6 ms·

I think some people here on Hacker News are semi-deluded free market fundamentalists who believe they're going to be future billionaires, so they naturally grav

by wackget 8mo ago

I think some people here on Hacker News are semi-deluded free market fundamentalists who believe they're going to be future billionaires, so they naturally gravitate towards protecting the rights of big business to do whatever it wants, even if it hurts people and the planet. The only people who think that destroying useful items is a good idea are those who would stand to lose money from it; either by having to pay a tiny fraction of their massive annual revenue for responsible recycling services, or by having their brand's reputation diluted by having their wares sold or (even worse) donated to the needy.

graemep 8mo ago
Personally I am surprised how anti-billionaire HN is given its run by a venture capital company and its aim is (indirectly, through reputation building and PR), to get wanna be billionaires to raise capital from them.
- dandanua 8mo ago
  I don't think this forum has significant costs of running, especially considering it is not in development.
  - shakna 8mo ago
    They switched the backend to Common Lisp in 2019, and at the time had two seperate Arc-to-JS compilers in development. [0] The site may feel less changeable than many, but I would be very surprised if it is not "in-development". [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21550123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21550123
  - direwolf20 8mo ago
    It employs two full–time moderators.
- bluebarbet 8mo ago
  It's partly explained by all the non-US contributors here. That's my theory. Of course, billionaires are unpopular even in the US. Yet, as sparsely attended at that (earnest!) pro-billionaire protest in San Francisco was, I find it totally unimaginable that that could happen anywhere outside the US.
  - zdragnar 8mo ago
    Most software developers are not founders, but they like to hang out here for the news and community anyway. It used to be a lot more libertarian back when I joined (even more so when I only occasionally lurked) but things have shifted rather dramatically over time.
- philwelch 8mo ago
  It didn’t use to be this way but through evaporative cooling, most of the founder types stopped posting here.
  - apparent 8mo ago
    Can you explain the connection to evaporative cooling?
    - mftrhu 8mo ago
      It refers to evaporative cooling of group belief - https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporative-cooling-of-group-beliefs https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporativ...
    - philwelch 8mo ago
      In evaporative cooling, the warmer particles are more prone to evaporate and escape leaving the remaining substance cooler than it was. Likewise, as individuals with more of a libertarian or founder-sympathizing mindset stopped contributing to HN as much, the overall tone of the site turned more negative against business and successful founders.[1] I don't want to speculate too much on why they started leaving--I hope it's because they all got too busy being successful founders--but once the effect started to happen and HN turned into less and less of a site for founders to discuss their startups and turned more and more into the proverbial peanut gallery, I think a feedback loop started pushing more of them away. mftrhu is probably correct in attributing the origin of the analogy but I don't specifically remember where I got it from and I think some of the examples EY gives in that essay would be uncalled for to apply as a direct analogy to HN. HN was never a doomsday cult and I'm not even trying to say that all of the smart and reasonable people left HN, but rather that there was a specific attitude and mentality that's not well represented here anymore. [1] This is oversimplified. Classic HN still had lots of people complaining about big tech companies, it's just that the criticism was usually voiced from the perspective of another founder rather than from the perspective of a progressive critic. For instance, I remember lots of complaints about Apple's arbitrary and capricious App Store policies, but then that directly affects the startup founder who wants to build an iPhone app.
rapidfl 8mo ago
all that said.. most of the clothes are not so "branded"? Who cares if a GAP or something ends up in outlet or wherever..
charcircuit 8mo ago
Why would it require becoming a billionaire to benefit? A lot of big companies are able to purchased by the public. There are even fractional shares which lowers the bar even further in being able to get exposure to these companies.
fatherwavelet 8mo ago
I am not against this in spirit but what are the higher order effects and unintended consequences? The only thing that is more annoying to me than market fundamentalist, neo-liberal bullshit is emotional appeals that sound right on paper but have a total disregard for higher order effects and unintended consequences.
bsder 8mo ago
> The only people who think that destroying useful items is a good idea are those who would stand to lose money from it; either by having to pay a tiny fraction of their massive annual revenue for responsible recycling services Some of us like the intent of the law but are wondering what the consequences of the law are. We have already seen all the schemes that corporations use for greenwashing. We have already seen all the recycling that isn't. Most of us assume that these corporations will simply do the absolute minimum they have to do to comply with the letter of the law. That likely means "selling" crates of these clothes back to some country willing to discard or destroy them. In addition, we already have a ton of problems from Always Late Inventory(tm), and this seems like it's going to add to that. Are you even slightly outside of the normal body shape? Sorry, no stock for you evermore. I think the law is a good idea, but, sadly, laws mean nothing without implementation. The devil is in the details.
brightbeige 8mo ago
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." - (probably not) John Steinbeck I guess with inflation we can update the quote to “temporarily embarrassed billionaires”
- lingrush4 8mo ago
  Socialism never took off in America because Americans know that disincentivizing work shrinks the economy and makes everyone poorer.

by wackget 8mo ago

graemep 8mo ago

Personally I am surprised how anti-billionaire HN is given its run by a venture capital company and its aim is (indirectly, through reputation building and PR), to get wanna be billionaires to raise capital from them.

dandanua 8mo ago
I don't think this forum has significant costs of running, especially considering it is not in development.
- shakna 8mo ago
  They switched the backend to Common Lisp in 2019, and at the time had two seperate Arc-to-JS compilers in development. [0] The site may feel less changeable than many, but I would be very surprised if it is not "in-development". [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21550123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21550123
- direwolf20 8mo ago
  It employs two full–time moderators.
bluebarbet 8mo ago
It's partly explained by all the non-US contributors here. That's my theory. Of course, billionaires are unpopular even in the US. Yet, as sparsely attended at that (earnest!) pro-billionaire protest in San Francisco was, I find it totally unimaginable that that could happen anywhere outside the US.
- zdragnar 8mo ago
  Most software developers are not founders, but they like to hang out here for the news and community anyway. It used to be a lot more libertarian back when I joined (even more so when I only occasionally lurked) but things have shifted rather dramatically over time.
philwelch 8mo ago
It didn’t use to be this way but through evaporative cooling, most of the founder types stopped posting here.
- apparent 8mo ago
  Can you explain the connection to evaporative cooling?
  - mftrhu 8mo ago
    It refers to evaporative cooling of group belief - https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporative-cooling-of-group-beliefs https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporativ...
  - philwelch 8mo ago
    In evaporative cooling, the warmer particles are more prone to evaporate and escape leaving the remaining substance cooler than it was. Likewise, as individuals with more of a libertarian or founder-sympathizing mindset stopped contributing to HN as much, the overall tone of the site turned more negative against business and successful founders.[1] I don't want to speculate too much on why they started leaving--I hope it's because they all got too busy being successful founders--but once the effect started to happen and HN turned into less and less of a site for founders to discuss their startups and turned more and more into the proverbial peanut gallery, I think a feedback loop started pushing more of them away. mftrhu is probably correct in attributing the origin of the analogy but I don't specifically remember where I got it from and I think some of the examples EY gives in that essay would be uncalled for to apply as a direct analogy to HN. HN was never a doomsday cult and I'm not even trying to say that all of the smart and reasonable people left HN, but rather that there was a specific attitude and mentality that's not well represented here anymore. [1] This is oversimplified. Classic HN still had lots of people complaining about big tech companies, it's just that the criticism was usually voiced from the perspective of another founder rather than from the perspective of a progressive critic. For instance, I remember lots of complaints about Apple's arbitrary and capricious App Store policies, but then that directly affects the startup founder who wants to build an iPhone app.

rapidfl 8mo ago

all that said.. most of the clothes are not so "branded"? Who cares if a GAP or something ends up in outlet or wherever..

charcircuit 8mo ago

Why would it require becoming a billionaire to benefit? A lot of big companies are able to purchased by the public. There are even fractional shares which lowers the bar even further in being able to get exposure to these companies.

fatherwavelet 8mo ago

I am not against this in spirit but what are the higher order effects and unintended consequences? The only thing that is more annoying to me than market fundamentalist, neo-liberal bullshit is emotional appeals that sound right on paper but have a total disregard for higher order effects and unintended consequences.

bsder 8mo ago

> The only people who think that destroying useful items is a good idea are those who would stand to lose money from it; either by having to pay a tiny fraction of their massive annual revenue for responsible recycling services Some of us like the intent of the law but are wondering what the consequences of the law are. We have already seen all the schemes that corporations use for greenwashing. We have already seen all the recycling that isn't. Most of us assume that these corporations will simply do the absolute minimum they have to do to comply with the letter of the law. That likely means "selling" crates of these clothes back to some country willing to discard or destroy them. In addition, we already have a ton of problems from Always Late Inventory(tm), and this seems like it's going to add to that. Are you even slightly outside of the normal body shape? Sorry, no stock for you evermore. I think the law is a good idea, but, sadly, laws mean nothing without implementation. The devil is in the details.

brightbeige 8mo ago

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." - (probably not) John Steinbeck I guess with inflation we can update the quote to “temporarily embarrassed billionaires”

lingrush4 8mo ago
Socialism never took off in America because Americans know that disincentivizing work shrinks the economy and makes everyone poorer.