Hacker News Reader

Comment by stillwithit | Hacker News Reader

Stop hiding reality behind euphemism.

The rich are just people.

The sooner we accept that and dispose of the bizarre “deification” of the rich the sooner we can discuss deprecation of their influence and reach.

The apathetic kowtow to a handful of aging out government brown nosers who lobby to insulate themselves is sad.

1980s Reagan economy is not immutable physics and we have no obligation to believe the stories of the rich about their success. There’s a whole lot of behavioral science being leveraged, and intentional PR propaganda tossed around to obfuscate the rich are “just people”

View on HN

You're conflating "large and powerful corporations" with "rich people". This is a mistake. Your post is not really wrong, but doesn't address anything in the one you replied to.

What are large and powerful corporations under the hood? It's only an abstraction to facilitate business, but the reality is just a few people making decisions. Don't make the mistake of giving a physical existence to companies.

Thanks for reinforcing my point about over reliance on euphemisms.

“Rich people” in a fiat economy is due to the valuation of their assets, often but always, large stakes in corporations.

All of which is politically correct hallucination. None of it exists as immutable physics.

The mistake is yours for memorizing vacuous political statements.

Enough people believe the "hallucination" for rich corporations to behave noticeably differently from rich people, notably in their response to being defrauded, which is how you got onto this topic. I'm not even trying to talk morals here, just make accurate explanations and predictions.

Oh you’ve polled all the people and learned they really believe? Most just “follow orders” and I’m guessing if pressed would see no value to the hallucination. Anti-corporatism is everywhere; how many actually believe as you say? I doubt that many believe and it really just seems beneficial for you to patronize and “correct” others.

Accuracy relative to the dying and long dead’s ignorant political babble is a ridiculous stat to min/max to dial in correctness. Stay in the centrist lane!

Rather than have a forward facing conversation, you reach for history. There’s little point in continuing this conversation

Following orders is close enough to believing as to make no practical difference. Emphasis on practical. Anti-corporatism is a) not the same as thinking their existence is meaningless (rather the opposite in fact) and b) irrelevant if they don't act on it.

And really, mostly only law enforcement needs to believe the "hallucination" for it to have real effects. You, know, those guys with guns who will hurt you if you don't do what they say?

I don't think our positions are actually that far apart. It's just that, as far as I can tell anyway, you're trying to make a stand on some point of terminology while I'm trying to be reductionist and understand the dynamics.

I do agree with your take. Large corporation have a mechanism of their own that will tend to persist even as people in charge get rotated out.

That said:

“Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.” Ambrose Bierce 1906

Sure, and it would be great to see some combination of reduced profit and increased responsibility. As others in this thread have mentioned, there's no real reason to play along with the illusion that corporations are people. They should have fewer rights than humans, and the government should play rougher with them when they get out of line.

On this case, the rich were defrauded too, just like every person.

Some of them were also doing the defrauding, and got a positive net profit, while many weren't. Things are way more complex than "the rich did it".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com