Hacker News Reader

Comment by themartorana | Hacker News Reader

With truly evil billionaires out there - the Koch brothers come to mind - and family run organizations that take horrible advantage of employees - like Walmart and the Waltons - why is it so many people want to make a case against Google and its founders?

Yes, it makes sense to keep a check on powers. But I'm way more worried about all of our three-letter agencies and the private billionaire donations behind the power structure in Washington than the company that may in fact give me self-driving cars, give Internet access to remote parts of the world, and so on.

This article feels like it's doing nothing but trying to build an evil genius narrative where none exists. When you summon images of Lex Luther in the first sentence, you've lost me.

View on HN

Come on.

The article specifically ends with this after setting up the scenario:

>I’m not saying that Page is going to abuse his power. I am saying that he could. And that, should make us uneasy. If the old saying is true, that power corrupts, then perhaps Larry Page has too much power for one man.

The point is obviously that Google has far too much power in our society, in excess of just about any other organization, even some governments, and that the Google motto shouldn't make us trust them with it. No one should be trusted with the power Google has. The people at the helm are only human.

Indeed. I just posted a similar response to another comment elsewhere on this thread.

It's ironic too that the company's motto was (is?) "Don't be Evil". Kind of a self-acknowledgment of the power they were amassing from even he earliest days. There is also a choice implicit in formulating and publicizing such a motto. That is, "we have the power and the option to be evil, but we are asking you to trust us."

Beyond that, it's a motto straight from the comic super-villain motif: A mega-company seeking powerful futuristic technology, with a grandiose and ironic PR slogan that completely contradicts its true activities.

Not saying that's Google and none of this is to say we should all be building bomb-shelters; only that the article is spot-on in tone and content.

Yeah, the Koch Brothers are evil. That George Soros, though, he's totally a force for good. The reality is that left and right all have their rich supporters, and only the truly blinkered would say one side is "evil" and the other is "good".

The Koch brothers donated hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research. Have you given as much?

Themartorana never said that the left was good and the right was evil, and never said anything about George Soros. Even worse, you are engaging in a tu quoque fallacy to defend this perceived partisanship.

The Koch brothers spent $31 million in 2012 to lobby for their coal power interests [1], which is linked to higher rates of lung cancer for miners, people who live near mines [2], and people who live near coal power plants [3]. I consider their cancer research donations restitution.

[1]: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/07/oil-lobby-coal-...

[2]: http://www.scopemed.org/?mno=20068

[3]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19187950

I've yet to hear of any right-wingers criticise the Koch brothers. Perhaps Themarorana is a rogue libertarian that doesn't like them, but I'd consider that one of the least-likely possibilities.

I'd also say that promoting fossil fuels, which are responsible for most of the prosperity we have today, is a pretty low bar to have to cross in order to be considered "evil".

ISIS are evil. The Leader of North Korea is evil. The Koch Brothers (or George Soros)? Not so much

Did you sense any irony when you read "Run to Walmart to buy our tinfoil hats." ?

I'd posit that the OP has a focus of concern. If they read your comment, you've likely just sent them over the edge into cape-wearing-radioactive-spider-please-bite-me territory.

>With truly evil billionaires out there - the Koch brothers come to mind

what the fuck do you think gives you the right to claim someone is evil? I literally cannot imagine how much of a goddamn bubble you must live in to think you have any right to call someone evil because their political opinions differ from yours.

Isn't evil as undefined as good?

Although people have different definitions of 'good' and 'evil', in practice most people roughly agree about most of it. Humans have very similar minds. It's easy to lose sight of this, since discussion mostly focuses on the parts where we disagree, but that's some pretty serious selection bias.

I think the opposite is the case.

There is a big bunch of people who thing gays are bad or blacks or jews or people who don't believe in their god.

The war on drugs also made many people "evil" in the eye of those who don't did drugs, but most of them just were a bunch of spaced-out-hippies.

Let's see... he's a human with his opinions, knowledge, and internet access. He can claim whatever he wants.

It's the same thing that gives you the right to ride quixotically in to win the internet for billionaires everywhere this fine day.

A little harsh, but I agree in general. The Koch Brothers spend their money promoting mainstream political causes in a legal, and as far as I know, fairly standard, manner. There are financiers on the left that do the same things, and just as it was silly when the right was foaming at the mouth about Carl Icahn, it's silly when the left foams about the Kochs. It seems that people hate whichever one their chosen media network decides to demonize, but really both are playing according to the rules (as far as I know; neither have been convicted of a crime related to this yet, at least).

Some people are just bitter, and specifically, the hacker community has a long-standing issue with tolerance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com