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Re:Why I'm Furious with Silicon Valley (2011) by glurgh on Thursday May 09, 2013 @01:06AM (#5678930)
The entire notion of calling a broad class of people whom you seemingly know nothing of beside accusing them of 'running the world' (itself an idea worthy of closer examination) 'scumbags' and 'human garbage' ought to be giving you very, very serious moral pause.
Re:Why I'm Furious with Silicon Valley (2011) by olefoo on Thursday May 09, 2013 @01:55AM (#5679026)
To be powerful in a corrupt society is a sign of corruption is it not?

When you live in a world where the highest levels of society are literally "above the law", torture as policy is considered acceptable, might makes right, and democracy has been for sale for so long that it's newsworthy when a politician refuses sponsorship; it is very hard to make an argument that anyone who pays attention to the news does not have a very clear idea of the moral status of our ruling elites.

Re:Why I'm Furious with Silicon Valley (2011) by glurgh on Thursday May 09, 2013 @02:19AM (#5679074)
It doesn't really matter what you or I think or whether we agree on the moral status of 'our ruling elites'.

We do have, though, concrete empirical evidence of the eventual consequences of casually thinking of and referring to others, any others at all, as 'human garbage'.

The moral status of that line of thought is much more clear - it's noxious and if there's some sort of moral thing we ought to agree on is that it's to be rejected and opposed, wherever it pops up.

[Edit: and to completely Godwin up this thread - if there's a day to take 30 seconds to think about the implications of such rhetoric, today, V-E day, is a good one].

Re:Why I'm Furious with Silicon Valley (2011) by olefoo on Thursday May 09, 2013 @03:08AM (#5679188)
Well, if we're going full Godwin; it might be good for you and all those of us who are US Citizens to reflect on the fact that our country is currently the one running the most notorious concentration camp on the planet and has admitted to running such camps in Iraq, Afghanistan and even Diego Garcia. When the histories of this era are written we probably won't be the good guys; if we ever were.
Re:Why I'm Furious with Silicon Valley (2011) by glurgh on Thursday May 09, 2013 @04:28AM (#5679368)
Sure but then it's not a contest of moral turpitude. Gitmo is probably better than any camp in North Korea, it doesn't make it any less despicable.

Calling VC 'human garbage' is, at the end of the day, just nerd message-board hyperventilating. And it's still completely repugnant and talking about other repugnant things doesn't make it any less so.

Re:Why I'm Furious with Silicon Valley (2011) by michaelochurch on Thursday May 09, 2013 @08:29AM (#5680014)
I actually never said that VCs were human garbage. Some of them are, some are not. I tend to think that most are not, but that many of the "cool kids" are.

My direct experience (which is not with VCs) is that the VC-darling startups are mostly run by human garbage, which raises questions about who funds them. Does this mean there are probably some horrible VCs? Yes, absolutely. Does it mean that all VCs are that way? Of course not. There are plenty of good ones out there, too.

My feelings about this suit are complicated. Look, Al Capone was nabbed on tax fraud, rather than the harder-to-prove but more vicious shit he did. If the Greenspan suit starts a process that puts an end to VC note-sharing and co-funding and social-proof calls-- against the spirit of the law, but hard to prove on an individual basis-- then I'm all for it.

Re:Why I'm Furious with Silicon Valley (2011) by fearless on Thursday May 09, 2013 @04:45AM (#5679402)
How much VC funding has Gitmo raised? I must have missed the Techcrunch post about the evil VCs who finance concentration camps.