i don't necessarily disagree with yours as a general statement and i'll admit i jumped a little far to reach my conclusions, but manuel hinds is not simply arguing for human rights either. he's arguing that (democratic) capitalism is the antidote for all our present ills, while at the same time saying technological revolution (fostered by that same capitalism) is the impetus for those ills due to a militant idealization of a technologically simpler and more egalitarian past.

he doesn't attempt at all to address the complexity of balancing the rights of the individual with the stability of the whole society. this is the hard part and he doesn't say anything about it at all. throwing out some rah-rah speech about how we should all be democratic capitalists, even through rough terrain like ours now, doesn't actually make a convincing argument. he also doesn't string together the tidbits of economic data he cites to form a coherent argument for why technological progress leads to our current geopolitical problems, though that's the presumed meat of the article.

that's what i (and seemingly a number of others) was reacting negatively to. even though i'm sympathetic to his line of reasoning, he's anything but convincing.