vorhp

>A puttering democracy is still better than a thriving authoritarian country.

That is your opinion. You'll find that many people disagree. Maybe not here, in HN, openly.

So if say, old white females who wear expensive clothes are more likely to shoplift, should we ignore that?

Of course they will be racist and sexist... they'll probably have a log of race and sex of those they see. That information is probably useful to know your customers and learn what to sell; it seems useful.

What do startups have to do with anything here?

Practically everything coming out of America has American tints to it, maybe you don't even realise because of how prevalent they are.

Did something happen lately? Any news I'm missing?

Arguing against the mainstream position can even get your comment flagged. Doing it a few times (even about unrelated topics) will get your account banned for being "incendiary". HN is an echo chamber. But that's not surprising, all Internet communities are an echo chamber to some point.