> Indeed, in most indigenous languages, there is no word for prison.
I think it's disingenuous to argue that a certain type of misery did not exist because it doesn't map 1:1 to our label of it. It's at least sloppy.
Noble savages are a fictional creation[0]:
> A large, horticultural population near Lake Victoria, the Gusii lived in clans that were territorially separated from other clan territories by areas of uninhabited bush. Because these clans were exogamous, men had to seek wives from neighboring clans. Many societies have chosen marriage partners in the same way without social conflict, but Gusii clans were so hostile to one another that most had feuded in the past, and animosities continued to run high. A Gusii proverb said, “Those whom we marry are those whom we fight.” This presented the Gusii with a dilema, but instead of attempting to soothe these tensions as other societies with a similar form of marriage have done, the Gusii made matters worse.
> Both before and after marriage, Gusii men were said to have been so frustrated sexually that they resorted to rape. Whether sexual frustration was the cause or not, the fact is that the Gusii committed rape almost four times as often as the average rate in the United States. In 1937, there were so many rapes that the British colonial government had to threaten military action, and in 1950 there were so many convictions for rape that there were not enough prison facilities to hold the offenders. Not surprisingly, married life itself was always distant and often hostile. The antagonism between Gusii men and women clearly caused considerable stress, and if it served any useful social purpose, it has yet to be identified.
And what about the mid to low radioactive waste? Also let's not forget France does not have any long term storage facility for their highly radioactive waste yet. Why if it is so easy have they not managed?
Nuclear-level containment on geological timescales is potentially impossible.
Its not like you can put it into a dump and its "gone" like household trash. Radioactivity is ionizing, so it corrodes all materials and cannot be physically contained. The earth's crust is to porous (i mentioned the radon problem in another post) to keep it underground.
And the ship is only turned around for a brief period of time because the next gen mbas will restart the outsourcing cycle. The allure of replacing your most expensive employees at one third the cost regardless of quality impacts is just too tempting to pass up.
> In this case, I blame the Merkel government for putting the financial well-being of its citizens over ethical principles,
Its much worse than that in terms of realpolitik: the gains were short-term, the costs will be paid for over decades, and disproportionately allocated to germanys eastern neighbors like the Poles and Estonians who are at increased risk of Russian aggression.
It really was such a bad tradeoff and I don't think this is hindsight: Russia is basically doing what is has been doing for centuries.
Complete failure of the German political system between 1990-2020+
I don't think anyone can assume that every comment on HN comes from a real human anymore. This law comes from the same nation that gave us Cambridge Analytica.
HN is a large enough forum that it would be included in any serious propaganda campaign.
Yes, the userbase changed quite a lot. Supporters of autocratic governments are in greater numbers, especially from EU based on what I see but also an increased number from SV. I have a passion for sociology, but I did not figure out completely this shift in a way I can prove it.
Hacker News users now profit from extensive invasion of privacy, from Facebook to LinkedIn, to every ad network, VPN, ISP, etc... They all trade in our private info daily. 20 years ago, the battle cry was around privacy and government monitoring of all traffic and how bad that was. Now people climb over one another to give away their data for free in exchange for mind-altering social media platforms and AI driven nonsense.
I am convinced Libertarians do not exist. The current state of the US should drive them to utter insanity, and yet, they tend to be mostly silent on all of these corporate over reach issues. People who say they are Libertarian just don't want to pay parking tickets. If the real techno Libertarians existed, they'd be burning our current Valley to the ground. Anyone who cared about the 2nd amendment should be losing their minds over military deployments on US soil. Constitution huggers should be screaming bloody murder, daily. Instead, those types are super happy with their new dictator. Funny how all the performative anger goes away when it's their side that is performing the authoritarian actions. The NRA seems to LOVE this willing take over of the well armed militias by the federal government... But I digress.
Instead, the reigning philosophy here is now greed. Privacy, sovereignty, ownership, open source, all those things are forgotten in the backseat of the crypto and VC cash car.
It surprises me how little the newer generations care about ethics, morality, principles. Call them whatever you want, but it really feels like everyone screams about how righteous they are, how wrong everyone else is, and then they take the cash and stand up for nothing when the chips are down.
Remember when the big thing we were worried about was the NSA recording our phone calls? Now large corporations harvest our call info, chat texts, social media posts, and even the raw microphone input on our phones to strip every last piece of information about us and mine it for data to influence our lives, purchases, and even out thoughts. And what did we do in the last election? We put in the party that will remove even more roadblocks from this type of thing, and has deregulated crypto. Victory!
How did we get here? Where are the Cypherpunks? Where are the high ideals we used to have?
I think it's less that HN users profit from privacy invasion as much as some of them aspire to run companies that do so. Perhaps a distinction without a difference.
Yeah it's like how people constantly vote for laws that benefit only those better off than themselves because that's where they are in their heads - they're not regular folk, they're just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
I think it's disingenuous to argue that a certain type of misery did not exist because it doesn't map 1:1 to our label of it. It's at least sloppy.
Noble savages are a fictional creation[0]:
> A large, horticultural population near Lake Victoria, the Gusii lived in clans that were territorially separated from other clan territories by areas of uninhabited bush. Because these clans were exogamous, men had to seek wives from neighboring clans. Many societies have chosen marriage partners in the same way without social conflict, but Gusii clans were so hostile to one another that most had feuded in the past, and animosities continued to run high. A Gusii proverb said, “Those whom we marry are those whom we fight.” This presented the Gusii with a dilema, but instead of attempting to soothe these tensions as other societies with a similar form of marriage have done, the Gusii made matters worse.
> Both before and after marriage, Gusii men were said to have been so frustrated sexually that they resorted to rape. Whether sexual frustration was the cause or not, the fact is that the Gusii committed rape almost four times as often as the average rate in the United States. In 1937, there were so many rapes that the British colonial government had to threaten military action, and in 1950 there were so many convictions for rape that there were not enough prison facilities to hold the offenders. Not surprisingly, married life itself was always distant and often hostile. The antagonism between Gusii men and women clearly caused considerable stress, and if it served any useful social purpose, it has yet to be identified.
[0]: https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-sick-societies-by-robert...