this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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TechTakes

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

No, the concern with slavery is the lack of agency for oneself at the behest of another. A slave has no say in how their body is used and it's a violation of the human rights to be your own person. Whether or not they are guilty of a crime is irrelevant.

Punishment for a crime does not mean permitting abuse. It means rehabilitation or isolation from others. They can still be their own person and aren't forced into labor, but are not allowed to be a part of society again.

[–] Tar_alcaran 5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Slavery violates bodily autonomy, which is basically the worst ethical failing imaginable, worse than killing.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 weeks ago

I think killing someone is a pretty major violation of that person's bodily autonomy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

So does jailing someone until they give up and take your bogus plea deal.

[–] Tar_alcaran 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

I'm still putting the pieces of my life back together. 😔

[–] [email protected] 42 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Same guy earlier upthread

Public transit fares are generally malformed. I personally never pay the LA Metro fare. Why? Because I pay the Metrolink fare, which by their own admission covers same-day Metro transit. But police will actively seek me out as a person who looks like they have money and give me a hard time for not “tapping”, all while folks who very clearly have no money waltz on into the metro, stopping only to smoke crack on the elevator up. There’s a general problem in this country of what to do with law breakers who do not have money. It seems like the answer is to make them work and garnish their wages, but for whatever reason we are against that.

Yea the police are always giving such a hard time to people who don't look poor. It's so unfair that someone who can and does apparently pay for public transit has to prove they did.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 weeks ago

"poor people have had it too good for too long and slavery is the only answer. I consider myself a pragmatic centrist"

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

jesus fuck, this is racist in so many different ways simultaneously that I’m trying to imagine what living like this person must feel like, living this existence where they assume all the “poor-looking” (yeah) people sharing public transit with them must be smoking crack and stealing fare and therefore deserve slavery

like fuck, that kind of existence is just a pit of despair you can’t leave, isn’t it?

e: and literally the only thing that happened to them is they had to pull up a receipt on their phone or whatever! and meanwhile people who look poor (to them) had the audacity to exist near them! fucking ordinary shit is what made them like this! minor inconveniences produced this Level of racial hatred! what in the fuck!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

big failed art student energy isn't it?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago

Every coke head businessman ever more like ...

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Scrooge was a fucking pussy and he should have told those ghosts to suck him in hell

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

so as I was reading that I was forming a sneer along the lines of “ghosts transcending both time and death to show me the consequences of my worldview is a classical fallacy, checkmate Dickens” but they just fucking go for it there at the end

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 weeks ago

Appeal to thanatority!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 weeks ago

Appeals to fiction are a fallacy. Not let me explain why X group is bad based on an extremely contrived hypothetical.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 weeks ago

"I have a legitimate Metrolink fare and should not be hassled when I don't tap. These other people who don't look like me obviously do not have the Metrolink fare and should be hassled when they don't tap."

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

heh yeah saw that one too. and they have some other remarkable glittering shitgems in their posting history

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

I think I've seen that username on something posted on TechTakes before.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Id say "less" controversial.

Is making people in prisons perform the necessary custodial work to maintain it slavery? I dont think it is, but strictly speaking its enforced unwilling labor so by a dictionary definition it kinda is.

Now making them take jobs performing work for companies seeking to make a profit for less than minimum wage... yeah that smells a lot more like slavery.

[–] Tar_alcaran 7 points 3 weeks ago

What is and isn't slavery is absolutely up for debate. You can have an argument over where you draw the line, but I'm pretty sure anyone remotely sane and moral would absolutely say that for-prisoner labour is slavery.

Which is probably why some countries specifically allow slavery for prisoners.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Where do these dopes come from? Do they grow them in a lab?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

It's an ailment that's endemic to HN

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago

this is obviously an attempt to goad ngate into returning...right?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Least controversial libertarian. (At least they picked slavery and not ... well you know).

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

This guy is complaining about this while living in LA?

Isn't prison slavery already legal in the USA??

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

Isn’t prison slavery already legal in the USA??

it is that (the thirteenth amendment carves out an exception specifically for prison labour), and it's literally the operational model for a significant fraction of US prisons aiui

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Not sure that any time someone posts cringe on HN counts as a tech take. Maybe we can bring AI into this?

What about, enslaving prisoners is not controversial if an AI is giving the orders, since it's not a person oppressing another person. I'll take my 500M VC now please.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Before I actually read the linked post I definitely thought this was about the ethics of enslaving sentient AI as seen in The Animatrix or R.U.R.