Sometimes the political divide between Europe and the US becomes glaring on Hacker News. I feel this tweet is one of those moments. Our differences makes us more interesting but this tweet was a bit hard to digest.
I don't think this is a continental divide at all. I think what PG said here would be considered reprehensible to a lot of Americans, and I count myself among that contingent.
This isn't demonstrative of a divide between continents, this is a musing of a man so far out of touch with regular society that he sees a large swath of society as an inefficiency waiting to be obsoleted by a tech startup (which would presumably increase his personal wealth in the process).
40/60 splits often turn into "group A does this, but group B does that". It happens a lot.
I remember an article about whether people consider various acts on social media to be "cheating". So you know, 85% of women considered having a tinder account to be cheating, whereas 75% of men did (or something like that, I can't really remember). This was reported, of course, as "men and women differ about what counts as cheating on social media" when the data screamed "men and women largely agree about what counts as cheating on social media."
The split may be relevant - it does tell you something when 60% of one continent feels one way and only 40% of another does, but "Europe is this, whereas the US is that" is usually a vast oversimplification.
It's generally media driven, the differences make for better headlines, but it crops up all over the place.
This isn't demonstrative of a divide between continents, this is a musing of a man so far out of touch with regular society that he sees a large swath of society as an inefficiency waiting to be obsoleted by a tech startup (which would presumably increase his personal wealth in the process).