[peresthe]

It is truly strange to see so many comments on Hacker News -- a message board owned by YCombinator, a startup accelerator whose actual mission is to launch wildly profitable companies -- talking conspiratorially about the wealthy being "parasites", lambasting "capitalism", pointing to increased profits as evidence of unscrupulous behavior.

[lordfrito]

Agreed...

Sometimes it feels like the site is being astroturfed with progressive / class warfare type messages.

Othertimes I feel it's just the same old "eternal september" problem but with techies, a bunch of young idealistic kids fresh out of college who tend to think in black and white terms of "us" vs "them". I remember being this way as a teenager, not quite sure when I grew out of it.

I remember listening to punk rock and advocating for "anarchy" etc (I'm sure I got the idea listening to too much Sex Pistols)... SMH... We all took ourselves and our political views sooooo seriously at that age.... Thank god no one was listening to me back then. The difference between then and now is that my conversations were in person and shared amongst a few high school kids, now they're broadcast to the world, commented on, and amplified.

The more I think about it, I'm hoping its just kids being kids.

[t43562]

The class struggle is the favorite argument for every form of ill in the UK. It's a culture war if you like. Once someone gets to the point of blaming something on the evil rich or the feckless layabouts then you cannot get any further in working out what's actually going wrong.

It is a horrendously boring argument which immigrants like me "cannot understand" because somehow or other we don't feel like we belong on either "side".

[kentrado]

Europeans are more aware of class struggle than people from the United States. They didn't have a McCarthyism red scare. Since this news is about an European country, it is no so strange that people complain about the system that brought this into being.

[rcarr]

Because the startups are (hopefully) adding value whereas the people we're talking about are robbing the UK blind whilst offering little of value in return. One is competence, the other is extortion.

[detaro]

The days of HNs audience primarily being the startup turbo-capitalism crowd are looong over.