> There are zero ways to interpret this that are okay if you have a sliver of moral integrity in you
I think democracies are innately superior, including morally, to autocracies. I think market-based economic systems are innately competitive against--and in their capacity to empower individual production, morally superior to--command economies.
A lot of broad assumptions and black or white categorisation of things that are too big to fit into such narrow terms as superior or inferior.
This is a discussion that will never be improved by system proponents proclaiming theirs as superior, and bringing dangerously connotated terms like innate to the table is only making it worse.
Of course not. But one of its fundamental advantages is its ability to build alliances and accept immigrants. Historically, those have been strengths of republics. That’s “innate” to the structure of the society.
> the world's largest democracy is in south Asia
India is a great example of Western culture hybridising with a local culture to produce a sum that’s greater than its parts. The British were dicks, particularly in India, and I’m not arguing that colonisation is okay. But I think it’s fair to say that a unified, democratic India very much flows from its exposure to Western systems of law and government. (India had indigenous democratic city-states. But in the south and never at scale.)
“The west” as a culture or thought definitely doesn’t include Russia - like in a other comment in this thread it’s the US, EU and allies, so mostly NATO
Some common definitions of the west are white people, western European countries and their former colonies, and the US and their allies. Many such countries are democratic currently. None are democratic innately.
Immigrants and white people are unrelated categories.
> Okay, so your argument is that "the west" can only mean something "innate"?
Karp said the west is innately superior. JumpCrisscross suggested this was acceptable because democracies are innately superior to autocracies. But western countries are not innately democratic. And democracy is not innately western. Superiority is not innate if its basis is not innate.
> What makes makes the US "innately" white?
People who define the west as white people do not consider all Americans part of the west. And I said it was a common definition. Not good.
> I think democracies are innately superior, including morally, to autocracies.
Even if the democracy commits mass genocide? I think the most dangerous societies/systems/governments are those filled by people who think they or their system are innately superior ( especially morally ) as it gives them moral cover to commit all kinds of evil.
Then again, Socrates and Plato thought democracies were innately inferior...
History certainly hasn't shown democracies to be innately morally superior.
Well at least for pigs, cross-breeding is innately superior to consanguinity....
I don't think that is what Palantir's boss was getting at here though.
That’s a cute setup there, but misses the point. The west—aka white people—don’t have any ”innate“ traits that make them superior to other humans. The entire foundation of our lives is built on the exploitation of others over hundreds of years. Suggesting that is the natural order of things is twisted bullshit, and we’ve heard it a hundred years before. It was wrong then, it is wrong now. Even alluring to that school of thought is wrong.
And no amount of „admit you like being privileged“ changes that.
This is the problem. Western culture isn't just white. Hell, the term 'white' is really a New World race. In the Old World, Europeans were enslaving each other and being enslaved by e.g. the Mamluks and Ottomans.
Do you have sources to backup your claim that Karp is only envisioning white people as part of the west? Is he a known white supremicist? I could not find such a claim.
I found he wrote this on his letter to shareholders…
> “As Samuel Huntington has written, the rise of the West was not made possible ‘by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion ... but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.’
“He continued: ‘Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.’”
That you have created a new category of people: 'white', that were historically not considered belonging to the same group does not subsume the history of western thinking; which arguably started in the middle east, was further developed by europeans, and is now fully multi-cultural.
The west, as a culture, absorbs what is useful and discards the not useful.
Notice that you are just admitting the superiority of the west here, no weak culture with subpar technology or weak people can exploit or conquer others. And pretty much everyone has tried to exploit others as much as they possibly could, that's unfortunately just how humans are. Everyone has at least one objectively bad ancestor, no matter the race or culture.
I think democracies are innately superior, including morally, to autocracies. I think market-based economic systems are innately competitive against--and in their capacity to empower individual production, morally superior to--command economies.