[dang]

It was a generic flamewar tangent: it takes the hottest points of indignation (richness, wrongness) to a such a level of generality that nothing concrete can be said. This doesn't overlap with curious conversation, and HN is supposed to be for the latter.

It's admittedly hard to remain in curious conversation about things that are so activating, so it's quite understandable that people do it.

[frm88]

I usually agree with you, but in this case you're spectacularly wrong. Andreessen, Thiel, Musk, Ellison, Zuckerberg and others have contributed massively ie millions of dollars to the last federal election. They rail publicly against introspection (Andreessen), empathy (Musk), competition (Thiel), death (Ellison), regulation (Zuckerberg, Thiel) and do so on all the media available and their money buys various policies that have rather detrimental effects on the general US population (think energy). These five are just examples that prove grandparent's assessment stands. Just have a look at a list of the contributors to political donations and the search for their public statements re humanity: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donor...

[dang]

I hear you, but your comment doesn't intersect with mine. I wasn't expressing a view about Andreessen et. al. at all - only about the GP comment type.

The point would be the same if you swapped any other individuals in for those 5.

[frm88]

Let me try one last time to get my point across, I'm an ESL, so maybe I was phrasing this wrong. It's not about those 5 or another 5. It's about how wealth negatively influences compassion, empathy and overall behaviour. There are scientific studies on that topic:

Rich less empathetic than poor, study says https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/rich-less-empathet...

How Wealth Reduces Compassion https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduce...

If you go along the donor list and search for remarks the biggest political donors have made you'll note that most of them are severely lacking in the 'how-to-human' department.

These are the people buying your politics. I still maintain that GP's assessment stands.

As for the comment type, there's nothing disparaging or even insulting about it. I don't know whether GP is a native English speaker, but as an ESL I can't find anything generalising or otherwise wrong with it. I have flagged a lot of comments for posters calling others Nazis or other insults or getting personal and I'm absolutely sure a lot remain. I have no feeling what kinds of failure you're reacting to here and this is grounds for general insecurity.