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Easy to say when it’s not your child facing starvation. The long term doesn’t matter if your family isn’t going to make it another month.

Avicebron 23d ago
RTFA, they say they it's not poverty, the explosives and boats involved mean that it's not the desperate doing this. It's greed, the sooner we can be less paternalistic about this kind of stuff the sooner we can start addressing these kind of problems. It's like India or china being major polluters, they need to be held accountable just like the west holds/held itself accountable.
- zmgsabst 23d ago
  I enjoy when HN engages in overt racism like this — eg, denying peer agency and morality to SE Asians, due to the posters feeling above those “lessers”. Paternalistic racism might as well be a central tenet of certain political movements — whose entire ideology is that certain humans are not fully equal as thinking moral agents in the world. The new “scientific racism”.
  - eloisius 22d ago
    I think you read a lot into my comment that’s not there. I replied to someone who wrote “ Desperation is no excuse.” Developed countries are rich after centuries of extracting natural resources, to the point that Europe is nearly deforested, American rivers in the rust belt used to catch on fire from chemical pollution, and we destroyed a pacific atoll with over 20 nuclear bombs. A little rich for us to suddenly care about the coral so much that we can lecture developing countries about it. In this case, it doesn’t seem these are the acts of desperate people, but the arrogance of someone who will probably never face hardship beyond “ramen profitability” saying desperation is no excuse is astounding.
    - zmgsabst 22d ago
      Desperation is no excuse for anti-social behavior. I am calling out exactly that sentiment, because it removes the intelligence, agency, and morality from the people you’re discussing by reducing them to animals. You call them lessers and stop holding them to the same standard — and that so many did so here, despite poverty being unrelated, is precisely the evidence their motivation for doing so was racial stereotypes and not facts. You see the same with, eg, excusing gangland violence as “poverty”, despite areas with much higher poverty (including foreign nations) not experiencing the same anti-social behavior.
      - eloisius 22d ago
        Like I said, you're reading a lot more into what I wrote, than what I actually wrote. No one is more or less responsible for their actions on account of being Indonesian. And I've already agreed that in this case it appears not to be the result of desperate acts, but I am replying specifically on the point that "desperation is no excuse." Responsibility for most desperate situations begin way further upstream. I wonder if you hold your colleagues working at Meta to the same anti-social behavior standards, or yourself if you drive to work when taking the bus would only mean a few hours of inconvenience.

Avicebron 23d ago

RTFA, they say they it's not poverty, the explosives and boats involved mean that it's not the desperate doing this. It's greed, the sooner we can be less paternalistic about this kind of stuff the sooner we can start addressing these kind of problems. It's like India or china being major polluters, they need to be held accountable just like the west holds/held itself accountable.

zmgsabst 23d ago
I enjoy when HN engages in overt racism like this — eg, denying peer agency and morality to SE Asians, due to the posters feeling above those “lessers”. Paternalistic racism might as well be a central tenet of certain political movements — whose entire ideology is that certain humans are not fully equal as thinking moral agents in the world. The new “scientific racism”.
- eloisius 22d ago
  I think you read a lot into my comment that’s not there. I replied to someone who wrote “ Desperation is no excuse.” Developed countries are rich after centuries of extracting natural resources, to the point that Europe is nearly deforested, American rivers in the rust belt used to catch on fire from chemical pollution, and we destroyed a pacific atoll with over 20 nuclear bombs. A little rich for us to suddenly care about the coral so much that we can lecture developing countries about it. In this case, it doesn’t seem these are the acts of desperate people, but the arrogance of someone who will probably never face hardship beyond “ramen profitability” saying desperation is no excuse is astounding.
  - zmgsabst 22d ago
    Desperation is no excuse for anti-social behavior. I am calling out exactly that sentiment, because it removes the intelligence, agency, and morality from the people you’re discussing by reducing them to animals. You call them lessers and stop holding them to the same standard — and that so many did so here, despite poverty being unrelated, is precisely the evidence their motivation for doing so was racial stereotypes and not facts. You see the same with, eg, excusing gangland violence as “poverty”, despite areas with much higher poverty (including foreign nations) not experiencing the same anti-social behavior.
    - eloisius 22d ago
      Like I said, you're reading a lot more into what I wrote, than what I actually wrote. No one is more or less responsible for their actions on account of being Indonesian. And I've already agreed that in this case it appears not to be the result of desperate acts, but I am replying specifically on the point that "desperation is no excuse." Responsibility for most desperate situations begin way further upstream. I wonder if you hold your colleagues working at Meta to the same anti-social behavior standards, or yourself if you drive to work when taking the bus would only mean a few hours of inconvenience.