aylmao 2 days ago

It's unfair to place all the blame on the individual.

By that metric, everyone in the USA is responsible for the atrocities the USA war industry has inflicted all over the world. Everyone pays taxes funding Israel, previously the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc.

But no one believes this because sometimes you just have to do what you have to do, and one of those things is pay your taxes.

  • johnnyanmac 2 days ago

    >unfair to place all the blame on the individual.

    I'm mostly blaming the rich.

    >everyone in the USA is responsible for the atrocities the USA war industry has inflicted all over the world.

    Yeah we kind of are. So many chances to learn and push to reverse policy. Yet look how we voted.

    >sometimes you just have to do what you have to do, and one of those things is pay your taxes.

    If it's between being homeless and joining ICE... I'd rather inflict the pain on myself than others. There are stances I will take, even of AI isn't the "line" for me personally. (But in not gonna optimize my portfolio towards that either).

    >

  • duskdozer a day ago

    It's unfair to place all the blame on an individual, not on the individual. Each individual is responsible for their share of the blame.

  • venturecruelty 2 days ago

    >By that metric, everyone in the USA is responsible for the atrocities the USA war industry has inflicted all over the world. Everyone pays taxes funding Israel, previously the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc.

    I mean, the Iraq War polled very well. Bush even won an election because of it, which allowed it to continue. Insofar as they have a semblance of democracy, yes, Americans are responsible. (And if their government is pathological, they're responsible for not stopping it.)

    >But no one believes this because sometimes you just have to do what you have to do, and one of those things is pay your taxes.

    Two things. One, you don't have to pay taxes if you're rich. Two, tax protests are definitely a thing. You actually don't have to pay them. If enough people coordinated this, maybe we'd get somewhere.

  • amrocha 2 days ago

    Honestly yeah. You are complicit and it is your fault. Either donate significant amounts, protest, or move.

_ttg 2 days ago

if the alternative to 'selling out' is making your business unviable and having to beg the internet for handouts(essentially), then yes, you should "sell out" every time.

  • owenthejumper 2 days ago

    The guy won’t work with AI, but works with Google…

    • averageRoyalty 2 days ago

      Thank you. I would imagine the entire Fortune 500 list passes the line of "evil", drawing that line at AI is weird. I assume it's a mask for fear people have of their industry becoming redundant, rather than a real morality argument.

    • johnnyanmac 2 days ago

      "Works with Google" in what way? And at what tome-frame? Even as someone who's actively decoupling from Google it's hard to truly de-Googlefy in this world as is.

  • venturecruelty 2 days ago

    "I have to do this societally deleterious thing or else someone else will." Is that the world you want to live in?

wonderwonder 2 days ago

Selling out is easy when your children have no food.

  • johnnyanmac 2 days ago

    Is the author starving or does he have the savings to bear a few bad years?

  • rglover 2 days ago

    Bingo. Moral grandstanding only works during the boom, not the come down. And despite being as big an idealist as they come, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. You can crusade, but you're just making your future self more miserable trying to pretend that you are more important than you think. Not surprising in an era of unbridled narcissism, but hey, that's where we are. People who have nothing to lose fail to understand this, whereas if you have a family, you don't have time for drum circles and bullshit: you've got mouths to feed.

    • johnnyanmac 2 days ago

      >Not surprising in an era of unbridled narcissism, but hey, that's where we are.

      Having the empathy to reject an endemic but poisonous trend is the opposite of narcissistic.

      And we're making big assumptions on the author's finances. A bad year isn't literally a fatal year depending om the business and structure.