Andreessen is such a drama queen. I said something clever and a little critical to him on twitter once and he blocked my ass. He runs his mouth off and says stupid shit all the time.
The tone of your comment comes off as drama. When it doesn't include the details of the tweet, people are left guessing. If no mention of the other things you find questionable are explained, then it's just flaming. This isn't to defend him, but to suggest this style doesn't help solve the problem of sloppy social media commentary.
I can anecdotally confirm that piratebroadcast's claim is not unusual, as I got blocked sometime after this tweet: https://twitter.com/geofft/status/458371450052022273 To be fair, maybe I should have attempted some substantive discussion instead.
I don't see what's wrong with this, specifically. It's his account, he can block whoever he wants.
People take this stuff way too personally. I've blocked a few people simply because I don't like their stuff in my feed. One of them bugged me for months afterwards to unblock him, even though it's completely inconsequential and I don't say much interesting anyway.
IMO this is a flaw with twitter. Blocks are two-way: I don't see their stuff, and they don't see my stuff. But whenever I'm blocking someone, it's just because I don't want to see their stuff. There's no reason to tie those together.
In any case, how a person manages their own Twitter account is their business. If they use it to say something ridiculous then by all means attack it, but going after them merely for blocking people is ridiculous.
>IMO this is a flaw with twitter. Blocks are two-way: I don't see their stuff, and they don't see my stuff. But whenever I'm blocking someone, it's just because I don't want to see their stuff. There's no reason to tie those together.
I don't think "don't show them my stuff" is a legitimate option for a publication and broadcast platform like Twitter. It's so simple to evade the blocks that all it does is promote sockpuppetry, which just complicates attempts to control all that "harassment" (which, more often, is actually just simple disagreement) that Twitter users are concerned about.
If you don't want your tweets to be publicly visible, set your account to private. If you do want your tweets to be publicly visible, keep your account public. Those are the two valid options. "Blocking" someone from seeing your tweets just puts them an extra click away (the "logout" button). It's online security theater.
The point isn't to put some ironclad barrier between you, it's just to make it harder for them. That's enough to get a lot of people to just give up and move on. If people want to do it, why not let them? Social stuff doesn't have to be all or nothing and it doesn't have to be perfect. The lock on my front door won't keep out a determined intruder, but it's still extremely useful.
A locked front door provides basic protection for a private domicile. Twitter is not private. A more apropos analogy to Twitter's block functionality would be holding a meeting in the park and yelling at certain people to stop listening because you don't like them being around. You can yell all you want but you can't actually stop them from hearing you or listening if they're interested, and it's unreasonable to expect to be able to do so.
Regardless, the fact remains that some users find this functionality useful. You can tell them it's useless as much as you want, but they want it, and Twitter provides it, so there's no particular reason to take it away.
Were the mughals invaders and colonisers like the British? Did they "leave" after their demise? I thought they basically became part of India, especially with their artistic and religious influence on the people.
Manchu Qing Dynastsy was foreign invaders that "got assimilated", too. Chinese people were glad to get rid of them and okay with Britain countering their presence.
Every serious economic paper I've read on the subject suggests that decline in Indian GDP during the colonial years was due to the bottom dropping out of several commodities markets. You seem to be insinuating something else was at work. Do you have anything you could cite?
Mughals:
"The psychological interpretations emphasize depravity in high places, excessive luxury, and increasingly narrow views that left the rulers unprepared for an external challenge." [ theory from Wikipedia entry on Mughals. Follow their citations. ]
People were glad to get rid of them and their wars which crippled India.
Britain kicked them out and (mostly) unified India.
I really hate this argument, the change in GDP share is because the West industrialised and the East didn't, before that it was mostly a matter of population, per capita GDP didn't matter so much.
Not to say I have any idea what would have happened without colonialism, but thinking that India would have retained their share of world GDP is naive.
Is it a coincidence that industrial revolution happened in a country which was taking raw material from its colonies at zero cost?
Owning India is what allowed Britain to fund its own development (as well as all its international wars). The british destroyed india's local textile sector (which was world-famous), shipped all the cotton to Britain, and sold clothes BACK to Indians. That's how this industrial revolution happened.
This is what Mahatma Gandhi opposed and encouraged Indians to make their own yarn. That's where his association with the "charkha" and swadeshi movement comes from.
I would agree it's almost certainly true that colonialism and extracted wealth did a great deal to fuel the industrial revolution, but saying that the British pace of industrialization was dependent on India is a different thing from saying that India would have industrialized at the same pace as the West in the absence of colonialism. Leaders and elites frittering away wealth, rather than investing it in economic development, has been the rule rather than the exception for the majority of human civilization, in the West and the East. What makes you think that the Mughals would have suddenly shifted the basis of their social order, to start investing in steam engines rather than palaces, in the absence of the British? The Newcomen engine was invented in 1712, at a time when the East India Company were an irrelevance. Where is the parallel in India?
Just to be clear, I'm not saying pace of development wasn't seriously set back through colonialism, I'm questioning specifically this percentage of GDP argument.
To be fair, the % of GDP argument is really hard to quantify along the axes being used here.
If India wasn't a colony, wealth would not have concentrated in GB, likely slowing Down their development and Maybe even making them more open to local conflicts.
Provided the French or Dutch didn't conquer more of India, and, it's hard to argue that wealth remaining in India would have not have resulted in more trade and local development.
We can definitely say that having someone come to your country, and clearly stop you from building the best product you can build, sell or pruchase, impoverishes your country.
I really hate your argument too. India actually had trade routes all the way upto Britain until and after it was colonized. In fact there is no doubt that India would have taken part in Western industrialization looking at the attitude India had in allowing foreigners to settle in its land. Don't forget that the British never waged a War against India unlike other countries which Britain colonized. They came into India as the "British East India Company" to do trade and business. Wouldn't this trade and business easily influence India to industrialize? So what changed? Why did this company, that had been setup to do trade and business, end up getting it's own private armies, exercise military power and assume administrative functions? Was it part of a bigger plan to actually colonize a country without waging War by infiltrating the country in the guise of a Company and ruling via the Divide and Rule policy? Ask yourself these questions and you'll get your answer. India was always open to new cultures, traditions and advancements before British colonization. You should read about Indian history to know that we even had metal working way before Britain even knew about metallurgy. Read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metallurgy_in_South...
There is a reason why Britain industrialised first. A lot of it had to do with barring Indians from making manufactured goods in their own country and importing raw materials at artificially low prices. Also Indians were not allowed to own valuable assets like tea plantations etc. Educate yourself before making statements that make no sense
That's prior to the industrial revolution compared to after the industrial revolution. It's the same story with India, Russia and China - during that period the global economy shifted from being overwhelmingly defined by agriculture and other products of manual labour (and therefore being heavily dependent on population) to being defined by industrial production. Britain treated India as an extractive economy, were involved in many abuses and crimes, and certainly held back India's development (the lack of literacy even in the 1940's is the most clear-cut example), but it's an enormous stretch to say that India under the Mughals or the other regional rulers would suddenly have made India into an industrial superpower.
You can see in Russia, in the absence of any colonialism, the enormous struggle which there was to transform an economy dependent on manual labour, and with an elite dependent on feudal social structures, into a modern economy. I would separate the issues of abuses/crimes and the issues of development in the sense that the abuses were perpetrated due to moral failings, of power-hunger, racism, and greed, but development is not just about morality, it's about having the right policy and the right trajectory for society. In terms of development, the really damaging attitude was that India's ancient culture should not be disturbed to make way for industrialization, and this was an opinion shared by many well-meaning British and also Indians, pre and post independence.
I think that's almost certainly true, but again I'd go back to the example of Russia, where the elite continued to put their wealth principally into competitive status symbols rather than industrialization for almost two centuries after the industrial revolution started. Elites siphoning off wealth for their luxury, rather than investing in society or the economy, has been the rule, not the exception, for the majority of human history, and the Mughals certainly had been doing that in India for centuries before the British arrived. Empiricism and scientific enquiry also got going centuries before industrialization, I admit I don't know much about Indian intellectual life in the 17th century, but did they really have an equivalent of the Royal Society, or of Newton?
India had a more vibrant scientific society than the West. While the West was still figuring out if the Earth was flat or not, Indian scholars had already established that the Earth was not only a spheroid but also determined the age of the Universe (See: https://www.quora.com/What-does-Hinduism-say-about-the-shape... and this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_time). We even had Metallurgy working way before Britain learnt about working metals. I can go on and on about Indian intellectual life way before Britain came to colonize India but it makes no sense in today's context because most of these facts are either unknown or is of little interest to the West. See what Professor Dean Brown (a scientist from the United States) says about India, Sanskrit and India's Scientific heritage in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Brv2FaOluU
I didn't downvote you, but I do disagree very strongly with what you have written. I was talking about scientific culture in the 17th century and you reply with the achievements of Indian civilization from thousands of years earlier. No one doubts that India is home to one of the great world civilizations, but science is empiricism, it is observation taking precedence over everything else. If this had been created in the Hindu texts we would have settled separate star systems by now. You might as well say that 12th century England had a dynamic scientific culture because they read Aristotle and Galen.
You can't compare Russia to India. India was welcoming to foreigners and integrated their cultures and traditions. It was the same Mughals and other regional rules who allowed the British to setup the "British East India Company" in India. Its unfortunate that the British took advantage of this gesture and misused the opportunity to colonize India. To say that India would not have industrialized without colonization is stretching it too far. India was always open to new endeavors.
The revisionism in this thread is incredible. Britain enslaved an entire nation for centuries and you think that didn't cripple India? They will have to pay for their crimes one day.
The original was catastrophically dumb. Was it because it's what he actually believes, or because he didn't spend more than fifteen microseconds considering his words? Beats me. Fun to watch, though.
Even when dealing with people I don't like and with whom I almost 100% of the time disagree, I've found it much better to try first to understand what the person was actually trying to say before jumping reflexively to the most uncharitable interpretation of what the person said.
The original statement may have different interpretations, but none of them result in mapping "anti-colonialism" to "socialism." There's just no way to get from A to B actually looking at what was said.
Then he comes along and says he meant something completely different. No relation to the original statement. Apparently a moment of total brain confusion.
Do we take him at his word? I suppose we could, but then we're basically giving everybody a free pass to retroactively alter any statement they've made in any way if they don't like the reaction.
For what it's worth, I don't dislike Mr. Andreessen and have only a vague idea of who he even is (something to do with Netscape, right?).
He's one of the original creators of one of the first web browsers - arguably one of the early architects of the web. And since has parlayed his fortune to become one of the top investors in silicon Valley.
And now, apparently a self-righteous hypocrite who is arguing against net neutrality because it suits his financial interests in Facebook.
>jumping reflexively to the most uncharitable interpretation of what the person said.
There isn't a charitable interpretation to what he said. There's only a "damage control" interpretation. And that one doesn't really fit well with the fact that he blocked people who retweetted (and hence gave more prominence) to his original tweet.
Which interpretation is at least as uncharitable as the one that thinks he said India should have remained a colony of Britain?
Any other (more sane) interpretation might be a really, really profoundly stupid statement, as well. I don't care and am not qualified to argue those.
The point is that we can't have meaningful conversations when so many people jump immediately on the misinterpretation of a statement that is most useful for bringing out the hate for the one who spoke it.
> Any other (more sane) interpretation might be a really, really profoundly stupid statement, as well
Agreed.
The exercise in measuring charitability is merely academic in this instance. The bottom line is a VC has said a really stupid thing which goes against his earlier pronouncements on NN, because he literally has money on the line as an FB investor. Which ever way you look at it, he sounds like an out-of-touch corporatist.
The exercise in measuring charitability is merely academic in this instance.
If we value having any kind of meaningful discussion then does it really not matter that we criticize on the grounds you mention and not just seize on the opportunity to mischaracterize a statement as pro-colonialist?
>just seize on the opportunity to mischaracterize a statement as pro-colonialist?
It's not a mischaracterization. Just because he now regrets calling his opponents "anti-colonialists" (or rather because the internet made him regret it) does not mean I have to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Did he explicitly state that he thinks India would be better off under colonial rule? No.
Did he call opponents of Free Basics "anti-colonialist"?
If he's uninformed about what colonialism did to India, then he should shut his mouth about it. But that would be too hard seeing as he has personal interest in Facebook getting a monopoly there and offering a second-class internet experience without having to invest anything into bandwidth (which would be paid for by the state).
Besides, the so-called "explanation" of his views in further tweets makes it look even worse because "anti-colonialism" is apparently very close to "nationalism". So those filthy Indians are actually being nationalists for telling poor little Mark to go fuck himself and his idea of a cheaply done monopoly.
Indians are actually being nationalists for telling poor little Mark to go fuck himself and his idea of a cheaply done monopoly.
... which is still different from being in favor of or somehow defending colonialism (leaving aside the notion that he must think of them as "filthy" Indians).
We can criticize Andreessen for any among a giant pile of good reasons for doing so, while understanding that in this instance he was talking about something like anti-Westernism and should have used something like that phrase instead of the one he did.
100% of your dislike for him remains and is well-founded without undermining your argument with the belief that he really thinks those "filthy Indians" ought never to have escaped colonial rule.
(I have zero motivation to defend Andreessen on anything he's actually said or done -- I just object to the misinterpretation and mischaracterization going on here because it destroys valuable conversation and debate.)
Would it help HN readers if I clarified that the first line in my post above ("Indians are actually being nationalists...") is a QUOTE of the preceding comment?
Those are not my words -- I am responding to those words.
In the face of overwhelming condemnation, that might be what he now says he initially "meant." But I don't see any particular reason to believe him. He knows he's backed himself into a corner and desperately trying to spin himself out of it. But even so, that very statement you quoted (and which marca said "Exactly") to:
@pmarca referred to the post-colonial anti-colonial mix of nationalism, socialism, abuse/power that afflicted many ex-colonies
is itself pretty obtuse -- it's basically saying that post-colonial societies like India still haven't quite "grown up" yet, and don't really know what's best for them. Hence, their rejection of the wondrous gift to humanity that is Free Basics.
It wasn't socialism, more protectionism. Investment in defunct industry and lack of investment in new technology for fear that it would overshadow the old craftmanship.
He probably meant "Anti-West" attitudes, not anti-colonialism. Coming from a third world country myself, I know there is a tendency to deny and dismiss some socially disruptive innovations because of their origin. There is a cultural trust issue there.
Facebook was not the center of this debate at all. The debate and the regulation are about differential pricing. The movement started in opposition of Airtel (an Indian company) and people en-masse downvoted Flipkart (an Indian company) for participating. People have praised Google (a western company)'s Project Loon for respecting Net Neutrality and installing free wi-fi in railway stations.
The criticism of FreeBasics would have gone to Reliance (an Indian company) if Facebook hadn't started this high-decibel campaign with two full pages of ads with heading "What Net Neutrality activists are not telling you". FB wanted the attention so they got it.
India is pro-modernism. It has nothing to do with cultural trust. We just don't want to take in Western culture into India because we believe our culture, tradition and identity, that has been inherited from our ancestors for over thousands of years, needs to be protected. It is nothing against the Western culture. When we visit foreign countries we don't demand that our customs be followed but instead assimilate with that country's culture. Why do you think there are so many Indians in every part of the World living harmoniously? The same cannot be said about some other countries who are actually "Anti-West" and actively seek to change Laws in Western countries to suit their customs/traditions. We don't do such things and never will.
To be fair, it was stupid, however it was also a tongue in cheek tweet that was not an endorsement of colonialism and more poking fun at the sluggish Indian economy once they freed themselves of colonial rule. He was essentially making the point you made.
> sluggish Indian economy once they freed themselves of colonial rule
If you understand the affects of colonialism of 200 years - economic and other exploitation - sluggish is pretty much the best case you can expect after freedom. Comparing to other colonies India has done fairly well for having being nearly destroyed and rebuilt.
I understand colonialism perfectly. My country was under British rule for almost 900 years, longer than any other country on earth. I wasn't supporting him in his statement, actually I disagree with at least 80% of what he tweets, however if there is to be a backlash against the likes of Marc Andreessen then it should be for legitimate reasons and not that he endorsed colonialism which he didn't. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be pissed with SV elites who say and act as they wish without making up fake reasons.
It was just pure ignorance. Some of the larger impacts of colonialism:
Indian share of world economy went from 23-24% before colonialism to less than 4% under colonialism. India's share of World Trade went from 27% to 2% under colonialism.
India's healthcare worsened during colonialism because all the resources were exported to Europe for cheap and in abundance
India's literacy was worsened during colonialism and was just close to 10% during Independence.
India's revolutionaries who opposed colonialism and raised against the British were brutally killed or hanged under British rule.
Anyone who spoke against the colonialism were jailed.
British Divide and Rule policy still affects India today.
Colonialism was one factor. It is not clear how India would have imbibed and benefited from the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution in the absence of British presence in the subcontinent. Just a reminder that British presence started in the very late 18th century, but their true hegemony was for 90 years, between 1857 and 1947. Japan had American presence, but no hegemony and is a good counterpoint to those who claim that colonialism has benefits. A few things to note: without the British, there may never have been a coherent whole of "India" as we know today. Counterfactuals are hard, but it is hard to assume that there would necessarily have been an Indian Bismarck or Garibaldi had there been no British hegemony. Different regions and kingdoms in India would have developed differently. You would have had a few Japans, notably in the South, West coast, Northeast, and parts of the Gangetic heartland: regions which were always wealthy and/or politically stable.
Whether the economy would have declined less in the absence of colonialism is really impossible to answer. But to cite colonialism as the only reason is wrong, especially since the decline coincides roughly with the scientific and industrial revolutions that occurred in Western Europe and later, America.
Wrong. From wikipedia: Company rule in India (sometimes, Company Raj,[1] "raj," lit. "rule" in Hindi[2]) refers to the rule or dominion of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent. This is variously taken to have commenced in 1757, after the Battle of Plassey, when the Nawab of Bengal Sirajuddaulah surrendered his dominions to the Company,
Also India pre 1947 was a civilization; a 2000+ year old one. Closest analogy is Europe. Do people vex about the existence of Belgium (a small country)?
India went from exporting finished goods to exporting raw materials from the 1780's to the 1860's. Coincidence?
To repeat what I said below:
the industrial revolution in textiles kicked into high gear in England in 1822, a good 50 years or so after India was under effective company rule. And textiles was an industry where India had a comparative advantage before company rule. Wonder where Britain got all that raw material to make textiles from?
From wikipedia: During the period, 1780–1860, India changed from being an exporter of processed goods for which it received payment in bullion, to being an exporter of raw materials and a buyer of manufactured goods.[20] More specifically, in the 1750s, mostly fine cotton and silk was exported from India to markets in Europe, Asia, and Africa; by the second quarter of the 19th century, raw materials, which chiefly consisted of raw cotton, opium, and indigo, accounted for most of India's exports.[21]
Starting in the 1830s, British textiles began to appear in—and soon to inundate—the Indian markets, with the value of the textile imports growing from £5.2 million 1850 to £18.4 million in 1896.
So British industrialists climbed up the value ladder, as you do when you're trying to create wealth. They did the same thing with porcelain, once they figured out the process.
Right around 1830 was when the American Southern cotton plantation system took off, and more or less completely displaced Indian cotton on the world market[1] because it was cheap, cotton gins were efficient, and it was a whole lot closer to ship it from Mobile or Charleston to Birmingham, than to go all the way down around the Cape and back.
Opium became a huge export for India because it was the only thing other than bullion the Brits (and Americans, and Dutch, and Portuguese) could hit on to trade profitably in the China market. Then, later, that cash crop was undercut by cheaper product produced in Turkey, and by Chinese domestic production.
Point is they climbed it by having a subjugated captive population who were not even allowed to make salt let alone textiles[1]. That population was forced to plant cash crops (primarily cotton) that could then be exported to Britain at fixed prices and sent back as textiles.
There is about 70 years from the start of company rule to the 1830's. If you're not allowed to manufacture textiles in that time period, what exactly do you think would happen? You'd maintain a comparative advantage?
On opium: In India, its cultivation, as well as the manufacture and traffic to China, were subject to the British East India Company (BEIC), as a strict monopoly of the British government.[7]
Opium, like most industries, only benefited the British. So it would be more accurate for you to say the British used the Indians to start exporting opium.
So lets recap. People that mostly export textiles suddenly finds themselves 1) unable to make their own textiles, 2) forced to plant cotton and other crops for sole benefit of the British. So you have a whole civilization barred from selling finished goods. Gee wonder what happens to them.
[1]
Taxation of salt has occurred in India since the earliest times. However, this tax was greatly increased when the British East India Company began to establish its rule over provinces in India. In 1835, special taxes were imposed on Indian salt to facilitate its import. This paid huge dividends for the traders of the British East India Company. When the Crown took over the administration of India from the Company in 1858, the taxes were not replaced.
The stringent salt taxes imposed by the British were vehemently condemned by the Indian public. In 1885, at the first session of the Indian National Congress in Bombay, a prominent Congress Leader S.A.Swaminatha Iyer raised the issue of the salt tax.[1] There were further protests throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries culminating in Mahatma Gandhi's Salt Satyagraha in 1930. This sathyagraha was followed by other sathyagrahas in other parts of the country.
After the arrest of Gandhi, Sarojini Naidu lead the sathyagrahis to Dharasana Salt works in Gujarat and was arrested by the police. C. Rajagopalachari broke the Salt Laws at Vedaranyam, in Madras Province in the same year. Thousands courted arrest and were imprisoned in large numbers. The administration eventually relented and invited Mahatma Gandhi to England to attend the Second Round Table Conference. Gandhi's Dandi March got wide news coverage and proved to be a turning point in the history of India's independence movement.
The salt tax, however, continued to remain in effect and was repealed only when Jawaharlal Nehru became the Prime Minister of the Interim Government in 1946.
Let me also give you a modern example so it makes sense. China didn't invent the smartphone; IBM did. But there's a transfer of technology that allows chinese manufacturers to import/figure out how to make smartphones. Now they start manufacturing smartphones but are low in the value chain. Xiaomi comes about a few years later, climbs the value chain and takes the low end of the market in Asia. Awesome!
Now imagine an alternate scenario where America comes along and says, no China, you can only make plastic and metal parts. I have the machines that can make components. You have to sell these parts to me at fixed artificially low prices. I will then finish them in my factories and sell them to you. No other country can sell in your market. Suddenly you have 1BN people you can practically shoot smartphones at and make money.
70 years later Brazil starts making tons of smartphones. Great. They still can't sell in China. Brazil wins, America wins, China loses.
>Indian share of world economy went from 23-24% before colonialism to less than 4% under colonialism. India's share of World Trade went from 27% to 2% under colonialism.
Please cite this very interesting piece of information.
All the charts that show this are dealing in percentage of world GDP. This is really a meaningless statistic, and by itself doesn't show anything one way or the other about colonialism. Until the beginning of the industrial revolution, China and India were always 1 & 2 in GDP, because they were 1 & 2 in population. The biggest innovation of the Industrial Revolution was decoupling production from population.
Est. world GDP, 1750: $128 billion - India @ ~22% = $28 billion
Est. world GDP, 1950: $4 trillion - India @ ~ 4% = $163 billion
You are right; the largest gains in global economic output where made after the industrial revolution. http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/quantifyin...
But you can't ignore British policies that decimated India's manufacturing capability before that. Like what's been written below..
> Indian share of world economy went from 23-24% before colonialism to less than 4% under colonialism. India's share of World Trade went from 27% to 2% under colonialism.
Source? And are you sure these are reliable, given we are talking about things that happened a 100 or more years ago?
> India's healthcare worsened during colonialism because all the resources were exported to Europe for cheap and in abundance
Indian healthcare????? Are you serious?? So.. what... things like hospitals? Doctors? Medical welfare? They had all those before whitey rolled in? Nobody told my great-grandfather who constantly suffered from hip related problems due to horse riding accident. He found no care whatsoever and had to take opium to manage the pain.
>India's literacy was worsened during colonialism and was just close to 10% during Independence.
So you are saying that before colonialism, Indian people could read and write better? The existing rulers, nobility, upper class, Brahmans were actually interested in a literate population?
>British Divide and Rule policy still affects India today.
There is a Divide and Rule policy for sure, but it is one instigated and maintained by the current set of Indian politicians who rule in the name of religion, caste and personality cults.
Please explain why more than 75% of the Indian population lives in border line poverty 60 years after the colonials left.
I will tell you why: they are in that state because that was their default state before the colonials came along. The new leaders have no gain whatsoever in changing this and so it stays that way.
You cannot keep on blaming other people for your troubles 60 years after the fact. They left, India had problem and those problems have only gotten worse or stayed the same.
I do not support colonialism in any way and regard it as an evil period. That doesn't mean I am blind to what went before it. And what is happening now.
One thing I never see mentioned in this debate is the fact that America was a British colony as well, and colonial status definitely drained American wealth for centuries (though obviously, the occupation of India was far more brutal). But I think it's highly unlikely that America ever would've become a superpower without the benefit of British culture, institutions, and law.
How about German culture, institutions and law? How about Bohemian? Austrian? Italian? Czech? Polish?
America was last a British colony, but it was far from a uniform culture of expat British. And it reinvented itself violently upon rebellion. Into something quite new in the world. Or at least not seen in a long time. And definitely not British.
Well, that's not exactly true. American is another child of the Magna Carta and we definitely (at the North's insistence) adopted the British economic system (Capitalism). Originally, Americans fought for their rights as British subjects, and later turned towards independence when that was not going to happen.
Yes, the American government was a new thing, but it was built on a foundation already understood by the founding fathers.
I often wonder about the world in the British had given seats in the House of Commons to its bigger colonies. Distance and communications speeds were problems as well as the government's attitude toward the colonies. It probably would have been cheaper than the world spanning war they ended up fighting with France during the American Revolution.
They did something like that - they would defer decisions until they'd heard from the representative of the colony (the Governor?) In fact that was all the 'representation' that the American colony wanted in that slogan "No taxation without Representation!" (perhaps the worst political slogan of all time?) Just to be heard. Because our colony rep arrived a day or two too late to speak on the tea tax, designed to defray Britain' expenses for the defense of the Colony.
Ironically the representative would have spoken in favor! But because he was not heard at all (and his objection dismissed as irrelevant), that put colonists in the same bucket as slaves and women - those who were not heard in government. That was what was intolerable.
> "No taxation without Representation!" (perhaps the worst political slogan of all time?)
No, a true sentiment always.
I am talking about actual MPs from the colonies not the consult after the fact system and definitely not the way they ignored and ridiculed Benjamin Franklin.
You forget Dutch, the culture that gave Manhattan its name (among other things). And French, which during and after the American Revolution was probably the most popular and influential culture among US elites.
Apart from that, I agree wholeheartedly. The US phenomenon cannot be reduced to "some rogue British colony that stroke it rich".
European, and later American, treatment of Native Americans was not colonization, just straight-up genocide. It's not really relevant to the question of the long-term impact of British institutions in former colonies.
The biggest part of that genocide was accidental, and accomplished before the first permanent European settlements were ever established in North America. The story of Amherst's "smallpox blankets" is widely known, and deplorable, but the worst of the epidemics had raged through and decimated native populations in the 250 years prior since first contact.
It seems to be conveniently forgotten that many tribes were complicit in aiding and abetting Europeans in exterminating their rivals as well. Cortez conquered the Aztecs with 600 Spaniards... and 200,000 Tlaxcalans. The Iroquois confederation did most of the work of exterminating other native populations throughout the Great Lakes region.
The British were famous for divide and rule policies in India - that's how a little company like the east India company eventually swallowed up the various kingdoms and princely states of the subcontinent.
America was different in a couple of ways. Due to its geographical position, America's cultives were similar to the ones in England. In this way, America didn't become a mono-producer to serve England's economy, as was the fate of colonies closer to the equator.
Not true. The British did the same thing here that they did in India--prevent the development of local industry so that raw materials from the colonies would be shipped back to England for manufacturing and sold back to the Americas.
Let's drop the pretense. A differing political interpretation is not necessarily a sign of ignorance, and pretending like it is only contributes to the atmosphere of toxic obstinance that has devoured our political process in recent years.
Instead of implying that Marc Andreessen is uneducated or ignorant, explain your disagreement civilly, without name-calling or mud-slinging. If the issue is too sensitive for you to do that, it's probably best to refrain from replying until you've cooled down enough to remain civil and present a legitimate counter-argument.
On the subject on British attitudes towards the third world, an illuminating example is that of Iran. English prospectors found oil in Iran in the early years of the 20th century, a find that in the words on Winston Churchill was "a prize from fairyland beyond our wildest dreams". Britain established what was then the largest refinery in the world in Abadan, Iran, operated with was effectively slave labour, and spent the decades leading up to fifties with extracting vast fortunes. The Shah goverment was mostly a puppet regime and due to the British refusal to allow independent audit of the books of the Anglo-Persian oil company, only a few percent of the actual profit ended came back to the Iranian people.
The Iranian people finally rose against the imperial influence of the British and ejected all British citizens in the early years of the fifties. Mossadegh, the prime minister, rose to prominence on an anti-english platform, initially demanding a 50% share of profits and reasonable treatment of Iranian labour. The British, under Attlee as well as with Churchill back in control, selfishly rejected all attempts at comproimise, and produced several internal reports that spoke of how inferior the Iranians were as a race.
Finally, having lost their influence, the English turned to the US for assistance in overthrowing the democratically elected government. Truman resisted, but Eisenhower relented, with John Foster Dulles enthusiastically moving forward with a coup. The Shahs absolute power was reestablished, and his oppressive rule paved way for the Islamic revolution two decades later.
One of many illustrative examples of how the English could never be considered benevolent rulers.
(As described in All the Shah's men, by Stephen Kinzer)
Above is (somewhat) right. Meet the original BP [1]
The Shah was not a puppet. Puppets dance to the tune of puppet master & master would not replace said puppet with Ayatollahs.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was an Iranian Nationalist and the story of 20th century in Iran is far far more nuanced than the caricature painted by (very interested) partisans such as Kinzer.
Do the research. This [2] is the Iran that the "puppet's" father, Reza Pahlavi ("the Great") inherited. Exceptional moves by the "puppet's" father began with establishment of an independent National Bank (which did not please "master" in City of London). And continued until Iran was actually considered a geopolitical threat to the gang that started the Trilateral Commission [3].
[3]:https://youtu.be/DqrHQpRHwws (Don't be confused. Jimmy here is saying Iran is /too/ stable and my friend Zibig & our friends like to see massive instability in this region until "the great game" is won.}
[minor typo edits; link fix; final edit note corrected NG pdf link.]
Thanks for the elaboration! Having read only a single book on the subject, I figured that my account would be somewhat biased, even though I tried (through googling) to verify what I wrote. I'll refer to your links and try to widen my perspective!
Having said that, I think Kinzer do your view more justice than I did in my summary. I do apologize for over simplifying things.
Glad it was helpful. Now read the below if you want to understand a bit better what's up with "Middle East" [sic] and what has been going in that area -- "instability" --since the Shah of Iran was forced out.
Honestly I think this reflects a fairly common sentiment amongst westerners. Not the first time I've heard this; doubt it would be the last. I've even heard white south africans in the west say that south africa would have been better off under apartheid, to be greeted by a chorus of nodding heads. Scary people actually think subjugation is a good thing.
Finally he gets caught out for saying stupid shit. Every thing this man says is self serving (which is fine) but he tries to disguise it as profound knowledge. Ben Evans is 10x worse however, he is one idiotic twat.
One of Evans' favourite debate tactics is to tweet something brimming with subtext, then when someone calls him out on it, takes a literal approach to what he said. It's infuriating.
Evans has been called out for his idiotic behavior before[0]. From what I can tell, his only contribution to a discussion is to say the most banal things (ex: there will be 5B smartphone users in 2020) in a way that makes them sounds original.
Ahh yes, an important distinction. I do mean Tweet. His tweets really sit at odds with me. He was someone I looked up to at one point, but the main interface (Twitter) I have with him portrays a very different person than the one I thought he was.
Knowing the sentiment in tech about keeping internet free from external interests, I don't know how he could support Facebook's plan like this. On top of that he was condescending towards India by bringing up "poor" and "morality" when instead he should have commended India for not falling for the trap.
He is entitled to his opinions about colonialism. People that care about it will respond.
> ...the most beneficial infrastructural policy...
That's a nice objective view of free basics. I honestly believe, as I believe the parent to your comment does, that free basics really is bad for the internet and that none of the big players supporting it, e.g. the board of Facebook, are ignorant of the massive walled garden effect that they expect and hope it will create.
At this point I think it's pretty close to an evil plan. Imagine a privately run "public" transit system that dropped you off inside buildings with no exterior doors. You'd be hard pressed to argue that the creators of such a system would not be aware of the effects it would have om the businesses inside such buildings, much less that they're creating this network out of the kindness of the hearts to honestly just give people who are in need access to transportation.
(little straw-many but i reallt hate the idea and implementation of free basics)
I did not want to say that the consequences of Facebooks Free Basics can't be seen as something bad. ..and I personally wouldn't argue for their proposed implementation either.
It just bugs me that the whole debate always needs to be drown to the lowest common denominator of political understanding. There is little positioning left if everthing is always pressed in shallow us versus them identities.
Both sides have better and worse arguments for their position.
Ultimately, in my opinion, the issue comes down to solid antitrust mechanisms.
To use your picture: If it is a transit system which sparks the idea of mobility in a previously immobile and unconnected society: I wouldn't stop it as long as there is room for other suppliers that might compete with exit-door featured stations.
I thought net neutrality was about protecting consumers from selective high prices set by regional monopolies. Here it "protects" them from a free product that anyone is AFAIK free to compete with. Do I miss something or did things go wrong with the net neutrality idea?
That's not what neutrality means. That means the ISP doesn't take anyone side - either by making certain services faster at the expense of others being slower, or by setting preferential pricing. If facebook really cared about access to internet, they could negotiated 1 free GB of traffic / month for everyone, not just access to facebook and a few other websites that they picked.
What harm is done by giving something away without restricting anyone's options? How is it similar to a regional monopoly giving preferential treatment to some content? What are the reasons to oppose this that do not apply to giving away anything imaginable?
(I understand it's a self-serving move by FB but on those grounds alone one can be opposed to anything.)
There is one salient example: fresh water in India.
In 1947, the British departed with 24/7 pressurized water across the developed parts of India.
Now, the British-built water system has all but collapsed. Instead of pressurized water, the water comes weakly and only intermittantly. What difference does that make, you ask?
Well, if a pressurized system leaks, the leak causes water to leave the pipe. In a non-pressurized system--coupled with the user-side pumps that are used to pull in more water--leaks flow INTO the water line, bringing contamination with it. Couple that with the common practice of placing fresh water and sewer lines in the same trench and everytime somebody pumps that water toward them, they are pulling in fecal matter that leaked from the adjacent sewer lines, which also leak.
That's why Indians often cannot drink their water without going through reverse osmosis. This is just an example of how India frittered away a resource the British brought them.
I doubt even the Indians themselves are debating that the British brought many new technologies to India or that they maintained them well. Something which the later Indian administrations did not do as well.
But when, in the end, the whole system was a huge scam meant to get resources out of India and into Britain, everything comes into a larger perspective.
Hm, I'm curious to see more about this. I was a young child when I last visited my family in India, many years ago, but I don't remember a particular need to filter water. And if I google 'india reverse osmosis', the second result (the first is a sales site) is a Times of India article about how it's a scam:
Developed parts of India made up about 10% in 1947. Today Urban india is almost 35% and the population is 4 times larger. So effectively an increase of 14 times in number of people that are urbanized. Highly doubt the British system would scale to current population and density levels.
We just saw reports of Flint, Michigan and multiple cities having excessive lead and contamination in water supply etc. I wouldn't use that to suggest British need to come back and take over the US.
The British also brought the Great Bengal Famine along with them. Funny how this 24/7 pressurized water could not prevent a famine in which millions died. And yes, the famine took place when India was still a colony of the British Empire.
What Marc, Benedict and everybody else is (conveniently) ignoring is that Facebook does NOT bear the bandwidth cost of FreeBasics. So the whole thing about "giving something for free" is disingenuous.
Indian telcos, Indian consumers and Indian public pay for FreeBasics. Fair of them to decide whether they want this scheme or not.
I don't particularly like the guy, but is there a campaign of deliberate misinterpretation going on?
Yes, probably a really stupid thing to say, and perhaps wrong for many reasons.
No, he did not say India should have kept Britain as its colonial power, or any of the other incredible interpretations now flying around the Twittersphere.
Jonny Axelsson: Anti-semitism not the opposite of semitism. Now whether anti-colonialism is a thing is another thing. Americans, esp. right-wing, have Humpty Dumpty appoach to redefining words but in context is clear: @pmarca referred to the post-colonial anti-colonial mix of nationalism, socialism, abuse/power that afflicted many ex-colonies
[Please disagree with Andreessen's point, not with my point that he really didn't say take India back to British colonialism but said something else that perhaps is almost as stupid.]
This exactly. What's going on here is the internet hate machine has found a new target, and is eager to assign the least generous possible interpretation so they can feel good about themselves, look nice and self-righteous to their friends, get up votes, and so on. If you want to attack a man, maybe it's best to figure out what he was trying to say first.
Some of the comments even in this thread are disgusting, and they are getting plenty of upvotes; and I find it curious how a community that usually decries this sort of thing becomes so quick to engage in it.
people often claim that they "misspoke" or "my words are being misinterpreted" as a way of attempting to save face when they actually said what they meant.
For better or worse, I suspect a large part of recent developments in India regarding zero-rating services were supported as "let's deal a blow to the big bad corporations affiliated with the western civilization that colonized us! we don't like them!" rather than a matter of intrinsic merit. It's a common motive in a variety of nations.
(edit: in this case, I suspect it might be "for better" and not "for worse" in effect, but I still suspect the ulterior motive.)
The whole movement started with opposition to Airtel Zero (an Indian company) and Flipkart (again, an Indian company). People have lauded Google for respecting net neutrality in Project Loon.
I don't know where this perception of an anti-west sentiments is coming from.
It isn't. But ignoring the NN aspect of this discussion, the sentiment I got from the tweet was that the "anti-colonial" mindset was to drive out foreign influence, both positive and negative. The idea that the tweet was pro-colonial I believe is incorrect.
Once again, Twitter shows us why it shouldn't be used for nuanced conversation.
However, if you look at a lot of the rhetoric that has been used it is heavily influenced by anti-colonialism. (Don't let this Western company come in and colonize our Internet.) I suspect the debate would have been quite different if it were ex. Flipkart offering Free Basics.
In case you don't know, the whole movement started as opposition to Airtel Zero and people downvoted en-masse Flipkart's app on Play Store because it was participating in Airtel Zero. Facebook brought attention to itself by a 40m$ ad-campaign, demonizing and slandering the activists AND DDoSing the regulator.
There's a case to be made about the good things colonialism brought for countries. Not a great one and you'll get shouted down however.
But this fracas really distracts from the more important issue - "net neutrality" (Colonialism is dead after all, at least early 20th century style..) The Indian government seems quite appropriate in their concerns. This whole 'denying poor people free stuff' is very likely seen as a subterfuge. Maybe 'owning' parts of the net is the new colonialism.
> I don't particularly like the guy, but is there a campaign of deliberate misinterpretation going on?
Yes. We live in a sound bite news era and if you can interpret the sound bite (tweet) in a wholly different way than intended and shout it loud enough, the original truth of the statement doesn't matter. Many of the headlines about political candidates are contradicted by the actual speeches, but SNL, late night, and reporters can make money off their interpretations.
Please [don't] disagree with my point that he really didn't say take India back to British colonialism.
He didn't literally "say" that, but it's (nearly) irrelevant to point that out. The bigger point is that what he indisputably did say was, by itself, utterly idiotic and offensive.
I am not making the point that he didn't literally say what people are choosing to assume he meant. I am making the point that the assumption people are making about what he meant is wildly unfounded, and is mainly useful for justifying their already-held opinions about him.
And I am making the point that employing this misinterpretation to criticize him undermines the important, substantive reasons to criticize him.
(It is somewhat ironic that you make your point by rewriting my words in a way that significantly changes their tone, and likely changes how readers would interpret them.)
I am making the point that the assumption people are making about what he meant is wildly unfounded, and is mainly useful for justifying their already-held opinions about him.
But (if you mean this idea that he specifically wants to bring back British colonialism) I don't anyone thinks that he meant that. So it seems like a weird charge to defend him against.
If that's not what you meant (by "the assumption people are making"), please clarify.
(It is somewhat ironic that you make your point by rewriting my words in a way that significantly changes their tone, and likely changes how readers would interpret them.)
Sorry, I was just trying to simplify your text to make it easier to respond to that what seemed to be the core import of what you were saying.
The Internet hate machine on this issue has been driven almost entirely by that very thought. Andreessen's even been forced to say, "To be clear, I am 100% opposed to colonialism, and 100% in favor of independence and freedom, in any country, including India."
Why would anyone have to make such an absurd clarification if that wasn't exactly what has become a widespread interpretation?
The original title of the Bloomberg article (which has since been rewritten, and is the submitted article for this HN thread) was "Marc Andreessen Pro-Colonialism Tweet Riles India Tech World," with subheds to the same effect.
The Internet hate machine on this issue has been driven almost entirely by that very thought.
Without dissecting what Bloomberg may or may not have meant with their temporary headline, it seems you're (mistakenly) assuming that people have been somehow reacting more to Bloomberg's (since retracted) one-line description of what Andreessen said than by the substance he actually did say (and his immediate follow-up remarks, which to say the least, weren't particularly apologetic). Most readers on HN go straight to the source, and don't attach much weight to catchy headlines.
Why would anyone have to make such an absurd clarification if that wasn't exactly what has become a widespread interpretation?
It's a fairly typical form of ass-covering to categorically "reject" a position one didn't actually make (as a way of deflecting attention from from the somewhat more nuanced, but just the same, boneheaded and disturbing statement that one did, in fact, make).
You'll notice he isn't trying to explain just what he did mean by his initial tweet, right? That's because he knows there's no way he can really salvage himself.
And BTW:
The Internet hate machine on this issue
It's not a "hate machine." Andreessen did say something pretty darn stupid and and offensive (his subsequent and less than entirely convincing attempts to talk his way down from what he said notwithstanding). And is being rightly called out for it.
Of course, that document was written by another VC who likes to run his mouth on Twitter. So there's a legitimate discussion to be had about whether that document is poisoning the well of criticism.
Marc Andreessen is an extraordinarily influential person in tech, and that influence is based on his reputation. If a nobody like me tweeted something dumb, everyone would just ignore me. Nobody ignores Andreessen, though. Maybe it would be better for the world if his Twitter feed and mine were treated similarly, but that's not how the world works, and we have to respond to the world as it is.
Furthermore, part of his continuing influence, 20 years after Netscape, is the continuing impression that he is a clear thinker about issues facing the tech world. (See, elsewhere in this thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072721 .) There are two valid discussions at play here. The first is whether Free Basics is a good idea; the second is whether Andreessen is in fact the insightful thinker he appears to be. (The specific subdiscussion about whether rejecting Free Basics is a form of anti-colonialism, incidentally, is only valid if we take it as a given that Andreessen's ideas are worth listening to in the first place.) For the second one, a record of him just not being a good or well-informed thinker is in fact refuting the central point of that argument.
>Of course, that document was written by another VC who likes to run his mouth on Twitter. So there's a legitimate discussion to be had about whether that document is poisoning the well of criticism.
This comment itself is further argument that more people here could stand to read it. You've literally ignored the ideas within and just made an ad hominem argument based on the author instead.
He's questioned the judgment of the person writing the document based on his position which can introduce the bias similar to what we see in Andreessen. Not using the ideas described by said document would be the first step when discussing/critiquing it. Otherwise it would circular, no?
If for example you wanted to discuss The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, the first step would not be to "not use the ideas described within (e.g. genetics and biology research)". Ignoring the topics within and attacking the author for what he later wrote about Atheism or how he behaved in interviews would a mindblowingly terrible way to critique his book about biology.
When discussing or critiquing an essay, the first step is to actually address the ideas inside of it. Attacking the character of its author or other things they may have said about unrelated topics is not a rational substitute.
In this case, geofft's comment is flawed on multiple levels. Aside from making a purely ad hominem argument against the 2008 essay How to Disagree, its specific attack was the author's twitter usage that occurred more than five years later.
Did you read the remainder of my comment past the first sentence, or did you get distracted by the ad hominem? I admit that there is one, but it wasn't actually presented as an argument. The rest of it refutes the central point of the claim at hand, namely geomark's claim that people in this thread are violating DH0. They're not, and in fact I go on to agree with pg's framing of the hierarchy of disagreement in order for me to argue that the thread is at DH6.
If you think that anything I say is invalidated because I put ad hominems at the top of my comments, well, uh... I'm not sure how to explain this to you, but....
I read your comment in its entirety and didn't see any defense of the How to Disagree essay. The only mention I saw you make of it was the first paragraph with the ad hominem attack.
To answer your question, no I don't think your usage of ad hominems invalidates everything you say. It does detract from the quality of the discussion and the pleasantness of the site, though. It also detracts from your ability to communicate effectively.
I completely agree with geomark's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072755). There are a lot of comments on this article that are little more than name calling, personal attacks or uncharitable assumptions.
>Marc Andreessen is an extraordinarily influential person in tech, and that influence is based on his reputation.
And that reputation is based on his position as an early luminary that made direct and real contributions to the progress of the field, and his continued ability to make great picks for VC. Andreessen, like Paul Graham, is one of the few VCs who actually understands the technical underpinnings of what's going on, which seems to seriously enhance a VC's performance.
Andreessen's political beliefs are totally irrelevant. Frankly, it wouldn't matter if he were a neo-Nazi.
Depends on what "matter" means. For the goals of the individual VCs making themselves more money, sure, agreed. And perhaps also for the goal of making as many (financially) successful tech companies as possible, without regard to what those companies do.
But for the goal of improving society by this investment, instead of worsening it? A successful neo-Nazi VC would be terrifying.
Is there anything in the actual essay you disagreed with?
To answer your question, first of all name calling and attacking the people instead of the ideas makes for a nasty and unproductive conversation—basically like youtube comment discussion.
Secondly you're on the site he built. The guidelines clearly say, "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names." If you dislike the guidelines or feel that they are "terribly condescending", then maybe this isn't the ideal site for what you want.
standards of discourse in a community are the product of that community. we don't take direction from "dear leader" Paul Graham or anyone else.
is there anything in my comments that you think is out of line? did I attack anyone ad hominem or use weasel words or other forms of deceptive rhetoric?
judge for yourself. my standards of conversation are perfectly fine though, in my opinion. in fact, nearly ALL of the conversation in this thread has been perfectly fine.
my question for you is: why are you so sensitive about the tone of the conversation? is it that you're unhappy that so many people are deeply offended by Marc Andreesen's comments and it makes you uncomfortable to confront that disagreement?
You didn't answer my question, but instead asked me several.
I do not appreciate your insinuation about my own opinions. It's way off base and uncalled for. Referring to pg by the title used for N. Korea's dictator is also obnoxious.
I care about the civility of discussions because without it, they get both less pleasant and less constructive. This entire thread has been an exhibit of that.
IMHO it isn't "direction". PG just put various arguing methods into a sensible framework. Other people have done the same. I only referenced PG's because it seemed pertinent given his relationship to this forum. And I was an early commenter when there only a few comments and a high percentage of them engaged in name calling.
While probably not a smart tweet I am not sure if people just buzz about it for entertainment reasons or maybe really did not understand what he wanted to say.
..because I think the message in its context is only that using the anti-colonialism gesture is not a useful policy trick to counter facebooks free basics initiative for Indians.
On the other hand it's twitter. And they have to be outraged about something.
"Denying world’s poorest free partial Internet connectivity when today they have none, for ideological reasons, strikes me as morally wrong." - Mr Andreesen, given how rich you are, you need to be really careful when you talk about morals. (Quote from Bible omitted)
While I admire Mr. Andreessen a lot for his work as an entrepreneur and investor, we're witnessing a very real amplification of the consequences behind the expression "don't meet your heroes." The difference here is that Marc is abnormally outspoken. It would be dubious to assume that similarly ignorant opinions about large swaths of the world are not also shared by some of the biggest minds in tech.
> Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic
> for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now?
I assumed anti-colonialism meant the license raj, protectionism, central planning, import substitution, and other illiberal policies brought in in 1947, that were sold at the time as being anti-colonial.
Can someone tell me what it actually means, or is the suggestion that these policies weren't economic suicide?
A casual glance at your social media feeds would have told you at least two things: 1. In India, the public rejected a massive PR campaign designed to create support for Free Basics, and went in the opposite direction; 2. That nobody from India in the US tech business thought Free Basics was a good idea.
In light of that, how Marc Andreesen thought it was a good idea to wrap his defense of Free Basics in a defense of colonialism is beyond imagining. But it does illustrate how certain stars of the tech world, some of whom have their claques on HN, can get pretty far disconnected from the real world.
The interesting thing about the luminaries of tech is that they are willing to publicly display their prejudices and ignorance. You don't see leaders in finance or airlines doing this with similar regularity.
Looking at the amount of opinionated tweets that he writes every day, it is statistically inevitable that he at one point writes something which gets him in trouble. This simply must have been taken into account by him from the beginning when starting to use Twitter the way he does. How can he do that? He simply knows that this, like almost anything controversial people say or do, will blow over.
In addition to the idiotic comment about colonialism, I'm curious about this new phrase he used: "partial Internet connectivity."
That's a rather Orwellian choice of words, and appears to be flying under the radar while everybody gets upset at the other stuff.
Let's call it what it really is: connectivity to a couple of services which also happen to be connected to the Internet. "Partial Internet connectivity" is about on the same level as "partial pregnancy."
Someone not sensitized by the net-neutrality debate would probably call a slow, spotty or censored internet connection still internet. But as frontiers are already pretty straight, qualitative differences in internet access already constitute a difference to what the net-neutrality side would be willing to accept as part of what can be called "internet".
This makes it funny that you name his wording "Orwellian" while subliminally reproducing this carefully crafted and politically loaded understanding of what qualifies as internet.
It in fact already is seeking political influence on a grammatical level.
No, IIRC, not just two sites. But just a few sites, may be in the range of 10, which is not at all the same as all Internet sites, and letting the users decide which (of the many other useful sites) they can access.
Twitter is an amazing machine of outrage, misunderstanding and hatred. It allows the benign comment to be taken as an offense and it amplifies genuine offensiveness, bullying, witch-hunting and harassment.
There are some wonderful things Twitter does, especially around real time news of non-controversial events such as natural disasters, but if the service is a net positive for the world, it's by the slimmest of margins.
First, a disclosure: I hate Facebook, I think Free Basics is evil, and I think Marc Andreesen says a lot of stupid shit.
That being said, this whole uproar is just more proof that social media is totally, utterly broken. Let me explain.
While I think Marc is on the board of an evil company and that his thought process on this matter is incredibly ignorant, I really appreciate the fact that he shares his point of view. I don't just appreciate it, I respect it. Maybe he's got a point. Maybe he doesn't. I won't know unless I hear what he's got to say, and then spend some time thinking it through. This is what intelligent, thinking people do. Before they turned into kettle pots of blind activism, this is what people went to college to learn to do. This is what makes living in a free-speech democracy so great -- people say totally crazy shit, some people agree, some people don't, it's all good.
Maybe the education system broke down or something, but people are no longer capable of dealing with viewpoints that differ from their own. They immediately label the person with whom they disagree, shame them (look at all of those screen grabs! Oh my!), and broadcast their displeasure to the world. We live in a world where people are supposedly taught to embrace those with different views -- that you and your best friend and your daughter's husband and your next door neighbor might not actually have the same exact views, but you can still be friends and get along just fine -- but this sort of tempered nuance attracts zero attention in a click-like-share world. Tolerance gains no attention in the world of social media; "disgust," "outrage," and other such intolerant reactions attract a crowd of views.
People should be thanking Marc Andreesen, the Facebook board member, for being so utterly candid about his thought process. Those in disagreement should cite facts to educate him. I'm sure he has his own facts that form his opinions (and surely, he does). Maybe his opinions won't change, and maybe those of the dissenters won't either. You know what, that's okay! That's LIFE. Life isn't about being right, it's about being alive. You can think Marc is a total moron on the India topic and still be his friend. We don't all have to agree on everything. It's WEIRD if we did -- there's nothing real about it. As I like to say, "a friend with whom you've never disagreed is a potential enemy you never knew you had."
Social media justice isn't justice, it's a modern-day mockery of the freedom of thought we fought so hard to attain. This shit is broken, folks. I don't know why Marc bothers with it, but I guess he is one of those people who thinks social media is the future of human discourse. I'm not. And that's okay.
Yeah, I agree. Most social media makes it easier to attack than to argue, so it benefits groups that attack rather than argue. A big part of the problem is the retweeting/reblogging functionality, which seems designed to encourage aggressive mass stupidity. There's already a problem on Tumblr where people selectively quote others' private posts as public and add some political sneer. I guess the best solution is to treat internet pile-ons the same way as trolling: ban it, flag it, block it, scorn it, or walk away if all else fails.
Andresson basically tweeted colonialism is good for India. How can someone, especially someone from India, just agree to disagree on that. That is like saying one can make racist, sexist remarks and the people who were offended can just agree to disagree on that. At least the guy made his viewpoint public.
Besides isn't it the intolerant who shape the society around them. If one wants a community whose members aren't ignorant or bigoted, why would just a live and let live approach shape the community to one's desires?
> India’s decision to block a free Internet service from Facebook Inc.
How does Bloomberg lead with this "fact"? Facebook's offering is not Internet service, but a whitelisted pipe. Does Bloomberg normally willingly eat up and repeat corporate propaganda?
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 243 ms ] threadhttps://medium.com/@aminatou/to-marc-andressen-6d09239f0065
https://twitter.com/triketora/status/677597576183480320
http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/23/technology/marc-andreessen-b...
https://blogdotitrendcorporationdotcom.wordpress.com/2014/05...
And, confusingly enough, doesn't really respect other people's blocks:
https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/622911480841699328
I can anecdotally confirm that piratebroadcast's claim is not unusual, as I got blocked sometime after this tweet: https://twitter.com/geofft/status/458371450052022273 To be fair, maybe I should have attempted some substantive discussion instead.
People take this stuff way too personally. I've blocked a few people simply because I don't like their stuff in my feed. One of them bugged me for months afterwards to unblock him, even though it's completely inconsequential and I don't say much interesting anyway.
IMO this is a flaw with twitter. Blocks are two-way: I don't see their stuff, and they don't see my stuff. But whenever I'm blocking someone, it's just because I don't want to see their stuff. There's no reason to tie those together.
In any case, how a person manages their own Twitter account is their business. If they use it to say something ridiculous then by all means attack it, but going after them merely for blocking people is ridiculous.
Twitter tried to fix this and it was a PR disaster for them. http://archive.is/YMJCg
Both "don't show me their stuff" and "don't show them my stuff" are useful, they just shouldn't be bundled.
If you don't want your tweets to be publicly visible, set your account to private. If you do want your tweets to be publicly visible, keep your account public. Those are the two valid options. "Blocking" someone from seeing your tweets just puts them an extra click away (the "logout" button). It's online security theater.
FYI it was socialism that held back the Indian economy during the 70s and 80s.
And it was colonialism that drained the country's wealth for over two hundred years.
Here, Mr. Andreessen, educate yourself: https://www.google.com/search?q=bengal+famine
So the previous comment was quite accurate. The Mughals of Babur were far removed from the Mughals of Bahadur II.
People were glad to get rid of them and their wars which crippled India.
Britain kicked them out and (mostly) unified India.
Not to say I have any idea what would have happened without colonialism, but thinking that India would have retained their share of world GDP is naive.
Owning India is what allowed Britain to fund its own development (as well as all its international wars). The british destroyed india's local textile sector (which was world-famous), shipped all the cotton to Britain, and sold clothes BACK to Indians. That's how this industrial revolution happened.
This is what Mahatma Gandhi opposed and encouraged Indians to make their own yarn. That's where his association with the "charkha" and swadeshi movement comes from.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying pace of development wasn't seriously set back through colonialism, I'm questioning specifically this percentage of GDP argument.
If India wasn't a colony, wealth would not have concentrated in GB, likely slowing Down their development and Maybe even making them more open to local conflicts.
Provided the French or Dutch didn't conquer more of India, and, it's hard to argue that wealth remaining in India would have not have resulted in more trade and local development.
We can definitely say that having someone come to your country, and clearly stop you from building the best product you can build, sell or pruchase, impoverishes your country.
You can see in Russia, in the absence of any colonialism, the enormous struggle which there was to transform an economy dependent on manual labour, and with an elite dependent on feudal social structures, into a modern economy. I would separate the issues of abuses/crimes and the issues of development in the sense that the abuses were perpetrated due to moral failings, of power-hunger, racism, and greed, but development is not just about morality, it's about having the right policy and the right trajectory for society. In terms of development, the really damaging attitude was that India's ancient culture should not be disturbed to make way for industrialization, and this was an opinion shared by many well-meaning British and also Indians, pre and post independence.
Which is exactly what he says he meant:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072752
The original was catastrophically dumb. Was it because it's what he actually believes, or because he didn't spend more than fifteen microseconds considering his words? Beats me. Fun to watch, though.
The original statement may have different interpretations, but none of them result in mapping "anti-colonialism" to "socialism." There's just no way to get from A to B actually looking at what was said.
Then he comes along and says he meant something completely different. No relation to the original statement. Apparently a moment of total brain confusion.
Do we take him at his word? I suppose we could, but then we're basically giving everybody a free pass to retroactively alter any statement they've made in any way if they don't like the reaction.
For what it's worth, I don't dislike Mr. Andreessen and have only a vague idea of who he even is (something to do with Netscape, right?).
And only a single stupid interpretation results in mapping "against anti-colonialism" to "pro colonialism", but you chose exactly that one.
And now, apparently a self-righteous hypocrite who is arguing against net neutrality because it suits his financial interests in Facebook.
There isn't a charitable interpretation to what he said. There's only a "damage control" interpretation. And that one doesn't really fit well with the fact that he blocked people who retweetted (and hence gave more prominence) to his original tweet.
Any other (more sane) interpretation might be a really, really profoundly stupid statement, as well. I don't care and am not qualified to argue those.
The point is that we can't have meaningful conversations when so many people jump immediately on the misinterpretation of a statement that is most useful for bringing out the hate for the one who spoke it.
Agreed.
The exercise in measuring charitability is merely academic in this instance. The bottom line is a VC has said a really stupid thing which goes against his earlier pronouncements on NN, because he literally has money on the line as an FB investor. Which ever way you look at it, he sounds like an out-of-touch corporatist.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11073021
The exercise in measuring charitability is merely academic in this instance.
If we value having any kind of meaningful discussion then does it really not matter that we criticize on the grounds you mention and not just seize on the opportunity to mischaracterize a statement as pro-colonialist?
It's not a mischaracterization. Just because he now regrets calling his opponents "anti-colonialists" (or rather because the internet made him regret it) does not mean I have to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Did he explicitly state that he thinks India would be better off under colonial rule? No.
Did he call opponents of Free Basics "anti-colonialist"?
If he's uninformed about what colonialism did to India, then he should shut his mouth about it. But that would be too hard seeing as he has personal interest in Facebook getting a monopoly there and offering a second-class internet experience without having to invest anything into bandwidth (which would be paid for by the state).
Besides, the so-called "explanation" of his views in further tweets makes it look even worse because "anti-colonialism" is apparently very close to "nationalism". So those filthy Indians are actually being nationalists for telling poor little Mark to go fuck himself and his idea of a cheaply done monopoly.
... which is still different from being in favor of or somehow defending colonialism (leaving aside the notion that he must think of them as "filthy" Indians).
We can criticize Andreessen for any among a giant pile of good reasons for doing so, while understanding that in this instance he was talking about something like anti-Westernism and should have used something like that phrase instead of the one he did.
100% of your dislike for him remains and is well-founded without undermining your argument with the belief that he really thinks those "filthy Indians" ought never to have escaped colonial rule.
(I have zero motivation to defend Andreessen on anything he's actually said or done -- I just object to the misinterpretation and mischaracterization going on here because it destroys valuable conversation and debate.)
Those are not my words -- I am responding to those words.
@pmarca referred to the post-colonial anti-colonial mix of nationalism, socialism, abuse/power that afflicted many ex-colonies
is itself pretty obtuse -- it's basically saying that post-colonial societies like India still haven't quite "grown up" yet, and don't really know what's best for them. Hence, their rejection of the wondrous gift to humanity that is Free Basics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fHDWoQuUZo
The criticism of FreeBasics would have gone to Reliance (an Indian company) if Facebook hadn't started this high-decibel campaign with two full pages of ads with heading "What Net Neutrality activists are not telling you". FB wanted the attention so they got it.
Ah, that's so much better. /s
If you understand the affects of colonialism of 200 years - economic and other exploitation - sluggish is pretty much the best case you can expect after freedom. Comparing to other colonies India has done fairly well for having being nearly destroyed and rebuilt.
Indian share of world economy went from 23-24% before colonialism to less than 4% under colonialism. India's share of World Trade went from 27% to 2% under colonialism.
India's healthcare worsened during colonialism because all the resources were exported to Europe for cheap and in abundance
India's literacy was worsened during colonialism and was just close to 10% during Independence.
India's revolutionaries who opposed colonialism and raised against the British were brutally killed or hanged under British rule.
Anyone who spoke against the colonialism were jailed.
British Divide and Rule policy still affects India today.
Whether the economy would have declined less in the absence of colonialism is really impossible to answer. But to cite colonialism as the only reason is wrong, especially since the decline coincides roughly with the scientific and industrial revolutions that occurred in Western Europe and later, America.
Also India pre 1947 was a civilization; a 2000+ year old one. Closest analogy is Europe. Do people vex about the existence of Belgium (a small country)?
India went from exporting finished goods to exporting raw materials from the 1780's to the 1860's. Coincidence?
To repeat what I said below:
the industrial revolution in textiles kicked into high gear in England in 1822, a good 50 years or so after India was under effective company rule. And textiles was an industry where India had a comparative advantage before company rule. Wonder where Britain got all that raw material to make textiles from?
From wikipedia: During the period, 1780–1860, India changed from being an exporter of processed goods for which it received payment in bullion, to being an exporter of raw materials and a buyer of manufactured goods.[20] More specifically, in the 1750s, mostly fine cotton and silk was exported from India to markets in Europe, Asia, and Africa; by the second quarter of the 19th century, raw materials, which chiefly consisted of raw cotton, opium, and indigo, accounted for most of India's exports.[21]
Starting in the 1830s, British textiles began to appear in—and soon to inundate—the Indian markets, with the value of the textile imports growing from £5.2 million 1850 to £18.4 million in 1896.
Right around 1830 was when the American Southern cotton plantation system took off, and more or less completely displaced Indian cotton on the world market[1] because it was cheap, cotton gins were efficient, and it was a whole lot closer to ship it from Mobile or Charleston to Birmingham, than to go all the way down around the Cape and back.
Opium became a huge export for India because it was the only thing other than bullion the Brits (and Americans, and Dutch, and Portuguese) could hit on to trade profitably in the China market. Then, later, that cash crop was undercut by cheaper product produced in Turkey, and by Chinese domestic production.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin#Effects_in_the_Unit...
There is about 70 years from the start of company rule to the 1830's. If you're not allowed to manufacture textiles in that time period, what exactly do you think would happen? You'd maintain a comparative advantage?
On opium: In India, its cultivation, as well as the manufacture and traffic to China, were subject to the British East India Company (BEIC), as a strict monopoly of the British government.[7]
Opium, like most industries, only benefited the British. So it would be more accurate for you to say the British used the Indians to start exporting opium.
So lets recap. People that mostly export textiles suddenly finds themselves 1) unable to make their own textiles, 2) forced to plant cotton and other crops for sole benefit of the British. So you have a whole civilization barred from selling finished goods. Gee wonder what happens to them.
[1] Taxation of salt has occurred in India since the earliest times. However, this tax was greatly increased when the British East India Company began to establish its rule over provinces in India. In 1835, special taxes were imposed on Indian salt to facilitate its import. This paid huge dividends for the traders of the British East India Company. When the Crown took over the administration of India from the Company in 1858, the taxes were not replaced.
The stringent salt taxes imposed by the British were vehemently condemned by the Indian public. In 1885, at the first session of the Indian National Congress in Bombay, a prominent Congress Leader S.A.Swaminatha Iyer raised the issue of the salt tax.[1] There were further protests throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries culminating in Mahatma Gandhi's Salt Satyagraha in 1930. This sathyagraha was followed by other sathyagrahas in other parts of the country.
After the arrest of Gandhi, Sarojini Naidu lead the sathyagrahis to Dharasana Salt works in Gujarat and was arrested by the police. C. Rajagopalachari broke the Salt Laws at Vedaranyam, in Madras Province in the same year. Thousands courted arrest and were imprisoned in large numbers. The administration eventually relented and invited Mahatma Gandhi to England to attend the Second Round Table Conference. Gandhi's Dandi March got wide news coverage and proved to be a turning point in the history of India's independence movement.
The salt tax, however, continued to remain in effect and was repealed only when Jawaharlal Nehru became the Prime Minister of the Interim Government in 1946.
Now imagine an alternate scenario where America comes along and says, no China, you can only make plastic and metal parts. I have the machines that can make components. You have to sell these parts to me at fixed artificially low prices. I will then finish them in my factories and sell them to you. No other country can sell in your market. Suddenly you have 1BN people you can practically shoot smartphones at and make money.
70 years later Brazil starts making tons of smartphones. Great. They still can't sell in China. Brazil wins, America wins, China loses.
Please cite this very interesting piece of information.
Est. world GDP, 1750: $128 billion - India @ ~22% = $28 billion
Est. world GDP, 1950: $4 trillion - India @ ~ 4% = $163 billion
[1] https://infogr.am/Share-of-world-GDP-throughout-history
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product
You would enjoy this as well -https://www.change.org/p/british-government-england-uk-india...
Source? And are you sure these are reliable, given we are talking about things that happened a 100 or more years ago?
> India's healthcare worsened during colonialism because all the resources were exported to Europe for cheap and in abundance
Indian healthcare????? Are you serious?? So.. what... things like hospitals? Doctors? Medical welfare? They had all those before whitey rolled in? Nobody told my great-grandfather who constantly suffered from hip related problems due to horse riding accident. He found no care whatsoever and had to take opium to manage the pain.
>India's literacy was worsened during colonialism and was just close to 10% during Independence.
So you are saying that before colonialism, Indian people could read and write better? The existing rulers, nobility, upper class, Brahmans were actually interested in a literate population?
>British Divide and Rule policy still affects India today.
There is a Divide and Rule policy for sure, but it is one instigated and maintained by the current set of Indian politicians who rule in the name of religion, caste and personality cults.
Please explain why more than 75% of the Indian population lives in border line poverty 60 years after the colonials left.
I will tell you why: they are in that state because that was their default state before the colonials came along. The new leaders have no gain whatsoever in changing this and so it stays that way.
You cannot keep on blaming other people for your troubles 60 years after the fact. They left, India had problem and those problems have only gotten worse or stayed the same.
I do not support colonialism in any way and regard it as an evil period. That doesn't mean I am blind to what went before it. And what is happening now.
America was last a British colony, but it was far from a uniform culture of expat British. And it reinvented itself violently upon rebellion. Into something quite new in the world. Or at least not seen in a long time. And definitely not British.
Yes, the American government was a new thing, but it was built on a foundation already understood by the founding fathers.
I often wonder about the world in the British had given seats in the House of Commons to its bigger colonies. Distance and communications speeds were problems as well as the government's attitude toward the colonies. It probably would have been cheaper than the world spanning war they ended up fighting with France during the American Revolution.
Ironically the representative would have spoken in favor! But because he was not heard at all (and his objection dismissed as irrelevant), that put colonists in the same bucket as slaves and women - those who were not heard in government. That was what was intolerable.
No, a true sentiment always.
I am talking about actual MPs from the colonies not the consult after the fact system and definitely not the way they ignored and ridiculed Benjamin Franklin.
Apart from that, I agree wholeheartedly. The US phenomenon cannot be reduced to "some rogue British colony that stroke it rich".
The 'Americans' were the occupiers. Native Americans have quite a tale to tell about brutality.
It seems to be conveniently forgotten that many tribes were complicit in aiding and abetting Europeans in exterminating their rivals as well. Cortez conquered the Aztecs with 600 Spaniards... and 200,000 Tlaxcalans. The Iroquois confederation did most of the work of exterminating other native populations throughout the Great Lakes region.
-that said lets not sweep the brutality against native Americans under the rug.
Instead of implying that Marc Andreessen is uneducated or ignorant, explain your disagreement civilly, without name-calling or mud-slinging. If the issue is too sensitive for you to do that, it's probably best to refrain from replying until you've cooled down enough to remain civil and present a legitimate counter-argument.
The Iranian people finally rose against the imperial influence of the British and ejected all British citizens in the early years of the fifties. Mossadegh, the prime minister, rose to prominence on an anti-english platform, initially demanding a 50% share of profits and reasonable treatment of Iranian labour. The British, under Attlee as well as with Churchill back in control, selfishly rejected all attempts at comproimise, and produced several internal reports that spoke of how inferior the Iranians were as a race.
Finally, having lost their influence, the English turned to the US for assistance in overthrowing the democratically elected government. Truman resisted, but Eisenhower relented, with John Foster Dulles enthusiastically moving forward with a coup. The Shahs absolute power was reestablished, and his oppressive rule paved way for the Islamic revolution two decades later.
One of many illustrative examples of how the English could never be considered benevolent rulers.
(As described in All the Shah's men, by Stephen Kinzer)
The Shah was not a puppet. Puppets dance to the tune of puppet master & master would not replace said puppet with Ayatollahs.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was an Iranian Nationalist and the story of 20th century in Iran is far far more nuanced than the caricature painted by (very interested) partisans such as Kinzer.
Do the research. This [2] is the Iran that the "puppet's" father, Reza Pahlavi ("the Great") inherited. Exceptional moves by the "puppet's" father began with establishment of an independent National Bank (which did not please "master" in City of London). And continued until Iran was actually considered a geopolitical threat to the gang that started the Trilateral Commission [3].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Persian_Oil_Company
[2]: http://www.chaonix.com/DL/National_Geography_April_1921.pdf
[3]:https://youtu.be/DqrHQpRHwws (Don't be confused. Jimmy here is saying Iran is /too/ stable and my friend Zibig & our friends like to see massive instability in this region until "the great game" is won.}
[minor typo edits; link fix; final edit note corrected NG pdf link.]
Having said that, I think Kinzer do your view more justice than I did in my summary. I do apologize for over simplifying things.
http://masoudbehnoud.com/weblog/s2.pdf
[1]: https://youtu.be/n-grR1e6dw8
Britain Does Owe Reparations https://youtu.be/f7CW7S0zxv4
0: http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/benedict-evans-wants-to...
Ouch. Please stop posting uncivil comments to HN. Even assuming you're right, putting it this way encourages the worst from others.
He is entitled to his opinions about colonialism. People that care about it will respond.
He's a pretty big investor in Facebook. That's why he's willing to ignore the net neutrality implications - because it benefits him.
..basically the pop culture version of a regulatory debate.
That's a nice objective view of free basics. I honestly believe, as I believe the parent to your comment does, that free basics really is bad for the internet and that none of the big players supporting it, e.g. the board of Facebook, are ignorant of the massive walled garden effect that they expect and hope it will create.
At this point I think it's pretty close to an evil plan. Imagine a privately run "public" transit system that dropped you off inside buildings with no exterior doors. You'd be hard pressed to argue that the creators of such a system would not be aware of the effects it would have om the businesses inside such buildings, much less that they're creating this network out of the kindness of the hearts to honestly just give people who are in need access to transportation.
(little straw-many but i reallt hate the idea and implementation of free basics)
It just bugs me that the whole debate always needs to be drown to the lowest common denominator of political understanding. There is little positioning left if everthing is always pressed in shallow us versus them identities.
Both sides have better and worse arguments for their position.
Ultimately, in my opinion, the issue comes down to solid antitrust mechanisms. To use your picture: If it is a transit system which sparks the idea of mobility in a previously immobile and unconnected society: I wouldn't stop it as long as there is room for other suppliers that might compete with exit-door featured stations.
(I understand it's a self-serving move by FB but on those grounds alone one can be opposed to anything.)
In 1947, the British departed with 24/7 pressurized water across the developed parts of India.
Now, the British-built water system has all but collapsed. Instead of pressurized water, the water comes weakly and only intermittantly. What difference does that make, you ask?
Well, if a pressurized system leaks, the leak causes water to leave the pipe. In a non-pressurized system--coupled with the user-side pumps that are used to pull in more water--leaks flow INTO the water line, bringing contamination with it. Couple that with the common practice of placing fresh water and sewer lines in the same trench and everytime somebody pumps that water toward them, they are pulling in fecal matter that leaked from the adjacent sewer lines, which also leak.
That's why Indians often cannot drink their water without going through reverse osmosis. This is just an example of how India frittered away a resource the British brought them.
But when, in the end, the whole system was a huge scam meant to get resources out of India and into Britain, everything comes into a larger perspective.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/patna/Reverse-osmosi...
We just saw reports of Flint, Michigan and multiple cities having excessive lead and contamination in water supply etc. I wouldn't use that to suggest British need to come back and take over the US.
> “Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now?”
The context is: India’s telecom regulator this week blocked Facebook's free, but limited internet service.
Indian telcos, Indian consumers and Indian public pay for FreeBasics. Fair of them to decide whether they want this scheme or not.
Yes, probably a really stupid thing to say, and perhaps wrong for many reasons.
No, he did not say India should have kept Britain as its colonial power, or any of the other incredible interpretations now flying around the Twittersphere.
Jonny Axelsson: Anti-semitism not the opposite of semitism. Now whether anti-colonialism is a thing is another thing. Americans, esp. right-wing, have Humpty Dumpty appoach to redefining words but in context is clear: @pmarca referred to the post-colonial anti-colonial mix of nationalism, socialism, abuse/power that afflicted many ex-colonies
Marc Andreessen: Exactly.
https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/697281882401026048
[Please disagree with Andreessen's point, not with my point that he really didn't say take India back to British colonialism but said something else that perhaps is almost as stupid.]
Some of the comments even in this thread are disgusting, and they are getting plenty of upvotes; and I find it curious how a community that usually decries this sort of thing becomes so quick to engage in it.
I have zero qualifications to have an opinion on the question you raise.
(edit: in this case, I suspect it might be "for better" and not "for worse" in effect, but I still suspect the ulterior motive.)
I don't know where this perception of an anti-west sentiments is coming from.
Once again, Twitter shows us why it shouldn't be used for nuanced conversation.
However, if you look at a lot of the rhetoric that has been used it is heavily influenced by anti-colonialism. (Don't let this Western company come in and colonize our Internet.) I suspect the debate would have been quite different if it were ex. Flipkart offering Free Basics.
And now they're being called "anti-west".
In case you don't know, the whole movement started as opposition to Airtel Zero and people downvoted en-masse Flipkart's app on Play Store because it was participating in Airtel Zero. Facebook brought attention to itself by a 40m$ ad-campaign, demonizing and slandering the activists AND DDoSing the regulator.
But you can certainly find plenty of people who equated Free Basics with digital colonialism. [1] Whether it is I don't have an opinion on.
Of course, anti-colonialism is not the only reason to support net neutrality (nor do I think it's the best one).
[1] http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/fear-of-facebook-c...
First sentence
>then suggesting the country would have had stronger economic growth if it had stayed under British rule rather than become independent in 1947.
Actual tweet, at the bottom
>Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now?
But this fracas really distracts from the more important issue - "net neutrality" (Colonialism is dead after all, at least early 20th century style..) The Indian government seems quite appropriate in their concerns. This whole 'denying poor people free stuff' is very likely seen as a subterfuge. Maybe 'owning' parts of the net is the new colonialism.
Yes. We live in a sound bite news era and if you can interpret the sound bite (tweet) in a wholly different way than intended and shout it loud enough, the original truth of the statement doesn't matter. Many of the headlines about political candidates are contradicted by the actual speeches, but SNL, late night, and reporters can make money off their interpretations.
He didn't literally "say" that, but it's (nearly) irrelevant to point that out. The bigger point is that what he indisputably did say was, by itself, utterly idiotic and offensive.
And I am making the point that employing this misinterpretation to criticize him undermines the important, substantive reasons to criticize him.
(It is somewhat ironic that you make your point by rewriting my words in a way that significantly changes their tone, and likely changes how readers would interpret them.)
But (if you mean this idea that he specifically wants to bring back British colonialism) I don't anyone thinks that he meant that. So it seems like a weird charge to defend him against.
If that's not what you meant (by "the assumption people are making"), please clarify.
(It is somewhat ironic that you make your point by rewriting my words in a way that significantly changes their tone, and likely changes how readers would interpret them.)
Sorry, I was just trying to simplify your text to make it easier to respond to that what seemed to be the core import of what you were saying.
The Internet hate machine on this issue has been driven almost entirely by that very thought. Andreessen's even been forced to say, "To be clear, I am 100% opposed to colonialism, and 100% in favor of independence and freedom, in any country, including India."
https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/697488911350652928
Why would anyone have to make such an absurd clarification if that wasn't exactly what has become a widespread interpretation?
The original title of the Bloomberg article (which has since been rewritten, and is the submitted article for this HN thread) was "Marc Andreessen Pro-Colonialism Tweet Riles India Tech World," with subheds to the same effect.
Without dissecting what Bloomberg may or may not have meant with their temporary headline, it seems you're (mistakenly) assuming that people have been somehow reacting more to Bloomberg's (since retracted) one-line description of what Andreessen said than by the substance he actually did say (and his immediate follow-up remarks, which to say the least, weren't particularly apologetic). Most readers on HN go straight to the source, and don't attach much weight to catchy headlines.
Why would anyone have to make such an absurd clarification if that wasn't exactly what has become a widespread interpretation?
It's a fairly typical form of ass-covering to categorically "reject" a position one didn't actually make (as a way of deflecting attention from from the somewhat more nuanced, but just the same, boneheaded and disturbing statement that one did, in fact, make).
You'll notice he isn't trying to explain just what he did mean by his initial tweet, right? That's because he knows there's no way he can really salvage himself.
And BTW:
The Internet hate machine on this issue
It's not a "hate machine." Andreessen did say something pretty darn stupid and and offensive (his subsequent and less than entirely convincing attempts to talk his way down from what he said notwithstanding). And is being rightly called out for it.
[1] http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html
Marc Andreessen is an extraordinarily influential person in tech, and that influence is based on his reputation. If a nobody like me tweeted something dumb, everyone would just ignore me. Nobody ignores Andreessen, though. Maybe it would be better for the world if his Twitter feed and mine were treated similarly, but that's not how the world works, and we have to respond to the world as it is.
Furthermore, part of his continuing influence, 20 years after Netscape, is the continuing impression that he is a clear thinker about issues facing the tech world. (See, elsewhere in this thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072721 .) There are two valid discussions at play here. The first is whether Free Basics is a good idea; the second is whether Andreessen is in fact the insightful thinker he appears to be. (The specific subdiscussion about whether rejecting Free Basics is a form of anti-colonialism, incidentally, is only valid if we take it as a given that Andreessen's ideas are worth listening to in the first place.) For the second one, a record of him just not being a good or well-informed thinker is in fact refuting the central point of that argument.
This comment itself is further argument that more people here could stand to read it. You've literally ignored the ideas within and just made an ad hominem argument based on the author instead.
If for example you wanted to discuss The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, the first step would not be to "not use the ideas described within (e.g. genetics and biology research)". Ignoring the topics within and attacking the author for what he later wrote about Atheism or how he behaved in interviews would a mindblowingly terrible way to critique his book about biology.
When discussing or critiquing an essay, the first step is to actually address the ideas inside of it. Attacking the character of its author or other things they may have said about unrelated topics is not a rational substitute.
In this case, geofft's comment is flawed on multiple levels. Aside from making a purely ad hominem argument against the 2008 essay How to Disagree, its specific attack was the author's twitter usage that occurred more than five years later.
If you think that anything I say is invalidated because I put ad hominems at the top of my comments, well, uh... I'm not sure how to explain this to you, but....
(Oh, and if you think this is about Twitter usage alone, I'd like to amend my personal attack to remove the words "on Twitter", and then direct your attention at http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm .)
To answer your question, no I don't think your usage of ad hominems invalidates everything you say. It does detract from the quality of the discussion and the pleasantness of the site, though. It also detracts from your ability to communicate effectively.
I completely agree with geomark's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072755). There are a lot of comments on this article that are little more than name calling, personal attacks or uncharitable assumptions.
And that reputation is based on his position as an early luminary that made direct and real contributions to the progress of the field, and his continued ability to make great picks for VC. Andreessen, like Paul Graham, is one of the few VCs who actually understands the technical underpinnings of what's going on, which seems to seriously enhance a VC's performance.
Andreessen's political beliefs are totally irrelevant. Frankly, it wouldn't matter if he were a neo-Nazi.
But for the goal of improving society by this investment, instead of worsening it? A successful neo-Nazi VC would be terrifying.
To answer your question, first of all name calling and attacking the people instead of the ideas makes for a nasty and unproductive conversation—basically like youtube comment discussion.
Secondly you're on the site he built. The guidelines clearly say, "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names." If you dislike the guidelines or feel that they are "terribly condescending", then maybe this isn't the ideal site for what you want.
is there anything in my comments that you think is out of line? did I attack anyone ad hominem or use weasel words or other forms of deceptive rhetoric?
judge for yourself. my standards of conversation are perfectly fine though, in my opinion. in fact, nearly ALL of the conversation in this thread has been perfectly fine.
my question for you is: why are you so sensitive about the tone of the conversation? is it that you're unhappy that so many people are deeply offended by Marc Andreesen's comments and it makes you uncomfortable to confront that disagreement?
I do not appreciate your insinuation about my own opinions. It's way off base and uncalled for. Referring to pg by the title used for N. Korea's dictator is also obnoxious.
I care about the civility of discussions because without it, they get both less pleasant and less constructive. This entire thread has been an exhibit of that.
..because I think the message in its context is only that using the anti-colonialism gesture is not a useful policy trick to counter facebooks free basics initiative for Indians.
On the other hand it's twitter. And they have to be outraged about something.
Really, what on earth was he thinking when he wrote those tweets. And it's not the first time he pulls a gaffe like this either.
Can someone tell me what it actually means, or is the suggestion that these policies weren't economic suicide?
In light of that, how Marc Andreesen thought it was a good idea to wrap his defense of Free Basics in a defense of colonialism is beyond imagining. But it does illustrate how certain stars of the tech world, some of whom have their claques on HN, can get pretty far disconnected from the real world.
That's a rather Orwellian choice of words, and appears to be flying under the radar while everybody gets upset at the other stuff.
Let's call it what it really is: connectivity to a couple of services which also happen to be connected to the Internet. "Partial Internet connectivity" is about on the same level as "partial pregnancy."
This makes it funny that you name his wording "Orwellian" while subliminally reproducing this carefully crafted and politically loaded understanding of what qualifies as internet.
It in fact already is seeking political influence on a grammatical level.
But that's not at all what we're talking about here, right? The service in question allows connecting to just two sites or something?
There are some wonderful things Twitter does, especially around real time news of non-controversial events such as natural disasters, but if the service is a net positive for the world, it's by the slimmest of margins.
That being said, this whole uproar is just more proof that social media is totally, utterly broken. Let me explain.
While I think Marc is on the board of an evil company and that his thought process on this matter is incredibly ignorant, I really appreciate the fact that he shares his point of view. I don't just appreciate it, I respect it. Maybe he's got a point. Maybe he doesn't. I won't know unless I hear what he's got to say, and then spend some time thinking it through. This is what intelligent, thinking people do. Before they turned into kettle pots of blind activism, this is what people went to college to learn to do. This is what makes living in a free-speech democracy so great -- people say totally crazy shit, some people agree, some people don't, it's all good.
Maybe the education system broke down or something, but people are no longer capable of dealing with viewpoints that differ from their own. They immediately label the person with whom they disagree, shame them (look at all of those screen grabs! Oh my!), and broadcast their displeasure to the world. We live in a world where people are supposedly taught to embrace those with different views -- that you and your best friend and your daughter's husband and your next door neighbor might not actually have the same exact views, but you can still be friends and get along just fine -- but this sort of tempered nuance attracts zero attention in a click-like-share world. Tolerance gains no attention in the world of social media; "disgust," "outrage," and other such intolerant reactions attract a crowd of views.
People should be thanking Marc Andreesen, the Facebook board member, for being so utterly candid about his thought process. Those in disagreement should cite facts to educate him. I'm sure he has his own facts that form his opinions (and surely, he does). Maybe his opinions won't change, and maybe those of the dissenters won't either. You know what, that's okay! That's LIFE. Life isn't about being right, it's about being alive. You can think Marc is a total moron on the India topic and still be his friend. We don't all have to agree on everything. It's WEIRD if we did -- there's nothing real about it. As I like to say, "a friend with whom you've never disagreed is a potential enemy you never knew you had."
Social media justice isn't justice, it's a modern-day mockery of the freedom of thought we fought so hard to attain. This shit is broken, folks. I don't know why Marc bothers with it, but I guess he is one of those people who thinks social media is the future of human discourse. I'm not. And that's okay.
Besides isn't it the intolerant who shape the society around them. If one wants a community whose members aren't ignorant or bigoted, why would just a live and let live approach shape the community to one's desires?
Following two incidents are enough to educate what a gift british colonoalism was for India:
1. Firing on Poor people http://www.sikh-history.com/sikhhist/events/jbagh.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre
2. Artificial Famine took Millions of Lives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
How does Bloomberg lead with this "fact"? Facebook's offering is not Internet service, but a whitelisted pipe. Does Bloomberg normally willingly eat up and repeat corporate propaganda?