Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

I don't think the parent commenter is referring to going back to what there was before; a Marxist who wants to hasten the revolution, for example, is not arguing for the stage of historical development before capitalism (feudalism), rather he is arguing for the abolishment of classes altogether. That is the charitable reading, anyway.



No, I don't think the parent really wants to go back to the way things were. But I argue against something different - I argue against revolutions itself. The two points I made could be restated like this: our civilization is at a very fragile stage and a big enough revolution now could kick us back into pre-industrial level and keep us there, since all the easily available sources of energy have been already mined and used up. That, and revolutions are bloody, and frankly, I don't want to die yet.


A revolution is like hiring a new team to build Version 2 of your product from scratch: they end up repeating all the old mistakes. Successful software development and science both require well-controlled experiments where the effects of the change can be traced back to a cause.

They also require a management that is willing to iteratively rewrite core pieces of the software and release major versions with breaking changes. That is what is lacking in our government, and what fuels the frustration behind calls for revolution.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: