Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Seeing free speech as an impediment to nationalist competition is rich. Nationalist competition appears to corrode every civil liberty and thing that makes life worth living that we have. What if we had international cooperation instead of a death match? I guess certain business people would not make as much money.


>What if we had international cooperation instead of a death match? I guess certain business people would not make as much money.

Cooperation is hard because of the prisoner's dilemma etc. You don't need "certain business people" to malevolently prevent international cooperation.


>Nationalist competition

What do you mean by nationalist competition? Nations competing against each other?

>What if we had international cooperation instead of a death match?

Cooperation for what? Different people value different things. Different cultures even more so. You cannot have cooperation unless everyone is on the same side of every issue in the same degree.

If we had that level of agreement, we would not survive, not for long anyway. Let me explain:

Almost all of politics (or religious sects for that matter) is about how we use the resources we have. If there are multiple ways of using the resources, there have to be people who disagree and want different ways of using the resource. That slows us down, which helps us understand the cost/benefits of different ways of doing things. That also keeps options open... so if we find problems with the prevalent way, we won't have to start over. Other groups will already have understood the alternative ways and made some progress that others can join... once they sacrifice the leader who led them the "wrong way", of course.

Nations are just another level of doing this thing on a global scale. Nations should do things differently, so that the world as a whole is more robust.

>I guess certain business people would not make as much money.

Ironically, it's certain business interests which have tried to make the world homogenous. That helps them scale their business in the most efficient way. They value efficiency more than robustness. George Soros, founder of the Open Society Foundations, is an example of a person who religiously believes in removing all inefficiencies due to nation states... and has been using his billions of dollars for that cause. I think that is dangerous. It's not different from finding "superior people", inbreeding them and killing everyone else for being inferior. That wouldn't make them superior. That would make them fragile. It's the same for nations.


> What if we had international cooperation instead of a death match?

competition is at the heart of our economies at a deep level, both within and without... i suspect this wont change until internally our economies are more cooperative than competitive (im not holding my breath)


This is why I am not a philosophical adherent to capitalism.




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

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

Search: