The company’s right-wing politics and eagerness to facilitate U.S. and Israeli military aggression abroad, NSA global surveillance, and ICE deportations has also made many wary of its access to incredibly sensitive personal data. A recent post on the company’s Palantir’s X account summarizing a book by CEO Alex Karp triggered an immediate backlash from those unnerved by the manifesto’s fascistic bent. The bullet points extolled the virtue of arms manufacturing, argued the Axis powers were unfairly punished after World War II, called for a reinstatement of the draft, condemned cultural pluralism, and claimed that wealthy elites are unfairly persecuted.

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Your idea that profit is simply the extraction of value from those doing the work ignores the role of risk. The factory owner provides the initial capital, buys the machines, secures supply chains, finds the right workers, organizes everything and takes the risk of bankruptcy. If the company fails, the workers lose their jobs, but the owner loses their investment. Therefore profit is the reward for taking on that financial risk and organizing the resources efficiently. Also, some of that profit will need to be reinvested into the factory or new factories.

Being honest, it just sounds like western companies being upset that they don’t get to exploit cheap Chinese labor for the benefit of western capitalists.

They want to use China as a sweatshop that they profit from, rather than letting Chinese companies profit themselves.

I don’t really see the issue with it, as a consumer. I’d rather the origin of the product got to keep more of the proceeds rather than letting some western capitalist skim more off the top, especially if that means cheaper goods for consumers.

That’s a really limiting way of seeing things. Not all companies are bad and not all of them want to EXPLOIT cheap labor just because they want to manufacture in China and there are companies (especially in Europe) that go the length of making sure that the products are made fairly (i.e Fairphone) and people are paid a livable wage. I think this will be more and more important as we go into the future and people become slowly more conscious of what they’re buying.