Because you have motivated reasoning to dislike these companies, even though Blackrock and Blackstone are bog standard financial services companies and a random naming scheme is easy to grab onto.
All the worst companies seem to all be LOTR themed.
Technically the Palantiri were a force for good in the hands of Elves and Men, and could still be used for good, like Aragorn using it to challenge Sauron and forcing Sauron’s hand. So that’s a defense to the self-awareness argument. In fact that ambiguity is likely intentional.
Btw I always wondered why I was seeing droves of Palantir swag on Stanford campus back in early 2010s. I wouldn’t wear something that has a 50%+ chance of being interpreted as evil.
The Palantir themselves aren’t evil, they were made by the elves long before the events of LOTR. Essentially they are just a tool.
However I heard that Thiels favourite book is the rewrite of LOTR from the perspective of Sauron, where Gandalf and the elves seek to destroy humanity and technology (at least that’s how I understood the gist, haven’t read it)
Pretty much private mercenaries that work outside of the usual army structure as "private contractors". They're usually the ones the US contracts to do the worst atrocities, as that gives the government a thin veneer of plausible deniability because they were behaving "independently". The US also does its best to make sure they never face any legal consequences for their war crimes.
Also worth pointing out that, due to this "contractor" relationship, they never count towards official casualty figures. For example, if Iran were to kill 50k of them (I'm of course exaggerating to make a point), they wouldn't count towards US casualty figures, so it's also a way for the government to downplay the effects of foreign intervention to the general public.
> Also worth pointing out that, due to this "contractor" relationship, they never count towards official casualty figures. For example, if Iran were to kill 50k of them (I'm of course exaggerating to make a point), they wouldn't count towards US casualty figures, so it's also a way for the government to downplay the effects of foreign intervention to the general public.
This has happened throughout history in war, before even recorded history.
Russia is doing it right now with North Koreans. Also with Wagner Group, until they had their little uprising against Putin and then their plane happened to crash.
