If these projects ultimately end up canceled they’ll be the largest “mostly done” infrastructure projects to be cancelled. A huge waste. And a monument to US incompetency.
Even bigger than the abandoned AP1000 reactors in South Carolina? That was about $5B of abandoned capital, IIRC. It was also a monument to IS incompetency, but at least those responsible went to prison for it. I doubt we would see the same for cancelling the wind projects.
Just as a side note: Recently it seems as if there is interest in finishing those projects as a result of data center energy needs. Your point still stands but just wanted to put that out there.
There's been talk for a long time about restarting construction on Virgil C Summer again, but it has never happened. I remember an interview with a Santee Cooper exec that was extremely withering on the prospects of it actually happening. I can't find it now, but here's a 2019 video from the then-new CEO about the people who were looking into restarting construction, that's far less withering:
I'll believe it when it happens. Traditional 1GW nuclear like the AP1000 is just such a huge financial bite to make these days that the only orgs big enough to do it are large consortiums of large companies, or nation state.
It's a tough position because the AP1000 has a much better chance of reaching affordability than SMRs, but nobody wants to spend the $50B-$100B in capital to produce uneconomic nuclear reactors in order to maybe drive down the cost of construction so that future reactors will be economic.
It's a very different situation for funding than solar, because there's small scale use cases where expensive energy makes sense, in places that wires don't reach, etc. etc., on devices, etc., and that's what really drove a lot of the early development of solar manufacturing capacity. That got it to the point that Germany could do subsidies to really scale up the deployment of expensive energy, and since Germany spent that money, it's been smooth sailing for the rest of the world.
The path for nuclear is not as clear as it was for solar.
Almost half of the voting public intentionaly acted to sabotage the country. Let's stop treating them with kid gloves, they are anti-American and should never be forgiven.
This is not how to reverse the damage that has already been done, if you are unwilling to forgive, you are as bad as MAGA, perhaps worse. Forgiveness is a core human virtue we do not want to lose.
No, half of the voters did not intentionally vote for this. Half of the voting public doesn't pay any attention and votes based on their finances or party allegiance.
You and I saw all the bad things to know what would happen. That was hidden from many people. Yes you can fault them for being ignorant, but that doesn't imply intentional malice
There is no forgiveness without contrition. However you want to spin it, they did vote for this and as long as they don't acknowledge culpability for their actions there is no point in forgiving them -- they'll just continue blamelessly voting to sabotage the country.
The sad truth is that it's millions of people. These people just want to see the world burn due to nothing but narcissism and hate of the imaginary "other side".
There are a lot of people on "both sides" who choose their positions on the issues to fit their political party as opposed to choose the party that fits their positions. Particularly for an issue like offshore wind or Keystone XL that is basically "out of sight and out of mind" there are millions of people who would change their position if the right people told them to.
99% of every person's beliefs are driven by what "the right people told them," of course.
That's not really the point nor the problem, because some people choose to listen to very stupid or malicious people and others are (by chance or by skill) more susceptible to being steered by more credible people.
Half the country is in thrall with a uniquely malicious and moronic force, and the other half is vaguely in alignment with the vague directional gestures of expert consensus (even though it's sometimes wrong!). These are not at all the same, even if they both are technically "believing what people told them to."
>half is vaguely in alignment with the vague directional gestures of expert consensus
Their beliefs are driven by a different set of oligarchs and imperial mandarins who have their own set of self serving reality distortion fields.
The companies which donate to both sides and the countries which collect enough komptomat are often able to set up bipartisan reality distortion fields.
That's how parties work, of necessity. They are all uneasy alliances of people who can barely tolerate each other. People find the one that supports their most important issues and hopefully few things they really detest. Then they have to pay at least lip service to all of it. By getting everyone else's support, at least one or two of your favorite issues get worked on.
In doing so you need to find a way to live with the cognitive dissonance. The best way is to truly buy into all of it, as hard as you can. That wins and keeps on winning. Or you can try to mitigate things to your conscience, but that leads to a lot of halfhearted efforts and poor turnout.
Having seen student politics with and without parties - my student union had them, my engineering society banned them - I'm convinced that it's not bad voters that ruin democracies but political parties. Parties need to simplify their messages to get buy in, and promote a 'team first' over 'issues first' mentality in their members. They're anathema to principles of honest debate and compromise.
The large scale something is, the more a political party matters. At a school level you can be closely informed about all of the issues and know all of the players. You can barely do that at the level of city politics. State and federal politics simply doesn't allow it.
Large scale democracies only work when people are willing to live together. If you play democracy as a winner-take-all game, it's going to fail sooner or later.
I'm not convinced that anything works at the national scale, at least not over the long term. I suspect that the US, as one of the oldest-and-largest democracies, is demonstrating a path that others will eventually follow.
The problem is that the side that organizes always wins over the side that does not. And it's very difficult to ban political organization (which is ultimately what parties are) in a way that is actually enforceable.
The American founding fathers were mostly of the opinion that political parties are bad and should be avoided if republic is to stand. Yet they found themselves organizing into parties before the ink was dry.
So the best we can do in practice is engineer the political system such that the damage from party groupthink is minimal.
This is all true, but I think the issue is upstream of where you're pointing - democracy declines when the goal becomes to win rather than to serve the constituents. Parties are a way to win and they also reinforce the idea that winning is the goal.
I'm not sure as to solutions but I don't think they're impossible - something like an inoculation of the entire political class against the memeset that prioritizes winning over serving the constituents. Then if an unofficial party tries to seize power in a system that officially disallows them, the majority is already primed to respond in an organized way.
There are democracies with proportional representation out there. Those have their own problems in forming coalitions, but the parties themselves are much closer aligned with their base.
It comes at the cost of locality, but that's far less important today than it had been in the past. Nobody knows their congressman anyway.
I'd really like to give PR systems a try, if for no other reason than to do a reset on the current coalitions. I fear that they will eventually settle down into a pair of coalitions very similar to the current parties, but that leaves us no worse off.
It need not; you can have more proportional representative in a district based system (and still also have vote-for-person), using multimember districts with a system like Single-Transferrable Vote.
You can also get finer grained proportionality with Mixed Member Proportional which combines a district-based system (either single-member or a multimember proportional system described above) with top-up representation from party lists.
MMP would require Constitutional change in the US; but multimember districts with STV (in states with more than one seat, as well as increasing the size of the House so more states would have more than one seat) can be done by Congress without Constitutional amendment.
It's not an either-or. In mixed-member proportional system, you still get a representative specifically for your district who can thus argue for its interests. But you also get some people elected on party lists so that the representation as a whole remains proportional to party vote. New Zealand is a good example of the system in practical use.
There it is, the both sides brigade, right on time!
No, Keystone XL was not the same level of pettiness as offshore wind. Find me the IPCC report equivalent that makes the case for wind farms doing whatever social damage Trump says they do. I'll wait.
(feels authentic to somebody even when it is completely disingenuous)
and the left wing version is
smart + stupid = inconsistent -> loses
(feels demoralizing to the true believers, feels disingenuous to everyone else, see Kamala Harris) e.g. "woke" is really a left wing retread of right wing ideology, for instance that "defund the police" slogan cribs Reagan's "defund the left" slogan, because it is so exhausted it can only mine Thatcherism for ideas.
The emotional concerns that underly this ineffective (akratic) behaviour seem to come from uh "rationalist suffering" (the modern day version of white man's burden?)
Piketty 2022 section on Educational Justice (page 1007) thinks that its because dems are the overeducated children of the "Brahmin left".
So I think you've got the right diagnosis- reps are the undereducated children of the "Merchant Right", so their rationalist* cover stories are naturally more convincing :)
*Pecuniary===rational as in the "Legitimation Crisis"
Ps: somewhat better (=less overtly social-darwinist) handwringing, but not quite a bandaid
There are not in fact millions of people who want to burn the world just to spite others. If you truly believe that then you have really failed to understand people around you, and should try to better empathize. As a rule, people do what they do because they believe it to be the right thing. They might be misguided in that belief, of course, but the idea of millions of people deciding on a cartoonishly evil course of action is not an accurate analysis of anything.
I have an interesting perspective because my town is currently being sued by the state for years of secret discrimination by police and authority(my neighbors obviously voted strongly MAGA) so its an interesting hard right perspective.
After sitting and observing my local town's MAGA base for the better part of two years straight(by attending town meetings and joining all their facebook groups) it is clear that there is no real long term plan. They just love to get a rile out of others and deeply believe that Trump is doing great and that any problem is caused by someone else.
Its depressing trying to steelman that behavior because you realize that the country you grew up in had these people there. Growing up in the same town, everyone I interacted with was serious about excellence. My parents, my neighbors, my teachers and my classmates. There was this minimum standard where everyone from the businessman to the garbageman may have had different views on life but everyone still did their best every single day and still had this mentality of growth.
Its gone now. The cracks started to form after 9/11 when the quiet racists came out but it really seems like one grievance after another built up until Trump came along and caused all these people to put all their chips on supporting him do or die. Man going back to 2016 if Hillary had won, I wonder if the temperature would have come down. Part of the current hubris that they have is the same thing I saw under Bush(many Trump people are former all in on Bush supporters). They think they can do no wrong but eventually reality set the Bush people straight because when the economy crashed and people started to feel real pain, all those people went back into their caves for a while. I think the only thing that will stop MAGA is that the coming crash has to really really hurt. Thats when the jokes stop and they become serious again. It has to be absolutely obvious that Trump caused it which means that it has to be severe.
I often hope that maybe if Trump just peacefully passes away that it will finally fizzle out. Maybe thats a better outcome?
> Its depressing trying to steelman that behavior because you realize that the country you grew up in had these people there.
Maybe we should stop steelman them all the time. That is how they got enabled by centrists and pundits and moderates so much, they became the rulers. Steelmanning obvious bad faith actors is just another fallacy.
Steelmanning consists of ignoring disturbing claims conservative right says, not listening to what they are actually saying and replacing what they are saying by some feel good fiction of good intention.
The other method of challenging them and trying to prove your point does not work either. There is no solution it seems. They need to suffer the consequences of their decisions on their own.
Thats why I was so depressed. I have an engineering mindset of finding out how to improve things and there seems like there is no solution to this problem that involves remaining with this group as part of your society because it takes two to tango (ie. both sides need to put in genuine effort at growth).
Steelmanning is not challenging them at all. It is whitewashing them, making softer argument so that they are more palatable and frequently undistinguishable from support.
The only person challenged by such steelmanning is opposition to MAGA. They now have two opponents. They are made look as if they were exaggerating or were crazy when they accurately report to what MAGA does or says. They now have an additional, basically unintentional bad faith, rationalization to deal with against them.
> there is no solution to this problem that involves remaining with this group as part of your society because it takes two to tango (ie. both sides need to put in genuine effort at growth).
The problem is that what happens is that the opposition to MAGA is constantly asked to do growth, to steelman, to concede and move more to the right to accommodate MAGA. It is highly asymmetric and provably does not work.
> I have an engineering mindset of finding out how to improve things
I think that making it clear what MAGA wants says and supports to moderates and center is way better strategy then basically helping them.
>Steelmanning is not challenging them at all. It is whitewashing them, making softer argument so that they are more palatable and frequently undistinguishable from support.
I think you misread what I wrote. Yes Steelmanning them is not challenging them. What I said was that if you go the other direction and challenge them it does not work either. It might makes you feel good but no progress gets made.
You put way too much emphasis into my original comment of steelanning them. The original goal of sitting and observing them for two years was to try to understand their mentality, their point of view to then figure out how to convert at least some of them. Thats where the depression came in when I realized that there is no plan, no ideology, and no real end state: just vibes in the moment. This is not a cohesive vision for the future of a country.
I'm strongly of the opinion that we're seeing the consequence of 40 years of neoliberalism in which there's no longer any political objective of actually improving things for normal people, just hoping the private sector will sort things out.
Its certainly a symptom. With corporate financing of elections in the post Nixon years, neoliberalism has run amok and led to the disaster we are in. What I worry about is that only about 50% of the country has a passport. Half the country have never seen how other places are run and now 40+ years later a large percentage of the country wouldn't even remember how things used to be. They just think this is how every place runs.
The movie Fahrenheit 11/9 builds up understanding of the theory using specific case studies on the behavior you describe. They also discuss efforts to try and fight back. It is a recommended watch for anyone interested in understanding the underlying reasons for how we ended up where we are now. I can't believe the film is now eight years old yet feels like it was produced right now. Some of the people who were high school kids in the movie graduated college and are now even running for congress to try to fight back against neoliberalism! :O
“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
The child may be mad but he is happy to take bribes from the oil industry so they are as guilty as he is. And the same goes for most right wing politicians in Europe.
Humanity needs to wake up to the fact that our supposed "leaders" only lead us toward servitude. Our economic and political systems are designed to keep the vast majority of people in either literal or figurative chains so 25 people can get rich.
The entire system needs to be smashed to bits for the good of the many. Because after all, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few, or the one. But not in current human societies -- currently we value cruelty and malice.
The Keystone XL pipeline had been partially constructed before President Biden revoked the permit on January 20, 2021 on his first day in office.
About 300 miles had been completed when TC Energy officially abandoned the project.
there's been, in 2025, 983 000 people receiving disciplinary sanctions[0]. then:
1. either there's no corruption, and people are getting sanctioned for no reason
2. there's corruption
> Less incompetency
one thing they seem to do correctly in China, is to select their leaders not based on pure political skills, but on actual thinking skills: many of them come from technical backgrounds, and have been trained to think rationally.
furthermore, in my experience, Asian people, and Chinese in particular, also have better working habits − stronger wills − than most Westerners.
I'd still be careful about assuming they're really _that_ more competent. intellectual theft, propaganda, rushed work, all could contribute to a temporary illusion of superiority.
> Less freedom for stuff like protesting
this is a watered-down description of the actual situation.
you can get jailed, beaten up, tortured, killed, etc. religious groups seem to be the main target of the most violent treatments[1]. there's really no reason to target peaceful people, via such extreme means.
> one thing they seem to do correctly in China, is to select their leaders not based on pure political skills, but on actual thinking skills: many of them come from technical backgrounds, and have been trained to think rationally.
>there's been, in 2025, 983 000 people receiving disciplinary sanctions[0]. then:
>1. either there's no corruption, and people are getting sanctioned for no reason
>2. there's corruption
> Less incompetency
You're just compressing reality so the logic becomes simple. But your analysis loses the nuance. First of all no one said there's no corruption in China. Corruption is everywhere... saying there's none is a practical impossibility.
Second. In 2025 983,000 people received disciplinary sanctions.... If what China claims is true or even partially true it means corruption was reduced on a scale that cannot be replicated in the US.
You analysis is valid, but inconclusive.
>furthermore, in my experience, Asian people, and Chinese in particular, also have better working habits − stronger wills − than most Westerners.
>I'd still be careful about assuming they're really _that_ more competent. intellectual theft, propaganda, rushed work, all could contribute to a temporary illusion of superiority.
First of all let me be frank. I am asian. I am genetically Chinese and culturally western. My comment was purely about centralized systems of government and how THAT effects competency and not at all about the competency of the population seperate from that.
That being said, average IQ in China is higher than the US, that is a statistical fact. I did not comment on how that translates into this argument or what IQ even means in reality. I'm going to avoid that argument because I have no opinion on it.
>this is a watered-down description of the actual situation.
>you can get jailed, beaten up, tortured, killed, etc. religious groups seem to be the main target of the most violent treatments[1]. there's really no reason to target peaceful people, via such extreme means.
You're right. I did water it down. But I still stand by my point. I won't in actuality participate in activities that will lead to these types of consequences so restricting me of these freedoms is something I practically don't care about.
The religious argument is valid. But what do you think of scientology? Cults. Basically the religions that China cracks down on are religions it considers to be similar to scientology. Ultimately these things are bullshit. I'm not religious so, again practically speaking it doesn't affect me. I think most HNers are also atheist or agnostic.
Yup, it's a bit quick, I'll give you that. The numbers in 2025 were higher than in 2024, and in 2023, which could indicate that "it's not very effective" in actually reducing corruption.
I would guess that corruption is probably tolerated as long as it's not too visible, nor undermine people responsible for holding you accountable.
But it's really difficult to understand what's happening in China, because of the difficulty to get factual data.
> My comment was purely about centralized systems of government and how THAT effects competency
I would agree then than centralized government are likely to be more efficient. We've had kingdoms and empires all around the world for millennia, probably not by chance. In my opinion, they can be quite beneficial, as long as there's a substantial amount of morality driving the leading forces. For otherwise, they're efficient in the opposite direction.
China's leader banned Winnie the Pooh from the Chinese Internet because someone said they look alike. That's − dare I say − quite a red flag on many levels.
> I won't in actuality participate in activities that will lead to these types of consequences so restricting me of these freedoms is something I practically don't care about.
Well, it's fair enough, but it is − no offense − a rather self-centered view. It might not affect you today, directly. But it may affect you later, or affect close friends, your children, etc. Genuinely upholding morality within society has a bunch of benefits for everyone.
> But what do you think of scientology? Cults
Agreed.
> Basically the religions that China cracks down on are religions it considers to be similar to scientology.
People in genuine cults are suffering and being abused. Why on Earth would it be justifiable to impose upon them something far worth? If one decides to take down some cults, one may suppose that it's to actually help their members, not to beat the hell out of them; it doesn't make much sense.
There are many, way healthier and efficient alternatives than vicious crackdowns, especially if your intent is to protect the people.
> Ultimately these things are bullshit
I don't know; the most beautiful architecture, all forms of arts, etc. all were rooted in religions. All great men in the past were quite spiritual.
Also, you know, there are things like [0] which really raises eyebrows.
> I'm not religious so, again practically speaking it doesn't affect me. I think most HNers are also atheist or agnostic.
Perhaps it doesn't affect you directly again. But indirectly, or in the long run it might.
Religions are often caricaturally understood nowadays, which I believe is a cause for the increase of their rejection. Don't get me wrong, the caricatures are there for good reasons. But the caricatured things can't be reduced to their caricature − if one attempts to understand them thoroughly and accurately.
>People in genuine cults are suffering and being abused.
Not true at all. The only difference between a cult and a religion is popular acceptance. That's it. Some people suffer in christianity, just like how some people suffer in scientology. Many people in both religions don't suffer at all.
Tibet is a country with a religion that believes in serfdom and slavery. That's why China doesn't like them.
>There are many, way healthier and efficient alternatives than vicious crackdowns, especially if your intent is to protect the people.
It's called a tradeoff. You can eliminate the disease now by excising it with some collateral damage or you can try to slowly excise it which can basically be completely ineffective. For example the US in order to avoid collateral damage of trampling on peoples freedsoms allows bullshit religions like scientology to exist.
>I don't know; the most beautiful architecture, all forms of arts, etc. all were rooted in religions. All great men in the past were quite spiritual.
Does beautiful architecture equate with truth? Does being great equate with reality? Scientology is bullshit as much as christianity. It's just you PREFER the christianity bullshit.
Additionally all of the things you mentioned are not rational or logical. Being a great man is orthoganol to religion, beautiful architecture is orthoganol to religion. Think critically.
>Well, it's fair enough, but it is − no offense − a rather self-centered view.
How is how or where I choose to live my life self centered? I am simply saying I prefer China's way. If you don't prefer it, then don't live there.
I think the problem with you, is that you think I'm self centered, but I'm not. You are. Think about what you're asking for. You're saying that my OPINION on China is wrong and self centered and that my thinking needs to be adjusted and you imply all of China and it's government must adjust themselves to the same style of governance as the west. You are imposing your view on others and declaring that if one doesn't hold YOUR view, they are self centered. Ironic.
>Perhaps it doesn't affect you directly again. But indirectly, or in the long run it might.
Well it depends. Cults are responsible for mass genocide in the US, so one positive way the crack down on religous bullshit will affect me is that there is less mass genocide from cults. Scientology just won't exist in China. But it does in the US and it's the long term consequence of many freedoms.
>Yup, it's a bit quick, I'll give you that. The numbers in 2025 were higher than in 2024, and in 2023, which could indicate that "it's not very effective" in actually reducing corruption.
Or it can indicate corruption is massive and pervasive and that the clean up will need to be equally massive and pervasive.
> The only difference between a cult and a religion is popular acceptance.
That's typically caricature. I encourage you to study things more thoroughly before allowing yourself to form an opinion. One simply can't know a subject before having thoroughly studied it.
> It's just you PREFER the christianity bullshit.
I'm not Christian.
Regardless, Christian teachings are freely available. Anyone can practice on their own. You'd be right to critic the church − the institution: people have done it for a while, hence in particular the fair amount of subsects.
Scientology's "highest teachings" are kept private. Its primary purpose seems to be raising money by abusing people's naivety. Compare that to the Christ's « love thy neighbor as thyself. » Very distinct essences.
Which one promotes social stability?
> How is how or where I choose to live my life self centered? I am simply saying I prefer China's way. If you don't prefer it, then don't live there.
I think you've essentially said « I don't care whether people around me get slaughtered, because I'm not the target audience. » Allow me to find this self-centered. And still to find it okay-ish.
> Does beautiful architecture equate with truth?
Not what I was hinting at.
> Additionally all of the things you mentioned are not rational or logical
They actually are, but I haven't articulated the reasoning fully. Nor do I feel encouraged to articulate it. If you're truly in good faith, enough has been already said for you to do your own research
Apologies, I assumed such from the way you described architecture. Few western religions have influence on architecture as much as Christianity.
>Scientology's "highest teachings" are kept private. Its primary purpose seems to be raising money by abusing people's naivety. Compare that to the Christ's « love thy neighbor as thyself. » Very distinct essences.
That's your assumption. I can easily assume that Catholicism primary purpose is to hide a ring of people who engage in rape and pedophilia. There are different angles to every religion, you're just indoctrinated with the most populist angle. In the same way much of the west doesn't realize the religions of tibet and falun gong have cult like aspects FAR worse then scientology.
>Which one promotes social stability?
Both. Morality is not required for stability.
>I think you've essentially said « I don't care whether people around me get slaughtered, because I'm not the target audience. » Allow me to find this self-centered. And still to find it okay-ish.
You're just twisting and manipulating the logic so you can maintain the moral high ground when in actuality you're twisting everything.
The first problem is I'm not talking about mass slaughter. When the fuck did that become the topic? Are you saying I promote mass slaughter because China promotes mass slaughter? You're under this western propaganda where you seem to think China is some futuristic cyberpunk city on top but underneath the system is bathed in blood, torture slaughter and evisceration. Nothing is further from the truth.
When China tortures, when china executes someone, it is for crimes that fit punishment. They won't execute you if you're in a cult. They will execute you if you stole millions of dollars. The debate is about degree but the overall severity is reasonable.
I'm sick of talking to people with a misguided view of China. It's like talking to a clown. Somehow people like you are convinced that it's just blood and evil underneath.
>Not what I was hinting at.
Speak in english please, don't speak in hints. I said religions were not true, you countered with architecture. Now you claim it was a hint. Hint: don't speak with hints.
>They actually are, but I haven't articulated the reasoning fully. Nor do I feel encouraged to articulate it. If you're truly in good faith, enough has been already said for you to do your own research
No they aren't. I don't need to do research for a country I'm highly familiar with and even lived there for quite some time. I'm going to be utterly clear: You are ignorant and you are illogical and you need to do research. I'm Chinese. And I was born in the states. I know both cultures intimately, you only know one through the lens of US propaganda.
Good faith my ass. If you were talking to me in good faith you'd concede your lack of knowledge.
I directly know people who lived in China, have been jailed and beaten there, and have literal scars to prove it. Hard to brush this away easily from my mind.
Not all people who express negative views on China are alike.
I don't mind you expressing your (ignorant) opinion, and I wouldn't stoop so low as to call it rude. It's just you're not knowledgeable.
>I directly know people who lived in China, have been jailed and beaten there, and have literal scars to prove it. Hard to brush this away easily from my mind.
I directly know people from prison in the US who have similar if not worse injuries and scars. They have also told me of people who have died due to prison violence. I understand how it's easy to selectively brush away the atrocities done in the US while only focusing on the Chinese. If I were like you, I would label it as "self centered" because you don't give a shit about prisoners in the US, you only care about your Chinese friends because they serve as evidence for your biased views against China. I'm so sorry but there's no other way to look at it.
>Not all people who express negative views on China are alike.
No, I never claimed this. But I did claim that you're wrong and ignorant. That being said... You do fit a typical trope that does often come from people who have negative views against China and it's selective focusing on certain things without looking at the big picture.
You have to know that I know people in the US who were in prisons where the prison guards allowed rape and violence to occur and turned a blind eye to it because it served their ulterior objectives. Does that action characterize the entire US? No. It doesn't.
There is a relationship here. It is not a perfect one, but it is real, and pretending otherwise just avoids the tradeoff.
Take California’s high speed rail. Every individual has the right to object. No one wants an eyesore in their backyard. Everyone gets a hearing. Everyone gets a lawsuit. Everyone gets a veto in practice, if not in theory.
The result is predictable. I will never see a functioning high speed rail system in California in my lifetime. Neither will anyone alive today. Not because we lack money or engineering talent, but because the accumulation of individual rights makes collective action nearly impossible.
Now look at China. They decide to build it, and it gets built. If you are in the way, you move. If persuasion fails, coercion follows. Freedoms are not part of the equation.
That contrast is uncomfortable, but it is real. Freedom buys dignity and protection from abuse. It also buys paralysis. China sacrifices individual rights and gets infrastructure. California preserves individual rights and gets endless meetings, delays, and nothing on the ground.
You can argue which system is morally superior. You cannot argue that they produce the same outcomes.
Autocracy can (and perhaps usually does) produce corruption, and there's no guarantee that progress will be beneficial. I agree there are tradeoffs, but it's worth pointing out that sacrificing freedom does not reliably produce useful results.
> Take California’s high speed rail. Every individual has the right to object. No one wants an eyesore in their backyard. Everyone gets a hearing. Everyone gets a lawsuit. Everyone gets a veto in practice, if not in theory.
That has absolutely nothing to do with civil liberties and everything to do with the adversarial legalism of the Common Law code and with property rights, which are quite a different matter. There are any number of Western countries in which individual or household property rights are not taken to constitute an arbitrary veto on otherwise legal state action: if a train is scheduled to get built, it gets built, and compensation is paid but vetoes cannot be exercised.
Every additional "right" you have is a "freedom" you can choose to execute or not execute on. A right is an additional freedom. If you have no rights, you have no freedom, if you have unlimited rights, you have unlimited freedom.
I agree there's things like eminent domain. I'm just saying China leans more in the direction of less rights overall which in turn leads to a more productive society.
> Every additional "right" you have is a "freedom" you can choose to execute or not execute on. A right is an additional freedom. If you have no rights, you have no freedom, if you have unlimited rights, you have unlimited freedom.
Suppose there is one city where everyone has the right to build new housing on any piece of land they own and another city where everyone has the right to prevent anyone else from building new housing. These things are the opposite of one another, so they can't both be increasing the "freedom" of the public at large.
I guess the keyword is "individual freedom." Technically, freedom can be expanded in the way you're implying but usually in common parlance they are referring to individual freedoms. That is what people mean when they say the US is "more free" than China. Under your expanded definition it's not clear which one is more free.
Extreme individual freedom is often called anarchy.
There is nearly universal agreement among humans that nobody should have the "freedom" to commit non-consensual violence against another person. This is often cast as interfering with their freedom to be left alone and then the argument is that you don't have the freedom to deprive someone else of their freedom. But as soon as you have a government that so much as prohibits murder you're not doing something that can be described as anarchy.
The question is, in a "free country", does the government limit itself to punishing compelling violations with near-universal consensus like murder, or does it seize control over the micromanagement of dubious and petty violations like hypothetically marginally increasing traffic by carrying out a construction project?
It seems like the thing you're objecting to is the latter.
I think this framing quietly smuggles in a category error.
This isn’t about what feels compelling to you or me, nor is it a clean split between “near-universal moral prohibitions” and “petty micromanagement.” There’s a massive middle ground you’re flattening. Scale matters. Irreversibility matters. Civilization-level consequences matter.
Banning murder preserves a baseline condition for freedom. Large infrastructure projects don’t just “nudge” behavior or marginally increase traffic. They reshape cities, labor markets, land values, energy use, migration patterns, and political power for decades or centuries. They bind future generations who never consented and cannot meaningfully opt out. Calling that “petty” is just wrong descriptively, regardless of whether you support the project.
Once you acknowledge that, the question stops being “should the state only prevent violence?” and becomes “what kinds of collective decisions are legitimate when their effects are vast, asymmetric, and effectively permanent?” That’s not micromanagement. That’s the core problem of modern governance.
So no, the objection isn’t to the government punishing murder instead of being anarchic. It’s to pretending that civilization-shaping actions belong in the same moral bucket as minor regulatory nuisances. You can argue that such projects are worth the tradeoff. You can argue they should override individual objections. But dismissing them as trivial violations is an easy rhetorical move that avoids grappling with why people resist them in the first place.
And I'm just saying that "less rights overall ... in turn leads to a more productive society" is rubbish idealism that imagines a big thermostat slider by which to trade off one abstraction vs another, ignoring the material histories and institutions that actually generate the outcomes.
> Take California’s high speed rail. Every individual has the right to object. No one wants an eyesore in their backyard. Everyone gets a hearing. Everyone gets a lawsuit. Everyone gets a veto in practice, if not in theory.
If there was actually freedom and you wanted to build high speed rail, you would solicit investors, go negotiate for some land -- the power company has a bunch of transmission lines up the coast that run approximately parallel to the highways, maybe get that land, your trains were going to need power anyway -- and then you hire some people and start laying tracks.
"Everyone gets a veto" is the thing where you can't do it because the government won't let you even when you have the wherewithal and inclination to do it. That's the opposite of freedom.
But what of the culture? For years now the art and music has felt like poor cousins to what is in the west, similar to what we see generated by AI now, and consumed be people doomscrolling on WeChat moments while they wait for their didi to deliver their food from the shop down the street.
Every time I visit SZ now it feels like the scooters are misrouted neurons firing in any which direction, with no respect for pedestrians, parking, or the rest of the city.
>Now look at China. They decide to build it, and it gets built.
Look up "Nail Houses". The USA used eminent domain heavily in the same situation back when they were still building new infrastructure.
>Take California’s high speed rail. Every individual has the right to object.
It's not the result of many individuals objecting. It's the largely the result of a few wealthy individuals objecting. Elon Musk has admitted to publicizing hyperloop largely to take the wind out of the sails of the proposed high speed rail. American democracy is for the rich.
>Look up "Nail Houses". The USA used eminent domain heavily in the same situation back when they were still building new infrastructure.
Yeah. China is not THAT strict. But still building the rode around the nail house is something that wouldn't happen in the US. Eminent domain for other people is something I believe in for a better society.
>It's not the result of many individuals objecting. It's the largely the result of a few wealthy individuals objecting. Elon Musk has admitted to publicizing hyperloop largely to take the wind out of the sails of the proposed high speed rail. American democracy is for the rich.
Still it is freedoms + capitalism that enables this. Rich people objecting can get silenced. Jack Ma for example.
Is that a freedom? You're defining everything as though the US were the optimal model of society. Couldn't I just as easily define the freedom to be safe from guns?
What? I'm defining China, a country with less freedoms, AS more optimal then the US.
I think that comment about guns threw everyone off. People are very liberal on HN and at the same time very patriotic. They support gun control and ironically more freedoms at the same time so I think you and the other guy didn't realize that you both support China's lack of freedom in the aspect of owning guns.
Exactly. I don't care about owning guns. I don't care about the overwhelming majority of the freedoms the US provides to me for which China does not provide.
The U.S. doesn't have that much real freedom. It is nearly completely controlled by a concentrated oligarchy of people and corporations. Sure, there are rights, but these are almost entirely enforced via a massively beauractic and expensive judicial system. So if your rights are violated, it can take months and perhaps thousands or millions of dollars to prove and correct such violations. A cop murders someone? That takes like two years or more of trials and appeals if it even escapes internal affairs and the district attorney's office.
As an example, Texas is a state that prides itself on freedom but is incredibly privatized. There's hardly any public land. The entire electricity grid is privately owned. Toll roads abound in every major city. Over 20% of homes have an HOA, so those Texans have people (basically a small corporation) telling them how to cut their lawn. Women can't get medically suggested abortions. Universities are told what to teach by donors and politicans. For a while, the Texas DMV was collecting fingerprints just to get a license. Is that really freedom?
I'm specifically talking about Chinas' lack of freedoms... which is entirely different then Brasil or Argentina.
I don't have the freedom to own a gun in China, but it's safer in China to the point where you don't need a gun. Practically speaking I prefer to have less freedoms simply because you need less freedoms for society to function better AND most of these freedoms that are taken away by China are freedoms most people never exercise.
Yes, the event is Tiananmen Square. And on the moral axis, there is no ambiguity. It was a tragedy. People were killed for demanding political change. History does not need softening there, and I am not interested in doing that.
But morality alone does not explain how the world actually unfolds. And using morality as a trump card to end the discussion only works if we pretend the world is clean, fair, and reversible. It is not.
The uncomfortable reality is that history does not grade outcomes on intentions. It grades them on stability, continuity, and what comes after. The question is not whether Tiananmen Square was morally wrong. It was. The harder question is whether allowing that movement to succeed would have produced a better long term outcome for China, or whether it would have fractured the country into something far worse.
At that moment, China was not a mature liberal democracy waiting to be unlocked. It was a fragile state emerging from famine, revolution, and internal collapse. Power vacuums do not fill themselves with enlightenment. They fill with chaos, factionalism, and often bloodshed on a scale that makes a single atrocity look small in hindsight.
The leadership chose order over moral legitimacy. They chose continuity over uncertainty. They decided that dissent, even righteous dissent, was a risk they could not allow. The cost was horrific. The result was a state that remained intact, centralized, and capable of executing long term plans.
And execution matters. A lot.
Today, you can live in China and experience a society that functions at scale. Infrastructure appears where it is planned. Cities are built. Systems work. The future arrives on schedule. For many ordinary people, daily life feels stable, predictable, and materially improved compared to what came before.
Now contrast that with San Francisco. A city that prides itself on moral clarity, individual rights, and moral signaling. A city that debates endlessly and acts reluctantly. A city where compassion has become so fragmented across competing claims that enforcing basic order is treated as cruelty. The result is visible on the streets. Not theoretical. Not symbolic. Real decay, real suffering, real dysfunction.
This does not mean repression is good. It means the world forces tradeoffs whether we consent to them or not. There is no system that gets everything. There is no button you press that yields justice, freedom, stability, and progress simultaneously.
China accepted moral debt to buy coherence and speed. The West often accepts paralysis to preserve moral self image. Both choices carry costs. One is just easier to condemn from a distance. The other is easier to live with emotionally while things quietly fall apart.
If you want to argue morality, you will win the rhetorical point immediately. Tiananmen Square ends the conversation. But if you want to understand how nations actually become what they are, you have to step into the grey zone where history operates, where choices are made under uncertainty, and where the alternative paths are not clean, heroic, or guaranteed to be better.
The world is imperfect. Every society is built on compromises it would rather not examine too closely. The honest discussion is not about pretending one side is pure. It is about acknowledging that values shape outcomes, and that no outcome is free.
I love the opening of this comment, very poignant. I’m not convinced however that the conclusion follows from the setup. “The West” is more than just America. And America is very easy to condemn from a distance. Actually everything is easy to condemn from a distance.
There’s more to disagree with in the second half, but I’ll stick to my biggest gripe: America’s founding is steeped in moral principles, from its very founding document. In fact it is a two and a half century experiment on building a society around transparency, with the question of what is Right and what is Just at its core, and how does a society follow from that. And compared to where the world was when it was conceived, the experiment has certainly yielded vastly more results than your comment gives it credit for, by only looking at San Francisco today. It is evidence that the dichotomy between morality and building a society is a false one.
Meanwhile, tian an men square was in 1989, and the tension of “moral debt” is ever present, evidenced by its persistent censoring. When will it be paid off? And will the Chinese then say, “ok, we get it, that’s the price we had to pay”? Because if the ball suddenly drops and they rebel after all, as soon as censorship is lifted, you didn’t buy anything for that debt. So what then—keep taking out more moral debt? Forever?
China’s moral debt feels much like America’s national debt :)
Anyway like I said I loved the opening half of your comment though.
>America’s founding is steeped in moral principles, from its very founding document.
The same founding documents that insisted that all men were created equal, and that America was for, of, and by those men
but not THOSE men?
The same document that spent a significant quantity of it's rather short length handing out provisions to literal slaveowners?
Those same founders thought it would be better to split off the whole list of inalienable rights to a separate document that possibly could have failed to be adopted?
Nothing is more American than ignoring the history of what actually happened in favor of some totally rose tinted propaganda.
> 1989, and the tension of “moral debt” is ever present, evidenced by its persistent censoring.
IMO mistake to frame censorship as a debt, when it's domestic investment in stability, just like policing or infra, or epidemiologic pathogen control. You don't stop investing in essential nation building. Simply part of domestic infosphere management against unwanted influence, which essentially all countries have recognized PRC is prescient. As for 6/4 specifically, future gens will look back and realize 3-4 digit deaths less than rounding error in terms of Chinese history, having 1000s yrs of events/context sharpens evaluation. Like how Mao 70% good, 30% bad evaluation will turn to 90% good, 10% bad, because what's a few 10s of millions starved to death when his engineering projects and industrialization efforts actually ended 1000s of years of reoccurring famine / Malthusian traps. It will be recognize as "price of future", i.e. retrospectives tend to evaluate empires less on carnage (which is assumed) but on the frameworks they leave behind.
>“The West” is more than just America.
The west is generally built on the same template as America, extractive exploitation of not only itself but others, aka, built off surplus blood and treasure from colonialism, except society indoctrinated to believe such is natural order and just. Generations pass, surplus snowballs to buy more rights and freedom and enable more introspection, where colonialism can be acknowledged as stain, but on the margins. West rarely acknowledge that often the fine line between able to experiment vs subsist is funded by foreign extractive surplus. Skewing global balance sheet of energy and resources enable building and experimenting and bribing peripheries, liberalism = luxury experiments derivative product of colonial surplus. We see how fast it erodes when physical resources contracts.
Regardless, when looting from another, the geopolitical balance sheet no longer remains domestic, like America, it starts geopolitical debts that likely can't be default without eventual consequence. Mistreated countries have long memories, and being mistreated, humiliated if you will (and we're not talking bout only PRC), those memories do not tend to soften with time, and can really only repaid in catharsis. AKA there maybe a day when global south develops/catches up and coerce the west pay their debts. It could be 100s of years from now or current events could hint interregnum where power shifts and debts are soon collected.
This is one of the most insane things I’ve ever read on this forum.
The assertion that being able to summarily execute people you accuse of corruption somehow reduces corruption is absurd. If that were true, places like Russia would have no corruption. Being a dictator just ensures that corruption flows your way as the leader.
Calling something “insane” is not an argument. It is a way to terminate a line of reasoning before it forces you to confront tradeoffs you would rather not look at. Once you label a position as madness, you no longer have to examine whether it explains real outcomes in the world. That move shortens the discussion, but it does not strengthen your position.
You are also arguing against a claim that was not made. No one is saying that executions somehow purify human nature or permanently eliminate corruption. The claim is narrower, colder, and more uncomfortable: extreme enforcement can sharply reduce certain forms of corruption for long periods of time, and that reduction can produce real, measurable benefits that save lives at scale.
This is not theoretical. Take food safety. In China, officials and executives have been executed for large scale food adulteration scandals. Morally, that is horrifying. Practically, it created an environment where cutting corners suddenly carried catastrophic personal risk. The result was a rapid tightening of compliance in industries where negligence or fraud can poison millions. Fewer tainted products means fewer dead children. That tradeoff does not become imaginary just because it makes us uneasy.
The same logic applies to infrastructure. When corruption in construction is treated as a capital crime, bridges do not collapse as often. Buildings are less likely to be built with fraudulent materials. Rail systems are less likely to be sabotaged by kickbacks and subcontracting fraud. One execution looks monstrous in isolation. The thousands of lives not lost to structural failure rarely make headlines because they never happened.
Singapore offers a milder but still illustrative example. It did not rely on executions, but it imposed severe, credible punishment and relentless enforcement for corruption. The outcome is one of the least corrupt governments on the planet and a state that functions with extraordinary efficiency. The lesson is not that brutality is good. The lesson is that consequences matter, and when they are weak, delayed, or politically negotiable, corruption flourishes.
Russia is not the counterexample you think it is. Corruption there thrives precisely because enforcement is selective and loyalty based. Power protects insiders rather than disciplines them. That is not what happens in systems where even high ranking officials can be credibly destroyed for crossing certain lines. Treating all authoritarian systems as identical collapses meaningful distinctions into a slogan.
You are framing this as a moral debate because morality is the easiest place to win rhetorically. Summary execution is evil. Everyone agrees. End of discussion. But that does not answer the structural question of why some societies manage to enforce standards at scale while others drown in fraud, decay, and institutional rot.
The world does not offer clean choices. Every system kills people, just in different ways. One system kills visibly, deliberately, and brutally. Another kills slowly through negligence, corruption, drug tainted streets, collapsing infrastructure, and the quiet abandonment of public order. One death looks shocking. Ten thousand avoided deaths look like nothing at all.
If you refuse to engage with that reality, you are not taking the moral high ground. You are opting out of the analysis entirely. And calling that insanity does not make it go away. It just signals an unwillingness to sit in the grey zone where cause, effect, and moral cost actually live.
Yes far worse, the superconducting supercollider produced science which has debatable value. There’s an argument we lost nothing by canceling the project.
Wind farms produce electricity which pays for the investment when you finish but pays nothing when a stop early. This makes stopping early extremely economically harmful.
Esoteric programming language developed for the superconducting super collider, Glish, was picked up by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which used it well into the 2000s.
Glish supported networked remote procedure calls, made then almost transparent to the program. Otherwise, Glish was roughly similar to Tcl or Lua.
I don't know what other bits and pieces got salvaged from the SSC project.
I dunno. The Americans stuck their hand in a blender for four years and then four years later needed to try it again. Alas, Stumpy McNubs remains long on limbs but short on memory.
"The President's party loses seats in the midterms" is a long-term trend and it seems pretty likely to hold this time.
The real question is, once the Democrats are back in control of at least one house of Congress, are they going to be sane or are they going to spend two years making such fools of themselves that we end up with another Republican President in 2028?
Alas you'll need to define "sane" first. That might be harder than expected.
Equally unfortunate is the need for 60 senate votes to actually have a meaningful say over what the president does. And in truth no part has had "control" of congress to this level for a while.
When one (or indeed both) sides are politically incapable of being bipartisan (witness the outcomes for those voting against party lines, on both sides) control of one house is meaningless and a majority in the senate (short of 60 votes) mostly meaningless.
Expecting any change in behavior after November, regardless of the results, is wishful thinking.
It takes 40 votes to prevent the other party from putting something in a bill that you're willing to do a government shutdown to prevent. That's probably a good thing. Consider what would be happening right now, when the Republicans have >50 but not >60, if that meant they could actually do whatever they want.
And the difference between 49 and 51 is still pretty damn important because "majority" has a lot of procedural consequences that are not irrelevant.
As you've seen, over, and over, and over again, this is their own internal rule they've changed it before and they can just change it again with a simple majority, the so-called "nuclear option".
None of this has any actual weight, it's all theatre. Which doesn't mean it lacks consequences, but they could at any time just sweep it aside and they choose not to.
Ironically, one thing the Senate does constitutionally need a super-majority for and can't just change the rule is Impeaching the President. Which means that so long as Republicans have enough votes and apparently still believe loyalty to one corrupt rotting bag of shit is their purpose in life he can't be impeached.
> As you've seen, over, and over, and over again, this is their own internal rule they've changed it before and they can just change it again with a simple majority, the so-called "nuclear option".
It's called the "nuclear option" because actually using it is mutually-assured destruction. They're not so stupid that they can't foresee ever being in the minority again when changing a rule where that consideration is the blatantly obvious cost.
Somehow the Democrats were that stupid and did it for judicial nominations and both parties can see how that came back to bite them.
> Which means that so long as Republicans have enough votes and apparently still believe loyalty to one corrupt rotting bag of shit is their purpose in life he can't be impeached.
The real purpose of impeachment is for when there is widespread consensus that someone so pressingly needs to be removed from office that it can't wait until the next election. It's for when they're so bad even their own side won't stand for it, not for when you hate the other party's President and catch a slight majority in the midterms.
But if you retake the legislature then maybe consider adding some new restraints on executive power to those hefty must-pass omnibus bills. It might be worth doing something about the problem in general instead of just that one specific jerk?
The thing I find irritating is that the government has been doing things as bad the things Trump is doing for decades, and those things are actually bad and shouldn't be done, but people are now acting like Trump invented them.
Don't get offended that Trump is more brazen about anything than anyone else and try to retaliate against him in particular, instead change the things that need to be changed so that nobody can do those things anymore, even when they're acting like they're not.
Yes I think some of what he's doing isn't new, and yes some of it isn't new, just more brazen, but I think there's also a lot of new.
For example, pardons are for sale. Thats pretty obvious. maybe it's been done before (?) but certainly not on this scale and not so soon in the term.
Secondly he's set up a direct method for paying him, TrumpCoin. That's different to campaign contributions. And indeed quite a bit of trumpcoin is being sold to foreign govts. I'm gonna put that in the "new" column.
In terms of international relations it's all new. He's blowing up trust in the US, via tarrifs, threats to invade a NATO country and so on. This is long term damage at unprecedented scale for no apparent actual gain.
There are plenty of laws which say he can't do any of this. Adding more laws is not the solution. A weak congress, and a weak Supreme Court unwilling to enforce the laws is the problem.
This seems like a pretty good example of how Trump is "different" but not actually different.
The traditional way this works is through prosecutorial discretion. You make friends with the politician and then when they're in office you don't get prosecuted or the case gets dropped or settled under favorable terms. Example: When Bush got elected, the antitrust case against Microsoft was effectively made to go away "for some reason" (https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/microsoft-political-...).
Doing the same thing with pardons is way more conspicuous, because instead of something that doesn't happen (prosecution) you have something that does happen, and in public view (official pardon).
Politicians traditionally care about distinctions like that because it makes it much easier to accuse them of the thing, whereas Trump DGAF. But it's fundamentally not a different thing and the actual problem isn't that Trump isn't being subtle about it, it's that they should not be getting away with it even when they are being subtle about it.
> Secondly he's set up a direct method for paying him, TrumpCoin. That's different to campaign contributions.
Eh. It's not that much different to campaign contributions and it's not really different at all to the longstanding practice of politicians or their family members owning a private company which then gets into a bunch of peculiarly advantageous business dealings while they're in office.
> In terms of international relations it's all new. He's blowing up trust in the US, via tarrifs, threats to invade a NATO country and so on. This is long term damage at unprecedented scale for no apparent actual gain.
The problem with this one is it's the hating the other party's President one. Congress passed a law letting the President set tariffs, didn't repeal it for many years, and then the President started setting some tariffs. You can argue that it's a bad policy, you can argue that they should repeal the law that lets him do it, but he ran for office saying he was going to do this, got into office, and now he's doing it.
> There are plenty of laws which say he can't do any of this. Adding more laws is not the solution. A weak congress, and a weak Supreme Court unwilling to enforce the laws is the problem.
There are two kinds of laws in this context.
The first is the ones that punish him for doing something. Those are useless in this context because the executive isn't going to prosecute itself so you're down to impeachment and for that you need bipartisan consensus.
The second is the ones that prevent him from doing something. Take away the law that lets the President set tariffs and he can't unilaterally set any tariffs.
>once the Democrats are back in control of at least one house of Congress
"Are the democrats magically going to be able to have 100% control of the government despite only holding a tiny majority in the lower house? If not, I'm going to yet again blame them for a failure that is actually just the constitution working as it clearly states"
The US system is not designed to give democrats any power by holding a small majority in a single house. The power granted in such a case is the power to prevent change.
FDR was able to reform and change things the way he was because Democrats had something like 80% control of both houses, and that's how the threat to pack the Supreme court carried weight: Because he could actually do it.
You want democrats to have power? You want them to be able to put these criminals in jail? You want to be able to reform the system to reduce the chance of this horseshit happening again?
Then you need far more than a small majority in one house. You need actual control.
It's much easier to obstruct and prevent and destroy, so Republican policy of tearing shit down and stopping normal legislative progress and ensuring our congress passes no laws to deal with obvious bullshit like rampant corporate fraud that would make Enron blush is just naturally advantaged.
> Are the democrats magically going to be able to have 100% control of the government despite only holding a tiny majority in the lower house?
They're not supposed to have 100% control of the government. Nobody is. They're supposed to prevent the Republicans from doing dumb stuff, just like the Republicans are supposed to prevent them from doing different dumb stuff because they have different constituencies. Only when they can both agree is when the government should be doing something, and even then you often need help from the courts and the states because the thing they both agree on is that someone is paying them to do something bad.
The best government is the one that does exactly what it should. The second best is the one that doesn't do things that it should; in that case someone else can do them, like the states or the market. The worst is the one that does things that it shouldn't.
> FDR was able to reform and change things the way he was because Democrats had something like 80% control of both houses
FDR was pre-Nixon and had 80% control by sweeping the South and losing New England. People forget that the original purpose of the minimum wage was to prevent black people from taking jobs from white people by offering to work for less money. Most of FDR's policies were economically illiterate or political knavery -- social security was created with the solvency of a pyramid scheme which is why the trust fund already has a negative growth rate and is soon going to run out of money now that population growth has leveled off.
That kind of authoritarian steamrolling over the opposition is exactly what nobody should be able to do, not least because it most often happens when people are heated about something and willing to start hastily implementing half-baked ideas with long-term consequences if given the chance.
> It's much easier to obstruct and prevent and destroy
If only! A major defect in the existing system is that the high bar meant to keep bad laws from making onto the books to begin with is also applied as the requirement to repeal them. Combined with the tendency for the powerful to defend the status quo that secured them that power, the result is that bad laws accumulate and how to be effective in destroying them is an unsolved problem.
"The mistake has proceeded from not attending with due care to the mischiefs that may be occasioned by obstructing the progress of government at certain critical seasons. When the concurrence of a large number is required by the Constitution to the doing of any national act, we are apt to rest satisfied that all is safe, because nothing improper will be likely TO BE DONE, but we forget how much good may be prevented, and how much ill may be produced, by the power of hindering the doing what may be necessary, and of keeping affairs in the same unfavorable posture in which they may happen to stand at particular periods."
The first time many of Trump's desires to do illegal things were somewhat restrained by non-political government employees who remembered that their oath is to the Constitution, not the President.
Based on what I've read a lot of people who voted for him subsequent times thought that would continue.
It’ll come back when there is more policy certainty, China isn’t going anywhere and they’re going to keep building. Luckily, there is manufacturing supply chain safely outside the US. China is roughly a third of global manufacturing capacity after all.
Don’t think in years, think in half decades and decades. This too shall pass.
It is not too useful to make bold unsupported claims that the current administration has the power to subvert elections. That just lowers us to their level, and the last thing we need is for a further erosion in confidence in our democratic system. The states run elections, and no matter what Trump says to get people to keep paying attention to him, they don't jump when the president tells them to. The feds have money and nukes, but States have a lot of the actual power.
> executive orders are toothless against the states and they all know it.
And judicial orders are toothless against the federal government... And the states can't lift a finger against any deployment of federal power against them, whether it's legal or not.
What recourse will a swing state in November have against ICE goons being deployed to do Kavanaugh arrests in voter lines?
Elon Musk just announced spending 300 million to make it harder to vote.
And it didn't even make the headline of the article I read it in.
And he's being spreading lies about elections for years. Again, not regularly mentioned even in critical articles about him, because it's so normalized.
Is he working in concert with the current administration on this issue? That's going to be the question with many of these new tech-billionaire/administration collaborations.
Reality check is that he has actual track record on delivering or trying to deliver on his anti-democratic impulses. In terms of personal monetary gain, he is the most successful president of history.
He is also actually successful at making Project 2025 reality. He is on the way to cause very real harm (economic, physical) to blue cities too.
> In terms of personal monetary gain, he is the most successful president of history.
And in terms of legislative impact he is the least successful president in history. I don't like the corruption one bit, but on balance it is probably the less damaging of the two.
> He is also actually successful at making Project 2025 reality
Not at all, though, on any kind of permanent basis. He is showing that you can make the executive branch do shitty things with executive orders. What he isn't managing to do is codify any of this in law. There's a reason that the universities and other 'elites' knuckle under and cut deals with him -- they know that these deals are informal and temporary, and go away with the next POTUS. If Trump took this agenda to Congress and got it enacted into law it would persist for many more years.
It's a call to have his ICE goons (armed to the teeth and trained to escalate to violence of course) operate voting stations because of all of the "illegal" voters and for DHS to administer elections instead of leaving it to the states.
He also said his polls are the best they've ever been today. Trump works hard to cultivate an aura of inevitability, but he simply does not have the power to make false things true by declaring them so.
