I've found it helpful to view the current US admin through the lens of organized crime: if you pretend the prez is a mob boss, everything becomes much more congruent and coherent. The incentives align, the not-so-clear motivations make sense, and most definitely the methods.
More generally I'd say it's a power grab, like a monopoly. Even if it was all legal and above-board, the problem is this mentality of "more power for me less power for you".
Most Americans love this idea of being powerful, which is why he won the popular vote. The rapes probably even helped him in some quarters. This idea also appeals strongly to a lot of HN - Warren Buffet openly talks about the importance of getting a "moat".
It's anti-competitive. In reality a more distributed power structure is much better for overall progress, and even for the monopolist in the long run (Example: Intel, Russia).
It’s amazing that on HN this is not universally condemned. The big learning out of this administration is that the US people aren’t stewards of democracy. But rather fanatics of their “side”.
Look man, dems have tried the whole "democracy is on the ballot" thing and lost two elections to trump. They have lost to him twice! Maybe instead of campaigning on how bad the other guy is (disclaimer: i fully agree that he is bad), they could actually do things that make people want to vote for them? I say this as someone who would really like to republicans lose forever after this, but who fears that the dems won't ever win again because they won't change.
HN has a whole lot of people trying to make it really big financially, for a huge variety of reasons. One of the things that excludes someone from that group is an understanding that our culture is dominated by the idea that wealth is the first, biggest, best priority.
We collectively give the wealthy extra protection, status, and influence. Basically every definition or subcategory of power.
When you do this, it creates a disgusting race to the bottom from those trying to reach the top. We are seeing the ultimate result of that: a mafia kingdom. A feudal clown show.
You will see a weirdly large amount of people supporting that here because a large number of people have conditioned morality out of their ideology. Or reduced it to a very superficial level, completely subservient to the almighty dollar. "Greed is good", "the ECONOMY", "my peers do it so it's okay". And in and on and on.
In short, many would be doing the same thing in the same position and they can't see just how amoral that is. And how it reflects the utter rot that is our culture.
I'm familiar with at least one company where the execs are downright excited about the new way of doing business. No longer do you have to carefully study laws and regulations, you just have to make sure one guy likes you! It's a nice deal if you can get it, which is why I'm so aggressive about saying that the people who are getting it need to go to prison when constitutional governance is restored.
> No longer do you have to carefully study laws and regulations, you just have to make sure one guy likes you!
American civic understanding has gone through the floor. People already think that corporate quid pro quo is the default, so for some, this is actually an improvement because it's more transparent now. It can't be that corporations achieve wins through research and coalition building because that would imply that people aren't not doing enough themselves. The irony has made lobbying stigmatized in grass-roots organizations [1], which only gives corporate lobbyists more power.
Sure, but there's a difference between voting for somebody more extreme because the existing options are ineffective, and supporting people with these attributes (pettiness, hatred, fascist-y behavior, incompetence, disrespect of laws/rights/citizens, disrespect of traditional US standards for leadership, etc).
Just Devil's Advocate, but this being the US, the opposition doesn't necessarily support pure democratic ideals either.
It's just that the conservatives are so much further along the authoritarianism scale that the liberals appear to be freedom loving democracy activists by comparison. But I guarantee you, if you were to drop the average US Democratic party politician into Germany, Australia, or Canada, they'd be considered to be so far right of center that people would question whether or not that politician even believes in democracy.
The ratchet effect is real. American liberals have comfortably positioned themselves as the counter to authoritarianism but you'll notice that they never actually make things less authoritarian. They're thrilled to keep the direct power seized by the right, and to expand their own soft power where possible.
Transactional at best. Not sly mob-leader transactional, but toddler transactional.
Edit: to his own detriment. Why bother with "deals" when you know it can change at any moment. Just put on a golden dog and pony show for the King and hope for the best.
I suppose the charitable interpretation is that Trump favors transactions that offer short-term benefits to the country, rather than America’s traditional investments into long-term goals that tend to be more nebulous (“soft power” etc.)
Of course, one look at Trump’s actual transactions in office should dissuade of that notion. After he made the preliminary trade deal with the EU, he bragged on TV that Europeans are investing $600 billion and Trump himself gets to decide where the money goes. It’s baffling that anyone would assume that’s how any of this works, but he clearly thinks the point of these transactions is to get more power and wealth for himself.
As bad as this is it will only lead to more brigading about how billionaires like Zuckerberg were talking about being repressed under the Dems/Biden. It just seems the party condemning others regarding first amendment rights isn't that first amendment. And for others yet this is going to be only a "rating" or a list. Nothing bad is going to happen just because the list or rating exists. Right?
To them I ask to explain how many points Tim ̶A̶p̶p̶l̶e̶ Cook and Apple got for his gold bar:
I've been beating this drum for a while and I'm going to keep doing it. If you run or make strategic decisions for a tech company in 2025, you need to understand that many if not most of your competitors are working hard to figure out how to wield the federal government in their favor. I wouldn't advise doing it yourself, unless you'd like to go to prison for bribery alongside Tim Cook in 2029, but any assumption that the current federal government will treat you fairly without taking their side in political battles is a grave strategic error.
Well, early supporters of fascism do tend to end up in prison, because fascism needs purges. So in a monkey paw way, I wouldn't bet against the current crop of CEOs falling from graces very hard.
The companies that you could accuse of outright bribery are Meta, Twitter, Paramount, and Disney who all gave money that benefited the President directly.
Cook kissing ass and giving the President a meaningless trinket, doesn’t quite arise to that level.
I mean billionaires don't even go to prison for engaging in pedophilia. Which is just about the worst crime you can commit. If anyone thinks liberals or conservatives will put them in prison for bribery, they're being a little naive.
This nation is owned by the billionaires. In all honesty, they don't even need to be in alignment with the government. There's next to nothing the government can do to rein in giant banks. If anything, the government has to be certain to make sure the banks are appeased.
The exception, of course, is if you expect to co-benefit - Intel sent their CEO to kiss the ring and now they might be getting free investment money out of the deal. But it's definitely a risky strategy.
I doubt anyone will care about this in four years. Society grows accustomed to daily life, as with the Vichy. The job market will be in tatters, similar to what South Africa has now with 40% unemployment. Every time a homeless person steals copper wire from a street lamp in LA, they make $50 from illegal recyclers and it costs taxpayers $10k to fix. $20 million per year, $100 million since 2020. 2029 there will be crime drones swarming LA recording crimes and seeking overly tanned people in real time on YouTube. LA took out a $1 billion loan this year to keep the lights on, and now Denver wants to do the same with zero economic prospects, which is a weird sales pitch.
>If you run or make strategic decisions for a tech company in 2025, you need to understand that many if not most of your competitors are working hard to figure out how to wield the federal government in their favor.
This has been true in every industry and every company for the last 100 years. It's not even illegal, unless you're out there offering quid pro quo bribes.
When the reckoning finally arrives the aristocrats will forgive themselves in the spirit of reconciliation and moving on, just like they did after WWII. Plenty of American companies like IBM made tons of money helping the Nazis and then after Berlin fell it turned out they were actually always on the side of freedom and there is absolutely no need to expand the war crimes trials to include collaborators.
This is fascism. There is no longer separation between the government and private industry as a result of the criminal and out-of-control authoritarian Trump administration.
By and large, Silicon Valley and its kingmakers are fully in support of this, many vocally so.
So in your definition that makes China fascists, considering all its big corporations are merged with the government?
I'd say it's the nature of power, politics and the existence of government. They start out small and then grow and attract corruption. You can only slow it down by having things like democracy (especially direct democracy) and separation of power.
It's pathetic how many people just shrug their shoulders at it and let it happen. The president is a corrupt clown, and people delude themselves into accepting it so they can line their pockets as well.
Let's say that I granted your point entirely. Would you object to the counter-point that massive authoritarian excess, corruption, and economic inefficiency is a natural end result of Marxist-Leninist thought?
I've never understood this line of Marxist rhetoric, isn't like every instance of communist government also a complete merging of state and corporate power? Or is that just more "not true communism"?
it really is just continually amazing that the American elite is almost entirely fine with the executive ending the rule of law and the pretence that the President isn't meant to use the powers of office purely to enrich himself and reward favoured courtiers.
why has no CEO of any, even medium sized, company come out and just said "fuck this, fuck you, fuck 33% of voters, we'll continue to try to operate like a normal country in our little corner"? I'm sure some absolutely fucking vile sociopaths will buy one share and then launch a shareholder lawsuit demanding the CEO be as pathetic as the rest of them and that Not Bribing The President is a new form of securities fraud, but you need at least one person to loudly say no to this nightmare if you want any hope of it ending.
Unfortunately the executive branch has a lot of power, and many opposed to these wild moves are fearful that openly speaking out will lead to retaliation. Witness the revocation of grant money at targeted universities, for example. Also consider how tariffs are applied and un-applied at moment’s notice.
The only way out that I see is for the executive branch to eventually overplay its hand and anger enough MAGA voters to risk losing the House and perhaps the Senate, thus opening the door for the opposition to have the numbers to block legislation and even threaten impeachment over egregious violations of the Constitution.
How many is enough? Half of Republicans stated they would still support Trump even if proven he was a child rapist on the Epstein plane. I don't think there is a bar low enough for conservatives to drop support. At some point we have to accept that they weren't just duped. They actually want these things to be happening.
I have very strong (and cynical) opinions on why people run companies do this but I was told posting it has made me unemployable so I’ll keep the spicier ones to myself.
I think a lot of it comes down to motivations. The people running these companies have very little to gain from acting ethically and a lot to lose.
> why has no CEO of any, even medium sized, company come out and just said "fuck this, fuck you, fuck 33% of voters, we'll continue to try to operate like a normal country in our little corner"
While I won't defend corruption, there are orders of magnitude of difference in the intensity and harm caused by the current US government's corruption vs the type most people have grown accustomed to. Both sidesing this is insane.
And all that aside -- in what world is the appropriate response to perceived misdeeds by a political opponent to crank the dial up to 11 on running the government as your combination personal slush fund, army, and all-encompassing bureaucratic warfare organization?
> in what world is the appropriate response to perceived misdeeds by a political opponent to crank the dial up to 11
A world in the throes of absolute war against an entirely dehumanized opponent. If the enemy is definitionally maximally evil, then absolutely any action is permissible as long as it hurts the Other.
I find it interesting (in a dismaying sense) how many people are perfectly comfortable or even in favor of government oversteps by “their” team that are aligned with outcomes they like but act shocked and indignant when the “other” team does it.
IMO, the solution is to demand constitutional and law-following behavior from both/all teams, but to be particularly careful to do that with your preferred side, as you might be prone to overlook those excesses.
Russia perfected the ethics of "you don't need to be good, you just need everyone else to be bad", Americans are just bringing the state of the art home.
This is what the system of checks-and-balances was supposed to enforce. Turns out that system is not effective if you vote the same party into power in each aspect of the government.
>the solution is to demand constitutional and law-following behavior from both/all teams
This is only a solution if you can reasonably anticipate the demands being obeyed. If instead you anticipate that they won't be obeyed (by one or both parties), then it only puts your team at a disadvantage. The other team knows this, so they tend to ignore or ridicule any such demands and to whip their team into ignoring and ridiculing those demands. At which point, your team suffers.
Cooperation strategies in an adversarial system only work in a limited set of highly unusual circumstances, and those circumstances aren't currently extant.
Yes, all political parties and organizations must be accountable to the Constitution and the law.
We also need to be honest with ourselves as a nation that Trumpism pushes far further into unconstitutional and law-disregarding behavior than what has come before. Pretending it is equivalent, as the starting comment does, is dangerous.
Bad governance does not justify more bad governance. Even if it's true that previous admins have done all this before (it's not) it wouldn't justify a thing.
I need to the left's version of starting your own memecoin and openly taking bribes from officials and foreign countries.
I also would like the left's version of pardoning people who they directly do business with.
Those legitimately parrot the "both sides" stuff are terribly naive. No one who actually pays attention to what's happening thinks these parties are remotely similar right now.
it isn't possible for you to be so poorly informed that you think "Joe Biden's son told people who his dad was so they'd let him do a business deal" is in the same scale as:
- taking direct bribes from Qatar
- the president and his family launching multiple cryptocurrency firms to do infinite fraud and money laundering
- demanding and accepting direct bribes from universities and using taxpayer money as the cudgel
- directly taking cash from randoms for pardons
> It seems the most of their policies are bitter reactions to perceived misdeeds from "the left"
"Perceived" is a very important word in that sentence. The "misdeeds" don't actually exist, they are only "perceived" as part of right wing manufactured victimhood.
> It seems the most of their policies are bitter reactions to perceived misdeeds from "the left".
lolwhat? “I don’t like what I imagined the left is doing so I’m going to turn our cities into police states?” In what world is that a reasonable justification? Might as well say it’s a bitter reaction to the tooth fairy.
This is such utter BS. And also, btw, also doesn't exist in a vacuum.
The left isn't immune to feeling bitter disgust at titans of industry that openly pay bribes and tributes and lie on camera in service of political objectives in exchange for political and economic favors.
The left does not equal the democrat party.
The right does not equate to the republican party.
My point is that there is open levels of collusion with the Biden admin (and Obama earlier) and media corps which have given the Trump admin cover to openly talk about their "favored companies"
I mean at first glance, this doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy. But ignoring my initial reaction; I don't think this is any different from lobby groups keeping tabs on what congressmen say vs do.
Just this time it's the government tracking which companies are pro-government currently.
It's not nice, but this government is transactional at best.
While I choose not to play games; it's hard not to play when the other side is the government.
This does explain all the random gifts the government is getting.
> It's not nice, but this government is transactional at best.
Is it? Will it remain so? Things sometimes are until they aren't and the difference is sometimes impossible to distinguish. Better not to give fascism the benefit of the doubt it doesn't deserve.
Lobby groups are private actors rating elected Congressional reps. This is government officials rating private actors (with an implied threat to punish those who don’t comply).
I don't think "transactional" is the right word at all. There's no durable deal you can make with the government that will stop them from demanding more. The President's open, explicitly stated position is that the American economy belongs to him, and you have no right to conduct your business in a way he doesn't like.
Im uninvolved in politics. Can someone explain to me why it's facist that the government is recording who is cooperative and who isn't? That doesn't seem malicious to me, unless you assume it will be used for punishing poorly cooperative companies. Even then, lawmakers know who cooperates and who doesn't, they don't need a spreadsheet for it. I'm willing to be enlightened of my ignorance here.
There is never any purpose for a government rating people/organizations on an axis except to act on that information in some way, and there is basically no way that the government acting on ratings of loyalty to the present leadership, is not, at a minimum, a dangerous promotion of private interest above public interest.
It is fascist, though, only in the context of other actions by the administration.
I think this is a good question that shouldn't be down-voted.
If you look at various definitions of what facism means, you may see something like: "characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition" (from M-W).
A "loyalty rating" implements both economic regimentation (the insinuation that higher scoring companies have better favor) and suppression of opposition (that companies actively avoid being seen as opposition).
So this is text-book fascist behavior.
It's not hyperbole to envision the justice department looking the other way for high-scoring companies, and actively persecuting low-scoring companies. You're right in that this is already happening (like with e.g. Harvard), but implementing a score in the open makes it shockingly easy to carry out fascist directives across the government bureaucracy.
This government already has a track record of punishing poorly cooperative companies! Look into the illegal executive orders that targeted various law firms.
> Can someone explain to me why it's facist that the government is recording who is cooperative and who isn't?
Because your experience with the government in a democracy shouldn't be dependent on whether the person in power decides you have shown sufficient fealty.
> unless you assume it will be used for punishing poorly cooperative companies.
I've found it helpful to view the current US admin through the lens of organized crime: if you pretend the prez is a mob boss, everything becomes much more congruent and coherent. The incentives align, the not-so-clear motivations make sense, and most definitely the methods.
More generally I'd say it's a power grab, like a monopoly. Even if it was all legal and above-board, the problem is this mentality of "more power for me less power for you".
Most Americans love this idea of being powerful, which is why he won the popular vote. The rapes probably even helped him in some quarters. This idea also appeals strongly to a lot of HN - Warren Buffet openly talks about the importance of getting a "moat".
It's anti-competitive. In reality a more distributed power structure is much better for overall progress, and even for the monopolist in the long run (Example: Intel, Russia).
It’s amazing that on HN this is not universally condemned. The big learning out of this administration is that the US people aren’t stewards of democracy. But rather fanatics of their “side”.
Look man, dems have tried the whole "democracy is on the ballot" thing and lost two elections to trump. They have lost to him twice! Maybe instead of campaigning on how bad the other guy is (disclaimer: i fully agree that he is bad), they could actually do things that make people want to vote for them? I say this as someone who would really like to republicans lose forever after this, but who fears that the dems won't ever win again because they won't change.
Careful, making this kind of statement publicly might hurt your loyalty rating.
HN has a whole lot of people trying to make it really big financially, for a huge variety of reasons. One of the things that excludes someone from that group is an understanding that our culture is dominated by the idea that wealth is the first, biggest, best priority.
We collectively give the wealthy extra protection, status, and influence. Basically every definition or subcategory of power.
When you do this, it creates a disgusting race to the bottom from those trying to reach the top. We are seeing the ultimate result of that: a mafia kingdom. A feudal clown show.
You will see a weirdly large amount of people supporting that here because a large number of people have conditioned morality out of their ideology. Or reduced it to a very superficial level, completely subservient to the almighty dollar. "Greed is good", "the ECONOMY", "my peers do it so it's okay". And in and on and on.
In short, many would be doing the same thing in the same position and they can't see just how amoral that is. And how it reflects the utter rot that is our culture.
I'm familiar with at least one company where the execs are downright excited about the new way of doing business. No longer do you have to carefully study laws and regulations, you just have to make sure one guy likes you! It's a nice deal if you can get it, which is why I'm so aggressive about saying that the people who are getting it need to go to prison when constitutional governance is restored.
> No longer do you have to carefully study laws and regulations, you just have to make sure one guy likes you!
American civic understanding has gone through the floor. People already think that corporate quid pro quo is the default, so for some, this is actually an improvement because it's more transparent now. It can't be that corporations achieve wins through research and coalition building because that would imply that people aren't not doing enough themselves. The irony has made lobbying stigmatized in grass-roots organizations [1], which only gives corporate lobbyists more power.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/nonprofits-lobbying-less-survey-1...
if Trevor Milton can do it, so can you.
Why? Tech has plenty of win at all costs people. Some of the most prominent people who openly don't believe in democracy are tech people.
Democratic leaders haven't been good stewards of our country so we're finding other ideas now.
Sure, but there's a difference between voting for somebody more extreme because the existing options are ineffective, and supporting people with these attributes (pettiness, hatred, fascist-y behavior, incompetence, disrespect of laws/rights/citizens, disrespect of traditional US standards for leadership, etc).
We? You aren't doing anything, you just happen to like what this guy is telling you to do more than the other guys.
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Democracy makes problems much more visible. The "other ideas" will just hide problems much better
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Maybe they haven't, but your other ideas are clearly worse.
https://archive.ph/ZTCSv
Wonder if there are any groups out there tracking a "Democracy Loyalty Rating" (i.e. the opposition)...
Just Devil's Advocate, but this being the US, the opposition doesn't necessarily support pure democratic ideals either.
It's just that the conservatives are so much further along the authoritarianism scale that the liberals appear to be freedom loving democracy activists by comparison. But I guarantee you, if you were to drop the average US Democratic party politician into Germany, Australia, or Canada, they'd be considered to be so far right of center that people would question whether or not that politician even believes in democracy.
The ratchet effect is real. American liberals have comfortably positioned themselves as the counter to authoritarianism but you'll notice that they never actually make things less authoritarian. They're thrilled to keep the direct power seized by the right, and to expand their own soft power where possible.
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> Trump works transactionally
Why can't we just call this corruption? Is there any other, more charitable, interpretation of "transactional"?
It has become so normal, nobody is even calling it corruption any more. See also: “regulatory capture”.
Transactional at best. Not sly mob-leader transactional, but toddler transactional.
Edit: to his own detriment. Why bother with "deals" when you know it can change at any moment. Just put on a golden dog and pony show for the King and hope for the best.
An article on HN yesterday calculated that he has made $2 billion on these various deals. Sounds like it's working great for him.
I suppose the charitable interpretation is that Trump favors transactions that offer short-term benefits to the country, rather than America’s traditional investments into long-term goals that tend to be more nebulous (“soft power” etc.)
Of course, one look at Trump’s actual transactions in office should dissuade of that notion. After he made the preliminary trade deal with the EU, he bragged on TV that Europeans are investing $600 billion and Trump himself gets to decide where the money goes. It’s baffling that anyone would assume that’s how any of this works, but he clearly thinks the point of these transactions is to get more power and wealth for himself.
>It’s baffling that anyone would assume that’s how any of this works.
It's because the president said it on TV.
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*Trump favors transactions that offer short-term benefits to himself (via maintaining or expanding power or money).
FTFY.
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As bad as this is it will only lead to more brigading about how billionaires like Zuckerberg were talking about being repressed under the Dems/Biden. It just seems the party condemning others regarding first amendment rights isn't that first amendment. And for others yet this is going to be only a "rating" or a list. Nothing bad is going to happen just because the list or rating exists. Right?
To them I ask to explain how many points Tim ̶A̶p̶p̶l̶e̶ Cook and Apple got for his gold bar:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/08/07/tim-...
I've been beating this drum for a while and I'm going to keep doing it. If you run or make strategic decisions for a tech company in 2025, you need to understand that many if not most of your competitors are working hard to figure out how to wield the federal government in their favor. I wouldn't advise doing it yourself, unless you'd like to go to prison for bribery alongside Tim Cook in 2029, but any assumption that the current federal government will treat you fairly without taking their side in political battles is a grave strategic error.
> I wouldn't advise doing it yourself, unless you'd like to go to prison for bribery alongside Tim Cook in 2029
That's optimistic that you think anyone is going to prison in 2029.
Well, early supporters of fascism do tend to end up in prison, because fascism needs purges. So in a monkey paw way, I wouldn't bet against the current crop of CEOs falling from graces very hard.
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It may take longer, but they will, eventually. Maybe not Tim Cook.
The companies that you could accuse of outright bribery are Meta, Twitter, Paramount, and Disney who all gave money that benefited the President directly.
Cook kissing ass and giving the President a meaningless trinket, doesn’t quite arise to that level.
This.
I mean billionaires don't even go to prison for engaging in pedophilia. Which is just about the worst crime you can commit. If anyone thinks liberals or conservatives will put them in prison for bribery, they're being a little naive.
This nation is owned by the billionaires. In all honesty, they don't even need to be in alignment with the government. There's next to nothing the government can do to rein in giant banks. If anything, the government has to be certain to make sure the banks are appeased.
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Trying to give something more power because you think it likes power is generally considered risky
https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1849951974944313590?lang...
The exception, of course, is if you expect to co-benefit - Intel sent their CEO to kiss the ring and now they might be getting free investment money out of the deal. But it's definitely a risky strategy.
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I doubt anyone will care about this in four years. Society grows accustomed to daily life, as with the Vichy. The job market will be in tatters, similar to what South Africa has now with 40% unemployment. Every time a homeless person steals copper wire from a street lamp in LA, they make $50 from illegal recyclers and it costs taxpayers $10k to fix. $20 million per year, $100 million since 2020. 2029 there will be crime drones swarming LA recording crimes and seeking overly tanned people in real time on YouTube. LA took out a $1 billion loan this year to keep the lights on, and now Denver wants to do the same with zero economic prospects, which is a weird sales pitch.
> as with the Vichy
Well, Vichy collaboraters certainly got executed afterwards
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89puration_l%C3%A9gale
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> in 2029
Nope, King of America is a lifetime position.
> "unless you'd like to go to prison for bribery alongside Tim Cook in 2029"
I don't understand how anyone could disagree with this assessment. This is the most transparent bribe ever,
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Getty... ("Donald Trump speaks behind an engraved glass disc gifted to him by Apple CEO Tim Cook during an event in the Oval Office of the White House")
>If you run or make strategic decisions for a tech company in 2025, you need to understand that many if not most of your competitors are working hard to figure out how to wield the federal government in their favor.
This has been true in every industry and every company for the last 100 years. It's not even illegal, unless you're out there offering quid pro quo bribes.
When the reckoning finally arrives the aristocrats will forgive themselves in the spirit of reconciliation and moving on, just like they did after WWII. Plenty of American companies like IBM made tons of money helping the Nazis and then after Berlin fell it turned out they were actually always on the side of freedom and there is absolutely no need to expand the war crimes trials to include collaborators.
Just one tiny step away from China’s social credit score.
This is fascism. There is no longer separation between the government and private industry as a result of the criminal and out-of-control authoritarian Trump administration.
By and large, Silicon Valley and its kingmakers are fully in support of this, many vocally so.
This is fascism. The merging of corporations and the government.
So in your definition that makes China fascists, considering all its big corporations are merged with the government?
I'd say it's the nature of power, politics and the existence of government. They start out small and then grow and attract corruption. You can only slow it down by having things like democracy (especially direct democracy) and separation of power.
Yes? I'm surprised that the idea the Chinese government is fascist is a controversial one. China is easily a totalitarian government.
It's pathetic how many people just shrug their shoulders at it and let it happen. The president is a corrupt clown, and people delude themselves into accepting it so they can line their pockets as well.
Yes—more broadly, this is totalitarianism. [0] Every CEO on this list should loudly denounce it and call it out for what it is.
[flagged]
Let's say that I granted your point entirely. Would you object to the counter-point that massive authoritarian excess, corruption, and economic inefficiency is a natural end result of Marxist-Leninist thought?
I've never understood this line of Marxist rhetoric, isn't like every instance of communist government also a complete merging of state and corporate power? Or is that just more "not true communism"?
[flagged]
Looking at this in a vacuum, sure maybe it's time to touch grass.
Looking at this in the context of everything else going on in the country, maybe there are a lot of warning signs that are pretty hard to ignore?
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I don’t like it but it’s not the first time. FDR’s National Recovery Administration crossed similar boundaries.
it really is just continually amazing that the American elite is almost entirely fine with the executive ending the rule of law and the pretence that the President isn't meant to use the powers of office purely to enrich himself and reward favoured courtiers.
why has no CEO of any, even medium sized, company come out and just said "fuck this, fuck you, fuck 33% of voters, we'll continue to try to operate like a normal country in our little corner"? I'm sure some absolutely fucking vile sociopaths will buy one share and then launch a shareholder lawsuit demanding the CEO be as pathetic as the rest of them and that Not Bribing The President is a new form of securities fraud, but you need at least one person to loudly say no to this nightmare if you want any hope of it ending.
Unfortunately the executive branch has a lot of power, and many opposed to these wild moves are fearful that openly speaking out will lead to retaliation. Witness the revocation of grant money at targeted universities, for example. Also consider how tariffs are applied and un-applied at moment’s notice.
The only way out that I see is for the executive branch to eventually overplay its hand and anger enough MAGA voters to risk losing the House and perhaps the Senate, thus opening the door for the opposition to have the numbers to block legislation and even threaten impeachment over egregious violations of the Constitution.
How many is enough? Half of Republicans stated they would still support Trump even if proven he was a child rapist on the Epstein plane. I don't think there is a bar low enough for conservatives to drop support. At some point we have to accept that they weren't just duped. They actually want these things to be happening.
I have very strong (and cynical) opinions on why people run companies do this but I was told posting it has made me unemployable so I’ll keep the spicier ones to myself.
I think a lot of it comes down to motivations. The people running these companies have very little to gain from acting ethically and a lot to lose.
> why has no CEO of any, even medium sized, company come out and just said "fuck this, fuck you, fuck 33% of voters, we'll continue to try to operate like a normal country in our little corner"
Because they’re the puppetmasters
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I do not like the Trump administration, but they don't exist in a vacuum.
It seems the most of their policies are bitter reactions to perceived misdeeds from "the left".
Corruption definitely crosses the aisle.
While I won't defend corruption, there are orders of magnitude of difference in the intensity and harm caused by the current US government's corruption vs the type most people have grown accustomed to. Both sidesing this is insane.
And all that aside -- in what world is the appropriate response to perceived misdeeds by a political opponent to crank the dial up to 11 on running the government as your combination personal slush fund, army, and all-encompassing bureaucratic warfare organization?
> in what world is the appropriate response to perceived misdeeds by a political opponent to crank the dial up to 11
A world in the throes of absolute war against an entirely dehumanized opponent. If the enemy is definitionally maximally evil, then absolutely any action is permissible as long as it hurts the Other.
I find it interesting (in a dismaying sense) how many people are perfectly comfortable or even in favor of government oversteps by “their” team that are aligned with outcomes they like but act shocked and indignant when the “other” team does it.
IMO, the solution is to demand constitutional and law-following behavior from both/all teams, but to be particularly careful to do that with your preferred side, as you might be prone to overlook those excesses.
Russia perfected the ethics of "you don't need to be good, you just need everyone else to be bad", Americans are just bringing the state of the art home.
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This is what the system of checks-and-balances was supposed to enforce. Turns out that system is not effective if you vote the same party into power in each aspect of the government.
>the solution is to demand constitutional and law-following behavior from both/all teams
This is only a solution if you can reasonably anticipate the demands being obeyed. If instead you anticipate that they won't be obeyed (by one or both parties), then it only puts your team at a disadvantage. The other team knows this, so they tend to ignore or ridicule any such demands and to whip their team into ignoring and ridiculing those demands. At which point, your team suffers.
Cooperation strategies in an adversarial system only work in a limited set of highly unusual circumstances, and those circumstances aren't currently extant.
Yes, all political parties and organizations must be accountable to the Constitution and the law.
We also need to be honest with ourselves as a nation that Trumpism pushes far further into unconstitutional and law-disregarding behavior than what has come before. Pretending it is equivalent, as the starting comment does, is dangerous.
Bad governance does not justify more bad governance. Even if it's true that previous admins have done all this before (it's not) it wouldn't justify a thing.
Here's the hilarious part: When you say "previous admins" you're almost certainly talking about previous Republican admins.
https://gigafact.org/fact-briefs/have-there-been-significant...
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It's an explanation, not a justification.
You're letting past gov'ts away with a lot apparently but overall i agree.
The Overton window shifted too far and now an egomaniac is in charge of its reset.
Such is dialectics, but if you are going to apply relativism to comparatively very different movements you are in for a really bad time.
I need to the left's version of starting your own memecoin and openly taking bribes from officials and foreign countries.
I also would like the left's version of pardoning people who they directly do business with.
Those legitimately parrot the "both sides" stuff are terribly naive. No one who actually pays attention to what's happening thinks these parties are remotely similar right now.
> Corruption definitely crosses the aisle.
it isn't possible for you to be so poorly informed that you think "Joe Biden's son told people who his dad was so they'd let him do a business deal" is in the same scale as:
- taking direct bribes from Qatar - the president and his family launching multiple cryptocurrency firms to do infinite fraud and money laundering - demanding and accepting direct bribes from universities and using taxpayer money as the cudgel - directly taking cash from randoms for pardons
etc etc etc
100% of these assertions are lies. Bravo.
> It seems the most of their policies are bitter reactions to perceived misdeeds from "the left"
"Perceived" is a very important word in that sentence. The "misdeeds" don't actually exist, they are only "perceived" as part of right wing manufactured victimhood.
> It seems the most of their policies are bitter reactions to perceived misdeeds from "the left".
lolwhat? “I don’t like what I imagined the left is doing so I’m going to turn our cities into police states?” In what world is that a reasonable justification? Might as well say it’s a bitter reaction to the tooth fairy.
It's an explanation not a justification.
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This is such utter BS. And also, btw, also doesn't exist in a vacuum.
The left isn't immune to feeling bitter disgust at titans of industry that openly pay bribes and tributes and lie on camera in service of political objectives in exchange for political and economic favors.
The left does not equal the democrat party. The right does not equate to the republican party.
My point is that there is open levels of collusion with the Biden admin (and Obama earlier) and media corps which have given the Trump admin cover to openly talk about their "favored companies"
Relax guy, politicians are not your friends.
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I mean at first glance, this doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy. But ignoring my initial reaction; I don't think this is any different from lobby groups keeping tabs on what congressmen say vs do.
Just this time it's the government tracking which companies are pro-government currently.
It's not nice, but this government is transactional at best.
While I choose not to play games; it's hard not to play when the other side is the government.
This does explain all the random gifts the government is getting.
>I don't think this is any different from lobby groups
for starter, lobby groups cannot issue executive orders just start and stop tariffs and government grant willy nilly
> It's not nice, but this government is transactional at best.
Is it? Will it remain so? Things sometimes are until they aren't and the difference is sometimes impossible to distinguish. Better not to give fascism the benefit of the doubt it doesn't deserve.
Lobby groups are private actors rating elected Congressional reps. This is government officials rating private actors (with an implied threat to punish those who don’t comply).
I don't think "transactional" is the right word at all. There's no durable deal you can make with the government that will stop them from demanding more. The President's open, explicitly stated position is that the American economy belongs to him, and you have no right to conduct your business in a way he doesn't like.
You can't appease bullies. They always come back for your lunch money again on some future day. Any promises they make are worthless.
Im uninvolved in politics. Can someone explain to me why it's facist that the government is recording who is cooperative and who isn't? That doesn't seem malicious to me, unless you assume it will be used for punishing poorly cooperative companies. Even then, lawmakers know who cooperates and who doesn't, they don't need a spreadsheet for it. I'm willing to be enlightened of my ignorance here.
There is never any purpose for a government rating people/organizations on an axis except to act on that information in some way, and there is basically no way that the government acting on ratings of loyalty to the present leadership, is not, at a minimum, a dangerous promotion of private interest above public interest.
It is fascist, though, only in the context of other actions by the administration.
I think this is a good question that shouldn't be down-voted.
If you look at various definitions of what facism means, you may see something like: "characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition" (from M-W).
A "loyalty rating" implements both economic regimentation (the insinuation that higher scoring companies have better favor) and suppression of opposition (that companies actively avoid being seen as opposition).
So this is text-book fascist behavior.
It's not hyperbole to envision the justice department looking the other way for high-scoring companies, and actively persecuting low-scoring companies. You're right in that this is already happening (like with e.g. Harvard), but implementing a score in the open makes it shockingly easy to carry out fascist directives across the government bureaucracy.
The administration's vindictiveness and obsession with loyalty is extreme (for the US).
This government already has a track record of punishing poorly cooperative companies! Look into the illegal executive orders that targeted various law firms.
John Adams: "I see a new nation ready to take its place in the world; not an empire, but a republic; and a republic of laws, not men."
> Can someone explain to me why it's facist that the government is recording who is cooperative and who isn't?
Because your experience with the government in a democracy shouldn't be dependent on whether the person in power decides you have shown sufficient fealty.
> unless you assume it will be used for punishing poorly cooperative companies.
Like they have so far?
> unless you assume it will be used for punishing poorly cooperative companies.
You don't have to assume that. The US government has already made that policy quite clear.
Does this also apply to Tesla with the previous administration, or is this new dynamic?
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