Comment by lukan

Idiocracy was a documentary sent to us from the future.

Isn't this the type of attitude that is giving cover to the types of actions the OP mentions, i.e. throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

It’s not the intellectuals who are pushing standards down. High standards inherently reject people, that’s inherent to the concept. The push for ever higher percentage of the population to get degrees means the average student keeps getting worse, as fewer of them are really seeking to be educated vs get a piece of paper. Public schools are pushed to raise graduation rates due to political pressure and higher education is ultimately a business and then responds to those forces.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Educatio...

That's a completely non-sensical take.

Ah, Schrödingers Immigrant. Stealing all the jobs while leeching off the hard working nationals.

Because they likely have no family there and on nights and weekends there is less trouble and noise, so better conditions to get into an uninterrupted flow state to get things done?

Is that really something in need of explaining on a hacker site?

(Or were you ironic? I cannot tell anymore)

The issue is that when people start abusing words like "fascism" out of context they make those words lose meaning.

The US is definitely undergoing authoritarian tendencies, but it remains structurally constrained by separation of powers, federalism, and independent courts and media, features that fascist regimes systematically dismantle.

If you start calling everything fascism you are essentially helping those you call fascists because they can easily refute your thesis and gaslight you on the very realities of the authoritarian descent the country is going through.

> It's a perfect word to describe what's happening

I don't think it really fits, but the US is sliding towards illiberal democracy.

> You just don’t like anything else than your ideas, because you don’t like us. Sorry to be born.

Why do you think political ideology is an inborn trait? People don't like you because you actively choose to vote for things that bring about pain and suffering. Not because of your innate attributes.

You'll notice that The same dude was in charge in 2016 as 2026. The people warning about fascism were the ones who know what happens to the rhetoric and policies of 2016 when not countered.

Your usage of "Your side" is telling. It seems like this is a team sport for you and you've picked a side. Unfortunately you might have sided with fascists.

"Your side"

Yeah the other side doesn’t over use socialism or communism or terrorist. And conservatives haven’t been refusing to make concessions in Congress and the Senate for decades.

Isn't this a delightful Catch-22.

If you forewarn about a developing Fascist movement, you're simply taking away the meaning from the word until it's too late and the Fascists take power.

You cannot call anything Fascist, for there may be something more Fascist that may need the power of the word.

But ah! We couldn't call out their fledgling movement full of dog whistles and double speak so no one was aware enough to stop them as a fledgling movement!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45349597

Ah, yes, let's concede just a bit of fascism, not a lot.

No man, that's called an oligarchy.

Sounds like you're not a fan of socialism.

How's it working out for you, spending a third of your income on rent but not actually having any rights to stay in the property you rent, and a further third on "health insurance" that'll take your money and run, leaving you to choose between a lifetime of debt or just plain dying if you ever get ill?

> Government interference in people's lives is socialism.

No, that's called 'governance'. Literally the whole job of government is interfering in people's lives.

There are generous ways to interpret a critique of "redditification".

1. An increase in comments that aim to gather social approval as opposed to advancing a conversation or sharing knowledge -- often including meta commentary on threads e.g., "reddit moment".

2. Topics start to become more general and lose the tech/startup scene focus of the site.

These are legitimate. Reddit threads are stereotypically full of noise and HN should avoid that.

However there's a third form of the critique that I think should be avoided.

3. Too many comments seem to reflect values and worldviews rooted in [socially] liberal ideals.

Because of this, it's probably useful to give some context for what in particular constitutes "redditifcation". That way dang and any other mods can try to address it with particular policy decisions.

> The irony is that almost every single one of the countries these foreigners come from would do exactly the same thing were the shoe on the other foot.

I'm having a hard imagining Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, or Italy, to name a few countries of the countries from which scientists have come to work on NIST projects putting these kind of restrictions on American scientists coming to work on non-classified research at their labs.

Imagine using this logic in the 1930s when scientists from Germany, Hungary, and Italy were flocking to the US.

Did the advances they helped spur actually maximize opportunities for native born people in the long run?

Would we be better off if we had blocked them from researching in the US?

you present a lot of conviction yet there is not a single source for your opinion that was presented.

"It’s fair to Americans and that’s what counts."

Well, let's talk in some years how this worked out for you. If you don't want to anymore, we in europe are mostly happy to welcome smart talents.

> I think the world got used to us being patsies where we spend our money on R&D paying foreigners

I can tell you're not in the business of training / employing people.

The best ROI is getting someone who is already trained (read you didn't pay for their K-12, their parents' teaching/maternity/healthcare) and just deriving value from their labor.

Quite the opposite. The US got the best of other countries, those countries paid for their education but the US got the benefits. The braun drain was to the US

Nazi scientists were brought in _after_ WWII, not during it.

I think that's quite far away. At least 12 months.

Yes? I don't know why these can't all be true and can't all be a bad thing. Anyways, the US used to not be like this. So it's noteworthy.