This is just nuts. Stuff like this is what made the US a leader. I bet next is to turn off GPS outside the US because no money. That's how you lose world leadership.
To the populist right, everything is zero-sum, all effects are first order, all effects are immediate, and all effects only impact the parties to a transaction.
Soft power doesn't exist. Iterated games don't exist. Long-term consequences don't exist. Externalities don't exist. Positive sum utility gains don't exist. Systemic effects don't exist. It's all too abstract and cognitively difficult, it's the business of the arrogant intelligentsia.
The problem for them is that reality isn't going to adjust to fit their worldview. The decline will eventually reach people's purchasing power. The laws of reality will catch up to them.
Basically they are mostly below average intelligence. The ability to think about second, third, N order effects is a sign of intelligence which is clearly lacking here. Those in power are leveraging that lack of intelligence in the populist right to execute their larger plan of dismantling the government for the benefit of the super rich.
You put this really well. It's been incredibly frustrating to try to understand the mentality of these people, but that's just the problem—there is barely any "mentality" at all, it's easier understood by what they don't consider or understand.
I just realised that per their own stories we’ve got a government headed by folks with extreme daddy issues. I’m not turning this into a Vox article. But perhaps there is overlap between leaders who can’t empathise and whose who admit to having had a trash upbringing.
Yeah folks tend to make fun of it, but from my experience missing or simply broken dysfunctional father figure a massive thing for both women and men that they will struggle to cope with (and mostly fail) during their whole lives.
Well, good thing nobody in a position of power and influence is having 14 kids with different women and neglecting all of them with no backlash whatsoever then.
Most have the same zero-sum first-order attitude to free speech, and couldn't see what's happening now was always going to be net worse for free speech than any controls that could have been put in place to reduce the chance of getting to this point.
MAGA can escape the "laws of reality" as long as Trump's charisma can can paper over the gap between what is promised and lived reality. There will always be another scapegoat, another enemy preventing MAGA from reaching its societal Utopia which is just over the horizon.
Trump and his administration are already explaining the economic downturn that the start of his administration caused to actually be a good thing for America. And MAGA is fully onboard with the idea that an economic recession/depression is necessary to clean out all of the alleged fraud, waste, and abuse in the system. And only afterwards can a stronger American economy be built.
I don't know about that, conservatives (well, free marketeers anyway) favour second-order effects in economics, and win-win and all that stuff when it comes to free markets. The trouble is that the populist right is now moving away from free markets.
(It's almost a return to the old setup, back in the days of the Corn Laws etc - free markets used to be a left-wing position while the right was into mercantilism / protectionism)
In general, the principles of democracy are that the people of the nation can steer the nation towards a better place. To do so, people need access to information, need access to information on what the state of their nation and the state of the world is.
These acts that teardown the information that the US makes available, that help us shape our decision making & view of the world, are deeply horrifically un-democratic. To march us from a nation that advocates sunlight & democracy, back into the dark is horror.
>> In general, the principles of democracy are that the people of the nation can steer the nation
Yes.
>> towards a better place.
Weeelll, where the population steer it to isn't really determined by any principles. Rather it goes wherever the population steers it to.
Sometimes the population gets it wrong, and with open eyes pick an option that takes them to a worse place.
Yes, information helps (hence campaigning) but that information has always been gate-kept. That was seen as a flaw.
Turns out though information is like water; you need enough, but too much and you drown.
Anti-vaxers don't exist because of a lack of information. People who voted for tarrifs don't have restricted information. People have shown over and over a willingness to vote against their own best interest, as long as you provide someone else to blame.
> Turns out though information is like water; you need enough, but too much and you drown.
How do we slow down or control the flow of information ? Genuine question. I'm just asking to see if there are any studies or proposals that already exist out there.
I've heard people talk about education. But this seems to be part of a long term solution. How can we solve this problem now so that in the next election (next 2 or 4 years) people will not vote against their own best interests ?
Convincing people to quit social medias or stopping listening to TV pundits ? So far that hasn't worked. Facebook/Tiktok just keeps growing.
>> How do we slow down or control the flow of information ?
There's no way that genie goes back into the bottle. And even if you could that's not the issue, people believe whatever they want to believe.
Ultimately education is a good start but if anything US education (which of course is very democratic) is getting worse not better. Book banning and burning spring to mind.
The real root of the issue is individualism over collective good. That's pretty baked into the American psyche (not to mention baked into the constitution) so no amount of education will change that.
For example it's obvious that fewer guns would reduce violence- that's been shown to be true many times over. But the individual's right to bear arms is baked in and not going away.
Of course this isn't necessarily a bad thing. The US acts as a counterbalance to other systems and other ways of life. It fights for women's rights in the middle east and Afghanistan. It traditionally stood up for the little guy against the neighborhood bully (think Kuwait and Iraq).
The pendulum will swing, but just as the USSR exited the world stage, the USA is now doing the same. All empires rise and fall. The gaps left by USaid will be filled by others. China is already buying influence in Africa and Asia.
As it stand today, like as of right now, it's actually possible China is providing Urkaine with more assistance than the USA because they're not going harder on stopping them from buying drones and drone parts.
>> How do we slow down or control the flow of information ?
It’s not a completely new problem. Voltaire wrote about this in Candide in the 1750s. I’m sure there are other (earlier or contemporary) examples that I don’t know, but Candide is the one obvious (partial) commentary on the “flood of information” phenomenon that always comes to my mind. Voltaire’s conclusion was to just ignore it. Worry about your own life. Live on a farm and work a physically exhausting job every day then spend your nights with your family and loved ones that you have no time for all the frivolous noise of news and world events that don’t affect you. When there is an actual signal among the noise, it’ll reach you and you should use your educated/good instinct that you have cultivated from the prior years when you were young and absorbing knowledge and information, and vote accordingly.
Obviously this is my interpretation of the work. Also obviously Voltaire was a very vocal opponent of voting and the will of the masses to enact real political and societal change through education and general shift in social beliefs and attitudes. He was also an advocate for acceptance of others and in Candide he had the wise old man who gives the final philosophical point in the book be a Turkish Muslim man in opposition to everything Christian French people believed in the 1700s. He was also a massive racist against black Africans and didn’t even consider them humans. Soooo your mileage may vary.
The growing concern people have is that you will not be able to vote.
Many people work hard in Russia and spend nights with their families, it didn't stop them from getting shipped off to die in Ukraine or any other god forsaken Russian made hellscape.
In a way, the life Voltaire is describing is kind of, luxurious ?
This is exactly the perfect example of noise. The left in the US worrying about their “right to vote” in 2025 is perfect example of leftist news noise. It’s the exact equivalent of the right news noise of stolen elections. Every. Single. Article. about people losing their right to vote in the US ends up being an absolute strawman non-story that gets pushed to the top of Reddit and leftist facebook groups and twitter accounts and all the other left leaning social media outlets for a week before fading into the noise hole where it belongs. The story got millions of clicks, so it’s worth it.
The guy running basically 'information' for tens of millions of voters is basically curating their information and seems to be able to fire almost anyone at will, and you, for whatever high reason think a fair election is just by default on the cards?
They exist because of justified lack of trust
, and by people taking advantage advantage of that lack of trust.for their own benefit.
(Mis)Information is just the tool.
Being the world leader in everything was whatade the US great, these sort of data networks was part of what made it great.
What made it less great is the decimation of all industry except for PR,finance,services and software. Plus the fact corporates were allowed to buy politicians.
This caused all the wealth to be super concentrated.
The losers were gaslighted and completely lost trust in the system.
Now the vultures come to finish the job. Blaming transgenders and immigrants for all the problems.
> Weeelll, where the population steer it to isn't really determined by any principles. Rather it goes wherever the population steers it to.
Trivially true.
> Sometimes the population gets it wrong, and with open eyes pick an option that takes them to a worse place.
I think any truly governing body steers the ship in more or less the direction they collectively want. I’m anti-elitist but/and I believe that the elites manage to serve their own interests successfully.
You have to ask yourself if you really live in a democracy. Or if the demos is just another scapegoat when things to “bad”. But don’t worry though. These questionable anti-democratic lines of reasoning tend to fall into a contradiction sooner or later.
> Yes, information helps (hence campaigning) but that information has always been gate-kept. That was seen as a flaw.
Aaaannnnd you’re already there. A democracy where the information is gate-kept?By whom? It can’t be the population. Clearly there is some entity above the people. Then how the hell is that a democracy?
> Turns out though information is like water; you need enough, but too much and you drown.
> Anti-vaxers don't exist because of a lack of information. People who voted for tarrifs don't have restricted information. People have shown over and over a willingness to vote against their own best interest
Pray tell who controls either the gatekept information or the overwhelming firehose of information? The People!?
The people are so thoroughly manipulated, you lament. Well what kind of a farce of a “democracy” is one where the rich control the Media, the rich control the politicians through donations, and the rich control who even is realistically (within 99% chance) able to be voted for President of the US?
The latter boils down to two people. Two people chosen by the elites. And you have the gall to blame “democracy” for pushing the Clown Button?
> , as long as you provide someone else to blame.
The anti-democrats are always there to blame the demos. Thank you for your service.
> These acts that teardown the information that the US makes available, that help us shape our decision making & view of the world, are deeply horrifically un-democratic.
Keep in mind you’re talking about air quality sensors. Just air quality sensors. In cities with multiple air quality sensors.
This is downvoted but for those outside the US it's actually true. Or more specifically once the new admin began acting erratically.
For instance, in Canada he has repudiated a trade agreement he himself negotiated in his first term and threatened repeatedly to annex us.
Americans who treat foreigners as abstractions shrug off that sort of thing and assume you can go back to normal but reliability is shot and trust is broken.
In term one the remaining vestiges of Republican and state apparatus ensured continuity on many fronts. That's all gone.
The sense I got is that it could be overlooked as an anomaly. The second time he was elected, and the actions he has taken since, have absolutely ended all that. The Allies are truly incensed, the US's reputation won't recover for decades.
Exactly that. Not only he got re-elected, during his first term he did bad things but what he did now while not even 2 months in office seems way worse. Also it's clearly visible that the checks and balances are now severely broken, you have an administration not even abiding its own countries laws in very fundamental areas, that does not spark trust. Heck he even discredits and breaks trade deals signed by himself, who can trust such a country?
It was easy to justify sitting out Trump I as a (former) US allied, Trump II demands immediate action.
It’s a loss of trust. We were in the process of getting better relations with Russia, but then when Putin goes and invades Ukraine you can sort of rationalize it. Communist gonna communist right?
All the actions potato head has taken are a deliberate slap in the face of all their allies. Maybe something we’d expect from potato head, but not from the United States. Even given he was elected we’d expect the rest if your political system to stop a single man from burning down all bridges. Clearly that was an incorrect assumption.
What does the KGB have to do with communism? A lot of countries have had draconian secret police and spy agencies, regardless of whether those countries were communist or not.
Congratulations, now can you respond to the contents of the message, instead of jumping on technicalities?
How is whether he is actually a communist relevant to the substance of what I wrote?
The point is that he wasn’t exactly trustworthy to begin with, and an erstwhile enemy. You don’t feel betrayed when your enemy does what you expected him to.
He's an autocrat acting on delusions of empire building. That is the root of Russia invading Ukraine. All the other excuses are ancillary or nonsense (Nazis etc)
Nah its much much worse now. Personal, humiliating, watching literal elephant in porcelain shop fucking up everything and everybody in all directions (apart from russians and israelis, I guess like-minded leaders).
He got way more senile, but in his case its not movement to incoherent bumbling but more hatred, pettiness, little napoleon complex etc.
Highly likely that Trump's bumbling of COVID resulted in Biden's election.
In NYC there were refrigerated tractor trailers parked outside of hospitals for the overflow dead.
I'm sure it was just as bad in other parts of the country during those months.
Curious how quickly people forget, and I'm sure we'll have to relearn these lessons yet again.
> Curious how quickly people forget, and I'm sure we'll have to relearn these lessons yet again.
I think some of this forgetting was attributable to the Biden administration's decision to suddenly start acting like COVID didn't exist. It's pretty hard to remind people of metrics from the past when you're also simultaneously trying to avoid talking about those same metrics in the present.
The elites of the country that are now in power don't care about world leadership, much less the soft power that we had that made us all very rich, that made a plumber in the US make $7k a month while in much of Europe that plumber would only make $3k a month.
They care about enriching themselves as much as possible. It's all short-term gain, without any view for the future. Get those tax cuts, reallocate money away from the government and away from those who work for a living and make a true oligarch class.
If events continue down this route, the US is looking at a lost decade or even permanent loss of leadership, letting China catch up and then step up, or maybe India.
>> that made a plumber in the US make $7k a month while in much of Europe that plumber would only make $3k a month.
I'm not trying to derail the thread, but framing your point as "magnitude of salary" is meaningless and perhaps reflects one of the issues.
It's not the size of the salary that's important- it's the quality of life. Salary is one factor in the equation, but it's not the only factor.
For example, in the US the plumber pays for health care. In Europe he mostly does not.
There are a million things that go into a very subjective quality of live assessment. Salary is part of it, yes, but ultimately only a part.
And, if we're being honest, the US certainly acts the part of leader, it talks a good game, and everyone is happy to take their money. But is anyone actually following their lead?
With huge respect, I’m an European SWE making a little more than 3k net (which means that what’s left after all taxes).
I own a nice house in a countryside village that I bought recently (so at the current market price), 10 min walking distance from the train station. I can afford premium quality food, I have enough money (and time !) to go on vacation 4 to 5 weeks per year (not just holidays but going abroad as a tourist). I own two cars. I’ll have a retirement.
Life hasn’t been cool on me on the last decade : I had to go under a 100+k surgery, I now take a treatment of about 150€/month. My grandmother had a stroke and is now living hospitalized under my dad’s roof. I did a burnout and stayed 1 year at home
to recover. And you know what ? Everything of this had barely any impact on our finances. Everything health related : 0 impact.
Now everything is fine, my health is better, I still have strong savings, still own my house, my grandmother is greatly taken care of…
I would never exchange that for the extra 4k I could lose at any moment without notice because life.
Interesting because income and ___location wise I am in the same boat but there is no way in hell I will ever own a house. So my assumption is you likely have a partner with equal income which triples your free spendable income.
To be fully transparent, I do have a partner but she doesn’t earn as much as me, she earns less than 2k€/month.
You are right to make the point that I couldn’t afford this lifestyle if I were alone without a family. Though I’d have very few interest in owning a 120m2 family house in this case, I’d probably live in a way cheaper apartment. I think being alone in the French countryside would be pretty boring, unless you are lucky enough to be near your friends and family.
Also, my point was absolutely not to compare European vs American lifestyle, saying which is better or going into the details, I just wanted to stress that comparing comfort of life by comparing revenue is not possible. It’s way more complex than "European earns less but don’t have to pay for healthcare".
Quality of life is something that many people evaluate along very very different metrics at different weights. But losing that $7k and bringing it down to $3k does not look like it will be accompanied by plumbers no longer paying for healthcare out of pocket.
One measure of the lead of the US is how it is a destination for those looking to create great science, a great startup, build a business, or otherwise build a long-lasting contributor to our institutions. Europe, Japan, other places certainly rank highly here too, but the US is by far the biggest player and attracts the most people as far as I can tell.
Science is pretty global. The cutting edge of fusion is in France, CERN is in Switzerland, the SKA is in South Africa, and so on.
On the other hand, VC money for nothing more than a good pitch is certainly easier in the US. Although even there it's limited to very small (very expensive) parts of the US.
One measure of QOL is indeed immigration. The US and Europe both struggle with illegal immigration. The US likely attracts more legal immigration, but to be fair even that is mostly from non-European places.
It's not like there's an army of European plumbers desperately trying to get into the US.
The weather is better in Europe (but both are waaaay worse than Australia. )
And yes QOL is very subjective. Which speaks to my point, simply plucking a single metric like salary out the air is meaningless- even within the US that 7k will mean different things depending on where you live.
> For example, in the US the plumber pays for health care. In Europe he mostly does not.
More like in the US he pays for private health insurance (and/or he is covered by Medicare/Medicaid). In Europe he pays for public health system, something like 5% of his earnings, and he may choose to buy private health insurance on top of that (as many do) because the public health system is in shambles.
The point being that the health amount is already removed from the net salary. So when comparing net salaries it's important to understand what has already been paid for.
Yes, some people top up with private health. That is a discretionary spend. And while areas in Europe may vary, public health services are typically good.
It was mostly used to slow down development and industrialisation of nations. Probably by guilt tripping developing world with the idea that the developing world would need to get western loans and green technology from the west.
That whole process is just a dirty process at least it still was during the 20th century. In 2020s there are other that came or are coming online with the Chinese and Russians willing to build nuclear power plants in the developing world and off course renewable energy is becoming cheaper every year thanks to Chinese industrial and research capabilities.
It might be that China is the last country to go through an extremely dirty development cycle.
> They’ll just fire the team responsible for maintaining the birds and then act surprised when they degrade.
AFAIK, the GPS system needs constant corrections, uploaded periodically from its ground base stations. Without these corrections, it will degrade very quickly (the satellites would still work fine, but their position estimate would no longer be good enough).
I think GPS is a very good point. I wonder if the capability to disable it exists, and I don't know what effects that will have - i assume many new devices can now use European's Galileo system.
(while writing this I can see GPS had 'selective availability' mode, but US claimed it is not possible with new satellites)
The essential question isn't whether selective availability could be reinstated (software can change, so the answer is yes, period, end of story) but rather whether there's any situation where it wouldn't also cripple a substantial portion of the US Government. How many GPS receivers even have support for military decryption these days, let alone contain keys which are ready to work in a crisis?
The US is a world hegemon. That’s a well-defined concept. I don’t know what being a leader means in this context.
It seems that it is just what the US and its cronies claim to be. Which works on any topic:
1. If it does something “good”: self-evident
2. If it does something “bad” or fails to do something good: just say that it is failing to be a “leader” like it obviously has been since sometime (post-WWII maybe). Yeah, even negative evidence can perpetuate the same narrative. Just wistfully look at the mythic past without questioning the premise.
Well, it's a good thing that the US stop acting like the world leader/police in everything. The US is just a country among many and it is about time it starts acting like that. And it's about time the "Western world" stops relying on the US for basic stuff like national defense.
More to the topic: why the hell are the US embassies reporting other countries' cities air quality? While it's a "nice" thing to do, it would be even nicer if those countries monitored that themselves. The fact that we think we need the US to do it because other countries tend to be dishonest about it is incredibly depressing.
> More to the topic: why the hell are the US embassies reporting other countries' cities air quality? While it's a "nice" thing to do, it would be even nicer if those countries monitored that themselves. The fact that we think we need the US to do it because other countries tend to be dishonest about it is incredibly depressing.
You answered your own question, but there are also other reasons; see the first post.
The US can still be a leader, I think. I'm curious as to if this is the time for a YC-funded startup to take the reins for a lot of the programs and policies being cut. As geohot showed unequivocally yesterday, who else is better to lead than the technical minds of the 21st century!
What sort of startup could ever replace the services that are being performed? The point of a startup is increase value massively by building revenue. The services that are being cut are meant to be public infrastructure upon which everybody else builds their startup, that enables all the innovation that makes the US a leader.
You can’t replace infrastructure with the private sector because infrastructure doesn’t generate any money. Instead, it works like a velocity multiplier that helps others generate money.
Infrastructure is also dependent on centralization. As opposed to some industries, the free market actually makes infrastructure less efficient.
Imagine there are 1000 companies developing roads and they all use different signage. All use different licenses. Would that work? Could you live your life? Probably not, and if you did, it would be absurdly expensive.
Some things MUST be a centralized public service. Pretty much all countries, independent of each other, figured this out 150 years ago. But here we are, still arguing the point.
I don't know if I agree, but I'm not as smart as PG or Garry Tan to evaluate what incoming infrastructure startups could make the cut for YC funding. Put it this way, if we as a tech community can band together and create protocols for various bits of infrastructure, then each startup is free to build upon that protocol so we can standardize what we need. That way we get the benefits of the free market while also gaining efficiency in government. Eventually I envision a world where the best implementation wins, but others are still free to compete. If I wanted to create a startup if I had better ideas for road protocols or standards, then I am blocked by government. It's effectively a non-starter, and a gap in the ability for the US to innovate.
They could do that, but it’s in direct contradiction to the free market. When you implement protocols, what you’re doing is enacting a non-compete agreement on those specifications. It’s a collusion of sorts, it’s just one we allow because everyone knows it’s good.
But inevitably, someone comes around and creates something better and new. And it is actually better. Because the problem with standards is they age. They’re fundamentally compromises. They have flaws by their nature.
You even mention innovation. Those are two contradictory ideas. Centralization and standardization are anti-innovation, because they favor status-quo. They tend towards longevity, maintenance, and incremental improvement.
Building the Internet on top of voice lines was certainly a shitty solution. It was slow. But it also allowed existing citizens to access the Internet. I think this perfectly exemplifies the trade-off.
We, of course, can build new infrastructure. But when we do, we do it deliberately, centrally, and slowly. And we’re very careful to leave no gaps. The old and new must exist together, at least for a couple decades.
