Money may influence certain blocks of voters more than others, and the parties may spend it differently. That still doesn't mean it's an unalloyed good that we pour so much money into it when it could be used on more productive efforts.
I don’t think many in either party are worried about small donations. But the concern from Dems is usually the unlimited donations as one billionaire could match the financial influence of millions of non-billionaires.
I don't doubt it. Even to an outsider there is a obvious economic divide between blue and red states and I am sure both parties exploit that to some extent.
Judging from what I have seen of the foreign reach of "US" politics I am certain there is a lot of dark money and influence going around beyond any official numbers. I have doubts if those sorts of operations have any influence on the swing voters that were required for a victory. It seems more likely their needs were simply ignored.
>there is a lot of dark money and influence going around
I personally suspect, but can't really know, that this is what explains the dysfunctional state of US politics. It is simply too big a target for corruption for it to ever be able to operate effectively. You can see that many US states seem to have much more effective governance than the Feds despite having nominally the same two major parties. I also think this explains why Australia is better run than the USA, and why New Zealand and Norway are better run than Australia.
I wonder if there is even that much dark money is circulating beyond official numbers. Why would they bother, given that they have the legal loophole of PACs, Super PACs, and 501(c) groups.
It already seems so easy to throw money at a candidate if you wanted to, without even needing to do it behind closed doors.
You can also walk there. The best beaches in my areas are the ones that need a 20+ minute walk through a forest to reach. Even though every locals know about them, they aren't as crowed as more accessible beaches.
> Just to be clear, you're saying that Shotwell has contributed more to SpaceX than Elon?
Which contribution do you believe that Elon Musk had on the development of reusable rockets?
Let's put it this way: if you kicked Musk out of SpaceX and replaced it with absolutely any random guy as CEO, do you believe reusable rockets would never see the light of day?
> if you kicked Musk out of SpaceX and replaced it with absolutely any random guy as CEO, do you believe reusable rockets would never see the light of day?
Would we have reusable rockets in the same timeline as SpaceX, absolutely not. The proof is all the other rocket companies that have failed to do so, including government entities.
So yah obviously if Musk never founded SpaceX, we would not have reusable rockets right now.
> if you kicked Musk out of SpaceX and replaced it with absolutely any random guy as CEO, do you believe reusable rockets would never see the light of day?
> do you believe reusable rockets would never see the light of day?
Correct.
You don't need a hypothetical, it's not like SpaceX is the first rocket making entity in the world. Why were all the other darlings incapable? SpaceX didn't invent a new branch of rocketry after all. And they hired from the pool of engineers who could have and did work at all the other rocket companies.
How did this same pool of scientists and engineers end up with a viable reusable rocket with 300+ successful landings only when they came together at SpaceX?
There are many reasonable points of criticism one can make for Musk. 99% of Musk-hate I see on HN isn't among them though. It's more reminiscent of the kind of nonsense articles Tesla short sellers used to publish back in 2016-17.
I'm not educated enough in journalism to distinguish high quality from low quality, but as a listener/reader, some of NPR feels like good, original journalism (my ears perk up whenever I hear Eleanor Beardsley, for example); other content feels like it is just parroting the NY Times (which itself is a weird mixture of thought-provoking articles and clickbait headlines).
I guess you missed the op-ed written by a senior NPR editor recently. He admitted that NPR suppressed stories because they might help Trump and pursued poorly sourced (and ultimately false) stories because they would hurt Trump.
What more could NPR say about those slap fights (Hunter Biden, COVID-19) that wasn't already beaten to death by the credulous corporate media? Is every news outlet required to be subsumed by the right-wing noise machine's narrative?
Uri turning to Bari to air his grievances is pretty much all any one needs to know about his POV.
"But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming."
That's no slap fight, those were serious allegations and the fact that they were false is equally important.
NPR happily participated in spreading those left wing falsehoods, but was unwilling to spread the truth with equal vigor.
I agree it's a shame that Uri had to turn outside NPR to discuss this. But you know as well as I do that NPR would not have published this.
And while COVID-19 was certainly a controversial topic, it was no "slap fight" either. It was the most important issue in the nation for two years or more.
You're dismissing important issues as "slap fights" and dismissing serious discussion because you suspect someone has a different point of view. Does that tell us all we need to know about you?
What could NPR possibly add to any of those 3 food fights? In addition to the 100s of hours and 1,000s of column inches already wasted? New evidence, witnesses, analysis, pizza toppings, anything? Nope.
Was yet another rehash more important than every thing else? There are 1,000s of newsworthy topics and issues every single day. Was relitigating the precise definition of "collusion" really the most important topic? Again?
Was there any risk that any one any where wouldn't have already been fully immersed in those jello wrestling matches? (Benghazi!)
FWIW: Every side have long claimed "the media" censors their favored tickle fights. aka "Working the refs", public relations. Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent explains how that endless meta-slapfight works.
To their credit, the right-wing noise machine created their own media ecosystem. (Though it's weird they continue to say they're being ignored, when conservatives dominate every medium.) The left, greens, socialists, grannies knitting for world peace, etc should all do the same.
> Does that tell us all we need to know about you?
Gods, I certainly hope so. Firstly, that the "news" actually be "new".
> The left, greens, socialists, grannies knitting for world peace, etc should all do the same [create their own media ecosystem]
You're proving my point there. Those are all relatively fringe groups, outside the mainstream of the Democratic party and the majority of elected officials. Prominent elected Democrats can rely on "the media" to get their message out and to protect them from criticism. (Both from the far-left and from the right, as we saw from their treatment of Bernie Sanders.)
The "right wing" (meaning mainstream Republicans and elected officials), had to create their own media because the "leans left" media will not report fairly about them. Twitter banned the POTUS. The NY Times forced an editor to resign for publishing an op-ed from a sitting Senator. And NPR targeted the President, according to that senior editor.
> Though it's weird they continue to say they're being ignored, when conservatives dominate every medium.
No one claimed they're being ignored. They're being attacked. When the left-leaning media, like NPR, covers conservatives, it's usually to take their statements and actions out of context and criticize them.
> Firstly, that the "news" actually be "new".
I agree completely, but we don't see much of that these days.
What we see is the neoliberal media chanting the neoliberal chorus, trying to silence both the right and (as you pointed out), the greens, socialists, and others to their left.
Most people misunderstood the role of NYT, WaPo, and NPR. They aren't left, right, up, widdershins, liberal, conservative, whatever.
Rather, their (self-appointed) role is to defend the status quo. aka the establishment, the beltway, the village.
NYT only looks "center-right" to me because I'm way far to the left, "left wing" to you because you're conservative. But those views aren't really helpful for understanding them. Those labels don't mean anything inside the bubble. (As revealed by their evergreen appeals for "bipartisanship", "compromise", and "consensus".)
--
Not that you asked, but there's a similar disconnect between the folk understanding of politics and how politicos behave.
I've run for office. Dialing for dollars, campaigning statewide, door belling, interviews, endorsements, messaging & framing, debate prep, costumes and makeup, all of it. Very illuminating. And now I totally get why everyone in that ecosystem behaves as they do.
Everyone should run for office, do some policy work, try to get published, etc. We'd all be better off if more people had first-hand experience in the sausage factory.
You can try and guess my politics (you'd be wrong), but I can guess that you don't think journalists who agree with your politics can be biased. I can agree with NPR's politics and still admit they are biased, why can't you?
I see it less as an alliance and more like a shift. Being pro freedom of speech and the freedom of computing you are pushed out of the left. You can say they aren't the actual left, but the fact is their anti-free speech ideas are polling over 50% so hate to say it, but they are the left. See "The shift in Democratic views on free speech — what’s going on?"
"at least until they get to power" 2016-2020 was when the left ramped up their censorship efforts, not the right. So how do you square that sentence with what actually happened?
>So how do you square that sentence with what actually happened?
One way to square that with what happened: The left continued accruing power throughout Trump's presidency. I don't think the model of power relations presented in, eg, the constitution, or a civics class, or even an econ 101 class, have existed for centuries now
>"at least until they get to power" 2016-2020 was when the left ramped up their censorship efforts, not the right. So how do you square that sentence with what actually happened?
During the Trump years the leftist controlled only the social media, most of traditional media, cultural institutions, academia, almost any big institution became "woke" and the civil service. And whomever has watched Yes minister knows who actually rules a country. And the censorship machine was well oiled for the 2020 election. We had literal pleas to pharma giants to postpone the covid vaccine after the election.
Yeah sure bro, sabotaged; totally not the case that Trump and his stooges were incompetent, just as many predicted and warned.
Imagine if Trump had just let normal Republicans run everything the way they would have done had we had a President Kasich or something; things probably would have gone fairly well and we'd most likely be in his second term right now.
Man, if I had a son and he turned out to be right-winger, I don't know what I'd dislike about the situation more: that he'd be bigoted or that he'd be a little bitch who participated in a culture of never assuming responsibility for one's own short-comings and instead blamed his failings, and those of anyone he was misguided enough to admire, on shadowy others (as well as being so unselfconsciously asinine so as to publicly assert that "Yes Minister" somehow possesses real explanatory and descriptive power).
Granted, if he were a committed left-winger that would come with its own set of problems, but at least most of his misjudgments would involve a kind of misdirection or misguidance of moral impulse and an overabundance of empathy and altruism, as opposed to the almost naked abandonment of any semblance thereof.
Don't you think if we turned USPS into this it would be a another billions of dollars a year waste for taxpayers? Do we really need to be subsidizing drop shippers?
> Amazon is not marshalling new capital to innovate or improve its digital marketplace. Rather, Amazon simply owns digital real estate and extracts rent, like some kind of futuristic dystopian corpo-baron.
Amazon owns one of the most sophisticated logistics networks in the world. They own warehouses and robots and trucks and planes. All of that adds up to a meaningful, valuable contribution to the world.
I buy tons of stuff on Amazon. I buy from them rather than from eBay or an independent online retailer because I know it'll actually get delivered to my house on time. For me, the marketplace is basically irrelevant - it's the promise of fulfilment by Amazon that I care about.
I sometimes reluctantly buy from an eBay seller or a random e-commerce site when the item I want isn't available on Amazon. Those retailers tend to offer "FREE DELIVERY", but they also tend to be very evasive about how long it'll take and which company will do the delivering. Sometimes they'll advertise next-day delivery, but take two or three days to actually dispatch the package. Sometimes they'll use an ultra-cheap delivery service that takes 3-5 days, with no prior warning of which day they'll actually try to deliver on. Sometimes their terrible delivery service will decide that they just can't be bothered to deliver to my house, so they'll lie about having tried to deliver it and tell me to collect it from a warehouse. Sometimes they deliver to somewhere random in the vague vicinity of my house (a neighbour, underneath a parked car, behind a bush) and I get to play a fun scavenger hunt where the prize is something I already paid for. These bad outcomes literally never happen to me when I buy from Amazon.
In the event that something did go wrong with a delivery, I'm confident that I could just contact Amazon and they'd make it right; when something goes wrong with $OnlineRetailer, I often find myself refereeing a dispute between the retailer and the logistics company, both of whom deny responsibility.
There are plenty of alternatives to Amazon, but from a customer's perspective they just suck.
All of what you're saying has to do with Amazon fulfillment (FBA), not Amazon.com the Internet marketplace.
They're two entirely different things (you can actually use Amazon fulfillment for items sold on other websites, although it's typically too expensive). If Amazon fulfillment continues to dominate on an independent platform, that's great, they earned it, but at least they won't have absolute pricing power because sellers will have alternatives, and at least other companies will have a chance to impress you, too.
I'd figure that the marketplace would show the fulfillment company in addition to the way that the courier is typically indicated, so that customers could express their preferences. If the item does a lot of volume, perhaps a seller would even have inventory with multiple fulfillment companies, and buyers could pay a surcharge to get their preferred fulfillment, same as shipping.
> Don't you think if we turned USPS into this it would be a another billions of dollars a year waste for taxpayers? Do we really need to be subsidizing drop shippers?
You've missed the idea entirely. No shipping services are envisioned whatsoever by the "public utility". It would just be the actual marketplace connecting buyers, sellers, and fulfillment.
Amazon can continue to do order fulfillment if they like, it's just that any company with a warehouse can actually begin to compete with them. Sellers would be able to freely associate with whatever fulfillment company best suits their needs, rather than being captive to FBA.
> What on earth are you on about? They own a url.
Right, from which they extract enormous rents. It is not a product in which they continually invest. If you have used it with any frequency over the past decade, you've almost certainly noticed how shitty it's become. That's not an accident; their "sellers" (tenants) are locked in, and are paying something more like obligate rent rather than indicating with their dollars that Amazon's product is the best.
It would be the same story with privately owned power lines or privately owned roads. You're not using them because they're the best, but because you don't have a choice. We screwed up with the actual internet cables, but we still have time to get it right with internet marketplaces.
In recent years I have worked quite hard to rid myself of such thinking, in favor of a more positive outlook, even if it's slightly forced.
As a result, I've found myself much more at peace with the world, and generally in a better mood. I'd like to think I'm a better version of myself sans cynicism but maintain a healthy dose of skepticism. I'm not sure I bought in at first, but I've slowly come to realize the benefit of actively acknowledging goodness. +1 for "fake it til ya make it."
That said, there's certainly a significant part of my psyche with which the sentiment of the law resonates.
Honest question are you legitimately excited for FedNow? What problem will it solve?
What does FedNow have to do with cryptos downfall? Does FedNow fix our 120% debt to gdp ratio? Estimates of inflation required to get our debt to gdp back to 50% is 4-5 years of 12-20% inflation.
You don't want inflation? Well then I guess the US is going to default on our loans. 98% of countries in the last 120 years that had a debt to gdp of 130% has either defaulted or had massive inflation (only exception is Japan which is still in progress, currently holding off because its positive NIIP, US has negative NIIP).
For the US it's either default, print, or hope for a miracle.
> 98% of countries in the last 120 years that had a debt to gdp of 130% has either defaulted or had massive inflation
Sounds impressive, but this stat relies heavily on a) developed world nations and b) nations back when we had the inflexible gold standard. The US also benefits dramatically from being able to issue debt in USD, which it controls.
From Jan 2019 to now we've had 17.4% inflation. Your purchasing power of the money in your bank account has been reduced. How have other assets faired in that time?
> Objection, Your Honor. Assumes facts not in evidence.
Okay longer timeline, if you held dollars in your savings account from Jan 2009 to now (during ZIRP) you've lost 30.5% of your purchasing power. How has the SP500 or houses fared in that time (even ignoring crypto)?
If losing 30% of your purchasing power is no consequence to you, please let me have a not much of consequence portion of your salary, thanks.
> if you held dollars in your savings account from Jan 2009 to now...
... I would be a doofus. That's where my emergency fund goes, but that's it.
> From Jan 2019 to now we've had 17.4% inflation. Your purchasing power of the money in your bank account has been reduced. How have other assets faired in that time?
My home value has tripled, and the S&P500 has gone dramatically up. Series I savings bonds are also a useful option if I'm really all that worried about the stuff in savings, as their interest rate is pegged to inflation numbers.
If we're going to carefully pick dates to make our arguments ("Jan 2019 to now" having had some... outlier stuff going on, after all) I'm gonna ask how hedging with crypto starting in April or October of 2021 would've gone. Remind me the purchasing power of a $64k Bitcoin today?
Well sorry but you confused me as my main issue was with USD and I believed you thought that USD had "not all that much of consequence" happening to its value. But it seems we are mostly in agreement.
I'm happy you have a home and own some SP500 to offset USD destruction. Not everyone is so fortunate to have access to those markets. I would suggest you look into crypto as part of your hedge against bad USG behavior because it has some nice properties that could uncorrelate it with those assets if things get nasty (90% tax rates, etc).
> if you held dollars in your savings account from Jan 2009 to now (during ZIRP) you've lost 30.5% of your purchasing power
One, obviously a policy failure. Two, don’t do this. Bank deposit dollars are optimised for transacting, not long-term value transport. For that, use Treasuries (including inflation-protected ones). It’s not the Falcon 9’s fault that it makes for a bad hammer.
Well I mean the recent bank failures showed the issue with treasuries, but sure it seems we agree more than disagree. You agree that holding USD is failure for long term value or even short term (3 year) value transport.
My argument is that assets and crypto is needed to hedge the potential incoming USD destruction. And that because crypto has some nice properties that houses and the SP500 don't, it has a legitimate reason to be a part (even if small) of your hedge.
I don't buy the "Crypto is a complete scam" argument at all.
> I mean the recent bank failures showed the issue with treasuries
No depositors lost money. And like, yeah, Treasuries go up and down in price; it's dumb our regulations pretended otherwise. Particularly given the problem was fixed by Basel III.
> assets and crypto is needed to hedge the potential incoming USD destruction
This is gold buggery. Which means gold does a fine enough job.
> don't buy the "Crypto is a complete scam" argument at all
I don't, at least not with certainty. But there is certainty around the prevalence of fraud. That needs to be regulated, which means crypto needs to be taxed to pay for that regulation. Gold bugs are a famously-profitable client group for finance; crypto is the same. Let's put them on the same level.
Gold and crypto are already taxed the same and on the same level (capital gains). Go ahead and regulate fraud how is crypto packets flowing preventing you? The blockchain is more open and transparent than the banking system. Don't you wish you could see JP Morgans or the Pentagons books laid bare like the blockchain?
> This is gold buggery. Which means gold does a fine enough job.
It's really expensive to secure my own gold. I can't easily verify my own gold. I can't easily send my goal in under a minute to help my friends in Venezuela who's government has inflated his money supply by 5,000% and confiscate most of what sent physically or through the banking system. The USG also has a precedent for confiscating everyones gold. I can't take gold with me across a border in an undetectable manner. Sorry but gold is not doing a fine enough job for me and I'd like something a little more advanced and modern.
I understand for us privileged westerners (assumption about you on my part) that this all this seems a little silly, but for my family and friends in situations where their government is behaving really badly, this is serious. And "buy T bills or a house or the sp500" are not the solutions you think they are.
And I hope it doesn't come to the US but it seems a little silly if you are rich enough to not hedge against that possibility, especially given the US financial competency these last two decades.
> Gold and crypto are already taxed the same and on the same level (capital gains)...It's really expensive to secure my own gold
Gold bugs pay for their own security. Crypto outsources investigation, enforcement and regulation onto the public.
> how is crypto packets flowing preventing you
My taxes pay for investigation and enforcement.
> Don't you wish you could see JP Morgans or the Pentagons books laid bare like the blockchain?
No? J.P. Morgan is audited. Almost nobody dives into their various filings with the SEC, FDIC, Fed, and every state banking and securities regulator. As for the Pentagon, absolutely not–that's a huge national security hole.
> for us privileged westerners (assumption about you on my part) that this all this seems a little silly, but for my family and friends in situations where their government is behaving really badly, this is serious
I don't think it's silly. I just don't think it should be subsidized by us.
> it doesn't come to the US but it seems a little silly if you are rich enough to not hedge against that possibility
It's a common pass-time for the rich. Crypto, like gold buggery, is aimed at soothing an emotional need to hedge. The fact that those with most to lose play by a different playbook should speak for itself.
Good dialogue so far but you've lost me with this.
When I buy a big vault, extra door locks, a pitbull, and a gun to protect the gold I store at home to go full gold buggery, am I paying for the investigation, enforcement, and regulation of gold? This is what I mean by its expensive to secure my own gold.
When I store gold at a business that specializes in such services, am I paying for the investigation, enforcement, and regulation of gold?
If yes for either of these, how am I not paying for that same investigation, enforcement, and regulation of crypto when buying a vault for my crypto or paying one of many such companies to hold it for me?
I don't really get what you are subsidizing that you don't also subsidize for pokemon cards, private equity, or any collectable.
Gold is exempt from sales tax in most US states so I really have no clue what you are on about.
Incase I've missed something, on behalf of all crypto users you have my full permission to stop subsidizing all USG employees trying to investigate, enforce, and regulate crypto.
> When I buy a big vault, extra door locks, a pitbull, and a gun to protect the gold I store at home to go full gold buggery, am I paying for the investigation, enforcement, and regulation of gold?
No, you’re paying to secure it. That minimises the fraud around gold.
> When I store gold at a business that specializes in such services, am I paying for the investigation, enforcement, and regulation of gold?
Id.
> don't really get what you are subsidizing that you don't also subsidize for pokemon cards, private equity, or any collectable
Private equity is subject to some reporting standards under the ‘40 Act because it is a haven for fraudsters. Pokémon cards are not similarly problematic so they’re not. Crypto, like securities and gambling, has proven itself a haven for fraud.
I don’t demonise crypto. But we need visibility, laws and enforcement, as well as a stream of revenue to pay for it.
And how has that alleged inflation hedge performed last year when inflation was at its highest? It went down about 80% YoY. Crypto is not a hedge against inflation. It's not a currency, and it barely works as a shitty payment system. It truly is one of the worst technologies ever invented, and nothing would be lost if it just ceased to exist.
In general D's always outspend and out raise R's.