Ultimately it comes down to the utter lack of accountability we've had for decades. Our system has been rotting, the elites claim everything is fine as they look at the numbers, especially their own numbers, go up up up. The average person's frustrations have built up to the point that people just want to see other people hurt for a semblance of accountability. See the outpouring of support for Luigi.
So then along comes a new demagogue, covers his face in orange makeup to signal he's not part of that elite ingroup, talks like he's mentally handicapped to make it seem like he lacks the capacity to lie, and claims to care about the plights of the common person. All the things that politicians previously wouldn't talk about, rightly or wrongly. "This one is different, and he really hears us!". But then rather than any sort of reform, he merely directs that anger at other powerless scapegoats - a series of revolving spectacles that leave supporters with no time for it to set in just how much they're being had, or the wide trail of societal damage in his wake.
I keep waiting for even half these people who claim to care about the Constitution and individual liberty to realize how their country is being mortally wounded. How every day they waffle and continue give this societal arsonist a pass, how much worse off our country will be. But being eternally hopeful that people will come around to seeing the truth is one of my personal flaws. So the cynical part of me is just waiting for Trump to start supporting gun control again.
> From statements made and queries in law enforcement databases, [redacted] has not violated his visa; however, the Atlanta Field Office Director has mandated [redacted] be presented as a Voluntary Departure. [Redacted] has accepted voluntary departure despite not violating his B1/B2 visa requirements.”
The article worded the whole thing very carefully, in a way to me is intentionally misleading. The director mandated that the visa holder be labeled as a voluntary departure. That could simply mean the person decided he would return, and was allowed to do so, and the director simply informed whoever filled out the paperwork that this was a voluntary departure. There is nothing in the article that actually indicates the person was forced to leave the country with a valid visa.
The fact that they dance around this tells me that this article is bullshit. And knowing what I know about The Guardian, it almost certainly is.
Baseless detainment and coercion, kicking a law-abiding America-contributing worker out of the country, interrupting the building of a new domestic factory, and making an allied country wary of working with us are the harms. You're just ignoring them, because you've been propagandized to think the victims deserved it.
That is a very different issue than what the article implies. The implication of the article was that something very illegal happened. What you're implying is not necessarily illegal, but I agree it is harmful.
I don't know what distinction you're trying to draw. I assumed they moved the victim some time in the course of the detainment. Call it unlawful detainment if you want.
If Ice detained me, kept me in kafkaesque isolation, shuttled me around for a few hours from one detention centre to another, but did no other harm, I'd probably also be happy to GTFO, and might even concede no harm was done.
Does controversy cause articles to slide on HN? I noticed that this had more points in less time than several articles ranked above it, which surprises me a bit
e.g. at time of writing a post about MentraOS has 11 points in 1 hour compared to this article's 51 in 53 minutes, but this is ranked 58th to Mentra's 6
Yes. Too large a comment/vote ratio causes articles to be defrontpaged, as well as some domains. Moderators do a lot of manipulation behind the scenes to keep what they deem ‘hot-button topics’ down in 3rd page or shadow-banned altogether. Then there’s the user flagging system that is abused whenever some popular article goes against the grain.
That’s why I use https://news.ycombinator.com/active to find the interesting topics instead of having to rely on the strict moderation algorithm
As far as I am aware, wealth inequality is significantly better in Europe than it is in the United States (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-in... as an example) and I still wouldn't characterize democracy in Europe as "perfect" even if we narrowly define the rubrick to be only concerned with money tipping the scales of power
That site is weird. As far as I can tell, it's measuring income inequality, not wealth inequality, and it doesn't... appear to know the difference? Quoting it:
> The Gini index, or Gini coefficient, is a statistical measure of wealth distribution developed by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini. The Gini index is used to gauge economic inequality by measuring income distribution, also called wealth distribution.
It's a kinda big red flag if they say that income and wealth are the same thing!
There are a few notable cases of European countries having very high wealth inequality despite lower income inequality (my take which may not be shared by many: having low income inequality makes it hard for people who aren't generationally wealthy to overcome old money). Notably, Sweden has a higher wealth inequality than the United States.
> It's a kinda big red flag if they say that income and wealth are the same thing!
Wealthy and old people love when income is used as a stand in for wealth. It deflects political action onto the young and hard/smart working, and helps keep their dynasties and rent seeking assets intact.
Peasant has a more specific meaning than this. More importantly, it has been used as a pejorative for a very long time now and that is clearly the intent the vice president had in mind.
This aligns with my experience with a couple of DEI (or similar) programs at large tech as well. Coupled with really basic training that amounted to "Unconscious bias exists and it can happen to you, make sure you judge candidates by their performance and nothing else", which always seemed pretty reasonable to me.
Deflation is a problem, but not for the reason mentioned there. The reason deflation is an issue is because it makes holding cash into an investment strategy. If the price of goods is dropping, the value of money is rising, so the more cash I hold the richer I get. This obviously dissuades people with cash from investing their cash into actual productive work, which means fewer jobs. There was a small deflationary bump in American history around the 1930s that helps to illustrate what can happen in a deflationary spiral.
Like interest on a bank account? Holding cash is already an investment strategy. Bonds are a thing. People have options to hold cash and not lose purchasing power. One of the traditional ways people tackle inflation is they demand interest from the banks sufficient to cover it plus a little more to account for time value of money.
It is rather unlikely that giving people an option that they already have is going to cause a problem. One major benefit of money is that people can hoard it and there is no cost in the real economy because all the resources are still there and prices can just adjust to the amount of cash in circulation.
> here was a small deflationary bump in American history around the 1930s that helps to illustrate what can happen in a deflationary spiral.
The US came out of the 1930s with an economy that was capable of overcoming almost literally the entire world. Again, the evidence that deflation was some sort of major problem is questionable, it seems to have been associated with the creation of one of the most dynamic economies in the history of history.
And the idea that we have this one clear lesson from one instance back in the 30s is just weird and unbelievable. That isn't how history or complex systems work.
