I also work in finance and my recent experience with regulators is really discouraging. DOGE wiped out a large amount of the regulators in government. It seems like most of the regulators remaining are the inexperienced and low tenure. Within the past few months we've attempted to roll out new financial products. When we attempt to send our proposal to them, they can't even tell us who we're supposed to send it to.
It doesn't feel like we're living in the same world of regulation that existed prior to DOGE.
Not sure why it's not covered in that wiki article, but I'm specifically referencing the FDIC and related agencies. They have been so decimated by DOGE that it is possible that multiple of those related agencies will be consolidated into one (FDIC, NCUA, OCC, etc.).
I can't go into too much detail, but for a financial institution to offer certain financial products, you have to submit a proposal to one of the above regulatory bodies to get their approval. We were attempting to do just that and we couldn't even find the proper person at the given agency who should be receiving said proposal. It was even rumored that regulatory agency who would normally review such proposals didn't have the staff to review them. And the review would be done by an entirely different group of regulators who have not done such things historically.
Additionally, these agencies do regular exams of financial institutions to ensure they are complying with regulations and handling fraud properly. These cuts have led to those exams either not happening, or happening at a fraction of the depth they had been previously.
So the DOGE geniuses failed to remove the regulations they allegedly thought were hampering legitimate businesses, while removing the people capable of verifying whether or not your business is in compliance.
They wiped out anybody that was hampering their businesses. Leaving the rest as an impossible barrier to entry for everybody else is a feature, not a bug.
You should probably take a look at the demographics of the top scores of the standardized tests like the SAT. You're not going to find the race you think at the top.
Rather than have me guess about what you know, would you care to explain what you meant by your original comment then? What exactly were you referring to as "racist"?
I'm curious as to what you're implying with the DEI comment. It is often used to imply that white people are being disadvantaged in favor of minorities. But I highly suggest you take look at the demographics of the standardized test scores. Heck, take a look at the demographics of any of the top schools in the country. Berkeley included. Many of the school groups, business, clubs, etc. wouldn't have any white people in them if it wasn't a DEI requirement. Source, my daughter is a junior at Berkeley.
It's the same in Southern California. When I sold my first starter home it was bought by internationals to rent. There were already multiple homes on the block owned by foreign interests.
And at the new home I moved into, the house next door is owned by foreign interests and rented out to the highest bidder. It makes it extremely difficult to get anything done that involves shared areas (like common fence or overhanging trees) because the owner is essentially unavailable and doesn't speak english. Not to mention that every year or so we have to deal with renters who are minimally vetted. We've had a group of 5 college kids turn the place into a frat house once. There is also a property management company involved, but they can't get in contact with the owner either.
In my experience, this seems to be a bigger issue than wall street investors.
The problem I see is that the term "conservative" is not defined. There are many places where current "conservatives" would be at odds with "conservatives" of just a few years ago. If you're a fiscal conservative, where did the tea party go?, you'd by furious by the spending of the current "conservatives".
Companies are driven by profits, but their decisions are usually based on legalities. I think their knee-jerk reaction to pull Kimmel was due to what might happen, or what the government was threatening to do. That doesn't amount to damages, legally. However, if they bring Kimmel back, and the government follows through on its initial threats, then that does amount to damages for which they can sue the government.
I've heard stories of plastic bags on the highway making their way into the path of the front-facing cameras of vehicles. Resulting in automatic emergency braking at highway speeds.
You're not wrong, but the same can be said for some militia groups and religious organizations. I think the problem people have is the selective use of this weapon to specifically target certain organizations and not others.
It's hard to justify that antifa is a problem and the people behind January 6th weren't. People were convicted of crimes and then pardoned. As long as we define what constitutes a terrorist organization and it is equally applied to all groups, I think a lot fewer people would have a problem with it. I know I would.
Having strongly held opinion on who lives and who dies are petty heavy opinions one might say, correct? Like just pushing the opinion on whether Palestine should or should not be wiped out means that you are advocating for the lives/deaths of one group of people or another?
I'm not saying people should necessarily die for their opinions. But it shouldn't come as a surprise that if your opinion, and the political policies you push for, literally result in the life or death of someone's family members, then those people may have very strong reactions to that.
Like if there was an entire town of purple people and I went around saying I want all people purple people to be killed, should I be surprised if purple people might want to cause violence towards me? I mean, I'm just debating and using words, right? But those words an debates are literally about the lives and deaths of other people.
> Like just pushing the opinion on whether Palestine should or should not be wiped out means that you are advocating for the lives/deaths of one group of people or another?
Can you show me a video/article/blog post where he said that Palestinians should be wiped out? I would like to see/read it myself.
Are you looking for something where he literally says "wiped out"? Or are you looking for his stance that it doesn't and shouldn't exist? I'm not a follower of Charlie Kirk or his positions and I don't support any violence against him. However, finding his position on Israel and Palestine is a very simple google search away. You can hear it from his own mouth right here:
How did this interaction end? Why do you show a short scene from a potentially long discussion?
This one looks like a rage bait more than anything. Pretty equivalent to taking a phrase out of context, and then claiming whatever suits your narrative.
My point was that many of the "debates" Charlie Kirk was having were about who lives and who dies in the world. Doing so publicly with the intent of swaying policy and elections. And the fact that the topics being discussed with "just words" are really discussion of life and death. You seem to be trying to say that these debates weren't really about who lives and dies.
You asked for evidence of this. I provided you an example of him literally telling someone from Palestine that the place they live doesn't exist and was not owned by him or his people.
I mean, do you think the follow up to this conversation results in the gentleman he is "debating" to walk away happily and change his views on whether Palestine exists? Because that seems to be what you're insinuating. You seem to be saying, that either his debates really weren't about the lives and deaths of others. Or that his opinions and policies were really "the right thing to do" and people on the other side just didn't understand that yet.
> You asked for evidence of this. I provided you an example of him literally telling someone from Palestine that the place they live doesn't exist and was not owned by him or his people.
You took a part of the conversation and showed it to me. Show me the whole thing, and not a rage bait piece potentially taking out of context.
I've seen your comments elsewhere and you're not arguing in good faith. You're doing a "no true scottsman" argument when you know full well there is plenty out there. But nothing will convince you.
For you it seems like unless there is a video where Charlie Kirk is telling a soldier to pull the trigger and kill somebody directly, you won't be convinced. It's the same argument that Charles Manson shouldn't be guilty because it was just his opinions that caused people to be killed.
Don't you see that one could see you're the one not arguing in good faith? What he's saying is that taking out of context clips do not represent anything. You need to understand the context of what is being said, and why.
For instance earlier in this thread numerous people were claiming he said he disliked the word empathy, completely leaving out the part of the discussion where he said that is because it had been politically weaponized and abused, much preferring the term sympathy which is less susceptible to exploitation.
> I've seen your comments elsewhere and you're not arguing in good faith.
What? Why?
What you did with your example is that you took a 60 second snippet from a conversation and use it to prove your point. I am not buying this because taking things out of context does not constitute a proof. An example would be saying that Charlie Kirk thought that empty is invented concept (a lot of people repeat it), while in fact if you watch the full video where he said that, you would know that his position was that sympathy is a better choice of a word. Now, when you learn this you realize that a single quote without a context means nothing.
This is why I am asking you to show me context.
We started this conversation when you mentioned strong opinions on who should live or die. Then, you proceeded with an example of wiping out Palestinians. Then you said that he said it "doesn't and shouldn't exist". To prove your point, you showed a short cut from a much longer discussion. I am willing to engage with you on the merits of the evidence you provide, but I think we should conduct this discussion based on the full video, and not a piece that was cut out for a rage bait articles or tweets.
This is why. In the other reply to me you said "This is a silly example: beauty is subjective. Thus, what you are doing you are insulting a person, and of course there are consequences for that." So you clearly understand that insulting people can have consequences. I take your combined arguments to either be that everything Kirk said was objective (as if it being objective would automatically mean people can't be insulted). Or nothing that he said should have insulted anyone and therefore should not have consequences.
If you can't find quotes in context made by Kirk that people would find insulting, then that is a search issue. Does that mean he should have been killed? Absolutely not. But again, it is quite obvious that saying things that insult people can lead to consequences. And those consequences can vary because people vary.
You intentionally disregarded my first statement in that comment that clearly differentiated between opinions and incitement for violence.
> So you clearly understand that insulting people can have consequences.
It seems to me you cannot differentiate personal insults (e.g., saying to a dude in a bar "your wife is ugly!" -- as you suggested), and opinions about ideas, e.g., "capitalism is a bad system". Are you saying that arguing the point of why capitalism is bad should be treated as an insult to people who think capitalism is better?
The difference between making a personal insult (the key word here is personal), and arguing why something in aggregate should or should not exist are completely separate issues. However, in the world of identity politics these two are inseparable.
> Or nothing that he said should have insulted anyone and therefore should not have consequences.
Or, let's listen to the whole conversation and not a rage-bait excerpt, and see if it was what you say it was.
> If you can't find quotes in context made by Kirk that people would find insulting, then that is a search issue.
Arguing ideas is not an insult. If you believe that any challenge to any claim is an insult, then it basically kills any sort of discourse unless the point made is in full agreement with your beliefs.
The amount of mental gymnastics you're doing here is impressive.
Your current iteration is trying to differentiate between insulting a person (ie. the ugly wife) and insulting people in aggregate. And arguing that ideas about an aggregate is not insulting a person, and therefore, the aggregate cannot be insulted or offended.
Then you jump to a logical fallacy that if you challenging some ideas is offensive, then challenging all ideas is offensive.
You do realize that co-workers discussing whether we should use AWS or Azure as our cloud provider could be a rich debate on the topic. But is highly unlikely to result in someone becoming offended and evenly less likely to result in some form of violence.
But this is altogether different from other kinds of ideas. We can discuss ideas along the same topic and at some point we transition from rational debate to offense. We can start with the idea that people with blue eyes are fundamentally different than those with other eye colors. That's not too offensive. Let's take it further, people with blue eyes are inferior to all other eye colors. This might offends some people. What about, people with blue eye color are so inferior that we should expel them to "blue-eyed people island". How about, people with blue eyes are so inferior that they would be better off as slaves for people of other eye colors.
What if I went on a tour across the country to debate blue-eyed people on the topic. Did I incite any violence? Did my ideas offend any aggregate? Would you be surprised if my ideas resulted in violence against me?
If you replace "blue eyes" with other things, you can see the number and ferocity of the aggregate changes depending on the topic at hand. Your ideas are so provably contradictory to the ways of the world that I don't understand how this isn't obvious to you. Wars have been waged over the idea that one religion is superior/inferior to another. Galileo was imprisoned for his idea that planets revolved around the sun. I can go on and on.
> The amount of mental gymnastics you're doing here is impressive.
Mental gymnastics about what? I am pretty consistent in my messaging: opinions and incitement for violence are two completely different things.
You, on the other hand, full of straw mans.
Any claim can be offensive, as I said earlier with my example about capitalism. According to you, we cannot discuss capitalism because some people maybe offended. Moreover, according to you, the person who will state that capitalism is bad can be rightfully attacked by the advocates of capitalism because he offended them. Thus, we have nothing left to talk about -- god forbid someone gets offended.
PS are you applying the same standard to “From the river to the sea” chants? Or offending Israelis and denying their rights to exist is totally fine?
> According to you, we cannot discuss capitalism because some people maybe offended. Moreover, according to you, the person who will state that capitalism is bad can be rightfully attacked by the advocates of capitalism because he offended them. Thus, we have nothing left to talk about -- god forbid someone gets offended.
Where did I say that? that has nothing to do with my point. My point is that a discussion of capitalism has an entirely different risk profile than discussing other topics. I stand by the first amendment that people can say whatever they want. Where you lose me is your follow-on that what they say disallows people from being offended. And secondarily, disallows people from having consequences for what they say.
Being on HN, it is highly likely you work a corporate job and you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know that if you were to debate some of Kirk's ideas in your workplace that you could be disciplined for it. Because your workplace knows that certain topics are extremely divisive and that don't want people arguing and fighting. That is why I said you are arguing in bad faith. And both you and I know we're not talking about the topic of capitalism. Let's be real.
Next time you speak to a woman at work I want you to try this idea out on them:
"Hey X, all kidding and sarcasm aside, this is something that I hope will make you more conservative. Engage in reality more and get outside of the abstract clouds. Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, X. You're not in charge."
This will be my last reply since you aren't really having a debate here. You know exactly what I'm saying and the point I'm making and you're just avoiding it. You obviously know what topics will get you fired from your job. You obviously know what topics will get you punched in the face if you say things to the wrong person. And that's not even politics, that's just how the world is.
I have no idea what "from the river to the sea" means. Based on what you said, it's some kind either pro-Israel or anti-Israel thing. I am not Israeli nor Palestinian so I don't know enough about the topic to publicly state an opinion on the matter.
All I know is that both Israeli and Palestinian children who have had their parents killed will grow up hating the other side. And if there were some kind of attempt at peace or debate in the future, one of those kind of people will be the one killing the person trying to have the debate. We're talking decades long generational hate from lost loved ones. Someone from the outside thinking they know what that's like to the point of deciding who should be killed can easily become the target of the other side. It doesn't matter which side that is.
> This will be my last reply since you aren't really having a debate here. You know exactly what I'm saying and the point I'm making and you're just avoiding it.
I know what point you are trying to make. I hope you realize how ridiculous it sounds. People can be offended by anything. Does it mean we should stop talking?
Ukrainians can be offended by the idea of peace talks with Russians: Russians are aggressors, there is nothing to talk about! Are we gonna stop any diplomatic contact with Russians right now?
For any somewhat important social issue I can find people who will be offended. Should we stop discussion about issues in our society?
It doesn't feel like we're living in the same world of regulation that existed prior to DOGE.
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