Or possibly ever again. Eras like this one can be what kills an empire/great power.
I think one of the greater risks to a power like the U.S. is getting old enough where it's felt like things always were, and therefore always will be. When there is no-longer a grandparent at the dinner table who can even tell you when his grandparent at the dinner table spoke about the before times.
Right, the fact that the current administration had a 4 year hiatus only extended this period. Think about all the young people that grew up with this as normal.
> The Roman Empire lost the strengths that had allowed it to exercise effective control over its Western provinces; modern historians posit factors including the effectiveness and numbers of the army (check), the health and numbers of the Roman population (check), the strength of the economy (check), the competence of the emperors (check), the internal struggles for power (check), the religious changes of the period (check), and the efficiency of the civil administration (check). Increasing pressure from invading peoples outside Roman culture (check) also contributed greatly to the collapse. Climatic changes (check) and both endemic and epidemic diseases (check) drove many of these immediate factors.
The decline of the Roman Empire, depending on how you define it, played out over centuries, if not a millennium. It is such a bad analogy for the kind of within-our-lifetimes collapse that is being speculated about here that it undermines the original concern. The decline of Germany as the leading scientific powerhouse in the first half if the 20th century would be a better case study imho.
> The decline of the Roman Empire, depending on how you define it, played out over centuries, if not a millennium.
Sure, and before COVID-19 pandemics often took years/decades to spread around the globe. Agriculture took thousands of years to develop; iPhones were invented twenty years ago.
Things move faster in a world of eight billion people who can get anywhere on the planet in 24 hours.
Sure, but it's also likely that some (but not all) historians will put the peak of the American Empire in the 1960's somewhere, perhaps onat the moon landing. Declines often start out slow and are often indistinguishable from random noise until well after the fact, and there will be rises and falls after the peak.
The US isn't Rome, it's Constantinople. Rome was Europe, the 20th century was about the colonial appendage achieving supremacy over the former imperial centre.
If you want a lesson in what to avoid to maintain dominance, it's internal conflict, that's what wrecked the European empire.
Good luck with that. Trump and Co will dig in. When they fall, there will be blood.
This is not convincing. Many of these are debatable when you actually pull apart what is meant then and now. But there’s also a long list of things that are different about the Roman Empire and US (and the world) today.
You could look even earlier. There are a lot of similarities between Trump's style and Emperor Commodus's. And to paraphrase Cassius Dio, Commodus took an empire of gold and transformed it into one of iron and rust.
Every time I hear people praise the stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius I am reminded of the fact that he failed in his most important duty: To plan well for his succession.
There a quite popular narrative saying JFK's murder was a coup, and the US is still couped to this day (voting does not truly matter: the dark budget agencies make the policies anyway, those votes into office simple have to follow suit).
I expect things to actually get better by some measures for a little while as the U.S. liquidates its holdings of international political and socioeconomic influence. A sort of short-lived glut from voluntary cannibalization.
I think the whole “empire collapsing” is a bit of a dramatized phrasing, though historians can correct me. I think it’s much more death by a thousand cuts, and the UK is a great analogue in that regard. Look at Brexit, for example. Or Black Wednesday, from which the US’s esteemed Treasury Secretary profited handsomely.
The UK’s decline has taken centuries, though, and there are many events that one can point to. I think I agree with the grandparent’s comment about grandparents, about the arrogance of how things will continue to be a certain way.
> I think the whole “empire collapsing” is a bit of a dramatized phrasing, though historians can correct me. I think it’s much more death by a thousand cuts, and the UK is a great analogue in that regard.
Didn't the UK's empire notably collapse quite rapidly?
In most areas (drug enforcement, basic education, healthcare, gun culture...) nobody should have been taking the US seriously maybe since Reagan. Finance, science and war were the only areas you could count on the US but now they went full Roman on the rest of the world not even that anymore. War is the only thing that's left I think.
It doesn't win wars, but it provides the necessary equipment for carnage and stalemates all over the globe. Remember war is just a pretext, the objective is always profit, so as long as a lost war is very profitable it's a success in their books.
If everyone has the same conclusion, how is it an argument? Nobody thinks the US won in Iran except the morons that started it. Maybe bigOil feels like its a win as their profits are soaring???
> nobody should have been taking the US seriously maybe since Reagan. Finance, science and war were the only areas you could count on the US
That was plenty of reasons to take the country seriously! Also, the US has been the most powerful cultural exporter for a very long time. It’s still the case, whenever anything becomes huge in the US we get our local version in each European countries. Our far right parties are parroting American right politics, even copying the terminology as is
Have you seen the state of AAA gaming and blockbusters lately? Even music is being utterly destroyed by the streaming platforms and record labels greed, so yeah it might have been in the 80s up until the 2010s, but enshitification got the best of the US I'm afraid so not even culture anymore. It's just decacence.
It's not all US, but as you said things start in the US and trickles down across the rest of the world, so that's also true for its decadence.
The US gained almost immeasurable power and influence by virtue of the 2 World Wars and being largely directly unaffected by those wars, whereas Europe was levelled, particularly by WW2. And that power came from selling weapons.
The world order was reset after 1945 and designed largely by the US for the benefit of the US, particularly the financial system. People will often mistake cause and effect. A common one is the petrodollar. The US dollar isn't strong because oil is traded in it. No. Oil is traded in the dollar because of demand fo the dollar. The world oil market could switch to Euros or RMB tomorrow and the net effect would be that people would hold USD and trade it for whatever currency as needed and convert any such currency immediately back to dollars.
But underpinning this has been the appearance of integrity in the US financial system and, in particular, the Federal Reserve and the SEC. That trust and that system is being rapidly destroyed for a few billion dollars in personal profit. All of this was enabled by an ideological Supreme Court who invented out of thin air the concept of presidential immunity to make the president a king in a country that rebelled against a monarchy.
We're living in times that will be written about in history books as the end of the post-1945 era, particularly with the Iran War. I, for one, called this the most disastrous US strategic defeat in the entire of US history and it's not even close back in April. And I stand by that.
There was a time when corrupt heads of state kept up appearances of not being corrupt. It was done in secret through layers of secrecy. That's gone now. The corruption is very much out in the open.
It's not to see this as anything other than China's rise to global prominence and the irony is they just had to do nothing while letting the US commit suicide.
I think that's been the most baffling thing about the rise of MAGA.
It was a global order built by the US to place the US in positions of power and privilege in every way imaginable.
And the MAGA group looked at it and said "we are being taken advantage of! We have to spend a rounding error worth of money on food aid and Voice of America?! I don't want soft power, I want rock hard power!!!"
They looked at a game with unfair rules that were written by them to benefit them and said "this is unfair.... to me!" Then went about dismantling nearly a century of work that unfairly stacked the deck in America's favor.
The US-Israel-Iran War is an interesting inflection point. They pulled out of every soft-power play, putting every chip in on hard-power military strength and now they are getting wrecked by cheap drones and Iran just being willing to stick it out and not fold. Venezuela will probably go down as the point in which they believed their world view was winning, no need for any diplomacy, just go in and abduct the president and take the oil. Iran showed them the limits of that kind of thinking, if they were more introspective they could learn from it.
The messed up part is that it's not even technically insider trading as long as they release the same information publicly shortly after... so they're not actually breaking any laws. So much of the way the US government has operated is based on some shared standard of moral sense that the current administration lacks completely.
> it's not even technically insider trading as long as they release the same information publicly shortly after... so they're not actually breaking any laws
No, that’s a canonical example of insider trading: acting on pre-release inside information before it’s made public; it doesn’t matter if it’s days, hours, or even minutes before it goes public.
People have been convicted for executing trades when they saw or handled earnings reports in-person hours before they’re released[1].
> No one is going to take the US seriously for the next 50 years.
I hate this obvious pay-for-access thing as much as anyone, but this isn’t going to define the US for the next 50 years. The second the next president is in office every other country will adapt to working with them, just as been happening every 4-8 years.
The American population has demonstrated that they'll nominate an insane criminal to power at random. Twice! I think that's gonna stick longer than the Bush to Clinton style transitions.
I’m talking about the people with decision making power and the businesses working internationally. I have no doubt that certain individuals in other countries will be holding grudges against the United States for the rest of their lives long after the country has moved on, but it doesn’t really have any effect. If you’ve spent some time traveling the world every country has older generations who have some grudge against other countries for events that happened prior to most people being born and the younger generations don’t care. The world changes and most people move on.
They're also talking about decision makers. They're going to operate with the consideration that Americans might elect another mad man. Anything requiring more than one presidential term's time will be much more carefully hedged.
> I’m talking about the people with decision making power and the businesses working internationally.
As am I.
At a certain point, you get bitten enough times that you decide the angry cobra isn't a great pet. It may be really cool, sometimes! But sometimes it hurts you, a lot.
> If you’ve spent some time traveling the world every country has older generations who have some grudge against other countries for events that happened prior to most people being born and the younger generations don’t care.
> Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again.
How do you explain all of the people and countries who are currently trusting the US and their commitments?
This is always a strange belief to hold when the current evidence is so overwhelming against it. The rest of the world and the people making decisions know that this administration will come to an end. Something about each new headline convinced a small number of people that this one event is actually the end of the entire country for the next 50 years, against all visible evidence
If nobody was trusting the country, the economy would collapse.
The Greenland drama was dumb, but there is zero reason to think it’s a next 50 years thing. Is the force even still there, or are they gone? Nobody takes the Greenland thing seriously already, and 50 years have not passed.
OK, so apparently the claim that "no one will ever trust the US or their commitments again" means that businesses and governments will still enter into all manner of trades and alliances and business arrangements with the US, but in their heart of hearts, they won't actually trust the US?
You loan a friend $5k. They promise to pay it back. They don't.
You may still hang out! But you may never loan them money again unless they give meaningful evidence they've changed.
The US probably has one concrete chance left to prosecute, convict, and jail these folks to rebuild trust. My vibe from the Democrats is that they'll whiff that opportunity.
Consider: I may also try and make/buy safer tools so I don't ever have to use them again at some point in the future. I may hire someone else (China!) to do the work.
A lack of trust does not mean an immediate cessation of use, but it does meaningfully change the relationship.
"I use x" is not evidence of "I trust x". Sometimes it's evidence of "I have no choice but to use x for now".
If insider trading is your concern then the country hasn't been serious for a long time, everyone in government does it and it's never punished even when exploited to the levels of 9 figures of assets.
Should just be legalized at this point so we can all take advantage if they're all gonna get away with it.
Was the Union army complicit in the crimes of the Confederacy by simply allowing them to drop their arms and walk away as well? The world is complicated and full of nuanced takes depending on context. That said:
>If a rival political party takes power in 2029 and they decide to do nothing about this, are they complicit?
Like this really does read as: I still blame the Democrats for the crimes of the Republicans.
The ultimate authority here is the US voters and they have chosen poorly again and again. They are complicit for sure as they chose both to empower Republicans and tie the hands of the Democrats with impossible standards.
We are still paying the price for that today, some of us a lot more than others. It was well-intentioned but with hindsight being what it is, historians pretty much agree that it was the cause of a lot of the problems we fight with today.
It’s funny you bring up Union vs Confederacy, because Reconstruction should be a blueprint of what not to do. We’re still paying today for the failures of our forefathers to not have the bravery to stamp out the worst cultural elements of the Confederacy, let alone the extended century-long suffering of formerly enslaved peoples in what ranged from “separate but equal” to outright apartheid.
So yes, it was very much the Union’s fault for not properly cutting the many heads of the hydra with great prejudice.
Edit: the Nuremberg trials are a fantastic blueprint for what to do, though. And that’s what was missing after the Civil War. The sentences handed out at Nuremberg aren’t necessarily relevant to the crimes committed by those in power today, but the cultural shift that materialized in Germany post-war is the type of cultural shift needed to counteract the damage of the current administration: against corruption, grift, and executive overreach.
Doesn't that still feel shortsighted? The way you speak, you cannot even imagine a world without a political landscape that is Republican vs Democrats. I think both parties have shown time and time again that they cannot be trusted steering the country.
Yes, that probably means that the US has to utterly break in its political system before it can get any better, considering that the current election process favours a two-party stalemate (or one party controlling everything)
Yes. That’s a great historical precedent — Reconstruction was a hotly debated topic and the more radical forms would have banned former Confederate soldiers for voting, for example. Many Southern states had military governors imposed by the Federal government.
Andrew Johnson pardoned almost all Confederate leaders, didn’t care about freeing slaves, and is one of the worst Presidents in history.
Even if the rival party were to somehow control all 3 branches of government (which they will not), the voting records show a full 1/3 of American adults outright support this corruption (many of the cops themselves), and another 1/3 are willing to ignore it.
If you are in the 1/3 that does care about it, you are not going to have a good time trying to fight the other 1/3, many of whom make up the “law and order” department.
So the answer to both questions is a resounding no, because the world is more complicated than a comic book superhero movie.
This is such an amazing take because it is a constant in US politics. Like how in the world did you think it appropriate to pivot like this?
The standards for the Democrats are impossible perfection, regardless of the challenges.
The standards for the Republicans is...there are literally zero standards. Thieves, grifters, rapists, pedos, just the absolute worst human garbage imaginable, and somehow Americans convince themselves that if the Democrats don't (usually because they can't) do anything about it, clearly the Dems are the real problem, so it's time to vote Republicans. Just bizarre stuff.
I could give infinite examples where the slightest thing is a massive story about Democrat action or inaction, while every day is a new low in what the shit-pile that the modern Republican party gets away with. Benghazi is still constantly cited by the right, while Trump...Jesus Christ, every day is a thousand times worse. Astonishing levels of corruption and stupidity is just another Tuesday now.
It's amazing. Every framing somehow shifts like this.
Biden was speaking to the people who ended up bankrolling Trump when threatened with slightly increased taxes, and who are going to dump billions into the midterms. When you're in a country that wavers around 50/50 every election (even when the choice is between competent government or a spectacularly incompetent shitshow of grifters, pedos and thieves), yes, there are limits to what you can realistically do in one election cycle.
In any case, it's actually hilarious that rhetoric like this "oh well actually the Dems are to blame because they haven't stopped them yet" is precisely why Republicans are gung ho in fighting against ranked choice ballots. A secret they've learned is to field some fringe bullshit candidates like Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr, Kanye, and so on, and they need the sort of idiots that vote for idiots like that to be throwing away their votes because "it's a uniparty of capital". Ranked choice ballots -- real democracy -- would threaten that.
Trump has repeatedly claimed ranked choice ballots are "corrupt", and House Republicans have repeatedly tried to ban it. Do you want to know why? Protip - it's because they rely on incredibly stupid voters.
Is that why Dems elevated Trump originally from meme-tier gameshow host to serious contender with their pied piper "strategy"? The best they could do is be mad at wikileaks for making them look bad.
Or why they forced a widely unpopular Dem candidate instead of having an actual primary last time around (not that they've shown they can even run a fair primary)?
100%. Clearly you've nailed it, and you should vote for Trump's third term.
Let's be real here - when people do the "both parties are the same", usually citing some chickenshit bullshit like you just did, they're almost always a terrible person who just loves Trump but won't just admit it.
Also, it's a strawman of your creation to say both parties are the same. They're two different facades for the same underlying monetary interests. Sorry you're so easily fooled by that, but it shows that it works.
> Thieves, grifters, rapists, pedos, just the absolute worst human garbage imaginable.
I would urge you strongly not to let yourself be this consumed by this kind of thinking. This is a distorted view of your fellow man - however accurate _some_ of it may be about _some_ people - regardless of their political affiliation. This kind of thinking is exactly how we got to where we are now and persisting in it will almost certainly get us more extreme reactions.
that said, the Republican establishment has proven itself unworthy of the office and should be shown the door in the next election cycle - in decimating fashion. So much so that it should cause a complete recalibration of that party.
>This kind of thinking is exactly how we got to where we are now and persisting in it will almost certainly get us more extreme reactions.
It was seeing a black guy, and then possibly a woman, and then possibly a black woman get to the top that got us where we are now. The message is clear, don’t disrupt up our image of the hierarchy, or else we will support the worst of the worst, as long as they maintain the order.
You're not going to get a real response. They're here. They literally just ignore it. It's too inconvenient of a truth. It's much easier to just point fingers at poor immigrants than to actually give a shit about the corruption of rich people.
> You're not going to get a real response. They're here. They literally just ignore it.
But that is the real response. All politicians do some things that you disagree with, so even if you hate some of their behavior, you can still end up supporting them if on balance their policy decisions are more aligned with your interests.
I see what you're saying, but ignoring something is withholding a response by definition.
Generally, I accept slight dissonance with politicians on matters of policy. I don't think it's okay to accept politicians blatantly breaking the law and sneering in the face of culpability.
That's true and what makes poltical topics frustrating and mostly pointless to discuss online.
There's very little incentive to engage with the topic in an intellectually honest way. Most would prefer to only contribute in a way that paints their team in a better light.
I guess that's why any political topics should be avoided on HN. Even with perfect moderation, one can't avoid the biases of individuals selecting when to or not to contribute to a discussion.
It's literally impossible to avoid politics on any forum. Everything is politics. Politicians create the laws that govern society. If you want to associate with other people in that society, you need to be able discuss those laws. There's no escaping it no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel, and attempting to moderate it out of existence is an exercise in futility.
How on Earth do you imagine that a forum like this would discuss things like AI regulation without discussing politics? Beyond just regulation, there's inflation, tariffs, copyright, immigration... All of these things affect tech workers every day. A forum without politics is an absurd fantasy.
If most were being honest, they would probably admit that the corrupt behavior like this is bad, but that the overall balance of good vs bad policy decisions still favor having Republicans in power vs Democrats.
I doubt there are many dyed-in-the-wool Republicans as such, but I'll bet there are many who still identify strongly enough with the old-school Republican messaging around rugged individualism and supply-side economics that they view the median Democrat as actively destructive by comparison to the merely flawed median Republican.
I'm far from being one of those myself, but I imagine the argument would be that any regulation one could propose to address this is bound to be worse than the problem itself, in terms of chilling effects on legitimate speech and commercial activity.
Not a Republican by any stretch of any imagination, but here’s my attempt at a steelman argument:
I imagine these companies were already spending some amount on crawlers that would poll every N milliseconds to get an edge on some market-moving post. In turn I imagine Truth Social were also spending more serving this bot traffic.
Truth Social making $1M a month from it — a rounding error in Trump’s fortunes — doesn’t seem like a world-ending catastrophe.
Trump has done many bad things to erode trust in our institutions and government. When compared to him trying to overturn the results of an election, this too seems like a rounding error.
(not a repub) I don't defend it, its outright fraud, but I also accept the reality that it is a more visible, and perhaps exaggerated, form of what has been ongoing forever.
Those who seek power seek it to:
1. Enrich themselves and their family
2. Wield it to achieve their means
The "pay to play" is rife everywhere. The contractors who get a sweet deal from local / fed government, the competition is stifled. The senators who make 10's of millions on insider information. The imminent domain cases where property is seized so corporation / donor can make millions. The "futures market" where insiders use their knowledge of product release date to swindle money for ordinary folks. The crypto scams, lotteries, casinos, street vendors, telemarketers, info-mercials, self-help gurus, snake oil sales, lemon peddlers, and more.
The truth is that the human system has not deviated far from the imposed hierarchy of feudalism / monarchy, we have only become better at concealing it, making it more potent in some ways. Power, corruption, opportunism, and greed are part of our nature. In an extremely large population with a democratic veneer, the levers of power become diffuse an ineffable, until they are blatantly shoved into our face.
In some ways I'm glad because its only through a constant vigilance and resetting the public vigilance that these kind of things can be controlled to any degree. Its an entropic force, seeping into the system at all times, only kept at bay by the disdain of the populace and fear in the hearts of the ruling elites.
Its definitely not a Republicans only phenomenon, the list on both sides of the aisle is embarrassingly long. But due to how our political system is setup, and human psychology, little will change by voting. People are tribal, and only have two choices in the matter, both of which are usually power-seeking corrupted. The prisoner's dilemma is giving the US a life-sentence.
> but I also accept the reality that it is a more visible, and perhaps exaggerated, form of what has been ongoing forever
Thanks for sharing this. It's a deep insight for me. I did not understand how the same people that were deeply skeptical about the state, ended up being so quiet when the state's corruption became flagrant and blatant. But this line of thinking makes a lot of sense.
It sounds like equivocating nonsense to me. No one expects a society to be completely free of corruption, but there is a difference between at least putting up a veneer of working towards transparency, and unabashed pay to play corruption.
In fact, the corruption is what the voters want, to show that they prioritize their group (white, men, rural, rich, benefactors, whatever helps you identify with the “winner” etc) at the expense of others.
My impression of political partisans, whether Republican or Democrat, is this:
(1) They tend to focus on the flaws of the other side, which of course exist. This focus affects not only how they passively interpret news stories but also how they actively, selectively seek news about politics.
(2) They consider politics to be like a game, so it's mainly about winning, at all costs, even if you play dirty. And going back to (1), they rightly think that the other side also plays dirty.
I'm not saying that both sides are exactly the same. I'm just saying that there are some commonalities in their thinking that allow them to overlook political corruption in their own party.
Specifically regarding contemporary Republicans, there's a frequent and borderline insane obsession with certain subjects, for example, as demonstrated in these very comments, Fauci: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49258021 There are other previous examples, such as Benghazi.
“That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did
You deserved it.”
I think most of us who have lived through many presidents understood that there was a decency required of the holder of the office that acted as the only true limit on their corruption. It's confounding that so many people in the US can't see it for what it is.
A video has been going around pointing out one of the consequences of the Strait of Hormuz closure.
Over the past few years, China has quietly purchased more than a billion barrels of oil from Russia and Iran at a discount in CNY rather than USD, pushing it into newly created strategic stockpiles that would be necessary for closure of a different Strait. After putting a strategic foot on the neck of refined product exports, they are now functionally acting as the largest part of the world's crude reserves, smoothing demand so that the global price does not spike and crash the global economy & global trade. If China was to keep up its normal buying cycle over the past few months, we would have easily seen >$200 oil. Instead, oil is a third that, and it's not even the limiting factor - refinery output drops on diesel from Ukraine's Kinetic Sanctions campaign are having a more significant bottleneck on petrochemicals right now than Hormuz.
Say what you like about the motivation, this is a form of global leadership of the sort that America used to specialize in, and every drop of oil traded in CNY rather than "The Petrodollar" weakens the USD as the anchor currency.
The US political system is now so deeply divided along partisan lines that it's increasingly difficult to imagine what "an impeachable offense" would look like. Impeachment requires that many members of Congress are willing to go against a President of their own party, and that doesn't really happen any more, at least not at the scale needed for impeachment.
The founders seem to have imagined that Congress (as a whole) would have an adversarial relationship with the President. But they failed to foresee the levels of partisanship we have today which have resulted in ~half of Congress being very closely allied with the President.
When the US was less divided, things like ethics or morals or even just not openly breaking the law mattered a lot more. Now, people (at least, the people who vote the most) care more about "is my party in power", and either don't know about or disregard everything else. I include "don't know" because if all you listen to is Fox news and social networks feeding you ideas that you already agree with then you can easily be completely unaware of things like this.
(for some reason this attracted a downvote? Obviously Republicans are never going to impeach a Republican President? I cannot imagine why you would think they would?)
The Republicans still control Congress at least until the new Congress is seated in January. At which point the House may impeach Trump for one of many crimes. But it's unlikely the Senate will have enough votes to convict, even if Democrats also take it back.
Even if the front running fails, it's a cheap way to raise your profile with the president. I bet if you are paying $100k / month, your chances of the president taking your call go way up.
Why would anyone want to pay that much for something, unless it gives them some edge.
I don't know if it is still a thing, but in the world of penny stocks and crypto there used to be subscription pump and dump channels, where influencers would charge $x / month, and coordinate pumps. "Signal" channels, as they were named.
This can't be too different. If not even more straight forward insider stuff.
Either that, or it is just another way to bribe your way closer to Trump.
Business idea for Trump: Sell access to his Truth Social posts, but bake in some latency. Those that pay most, will get to see the posts first (via API). Then after X minutes of posting the posts will go live for everyone to see. How fast you want to see the post between publishing and public access, depends on how much you want to pay. The less latency, the more you need to pay.
I think you’re missing the point. The payment is for early access. The posts don’t go live for everyone else until after a delay.
This isn’t some penny stock group. It’s the president of the USA who has command of the largest army in the world and signals his intentions to make governmental moves with a large impact on the markets via these posts.
If I had to venture a guess (and full disclosure I’m not currently working in the space, and am not privy to conversations about actually buying this product), the 100k/m for whatever the contract duration is relatively low stakes to see if there’s utility in the data. Since there is no historical data the only real option is to buy, see if it makes a difference, and dump the product at the end of the contract if it doesn’t move the needle.
The seller is trying to push upfront sales by suggesting “These guys are doing it, and if you want to keep an edge you need to too”, (and journalists wanting to write about how corrupt this shit is are eagerly picking this up and boosting the signal by writing these sorts of articles).
In 5-6 months I suspect the consumer number to be down to 1-2 from the original batch, and those who are still paying will probably be doing so because the fact that the contract exists will probably slip through the cracks.
There is plenty of historical data, $100k is a steal for as long as situations like Iran persist. And now he is incentivised to ensure they do persist. Our fearless leader, ladies and gentlemen.
That is only if there’s a direct correlation to price movements starting after he opens his yap on Truth Social (which, within this administration there is plenty of insider trading so the movement may pre-date the social media post).
I suspect, having worked in this space for quite a while, that this specific data, faster, is useless and that there are other signals that indicate something is coming before it ends up on social media (esp TS).
Yes, there is historical data about prices moving after TS posts, but what I’m arguing is paying to get it ‘faster’ may not be worth anything if you can achieve that same end (knowing something is happening) through previously established channels.
Even if it doesn't give any edge in terms of using the data, just paying money into Trump in more ways (i.e. a quasi-legal bribe) is enough of a benefit that I doubt many will drop it.
This is a lot cheaper of a bribe than i.e. the gold plaque Tim Apple gave to Trump too.
The trading firms don’t really get anything from bribing Trump. That’s not to say hedge funds don’t want to tickle the big guy’s ego, but they don’t need “faster data” in most cases.
It’s less directly beneficial than most people think it will be.
Completely ignorant here, and I don't want to ask an AI (I don't trust them on these issues). Could you give me an example how you can make money with this information?
Again, question as someone who doens't live in the US so I am not used how you can profit from this. I guess it may be because a war may impact the market and you can invest (or the opposite) with this, but in my mind bombing Iran wouldn't move the market by much (the consequences would, but by then everyone is on the same page).
Iran controls the straight of Hormuz, which is a key shipping channel for the world. It being open or not has an impact on all businesses which have to ship through it, which is a lot of them. Therefore it impacts the entire economy. The entire stock market goes up or down based on signals about the status of the war.
> Completely ignorant here, and I don't want to ask an AI (I don't trust them on these issues). Could you give me an example how you can make money with this information?
Place a Kalshi bet on the outcome of something that a Truth Social post just settled?
I'm also not the most smart there but there's this market thing of "futures", where I can say I'll buy 10 barrels for 10$ next month, then I can sell the "10 barrels for 10$" to others, if I know offer will be lower due wars, one can buy now and sell once it's lower, if it's going to have higher availability(or expectation of so), then there's those future things.
Aren't all the Iran announcements/bombings on weekends while the peace deals are announced before the markets open again? Or is that too much of a meme?
Functionally I suppose it's the same thing, but are they paying for access to Truth Social, or early access to Trumps posts?
Are there anything else of "value" on Truth Social. I haven't signed up for Truth Social, but is there actually anything else going on, besides Trumps post. Would any company have any reason to be on the platform, if Trump wasn't?
They are paying for early access to Trump's posts.
The first post they received after this system was turned on, was Trump literally posting "GREEN CANDLES. BEAUTIFUL GREEN CANDLES!!!"
This is an informal stock market term for asset values having a good day (or good minute, for that matter), with stock movements measured on a "Candlestick chart". This is a... not an admission, but a brag, that this is in fact an insider trading service, and that people who follow this insider trading service are going to make a lot of money. This is Trump announcing that he has rigged the stock market and you need to buy in right this moment if you want to remain competitive.
I am cautiously optimistic about this in some ways? Historically, the one thing you do not do in America is touch the money. There's now a hundred trillion dollars of capital that have an incentive for the lights to go out in the White House and to turn back on with JD Vance in a different seat.
I mean there are a number of politicians on there, as well as a few million active users. Honestly though this all makes sense? Like why wouldn't X do the same thing, it seems like a no brainer. Certain people want the first access to information, and sites like these are where things are posted first. This seems like a logical product to sell if you own a large enough social media site
I remember someone getting into trouble for taking a trips in government vehicles. A time when scandal would cause people to stop being in politics...Seems quaint.
It is completely unimaginable in comparison to previous administrations. Pre-trump, even just pre-2025 Trump, this would read like a parody of corruption.
thats how capitalism implodes... its lives and breathes might makes right and the way to be mightier is to eat competitors and when you run out of competitors you use your might to change the rules. Corruption.
if everything is capitalism, then nothing is capitalism
"But one should not succumb to the illusion that with an analysis of the fundamentals of the capitalist mode of production that everything decisive has already been said about capitalist societies"
Michael Heinrich, Introduction to the three volumes of Capital
Capitalism prescribes a limited role of government, to protect the rights of private citizens and maintain an orderly environment that facilitates proper functioning of markets.
This isn’t capitalism, it’s pure unfettered and uncontrolled greed.
The degree to which his works have been dragged through the mud by a bunch of people who insist on calling everything they don't like "capitalism" can't be overstated. The majority of people complaining about capitalism don't even have a coherent definition of it, it's a disgrace.
Reducing everything to a few sets of variables that you can keep in your mind is quite reassuring. Ask me how I know. Do take the time to assimilate this sentence though:
"But one should not succumb to the illusion that with an analysis of the fundamentals of the capitalist mode of production that everything decisive has already been said about capitalist societies"
Michael Heinrich, Introduction to the three volumes of Capital
Sure. The bourgeoisie in search of more and more profit have nowhere left to go but ransack the heartland. Outward expansion has stalled at a wall called Iran.
And yet he gave us nothing in terms of what alternative economic would look like apart from a "a free association of workers" or something. Turns out it's a hard problem.
The signs of rampant insider trading in the US were there since congress allowed it indirectly with no-one caught, leading to this.
Where was the outrage when Pelosi and several members of congress were buying and selling stocks and front-running key legislation being passed that directly affected certain stocks in question? That sort of corruption was largely (and deliberately) ignored.
Now we have lead it to the point where corruption like this is allowed because no one was caught in the first place.
To quote what Pelosi said herself when asked about this conflict of interest: "We’re a free market economy, They (law makers) should be able to participate in that.” [0]
Essentially she has green-lighted said corruption, which she and others (except for AOC) have zero integrity even when both Trump and them are just as corrupt.
I pay a dollar here and there to promote my homepage so people will actually see it. I guess being a president really helps. I wish people would just pay a dollar to read my posts someday
I can't swings the stock market, but maybe I could change people's values...? That's too bad. It's a little sad to think my writing isn't even worth a dollar, haha.
Insider trading as a service. No one is going to take the US seriously for the next 50 years.
Or possibly ever again. Eras like this one can be what kills an empire/great power.
I think one of the greater risks to a power like the U.S. is getting old enough where it's felt like things always were, and therefore always will be. When there is no-longer a grandparent at the dinner table who can even tell you when his grandparent at the dinner table spoke about the before times.
Right, the fact that the current administration had a 4 year hiatus only extended this period. Think about all the young people that grew up with this as normal.
Reinforced by the Parnas', Lambert's, Kirk's and Loomer's on TikTok. Ready to vote in the next midterms. Thinking 9/11 was an inside job...
Sorry, as an outsider, I think it has been a clown show for much longer.
The whole Hunter corruption scandal in Ukraine + the laptop made it quite clear to me back then. And I can go on.
yep, they have a hard time grasping the fact that its been the same for the past 40-60 years
the only exception now is not the corrupt administration, but the one being the most inept and blatant at being corrupt as opposed to its predecessors
Great podcast on this: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0XqYCQT4PgD3axPy0w5Wcd He calls this category certainty.
> Eras like this one can be what kills an empire/great power.
Is there actually any good analogue for this era that caused a previous empire or great power to collapse?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empi...
> The Roman Empire lost the strengths that had allowed it to exercise effective control over its Western provinces; modern historians posit factors including the effectiveness and numbers of the army (check), the health and numbers of the Roman population (check), the strength of the economy (check), the competence of the emperors (check), the internal struggles for power (check), the religious changes of the period (check), and the efficiency of the civil administration (check). Increasing pressure from invading peoples outside Roman culture (check) also contributed greatly to the collapse. Climatic changes (check) and both endemic and epidemic diseases (check) drove many of these immediate factors.
The decline of the Roman Empire, depending on how you define it, played out over centuries, if not a millennium. It is such a bad analogy for the kind of within-our-lifetimes collapse that is being speculated about here that it undermines the original concern. The decline of Germany as the leading scientific powerhouse in the first half if the 20th century would be a better case study imho.
> The decline of the Roman Empire, depending on how you define it, played out over centuries, if not a millennium.
Sure, and before COVID-19 pandemics often took years/decades to spread around the globe. Agriculture took thousands of years to develop; iPhones were invented twenty years ago.
Things move faster in a world of eight billion people who can get anywhere on the planet in 24 hours.
Hence you can’t take the starting conditions from thousands of years ago and assume they will evolve in the same way now
Sure. It might be much worse and faster this time! People have nukes and machine guns!
Sure, but it's also likely that some (but not all) historians will put the peak of the American Empire in the 1960's somewhere, perhaps onat the moon landing. Declines often start out slow and are often indistinguishable from random noise until well after the fact, and there will be rises and falls after the peak.
it's also likely that some (but not all) historians will put the peak of the American Empire in the 1960's somewhere
Based on what metric?
> The decline of Germany as the leading scientific powerhouse in the first half if the 20th century
Go on? WW1 and its consequences?
The US isn't Rome, it's Constantinople. Rome was Europe, the 20th century was about the colonial appendage achieving supremacy over the former imperial centre.
If you want a lesson in what to avoid to maintain dominance, it's internal conflict, that's what wrecked the European empire.
Good luck with that. Trump and Co will dig in. When they fall, there will be blood.
This is not convincing. Many of these are debatable when you actually pull apart what is meant then and now. But there’s also a long list of things that are different about the Roman Empire and US (and the world) today.
> This is not convincing.
Yeah, we heard that about climate change, too.
We may be Cassandras, but that doesn't make us wrong.
You could look even earlier. There are a lot of similarities between Trump's style and Emperor Commodus's. And to paraphrase Cassius Dio, Commodus took an empire of gold and transformed it into one of iron and rust.
Every time I hear people praise the stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius I am reminded of the fact that he failed in his most important duty: To plan well for his succession.
The two worst Roman emperors ruled hundreds of years before the fall: Caligula from 37 to 41 CE, Nero from 54 to 68 CE.
Not many people could name, or recognize the name of, any emperor from the last hundred years of the Western Roman Empire.
So I don't think Rome is a good analogue for the suggestion that the Trump era is going to kill the USA.
Sure. We had Nixon.
Most collapses start slow, and I tend to doubt this one is finished.
There a quite popular narrative saying JFK's murder was a coup, and the US is still couped to this day (voting does not truly matter: the dark budget agencies make the policies anyway, those votes into office simple have to follow suit).
I expect things to actually get better by some measures for a little while as the U.S. liquidates its holdings of international political and socioeconomic influence. A sort of short-lived glut from voluntary cannibalization.
I think the whole “empire collapsing” is a bit of a dramatized phrasing, though historians can correct me. I think it’s much more death by a thousand cuts, and the UK is a great analogue in that regard. Look at Brexit, for example. Or Black Wednesday, from which the US’s esteemed Treasury Secretary profited handsomely.
The UK’s decline has taken centuries, though, and there are many events that one can point to. I think I agree with the grandparent’s comment about grandparents, about the arrogance of how things will continue to be a certain way.
> I think the whole “empire collapsing” is a bit of a dramatized phrasing, though historians can correct me. I think it’s much more death by a thousand cuts, and the UK is a great analogue in that regard.
Didn't the UK's empire notably collapse quite rapidly?
Last time we discussed US collapse I wrote about the Chinese empire: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49211339
I would also deploy Adam Smith's "there is a lot of ruin in a nation". The US can withstand a few bad years provided it corrects.
In most areas (drug enforcement, basic education, healthcare, gun culture...) nobody should have been taking the US seriously maybe since Reagan. Finance, science and war were the only areas you could count on the US but now they went full Roman on the rest of the world not even that anymore. War is the only thing that's left I think.
The US also arguably lost the Iran war. So far it can't claim any minor fraction of a victory, at least; seems to be the general consensus.
I like to read Bret Devereaux (from the frequently HN posted https://acoup.blog/) takes on this in his Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/bretdevereaux.bsky.social)
It doesn't win wars, but it provides the necessary equipment for carnage and stalemates all over the globe. Remember war is just a pretext, the objective is always profit, so as long as a lost war is very profitable it's a success in their books.
As long as the profits of weapons contractors go up, it's considered a win. Most senate members are well invested, so they agree...
If everyone has the same conclusion, how is it an argument? Nobody thinks the US won in Iran except the morons that started it. Maybe bigOil feels like its a win as their profits are soaring???
No, I mean - the US has arguably already lost. It (almost unanimously) has no sign of winning. But it could, maybe, still win in the future.
In short the argument is: can the US still win in any sense?
> nobody should have been taking the US seriously maybe since Reagan. Finance, science and war were the only areas you could count on the US
That was plenty of reasons to take the country seriously! Also, the US has been the most powerful cultural exporter for a very long time. It’s still the case, whenever anything becomes huge in the US we get our local version in each European countries. Our far right parties are parroting American right politics, even copying the terminology as is
Have you seen the state of AAA gaming and blockbusters lately? Even music is being utterly destroyed by the streaming platforms and record labels greed, so yeah it might have been in the 80s up until the 2010s, but enshitification got the best of the US I'm afraid so not even culture anymore. It's just decacence.
It's not all US, but as you said things start in the US and trickles down across the rest of the world, so that's also true for its decadence.
> War is the only thing that's left I think
I would have agreed until the Iran war, the US used up so much of the missile stock that even the army isn't fully intact anymore
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49257982
The US gained almost immeasurable power and influence by virtue of the 2 World Wars and being largely directly unaffected by those wars, whereas Europe was levelled, particularly by WW2. And that power came from selling weapons.
The world order was reset after 1945 and designed largely by the US for the benefit of the US, particularly the financial system. People will often mistake cause and effect. A common one is the petrodollar. The US dollar isn't strong because oil is traded in it. No. Oil is traded in the dollar because of demand fo the dollar. The world oil market could switch to Euros or RMB tomorrow and the net effect would be that people would hold USD and trade it for whatever currency as needed and convert any such currency immediately back to dollars.
But underpinning this has been the appearance of integrity in the US financial system and, in particular, the Federal Reserve and the SEC. That trust and that system is being rapidly destroyed for a few billion dollars in personal profit. All of this was enabled by an ideological Supreme Court who invented out of thin air the concept of presidential immunity to make the president a king in a country that rebelled against a monarchy.
We're living in times that will be written about in history books as the end of the post-1945 era, particularly with the Iran War. I, for one, called this the most disastrous US strategic defeat in the entire of US history and it's not even close back in April. And I stand by that.
There was a time when corrupt heads of state kept up appearances of not being corrupt. It was done in secret through layers of secrecy. That's gone now. The corruption is very much out in the open.
It's not to see this as anything other than China's rise to global prominence and the irony is they just had to do nothing while letting the US commit suicide.
I think that's been the most baffling thing about the rise of MAGA.
It was a global order built by the US to place the US in positions of power and privilege in every way imaginable.
And the MAGA group looked at it and said "we are being taken advantage of! We have to spend a rounding error worth of money on food aid and Voice of America?! I don't want soft power, I want rock hard power!!!"
They looked at a game with unfair rules that were written by them to benefit them and said "this is unfair.... to me!" Then went about dismantling nearly a century of work that unfairly stacked the deck in America's favor.
The US-Israel-Iran War is an interesting inflection point. They pulled out of every soft-power play, putting every chip in on hard-power military strength and now they are getting wrecked by cheap drones and Iran just being willing to stick it out and not fold. Venezuela will probably go down as the point in which they believed their world view was winning, no need for any diplomacy, just go in and abduct the president and take the oil. Iran showed them the limits of that kind of thinking, if they were more introspective they could learn from it.
The messed up part is that it's not even technically insider trading as long as they release the same information publicly shortly after... so they're not actually breaking any laws. So much of the way the US government has operated is based on some shared standard of moral sense that the current administration lacks completely.
> it's not even technically insider trading as long as they release the same information publicly shortly after... so they're not actually breaking any laws
No, that’s a canonical example of insider trading: acting on pre-release inside information before it’s made public; it doesn’t matter if it’s days, hours, or even minutes before it goes public.
People have been convicted for executing trades when they saw or handled earnings reports in-person hours before they’re released[1].
[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/employee-securities-fil...
> No one is going to take the US seriously for the next 50 years.
I hate this obvious pay-for-access thing as much as anyone, but this isn’t going to define the US for the next 50 years. The second the next president is in office every other country will adapt to working with them, just as been happening every 4-8 years.
The American population has demonstrated that they'll nominate an insane criminal to power at random. Twice! I think that's gonna stick longer than the Bush to Clinton style transitions.
I’m talking about the people with decision making power and the businesses working internationally. I have no doubt that certain individuals in other countries will be holding grudges against the United States for the rest of their lives long after the country has moved on, but it doesn’t really have any effect. If you’ve spent some time traveling the world every country has older generations who have some grudge against other countries for events that happened prior to most people being born and the younger generations don’t care. The world changes and most people move on.
They're also talking about decision makers. They're going to operate with the consideration that Americans might elect another mad man. Anything requiring more than one presidential term's time will be much more carefully hedged.
> I’m talking about the people with decision making power and the businesses working internationally.
As am I.
At a certain point, you get bitten enough times that you decide the angry cobra isn't a great pet. It may be really cool, sometimes! But sometimes it hurts you, a lot.
> If you’ve spent some time traveling the world every country has older generations who have some grudge against other countries for events that happened prior to most people being born and the younger generations don’t care.
Some end this way, sure.
For an alternative, see Gaza.
The people with power put this government in place. The point is that there might be no “moving on” from here, just a new normal.
> The second the next president is in office every other country will adapt to working with them, just as been happening every 4-8 years.
That may well be, with one big difference.
Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again.
> Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again.
How do you explain all of the people and countries who are currently trusting the US and their commitments?
This is always a strange belief to hold when the current evidence is so overwhelming against it. The rest of the world and the people making decisions know that this administration will come to an end. Something about each new headline convinced a small number of people that this one event is actually the end of the entire country for the next 50 years, against all visible evidence
> How do you explain all of the people and countries who are currently trusting the US and their commitments?
You've never seen a crime flick where the soon-to-be-murdered victim goes "I won't call the cops, I swear! Don't hurt me!"
Who's genuinely trusting US commitments right now? Our most stalwart allies sent troops to Greenland as a tripwire force! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Arctic_Endurance
If nobody was trusting the country, the economy would collapse.
The Greenland drama was dumb, but there is zero reason to think it’s a next 50 years thing. Is the force even still there, or are they gone? Nobody takes the Greenland thing seriously already, and 50 years have not passed.
Why?
I don't trust a wood chipper or angle grinder or fireworks on the Fourth of July, so I'm extra careful around them. Doesn't mean I don't use them.
> Is the force even still there…
Yep.
OK, so apparently the claim that "no one will ever trust the US or their commitments again" means that businesses and governments will still enter into all manner of trades and alliances and business arrangements with the US, but in their heart of hearts, they won't actually trust the US?
Think of it this way:
You loan a friend $5k. They promise to pay it back. They don't.
You may still hang out! But you may never loan them money again unless they give meaningful evidence they've changed.
The US probably has one concrete chance left to prosecute, convict, and jail these folks to rebuild trust. My vibe from the Democrats is that they'll whiff that opportunity.
> Doesn't mean I don't use them.
And the goalposts keep moving. You’re proving my point by admitting that you still use it.
Consider: I may also try and make/buy safer tools so I don't ever have to use them again at some point in the future. I may hire someone else (China!) to do the work.
A lack of trust does not mean an immediate cessation of use, but it does meaningfully change the relationship.
"I use x" is not evidence of "I trust x". Sometimes it's evidence of "I have no choice but to use x for now".
If insider trading is your concern then the country hasn't been serious for a long time, everyone in government does it and it's never punished even when exploited to the levels of 9 figures of assets.
Should just be legalized at this point so we can all take advantage if they're all gonna get away with it.
> Should just be legalized at this point so we can all take advantage if they're all gonna get away with it.
Is this satire?
I fear not, look at which website we are on.
> everyone in government does it and it's never punished even when exploited to the levels of 9 figures of assets.
Statements like this are worthless without examples. Surely you can provide some? Hard mode: Don't mention Pelosi or Clinton.
If a rival political party takes power in 2029 and they decide to do nothing about this, are they complicit?
If the cops drive past a mugging, observe, and then drive on past allowing the law to go unenforced, are they not just as corrupt as the robbers?
Was the Union army complicit in the crimes of the Confederacy by simply allowing them to drop their arms and walk away as well? The world is complicated and full of nuanced takes depending on context. That said:
>If a rival political party takes power in 2029 and they decide to do nothing about this, are they complicit?
Like this really does read as: I still blame the Democrats for the crimes of the Republicans.
The ultimate authority here is the US voters and they have chosen poorly again and again. They are complicit for sure as they chose both to empower Republicans and tie the hands of the Democrats with impossible standards.
> Was the Union army complicit in the crimes of the Confederacy by simply allowing them to drop their arms and walk away as well?
yes, they were. the USA if the Unionists has followed through on reconstruction looks like a utopia compared to now
We are still paying the price for that today, some of us a lot more than others. It was well-intentioned but with hindsight being what it is, historians pretty much agree that it was the cause of a lot of the problems we fight with today.
It’s funny you bring up Union vs Confederacy, because Reconstruction should be a blueprint of what not to do. We’re still paying today for the failures of our forefathers to not have the bravery to stamp out the worst cultural elements of the Confederacy, let alone the extended century-long suffering of formerly enslaved peoples in what ranged from “separate but equal” to outright apartheid.
So yes, it was very much the Union’s fault for not properly cutting the many heads of the hydra with great prejudice.
Edit: the Nuremberg trials are a fantastic blueprint for what to do, though. And that’s what was missing after the Civil War. The sentences handed out at Nuremberg aren’t necessarily relevant to the crimes committed by those in power today, but the cultural shift that materialized in Germany post-war is the type of cultural shift needed to counteract the damage of the current administration: against corruption, grift, and executive overreach.
Doesn't that still feel shortsighted? The way you speak, you cannot even imagine a world without a political landscape that is Republican vs Democrats. I think both parties have shown time and time again that they cannot be trusted steering the country.
Yes, that probably means that the US has to utterly break in its political system before it can get any better, considering that the current election process favours a two-party stalemate (or one party controlling everything)
Yes. That’s a great historical precedent — Reconstruction was a hotly debated topic and the more radical forms would have banned former Confederate soldiers for voting, for example. Many Southern states had military governors imposed by the Federal government.
Andrew Johnson pardoned almost all Confederate leaders, didn’t care about freeing slaves, and is one of the worst Presidents in history.
Yes
The Police in the US have no legal requirement to help you. They are perfectly allowed to sit and do nothing while a gun man kills kids in a school.
This is well established in law.
https://nypost.com/2013/01/27/city-says-cops-had-no-duty-to-...
Rival party is not equivalent to the cops.
Even if the rival party were to somehow control all 3 branches of government (which they will not), the voting records show a full 1/3 of American adults outright support this corruption (many of the cops themselves), and another 1/3 are willing to ignore it.
If you are in the 1/3 that does care about it, you are not going to have a good time trying to fight the other 1/3, many of whom make up the “law and order” department.
So the answer to both questions is a resounding no, because the world is more complicated than a comic book superhero movie.
This is such an amazing take because it is a constant in US politics. Like how in the world did you think it appropriate to pivot like this?
The standards for the Democrats are impossible perfection, regardless of the challenges.
The standards for the Republicans is...there are literally zero standards. Thieves, grifters, rapists, pedos, just the absolute worst human garbage imaginable, and somehow Americans convince themselves that if the Democrats don't (usually because they can't) do anything about it, clearly the Dems are the real problem, so it's time to vote Republicans. Just bizarre stuff.
I could give infinite examples where the slightest thing is a massive story about Democrat action or inaction, while every day is a new low in what the shit-pile that the modern Republican party gets away with. Benghazi is still constantly cited by the right, while Trump...Jesus Christ, every day is a thousand times worse. Astonishing levels of corruption and stupidity is just another Tuesday now.
It's amazing. Every framing somehow shifts like this.
> The standards for the Democrats are impossible perfection
No, the standard for Dems is "don't rock the boat". The Right moves things further to the right, the Dems don't let them go back to the left.
> The standards for the Democrats are impossible perfection
How do you figure? The previous Dem president literally promised, "nothing will fundamentally change" and that's exactly what happened.
We have a faux democracy / uniparty of capital interests where one "side" manufactures consent for the other.
rightwardRatchet++;
> How do you figure?
Biden was speaking to the people who ended up bankrolling Trump when threatened with slightly increased taxes, and who are going to dump billions into the midterms. When you're in a country that wavers around 50/50 every election (even when the choice is between competent government or a spectacularly incompetent shitshow of grifters, pedos and thieves), yes, there are limits to what you can realistically do in one election cycle.
In any case, it's actually hilarious that rhetoric like this "oh well actually the Dems are to blame because they haven't stopped them yet" is precisely why Republicans are gung ho in fighting against ranked choice ballots. A secret they've learned is to field some fringe bullshit candidates like Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr, Kanye, and so on, and they need the sort of idiots that vote for idiots like that to be throwing away their votes because "it's a uniparty of capital". Ranked choice ballots -- real democracy -- would threaten that.
https://www.adn.com/politics/2026/08/07/worlds-wealthiest-ma...
Trump has repeatedly claimed ranked choice ballots are "corrupt", and House Republicans have repeatedly tried to ban it. Do you want to know why? Protip - it's because they rely on incredibly stupid voters.
Is that why Dems elevated Trump originally from meme-tier gameshow host to serious contender with their pied piper "strategy"? The best they could do is be mad at wikileaks for making them look bad.
Or why they forced a widely unpopular Dem candidate instead of having an actual primary last time around (not that they've shown they can even run a fair primary)?
100%. Clearly you've nailed it, and you should vote for Trump's third term.
Let's be real here - when people do the "both parties are the same", usually citing some chickenshit bullshit like you just did, they're almost always a terrible person who just loves Trump but won't just admit it.
Just own it, man.
Way to address actual criticisms.
Also, it's a strawman of your creation to say both parties are the same. They're two different facades for the same underlying monetary interests. Sorry you're so easily fooled by that, but it shows that it works.
> Thieves, grifters, rapists, pedos, just the absolute worst human garbage imaginable.
I would urge you strongly not to let yourself be this consumed by this kind of thinking. This is a distorted view of your fellow man - however accurate _some_ of it may be about _some_ people - regardless of their political affiliation. This kind of thinking is exactly how we got to where we are now and persisting in it will almost certainly get us more extreme reactions.
that said, the Republican establishment has proven itself unworthy of the office and should be shown the door in the next election cycle - in decimating fashion. So much so that it should cause a complete recalibration of that party.
>This kind of thinking is exactly how we got to where we are now and persisting in it will almost certainly get us more extreme reactions.
It was seeing a black guy, and then possibly a woman, and then possibly a black woman get to the top that got us where we are now. The message is clear, don’t disrupt up our image of the hierarchy, or else we will support the worst of the worst, as long as they maintain the order.
Same in Poland, sadly. Conservatives or rather "conservatives" can get away with way more...
Curious: are there any republicans left on HN? I have no concept of how you can defend this
You're not going to get a real response. They're here. They literally just ignore it. It's too inconvenient of a truth. It's much easier to just point fingers at poor immigrants than to actually give a shit about the corruption of rich people.
> You're not going to get a real response. They're here. They literally just ignore it.
But that is the real response. All politicians do some things that you disagree with, so even if you hate some of their behavior, you can still end up supporting them if on balance their policy decisions are more aligned with your interests.
I see what you're saying, but ignoring something is withholding a response by definition.
Generally, I accept slight dissonance with politicians on matters of policy. I don't think it's okay to accept politicians blatantly breaking the law and sneering in the face of culpability.
That's true and what makes poltical topics frustrating and mostly pointless to discuss online.
There's very little incentive to engage with the topic in an intellectually honest way. Most would prefer to only contribute in a way that paints their team in a better light.
I guess that's why any political topics should be avoided on HN. Even with perfect moderation, one can't avoid the biases of individuals selecting when to or not to contribute to a discussion.
It's literally impossible to avoid politics on any forum. Everything is politics. Politicians create the laws that govern society. If you want to associate with other people in that society, you need to be able discuss those laws. There's no escaping it no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel, and attempting to moderate it out of existence is an exercise in futility.
How on Earth do you imagine that a forum like this would discuss things like AI regulation without discussing politics? Beyond just regulation, there's inflation, tariffs, copyright, immigration... All of these things affect tech workers every day. A forum without politics is an absurd fantasy.
If most were being honest, they would probably admit that the corrupt behavior like this is bad, but that the overall balance of good vs bad policy decisions still favor having Republicans in power vs Democrats.
I doubt there are many dyed-in-the-wool Republicans as such, but I'll bet there are many who still identify strongly enough with the old-school Republican messaging around rugged individualism and supply-side economics that they view the median Democrat as actively destructive by comparison to the merely flawed median Republican.
I'm far from being one of those myself, but I imagine the argument would be that any regulation one could propose to address this is bound to be worse than the problem itself, in terms of chilling effects on legitimate speech and commercial activity.
Why shouldn't there be? Depending on the poll you look at, republicans are polling around 40%: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/state-of-the-union/ge...
Not a Republican by any stretch of any imagination, but here’s my attempt at a steelman argument:
I imagine these companies were already spending some amount on crawlers that would poll every N milliseconds to get an edge on some market-moving post. In turn I imagine Truth Social were also spending more serving this bot traffic.
Truth Social making $1M a month from it — a rounding error in Trump’s fortunes — doesn’t seem like a world-ending catastrophe.
Trump has done many bad things to erode trust in our institutions and government. When compared to him trying to overturn the results of an election, this too seems like a rounding error.
Not a Republican, but I support this behavior because I can't wait for more talent to leave the US
(not a repub) I don't defend it, its outright fraud, but I also accept the reality that it is a more visible, and perhaps exaggerated, form of what has been ongoing forever.
Those who seek power seek it to: 1. Enrich themselves and their family 2. Wield it to achieve their means
The "pay to play" is rife everywhere. The contractors who get a sweet deal from local / fed government, the competition is stifled. The senators who make 10's of millions on insider information. The imminent domain cases where property is seized so corporation / donor can make millions. The "futures market" where insiders use their knowledge of product release date to swindle money for ordinary folks. The crypto scams, lotteries, casinos, street vendors, telemarketers, info-mercials, self-help gurus, snake oil sales, lemon peddlers, and more.
The truth is that the human system has not deviated far from the imposed hierarchy of feudalism / monarchy, we have only become better at concealing it, making it more potent in some ways. Power, corruption, opportunism, and greed are part of our nature. In an extremely large population with a democratic veneer, the levers of power become diffuse an ineffable, until they are blatantly shoved into our face.
In some ways I'm glad because its only through a constant vigilance and resetting the public vigilance that these kind of things can be controlled to any degree. Its an entropic force, seeping into the system at all times, only kept at bay by the disdain of the populace and fear in the hearts of the ruling elites.
Its definitely not a Republicans only phenomenon, the list on both sides of the aisle is embarrassingly long. But due to how our political system is setup, and human psychology, little will change by voting. People are tribal, and only have two choices in the matter, both of which are usually power-seeking corrupted. The prisoner's dilemma is giving the US a life-sentence.
> but I also accept the reality that it is a more visible, and perhaps exaggerated, form of what has been ongoing forever
Thanks for sharing this. It's a deep insight for me. I did not understand how the same people that were deeply skeptical about the state, ended up being so quiet when the state's corruption became flagrant and blatant. But this line of thinking makes a lot of sense.
It sounds like equivocating nonsense to me. No one expects a society to be completely free of corruption, but there is a difference between at least putting up a veneer of working towards transparency, and unabashed pay to play corruption.
In fact, the corruption is what the voters want, to show that they prioritize their group (white, men, rural, rich, benefactors, whatever helps you identify with the “winner” etc) at the expense of others.
Nice writing man.
What will you vote in the midterms?
My impression of political partisans, whether Republican or Democrat, is this:
(1) They tend to focus on the flaws of the other side, which of course exist. This focus affects not only how they passively interpret news stories but also how they actively, selectively seek news about politics.
(2) They consider politics to be like a game, so it's mainly about winning, at all costs, even if you play dirty. And going back to (1), they rightly think that the other side also plays dirty.
I'm not saying that both sides are exactly the same. I'm just saying that there are some commonalities in their thinking that allow them to overlook political corruption in their own party.
Specifically regarding contemporary Republicans, there's a frequent and borderline insane obsession with certain subjects, for example, as demonstrated in these very comments, Fauci: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49258021 There are other previous examples, such as Benghazi.
Were you similarly upset when Trump was only on Twitter and Twitter had an API?
The API was free then
How are you even pretending this a real argument? What is the implied slam dunk here?
i suspect that, much like the rest of the world, HN has had a sharp increase in people who "don't do politics"
In my experience only people from the US are afraid to exercise their freedom of speech when conversing with friends, family and colleagues.
https://www.daynaemcraig.com/narcissistsprayer/
“That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did You deserved it.”
Borderline direct quote from Fauci during the trials these past weeks lol
No one is talking about Fauci here. This kind of whataboutism is frankly disgusting.
When I first heard saw headlines about this I thought it was so outlandish that it couldn’t possibly be real. Yet here we are.
It’s amazing how much corruption is occurring for so little money. A million dollars a month is peanuts for such clear graft.
I think most of us who have lived through many presidents understood that there was a decency required of the holder of the office that acted as the only true limit on their corruption. It's confounding that so many people in the US can't see it for what it is.
Official "insider-knowledge-as-a-service". No surprise who the first clients are.
Why is this not being stopped by us jurisdiction? Or at least why does the rest of the world does not decouple from those markets?
A video has been going around pointing out one of the consequences of the Strait of Hormuz closure.
Over the past few years, China has quietly purchased more than a billion barrels of oil from Russia and Iran at a discount in CNY rather than USD, pushing it into newly created strategic stockpiles that would be necessary for closure of a different Strait. After putting a strategic foot on the neck of refined product exports, they are now functionally acting as the largest part of the world's crude reserves, smoothing demand so that the global price does not spike and crash the global economy & global trade. If China was to keep up its normal buying cycle over the past few months, we would have easily seen >$200 oil. Instead, oil is a third that, and it's not even the limiting factor - refinery output drops on diesel from Ukraine's Kinetic Sanctions campaign are having a more significant bottleneck on petrochemicals right now than Hormuz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkA0bkb6ZO0
Say what you like about the motivation, this is a form of global leadership of the sort that America used to specialize in, and every drop of oil traded in CNY rather than "The Petrodollar" weakens the USD as the anchor currency.
Hint: You will never see the folks enforcing action against this platform and the folks using and posting on the platform in the same room.
The answer is simple: the US is corrupt.
They are decoupling, it's just if you just do it quietly.
I'm surprised this isn't an impeachable offence.
The US political system is now so deeply divided along partisan lines that it's increasingly difficult to imagine what "an impeachable offense" would look like. Impeachment requires that many members of Congress are willing to go against a President of their own party, and that doesn't really happen any more, at least not at the scale needed for impeachment.
The founders seem to have imagined that Congress (as a whole) would have an adversarial relationship with the President. But they failed to foresee the levels of partisanship we have today which have resulted in ~half of Congress being very closely allied with the President.
When the US was less divided, things like ethics or morals or even just not openly breaking the law mattered a lot more. Now, people (at least, the people who vote the most) care more about "is my party in power", and either don't know about or disregard everything else. I include "don't know" because if all you listen to is Fox news and social networks feeding you ideas that you already agree with then you can easily be completely unaware of things like this.
Republicans don't even try to put on an appearance of lawfulness anymore. Their supporters revel in the criminality. They worship it.
Impeachment requires a Democrat majority.
(for some reason this attracted a downvote? Obviously Republicans are never going to impeach a Republican President? I cannot imagine why you would think they would?)
not like that impacts anything anymore, apparently.
It is.
The US is over.
I remember when we gave a shit about "emoluments."
The Republicans still control Congress at least until the new Congress is seated in January. At which point the House may impeach Trump for one of many crimes. But it's unlikely the Senate will have enough votes to convict, even if Democrats also take it back.
Everyone involved should have their ankles broken so we can know them by their walk.
Now that this has proven successful and without recourse, I fully expect Musk to do the same for his tweets on Twitter.
It's not even that much money for the reputational damage. Wild.
Reputational damage has not been relevant in US politics for a decade. It simply is not a thing anymore
What reputation?
Yes because Truth Social and its owner/head troll both had a stellar reputation to begin with.
$100k seems cheap for the potential front running
Even if the front running fails, it's a cheap way to raise your profile with the president. I bet if you are paying $100k / month, your chances of the president taking your call go way up.
The amount of money you can make with this only depends on how much money you already have.
we've reached the "yes, we're cheating, do something about it" stage of corruption
Why would anyone want to pay that much for something, unless it gives them some edge.
I don't know if it is still a thing, but in the world of penny stocks and crypto there used to be subscription pump and dump channels, where influencers would charge $x / month, and coordinate pumps. "Signal" channels, as they were named.
This can't be too different. If not even more straight forward insider stuff.
Either that, or it is just another way to bribe your way closer to Trump.
Business idea for Trump: Sell access to his Truth Social posts, but bake in some latency. Those that pay most, will get to see the posts first (via API). Then after X minutes of posting the posts will go live for everyone to see. How fast you want to see the post between publishing and public access, depends on how much you want to pay. The less latency, the more you need to pay.
On paper, this is just standard enterprise API access most social media services offer. Isn't it?
I think you’re missing the point. The payment is for early access. The posts don’t go live for everyone else until after a delay.
This isn’t some penny stock group. It’s the president of the USA who has command of the largest army in the world and signals his intentions to make governmental moves with a large impact on the markets via these posts.
If I had to venture a guess (and full disclosure I’m not currently working in the space, and am not privy to conversations about actually buying this product), the 100k/m for whatever the contract duration is relatively low stakes to see if there’s utility in the data. Since there is no historical data the only real option is to buy, see if it makes a difference, and dump the product at the end of the contract if it doesn’t move the needle.
The seller is trying to push upfront sales by suggesting “These guys are doing it, and if you want to keep an edge you need to too”, (and journalists wanting to write about how corrupt this shit is are eagerly picking this up and boosting the signal by writing these sorts of articles).
In 5-6 months I suspect the consumer number to be down to 1-2 from the original batch, and those who are still paying will probably be doing so because the fact that the contract exists will probably slip through the cracks.
There is plenty of historical data, $100k is a steal for as long as situations like Iran persist. And now he is incentivised to ensure they do persist. Our fearless leader, ladies and gentlemen.
That is only if there’s a direct correlation to price movements starting after he opens his yap on Truth Social (which, within this administration there is plenty of insider trading so the movement may pre-date the social media post).
I suspect, having worked in this space for quite a while, that this specific data, faster, is useless and that there are other signals that indicate something is coming before it ends up on social media (esp TS).
Yes, there is historical data about prices moving after TS posts, but what I’m arguing is paying to get it ‘faster’ may not be worth anything if you can achieve that same end (knowing something is happening) through previously established channels.
> $100k is a steal
Literally
Even if it doesn't give any edge in terms of using the data, just paying money into Trump in more ways (i.e. a quasi-legal bribe) is enough of a benefit that I doubt many will drop it.
This is a lot cheaper of a bribe than i.e. the gold plaque Tim Apple gave to Trump too.
The trading firms don’t really get anything from bribing Trump. That’s not to say hedge funds don’t want to tickle the big guy’s ego, but they don’t need “faster data” in most cases.
It’s less directly beneficial than most people think it will be.
That thing probably only cost like $50K, so more than that.
I’m sure you could make a ton of money on oil if you had a 30 minute heads up about whether Trump was going to bomb Iran or not on any given day.
Completely ignorant here, and I don't want to ask an AI (I don't trust them on these issues). Could you give me an example how you can make money with this information?
Again, question as someone who doens't live in the US so I am not used how you can profit from this. I guess it may be because a war may impact the market and you can invest (or the opposite) with this, but in my mind bombing Iran wouldn't move the market by much (the consequences would, but by then everyone is on the same page).
Thank you!
Iran controls the straight of Hormuz, which is a key shipping channel for the world. It being open or not has an impact on all businesses which have to ship through it, which is a lot of them. Therefore it impacts the entire economy. The entire stock market goes up or down based on signals about the status of the war.
> Completely ignorant here, and I don't want to ask an AI (I don't trust them on these issues). Could you give me an example how you can make money with this information?
Place a Kalshi bet on the outcome of something that a Truth Social post just settled?
Short a company he's about to bash?
I'm also not the most smart there but there's this market thing of "futures", where I can say I'll buy 10 barrels for 10$ next month, then I can sell the "10 barrels for 10$" to others, if I know offer will be lower due wars, one can buy now and sell once it's lower, if it's going to have higher availability(or expectation of so), then there's those future things.
The answer is so obvious that you should try to figure it out by yourself as an exercise to avoid cognitive decline in the age of AI. Seriously.
Trump bombs Iran -> oil price goes up. You buy oil futures before the bombing and get the price difference paid out.
Aren't all the Iran announcements/bombings on weekends while the peace deals are announced before the markets open again? Or is that too much of a meme?
A 1 second head start is good enough.
Trumps posts and actions have orders of magnitude more impact than random influencers with userbase of 5k
Functionally I suppose it's the same thing, but are they paying for access to Truth Social, or early access to Trumps posts?
Are there anything else of "value" on Truth Social. I haven't signed up for Truth Social, but is there actually anything else going on, besides Trumps post. Would any company have any reason to be on the platform, if Trump wasn't?
They are paying for early access to Trump's posts.
The first post they received after this system was turned on, was Trump literally posting "GREEN CANDLES. BEAUTIFUL GREEN CANDLES!!!"
This is an informal stock market term for asset values having a good day (or good minute, for that matter), with stock movements measured on a "Candlestick chart". This is a... not an admission, but a brag, that this is in fact an insider trading service, and that people who follow this insider trading service are going to make a lot of money. This is Trump announcing that he has rigged the stock market and you need to buy in right this moment if you want to remain competitive.
I am cautiously optimistic about this in some ways? Historically, the one thing you do not do in America is touch the money. There's now a hundred trillion dollars of capital that have an incentive for the lights to go out in the White House and to turn back on with JD Vance in a different seat.
I mean there are a number of politicians on there, as well as a few million active users. Honestly though this all makes sense? Like why wouldn't X do the same thing, it seems like a no brainer. Certain people want the first access to information, and sites like these are where things are posted first. This seems like a logical product to sell if you own a large enough social media site
Corruption.
A bribe.
Even before this insiders had access to the prez. I am glad this presidency is making very apparent the inherent flaws with the US government.
A teleprompter operator was making bets on what the president would say..
And thats just one that got called out. Grift is kind of the new normal sadly.
https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/07/trump-teleprompter-a...
I remember someone getting into trouble for taking a trips in government vehicles. A time when scandal would cause people to stop being in politics...Seems quaint.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-06-23-mn-2062-s...
What is your point exactly?
The most corrupt US administration in history and it isn't even close.
It is completely unimaginable in comparison to previous administrations. Pre-trump, even just pre-2025 Trump, this would read like a parody of corruption.
Who knows? Maybe we'll see a new 'worst in history' every year from now on
It's possible. The ultra-wealthy now have a blue print to follow.
And the least corrupt US administration from now on.
Capitalism implodes on itself, just as predicted..
This isn't capitalism, it's pure corruption.
thats how capitalism implodes... its lives and breathes might makes right and the way to be mightier is to eat competitors and when you run out of competitors you use your might to change the rules. Corruption.
if everything is capitalism, then nothing is capitalism
"But one should not succumb to the illusion that with an analysis of the fundamentals of the capitalist mode of production that everything decisive has already been said about capitalist societies"
Michael Heinrich, Introduction to the three volumes of Capital
Capitalism prescribes a limited role of government, to protect the rights of private citizens and maintain an orderly environment that facilitates proper functioning of markets.
This isn’t capitalism, it’s pure unfettered and uncontrolled greed.
"that wasn't real capitalism" hmm, where have I heard that before?
I don't think anyone would have predicted that Karl Marx would ever end up being as vindicated as he turned out to be.
The degree to which his works have been dragged through the mud by a bunch of people who insist on calling everything they don't like "capitalism" can't be overstated. The majority of people complaining about capitalism don't even have a coherent definition of it, it's a disgrace.
Balanced out by a group of people who call everything they don't like "socialism". It's a very poor discourse environment.
Reducing everything to a few sets of variables that you can keep in your mind is quite reassuring. Ask me how I know. Do take the time to assimilate this sentence though:
"But one should not succumb to the illusion that with an analysis of the fundamentals of the capitalist mode of production that everything decisive has already been said about capitalist societies"
Michael Heinrich, Introduction to the three volumes of Capital
Can you break down the participants in this story in Marxist terms?
Sure. The bourgeoisie in search of more and more profit have nowhere left to go but ransack the heartland. Outward expansion has stalled at a wall called Iran.
That sentence is extremely unspecific to anything capitalistic. Were it not for the word "bourgeoisie", it could apply to the Mongols for all I know.
huh?
Read Marx, he predicted so many things that would happen during the late stage capitalism phase.
And yet he gave us nothing in terms of what alternative economic would look like apart from a "a free association of workers" or something. Turns out it's a hard problem.
Marx couldn't probably come up with a solution in the 19th century. That was far too early. Luckily Deng appeared with the solution.
Too bad he couldn't predict what would happen in late-stage socialism (mass starvation and inequality)
>late stage capitalism
That period is defined as starting about 100 years ago, after WW1. 100 years later the "late stage" capitalism outlived communism in USSR and China.
Except most marxists.
> The group is expanding into areas including cryptocurrency holdings and clean-energy investments.
Wait, what? Clean energy investments, from the Trump admin? Sounds like a protection racket.
The signs of rampant insider trading in the US were there since congress allowed it indirectly with no-one caught, leading to this.
Where was the outrage when Pelosi and several members of congress were buying and selling stocks and front-running key legislation being passed that directly affected certain stocks in question? That sort of corruption was largely (and deliberately) ignored.
Now we have lead it to the point where corruption like this is allowed because no one was caught in the first place.
To quote what Pelosi said herself when asked about this conflict of interest: "We’re a free market economy, They (law makers) should be able to participate in that.” [0]
Essentially she has green-lighted said corruption, which she and others (except for AOC) have zero integrity even when both Trump and them are just as corrupt.
[0 ]https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/16/nancy-pelosi-federal-lawmake...
I pay a dollar here and there to promote my homepage so people will actually see it. I guess being a president really helps. I wish people would just pay a dollar to read my posts someday
If your posts induce wild swings in the stock market i'll pay a dollar to read them a minute early.
I can't swings the stock market, but maybe I could change people's values...? That's too bad. It's a little sad to think my writing isn't even worth a dollar, haha.
Then improve it :)