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Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts

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Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts

#711

Post by intended »

WalterBright wrote: post #424
stevenwoo wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That figure does not include outside supporters spending campaigns. It's disingenuous to not include dark money spending. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/final-price-t... It's closer to 1.8 billion for Harris supporters versus 1.4 billion for Trump supporters in 2024. That also does not include various media outlets bought in the past decades, including One America News/Fox/Sinclair sandbagging for Tru…

FOX is indeed all in for Trump. But on the other side of the ledger, there is the media that was all in for Biden - NPR, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, NYT, etc., during the same time period.

Oh heck no! This is the error in comparison that is allowing an unfair competition between the left + center vs the Right wing information economies.

The whole point of journalism and freedom of speech was to create a market place of ideas that allows for competition between ideas.

The right side of the information sphere insulates its viewers from the left and center. They do not get punished by their own for platforming inaccurate or fringe theories. Instead they compete on getting the more viral narrative platformed, while voices that counter the inaccuracies do not get platformed.

They are a demagoguery machine. The political party and news media are the same entity.

The left and center are largely stuck with the ideas of being relatively true to facts, getting punished by members for getting things wrong.

There are people on the left which are trying to recreate the success of the fringe right, which has become the core base on the right.

They are starting a decades long process, that began around watergate.

Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts

#712

Post by FranzFerdiNaN »

EasyMark wrote: post #666
ethbr1 wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those unaware of ~1900 US political history and how the spoils system was dismantled through political will: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_reform_in_the_...

hopefully this time around it will go a little quicker, aka one term. project 2025 specifically pointed out all "disloyal" government employees should be kicked out and only those who bent a knee to trump should replace them, whatever their actual merit and ability to occupy the position

The goal is to make sure the Republicans never lose another election ever again, no matter how. So yeah no it won’t last only one term.

Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts

#713

Post by insane_dreamer »

handoflixue wrote: post #378
sega_sai wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also interesting, that many people here somehow have no issues with trump cancelling federal contracts with Harvard, prohibiting student visas for harvard, firing entire sections of NSF, NIH, NOAA, but when it comes to contracts with spacex, they react.

There's plenty of threads about all of those issues here on Hacker News - why do you think the people reacting to SpaceX didn't also react to the rest?

Nearly all of them were flagged (at least initially).

Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts

#714

Post by insane_dreamer »

absurdo wrote: post #648
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #42

It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form. Government contracts should not be based on whether or not the president likes the CEO, and the CEO says enough good things about the president. If you can cancel contacts not based on merit, then it shoul…

> This is literally the path that led the USSR to ruin. Or China to current-day prosperity. It’s hard to admit but it’s a double edged sword and there are winners and losers. Choose your poison wisely.

Incorrect. It was liberalization (to some extent) of the otherwise heavily centralized economy that led China to its present day prosperity.

Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts

#715

Post by insane_dreamer »

rchaud wrote: post #156
yongjik wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the positive side, Trump is so unstable that he'll trash your business one day and then the next day he'll reverse course. So, "if people kiss your ass enough, they get contract" does not seem to be a long-term viable strategy. (Exhibit A: Musk.) I'm 90% sure it will lead to America's ruin, but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin. Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/

> but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin. The end of the Soviet Union as a political and geographic entity was not its ruin. What ruined it and opened the door for a strongman ruler was: a) an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a unifying vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't respected by its business elite or by foreign leaders b) the 'free market liberalization' reform…

You’re not wrong but those all happened _after_ the fall of the USSR. They weren’t the cause of its fall they were the cause of post-USSR Russia becoming an oligarchy.

Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts

#716

Post by wltr »

afroboy wrote: post #657
mellow-lake-day wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine is fighting a Russian invasion. And republicans are pressuring Ukraine to give up. How is that a proxy war?

But numbers don't lie, USA still sending billions of weapons to Ukraine even with the Trump shenanigans.

As if they weren’t selling the weapons.

Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts

#717

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

solumunus wrote: post #699
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strengthening third parties can also increase extremism though. Consider parties such as Reform in the UK or AfD in Germany. I think what you want is electoral rules which tend to select for consensus-makers. Approval voting would be an example.

FPTP is what makes Reform so dangerous though. They have a real chance of having a lot of power. In a proportional representation system where parties have to share power in coalitions these extreme parties actually have to be involved in government, at which point they’re exposed as completely incompetent. See the Netherlands right now for example. I would rather have these extreme positions represented, because the…

I think FPTP ends up working out a lot different in the parliamentary context. The US only has 2 parties in Congress, despite FPTP.

In terms of strength of 3rd parties, I'd say they are generally quite weak in the US system, somewhat stronger in a proportional representation parliamentary system, and potentially overpowered in a FPTP parliament like in the UK.

Historically I believe the 2-party system in the US was pretty good at tamping down on extremism, but recently the 2 major parties have acquired too many extremists.

Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts

#718

Post by 4gotunameagain »

mousethatroared wrote: post #670
4gotunameagain wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahaha I'm pretty sure he meant that it was Greece and not Italy that invented everything first.

Ah, I thought he was referring to the clowns they have in Athens. But, no. The Greeks didn't create Western Civilization because the only non-awkward definition of Western Civilization is that scion of the Roman Church. Surely the cultural exchange with Greeks contributed to this. Greece was always eastern facing as far back as before Alexander. It is only with the Cold War that they glanced West. Aside for Magna Gre…

I don't know why you are angry at history and frankly I don't care, but you should read a bit more. Even the Roman pantheon was practically a copy of the Greek one, Greek was the language of science and philosophy, the first people to study mathematics in the west and so on and so forth.

All the great Romans revered Greece and Greek.

Anyway I don't know why I'm explaining history to some random angry kid online, have a nice day

Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts

#719

Post by Propelloni »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #694
Propelloni wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They missed that liberty and freedom is not a god-given right, but hard-earned privilege. They missed that liberty is not a personal property but a shared practice of pluralism. They missed that liberty is not absolute, but requires compromise and limitations so that we all can be free. To be fair, those are not things that are taught in school. If they come up at all it is in some historical context, a battle someon…

>Modern, ie. post-WW2, "fighting democracies" have built-in safeguards to oppose internal enemies of democracy, but if they are effective remains to be seen. Eh, "internal enemies of democracy" is way too vague. E.g. Trump supporters claim that "unelected bureaucrats" in the "deep state" are enemies of democracy. Anyone can call anyone an "enemy of democracy".

Those fighting democracies are very specific about what is and what is not irreconcilable. For example, in Germany you can murder the president--that's just homicide--but you cannot abolish the protection of minorities. That's a violation of the constitution. Germany's far-right party Alternative für Deutschland has been under suspicion of violating a few of those provisions for quite some time now.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (aka. Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) completed a report a few weeks ago but is required by law to withhold it from the public due to due process. Of course it leaked, you can read the report here [1] (it's in German, obviously).

Now there is a discussion ongoing, if the Alternative für Deutschland has to been dissolved. That's a fighting democracy at work, following the rule of law.

[1] https://assets.cicero.de/2025-05/Geheimgutachten_Teil%20A.pd...

Re: Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts

#720

Post by crossroadsguy »

__s wrote: post #605
unaindz wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's trump's social media?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_Social came out of him being banned by twitter a few years ago

I have never seen the inside of it. But to be honest the home page looks clean. How's the interface, in case you have ventured in? Is it clean and simple?
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