Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

scottsantens.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 89 posts

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#31

Post by jampekka »

ajross wrote: post #12
resters wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

indeed! HN has gone way to the authoritarian right. Not just socially but also a lot of HN readers favor economically authoritarian policies like tariffs!

My guess is the tariff thing is just a fad and no one actually wants a trade war. It's something Trump personally thinks is a good idea, and that sounds good in a stump speech. But all the folks advising him, including the ones from our own subculture (Musk, Ackman, Sacks) know better. I'm choosing this moment to try to be optimistic: if Trumps turns over the reins of government to a bunch of technocrats... it's not…

A major reason for the tariff thing is that free trade has a lot of losers, and those were left out to dry, and even ridiculed.

Another reason is that being economically dependent on foreign countries can be quite risky. E.g. if China gets economically independent from the west but the west is still dependent on China, China will have immense power over the west.

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#32

Post by niam »

veidelis wrote: post #5

The article mentions "immigration due to climate" - could someone give an examples of such occurrences?

Some easy US examples would be the literally destroyed homes from wildfires and floods.

Updated insurance rates are pricing people out of neighborhoods after a history of underpricing insurance.

Surrounding less-risky areas receive surges in prices after disasters that prompt buying/selling. Sometimes landlords sell property and pull the rug from underneath renters, further displacing people.

Adding to costs: FEMA's "50% Rule" requires that it's not enough to simply repair damaged homes in flood zones--you're mandated to tear down the home and rebuild to modern standards at raised elevation if the damage exceeds 50% of the home's value. Some people ignore this and rebuild anyways.

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#33

Post by Animats »

> A big, strong, middle class is reassuring.

That's what's disappeared - a strong middle class. Not what the WSJ calls the middle class - they mean people with enough money to invest - but what was called the middle class through the 1970s. People who had a secure job, and could afford a house, a car, a family, and a retirement. Those people had a stake in maintaining the status quo.

What we have now is called "the precariat", from "precarious" and "proletariat". There's a job, but you could lose it at any time. You can't afford a house. You can't afford to save for retirement. Just paying the bills is tough. This is the new American normal.

A friend in banking who has access to retail numbers points out that, for most customers, the account balance after they pay rent is at most a few hundred dollars.

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#34

Post by tzs »

honkycat wrote: post #13
resters wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

indeed! HN has gone way to the authoritarian right. Not just socially but also a lot of HN readers favor economically authoritarian policies like tariffs!

I realized HN was lost during a thread about having to provide identification to access adult websites. There we SO many voices in favor. I was shocked. Hackers historically cared a TON about their privacy, yet they were willing to throw it away for the sake of "the children." Ignoring that there is a huge suite of tools that would allow you to protect children WITHOUT having to register with the government and be tr…

Age verification that protects privacy can be done using clever cryptographic techniques.

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#35

Post by tim333 »

skhunted wrote: post #16
brightball wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any examples? Most of the voices I saw were people who wanted to the government to leave them alone.

Almost no one really wants government to leave them alone. Everyone looks to government after a disaster. People rely on government for policing and most people for providing their children education. People rely on government to ensure the food supply is safe. These things are largely forgotten about by the people saying they want less government. There are contradictory views held by the people who say they want go…

A lot of people would like quite limited government that does the basics but otherwise leaves them alone.

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#36

Post by mmooss »

veidelis wrote: post #5

The article mentions "immigration due to climate" - could someone give an examples of such occurrences?

In addition to the other responses ... it's long been predicted and isn't hard to grasp:

Global warming changes many local climates. What was wet is dry, cold is warm, etc.

For 10,000 years, humans have invested in the current locations of productive farmland. They build infrastructure, economies, societies, and grew populations to what the farmland could support.

Now that farmland can't produce as much, so people start becoming poor and starving. They aren't going to sit there and starve and become impovrished; they will move to where there is food and income.

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#37

Post by jampekka »

mmooss wrote: post #26
skhunted wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the perspective of wanting less waste and less pollution tariffs are a good thing.

Why do you say that? Without tariffs, the most efficient producer makes the good or service. With them, someone less efficient may make them. Efficiency includes, but isn't only, waste and pollution.

Efficiency includes also e.g. child and slave labor.

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#38

Post by ajross »

jampekka wrote: post #31
ajross wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is the tariff thing is just a fad and no one actually wants a trade war. It's something Trump personally thinks is a good idea, and that sounds good in a stump speech. But all the folks advising him, including the ones from our own subculture (Musk, Ackman, Sacks) know better. I'm choosing this moment to try to be optimistic: if Trumps turns over the reins of government to a bunch of technocrats... it's not…

A major reason for the tariff thing is that free trade has a lot of losers, and those were left out to dry, and even ridiculed. Another reason is that being economically dependent on foreign countries can be quite risky. E.g. if China gets economically independent from the west but the west is still dependent on China, China will have immense power over the west.

Yeah, I get the arguments. They're just wrong. I'm not aware of a single time in history where a trade war worked to the advantage of the instigator. If you really want this, for the reasons you say, it's because we're already losing and cutting us off from the "enemy" just accelerates the loss.

Trade makes everyone richer, and the cost is that some of the people you don't want to be rich get rich. But willfully choosing to be poor doesn't fix that.

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#39

Post by _zagj »

Because progressives refuse to make any concessions, even reasonable ones. The border is perhaps the best example. They won't simply concede to having a secure border, with or without comprehensive immigration reform (i.e., amnesty). Meanwhile, the American people see stuff like this, and rightly get angered: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7TNP2OTY2g

These are people flying commercial from another continent, and coming from a country, China, that is not only a geopolitical adversary of ours, but is projected to economically overtake us, and are coming here only because their economy has seen some recent slowdown. Purely economic migrants taking advantage of us.

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#40

Post by fencepost »

veidelis wrote: post #5

The article mentions "immigration due to climate" - could someone give an examples of such occurrences?

Drought in Africa is probably the most obvious, but other climate change-related migrations are basically guaranteed over the next 50-100 years.

Sea level rise will severely impact low-lying regions like most of Florida - not by putting them actually underwater, but by putting them closer to sea level which will make storm surges, etc more severe. Even if you recover, how many inundations with salt water will it take to have a significant impact? Not to mention salt intrusion into freshwater systems and aquifers.

In areas closer to the equator you'll also get higher heat - not always but regularly enough to render some areas unlivable without artificial cooling, and many of those places are ones that don't have the resources to provide cooling centers.

You'll also get more extremes at both ends - think of increasing the amount of heat energy in the atmosphere as being like increasing the amount of electricity going to a cone speaker. That speaker cone doesn't only move in one direction, what the increased energy does is increase the amount of movement. With the increased energy you also get distortion (extreme weather events vs just gradual change) and if you're really unlucky you get a one-way change of state (severe irreversible climate-driven event or a blown speaker).

Edit: forgot to include "Climate-induced migration in the Global South: an in depth analysis" https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-024-00133-1

Post reply on HN