541–550 of 587 posts
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But the power Musk holds isn’t the result of him being rich, it’s because he has a populist cult of personality. The candidate who spent twice the money lost the election. Musk has power because he got on stage with Trump in Pennsylvania promising to fire all the federal workers.
Absolutely incorrect. Musk holds power because he spent $290m on the election boosting the winning candidate.
Notwithstanding the other awful aspects of all of this, there’s a certain vibe of, “people who don’t understand how a system works attempting to act like they know how the system works and are too cowardly to admit they are breaking everything.” This just reads like “Character Limit” except replace Twitter with the federal government.
Sometimes the only way to know something is important is to shut it off and see if anyone complains. For example, lots of stories in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629714 . Now certainly the Trump administration could have been more careful, but they only have 4 years so the Facebook motto of "move fast and break things" applies.
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Are you sure that any change to address the recent issues would always result in those two outcomes? Also, Elon Musk is the richest elite in the world so it seems we already are at the bottom of the problem.
But the power Musk holds isn’t the result of him being rich, it’s because he has a populist cult of personality. The candidate who spent twice the money lost the election. Musk has power because he got on stage with Trump in Pennsylvania promising to fire all the federal workers.
From Gallup [0]—top issues among all registered voters:
The economy
Democracy in the U.S.
Terrorism and national security
Types of Supreme Court justices candidates would pick
Immigration
Education
Healthcare
Gun policy
Abortion
^^Taxes
Crime
Distribution of income and wealth in the U.S.
^^The federal budget deficit
Foreign affairs
Situation in Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians
Energy policy
Relations with Russia
Race relations
Relations with China
Trade with other nations
Climate change
Transgender rights
^^Items under which "firing all federal workers" could conceivably fit, and that's a massive stretch. Still, even with that generosity granted, they're 10th and 13th on the list.
[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/651719/economy-important-issue-...
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I don’t know what the distribution of advanced degrees is among NSF program managers, but I strongly reject the implication that career program managers are somehow a lower tier or less well suited for the job. I’ve personally served a few times as an NSF panel reviewer for a career PM that does not hold a PhD, and they are awesome. They have a background in the startup world and ask really insightful question and kn…
yeah well i worked with a high level DARPA PM that it turned out her phd was overinterpreting noise and her PI (francesco stellaci) railroaded the postdoc that tried to call foul. by the way, that PM, last i checked had left DARPA and was working on a microfluidics nanodrop blood diagnostics company -- you cant mke this shit up!! and a DOE biotechnology pm that was excited to be on the project -- but by his own admis…
There are lots of reasons that excellent scientists might not want to actively do research anymore. Being a PM seems like a nice way to get a broad exposure to cutting edge research without dealing with the (IMO) overwhelming incentive structure in academic science, driving a narrow research program at a national lab, or leaving the world of open science to as an industry researcher.
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In addition to these scientists, I heard from my friends in academia that they will be taking fewer PhD students because they're unsure of the funding. We may be looking at a lost decade.
> We may be looking at a lost decade. We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibiility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world. Reduced health, reduced education, reduced funding for research, reduced international aid programs (which both garner goodwill whilst also creating a bulwark against those who profit from misery), reduced oversight / regulation of the power of capital, alienation o…
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Said differently, most people don't care about principles. The government is designed based on certain principles that define how it is meant to work, and there's a reasonable case to be made that the executive branch should not have the authority to functionally create laws or run their own courts. That just doesn't matter to most people, as you said they're happy if those regulations work for them. The same situati…
I do agree that people rarely truly care about the principles they claim they adhere to, when it turns against their own interests. But that is not what is happening here. A principle is not self-motivatingly good just because it exists. The principle that Congress must directly make every law and set every detail of that law is simply a bad principle, at least for a country of the size and complexity of the USA, and…
The principle I was referring to is that the legislative branch creates law and the executive branch only only administers and executes on them.
I agree a principle is neither good or bad on its own, it just is. In this case it isn't good or bad that powers are separated this way, but it is foundational to how our government is designed.
Congress doesn't have to spell out every detail, I made that clear though maybe in a separate chain of comments here. They do, though, need to spell out whatever details are important to them. If all congress cares about is that a department exists with a certain name and spends every dollar of a given budget that's fine, but they can't complain at all about what the department does. In reality they should be spelling out fairly clearly what is expected of a department, in my opinion that would include metrics for success.
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Are you arguing that only Republicans have controlled Congress singe Bush Jr was in office? Or that Congress held primary decision making authority behind the number of executive orders signed by presidents since then?
No and no. I'm referring to Gingrich's attitude of never crossing the aisle leading to Congressional gridlock. And how a functioning Congress could have easily passed laws nullifying most executive orders (especially the ones grabbing extra power). It was precisely the power vacuum of Congress that enabled the strong executive.
I do agree though that inept congresses has allowed the executive branch to act so powerfully. My only caveat is that congress first had to give those powers to the executive such that they could eventually be abused. Earlier congresses didn't have to choose to empower the executive branch with so much authority.
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Are you arguing that only Republicans have controlled Congress singe Bush Jr was in office? Or that Congress held primary decision making authority behind the number of executive orders signed by presidents since then?
> Are you arguing that only Republicans have controlled Congress singe Bush Jr was in office? Republicans have been able to stop congress from doing anything they didn't like since... 2010. They can't even get their shit together to pass legislature when they control congress, but they've always been able to prevent it from passing legislature, or exercising oversight. Just like they are doing right now.
The republicans have been more willing to pull that lever, but the system is designed such that its a perfectly legal lever to pull.