Posted by intunderflow 2 days ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_taxation#Taxatio...
If it's a choice between say Princeton in the US and Harvard outside the US, Princeton will be the choice for many.
So let's not pretend these institutions are noble
You said they should now build foreign campuses. I said they won't because it would dilute their brand. And they could have done so in the US or abroad before this.
What am I missing here?
If only the noble deserve a reasonable state then welcome to hell.
[1] https://www.city-journal.org/article/harvards-attempt-to-dod...
Most successful franchises try to expand abroad. Why not build a Harvard branch in London, Dubai, Sydney, Mumbai or Tokio?
Each of those would likely be subject to some pressures over time, but those times and pressures would vary.
Nowadays it is a "all eggs in one basket" situation.
Edit: In addition, some people only attend Harvard and co. for the networking opportunities.
I naturally expected that this would be the case. At the very least, record the lectures in 8K and stream them to other campuses (there would be major timezone differences).
That's what federal funding for universities looks like.
I remember that people advocated quite hard a few years ago to make that last part mandatory, because at the time it wasn't. Universities can claim ownership and patent the discovery. The research was also usually locked behind for-profit publications, thus limiting the research to only those that can afford to pay.
The initiative that I remember asked that government funded research must be published in open access, and that no patents (or other IP) may be created in direct relation to such research.
Did such initiative win and become law?
Regardless, researchers share their research with other researchers for free and a huge amount of paywalled papers are actually just available for free on the authors' websites.
It's investment, not charity.
For example:
| Sarah Fortune, a professor and chair of the department of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, woke up Tuesday to a stop-work order for a large contract focused on unraveling how the immune system fights tuberculosis, with the goal of creating better detection and vaccines.
Who said they aren't profitable
I had thought the leftwing reaction to accuse this of authoritarianism, overblown. Many of the actions that had been taken were taken by previous leftwing administrations, just with less publicity (, and so on).
However I think the rubicon has been crossed. The president now believes he has impunity to engage in extrajudicial rendition to enslave people, including citizens, in foreign prisons. He attacks the centres of civil power: universities, law firms, (likekly soon, ) the mass media. And rival state power: ignoring the supreme court, congress (ie., reorganising federal gov beyond his power), and the institional professional class in the executive.
All the while, increasingly I see people on the centre-right in the mass media credulously believing the president's account of his actions. Identifying with the president as an expression of their power, and believing likewise, that the whole of civil society is legitimately brought under state ideological control. That the presidency is the state, that state is society, and that society must "for democratic reasons" be brought to the state's heel.
The next phase of this will be very dangerous for the american people. I think civil resistance will be target for at best, imprisonment -- perhaps even rendition to a foreign prison. All one needs to say is that the resistance protestors are domestic terroists, and trump has a wide base of people credulously willing to believe it -- no doubt looting and other things will occur. It is very easy to imagine state elections being brought under "federal control" and a process of election rigging soon following.
As far as I can see there are two forces acting against the possibility of an american tyranny: trump's own desire to perform what's he's doing completely destabilises his plans (eg., on the economy especially). Secondly, the federalism of the american system.
It seems now plausible to me to imagine a future in which a democractic state violently expels federal forces, esp., eg., if ICE are used to rendition american citizens. It will be almost an obligation of states to suspend federal police presense. This, in the end, may make totalisation of federal state power difficult.
I am not from the US, and I watch with mild amusement its slide into full blown banana republic dictatorship with a sprinkle of last century European fascism - I mean, at this point ICE is basically a secret police that disappears people, not unlike Stasi or Gestapo from years past.
But you thought that Trump was an answer to "wealth over income" or "capital over labor"? Even without knowing that much about the intricacies of US politics this sounds pretty naive.
Whether his solution works or not isnt relevant to whether Trump's real preferences aren't, "by default", the american corporate owner.
It's very unhelpful to reduce trump down to basic evil motivations, and to call any ascription of a non-evil one, "naive". It has been this manner which has made the left entirely unable to communicate beyond its self.
His preference seems to be to favor those that suck up to him.
I mean, that is why all the top billionaires are all very cozy to him nowadays. They may be assholes, but they are smart assholes. Psychopathically smart.
> It's very unhelpful to reduce trump down to basic evil motivations
I didn't reduce him to evil motivations. I just said it was naive to think he would somehow benefit labor and not capital or wealth.
Yes, Marxist-Leninist governments also wreck their local stock markets. That doesn't mean they, or Trump, are engaged in building a superior economic system for prioritizing labor over capital.
Do you have an example of ICE "disappearing" a US citizen or murdering someone? If not, they're nothing like the Stasi or the Gestapo.
It's a bad idea to cry wolf this much, because the wolf might actually come.
Write down on a sticky note "if the government sends a US citizen to CECOT I will..." and fill in the rest of this sentence. Put it somewhere you see it everyday.
I'm personally absolutely sick of the "oh it is not a problem until..." lines moving basically daily. Everybody defending this administration needs to commit to a line otherwise I fully expect to see posts saying what you are saying here with ever more brutal and violent outcomes from the state for the rest of time.
The issue with these extrajudicial renditions to foreign prisions is the extrajudicial part. The rest of it is just immoral -- the former part, a catastrophe.
> Within days of his 2009 inauguration, Barack Obama signed an executive order opposing rendition torture and established a task force to provide recommendations about processes to prevent rendition torture. His administration distanced itself from some of the harshest counterterrorism techniques but permitted the practice of rendition to continue
The new part here is that it's foreign nationals being taken from US soil instead of another country's soil.
The line being cross in taking persons unknown to courts from the united states, to a forieng country, isnt "a new part". It's to suspend the constitution and grant the president the power not merely to arbitarily detain, but to do so in a foreign prison.
It's hard to understate how serious this is. If it were only this, and nothing else, we might hope it will stay bounded by the "hopefully" diligient ICE. But coupled with the assault on all rival systems to presidental power, there's nothign to be hopeful about.
The constitution has been suspend, the president has sequestered the force of the federal government to bring under his private power the whole of american society, begining with the most powerful rivals: the courts, the media, the universities, the law first, and so on.
He will next suspend the broadcasting licence for media outlets.
Optimistically, the supreme court could suspend his emergency powers -- as they ought, since there is no war or emergency. This may make the federal government unable to execute his wishes -- but if they've replaced enough workers there already, it might be too late.
I mean, once they start disappearing people that are completely legal in the country, disappearing citizens is just a minor step forward.
By all means, I am not in the US, I'll keep enjoying my popcorn from afar. I wonder if when the ovens are turned on in some Central American death camp you will move the goalposts to "but, but we don't even have gas showers yet".
> cry wolf
The wolf has been here for a while buddy, we are just discussing what color and size it is.
This could lead to National Guard versus federal forces stand-offs as was seen in the 1960s over Civil Rights disagreements between state and federal governments:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine#National_Guar...
Another factor that differentiates the United States in conflicts of the people against their government is how heavily armed and resourceful the US populace is. In the War on Terror, US Armed Forces faced insurgency militias in Iraq and Afghanistan. If similar insurgency militias were to arise in the United States in response to illegal federal government actions, it would probably have similar results.
Is not optimistic reading
The underlying assumption is that the president would use such powers judiciously and that the expanded powers would enable emergency situations to be handled quickly since it would probably take more time for congress to respond and get things done.
The question now is: what if such powers are not used judiciously? What recourse is there?
Congress. But so far they're letting Trump declare emergencies left and right. All of his tariffs are being enacted under an "emergency" to bypass Congress (since under non-emergency situations, Congress sets tariffs).
Had the Democrats won control of the House/Senate, a lot of this nonsense wouldn't be happening (or even if conventional Republicans had control, which is why Trump 1.0, when conventional GOP held the senate, Trump couldn't go off the rails as he has now).
However, this entire line of thought presupposes that those people (whether in NG or SDF) would align themselves with the state and against the feds, and that's not given at all. I know from personal experience of close interaction with my local right-wing militias in WA state that quite a few members are in NG or WSG.
The same goes for armed populace. It's true that there's a lot of weaponry in private hands, and we're not just talking your stereotypical AR-15, but stuff like say .50 BMG anti-materiel rifles, grenade launchers, and even privately owned tanks and artillery in some cases. However, they are disproportionally in hands of people who lean far right, so in event of open conflict I would expect them to work with the feds. There are some of us on the left who are heavily armed precisely so as to counterbalance that, but we are outnumbered by an order of magnitude. Then there's the issue of training - right-wing militias actually get together and train, and while it is derided as LARPing - often for good reasons - it's still better than nothing. More importantly, it's not just training but also networking - those people know each other and have plans to get together and coordinate "when it's time".
Indeed, a particularly nasty possibility is that Trump wouldn't even need to issue any kinds of explicit orders to federal troops, but rather just let the right wing paramilitaries loose by simply not doing anything to stop them (and making it widely known that there will be no consequences).
But now I see posts like this and it's like "how could we have known this was going to happen?". Well, you could have! At least maybe you can update your priors on how seriously to take warnings that a political movement is dangerous?
Now I read every comparison to the Nazis with a huge grain of salt and I'm "somewhat neutral" on Trump.
The extrajudicial enslavement of legal immigrants into foreign prisons, "crosses the rubicon". You cannot have presidential power operating in this way. It's not the immigrant part, it's the extrajudicial part. If trump has this power against anyone, he then has it against everyone.
Against that backdrop you have the targeting of law firms that have represented political opponents of the president; the attempt to totalise control of universities, and so on.
The whole thing is now tettering on the edge of what was previously just hysteria.
Perhaps the final nail in the coffin for me has been seeing online how credulous the right has been about the government's propaganda. This tells me that the conditions for totalitarianism are here in the people -- a mass of people identify with trump, uncritically believe the propaganda. The dismantling of rival power centres in all of american society and government is taking place whilst a large number of people applaud.
People havent yet seen the transition that has taken place within the Trump government. Before the Musk programme, the deportations, etc. were all on the extreme-side of constitutional presidental power.
We are actually now past that, and his supporters are operating as if we're not. They don't realise they're applauding what they will severely come to regret. They think they're applauding the end of DEI, of elite power, of the stock-owning class. When in fact, it's pretty clear now, these are just the grievances benig used to establish unlimited intrusion of the presidency into all aspects of civil and political life.
The next mass protest will precipitate a crisis of the legitimacy of the federal monopoly on violence in the US. Unless some means can be deployed soon to constrain the president, america is in a very dangerous position.
What, exactly, do you think the left has been doing for the last ~10 years? The universities are basically captured by one party and their ideology and I suspect Trump's hamfisted attempts to counter that will only make a small dent.
Universities are at a point where getting a job often requires including a DEI statement in your CV[1]. In my opinion, this is not compatible with academic freedom.
The overall feeling I get is one of despair. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are fundamentally interested in "freedom". They just choose to nibble away at different corners of the constitution.
[1] https://freebeacon.com/campus/study-diversity-statements-req...
Since the president has vast formal and informal powers, any use of his power to achieve a totalisation of his ideology into society is "alarms going off territory".
When he has taken down the law firms, suspended the licenes of the media companies, sequestered the national guard against protestors, and deported political opponents --- at that stage, what will be left to protect you?
The president, as one man, cannot wield the full power of governmenrt -- this is tyranny. And, esp. cannot weild it against civil society, this is totalitarianism.
Why?
How were they captured? What evidence do you have?
>Democrats nor the Republicans are fundamentally interested in "freedom".
Which one is less interested in freedom?
Which single person is "the Left" here? You're basically proposing establishing a personalist dictatorship to combat a bureaucratic para-party. Your solution to authoritarianism is intensified authoritarianism.
And what happened is like Y2K: People who recognized the risks successfully worked to mitigate the worst of them. It's not really surprising, but it is frustrating, that just like with Y2K, many people thus concluded that it was not necessary to mitigate the risks.
For many people, mitigating risks provides evidence that there were never any risks in the first place. (You can probably think of more examples of this.)
But unfortunately, people were correct when they identified that Trump's character combined with increasing control over one of the two political parties could pose a that to our system. And now it's harder to mitigate the problem, because the control over the party has advanced significantly further.
The second term rolls around, and now you can do whatever you like, because you're done at the end of that. At least in theory.
I grew up in Russia at the time when we had a brief stint with democracy. I remember how people elected Putin because he was supposed to fix everything that was wrong, and how they laughed at those of us who said that it would be a dictatorship before soon.
There was some political fuckery, but nothing out of the ordinary for a populist srong man type politician.
What happened then is definitely not what is happening now.
If trump had been in this straightjacket I had expected, I would not mind that "on this go around" the american right, with its grievances, has them heard by american society.
The problem of american politics, over the last decade or two, has been the complete cultural maginalisation of the right (from centres of civil power). Something had to give. The universities, the corporate culture, the internet mass media -- had all been monpolised by a "consensus moralism" which was replusive to a lot of people.
I didnt feel able to continue to deny those people their representation. However, I hadn't seen how easily the straighjackets of the constituion were this easy to disregard if you only have enough people at the top to do it.
I see this offered a lot as an example of a "missing middle", that conservative ideals are systematically underrepresented in e.g. universities or popular culture, and the explanation offered by conservative thinkers is that there's some shadowy force at play.
Could it not just be that these ideals are unpopular? The classic tale of a kid going off to college and coming back with more liberal politics is offered as an example of brainwashing or "consensus moralism," but maybe it's because they were genuinely convinced to shift their worldview.
Can you elaborate on this?
Since I sympathised with the people who sympathised with him, I did not regard him as an inherently "evil" -- which seemed to be the left's take. And it's a pretty dangerous one. Because when people identify with trump, if you call him evil, so to them. And the left's habit of just opposing whatever he says renders their side seemingly at least as callous as him: which is why so many polls believe trump understands their problems better than the other side.
I think it's more accurate to say trump is a complex individual who could, with the right social environment, express quite different politics. What I hadn't anticipated is that his social environment has become so radicalised, professionalised, and totalitarian. (As someone else put it: the last trump was "Jared's" and this one is Don Jr's. Trump, I think, can be both. That's over now.)
In any case, I think it's a moot point. I was wrong. This latent rage of the right against their cultural marginalisation is now a smokescreen for the totalising of the presidency. It's a real problem.
What are some of the problems he identified? Because his speeches just seem to tap into vague insecurities and the general claim things were better in the past
Devil's advocate, I think it's easy if you don't directly feel impact from his policies. I've been losing my marbles about Trump at family dinners for a while, but for a chunk of my family he's a check against "radical" liberalism (read: gender ideology, spending money on things that don't serve everyday americans) and a path to lower tax bills.
Similarly, I think it's easy (from a conservative perspective) to dismiss all the seemingly emotional reactions to something Your Guy is saying because that's just politics; that's the expected behavior of politicians. It's not a problem if Your Guy is caught in a lie because they all do it.
I'm straw-manning a bit, but I'm just trying to sketch anecdotes of how I've seen otherwise rational, empathetic, intelligent people routinely offer (to me) unreasonably calm takes on Trump's activities and behavior.
That said, I do deeply appreciate your willingness to change your mind, and to talk about it publicly. The reality is that a third of our society is in Trump's thrall. At my best, I don't want those people to disappear, or suffer in powerlessness for years. I want them to change their mind, and I know how hard that can be. So thank you!
As an aside, I faced casual racism plenty of times in the country; pretty sure no one ever gave a shit. Trump country would cheer for it, actually.
If you want to familiarize yourself with how the site actually works, you'll find links to thousands of past explanations in my comment upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43724590.
There's a recent post [2] where a reply to me in a political argument, I don't remember the specific words [1], was some generalization or BS to support Trump. I continued the discussion but later the comment was flagged.
I was fine with arguing the points. There were also many more comments with similar content that weren't flagged.
I was previously a user for years and a reader for more than 15. I even directly conversed with you when I wanted to deleted my account, you asked if I was sure [3] so I'm familiar with the gist of the rules. I've also seen comments from you similar to.
[Para]"This isn't directly related to tech but it's of great interest so it's allowed"
[1] I thought this was possible in the past but I can't seem to do it now, however if I'm just not seeing the option then that's my fault. [2] link upon request [3] I'm not implying any relationship or that I'm some special "old soul"
I don't understand the latter part of your comment, I'm afraid, but if there are specific links you want us to take a look at, we'd be happy to.
What's different this time?
In 2024 the entire Republican Party had evicted the non-MAGA people. Trump could staff everything with absolute sycophants. And there is no way that the Republicans in Congress will lift a finger to change anything.
Further, Trump had years of vindictive rage bottled up after losing in 2020. Every organization and institution he spent years raging about on Truth Social suddenly becomes his target. No actual governance. Just revenge.
There are no guard rails, there is no emergency stop this time.