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iugtmkbdfil834 15 hours ago [-]
It is rather bold to suggest we take companies from its founders regardless ( or as a result ) of political expediency.
cactacea 14 hours ago [-]
The defense industry is already the most socialized industry in the US today. Do we want Raytheon deciding that they want to sell cruise missiles to whoever they want? Of course not. Do we let Lockheed-Martin just sell F-35s to whoever they want? Of course not. In fact it is the US the government goes out and sells them to other countries!
SpaceX only survived because of government investment and intervention. The majority of their income continues to be provided by the US government. Why shouldn't the government cut out the trillionaire middleman?
pinewurst 15 hours ago [-]
While Krugman has never met anything he wouldn’t nationalize, it’s legitimate and traditional for national entities to enforce communications carrier controls in the national interest.
ballmerpoint 14 hours ago [-]
Absolutely. It’s not socialism to nationalize a company that’s gone and made itself instrumental to national security and/or foreign policy. Especially when said company seems to interfere with either on a whim, often against (or perhaps I should say, not always entirely aligned with) America’s interests.
cyanydeez 11 hours ago [-]
right? We can't even get a treanous president elect in prison with video footage of the treason.
verdverm 11 hours ago [-]
unprecedented times may call for unprecedented actions
The oligarchy is out of control
rayiner 15 hours ago [-]
There’s two kinds of socialism. The first is “we will all pay really high taxes so we can all enjoy a safety net.” This kind of socialism is built on solidarity. The other kind is more focused on taking away things other people built. This kind of socialism is built on the resentment of people like Krugman who are smarter than 99% of people, but not smart enough to actually build anything.
ballmerpoint 15 hours ago [-]
> people like Krugman who are smarter than 99% of people, but not smart enough to actually build anything.
You can just say you don’t like his politics. You don’t need to misrepresent his accomplishments.
rayiner 13 hours ago [-]
I don’t actually dislike Krugman’s politics, in the sense that I’m also generally a market oriented economic liberal. But this is America, and here we value people who build stuff and are skeptical of people who just study stuff. It’s not just us. There’s a reason he won the “Nobel Memorial Prize” in economics and not a real Nobel Prize.
toomuchtodo 10 hours ago [-]
Close. The US values people who capture the hard work of others and put it forward as their own. The actual people who do the work, not valued so much, treated as replaceable and disposable cogs.
If you work hard, you’re the sucker. But running around as a thought leader on the backs of everyone else? Captain of Industry, probably mentioned in Arena Magazine or a Works In Progress publication.
rayiner 9 hours ago [-]
Americans acknowledge that technical direction, leadership, organizing people, and allocating capital is incredibly valuable work. A guy working construction in the U.S. builds a skyscraper and a guy working construction in my dad’s village in Bangladesh builds a tin roof house. Did the first guy do 1,000 times as much “hard work” that he has so much more to show for his efforts? No, the Bangladeshi guy worked harder. If you took the first guy and put him in Bangladesh (but retaining all of his knowledge and skills) would he build a skyscraper? No, he would build maybe a somewhat nicer and better made tin roof house.
You point to the skyscraper and say “the construction worker built that! Someone else is taking credit for his work! Someone is getting rich off his back!” But how is it that we ended up with a skyscraper instead of a tin roof house? Whatever it is, it isn’t intrinsic to the worker. So it seems odd to give the worker all the credit for the skyscraper when in a different context his same effort would have produced a tin roof house instead.
toomuchtodo 9 hours ago [-]
> Americans acknowledge that technical direction, leadership, organizing people, and allocating capital is incredibly valuable work.
How has China built far more and better than the US without great allocators of capital? I suppose because competent people in positions of power will still encourage building and progress without the capitalism performance art and theatrics.
You think America is great, I’m not going to talk you out of your religion, and believing America is a great is a religion not grounded in data and evidence. But I believe the data shows others have done far better with arguably better systems.
There’s a reason China can build 50M EVs a year and the US can barely build 1-2M, or double global annual solar PV demand, as examples. Good luck fighting a conflict with the stock market and “great allocators of capital.”
rayiner 7 hours ago [-]
> How has China built far more and better than the US
It's not because Chinese workers put in so much more effort than American ones!
China supports my point, not your's. Since 1990, China has followed a model of authoritarian-capitalism: https://www.hudson.org/economics/china-banks-on-authoritaria.... The CCP provides broad industrial policy and leadership, while capitalist business owners provide technical direction and capital allocation. The post-1990 Chinese model bears a resemblance to Hamilton's "American System," a combination of state interventionism to build infrastructure and free markets to allocate capital: https://carnegieendowment.org/china-financial-markets/2017/0...
Notably, in 1990 China and India had the same per-capita GDP: https://www.bmsmoney.com/article/full/gdp-per-capita-india-v... (both were desperately poor). Today, China's is five times higher than India's. How did that happen? It wasn't because Chinese workers suddenly started putting in five times the effort. It's because Chinese leaders and business owners started doing better at their job of directing people and allocating capital. For the last 35 years Indian workers have been putting in just as much effort as Chinese workers. But thanks to the people above the workers, Chinese workers now get to live in a country that's on the precipice of breaking into first world living standards.
So who is taking credit for the other's work here? The worker, who puts in the same amount of effort, or the leadership who, if they do their jobs well, will turn that same amount of effort into modern China as opposed to modern India?
> You think America is great
I think China is great. America is good for Americans who are socialized into England's 800+ years of civic development. China provides a model the third world can follow.
hollerith 6 hours ago [-]
Huh? China received tons of investment from US investors and benefited greatly from the US decision to grant China free access to the US market.
The US is self-sufficient in oil, so naturally it hasn't invested as heavily in risky ventures to reduce its dependence on oil as a country that gets most of its oil from a long supply line (past potentially hostile powers like India) to the Persian Gulf and even further through to Russia's European ports.
ballmerpoint 6 hours ago [-]
But Krugman doesn’t “just study stuff.” That’s the misrepresentation. You’re not performing skepticism; it’s either ignorance or petty dishonesty.
And all the Krugman negging! “Not a real Nobel Prize.” Sick burn, dude.
rayiner 5 hours ago [-]
What has Krugman gone out and built? There are economists who helped turn around countries. The Chicago boys helped Chile become one of the richest countries in Latin America. Has Krugman done any of that?
Krugman makes me think of Ashraf Ghani, the former President of Afghanistan and academic. The guy literally wrote a book “Fixing Failed States.” Then he got the chance to put his theory to practice and he flamed out miserably. Then there’s Muhammad Yunus, another Nobel Prize winning economist who is currently shitting the bed as prime minister of Bangladesh. I’d love to see Krugman put his money where his mouth is and run even a small economy.
cactacea 14 hours ago [-]
HN should really have an "ignore posts from this account" feature.
ballmerpoint 14 hours ago [-]
You know, I hadn’t noticed that it didn’t.
Must be some vestigial, ancient hacker ethos thing.
mrguyorama 14 hours ago [-]
Um, we did take starlink away from Musk.
That's the point of StarShield. That's the point of government in general. We have the FCC and rules around space launches.
If the current US admin wanted Ukraine to be able to use something like starlink despite Elon's personal beliefs, then it would.
Elon is taking the blame because he is being allowed to take the blame. It's a distraction.
Trump wants Ukraine to stop hitting refineries because apparently he has only just now realized that blowing up refineries in Russia affects gas prices, which was the entire reason that Biden prevented Ukraine from doing such things. Which implies the hilarious caveat that Trump at some times has been more beneficial to Ukraine simply by not understanding the global economy and second order effects.
But Trump desperately wants to massage gas prices for a few weeks, which is why he does the stupid things like suddenly leaning on Ukraine as hard as possible and buying a pitiful amount of Russian diesel.
Allowing Starlink to limit Ukrainian utilization has absolutely nothing to do with any the bullshit "But ITAR" claims of weird people who don't seem to realize that wasn't a problem previously, somehow. It's about putting more pressure on Ukraine to not blow up refineries.
If there was an ITAR issue, then it wouldn't have taken months of coordination to purge the Russian Starlink terminals.
Our government is holding Ukraine's arms behind it's back against a literal invader because the American public does not care about Ukraine's basic sovereignty nearly as much as they care about an extra 25 cents per gallon of diesel. That's it. Oligarchs or not, that's the core issue causing most problems in America. People don't pay attention, don't give a fuck, don't learn, don't think, and then complain that everything is going to shit.
If you don't want to do these things, you have to elect different people. For as much money as there is in our elections, they are still decided by vote, not price. A lot of work each election goes into convincing people to stay home, entirely because voting works
jrecard 10 hours ago [-]
"Well, I'm on the phone with my computer security service, and as I understand it someone compromised my IP address and is using it to download child pornography. I might just be a random target. But this could be an attempt to Qanon me." - Paul Krugman, Jan 2020
SpaceX only survived because of government investment and intervention. The majority of their income continues to be provided by the US government. Why shouldn't the government cut out the trillionaire middleman?
The oligarchy is out of control
You can just say you don’t like his politics. You don’t need to misrepresent his accomplishments.
If you work hard, you’re the sucker. But running around as a thought leader on the backs of everyone else? Captain of Industry, probably mentioned in Arena Magazine or a Works In Progress publication.
You point to the skyscraper and say “the construction worker built that! Someone else is taking credit for his work! Someone is getting rich off his back!” But how is it that we ended up with a skyscraper instead of a tin roof house? Whatever it is, it isn’t intrinsic to the worker. So it seems odd to give the worker all the credit for the skyscraper when in a different context his same effort would have produced a tin roof house instead.
How has China built far more and better than the US without great allocators of capital? I suppose because competent people in positions of power will still encourage building and progress without the capitalism performance art and theatrics.
You think America is great, I’m not going to talk you out of your religion, and believing America is a great is a religion not grounded in data and evidence. But I believe the data shows others have done far better with arguably better systems.
There’s a reason China can build 50M EVs a year and the US can barely build 1-2M, or double global annual solar PV demand, as examples. Good luck fighting a conflict with the stock market and “great allocators of capital.”
It's not because Chinese workers put in so much more effort than American ones!
China supports my point, not your's. Since 1990, China has followed a model of authoritarian-capitalism: https://www.hudson.org/economics/china-banks-on-authoritaria.... The CCP provides broad industrial policy and leadership, while capitalist business owners provide technical direction and capital allocation. The post-1990 Chinese model bears a resemblance to Hamilton's "American System," a combination of state interventionism to build infrastructure and free markets to allocate capital: https://carnegieendowment.org/china-financial-markets/2017/0...
Notably, in 1990 China and India had the same per-capita GDP: https://www.bmsmoney.com/article/full/gdp-per-capita-india-v... (both were desperately poor). Today, China's is five times higher than India's. How did that happen? It wasn't because Chinese workers suddenly started putting in five times the effort. It's because Chinese leaders and business owners started doing better at their job of directing people and allocating capital. For the last 35 years Indian workers have been putting in just as much effort as Chinese workers. But thanks to the people above the workers, Chinese workers now get to live in a country that's on the precipice of breaking into first world living standards.
So who is taking credit for the other's work here? The worker, who puts in the same amount of effort, or the leadership who, if they do their jobs well, will turn that same amount of effort into modern China as opposed to modern India?
> You think America is great
I think China is great. America is good for Americans who are socialized into England's 800+ years of civic development. China provides a model the third world can follow.
The US is self-sufficient in oil, so naturally it hasn't invested as heavily in risky ventures to reduce its dependence on oil as a country that gets most of its oil from a long supply line (past potentially hostile powers like India) to the Persian Gulf and even further through to Russia's European ports.
And all the Krugman negging! “Not a real Nobel Prize.” Sick burn, dude.
Krugman makes me think of Ashraf Ghani, the former President of Afghanistan and academic. The guy literally wrote a book “Fixing Failed States.” Then he got the chance to put his theory to practice and he flamed out miserably. Then there’s Muhammad Yunus, another Nobel Prize winning economist who is currently shitting the bed as prime minister of Bangladesh. I’d love to see Krugman put his money where his mouth is and run even a small economy.
Must be some vestigial, ancient hacker ethos thing.
That's the point of StarShield. That's the point of government in general. We have the FCC and rules around space launches.
If the current US admin wanted Ukraine to be able to use something like starlink despite Elon's personal beliefs, then it would.
Elon is taking the blame because he is being allowed to take the blame. It's a distraction.
Trump wants Ukraine to stop hitting refineries because apparently he has only just now realized that blowing up refineries in Russia affects gas prices, which was the entire reason that Biden prevented Ukraine from doing such things. Which implies the hilarious caveat that Trump at some times has been more beneficial to Ukraine simply by not understanding the global economy and second order effects.
But Trump desperately wants to massage gas prices for a few weeks, which is why he does the stupid things like suddenly leaning on Ukraine as hard as possible and buying a pitiful amount of Russian diesel.
Allowing Starlink to limit Ukrainian utilization has absolutely nothing to do with any the bullshit "But ITAR" claims of weird people who don't seem to realize that wasn't a problem previously, somehow. It's about putting more pressure on Ukraine to not blow up refineries.
If there was an ITAR issue, then it wouldn't have taken months of coordination to purge the Russian Starlink terminals.
Our government is holding Ukraine's arms behind it's back against a literal invader because the American public does not care about Ukraine's basic sovereignty nearly as much as they care about an extra 25 cents per gallon of diesel. That's it. Oligarchs or not, that's the core issue causing most problems in America. People don't pay attention, don't give a fuck, don't learn, don't think, and then complain that everything is going to shit.
If you don't want to do these things, you have to elect different people. For as much money as there is in our elections, they are still decided by vote, not price. A lot of work each election goes into convincing people to stay home, entirely because voting works