> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

RIMR says:

> nobody will ever challenge this, given the current political direction of the United States

It's obviously hyperbole to say that NOBODY will EVER challenge this, but I'd say it's directionally correct:

1. The Supreme Court is controlled by a conservative, pro-big-business majority that makes it very difficult for any legal attempts to challenge Elon's actions to survive litigation.

2. The United States Senate has a conservative, pro-big-business bias due its over-representation of rural voters and its internal norms (filibuster)

3. The United States House has a conservative, pro-big-business bias due to the gerrymandering efforts of Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country (which the Democrats have tried to counter and failed, see Virginia)

4. The conservative, pro-big-business Supreme Court has ensured that elections in the United States overall have a conservative, pro-big-business bias due to the unfettered spending allowed after Citizens United.

So yes, the winds seems to be against Republicans and Trump in the mid-terms, but the structural biases of the government are still very much pro-big-business, pro-capital, and anti-regulation.

It will take much more than a single mid-term cycle to reverse that trend.

Some of the greatest horrors of the 19th and 20th centuries were committed by people who refuted that theology and replaced it with Social Darwinism and Scientific Racism.

After reading this book, The Party Decides https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo592160... , he was a big advocate of the idea that the "endorsement race" of state officials and unelected party leaders.

There was a whole "Party Decides: Endorsement Tracker" graphic and everything, but Trump securing the Republican nomination and eventually the presidency pretty conclusively showed that theory to be a relic of the past.

So the 538 election coverage that year was: - Party endorsements matter more than early polling (they didn't) - Hillary's up so big there's no way Trump can win (he did, and yes I know they didn't actually say that but that's what the layman saw)

(ironically the Party Decides thesis seems to have correctly predicted events in the Democratic primary that year)

I prefer the exact opposite, especially when working remote.

When I was a manager, I saved non-urgent topics for a weekly 1-1 instead of pestering busy people with "Quick chat?" or "Do you have a minute?" messages. I wish others would do the same.

Which isn't to say that you're wrong about wealth inequality increasing. The share of wealth controlled by the ultra wealthy IS increasing, but the specifics of how that is playing out are nuanced and, at times, counter-intuitive.

This difference leads indirectly to things like the current "not war" in Iran. (Iran's geography already gives it strong bargaining power via pressure on energy markets. It would have an even stronger hand if the US was not capable of energy independence).

The long term impacts on climate changes are even more negative. It's hard to supplant a cheap, ubiquitous energy source with strong negative externalities when those externalities are subtle, gradual, and strongly denied via propaganda by entrenched interests.

Worse, it seems that doctors often prescribe new medications without a full understanding of what meds are already being used and what possible interactions might be.

I've tried a shared Google Doc, but struggle to get all parties involved to keep it updated. Are there any good, dedicated apps for this sort of thing (that aren't just data mining operations)? My initial searching yielded a lot of junk.

What do y'all use for similar situations?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47543432

Points: 3

# Comments: 4

In fact, weddings decreased in inflation-adjusted cost between 1990 and 2023: https://ktvz.com/stacker-lifestyle/2024/03/01/how-us-wedding...

I would assume that downward trend has continued as inflation has spiked in the past few years and people had to spend more of their money in other areas.

- "People don't have kids because they're afraid of climate change" - Wildly overestimates the number of people who figure climate change into their life plans, and it discounts the numerous catastrophes people have feared and experience in the past while continuing to have high birth rates. - "People don't have kids because everything is too expensive" - My father-in-law has 11 siblings and they grew up in a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom home. His story is not unique.

"having kids is almost completely intentional"....in countries where this is the case due to birth control, abortion, feminism (and other cultural shifts), the birth rate plummets.

Delving into the reasons why people opt to have fewer or no children when given the choice consistently across races, religions, cultural background, etc would be a book-length endeavor, but to me it really is that simple. There are numerous reasons someone wouldn't want to have more children, and they tend to find one of them when given the choice.

I do take your point, though. Civil disobedience and a digital trail of "undesirable" behavior isn't compatible with a high-earning life in the corporate world.

Parents fear kidnappers more than car accidents. The elderly fear whatever the news is telling them to fear more than heart disease or falling.