We all earned the money. Nobody makes 100M in a vacuum. That sort of profit only comes from taking full advantage of a country's infrastructure, its educated population, its safety from invasion. We all provide the society that allows someone to amass that much wealth, and we all deserve a piece of the pay out.
> That sort of profit only comes from taking full advantage of a country's infrastructure, its educated population, its safety from invasion. We all provide the society that allows someone to amass that much wealth, and we all deserve a piece of the pay out.
This is such a goofy argument. The US 2% of its budget on infrastructure. It spends 4% on education (yet literacy rates are only marginally higher than they were before compulsory education). Military spending is 20% of federal spending, and could be 1/4 of that without any risk whatsoever of invasion.
You don't need more tax revenues to pay for the stuff that makes business possible.
There is a broader definition of "infrastructure." For example, Medicare is infrastructure that is directly related to the success of any company in the United States.
Has Tesla ever received a check from Medicare? Probably not. But the fact that Medicare exists means that Tesla's factory workers don't need to be paid at levels that reflect they need to 100% self-fund their retirement.
Has Salesforce ever asked for regulation or assistance from the FDA? Probably not. But because the FDA exists, Saleforce's employees don't have to spend time verifying their medication is authentic and does what it claims to do, so they can spend more focus on their work for Salesforce.
Even beyond government: how much do you think a Ford or Chevy have benefited from the US's culture? They certainly don't sell many large consumer trucks Europe or Asia. That profit exists because of the ideals and beliefs Americans have about how they should live their lives and what type of car they need to do that. Yes someone made the truck, and the truck maker should reap most of the benefits, but some of that profit should feed back into society that supported it.
Sure, we probably spend too much on the military and there exists some cronyism that we should strive to stamp out, but make no mistake that anyone with 100M in investable wealth has earned it with substantial help from the society we have all built together.
> Medicare is infrastructure that is directly related to the success of any company in the United States.
That must be why there were no successful companies in the United States before 1965.
> But the fact that Medicare exists means that Tesla's factory workers don't need to be paid at levels that reflect they need to 100% self-fund their retirement.
Tesla is paying them that much, because Tesla--and all employers and employees--are funding Medicare via earmarked taxes on income.
> There is a broader definition of "infrastructure."
"The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those they have already held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. Adn the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but to change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer, and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language." ~Hayek
> That must be why there were no successful companies in the United States before 1965.
Of course there were. There were also lots of successful companies before we had highways or municipal plumbing. So I’m not sure what point you are trying to make here.
>Tesla is paying them that much, because Tesla--and all employers and employees--are funding Medicare via earmarked taxes on income.
Tesla benefits because every employer has been paying in. Anyone can freely go work in a Tesla factory because they know they will receive the same health benefits at the end of their working life if they go work there. They also benefit because their current employees don’t need to pay for the cost of their parents healthcare, which Tesla most likely did not pay for.
Regarding your quote. Was your intention to imply that I’m a totalitarian because I’m using a slightly different definition of a word than you? That seems a bit severe.
Let’s ask Wikipedia about infrastructure:
> One way to describe different types of infrastructure is to classify them as two distinct kinds: hard infrastructure and soft infrastructure.[4] Hard infrastructure is the physical networks necessary for the functioning of a modern industrial society or industry.[5] This includes roads, bridges, and railways. Soft infrastructure is all the institutions that maintain the economic, health, social, environmental, and cultural standards of a country.[5] This includes educational programs, official statistics, parks and recreational facilities, law enforcement agencies, and emergency services.
I don’t think it’s by any means a stretch to say Medicare or the FDA are institutions that maintain economic/health standards.
> So I’m not sure what point you are trying to make here.
Companies are no more successful with Medicare than they were without Medicare, so simply claiming that it is "directly related to success" is meaningless.
> Tesla benefits because every employer has been paying in.
Your argument was that Tesla was paying lower wages, which was objectively false. Now you're really branching out! This first claim is just a low-effort handwave. They benefit because... the program exists? Compelling.
> Anyone can freely go work in a Tesla factory because they know they will receive the same health benefits at the end of their working life if they go work there.
People went to work before Medicare, and more freely, because they kept more of their income. So the only difference you're actually stating here is that "they know they will receive benefits", which, again, is tautological--the benefit of the program is that people know the program exists. Amazing.
> They also benefit because their current employees don’t need to pay for the cost of their parents' healthcare, which Tesla most likely did not pay for.
How is this a benefit to tesla? Vibes?
> Was your intention to imply that I'm a totalitarian because I'm using a slightly different definition of a word than you?
I was merely observing the age-old tendency of people who advocate for the never-ending growth of the state to manipulate language in service of their goals. It usually takes the form of conflating less popular things for which they're advocating (welfare, etc) with obviously necessary things (roads, bridges, the electric grid, etc) which already enjoy broad support. I don't doubt that you are sincere in your belief that this new definition is legit. (Who wouldn't happily use terms which make their policy preferences sound better?) Yet this is an obvious example of the old trick, which is always worth calling out for the benefit of the uninitiated.
How many of the people on welfare contributed to those things? It just sounds like you're in favor of distributing the wealth to people based on their contribution to the country as a whole.
It’s simply pay for use. The more someone uses the system, the more they pay back into it. Anyone with more than 100M in assets has used the system a shit ton and owes a lot back into it.
This is false. Toll roads are "pay for use". Capital gains tax is, objectively, not "pay for use".
> Anyone with more than 100M in assets has used the system a shit ton
There's zero evidence that supports a strong correlation between how many assets someone has and how much value they've obtained from government services. This is just entirely fabricated.
> and owes a lot back into it
...which they've already actually paid through taxes on profits.
This bundle of falsehoods is just a thin facade around the emotional plea that "someone having more money than me is bad, and I should get some of it".
Pointing out that toll roads are "pay for use" is factually true.
Capital gains tax is, factually, not "pay for use". There's no usage that is being metered.
You also claimed "Anyone with more than 100M in assets has used the system a shit ton" and I pointed out that there is no evidence that supports a strong correlation between how many assets someone has and how much value they've obtained from government services. This is, again, a fact - had you had any evidence against this, you could have put it here, in your reply. But no, you didn't have evidence, so you tried to (incorrectly) portray it as an "opinion".
You calling my true statements "opinions" proves that you cannot differentiate between opinions and reality. The fact that you think that pointing out that capital gains tax is not pay for use is a conjecture proves that you literally cannot tell the difference between facts and opinions.
The US government, both at the federal and state level, is extremely inefficient at building infrastructure, in terms of value per dollar spent.
Proposing that we should continue to throw more money at infrastructure, before diagnosing and fixing the problems that are causing that inefficiency (at which point, sure, double the infra budget - as long as we're getting good value, the absolute amount can go up as far as I'm concerned), is straight-up malicious.
The only people who make the argument to keep increasing the infrastructure budget before fixing the problems are those generically interested in throwing more money and power at the government, not those actually concerned about infrastructure (who will seek to fix the problem first).
We've banned this account for repeatedly posting personal attacks and flamewar-style comments. You can't do that here, no matter how wrong another person is or you feel they are.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
It has indeed. American companies basically finance the EU superstate bureaucracy. I'd like to see some reciprocity on the American side, fining EU businesses dollar for dollar.
Such an US comment, the companies are doing something illegal and get the fine for it. They want to do business in the EU they should follow those rules.
Same goes the other way around, or do you think Philips isn't getting fined out of their nose for their mismanagement?
Oh really? You are saying that American companies are fined to the sum of roughly €160 billion to €180 billion each year? Because that's what the EU budget is (roughly 1% of the EU GDP).
The biggest ever fine was against Google and 4.3 billion several years ago (2018). As far as I know that has been fought over in court for several years and I am not sure if that actually has been paid yet.
So it certainly isn't a steady income stream and doesn't even come close to the actual EU budget.
I am all for discussions about topics like this. But it really is ridiculous to see takes like this, where clearly no single thought or piece of research has gone into the comment. Do better.
How so? US administrations (both D an R) have been pushing EU states to spend at least 2% GDP on defense, and everyone understands that a significant fraction of it must be purchased from the US.
What would the hit to the U.S. economy be if Europe turned into a Russo-Chinese protectorate? Besides, almost all NATO members have been doing exactly what the Americans have asked and increased their defense spending to 2% of GDP (a lot of that money flows in the U.S. economy through weapons purchases, thereby subsidising the U.S. economy)
There already was a civil war in the US, and that's not how it happened. What's strange is that anyone thinks that a second one would be a matter of the US Army vs. the People, irrelevant to the States. It's a non-sequitur. Anyway, let us pray that it never comes to that, as much as our enemies would like it to. Imagine how giddy the CCP would be.
And yet in the same breath we have people seriously claiming that the US government was >this< close to being overthrown by a bunch of unarmed boomers on January 6th.
I pay for insurance to avoid the chance of catastrophic loss. No matter how safe I operate, an innocent accident (instigated by myself or another) could still lead to financial ruin.
>Israel is literally everything US politicians say they abhor in a foreign government.
Israel is doing the same exact things the US would do to protect Raytheon, Northop Grumman, or Lockheed Martin under similar circumstances.
Pegasus is a weapon, a munition, and NSO is a defense contractor. NSO sells its weapons to friendly (and friendly-ish) states.
Someone trying to sue NSO is like an Iraqi trying to sue AMTEC Corporation for manufacturing the 40mm grenade that killed his innocent civilian father-- the US government ain't gonna let it happen without a fight.
Israel is doing the same.
edit: it's also kinda like someone trying to sue a lockpick manufacturer (or contract locksmith) for providing a product or service to the CIA
We helped create them, and we use them as a strategic base of operations inside of an ally country in the Middle East.
We built the architecture they use to exert influence over our lawmakers. There's significant sunken cost to disrupting that relationship, and Israel throws a huge fit whenever we fail to give them what they ask for.
> Why do we not do the same to Israeli companies? AIPAC.
When the israeli leader can visit congress at his leisure and nearly everyone in congress claps at the israeli leader like trained seals, do we really have to ask?
Besides, it's illegal to boycott israeli companies in like 38 states.
All the nonsense about russia and china, the biggest threat to american freedom seems to be israel. And yet every politicians seems to be whoring for israel. Strange.
This was an obvious outcome, the government always protects its own. The government class gets immunity from the bottom, cops and judges, all the way to the top, legislators, and now, the president.
The assumption that it will wash away in the rain rather than find its way into cracks and pits in the rock is an awfully big bet to make vs permanent damage to history.
Cool. So you'd be fine with me coming over and spray painting something of my choice on your house, assuming I assured you (with absolutely no supporting evidence) that it would go away over some unspecified period of time?
I do not think so.
Anyone who's been around small children knows that some food dyes do NOT disappear when washed, even with detergent.
So Israel does the exact thing all the politicians try to scare us into believing Russia does every election in the US. I guess the difference is AIPAC.
What do you mean "try to scare us into believing Russia does"? Do you have any doubt that Russia has been interfering in US politics for well over a decade?
The total amount of direct evidence (evidence, not assertions of secret evidence by the US government, unproven and unsubstantiated allegations of hacking or superman Bernie memes by click farms based somewhere in Russia) that Russia has "interfered" with US politics that has been released by the US government in the last 10 years adds up to less than the evidence in this article on Israel alone.
Evidence aside, I personally think it is extremely likely that Russia, China and most other countries active on the world stage have tried to "interfere" in US politics to some degree, but nowhere near the amount that we interfere in the politics of other countries or that Israel interferes in ours.
> that Russia has "interfered" with US politics that has been released by the US government in the last 10 years adds up to (...)
So you acknowledge that it's quite clear that Russia indeed is systematically interfering, and your only claim is to call "what about" some other country?
No, I acknowledge that some interference by Russia and other countries is likely but not clear, since no clear evidence has ever been publicly offered. The only public evidence of clear, systemic, long-standing and ongoing interference we have is that of Israel.
The only question is why you haven't found any of this evidence, haven't believed any of it, or why you would argue such an easily disproven position without ever taking a few minutes to find out if the position you argue is still true many years after you've formed it.
It's almost as if you heard an opinion once or multiple times, perhaps from people or political figures you trusted. Then you internalized that opinion and it took on the attributes of 'belief' and haven't ever questioned it since it was formed. This belief became bound up with other things you believe, and now the defense mechanisms your brain uses to support 'belief' are also supporting this opinion in contradiction to facts that have been proven over the past years.
These defense mechanisms exist in your brain for good reasons, but they are also a way that propaganda exploits your brain's natural tendency to behave. It's difficult for victims of this to see it for what it is, confront their 'belief' system and admit they've been tricked. They have to overcome the feeling that it's their own fault they were tricked and their brain was exploited, which many never do, even though it's really not their fault that the human brain works the way it does. Propaganda is insidious, and particularly treacherous in the way that it convinces people to argue on its behalf, and that the act of doing so reinforces the hold the propaganda has on the person.
Despite your smug attitude, the evidence you just linked is nothing new and does not contradict the person you were replying to, did you even read the report?
Well I did (again), so let's take it from the top:
- Russia hacked into various local & state election boards, scary right? But in the very same report we learn this from, it's detailed this had no influence on vote tallies.
- Russia's state media outlets preferred one candidate over the other and made efforts to promote them. This one shocked me the most since I'm sure everyone before now assumed Russia's state media outlets would never push Russian propaganda! Who would have thought? Guess I'll have to get all my completely unbiased news from Aljazeera, Xinhua and KNCA from now on.
- Finally Russia is credited with Guciffer 2.0 and DCLeaks. Which likely had the most impressive (relative) impact but are also the most likely to trigger an argument at the dinner table since the evidence crediting these hacks to them are highly dubious.
Not mentioned in the report, oddly enough, was the ad campaigns they ran on various social media platforms to promote fringe candidates to increase national discord. Sounds clever but these ads were pretty terrible, good idea bad execution.
Even if we credit Russia for the DCLeaks and Guciffer hacks, which I personally believe they are undeserving of, Russia's attempts at "interference" were rife with incompetence, much like anything Russia tries. It's noteworthy that one of your links detailed one of their failures as so dramatic it resulted in the arrests of 13 participants!
If you were to combine everything I've listed here and compare it with any single propaganda operation performed by Israel, would you truly consider Russia's attempts more impressive? Certainly not the person you were replying to, and certainly not me.
Not to mention China's attempts, which in both scale and scope eclipses anything Russia has tried:
These indictments contain assertions, not evidence. Indeed, when it came time to go to trial, the government dropped the charges rather than present the "evidence" they claimed they had.
>The only question is why you haven't found any of this evidence, haven't believed any of it
There is an endless number of reports, findings, Senate Committee conclusions, all of which are filled with evidence-free assertions. You may choose to believe the government and their evidence-free assertions, I do not. No doubt you put great credence into the letter signed by 51 top intelligence officials, including 5 former heads of the CIA that the Hunter Biden laptop was "Russian disinformation" - many people continue to believe this despite the fact that the letter has been proven to be entirely false, and the laptop was introduced as evidence at trial by the DOJ this week, with its authenticity sworn to by the FBI.
>It's almost as if you heard an opinion once or multiple times, perhaps from people or political figures you trusted. Then you internalized that opinion and it took on the attributes of 'belief' and haven't ever questioned it since it was formed. This belief became bound up with other things you believe, and now the defense mechanisms your brain uses to support 'belief' are also supporting this opinion in contradiction to facts that have been proven over the past years.
Trust and faith are for children and priests. I don't trust the government, the DOJ, Russia, any politicians, or anyone else. I trust my ability to very carefully scrutinize and interpret information. When a claim is made, I look at the evidence offered to support that claim, no matter who makes it, or what the claim is. I suggest you read the above paragraph (the one that you wrote) and try to understand how it exactly describes your own beliefs.
>Propaganda is insidious, and particularly treacherous in the way that it convinces people to argue on its behalf, and that the act of doing so reinforces the hold the propaganda has on the person.
I could not agree more, and your post is a perfect example.
I would agree that my brain is definitely as susceptible as anyone else's to manipulation. I'm just as human as you, and subject to the same limitations.
I've made you defensive, and that wasn't my intent. At least you didn't go straight to irrational anger.
That said, I really don't see anything in your reply to change my assessment.
You're not engaging on the linked content other than to state disbelief, you seem to have applied some kind of category label to me as a believer in some kind of letter campaign(?), you have affirmed the extremely high level of certainty you have in your ability to assess information, and you've hyperbolized the level of rigor you use to assess all information claims you ingest from any source.
We're not going to take this discussion anywhere useful from here.
And that's okay. I tried, and now remember why most people don't. I don't hold any ill will towards you.
The nation that systematically interferes to the maximum possible extent in other nation's internal affairs, including elections is the United States of America. Tens of billions of dollars are spent on propaganda, misinformation, sponsorship of civil disturbances, activist NGO's, paid-coups of elected leaders whose elections were EU observer verified, etc.
The U.S. has grandmastery level of expertise in this space. No other nation comes remotely close. ex CIA directors have even admitted this openly on TV - "election interference" for the "greater good" - to thunderous applause!
Russian efforts to interfere were small, laughable peanuts that the American experts pitied. Read the assessments written in 2023, when Anti Trump hysteria had lowered.
Other nations just grit their teeth and put up with the extraordinary American interference in their internal affairs - because what can they even do ? The U.S. is the Divine Icon of Sanctimonious Hypocrisy. Complain too hard and you will be openly threatened with sanctions. (Look at what is happening with Georgia nowadays)
I thought they were all bad - according to the U.S itself when it is the target of such activities at the minutest level.
There is a lot of evidence, including open statements made by ex-CIA directors, published books by former military/intelligence agents, de-classified documents, news articles, interviews of EU ministers, etc. But most Americans hold your position - that direct or covert U.S. interference in other nation's affairs is completely fine. The only thing I complain about is the sanctimonious hypocrisy when actions reflect back.
This seems like a remnant opinion resultant from old propaganda campaigns promoted by politicians Russia was supporting with its interference in US politics.
These campaigns were multifaceted and included calling proven basic facts into question, going so far as to suggest Russia wasn't interfering at all.
Convincing people to disbelieve this basic fact precluded them from any possible consideration of whether Russia was supporting specific candidates, how Russia might benefit from such a candidate taking power, and why Russia might consider interference to be worth the effort, money, and risk.
This disbelief would also preclude any consideration about why the politician might:
- support such Russian meddling by pretending it did not exist
- make unsupported claims implicating their political opponents which completely ignored known facts
- play dumb whenever the subject came up
It was a playbook, followed to incredible success in conjunction with other propaganda efforts.
This all served to enable the politician to completely avoid addressing core questions about why Russia would support the candidate to the point of interfering with US elections to begin with.
Get on X.com for more than 20 minutes and tell me it isn’t swimming in Chinese/Russian state actors trying to inflict damage to US societal structure, politics, and way of life. Just go to any political news article for a bit and go down the rabbit hole of all the “patriot” accounts on there that are blatantly not American with bad English and a laser focus on propaganda against the USA and promoting far right (or left) garbage. Facebook has improved quite a bit over the past few years but it was much worse in the 2020 cycle, so much worse.
All major nations interfere with each other’s elections and/or politics and political stability. That said, the narratives around election interference are political rather than objective.
> last decade
well over a century..
The thing is that it’s a Constant. It’s not a new or surprising thing like fake news presents it as.
> Do you have any doubt that Russia has been interfering in US politics for well over a decade?
You mean through completely accepted and legal campaign donations to pretty much every major politician? Oh no wait that’s AIPAC and Israel and “just fine”. You mean through bots that post shit on FB right?
I don’t care for conspiracies, but I do wonder why American politicians don’t try to stop donations from foreign government institutions to politicians in general. JFK was on track to do just that before he was murdered.
> Deepfake of U.S. Official Appears After Shift on Ukraine Attacks in Russia
> U.S. officials said they had no information about the origins of the video. But they are particularly concerned about how Russia might employ such techniques to manipulate opinion around the war in Ukraine or even American political discourse.
Most likely this is meant to target trump supporters to encourage them to go vote for him because it highlights increased US support for Ukraine.
