But wait, I thought the big selling point for massive permanent tax cuts for the ultra wealthy in the "One Big Beautiful Bill" is that they would directly lead to jobs creation...?
lol. lmao.
BugsJustFindMe 122 days ago [-]
It may feel cathartic to talk about hypocrisy and grift of right wing politics, but you should know that nobody responds to it. Saying "I told you so" doesn't work, even through snark. The people whom it would benefit you (and me, and mostly also them) to sway aren't swayed by it.
mooglevich 122 days ago [-]
What do you think a good faith person trying to persuade should do with this information?
(Legit question, not trying to throw out a gotcha. I've been wracking my brain about this, since I spiritually agree w/ you that throwing zingers aren't gonna help us all get on the same page, but I've been at a loss as to how to actually discuss these topics with people that seemed to have been taken in by...whatever it is that's going on.)
BugsJustFindMe 122 days ago [-]
You're probably not going to find this satisfying, but, online? For sure nothing.
Even in person, I'm not sure that there really is a way to persuade someone to change their politics in the modern media landscape, even if you get a lot of time alone with them one on one in person and you do everything right, because of what we know about media inundation and how people begin from their gut feelings and then work backwards to retcon details that align with those feelings.
You will have conversations where it seems like you've made some kind of progress, where it seems like you've earned some kind of credibility, where it seems like you've gained some kind of ground, and then the next day they will regress because the new thing they just saw will confirm their original vibes and the interpositions you created will be pushed out of mind and forgotten.
And this will happen over and over because the world is psychotically overrun by messaging from media empires that make mindbogglingly large amounts of money from outright conning people.
So, unless you have a few anti-billionaire billionaire friends thinking of starting media empires in your pocket, possibly the one thing you can do is run for local government.
lovich 122 days ago [-]
> You're probably not going to find this satisfying, but, online? For sure nothing.
Then why tone police the original poster? If these people are unconvinceable then why not enjoy the catharsis?
credit_guy 122 days ago [-]
I agree with the policing thing. I do that from time to time. Hacker News is one (maybe the only one) good place on the internet. Let's try to keep it like that. Snarky remarks are clearly against this site's guidelines. And for good reason: they do not change anyone's mind, and can result in polarizing responses. That's not what HN needs.
BugsJustFindMe 122 days ago [-]
I presently view that kind of cathartic expression as worse than neutral and actively harmful. That's not the same as being able to change someone's mind, but it's also still bad.
lovich 121 days ago [-]
I legitimately do not understand the idea that it’s harmful if you simultaneously argue that it has no effect on anyone but catharsis for the poster.
If it doesn’t change anyone’s mind then why care?
If it does change someone’s mind then why argue against it? Unless you mean to say that you think it’s actively changing people’s mind in the opposite direction of the original posters intent
cyanydeez 122 days ago [-]
There are definitely right wing talking points being shrouded as centrist or other fascism.
Like one thing that I see often are the "they deserve this right-wing grift". Like, there's a lot of people who quickly love to do victim blaming when there's now like one near left mainstream media (NBC) and the remainder are all some right wing grooming station.
There's definitely a center that needs to be reminded that they're currently surrounded by right wing propaganda and they're all trying to move the overton window.
You're right the far right is far gone, but the rest of civil society is still drifting, from apathy or misdirection or serious grift or be grifted realities.
BugsJustFindMe 122 days ago [-]
Ok, let's imagine that I agree with what you just said...
Given your stated premise of the major media landscape being manipulative right-wing grooming stations hiding behind veneers of centrism and the unimaginable power that carries with it, what do you think can legitimately counter the state of things you described other than an empire-shifting media effort that would take financial investments on the scale of an entire small nation state?
If they're uninformed, how much can you actually inform them against the background? If they're uncaring, still, after everything, how can you make them care? If they're undecided, still, after everything, how will you get them to decide?
bigbadfeline 122 days ago [-]
> how much can you actually inform them against the background?
Depends on who you is, in the sense of how many. You seem to be unaware of that choice.
What's our message? What's our reach? Are we coordinated? Are we effective?
AnimalMuppet 122 days ago [-]
All the media except NBS is a "right wing grooming station"? Seriously? CNN? AP News? Reuters? Huffpo? They're all grooming people for the right wing?
I mean, I agree that the right wing is pumping out propaganda and trying to move the overton window, but I think you are seriously mistaken about where the media is at.
cyanydeez 121 days ago [-]
Well, you're right in that we have to assume the right wing ibllionaire who bought CNN will ensure their editorial view point is properly aligned.
But lets be honest, you want to believe that there's some happy push and pull between left and right instead of a heavy handed skew into far right.
It's not just good business as Fox has demonstrated, it's also good _self interest_ to go into the conservative business.
I'm sorry.
bigbadfeline 122 days ago [-]
> All the media except NBS is a "right wing grooming station"? Seriously? CNN? AP News? Reuters? Huffpo?
Ever heard of "good cop, bad cop"? Look it up.
bigbadfeline 122 days ago [-]
> What do you think a good faith person trying to persuade should do with this information? (Legit question...I've been wracking my brain about this)
I can tell you that but it depends on what you are trying to be convincing about. You seem to assume you have all the answers and persuasion is all that remains, but as I said, it depends, you might actually need to first figure out what's worthy of persuasion.
FireBeyond 122 days ago [-]
This is the challenge. I made similar remarks around the reversal of Roe.
On one side you have people throwing arguments that even they know to be a lie, like "post-birth abortions up to 1 month", and when I said "You know, I'm done engaging in good faith with that type of argument", I found many, even here, said that that was my failing, not theirs:
> It's not really a choice but a demonstration of intelligence and empathy. Still, if you deliberately decide to remain ignorant, or simply fail to understand the opposition's position even despite your best efforts, it shouldn't surprise you when you also fail to convince people your position is the correct one.
Like huh? It is okay for them to be objectively dishonest, and have zero shred of empathy, curiosity for my position, but refusing to engage on a good faith basis is a failing of mine?
> Once you reach this stage, your commentary pretty much just becomes elaborate whining, which makes a poor impression of yourself and actually pushes people away from your position.
This is literally idiocracy in the making.
If I make a poor impression on people by repeatedly shutting down their horseshit about doctors performing "abortions" up to a week or a month after birth, or that babies are being harvested in the basement of a pizza parlor for their adrenachrome, and you're more concerned about how I should be "understanding" of that perspective, again, you're also supporting the idiocracy.
psunavy03 122 days ago [-]
Legit answer . . . drop the snark. That's the quickest way to take the person you're trying to persuade and just piss them off and make them double down.
No one changes their mind because someone allegedly "destroyed" or "wrecked" them; that's toxic social media-driven nonsense. If anything, snark and condescension just entrench people's beliefs because "I'm right and that guy's just an arrogant asshole."
The conservative feeling of being punched down on exists because for the longest time, pop-culturally they were. Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and that whole crew play great to a certain educated liberal crowd, but it turns out people really really don't like being the butt of the pop culture jokes.
invalidOrTaken 122 days ago [-]
A good faith person who was also informed would be aware that this is basically a criticism of Romney-era neocon policies, and that agenda is no longer the animating force of the GOP (and was soundly defeated despite the wishes of the great and the good of the party establishment). In the far-right circles I frequent, the sentiment is, basically, "Triple, quadruple, quintuple the national debt, and crash the economy, if that's what it takes to halt immigration and have a country again, rather than an economic zone."
It was not free-market sentiment that propelled Trump to the WH.
ahmeneeroe-v2 122 days ago [-]
Great point. I don't know that I'd say people want a crash, but that they are ambivalent to a crash as long as legal and illegal immigration are stopped and rolled back.
add-sub-mul-div 122 days ago [-]
"Swaying" doesn't happen abruptly in response to any one post, good or bad. It's a process and it takes time.
A critical mass of people in the middle have shown that they'll just get dragged by the Overton window wherever it goes. It does make a difference in the big picture whether bad policy is widely praised, mocked, or ignored.
BugsJustFindMe 122 days ago [-]
It is a process, but this isn't an effective method. People have been mocking MAGA stuff since the beginning, the response from followers is universally one of either outright dismissal or just not caring. Look at where things are now. Look at how much the mocking has any beneficial effect at all on anything.
add-sub-mul-div 122 days ago [-]
It's a passive process, there is no method. The zeitgeist is what it is. There's room for mockery, disgust, memes, cartoons, substantive analysis pieces, dispassionate think pieces. This is a comments section.
Calling attention to emerging actual MAGA policy failure is not the same as calling attention to pussy-grabbing being poor character.
Letting any of this become seen as normal/accepted is a non-starter. Even if things do continue to not change after this window of opportunity of bad results starting to emerge, there's room for things to get worse.
Non-acceptance of his first term did result in his electoral loss.
tayo42 122 days ago [-]
Why assume the poster is trying to change anyone's opinion? Maybe the point was to be cathartic.
prepend 122 days ago [-]
I find catharsis is better in private.
If GP’s point is to be cathartic, then do so on your own time, etc etc
I kind of figured the point here was discussion, learning, development.
yifanl 122 days ago [-]
Isn't it exhausting playing tone police all the time? Respond to the substance of the post or not at all.
BugsJustFindMe 122 days ago [-]
Do you find it slightly ironic that here you are trying to police the way I engage? I do.
> Respond to the substance of the post or not at all.
You might find more success with your future interactions if you don't give commands that you have no authority to give.
cyanydeez 122 days ago [-]
You need to wait 6-12 months for the potential employees to be desperate enough to debase themselves for less money. That's what we learned in 2008's crash.
avrionov 122 days ago [-]
The housing prices and the rents are extremely high right now. Everyone who bought in the last 3 years, doesn't have much room to work for a lower wages.
In addition to that health care will become more expensive, the student loans will resume, etc, etc.
cyanydeez 122 days ago [-]
I think you underestimate how wide the poverty gap is. There are still millions of people living comfortably.
silexia 122 days ago [-]
[flagged]
tomhow 122 days ago [-]
Please don't post flamebait like this here. We've asked you before to avoid flamewar-style commenting on HN, and we need you, like everyone, to observe the guidelines and use the site in its intended spirit if you want to keep participating here. We have to ban accounts that continue to comment like this.
Thanks for contributing to the argument in a meaningful fashion.
silexia 122 days ago [-]
Honest question: If you want environmental and labor regulations in America, how can you oppose tariffs? American businesses following those laws can't compete with countries using slave labor and toxic lakes of poison.
churchill 122 days ago [-]
America's uncompetitiveness in certain industries isn't because of strong environmental and labor regulations. It's scale. That's why, despite working 996, Chinese software technology companies are still in (admittedly) second place compared to the US.
Places like Silicon Valley, etc. have such a dense concentration of talent that if you want to build anything at the cutting edge, you need to pack up, leave your life behind and move over there.
Likewise, this is why China dominates in hardware. You can walk into a random store in Shenzhen and pick out enough off-the-shelf parts to build a reasonably high-end smartphone. No one in the US or Europe will even talk to you if you're not ordering 10k MOQ. And that's if you can find a supplier.
Scale is also the reason why China and South Korea build nuclear reactors at a fraction of Western prices. On budget too! Not because they carelessly expose everyone to toxic radiation.
That's why China has 200* America's shipbuilding capacity. They build so much of it that they unlock economies of scale.
It's the reason why China is churning out more PV systems and batteries than the rest of the world combined. They're building so much that their per unit costs fall tremendously. Then they parley those gains in one industry into adjacent industries like EVs where batteries are 40% of the cost. When you stack economies of scale back-to-back, you end up with an order of magnitude's difference. That's why high-end Chinese EVs cost, say <$20k, while American manufacturers are struggling.
BugsJustFindMe 122 days ago [-]
> If you want environmental and labor regulations in America, how can you oppose tariffs?
Environmental and labor regulations are not the same thing as domestic production. Plenty of domestic production uses slave labor and produces toxic lakes of poison.
> Honest question
It feels like a dishonest question given that we know the tariffs are coming from an administration trying to gut the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Labor.
red-iron-pine 121 days ago [-]
> Plenty of domestic production uses slave labor and produces toxic lakes of poison
The US basically runs on illegal immigrant labor. That's why food is cheap, houses cheap, lots of other crappy services also cheap -- it's all a buncha Mexicans working under the table.
lol. lmao.
(Legit question, not trying to throw out a gotcha. I've been wracking my brain about this, since I spiritually agree w/ you that throwing zingers aren't gonna help us all get on the same page, but I've been at a loss as to how to actually discuss these topics with people that seemed to have been taken in by...whatever it is that's going on.)
Even in person, I'm not sure that there really is a way to persuade someone to change their politics in the modern media landscape, even if you get a lot of time alone with them one on one in person and you do everything right, because of what we know about media inundation and how people begin from their gut feelings and then work backwards to retcon details that align with those feelings.
You will have conversations where it seems like you've made some kind of progress, where it seems like you've earned some kind of credibility, where it seems like you've gained some kind of ground, and then the next day they will regress because the new thing they just saw will confirm their original vibes and the interpositions you created will be pushed out of mind and forgotten.
And this will happen over and over because the world is psychotically overrun by messaging from media empires that make mindbogglingly large amounts of money from outright conning people.
So, unless you have a few anti-billionaire billionaire friends thinking of starting media empires in your pocket, possibly the one thing you can do is run for local government.
Then why tone police the original poster? If these people are unconvinceable then why not enjoy the catharsis?
If it doesn’t change anyone’s mind then why care?
If it does change someone’s mind then why argue against it? Unless you mean to say that you think it’s actively changing people’s mind in the opposite direction of the original posters intent
Like one thing that I see often are the "they deserve this right-wing grift". Like, there's a lot of people who quickly love to do victim blaming when there's now like one near left mainstream media (NBC) and the remainder are all some right wing grooming station.
There's definitely a center that needs to be reminded that they're currently surrounded by right wing propaganda and they're all trying to move the overton window.
You're right the far right is far gone, but the rest of civil society is still drifting, from apathy or misdirection or serious grift or be grifted realities.
Given your stated premise of the major media landscape being manipulative right-wing grooming stations hiding behind veneers of centrism and the unimaginable power that carries with it, what do you think can legitimately counter the state of things you described other than an empire-shifting media effort that would take financial investments on the scale of an entire small nation state?
If they're uninformed, how much can you actually inform them against the background? If they're uncaring, still, after everything, how can you make them care? If they're undecided, still, after everything, how will you get them to decide?
Depends on who you is, in the sense of how many. You seem to be unaware of that choice.
What's our message? What's our reach? Are we coordinated? Are we effective?
I mean, I agree that the right wing is pumping out propaganda and trying to move the overton window, but I think you are seriously mistaken about where the media is at.
But lets be honest, you want to believe that there's some happy push and pull between left and right instead of a heavy handed skew into far right.
It's not just good business as Fox has demonstrated, it's also good _self interest_ to go into the conservative business.
I'm sorry.
Ever heard of "good cop, bad cop"? Look it up.
I can tell you that but it depends on what you are trying to be convincing about. You seem to assume you have all the answers and persuasion is all that remains, but as I said, it depends, you might actually need to first figure out what's worthy of persuasion.
On one side you have people throwing arguments that even they know to be a lie, like "post-birth abortions up to 1 month", and when I said "You know, I'm done engaging in good faith with that type of argument", I found many, even here, said that that was my failing, not theirs:
> It's not really a choice but a demonstration of intelligence and empathy. Still, if you deliberately decide to remain ignorant, or simply fail to understand the opposition's position even despite your best efforts, it shouldn't surprise you when you also fail to convince people your position is the correct one.
Like huh? It is okay for them to be objectively dishonest, and have zero shred of empathy, curiosity for my position, but refusing to engage on a good faith basis is a failing of mine?
> Once you reach this stage, your commentary pretty much just becomes elaborate whining, which makes a poor impression of yourself and actually pushes people away from your position.
This is literally idiocracy in the making.
If I make a poor impression on people by repeatedly shutting down their horseshit about doctors performing "abortions" up to a week or a month after birth, or that babies are being harvested in the basement of a pizza parlor for their adrenachrome, and you're more concerned about how I should be "understanding" of that perspective, again, you're also supporting the idiocracy.
No one changes their mind because someone allegedly "destroyed" or "wrecked" them; that's toxic social media-driven nonsense. If anything, snark and condescension just entrench people's beliefs because "I'm right and that guy's just an arrogant asshole."
The conservative feeling of being punched down on exists because for the longest time, pop-culturally they were. Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and that whole crew play great to a certain educated liberal crowd, but it turns out people really really don't like being the butt of the pop culture jokes.
It was not free-market sentiment that propelled Trump to the WH.
A critical mass of people in the middle have shown that they'll just get dragged by the Overton window wherever it goes. It does make a difference in the big picture whether bad policy is widely praised, mocked, or ignored.
Calling attention to emerging actual MAGA policy failure is not the same as calling attention to pussy-grabbing being poor character.
Letting any of this become seen as normal/accepted is a non-starter. Even if things do continue to not change after this window of opportunity of bad results starting to emerge, there's room for things to get worse.
Non-acceptance of his first term did result in his electoral loss.
If GP’s point is to be cathartic, then do so on your own time, etc etc
I kind of figured the point here was discussion, learning, development.
> Respond to the substance of the post or not at all.
You might find more success with your future interactions if you don't give commands that you have no authority to give.
In addition to that health care will become more expensive, the student loans will resume, etc, etc.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45520332 and marked it off topic.
Places like Silicon Valley, etc. have such a dense concentration of talent that if you want to build anything at the cutting edge, you need to pack up, leave your life behind and move over there.
Likewise, this is why China dominates in hardware. You can walk into a random store in Shenzhen and pick out enough off-the-shelf parts to build a reasonably high-end smartphone. No one in the US or Europe will even talk to you if you're not ordering 10k MOQ. And that's if you can find a supplier.
Scale is also the reason why China and South Korea build nuclear reactors at a fraction of Western prices. On budget too! Not because they carelessly expose everyone to toxic radiation.
That's why China has 200* America's shipbuilding capacity. They build so much of it that they unlock economies of scale.
It's the reason why China is churning out more PV systems and batteries than the rest of the world combined. They're building so much that their per unit costs fall tremendously. Then they parley those gains in one industry into adjacent industries like EVs where batteries are 40% of the cost. When you stack economies of scale back-to-back, you end up with an order of magnitude's difference. That's why high-end Chinese EVs cost, say <$20k, while American manufacturers are struggling.
Environmental and labor regulations are not the same thing as domestic production. Plenty of domestic production uses slave labor and produces toxic lakes of poison.
> Honest question
It feels like a dishonest question given that we know the tariffs are coming from an administration trying to gut the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Labor.
The US basically runs on illegal immigrant labor. That's why food is cheap, houses cheap, lots of other crappy services also cheap -- it's all a buncha Mexicans working under the table.