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Comment by resters | Hacker News Reader

indeed! HN has gone way to the authoritarian right. Not just socially but also a lot of HN readers favor economically authoritarian policies like tariffs!

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Why do you call tariffs authoritarian? I would generally put them in the protectionist basket but I don't see how a country can be authoritarian towards another or either populations by simply imposing tariffs.

Tariffs are at least anti-libertarian.

Absolutely agree. The libertarian view of tariffs is that they limit free trade, and are often used for inefficiently for market manipulation than as a funding source.

One question this US election cycle has brought up is how to best fund a government. Every reasonable person understands that a government needs funding to operate. But every mechanism employed has trade offs. But I have not found enough information to develop an informed opinion on under what conditions a flat tariff on imports be better than a progressive income tax, a flat income tax be better than capital gains, etc. Tax policy is adhoc, driven by a multitude of factors. If you or anyone can provide an interesting survey on some principle approaches to tax policy I would be grateful.

We can ignore the reasons they give; they're well-established liars. Here are some patterns the tariffs fit afaict:

They like to shift the tax burden away from wealthy constituents and onto everyone else: Republican states tend to use sales tax, which taxes everyone at an equal rate, rather than progressive income tax. Most/much wealthy income comes from capital gains, etc., which are taxed at a relatively low rate. Most of everyone else's income comes from wages, which are taxed at higher rates ('income tax' should be called 'wage tax', to avoid confusion), including welfare taxes like Social Security, etc.

They are populist nationalists and want to increase nationalism and disrupt international institutions and cooperation. Tariffs ideologically do the first and practically do the second.

> The libertarian view of tariffs is that they limit free trade, and are often used for inefficiently for market manipulation than as a funding source.

Also, tariffs are like sales tax: They tax everyone at the same rate.

> If you or anyone can provide an interesting survey on some principle approaches to tax policy I would be grateful.

Sorry, not off the top of my head ...

My guess is the tariff thing is just a fad and no one actually wants a trade war. It's something Trump personally thinks is a good idea, and that sounds good in a stump speech. But all the folks advising him, including the ones from our own subculture (Musk, Ackman, Sacks) know better.

I'm choosing this moment to try to be optimistic: if Trumps turns over the reins of government to a bunch of technocrats... it's not the worst possible thing that can happen.

The real question is who's going to restrain him from turning the DoJ into a revenge organ. The rule of law is historically very hard to get back once its lost.

A major reason for the tariff thing is that free trade has a lot of losers, and those were left out to dry, and even ridiculed.

Another reason is that being economically dependent on foreign countries can be quite risky. E.g. if China gets economically independent from the west but the west is still dependent on China, China will have immense power over the west.

Yeah, I get the arguments. They're just wrong. I'm not aware of a single time in history where a trade war worked to the advantage of the instigator. If you really want this, for the reasons you say, it's because we're already losing and cutting us off from the "enemy" just accelerates the loss.

Trade makes everyone richer, and the cost is that some of the people you don't want to be rich get rich. But willfully choosing to be poor doesn't fix that.

> My guess is the tariff thing is just a fad and no one actually wants a trade war. It's something Trump personally thinks is a good idea, and that sounds good in a stump speech. But all the folks advising him, including the ones from our own subculture (Musk, Ackman, Sacks) know better.

They aren't doing it for economic purposes but for political ones: They are nationalist authoritarians; tariffs are not only nationalistic policy, they undermine international institutions and cooperation.

> if Trumps turns over the reins of government to a bunch of technocrats

That seems like the opposite of Trump's behavior, campaign promises, and plans.

Pretty sure that if Trump learned anything from term one its that he shouldnt rely on technocrats and should try to install as many sycophants as possible.

Well off people are pulling ladder behind them, a tale as old as mass migration become possible.

I realized HN was lost during a thread about having to provide identification to access adult websites.

There we SO many voices in favor. I was shocked. Hackers historically cared a TON about their privacy, yet they were willing to throw it away for the sake of "the children."

Ignoring that there is a huge suite of tools that would allow you to protect children WITHOUT having to register with the government and be tracked to visit a website.

It turns out that "hackers" and "rich boy startups" have much less cultural overlap than the latter would have you believe.

HN is not largely populated by hackers. It's populated mostly by people working for SV-type companies.

People forget - or never realize, if they're new - that the "Hacker" in "Hacker News" refers to startup entrepreneurs "hacking" capitalism. This place used to be called "Startup News," after all.

Age verification that protects privacy can be done using clever cryptographic techniques.

yea but we all know it wont be

Yeah I would be 100% for that, honestly.

I'm not a big anti-adult content person, I don't think it is a big deal. Cockfighting and dogfighting used to be popular pass-times. People used to take their whole family down to the public square for a nice afternoon hanging. Brothels used to be widespread! The old world was so much seedier and dirtier and violent, stuff is tame today by comparison.

But I 1000% respect someone who wants to control their kids access to adult content. I just know there is a lot of danger in implementing a Chinese-style "internet identification system."

I’m very liberal and very much opposed to authoritarianism. I don’t see the problem with forcing online content to be different than offline content. You gotta show ID or otherwise prove age to buy alcohol and pornography offline. Why not for online as well?

Because when you show ID to buy age-restricted things in person, nobody is keeping a record of anything. A clerk looks at your ID and that's the end of it.

Online is a completely different beast on that count.

I don’t think this is a compelling argument for keeping things as they currently stand.

Governments have a terrible track record when it comes to privacy. Everything from the USPS selling your info when you move, to the 2 dozen texts I got yesterday because the government sells[1] your voting records on the cheap. Maybe you don't agree but surely you at least understand why people are widely worried about a future where the government decides to sell your adult website access records to make a few extra bucks.

[1]: https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voter-registration/voter-re...

They should be worried. Bad governance is bad. But people do want something to be done about ease with which children can access pornography online. A solution will eventually be imposed if the industry doesn't clean things up.

I don't disagree. The problem is that the solutions being talked about have a large negative impact far wider than the problem they're intended to address.

It is the parents responsibility to raise their children. It's not my responsibility to have to show ID(I'm a grown adult, there is no mistaking me for someone 18 and below.. though I don't think there is any such laws in any country I would want to live in. this seems to be a fairly US centric world view).

"Think of the children"? That's the argument here?

Do you think a business should be able to sell alcohol to a 10 year child? It’s not the business’ responsibility to raise a person’s kid, afterall.

There is a big difference between storing someones credentials in a porn identification database vs showing your ID to some clerk. These things are not identical.

Of course they aren't identical. The point is that prior to the internet everyone thought it reasonable to prevent kids from accessing pornography. Now it is widely available to them online. Some people think this is not right. There are no perfect solutions.

Could you elaborate further on the problem you see?

I don't see a problem with "things as they currently stand".

As they currently stand anyone, regardless of age, can easily access pornographic content online.

Yes clearly ISPs, OSs, and everyone involved who is making money should provide easier and better tools for protecting kids from adult content.

But a state mandated thing associated with my ID is... iffy.

People have perfectly good reasons for wanting to protect their privacy.

But they have done that and so a government mandated solution is warranted.

Look into the Chinese identification systems associated with internet access to see where this leads. It isn't good.

We don’t have to do it the same way the Chinese do. We can implement it in a bad way or in a good way.

If you really want to buy pornography on the internet as a minor, you will have difficulties doing the transactions.

Aside from that you haven't thought about the implications of an ID system in the current political climate. Some advocates even state their real goals openly.

I don't think you are very liberal here for that matter. It is just a single issue, but it strongly correlates with positions around this particular topic.

It's easy to view pornography online regardless of age. That's what we are talking about.

Here are my leftist views: No one should have more than $10 million of wealth. Everyone should have a place to live, food, and healthcare. Healthcare should be free at the point of usage. The U.S. should stop funding Israel. Higher education should be free. Churches should pay tax on the property they own. Donations to charity should not be tax deductible. Public transportation should be heavily subsidized and greatly expanded. The DOD and CIA and NSA should be greatly reduced in size and scope. Elections should be publicly funded so that each candidate gets an equal amount of funding. Abortion should be legalized everywhere. Homeschooling should be outlawed.

If only you knew why my sweet summer child.

I've been wondering a while, is your username a reference to the comic "stone toss?"

From the perspective of wanting less waste and less pollution tariffs are a good thing.

Why do you say that? Without tariffs, the most efficient producer makes the good or service. With them, someone less efficient may make them.

Efficiency includes, but isn't only, waste and pollution.

By waste I meant the consuming of goods and accompanying trash that comes with it.

How is that made better by tariffs? Do you mean the increased prices will reduce consumption, which will reduce the accompanying waste?

Yes.

Sure but that seems more a clever side-effect than a real policy?

Outcomes are more important than "real policy".

Real policy is about real outcomes; this idea, while interesting to talk about, fails on outcomes.

Hasn’t been implemented so how do you know the outcomes won’t be there? Real policy as you call often times fails to have intended outcome or has lots of unintended consequences.

> Hasn’t been implemented so how do you know the outcomes won’t be there?

That's not a serious policy analysis, or even much of a debate exercise.

Efficiency includes also e.g. child and slave labor.

You could say the same about progressive taxes. Without them, the most efficient do the work. With them, less efficient people below taxable income threshold will do more work.

That's the first valuable, novel insight I've heard about taxation in a long time. While I support progressive taxes for other reasons (fairness), I'd be interested in the economic impact.

(The research would have to use overall tax rate, not just 'income' tax (i.e., wage tax).)

There was a time before income tax… and there maybe a future without income tax. Or you can think of income tax as profit sharing with everyone’s required partner big brother. Remember corporate tax and payroll taxes are flat. the progressive part of income tax is really more targeted at consumption. so it’s really more of a progressive consumption tax. It’s easy to arrange a delay in taxes if you don’t need to consume, and are willing to run a business.

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