Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

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I could have quoted the roadshow verbatim in support of the point, but it felt tangential. The point is not “Chicago is on the precipice of a pogrom.” It is “political elites in Chicago’s African American community believe the community is impoverished in part because of extractive practices of vice entrepreneurs, and required as a condition of their political assent that Chicago keep equity ownership of a vice business in their community.”

The point is a true one; this _really is_ what some community leaders believe. This belief _really is_ why Chicago is doing this program.

> “Tonight is about a new opportunity on how to participate, about not just being a consumer but to be an owner,” Ald. Ronnie Mosley (21st Ward) said at the pulpit in front of the crowd of a couple hundred people.

https://thetriibe.com/2025/01/chicagos-black-residents-can-i...

There is much more support for that having actually been the sales pitch and political compromise there and elsewhere on the record.

And yes, this is a belief with a long and storied history in American politics.

Do you, Patrick, believe that “Chicago’s African American community is impoverished in part because of extractive practices of vice entrepreneurs?” Phrasing it this way winks that you don’t think so, but perhaps I am misreading you.

However, the conclusion of your article seems to be that Bally’s (a vice entrepreneur) is about to further impoverish them, this time under the guise of ownership but as usual with the support of the local political elites. So for consistency I think your answer should be “yes.”

You’d make a bigger difference in your hometown by conveying this message directly to the folks being targeted, rather than the HN crowd.

Patrick has mentioned several times lately that he writes for a broad audience, in a way that’s easy for people with influence to share. He didn’t write this essay for HN; it’s incidental that this article is posted here.

There's an amusing symmetry between the lines he quotes that carefully suggest without actually claiming that e.g. the operating company will pay out all its profits in distribution, and the way everything he himself writes suggests without actually claiming.

Patrick used to be better at obfuscating his true views with absurd language but I’ve noticed him going full mask off recently.

> yes, this is a belief with a long and storied history in American politics.

I wonder if there’s another set of beliefs with a long and storied history in American politics…..

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