Comment by nebula8804 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nebula8804 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Its all a giant scam:

Red states block anything and everything that could help anyone but themselves. To "compromise" Dems put investments into bills that help Red states in the hopes that something will get passed(Sometimes it still fails). Examples include all these battery factories being located in purple states so that those senators will be forced to vote for the package. Dems help out the red states just to try and move the needle forward.

Red politicians then get elected and further cut things that help Blue states. See all the medicaid cuts, soon social security, last trump admin cut the homeowner tax exemptions that mainly helped blue states, cutting tax benefits that encouraged companies to hire software engineers and timing it so that it takes place after trump left office.

Red states typically get more out then they put in in terms of taxes: https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-contribute-the-mo...

The blue states are held hostage by the Red states because of the structure of the system(a mess left over from the post Civil War).

You can argue that Blue states drag the rest of the country kicking and screaming into the future: Ex: The California CARB mandates setting emission standards forcing manufacturers to adopt their standard for emissions, The East and West coast define culture in the arts that the rest of the world see and knows as American, top universities are where the future ways of thinking are challenged and explored.

Every time the Red side gets into power they try to claw back even this stuff so that the Blue states are essentially nothing more than vassals contributing more but getting little back in return. Blue states need a Democratic party that will play extremely dirty just like the Republicans.

Battery factories are being placed in red states because they're still largely functional governments with fast go-to-market permitting and are pro-growth in general. Tesla built their new HQ (which is the largest building in the country) in Texas in 14 months, which would be impossible to do in California. It would take 5 years if they allowed them to do it at all.

Blue states have ineffective, slow, dysfunctional governments that tax heavily and regulate heavily. They also do indescribably stupid things, like Prop 47 in CA.

Red state / blue state categories have nothing to do with the civil war. CA wasn't even in the civil war, obviously, and for the longest time, they were a red state (until the early 90s). All of California's foundational industries (tech, entertainment, agriculture, aerospace, etc) were brought there when it was red.

What in particular do you disagree with in Prop 47?

Criminals should be punished, actually. Legalizing crime or treating it as an unserious problem leads to situations like you have in SF and LA today, with window smashings and retail theft etc. highly common despite recent improvements in law enforcement.

The biggest change I recall it making is raising the boundary between misdemeanor and felony from $400 to $950, but raising that is something that most states were doing in the first couple of decades of this century, with most going to $1000 or $1500. $950 is the 12th lowest.

It's hard to blame increased crime on that since so many other states (big and small, red and blue) have a higher limit.

As the other poster pointed out, California, in fact, has one of the lowest felony theft thresholds out of any of the states. In fact, it has the 12th lowest felony threshold in the union. [1]

Of the top 15 states with the highest felony thresholds, only 4 of them are Democratic states. Two states are purple (but have voted red in the last election). So, it would seem Republicans states actually tend to have the highest felony threshold amounts across the US.

It was actually Oklahoma who started the trend to increase the felony threshold in the early 2000s.

Do you want to know which states have the highest felony theft thresholds? It’s Texas and Wisconsin at $2500. In 2014, California went from a threshold of $400 to $950. In 2015, Texas went from a threshold of $1500 to $2500, so California’s threshold has always been much lower even in the recent past. [2]

On top of that, California actually repealed parts of prop 47 in 2024.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/felony-thef... [2] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-bri...

The state was red but all those foundational industries come from traditionally "Blue Cities" that have expanded to fill the state as those industries have grown.

A faster time to market is beneficial for companies, but it's also an excuse to avoid quality, safety, and ethics.

Sure there are groups and legislation that slow things down to the point it becomes a problem, but with most things, it's about balance and context, but I guess it's easier to speak in extremes and act partisan.

> those foundational industries come from traditionally "Blue Cities" that have expanded to fill the state as those industries have grown.

In the 50s and 60s, when Silicon Valley was founded, it was heavily Republican. David Packard was a conservative. Nixon and Reagan were CA Republicans. In the early 90s it flipped blue, partially due to demographics and partly because Gore and Clinton (both Southern Democrats) courted them and pursued pro-tech policies, in particular Gore played a role in opening up the internet to commercial markets, enabling the dot com boom of the 90s.

CA flipped blue largely because of migration into the state from Asia and Mexico, and a shift in industries and focus post-Cold War, as well as some trends towards environmentalism and social progressivism while the GOP became more socially conservative in the 90s.

> A faster time to market is beneficial for companies, but it's also an excuse to avoid quality, safety, and ethics.

A faster time to market is beneficial to human progress. By slowing everything down by a factor of 5 humanity shrinks in its potential, dramatically so, and it hurts the trajectory of our whole country in the face of rivals that move at lightning speed with no such pretenses. In large part, its just bureaucratic rot that holds back everything in the name of safety or ethics while we conveniently import things from nations which have no such ethics. You simply export the problem at the cost of long term financial, industrial, and logistical security. The Tesla HQ was built in Texas in 14 months perfectly safely and soundly.

>In the 50s and 60s, when Silicon Valley was founded, it was heavily Republican. David Packard was a conservative. Nixon and Reagan were CA Republicans. In the early 90s it flipped blue, partially due to demographics and partly because Gore and Clinton (both Southern Democrats) courted them and pursued pro-tech policies, in particular Gore played a role in opening up the internet to commercial markets, enabling the dot com boom of the 90s.

David Packard is one person versus literally 99.9% of technical workers and innovators that held more progressive views of the future and technology.

>CA flipped blue largely because of migration into the state from Asia and Mexico, and a shift in industries and focus post-Cold War, as well as some trends towards environmentalism and social progressivism while the GOP became more socially conservative in the 90s.

This is just not true. Most large cities in America shifted blue due to population density in general and the wants that arise through dense population alone. I'm not going to argue with you but I can tell you that is very obviously not the whole picture and politicians position have little to do with how innovators and technologists identified politically.

>A faster time to market is beneficial to human progress. By slowing everything down by a factor of 5 humanity shrinks in its potential, dramatically so, and it hurts the trajectory of our whole country in the face of rivals that move at lightning speed with no such pretenses. In large part, its just bureaucratic rot that holds back everything in the name of safety or ethics while we conveniently import things from nations which have no such ethics. You simply export the problem at the cost of long term financial, industrial, and logistical security. The Tesla HQ was built in Texas in 14 months perfectly safely and soundly.

Texas also loves to cover up any problems they have, and had one of the worst power crises due to traditional conservative business practices recently. So if you want to compare examples we can, I have hundreds more about how ignoring ethical and environmental concerns is net negative for America and the world.

What do we gain by having an Tesla HQ in Texas? They literally moved there for the exact reason we're talking about. They wanted to avoid dotting their i's and crossing their t's and they can do that in Texas. Building a new Tesla HQ is not "Progress"

Most red states are economically defunct, essentially relegated to be welfare states with those with successful economies support them. They let their infrastructure crumble and they barely resemble a developed nation. Ever just driven through Louisiana or South Carolina? These are poor, poor states. The people who live there know it - it's just dummies online who like to pretend red states matter.

The only exception is Texas. I live in Texas. We're actively self-sabotaging and have for a long time. I give it like 10 years before we reach California levels of COL and then companies flee to whatever desperate backwater state they can find and the cycle repeats.

But don't worry, it's okay! We have 1 trillion dollars of oil damage in the state so we'll have something economically productive to do for a while.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com