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Comment by bediger4000 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not against the end result, but I was taught that we lived in a Republic, not a dictatorship. This should have been done legislatively, not by executive fiat.

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Did Congress mandate the production of the penny? Or was the authority over what coins are produced (and how many of them) given to the Treasury?

I think that's a bit beside the point. We all use physical money. An executive that respected the vox populi would leave this for the legislature, where everybody has elected representatives that can debate, wheel-and-deal, and act on that voice of the people.

There's an awful lot you can do, but shouldn't.

The President is also an elected representative. This isn't beside the point: if it's not legislatively mandated, this is American democracy working as designed.

If the voice of the people is the concern, there should just be a referendum. I for one would vote to save the penny.

As I understand it congress mandates which coins _can_ be minted and their specifications (denomination/physical size/markings/etc) then leaves it up to the Secretary of the Treasury to determine how many need to be produced to meet demand.

If the USA was a dictatorship, I don’t think you would be able to criticize your government on the internet.

It isn't dictatorship, but it is turning into dictatorless dystopia

At what point in the rise of Hitler do you think people stopped posting anonymous criticism about Hitler? Because I'm going to bet never.

I didn’t know there was internet censorship at Hitler’s time, preventing people from talking about the dictatorship. Can you back it up with a source? I think you might have to use a LLM to find one.

As for my claim (that people in a dictactorship wouldn’t be able to use the internet), here’s an example of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Ara...

Weird choice of example when there are so many relevant examples happening right now. Even worse the US is currently suppressing speech and actions that protest foreign countries (and our support for them). Anti-BDS laws should surely be unconstitutional yet they stand. Detaining and deporting legal residents for their speech. Pulling unrelated funding from universities for not policing student speech. The US isn't particularly good about press freedom either.

Interestingly, it's actually being done properly:

* The US constitution has an executive branch consisting of a single person, the President. (The other two branches are judicial and legislative)

* That person is given broad authority that includes the treasury, commanding the military, pardoning power, appointing a cabinet, etc.

* Delegating this is well within the power of the executive

That said we're allowed to complain about these things and a big enough protest could have the desired effect. I love pennies myself, but I'm not interested enough to leave my Go compiler long enough to do so.

Very incorrect, the US constitution states "[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures"

Congress, not the executive. And the supreme court has ruled that power to be exclusive

source: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C5-1/...

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