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Comment by googlywoogly | Hacker News Reader

There's no need to do any of things you mention considering that both parties are owned by the same people and are essentially two faces of the same party in practice. Also - almost all the powers that be - including courts and Congress are already for sale/at the service of big tech.

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Both sides are not the same,not even close, and the voting record proves it.

> the voting record proves it.

Putting on my tin-foil, devils-advocate hat... AKA I don't necessarily believe this but I also have no counter-argument:

Mostly performative. When it's decided that something actually needs to pass, then you'll get some sacrificial lambs that vote across the aisle. Typically they'll be close to retirement or from a state where they won't be heavily punished for that specific vote.

I mean at some point arguments like this become more akin to Russell's Teapot. If you're making an almost unfalsifiable claim, then the burden of proof is on you to prove it and not others to disprove it.

From a political standpoint, the statement "from a state where they won't be heavily punished for that specific vote" is a weird way to put it, since if you framed it in a positive light it would sound more similar to "the state population falls on both sides of the issue and thus either vote could make sense from their legislator depending on exigent circumstances and other factors" or any number of other explanations depending on the vote and populations.

It's not performative when people are losing health insurance and other people are at risk of starving. I agree with holding out on the government shutdown to try to prevent Americans losing healthcare. But when Republicans are absolutely fine with poor people starving so that they can take away people's healthcare, with a bonus that they get to shut down the government and say "see, government doesn't work", it becomes clear that letting the government shut down (especially food program shutdowns) continue is going to hurt more people than the government shutdown is going to help. So, when you say "performative" it sounds like you support the "both sides are the same" meme, but the ideologies are vastly different - one side is fine with people starving indefinitely, and the other actually doesn't want that.

I would think at least some of this should be obvious, but I guess not?

Both sides are exactly the same when it comes to big tech and the voting record proves it.

That's funny, because the president (Republican) just signed an executive order forbidding states from enacting their own AI regulations. Meanwhile, California's governor (Democrat) is trying to regulate AI.

Please explain how that's "exactly the same".

We'd have the exact same situation in reverse if democrats were in the white house.

No, we definitely would not, but you aren't here to engage in any kind of honest discussion. Your assertions are simply not supported by reality.

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