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Comment by cjbgkagh | Hacker News Reader

That’s why it’s extremely important to remain mighty. The US is in serious decline and I don’t see them turning that around anytime soon.

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The US seems mostly healthy except for corruption skyrocketing. I don't even need to see the stats. If the president is this bad, and Americans overall think that's fine, then a lot of lower offices will soon be filled with corrupt officials. Attitudes shape incentives, and incentives shape behavior. Otherwise, both in terms of labor laws and capital markets, the US looks very healthy. But corruption in itself might create huge problems in the long term.

In many ways electing Trump was a reaction to the corruption, but of course instead of getting less of it voters got more of it. That’s why it’s so hard to turn the ship around, profits from corruption are reinvested into more corruption.

> profits from corruption are reinvested into more corruption.

Beautifully explained.

And I want to ask is there anything we can do bottom line about it?

I think like stricter rules against corruption should be in check, but that requires the govt. to do something and I feel like govt.'s themselves are being corrupt

It's this cyclical loop and I don't know if there is rather anything that we can do to break out of it.

We have the rights to vote, but those end up being squandered in most/all countries with corrupt politicians, those right to vote aren't really used mostly to bring real change, maybe a different name perhaps

At the end of the deal, its more so an faith in overall humanity that we can figure out what's right for all of us but we just fight over petty differences sometimes.

Do you guys have faith in overall humanity in aggregate? At times I feel like some instances restore my faith whereas others reduce it so its all just feelings for me perhaps.

An internal reform would look like the catholic reformation. There was hope that having an external adversary like China would spur the US into self reform to save itself but it appears that our leaders have now figured out that despite recent attempts at puffery we would not win such a war and have instead chosen a managed decline. It also means we’re in the looting phase of collapse. It can last a long time as there is a lot of wealth to loot. I personally gave up hope and left the US 10 years ago. I wish those who remain all the best with it.

I am not really familiar with the catholic reformation sorry.

Regarding your comment, its very interesting, where have you shifted now if I may ask or more details about it?

I am not really American but I still hear that its startup culture is well although with all of the other downsides we have mentioned, it does become moot.

A lot of people feel like the system is unfair but they want to be on the other side of unfairness rather than making the system fair from what I've observed. And this observation kind of fits globally sometimes imo

Somewhere cheaper, I expect the downturn to present as things generally becoming too expensive to afford so I got a jump on reducing expenses.

If you want to be in startup culture SV is still the place to be. I didn’t like it because of all the trend following, if you want to succeed there it’s best to jump on a trend. I’m more of an applied researcher and had my own ideas I wanted to explore.

As inequality continues to get worse those who initially benefited from it will generally find themselves on the other side of the transition and losing out.

AI is going to increase inequality far more than economic policy, I’m 5x more productive with AI and am able to compete with much larger orgs. What happens when they lose their job, what happens when someone does the same to me. The Pareto distribution of productivity is about to get a hell of a lot steeper.

Hm Interesting, I already live in India and its already really cheap and still has a really good startup ecosystem. When I wrote that comment, I didn't mean that I wanted to go to startup, I am a little annoyed by some of the things happening there too

So I guess India's the best option considering all factors I guess.

but one of the problems especially in India is the saturation of the market for software engineers and the competition to get into college is so cut throat that I can't even start to tell smh

I think perhaps remote jobs from india might make more sense but I clearly am not the only one with this idea so might be hard to differentiate I suppose

> AI is going to increase inequality far more than economic policy, I’m 5x more productive with AI and am able to compete with much larger orgs. What happens when they lose their job, what happens when someone does the same to me. The Pareto distribution of productivity is about to get a hell of a lot steeper.

That's great but I think I have nuanced discussion on AI, I think that we are gonna have much bigger financial issues all around the world because of the AI bubble itself

skyrocketing corruption is a cancer. You might "seem mostly healthy" at first glance while you are rushing to the grave.

Most of our people in the US do not think it's ok what trump is doing. We have a binary political system where both parties work to deceive the public that there is any real choice. Both parties in involved in the attrocies at varying degrees. Democrats are the carrot and republicans are the stick with business interests in the middle controlling both sides with money. I'm not sure what the solution is but more of same voting dems/rep ain't working.

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