If I could find a reputable construction company to build my underground home I would be a true troglodyte.
THEN the LLC hires the subcontractors in stages without them knowing about each other.
Youd take about 5 years, but itd be about as secure as you could be if you lost trust in soceity.
Realistically, society we know it won't survive if it dwindles to beneath a couple of millions.
That's what's the fallacy. You need the rest of the trappings of modern society to keep wealthy in power.
This is all just fantasy of course as I have not yet found a highly rated company within a few states that have vast experience with upper-end UHPC 60K PSI which has to be done right the first time and I need to get the designs baked first addressing all the "Errm Achtuwallly" memes.
Other comments talk about society collapsing. I am totally fine with that. I will set up a copy of HN and make silly comments on it then as admin give myself points and reply using alternate accounts. Then I will start some contrarian arguments and then ragebait the contrarian personality. Another personality will step in and calm everything down. Then 48 hours later another alt will make a totally unrelated comment and just after that there will be spam for bitcoin in Uganda. All of this powered by the Sun and my farts. Some poor bastard will happen across this site on internet over CB radio.
If you have the resources you could always buy an existing underground structure and renovate. Like a missile silo. Or buy an already renovated one:
https://washingtonmissilebase.com/
I imagine upkeep is pretty expensive, probably needs a lot of HVAC, dehumidifying, pumping, etc to keep you from dying due to weird mold and stuff lol
Then why give it up in the first place? "Because you have to" is probably going to be the argument, but I don't buy that.
They reality is the average person is between a rock and a hard place.
Also, a lot of crap in Western countries is caused by tech broligarchs enriching themselves in favor of workers en destroying democracy for tech feudalism. So if we can bring down their sales Tesla-style, I'm all in for it.
Not true. The reason my Col is off the charts, salary low and housing unaffordable is due to EU central bank printing too much money leaving us holding the bags, government's zoning laws making housing expensive and them importing millions of immigrants despite record unemployment numbers to put downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on housing. None of this is done by US tech bros, it's all done by EU rulers and elites.
US tech bros is an orthogonal issue that distracts from the core issues.
And savings absolutely did eventually get obliterated by excessive Covid money printing, what are you on about?
Sure, spending might cause inflationary effects, but that's orthogonal to quantity (flows not stocks), but then economics is the science of confusing stocks with flows.
Only reason this one wouldn’t be, is human sentiment being nonlinear.
You’re asking to be trapped in a small fish tank with no air pocket…still not a good argument.
Not.
Read more carefully before getting snippy, here.
Better: don’t get snippy here at all!
I don't trust the small number of E2E US services at all. E.g., some of the companies that were/are in PRISM seem to have very convenient 'accidental' backdoors. E.g. WhatsApp doing backups on Google Drive without encryption by default on Android or Apple doing iCloud backups of iMessage that are not E2E encrypted unless you enable ADP. And even if you are wise enough to enable E2E in both cases, most people that you communicate with don't, because they use the defaults, so it's game over anyway.
That won't change until Ursula von der Leyen goes. Her nickname in Germany (since 2009) is Zensursula, because she attempted to build a pan-German firewall.
She failed in Germany, but she may yet succeed in the entire EU.
That some businesses are not trustworthy seems less a concern for me, than that many governments would like to make all business insecure by design.
I think a lot of our issues are due to a lack of cooperation.
Please don't stop us having access to your information, else we will destroy you with the information we already hold :-)
But no, our cooperate oligarch overlords just can't keep their hands out of the piggy bank.
America has a long tradition of selling anything to the highest bidder. There was never any chance they were going to change.
I don't think it's still the money laundering haven, though. The US forced them into some pretty strict KYC laws to avoid being globally debanked.
The last thing I want is Europe in control of any of my data they just fundamentally don't think privacy from the government should exist. Pair that with the frankly appalling lack of free speech I wouldn't want to risk it.
What tech companies?
At the end of the day, it's all about capital and IP.
American domiciled VCs and companies can outinvest just about any other competitor, and much of the core IP for vast swathes of critical next-gen technologies (high NA EUV, Foundation Models, Quantum Computing) is in the US, but American companies are fine transferring technology abroad (often with American government backing [3][4]) and moving jobs abroad.
China has a similar ecosystem but prefers to invest domestically and for IP to remain within China.
Meanwhile Japan, Taiwan, and Korea continue to back the US no matter what due to tensions with China and North Korea along with existing fixed asset investments in the US.
When companies like Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and others are able to invest tens of billions of dollars in India [0], Poland [1], Israel [2], Portugal [5], Ireland [6], and others it makes them more open to collaborate with American capital and IP instead of dealing with alternatives who cannot deploy similar amounts of capital and transfer IP.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-11/india-dra...
[1] - https://www.gov.pl/web/primeminister/google-invests-billions...
[2] - https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjcwdmxxzg
[3] - https://www.state.gov/pax-silica
[4] - https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
[5] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-11/microsoft...
[6] - https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2025/11/27/microsoft-has...
Because every investor in the world put their money in the US. They knew the best companies and people would centralize around that hub.
When the US is a rogue, isolated idiocracy -- already true, but the world takes time to adapt to this new reality -- how much of that money do you think will flow to the US?
American public pension funds alone hold $6 Trillion in AUM [0] and American endowment funds hold a little under $1 Trillion in AUM [1], and tend to be the LPs for most VC funds as most institutional investors follow the Yale Investment Model.
[0] - https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/2024-ann...
Neither of your citations has any relevance to this at all. That endowments and pensions funds have money...what is your point? Ah, the old HN "look I've provided citations so upvote me, even if they don't support my contention".
Canadians alone hold almost $4 trillion dollars in US securities. Because the US was the centre of the capital universe. Just like we saw it as the centre of the media and music universe. Americans mistook the free world basically anointing the US into some confused notion that it was actually some earned accomplishment.
When we in the VC/PE space raise a fund, we are investing other people's money. Most of that money is of American origin and American domiciled.
You do see some large players like in Canada and Europe, but even they are not similar in size to American pension funds and endowments, let alone other American institutional investors.
Edit: Can't reply
> these will often end up being national level and will look individually much smaller than the ones from the US, purely because the US has more people.
Absolutely! And that's what makes it so difficult for Europe to decouple from the US or China.
Most attempts at EU federalization are undermined by national level politicans as the keys to hard power (defense, foreign policy, FDI attraction) remain under the purview of individual European states, becuase push comes to shove, an American employer or fund can threaten to leave and that country's entire political apparatus will work to appease us at the expense of Brussels.
This is how Meta and Amazon have been able to neuter the GDPR thanks to Ireland [0] and Luxembourg [1] respectively.
Even India got the FTA with the EU by using the carrot on France [2] and Italy [3] and the stick on Germany [4].
Europe is in a very tough position because the incentives of a politician who wants to build their career in Brussels is different from one who wants to build their career in Berlin, Bucharest, or Bratislava.
[0] - https://www.euractiv.com/news/irish-privacy-regulator-picks-...
[1] - https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/policy/amazon-leaders-meet-l...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-signs-74-billion-d...
[3] - https://www.lagazzettamarittima.it/2025/10/30/rixi-in-india-...
[4] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...
Look, I haven't dug into this, but if one wants a fair comparison, then you need to account for the size of an economy. If 330mn people need pensions, then you'll obviously see much larger pension funds. If 400mn people across 27 countries want pensions, these will often end up being national level and will look individually much smaller than the ones from the US, purely because the US has more people.
(Anyway to put another argument: the US can outflow. Why should people invest to a Trumpland?)
Many Europeans prefer bank deposits to investment in markets, that's true. I assure you though, there are lots and lots of pension funds in Europe, as well as many, many insurance companies who represent similar capital profiles.
it's a common pattern in GPs comments
pretty certain he just asks the "AI" for citations on whatever he's written
(for a VC he sure has a lot of time to waste shit-posting on the internet)
This reads like wishful thinking from a butthurt European. I am not a fan of many of Trump's policies and I think ex-US investor sentiment has definitely soured. But it's not like the USA is now DPRK.
> how much of that money do you think will flow to the US?
If there's one thing you can be sure of about aggregate investor behavior, it's that investors seek good risk-adjusted returns regardless of any moral or political objections.
So long as capital flows remain unimpeded, property rights are respected, and US companies have good expected future returns, investors' money will continue to flow in to the US.
I'd say the perception is probably worse
kim is simply not a threat
he also hasn't threatened to invade us, and he's not kidnapped any foreign leaders (recently)
Thank you.
It's not just about capital and IP. It's now about a halo of related things, like everyone using US payment networks - if the US unbanks you, even banks in your own country can't do business with you[1]. Or everyone using a US-based messaging platform (WhatsApp) because its been subsidised by a BigTech to cost $0, whereas text messages are still not free...
[1]: https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-12-28/the-comp...
it's a critical industry, so can be regulated to prevent foreign interference
airlines aren't granted freedom of the air unless they're domestically owned
and exactly the same approach can be applied to tech companies
I wish the US had something similar, and that there was more enforcement of disallowing "accept all" buttons without an equivalent "reject all" option. I also recognize that websites don't need the banner if they aren't trying to track me, but lets not pretend there aren't annoying consequences.
Second, the EU is not to blame for cookie banners. Companies doing tracking via cookies are to blame. They always have the option to not have a cookie banner--just don't do the things that require cookie banners. They deliberately choose to do these things, and then people complain about the banners.
Cookie banners are not analogous. It's easy to make a web site that doesn't need cookie banners. It's actually easier to make a site that doesn't need them than to make one that does. Adding in the tracking that requires banner takes effort. But companies prefer to put in that effort and annoy their users so they can have that tracking. That's 100% on them, not on the government.
This is making the assumption that the company has already paid the significant legal fees to see if they need the banner or not. Or ignoring the companies that think it is easier to add the banner than pay a law firm to review it's data usage.
It's like 'Hey, I make T-shirts. I want to sell them to anyone who visits my website. Do I need a cookie banner? I don't know. I do collect personal information to facilitate the transaction. I do retain the information for refund purposes. I do log IP addresses. Is this covered without a banner? Am I 'safer' to just make a banner saying we are saving their data and using it? I can't afford a lawyer to review everything we do, but I can afford a developer to make a banner like they did on other sites. Even if they implement it incorrectly, I think it's worth the cost to have the banner because I probably won't be liable if I attempted to follow the law. And maybe I'm wrong there because again, I have no idea what the letter of the law requires. I just make t-shirts and want to sell them.'
Or we all just don’t take toxins seriously enough.
Not saying there isn’t alert fatigue - just that, in this case, not too many unwarranted alerts…
Yeah, just like it's the EU's fault sometimes that the police cuts of roads when a drunk driver collides with another car, it can impossibly be the fault of the driver themselves.
Maybe try to point the blame in the direction of the ones that are A) showing you the banners in the first place and B) refuses to remove them and instead decide to inconvenience you
You know, like we do with every other single thing.
Besides, GDPR has nothing to do with those cookie banners, you're yet another example of people not understanding how any of these things work, yet find it valuable somehow to point blame in some direction, even if they don't understand the fundamental reasons things are the way they are.
I'm sure you also think EU is the same as Europe, as that tends to also be a common misconception among the people who don't understand the cookies banners or GDPR.
And I recognize that there is a non-trivial cost to knowing if you need the banner or not, and people are likely to ask their web designer/dev "Hey, where's the cookie banner?" and then pay for the subsequent cost of implementing that because it's cheaper than expensive lawyers.
Every company wants to spy on you using cookies and sell you data or target ads. cookies banners are warnings to protect your data from these greedy companies.
This is the most low-rent complaint imaginable and it boggles my mind how I keep seeing it made straight-faced. One time I literally timed how long it took me to dismiss a EU cookie banner, it was about 350ms and only needs to be done once per site. All this outrage is over 350ms and I cannot take it seriously.
such as when creating an account, or doing anything to provide consent besides loading the domain.
Instead, we normalized breaking the site by covering 80% of it so the standard user clicks the first thing that brings the site back: Accept (giving me the 80 advertiser tracking cookies!!1!)
The EU then learned from these mistakes and passed the GDPR in 2016. The GDPR is quite on point - it directly addresses the problem, preempts the foreseeable ways which companies could sidestep such regulation, and didn't succumb to lobbyists looking to install backdoors.
The US could learn a thing or two from the EU regarding legislation.
I cannot understand the constant whining of Apple and other companies, whereas if the PRC asks to jump, they ask 'how high'?
(And of course, it's also the case that "selling to an EU resident" is substantially broader than "doing business in the EU" - EU residents do often travel to foreign countries and provide personal data to stores they transact with while there.)
1. GDPR applies to EU residents in the EU. The protection does not apply to EU residents going on trips to the US.
2. Based on the examples they've presented, there is a SUPER clean solution to your concerns. Geo-blocking. Problem solved, bye bye GDPR. But don't go crying for EU citizen money, can't have it both ways.
Just read the examples they present, they're fairly well written.
> But the GDPR does not apply to occasional instances. Rather, regulators look for other clues to determine whether the organization set out to offer goods and services to people in the EU. To do so, they’ll look for things like whether, for example, a Canadian company created ads in German or included pricing in euros on its website. In other words, if your company is not in the EU but you cater to EU customers, then you should strive to be GDPR compliant.
2. As a general rule Europeans are MUCH less lawsuit addicted than Americans. Plus the way the GDPR works is that generally complaints are filed with a government agency that investigates.
You analysis starts from a position of deep fear.
In practice, it is easy to pick out the situations in which there is "practical" universal jurisdiction, vs "theoretical" universal jurisdiction.
A Colorado company selling locally in Colorado falls in the "theoretical" bucket.
Some do, but...
> (for example, the Bill of Rights doesn't say, "unless you are located outside the US").
The Bill of Rights is a set of constraints on the US government, so even to the extent it applies to the government when acting outside of its borders [0], it isn’t an imposition of US law on the territory of other countries, but a limit on such imposition.
[0] And it doesn't fully, see, e.g., Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763 (1950), subsequently limited somewhat with the core holding retained in Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008).
Unipolar worlds are safer than Bipolar. Multipolar is extremely dangerous.
I imagine you didn't know that more people will be killed if the US doesn't have hegemony.
With their current demographics? Doubt it.
At least the US has the benefit of not really having a core ethnic class.
(To stem off the haters, the US has a "massive problem with racism" exactly because we have such a mixed society. Most monoracial places are obscenely and shamelessly racist, but never has a chance to arise)
The Chinese are clearly doing some "rebalancing" lately. Some would even say that "rebalancing" is not a strong enough word. "De-linking" is a word a lot of those people are more comfortable with using to describe what we're seeing.
You can't really have a unipolar power if that power simply "takes all their marbles and goes home" so to speak.
I think we need to really do some strategic planning around scenarios where China or Europe simply withdraws from the rest of the world. Or decides they only need subsaharan Africa for instance.
Or, the nightmare scenario; where China, Europe, and subsaharan Africa actually figure out that together they don't really need anything from the rest of us.
saying unipolar is better is like saying absolute monarchy is better. sure it is, as long as the good king is alive.