Someone needs to go to jail | Hacker News Reader

Someone needs to go to jail

edwardelson.substack.com

111 pointsshimm72373 comments

It begins to look like Citizens United [1] cost us democracy.

"That government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich shall not perish from the earth."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

I know people hate Citizens United, but to me, if the debate on this is ever to progress: what's the alternative? Say I and a bunch of my friends donate money to promote some cause; let's say "Black Lives Matter", for the sake of argument. Is that also off the table? Is there to be no ability for people to associate & collectively argue for change (e.g., by buying an ad to raise awareness)?

Or, is it fine when I do it, but not when others do it? Where do I draw the line, between what association for the purposes of political advocacy is fine, and what association isn't fine?

Campaign finance laws were set up tell you where the line is. There needs to be a line because the amount of reach you have should not grow with your wealth. But Citizens United made the money as speech an unlimited right. Spending $250 is a completely different category than spending $250 million.

But where's the line between political contribution & opinionated news article about a political candidate?

Having unlimited funds to make sure everyone sees your opinion.

In the age of LLMs, separating money from speech on the internet (where the most desired sociodemographics live) is literally impossible.

You restrict ads, they just create more bots or even pay actual people to express certain opinions.

As an individual you can. Not as a corporation.

Again, I'm asking about generalized freedom of association. I get the hate for corporations, I do, but if you ban freedom of people to associate, and through that association, to pool money for a common cause: are you just straight up good with that?

The underlying law in Citizen's United didn't just target corporations: it targeted unions, it targeted non-profits. That's why I'm asking about those other cases that would be banned. I understand wanting to ban Evil Inc., but are you ready to ban World Peace Non-Profit, too? Not only that, but Citizens United itself wasn't a corporation.

If you have a defensible case, that, yes, that'd be fine, go ahead. But when only individuals can spend money on politics, are we not in the same situation, where Bezos or Musk can afford an ad, but I cannot?

Convince me that the solution is not to remove money from the process entirely.

I’m just spitballing here but why don’t we have a system where every candidate gets the same allocation of money for ads and it is outlawed to use your own fortune to bankroll your candidacy

In a world where social media companies are all run by billionaires, let them pollute the feeds with their candidate of choice. This only speedruns the complete collapse of SM in an era where we can no longer distinguish real discourse from AI

And good riddance.

Workaround: I'm rich and would just start up a newspaper that gave my candidates good coverage.

In my opinion, this isn't a easy problem if you value freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of people to spend their own money.

And fix: a functioning government would make a law that outlaws such flagrant abuse of a media company.

What, if making murder illegal was hard would you just throw your hands and give up and make murder legal? Why is it that suddenly, when it's about corporations to do whatever they want - including destroy democracy itself - we're little babies who can't possibly lift a single finger to stop it?

But that guy who sold an eighth? Implement the full extent of mass surveillance and send a tactical SWAT team to the wrong house to arrest him for 40 years!

> Workaround: I'm rich and would just start up a newspaper that gave my candidates good coverage.

Or buy Twitter.

The alternative was what we had between McCain-Feingold and Citizens United, which was not a hellscape of limitations on collective action.

This isn't some hypothetical world. We had it.

Is this "Black Lives Matter" running for President?

Is this "Citizens United" running for President?

Obviously neither is running for president. But collective groups of people may wish to support certain causes, bills, or even candidates who support such things. Do I prevent all collectives of people — and since everyone's favorite punching bag is the evil corporation — including non-profits and unions (which is what the original case was about!) — from spending money?

And I'll distill this down to what I said to the other commenter: assume we do, and no political money from anyone except individuals. Is it not just Bezos and Musk who can afford the ad, whereas I'm left without a voice?

Citizens United has tax ID 91-1433368 and is a 501(c)(4) in Washington, D.C.

Where is "Black Lives Matter" headquartered?

It's in the same building as antifa headquarters, duh.

> Tomahawk cruise missiles are the new AI.

I'd say AI is the new AI.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/03/iran-war-...

"Some argue this blurriness unfairly implicates those who were simply mentioned in the files. I take the opposite view: It unfairly protects those who abused minors." This seems like a weird distinction to make, and the fact that he sees these as being in conflict kind of ruins the article for me. For instance Ro Khanna revealed six names of people in the Epstein files but then it turned out four of them had just had their photos used in a photo lineup and had no other connection (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/13/four-men-unr...) so obviously yes, there are some perfectly innocent people in the files. Then later in the article he says "There’s a solution to the Epstein problem, and it’s called a perp walk. It doesn’t matter what we get them for, but someone very rich and very famous needs to be seen in handcuffs. It could be Gates, it could be Dershowitz, it could be Clinton, it could be Summers, I don’t really care." Which once again is missing the point, assuming that anyone mentioned there is guilty and worthy of punishment of a public shaming. And while honestly I wouldn't be upset if any of these famous men were shamed that way, the fact remains that's not how justice works. He sees a problem, a lack of justice for these crimes and then instead of coming to the solution as being that we need justice, which includes trials and the presumption of innocence, that we just need to start punishing at random. That not only is a failure of justice, but it also isn't a good deterrent and I think will ultimately fail to accomplish his goals.

Caring about Epstein is stupid and I don't listen to people who talk about it at all.

Isn’t it amazing how the conspiracy of “elites running a pedophile ring and controlling the world” was all the rage not that long ago?

Yet now that we have actual documents that say exactly that, somehow it becomes stupid to talk about it, because it turns out that your team was behind it the whole time? Can’t we all just move on already?

Teams? We?

We live in an era where the Western social contract is breaking down and the wealthy collect more money and power to themselves than ever before. We should care about Epstein and consequences for illegal activities done by the rich and famous. Justice must be seen to be done. We need it for social cohesion.

empty assertion, empty assertion. normative statement. normative statement. empty assertion.

I both agree with the sentiment, and believe it won't happen because the USA is past the point of no return.

I mean this with no direspect or cynisism, and hope I'm wrong, but I think that country has rotted too much for saving. You let it go too far for too long.

Then again the UK (repeatedly) went through some very dark times, and whilst not exactly a bastion of justice, we're doing a lot better now.

Correct me if I'm on a limb here, but didn't the UK truly embrace stupid, only after it lost its Empire status? While the US does it at its peak, which seems much more dangerous for, well everybody actually.

Yes, the rich and powerful have increasingly captured and profited from the police and carceral state while being completely free to, for instance, build an island dedicated to the rape of children. Justice should absolutely be served here. Arrest more rich people, arrest more politicians, and hell arrest all of the "royalty" (for this and other reasons).

But this rant's "solution", which seems to be "let's empower the police state to do more excesses" - yeah, no. Maybe let's just ensure that everyone gets the same due process?

> But this rant's "solution", which seems to be "let's empower the police state to do more excesses" - yeah, no.

What led you to believe this is the solution presented in the article? Much less try to pass those statements off as quoting or paraphrasing.

> Maybe let's just ensure that everyone gets the same due process?

That is the actual solution presented in the last two sections of the article.

> Every associate of Epstein was interested in him for the same reason

Baseless speculation.

Indeed just heard that "Epic Fury" is an anagram of "Epstein Files" (FBI-redacted I guess)

That does not make sense.

Yes it does: Epic Fury is the name of the operation that's been started on Saturday. Granted, it takes some nimble to keep up.

Do you know what an anagram is?

It was a pun...NO WAIT! Whats that thing where it spells the same backwards and forwards?

palindrome

He is being tongue-in-cheek. To explain the joke, Trump is fumbling around for anything to distract from the fact that he is in the Epstein Files.

We are in a battle of top 0.01% vs. the bottom 99.99% where the top 0.01% has convinced us that our enemy is the "right" or the "left" such that we are distracted from our actual oppressors.

Please don't make grand sweeping proclamations on HN. We're here for curious conversation. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My comment is meant as a conversation starter more than anything, based on my observations of how both 1) the right (or at least MAGA?) and the left are against the Iran war AND 2) both the right (or at least some part of MAGA?) and left want to see the Epstein perpetrators locked up.

This hasn't happened, per my theory, because we are really in a top versus bottom fight where the top controls the narrative and shapes it to be a right vs. left fight amongst the bottom.

> My comment is meant as a conversation starter more than anything

Sure, but the guidelines ask:

Please don't fulminate...

Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

There may well be a way to propose the idea in a way that can be discussed in a curious conversation. I'm sure there is. I think it would need to be more fleshed out hypothesis, and even better, some kind of potential solution. That's the kind of thing you can have a good conversation about. What you wrote works well as a rallying cry, but that's not what HN is meant for.

I think that this is ridiculous. The idea that grand sweeping proclamations cannot be curious is plainly false. We can look at numerous excellent works of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences that produce grand sweeping proclamations that are nevertheless backed by years of archival or scientific research performed by experts.

While I don't agree with the poster that left/right is a distraction from class conflict, the idea that this idea cannot possibly be worth discussion or inspection is outrageous.

> I think that this is ridiculous

> plainly false

> the idea that this idea cannot possibly be worth discussion or inspection is outrageous

This is not curious conversation.

I have no idea what is going on here.

All you did is say that sweeping pronouncements cannot be curious conversation. I said that they can be curious conversation, and referenced situations where it is. My post is now not curious conversation, but yours is?

The point is that when your position is presented with these hyperbolic barbs and this enraged tone, it closes off the opportunity for discussion rather than opening it, and erases any opportunity for a curious conversation. This is a theme in much of your activity on HN, particularly in discussions about politics and the aspects of the tech industry that displease you, and also in the way you engage with the moderators. We need this to stop, because it's poisonous to the culture here. HN is only a place where people want to participate because others make an effort to raise the standards rather than drag them down. You're welcome to email us (hn@ycombinator.com) if you want to discuss this further.

Yeah, remember occupy wallstreet? They got spooked and pretty much whipped up the whole identity-politics thing overnight in response. And unfortunately it did work.

Identity politics was the primary agenda well before occupy wall street. Think about the religious right in the early 90s pushing abortion and gay marriage as primary political issues to drive voters.

This is not an either or issue. There are policy issues all around. The "left" isn't creating an magical "other" in the form of panic about "woke"/"immigrants"/"terrorists cells"/"trans people"/"welfare queens"/"libs"/"gay agenda" etc.

The US government in general is not prioritizing the reality and needs of the people, it is supposed to be in service to. Instead it is serving the needs of the few, but there are many many fronts of injustice, as there are many different people in power with their own agenda. It's not necessarily a single unified agenda.

Edit: The astro-turfing in this thread is going to be interesting based on the bot comment just below my comment...

hah, dang, did i fall for that?

Nope. The right explicitly supports the policies that lead to the direct concentration of wealth and power and rise of fascism. If the right constantly sides with the oppressors, they are the oppressors. This should be trivial to see just by looking at voting records. It's all very public and you've got decades of history worth of it to review. Both sides are not the same. The right chooses to align with the top 0.01% making them firmly part of the problem.

I believe it's a bit more nuanced than that. Both democrats and republicans have had enough power to make meaningful changes to prevent such a wealth gap and thus the wealthy play both parties. I do see democrats trying to help people have a better life (medicare for all, etc), but the wealth gap grew nometheless. Though I do agree with you that republicans don't seem to give a flying fuck about the people these days, which does make it worse IMHO. Regardless, both parties enabled the wealth gap and is why the fight is the 99.99% against the 0.01%. The US needs to kill citizens united and take money out of politics, I think that'd be a huge step forward...and yet, it is basically impossible because the 0.01% have the power.

Hard to blame the 99.99% when only 48% of voters voted for Hillary Clinton who had "undo Citizens United" explicitly on her platform.

Tell me you don't know how US legislation gets passed without telling me you have no idea how legislation is passed. I agree Democrats have been failures at what they've attempted to do. But it's a cop out or disingenuous to say both sides have had enough power to make meaningful changes.

How often has either side had a filibuster-proof majority in the last 30 years? Once. Democrats had it in 2009-2010 for 72 working days. During that window they passed the ACA sans a public option thanks to Joe Lieberman. They have not had an opportunity like that since. And we live in a time when Republicans explicitly state they will do everything they can to oppose a Democratic president. Even filibustering their own bills.

Now take a step back and consider what each party is actually trying to accomplish and the mechanisms available to them. Budget reconciliation only requires a simple majority, but it's limited to taxing and spending. Tax cuts, the core of the Republican agenda, fit neatly into reconciliation. They don't need 60 votes for their top priority.

Democrats' goals... expanding healthcare, strengthening labor protections, voting rights, are substantive policy changes that don't fit reconciliation's rules. They need 60 votes they haven't had. So when you say "both parties enabled the wealth gap," what you're really describing is a system where one party can pass tax cuts for the wealthy with 51 votes while the other needs 60 to do almost anything about it.

Well, dethroning the 0.01% seems more feasible than starting and winning a civil war against the right. I think the right is not so pro 0.01% as you think, the killing of the United Healthcare CEO had strong bipartisan support, at the level of ordinary people.

the 0.01% have access to both the left and the right. They can fund and lobby both, however electors have considerably less flexibility given the paucity of options and how either of those options are to some extent; in thrall to the 0.01%.

Nope, it's 0.01% vs 99.9%. First, because they themselves are at the top — or, what, was Biden some sort of proletarian? Second, the left is okay with left-flavored dictatorships — just think, recently, of poor, poor Maduro. Third, from the outside, the drones kept coming whether red or blue happened to be in power.

hard disagree

when you couch it as a left vs right instead of a top vs down problem you will lock yourself (and your immediate circle) up in the hardline media items the people who lobby both sides will control.

as disclosure: i am socially liberal and fiscally conservative except in matters relating to education, which i believe should be free (and tuition rate controlled). never voted for trump, never will. wanted to write in bernie for the first pass until he dropped, then threw for the queen of england. i didn't vote in the last election. i consider ice to be an illegal and fascist arm of too large a state.

the most arresting argument i've heard a leftist say (which i agree with) is: there is a distribution of wealth at which a free market fails and we are long past that, especially given our failure to bust monopolies and enforce antitrust law.

that enables entities who lobby both sides of the policy spectrum to position us against each other. epstein played this well: how else do you get neoconservatives bubbling out of 4chan as an answer to thundercat tumblr kids? it's all divide-and-conquer (and over the most inane issues).

now, tell me: do you want to support eurasia or oceania? or do you want to put the puppeteers in jail?

This is such a fucking stupid argument because the "right" explicitly aligns itself with the 0.01%. If they are cheerleading it and voting for it and celebrating it, what the fuck makes you think they are on the side of the 99%. It's counterfactual. There is no evidence of it. Look at their support for Trump for fucks sake. He has made over $3B from his presidency ripping people off, and they fucking love him for it. They are on his side, not ours! Again. Look at how they consistently vote before pretending they are any sort of ally.

yeah, i hear you.

you flip on the news and you see the fat red faced wal-mart alcoholics raving about the latest ice raid and iran bombing. it's a pretty disgusting thing, isn't it? but count that number of people you see on the news and compare it to the number represented by 49.81 percent of people who are duped into leaning right in a two party system. then what you see on the news is an insipid and vocal minority by comparison.

they seem loud because they were born and raised in a 4chan cesspool, and relative to our ears (as we see them online), the 'enemies' are everywhere (ie overrepresented by our algorithms, since our outrage makes them money).

meanwhile both parties (in various states and layers of government) have made ranked voting either illegal or impossible to implement.

both parties (as well throughout the world) have pushed for greater government surveillance technologies and laws.

both parties have gone to the island, shot kids in sarajevo, staged military coups throughout the world, destroyed democracies, left migrant children starving at night in detention centers, sleeping on mattresses thrown into the mud. you think biden was blameless in that? i've seen those kids.

i hear you, and i am just as angry. but remember that there are a variety of reasons why people vote in the way that they do. they may come to regret those decisions when they send their kids to war, and perhaps that is some apt and just punishment.

however, don't fall into the trap of mistaking those people in your relative socioeconomic group from having entirely different needs and wants as yourself and your family.

if you vilify them, you will have aided and abetted in our dividing. the people needing to be put in jail are outliers in our system by far. they corrupt the islands, stage sarajevos, trade diamonds in war torn villages, and laugh their way to the bank while we squabble with ourselves as to 'whodunnit'. don't fall for it.

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Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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There is a real argument about the rise of fascism and the equivalent about the rise of communism is too silly for the bit to work

Sometimes the wrong people do the right thing for whatever reason and the war in Iran is precisely that.

This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No It Won’t

https://theonion.com/this-war-will-destabilize-the-entire-mi...

You can see by the Iranian violent reaction that’s spread far and wide over most of the Middle East countries about what exact kind of stability it brings to the area.

Amongst the countries attacked by Iran now are Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Oman, Kuwait and Saudia Arabia; indirectly, it’s dragging kicking and screaming into the conflict also Yemen (surely soon), Lebanon (already) and Iraq (already).

The authors really nailed it on the timing if you look at when ISIS peaked

How about we wait more than three days to see if this really was “the right thing” before rolling out the Mission Accomplished banner, yeah?

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