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Comment by SilverElfin | Hacker News Reader

It’s not a self decapitation exactly. I think Trump, his family, his corporate donors, and other friends are all willing to sacrifice everyone else - including the lead America had - to make themselves rich and powerful. Every single decision to spend - defense, ICE contracts, AI, approvals of anticompetitive acquisitions, changes to regulations, etc - is making that circle richer at our expense.

They don’t care if American supremacy is lost or if the dollar crashes or if the national debt becomes a crisis. As long as they have their wealth. The public is being decapitated, not them.

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That's fair. I agree. I was thinking of the USA as one actor. The USA votes, or chooses not to, and that has effects.

True. In that sense the voters have self decapitated. I can’t understand how the Trump administration still has support from 40% of the country (per polls). I could understand voting for him due to some issue a voter has strong feelings about. But now we have seen it all play out and it’s a disaster leading to national ruin. And there is no talk of impeachment, trials, and accountability for everyone in his circle. So I guess that 40% DOES choose to self decapitate.

They don’t care when the media on am and talk radio, evangelical and mega churches, and all the conservative news tells them what to believe

Media that is never critical towards one side is what started all of this. A politician's kryptonite is when their voters find out that they lied or were hypocrites. That is a universal truth.

Single party media outlets like News Corp, Sinclair, Euronews, and so many others have broken that system entirely.

My test to see if someone is a shill/moron is to simply ask them to say one obvious bad thing about "their side." If they cannot, it becomes clear that they are not worth listening to.

What’s the worst thing, in your mind, about “your side”, assuming you have one.

I grew up in Seattle mostly, some of my policy positions could paint me as a progressive, and they are somewhat "my people."

It turns out that progressives are just as easily fooled as any other group, by a slick turn of phrase. For example, "Genocide Joe."

I once thought my group was more thoughtful. But, it turns out that ALL of us are easily programmed meat machines.

Voted for Obama, he totally messed up with Russia and Crimea.

I could go on, and on. I believe that the only -ism I can believe in is fallibilism.

> and all the conservative news tells them what to believe

And most traditional news is conservative now.

The idea that the mainstream media was ever leftest was always wrong, but these days its absolutely laughable and yet a lot of people still parrot this like it is the truth.

Heather McGhee's concept of 'drained pool politics' really resonates with me: https://newrepublic.com/article/171844/heather-mcghee-moving...

People like to do this because it's simple, but it's so unrealistic that it's basically a fairy story in terms of explanatory power.

You have to take account of warring internal factions.

The US lead over the EU in per capita productivity has massively grown over the last 20 years. There's no indication of waning American power.

America has produced 70 times more stock market wealth if you look only at companies created within the last 50 years than the EU. And this is not all paper wealth. If you look at technological sophistication, whether that's frontier AI models, leading-edge pharmaceutical drugs, total amount of compute, or the space industry, the U.S. has grown its lead over the EU over the last 50 years.

It's because the EU has largely fixated itself on reducing wealth inequality by punishing those who succeed. It's safety-maximalist approach to private industrial action has also hamstringed industry — see Germany closing all 17 of its nuclear power plants. The US doesn't really need to do much except not sabotage itself to maintain its lead. Like in all nations, laissez-faire (French for "leave it alone") allows the private sector to do the rest.

> It's because the EU has largely fixated itself on reducing wealth inequality by punishing those who succeed.

It's actually because America pivoted[1] from manufacturing to higher-margin services (financial, tech[2]), and generations of American Diplomats had negotiated trade deals that ensure American services are never shut-out or hobbled in most countries. American companies won't look so special,or be nearly as profitable, once they lose their default status that allow them to siphon money from all over the globe -including Europe

1. https://americanbusinesshistory.org/2022-updated-largest-com...

2. Silicon valley caught lightning in a bottle. Other American locales repeatedly tried and failed to replicate it - so it rules out American legislative attitudes as the vital ingredient.

If you're familiar with American capital markets and global venture capital, you'd know that it had almost nothing to do with these trade deals. They had a marginal impact. The amount of capital available to startups and established companies at all stages of their development was the main difference. And the difference between the US and EU in that regard came mostly from the US simply not sabotaging itself the way the EU did with extremely high taxes on the top income earners, as part of an agenda to reduce wealth inequality.

The fact that the tech industry concentrated in Silicon Valley is simply due to network effects. Regardless of which locale became the Schelling point for U.S.-based technology companies, that locale would have succeeded, because of the national economic policy it operated inside of.

> ...that locale would have succeeded, because of the national economic policy it operated inside of.

The US policy is about to become a lot more robust and a lot less laissez-faire. Over the decades, the public image of tech CEOs has switched from benign, awkward but genius dorks, to out-of-control bond villains.

There's a tech backlash happening in the US, if you've been paying attention, and legislators follow the voter zeitgeist.

Correct. There seems to be a pretty broad tendency across societies to fixate on reducing wealth inequality. I don't think the U.S. is going to escape it. Taxing the rich is the most popular thing in the world. There's nothing the common man prefers more.

Does Azure/AWS/Google/FB sell as well in China as well it does in the EU?

They sell close to 0. Europe made a conscious decision to not limit the reach of the infinite margin US companies.

The deal was we buy your fancy services and expensive war toys, but you keep us safe.

America forgot its obligation. Hence the deal is off.

Now VW is making war machines and Airbus is building AI infra.

Even if US companies only had the US market, they'd be massive — Google gets ~50% of its revenue from the US alone, Amazon over 60% from North America, and most other Big Tech is in that same range. The US market by itself is plenty huge. And the EU provides 20-30% of US Big Tech revenue. Even losing all of that (very unlikely even under protectionist policies), US tech companies would be doing well, with 70-80% of their current revenue.

Sure, full-blown protectionism everywhere would make the world including the US poorer (less specialization, less division of labor), but it would also harm EU exports, as the US is the EU's biggest importer, and moreover it wouldn't change the factors behind the growing US-EU gap. US-EU trade policies with each other are basically the same. The difference is internal, and mostly comes down to the US just not sabotaging the private sector as much.

You write as if Trump did not put tariffs on european exports to US.

Europe could put same tariffs on USA services and the margins in USA will disappear

It's like you see but ignore what the other poster said. Europe allowed US services to grow, but it can stop them too. Same way China does.

Funny how you write about 50% market share being USA, when the other poster writes about the other part. That might dissappear.

The EU did retaliate to Trump's tariffs with its own.

Anyway, I wasn't making a point about recent developments. I was talking about more long-term trends showing that why the US has outpaced EU in economic growth.

As just an average US citizen living in a not so prosperous area, this rings pretty hollow to my mind and most of Europe sure looks like it is winning over 95% of the people that live around me. We already know the stock market is divorced from reality, IP rights are a short-term benefit, and I fail to see how having more compute or starlink satellites are suppose to carry the US into future economic prosperity.

Now im not saying everything is bad, but it sure feels like a lot of the US economy is a Lamborgini shell stuck on the body of a Ford Focus and we think we are winning because most people haven't noticed yet and the profit margins are higher than ever. Europe sure ain't perfect, they got plenty of problems, but their problems are more like worrying about percentage points in the future, while in the US the worry is whether our economy is going to provide for people at all not in the top 25% long-term. And an angry and unsatisfied mass of lower class people is a recipe for upheaval with everyone on top relying on that not happening.

I'm not so sure people in Europe are better off. There are a lot of very poor regions in Europe compared to how people tend to imagine Europe. In fact, most European countries, if they were U.S. states, would rank among the poorer U.S. states.

Now, looking only at the statistics, there are certainly some things European countries are doing better than the U.S. But based on my research so far, which admittedly isn't enough for a full understanding, my tentative conclusion is that almost all of those things don't seem related to economic policy. They seem more related to things like urban planning, for example more pedestrian- and bike-friendly cities.

In terms of work and wages, U.S. wages are substantially higher than wages in most European countries. And I'm not just talking about longer hours. I mean the compensation per hour is significantly higher.

EU Europe average per-capita income ≈ $30,500

United States per-capita income ≈ $68,000

Averages tell nothing about an average citizen.

Also, there are other measurements like inequality, healthcare cost, social securities...

Averages tell us the general availability of wealth. To give you some perspective, most European countries are poorer than the poorest U.S. state, which is Mississippi. There just aren't as many high-paying jobs. And these figures encompass everything, including what the government spends on health care and welfare programs and education. So Europeans as a whole get much less per capita from both government and private sector. When it comes to purchasing power parity, which takes into account cost-of-living differences, the gap isn't as big as above, but it's still pretty significant.

Avetage tells nothing you should use median or a graph.

Median data is better, yes, but it's harder to get. Average correlates quite strongly with median.

1) USA's stock rose on the back of dollar being the reseve currency. It will fall when not anymore

2) Germany lost nuclear power plants due to russia sponsored interference

The same russia that supported Brexit

Weakening your own domain to get powerful sounds clearly contradictory, yet there are so many examples of elites doing exactly that despite the fact that doing so must've required foresight and planning elaborate enough to not blind them from the consequences.

> Weakening your own domain to get powerful sounds clearly contradictory

No because it's relative. If people around you get weak then you get more powerful automatically. If you get more powerful and people around you also get more powerful then you are in the same situation.

So if power is what you want you destroy others at the same time as building your power. What trump is doing is logical. He isn't living in china or russia. he doesn't care if they get stronger. he cares if people around get weaker relative to him and cronies who are in on it. and that works

Funny enough, that's capitalism, isn't it? Survival of the most ruthless, and morality is a weakness. Are we surprised he was born out of this?

The worst part is that I dont see a meaningful opposition to Trump.

if American political system allows President to do that and allows such President to be elected, than such system deserves to die.

How does sacrificing America's lead make American oligarchs richer? That doesn't even make sense.

just like stock trader, you can get rich from going long, you also can get rich by shorting the economy (selling short).

this is what trump is doing: selling America short

basically make decisions that make no sense but benefit you financially. Sample. you run a printing business. you dont own it just run it. you sell your main printer and assign a performance bonus to your self. next month your business is closed because you dont have equipment to print, but you also have your bonus in pocket.

It does, it's textbook "banana republic". Dictator and close circles enrich themselves, everyone else gets poorer.

US voters were so worried that South America would come to them, that they have become the worst of South America.

Well we know the US doesn't have a dictator, so that's not a good example.

This all sounds incredibly hand wavey "oh, they just do things that benefit themselves but tank the US economy".

From what I've seen all the oligarchs in the US got rich when the economy was doing well.

Do you have a specific example of someone who got rich by "tanking the US economy"?

> we know the US doesn't have a dictator

Even most dictatorships don't "have a dictator". They have a "great leader" that coincidentally gets voted in again and again, for whom constitutions are amended, and who happens to have his own "revolutionary" irregular militias, not-so-secret police grabbing people on the streets in plainclothes (or worse), a subservient parliament rubber-stamping decrees, etc etc.

Even without some of that, the "unitary executive" theory, as implemented by George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump, is effectively a temporary dictatorship in all but name.

> all the oligarchs in the US got rich when the economy was doing well.

You can make bank when things go bad. Look up the European currency crisis of the 90s, when folks like Soros amassed their billions. Or the few who got 2008 right.

Whoever is betting with incredible timing on Trump's unexpected policy shifts, every other week, is definitely not getting poorer. And when the economy tanks, assets get cheap - which is great if you have accumulated cash.

No, actually those countries do call them dictators - I’m not aware of any similar to what you’ve described.

A very few select oligarchs got rich during the European currency crisis - and anybody oligarchs got hammered.

How do the oligarchs decide? Do they meet in secret?

Look at post-USSR Russia

As an analogy, you can pump the yield of your crop fields by 50% if you are willing to deplete the soil and cash in on 100 years of careful building of the topsoil layer. The person doing it wins out in the short term 10 years, but society loses out long-term when they gotta spend another 100 years of much lower yields to build the top soil back up to healthy levels. Meanwhile the 10 year guy already made his money and sold off whats dregs are left to seek the next snatch and grab operation.

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