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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

> A de-facto dictatorship.

It's a spectrum, not a binary. We're really far from the "packing bags and leaving the country" end where you're a slave to the state. America is nothing like an Iran or China where we have no power and no rights to overturn the state.

Let's see if any of these petty games helps Trump with midterms. I highly doubt it. Kalshi is already calling it a double win for Democrats.

The economic impact of the Iran War looks like it really cost Trump everything. And it's funny because he always campaigned on not getting into wars.

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China doesn't seem that bad in most respects either. Only in freedom of speech, and resulting internet censorship, but in quality of life and in productivity they seem to be thoroughly pwning the USA.

sounds like you should go move there!

I get to live in Europe where there's both freedom and QoL at the cost of insane bureaucracy.

Try voting the CCP out of power. Let me know how it goes.

Try voting the TN GOP out of power.

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/15/nx-s1-5822329/memphis-gerryma...

Both systems have strong benefits for incumbents.

Strong benefits, sure.

But in China, the CCP literally determines which candidates can run for office. The TN GOP does not determine whether Democratic candidates can even run.

> The TN GOP does not determine whether Democratic candidates can even run.

But it does largely determine if they can win.

Which is functionally identical.

The TN GOP and DNC (or whatever the equivalent is) together determine which candidates can run

Isn't there plenty of internal conflicts within the CCP? China does their main voting at their version of primaries.

> Kalshi is already calling it a double win for Democrats.

It's quite common for Kalshi bets to go from <1% to 100% chance in minutes when news breaks. "Prediction markets" is almost Orwellian in its inaccuracy.

If that's the case you should really buy that <1%. You have a 50% chance of 100xing your money.

That would require these to be predictable.

Which is the precise problem with the "prediction" markets writ large. Some things just... aren't.

In what way is the outcome of a coin flip predictable?

It is fairly predictably binary, barring an odd experimental setup.

Versus, say, this sort of prediction market wisdom: https://imgur.com/a/pw5hW9x

> We're really far from... leaving the country

Are we now? https://trends.google.com/explore?q=how%2520to%2520emigrate&...

https://trends.google.com/explore?q=how%2520to%2520emigrate%...

Yeah

You added Pokemon and this proves....?

> We're really far from the packing bags and leaving the country end.

Some of my American friends in Canada have taken in American friends who left so quick they didn't have a long-term place to land yet. Whether you have packed your bags and left, that depends who you are. It's not a flood, but an exodus has begun amongst those whose lives have been disrupted: academics, trans, queer, etc

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