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Comment by iron0013 | Hacker News Reader

This seems like the political equivalent of "rolling coal". Damaging the nation's health and well-being purely to spite political opponents, with barely a fig leaf for rationale ("jobs" somehow, I guess, although of course that makes no real sense).

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If I were president, knowing that I would certainly have my own chapter in the history books, I would spend at least some of my thoughts on how it would read. "President rootusrootus spent the entirety of his term in office attempting unsuccessfully to undo the legacy of the previous occupant." is not exactly what I would be going for. Tearing down a legacy is not the same as building one.

I hope the adults are back in charge next time around. This was not a fun experiment.

It's interesting to see populism take hold in real time. Growing up, I remember teachers and student asking, "well how did $HORRIBLE_LEADER even come into power." Now we know.

Turns out it's ridiculously easy to get people to cut off their nose to spite their face.

Someone recently made the observation that we should not describe people who did terrible things in the past as monsters, because it allows us to rationalize away our own action or inaction. "We could never do <whatever bad thing our ancestors did> because they were monsters and we are not." Better to keep in mind that they were very much human, just as we are, and take the history lesson as a warning. And we just got a shot across the bow.

I think it makes complete sense to describe us as terrible. We are what we are. No point in sugar coating it.

Write the books to talk about how a lot of people were upset with the way things went. But don't forget to include the part about how lots of people were happy with it.

Problem is: if the other side had one, lots of people would feel exactly the way you do. But from the other side. So who is right?

Of course. I advocate writing both perspectives, knowing that the bias of the victor would show up.

But looking back, I think we’ve done a major disservice in the US by not including the dark parts of history in our stories: civil war -> states rights. Nazis -> no american ever supported that idea.

Stuff like that. It makes the times we live through now feel like a surprise to many I think. They’re shocked people could actually support racists, bigots, worthless people.

But here we are.

> They’re shocked people could actually support racists, bigots, worthless people.

Oh please. Just take a look at the shenanigans around HRC's nomination. Democrats have no claim to moral authority, if that's what you're suggesting.

Nope. Not at all.

Especially given the fact that Henry Ford was an incredibly pernicious anti-semite who supported Adolf Hitler's movement in its infancy with financing for vehicles and uniforms. Nazism got its start in America and for us to pretend like it's some foreign ideology is bonkers.

There is historical evidence that Hitler got many of his ideas and policies from American eugenicists.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/09/hitler-th...

Hannah Arendt: The Banality of Evil

...which was extremely controversial when published, because people thought it was diminishing the Nazis' atrocities. I always felt your point to be the far more immediate lesson, apart from any argument of her view of Eichmann (that he was a paper-pushing bore as well as a mass murderer) simply being the correct one.

> "President rootusrootus spent the entirety of his term in office attempting unsuccessfully to undo the legacy of the previous occupant." is not exactly what I would be going for. Tearing down a legacy is not the same as building one.

That assumes the previous occupant had a legacy worth preserving. The real underlying problem is that a lot of people honestly believe the previous occupant's legacy needed to be torn down.

They didn't though. Just recall during the Healthcare repeal debacle, the very same voting base was foaming at the mouth against Obamacare while complaining about the threat against the Affordable Care Act.

It’s not about rational, every president disagrees with the previous one to some degree. I mean the point of the political system is to make changes they believe in.

However, the world is a chaotic place so no president can actually remove the legacy of the previous one. Revert all policies on day one, and the next president reverts all yours in an endless cycle that’s not a legacy. The actual legacy is the impact of your choices.

Ah, but you read books.

I don't think this is purely out of spite. It's a calculated move to get/keep support of automotive execs and investors. California is a huge market. Any emissions standards they set is basically the entire country's, because no manufacturer is not going to sell in the California market.

This move will probably result in money for Trump's 2020 campaign, because he's saving the automotive industry money.

No, several auto makers actually did not want Trump to cut the federal emissions standards, and 4 manufacturers (VW, BMW, Honda, and Ford) made an agreement with California to meet higher standards than what Trump wanted.

Reason being that they're developing more efficient powertrains for global markets, so going backwards from that just for the US would cause them either to waste money developing different models for the US, or lose market share to companies not attempting to be more fuel efficient.

The Trump DOJ then sued those automakers for antitrust violations for making an agreement with California to meet stricter emissions/fuel economy standards.

Of course the largest most established carmakers would want to keep an effective form of regulatory capture in place. Byzantine and inconsistent regional compliance requirements raise the cost of market entry.

That seems like a weak argument, because almost everyone trying to enter the car manufacturing market is doing so with electric cars or other low emissions technology, and aren't inconveniences at all by California's emissions requirements.

How much does it cost to merely certify a model as compliant?

I'd expect California to use the data from the EPA. The manufacturer already has to submit fuel efficiency and emissions information to the EPA.

So it should be free or cheap, since all California would be doing is querying the EPA for the data, then comparing those numbers to whatever California's standard is.

But does it? A change like this is going to result in years of legal cases. The uncertainty means that investing in new designs is more risky as the companies doesn’t know what emissions standards they are aiming for.

It's a calculated move to get/keep support of automotive execs and investors.

Except that the main way it might do so is if they're afraid of being targeted by Trump of they don't support him.

In practical terms the auto makers likely need to meet California's desired standards as well as international ones in order to sell cars globally, and if they don't meet them domestically they're vulnerable to competitor ads "$BRANDX, so bad they're illegal to sell in most of the world," etc.

Even without those factors, a following Democratic (or Republican, frankly) administration is likely to return to the standards in question.

This is "respect mah authoritah!" spite.

in order to sell cars globally

Look at some the most popular cars from US car makers in the US, like the Ford Fx50 series, Dodge Ram series of trucks, the Chevrolet Silverado, Jeep Wrangler and Cherokee etc. Non of those cars sell in any significant number outside the US.

Serious question time:

Do the auto manufacturers actually have in their R&D pipeline engines that achieve California's 54.5 mpg target that they can bring to market before 2026?

Europe's measuring standards are very different from here and the "80-mpg" economy figures you see touted actually work out to be more like 50 real world...similar to what happens here.

Auto manufacturers aren't set to increase standards for the EU until 2030.

I’m also curious about this. They might be planning to meet these targets by switching enough of the fleet to hybrids or electric?

>This move will probably result in money for Trump's 2020 campaign, because he's saving the automotive industry money.

Unsure why you're being downvoted. This sounds like, at minimum, one of the lines of calculation.

"Hey, we're not going to win California anyway. Let's screw those Americans over and make some money for our buddies over here. Remember fellas, some of that money's gonna come to us!"

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