Hacker News Reader

Comment by gchamonlive | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

Unfortunately the democratically elected part is mostly true.

Several notable dictators came to power through elections or through the existing legal appointment process. Of course it's more common for a dictator to come to power through a revolution, military coup, or civil war, but the way a political figure originally came to hold their political position is not really relevant to determining whether they are a dictator.

The more rational distinction between a dictator and a non-dictator is not how they came to power but how they can be removed from power.

While I agree with you, (1) this thread was started when someone argued that Trump isn't a dictator because he was democratically elected and (2) it's _extremely_ difficult to remove a US president from office--so hard that it has never happened.

  it's more common for a dictator to come to power through a revolution, military coup, or civil war

Maybe in sheer number but the most notable autocratic regimen of the national socialist party in Germany began with a democratically elected leader.

Not quite. That guy was appointed chancellor by the President after his political party won the most seats (still a minority) in two parliamentary elections that year. He had in fact lost the presidential election earlier that same year against the incumbent who ended up appointing him chancellor.

> the way a political figure originally came to hold their political position is not really relevant to determining whether they are a dictator

True, but Trump is a dictator because why? Because you disagree with the 77,304,296 people who elected him? Because he cracks unfunny jokes about running for re-election? Because he's corrupt? We've had corrupt Presidents before, but a dictator to me is someone who won't leave office. We do have a precedent of, despite the Jan. 6 looney toons (that he encouraged) trying to stop it, and despite all his dumb baseless lawsuits, Trump hopping on the helicopter and handing over power as scheduled. To me, that's the clear dividing line between an egomaniacal clown and a dictator.

I don't agree with a LOT of his 'policies,' (honestly sometimes describing his whims as policies is overstating it) but I would say the specific one being discussed here is not one of those open-and-shut dumb ideas. There are plenty of unemployed software engineers right here in the U.S. right now, and any US businesses saying they need H1Bs for most of those roles are full of crap.

Trump is not really a dictator due to constraints outside his control, but he certainly behaves as if he wants to be one, and this is the result: it's hard for people to believe that policy moves (or whatever you want to call it) like this are being motivated by a real concern for American workers rather than personal pique or corruption, because not only have so many of his moves been transparently motivated by personal pique and/or corruption, but he's also been restructuring the government in plain view to enable his personal pique and corrupt interests to dictate policy.

The Anthropic thing is the same: we can argue until we're blue in the face about whether the designation as a supply chain risk is legitimate based on Anthropic's policies and actions, but Hegseth is such a vain, insecure clown that any decision like this is suspect.

In short, Trump may not have achieved his dream of dictatorship, but he runs the parts of the government he has control of like a dictator would, and this has done terrible damage to the federal government's legitimacy.

> this has done terrible damage to the federal government's legitimacy.

I think one of the core issues here is that reactionary media has been creating this exact kind of reputational/institutional damage for decades (cf Obama is going to take your <blank>). So reactionaries don't see the damage as a new thing, but just something more like "now it's finally happening to them too". Of course the reality is that the former was mostly corporate propaganda (based on some legitimate concerns, but propaganda nonetheless), while now Grump is actually destroying our institutions. Which, if seen, is further rationalized by things like "they were corrupt anyway". Of course this is decidedly not a "conservative" position, but they've been mainlining the kool aid for a long time.

Which part is incorrect?

I mean that, you're either saying he wasn't democratically elected, or that this move doesn't help domestic labor. The first is objectively false, and the second is covered in the most basic college economics courses.

>the second is covered in the most basic college economics courses.

You realize the courses don't stop at basic, right?

It is well-established that immigration (legal and otherwise) is good for the economy overall. Skilled immigrants are good for US businesses.

https://kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/permanent-residency-rule...

Immigrants start businesses at twice the rate of native-born Americans.

https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116727/documents/... (page 1, though the citation has gone down the memory hole)

Some immigrants are complementary to native-born American workers rather than being in competition.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/page-one-economics/2...

Immigrants spend money and grow the market for goods produced by native-born Americans.

All these things are good for domestic labor. There is no reason to believe immigration is bad for American workers. Not everything is zero-sum, and that's basic economics.

This is all true and it's referring to immigration generally. This is a specific type of immigration so let's talk about that specific type and not every other type.

This is immigration to staff augmentation body shops that are doing $150k/yr programming jobs with the company taking 25% off the top. It's not "immigrants starting businesses," it's not "the economy overall" it's targeting immigration suppressing the wages of a specific sector.

Maybe. I haven't seen that proven. I can easily imagine that making the US technology sector function more efficiently leads to higher employment. The fact that the US is home to all of the big tech companies is a boon to American employees, and this form of immigration is a boon to the big tech companies.

>> Democratically elected officials acting in the interest of domestic labor

> Can you really say this with a straight face about trump?

On this particular issue? Yes. On immigration and trade specially, Trump seems to be genuinely far more in tune with domestic labor than any president since Carter. It's a big reason why he was elected.

Since Reagan until Trump, the political class of both parties seemed quite happy to aggressively ignore the interests of domestic labor, in favor of ideology peddled by capital-aligned economists.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com