Private antitrust cases are going through the courts

For sure they are rightfully angry. From a moderation point of view, should we let that anger, however rightful, break this site for its intended purpose? I don't see what good that would do.

(I realize you weren't arguing for that)

No one ordered me to take any editorial stance about that or anything else. Actually, no one at YC has ever ordered me to do anything. That's one reason I'm grateful for this job.

(Edit: if you look at the FAQ (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), you'll find these links, which I suppose are relevant: https://venturebeat.com/business/y-combinator-spins-out-hack..., https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/two-hn-announcements.)

The only people "ordering" me are HN users with strong feelings, and some of them even add menacing threats.

p.s. I'm not sure why, but your comment got me thinking about the lines "everything is political" and "neutrality is not possible"—lines I happen to agree with and (believe it or not) keep in mind while moderating HN—yet which somehow push people to a place where the only thing they feel they can do is destroy each other.

It must be possible to recognize how (nearly) everything has a political valence and (nearly) nothing is neutral, yet still have some option other than "band together with one tribe to destroy another tribe". Yet that is the pressure that we end up feeling. To that my answer is no, I'm not going to and I don't believe that is the only choice, even though nothing is apolitical in the end.

The best solution would be a reform of the voting system. It has become clear over the last decades that a two-party system slowly radicalizes both sides. It is also very problematic in the face of single-issue voters. But the two-party system exists just because first-past-the-post voting makes it a strategically bad choice to vote for anyone but the two dominant parties, and makes party-internal reform hard by making it a nonstarter to split a party, no matter how severe the disagreement.

Now first-past-the-post made some sense in the 1700s, but with the vastly improved communication of the 1900s and 2000s it's just a bad voting system. Basically anything else is better.

> The Democratic base is tired of reaching across the aisle only to have their hands slapped and be met with disapproval and silence.

Perhaps the Democratic base should stop "reaching across the aisle" the way they are because it clearly isn't working. On any given issue, Republicans generally understand the Democratic position on things and reject it. Democrats rarely understand the Republican position. That makes it sound like "reaching across the aisle" is a bit more of "preaching across the aisle" than truly attempting collaboration.

> And revenge means a D Potus coming in and doing things like firing every Republican they can, attempting to redirect funds.

This already generally happens, and more power to the Democrats who want to swing the pendulum hard on the Republicans after this one. The fact remains that for the last several administrations, if you were high up in one of these organizations, you would have to expect to get fired or demoted when the other party gets into power. If you want to see the history of this, the EPA has some of the most visible examples. The situation that's new is the wholesale gutting of entire agencies at the direction of a third party (Elon Musk).

> IMO, the only revenge that will work is by making laws forcing both sides to legislate. Idk what that looks like but not legislating has led to interpreting the law as acceptable behavior for the team to win, not interpreting the law as applied against the acting individual. However something like a legislation quota sounds messy and easily abused in a country of lobbyists.

I completely agree with you here. The administrative bloat of the executive branch is largely because the legislature has abdicated the power to write the rules on all but the broadest basis to the executive branch. The executive branch is run by only one elected person who has the power to change quite a bit about its operations.

That is optimistic scenario. Pessimistic one is that this will be irreversible because remaining agencies and wealth will be used against opposition.

> The Democratic base is tired of reaching across the aisle only to have their hands slapped and be met with disapproval and silence.

You mean, like the Democrats have been doing since the Obama administration? The ACA was not a bipartisan bill, it was a jam-down, and that attitude only continued. Pendulum-swing indeed.

The solution is the same one Lincoln pointed out. The people aren't fooled anymore, so if you really want to do something, you can't just shuffle the problem around for campaign donations and not actually fix it. You have to make an honest attempt to support the good of the people. At the moment, President Trump is seen as the one doing it, because the Democrats have so clearly been acting against the interests of the majority of their constituents in favor of ideological luxuries. We're done with that for a while.

A political comment is about to be the fuel that shoots me over 1k karma. Apply your down-votes here to help keep me grounded.

Yes, if history has taught us anything it's that the pendulum will swing back. Sometimes it takes a decade, sometimes it takes 500 years, but it always comes back. Hopefully we'll be alive to see it!

I agree. I also note that Trump also isn't credible in the slightest. He could take all that money and decide to "only" break up a few divisions instead of the biggest sectors. Very few people are coming out of this unscathed. Even among billionaires.

Americans are going to be very surprised when they figure out what happens to the government when the country becomes a third world Latin American state.

At least those of us that did live through the turmoil in these countries can see what is going on.

“For my friends: everything; for my enemies: the law.”

On some level I hope he tries. There's already mounting hostility on the populist wing of the right towards Elon. Going after anti-trust might just be the bridge too far.

And frankly, given his public comments about and noted vitriol towards Lina Khan and the FTC (and his own tendencies towards seeking monopolies) I assume at some point he'll try.

Further, purely speculating: it may be he already has tried. It's indicative that we didn't immediately see him go for the FTC. He's too small of a man to not have wanted to for personal reasons, and too greedy to not have wanted to for long-term business reasons. I have to wonder if he was restrained from doing so on account of (correctly) predicted blowback from such an action.

Seeming to come down on the side of John Deere and DuPont subsidiaries and spinoffs is not a smart move. These are hot issues for the populist wing of the party who want to purge what they label as the "Con(servative) Inc" wing and routinely make hobbyhorses of issues affecting farmers in flyover states.

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