They would solve the problem if it weren't so valuable.
Why have enough housing when rents go up during scarcity?
Why make life better for your working class citizens when you can import fresh ones to exploit?
Seems like there is a systemic problem that is causing the same issues in many countries.
Pharmaceutical, hospitals, equipment manufacturers.
Not everyone profits maximally from healthy people.
First, it use to be the case that companies provide jobs for life and they were more tuned to helping society rather than just looking at the bottom line. That has changed over the years.
Healthcare in the US has been on a steady decline. HMO middlemen and insurance companies with a deny claims profit model are only making it worse. Luigi event comes to mind. Hospitals in other countries offer same if not superior service for a fraction of your US copay. The ICE article on Medicaid data https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44605618 seems to has some ulterior motive to reduce the Medicaid usage by non-citizens.
The two tiered system of justice has always existed, we just have better ways to highlight it with mobile devices and social media. If we look at how the Arab Spring was enabled by Twitter, more of this is happening. But at the same time deepfakes are offering a new way to discredit truth tellers.
Large entrenched monopolies love new regulation as it builds a regulatory moat that prevents new, smaller competitors from entering the market. This will only drive people to markets outside of the US or to find ways to use AI to reduce the number of human jobs needed.
AI whether we reach AGI or not is already good enough to replace a good chunk of jobs. Larger companies that are not model companies move a little slower and it will take a year or two to catch up before people realize what happened. Education has not adapted slow enough, so there will be a large number of college grads in debt who will not be able to find jobs.
The US 35 trillion debt is not helping car loan rates and mortgage rates. There will be a whole generation of young people who will not be able to afford a house, part of the American dream. This will further push the divide between the Elite and boomers and the younger generations.
The current administration seems to have the goal of acceleration of that end.
Not reform, not improvement-- destruction.
They have literally written down, stated in interviews, repeatedly, that these are what their goals are.
They want to cripple the government, neuter every check on their power, and use the ensuing chaos to reshape the United States into a series of neofeudal states where "accountable monarchs" (tech billionaires who think they're gods) rule over the masses.
This isn't hyperbole.
And they are using the bloated, dementia-addled, shambling corpse of a god-king to do it while half of everyone stands around refusing to believe that they are doing what they stated and wrote down they were going to and the other half cheers them on because they're "sticking it to the dirty Mexicans, DEI welfare queens, and trannies".
"Unintended consequence" my ass.
What is happening, and will continue to happen, is by active conscious choice and design.
bell-cot•3h ago
roenxi•3h ago
The issue seems to be that the US voting public is overwhelmed by the complexity of understanding what a good idea looks like or what is in their own interests. A lot of that can be laid at the feet of the Boomers though. Hopefully they pull through, the US has historically had a remarkable ability to lurch out of disaster and sort of shamble on into accidental prosperity.
cool_dude85•2h ago
I can't agree. The highest profile elections we are offered have, in the recent past, been choices between absolutely terrible options. In 2016 we could choose between a largely reviled Iraq War supporter and Trump, in 2020 the senile Biden and Trump, and in 2024 a continuation of Biden's term, represented by a poor politician hand-picked by the party and Trump, the one-term loser.
In my adult life, the best candidate I have been able to vote for is a guy whose signature achievement in office was passing a heritage foundation Healthcare bill centered around fining me for not bolstering Blue Cross' bottom line. How am I supposed to vote in my interests?
bigstrat2003•2h ago
cool_dude85•2h ago
amanaplanacanal•1h ago
DerArzt•24m ago
yifanl•2h ago
no_wizard•2h ago
How are these equivalent to each other? That’s such false statement I don’t know how anyone can give it a pass at this point
cool_dude85•1h ago
Maybe you might feel that Harris was herself an objectively good option, one who would successfully solve some of the problems brought up in the article. I personally find that very hard to believe.
wpm•1h ago
Because those very same "sane" economic policies didn't actually do much perceivable improvement to the lives of most Americans. TFA even mentioned that Harris probably would've fired Lina Khan because "number must go up". Sure, being able to cancel Netflix with a button is nice but people want fucking healthcare and for there to be a shred of dignity in working an honest living.
People in 2020 were suffering, so they voted for change. People in 2024 were suffering, so they voted for change. People in 2026 will be suffering, so they'll probably vote for change...people in 2028....
ndiddy•38m ago
Of course if you're looking at things purely from a logical, calculating, "lesser-evil" perspective Harris is the better candidate, but a lot of people can plainly see that their quality of life has gotten worse compared to how their parents and grandparents were doing at their age. A large amount of people who see things getting worse and feel like they have nothing to lose is how you get political extremism and candidates like Trump winning elections.