If i leave a knife on the table and you decide to stab me with it, who is to blame? The knife, me or you?

Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Ellison and of course Elon Musk who funded the trump

unchecked social media has allowed outside actors like russia/china to influence elections.

It has also allowed brainwashing of society's most vulnerable to a point where a nazi salute is just dismissed, pedofiles can be protected, etc.

This is something that is pervasive through ads, seo, social media 'organic' campaigns, etc.

Tech sector was more then happy to take all the money and none of the responsibility.

Then with that money they go and do what? better society like bill gates?...

Who were the people in the front row behind the current president during his inauguration ceremony, I wonder?

Probably the creation of techno-fascist state, or at least the desire to have one as outlined by Thiel and co. The excessive deference that all tech companies have had towards elected leaders instead of striving for independence under the law, and now they strive to co-opt government to achieve their goals.

>What part of this do you think is the fault of the “tech industry”?

Are you really asking this in good faith? This is the tech equivalent of saying "The earth is flat because when I look out on my 43rd floor condo I can't see the earth curve."

>I’m missing a connection somehow.

Yeah? All the """tech people""" that supported a platform to do exactly like the article is describing?

Some of the tech industry leaders were going all-in on Trump before the election [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40562399

The relentless disintermediation of, well, everything in society is powered by big tech. No middle class can exist anymore in the neoliberal turbocapitalist system that's trying to grow into place everywhere; there is just the little human puttering about, and a bunch of extremely rich oligarchs and tech bros taking their money.

Technology made all of this possible. From amazon (destruction of local shops) to uber (not saying the old system was good, but who needs transit concentrated into the hands of a few) to google (monopolizing and stifling search and adtech). And who knows what role large scale manipulation by stochastic propaganda parrots will play.

Well, among other things, the Vice President was quite literally a tech venture capitalist with all sorts of tech support (not that kind though)

Just a wild guess: The connection is uncontrolled growth, where companies evolve from a normal business to a perpetual "increasing shareholder value" grift (think the Apples, Googles, Microsofts, Metas, (Space)Xs out there...). It happened when tech incorporated "the user" as a product (as opposed to tech working to actually solve problems and elevate the status quo).

So Thiel and Musk have nothing to do with Trump getting elected.

Or Social networks as an easy way of spreading misinformation.

New to the club AI that delivers convincing sound, photo and video „proofs“ for any fake news they want including elaborated texts fitting to their target audience

who did most of the tech billionaires sponsor?

The workers did, the people with money welcomed him with open arms hoping for less regulation and big contracts. Look in the row behind trump during his inauguration if you need proof.

It's a very worthwhile story to follow imo :)

I work for one of the largest financial companies. It's not us or the sector. There's a whole shadow sector behind the scenes doing this stuff run by billionaire funded think tanks who manipulated tech markets and leverage political and social manipulation through their connections. It's the world we live in but we didn't create it.

Shit education leads to pliable humans leads to social manipulation leads to desired outcomes from marketing efforts.

Inner emigration?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_emigration

Yes, too much oversight is the problem here, not lobbying and self-interest/corruption.

The shuttle program wasnt what NASA wanted to do, it was the military that pushed for that.

It's ironic that you'd blame them for the thing they didnt want to do.

If theyd kept their budget and autonomy after the moon landing it looked like they wouldve started building reusable rockets like the ones elon is building, except in like, 1980.

Do you remember when a President of the United States was impeached for an affair with an adult intern?

Do you remember when a Republican presidential nominee defended his opponent from a racist question at a Republican Rally, calling him a "decent family man?"

--

Then, can you think of a time when a POTUS committed a pump a security he was selling, only to dump it immediately after his inauguration, and it it was barely talked about at at all?

I don't think this is true or at least is not reflected by any statistics.

Inequality, as measured by GINI has been falling both for the EU as a whole and within most European countries for decades now. The last decade in particular has seen declines in nearly all EU countries.

Taking the EU on average the last time it increased was in 2014 - which is to be expected as the 2013 expansion allowed a number of relatively poor countries into the union.

For individual countries, you can check the statistics here: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI

A few examples, I looked at Ireland in particular, and inequality has never been lower - the earliest statistics I could find is from the mid-1980s. Inequality peaked around 2000 for the UK and has declined hugely since then. France is more equal than it was in 2000 although the fall is less dramatic than that for the UK. Admittedly Germany has seen a slight rise since 2000 but Germany has also absorbed millions of very poor refugees in that time.

The US is an outlier globally - with rising inequality over the last few decades.

Slightly off-topic, this untrue claim of rising inequality in Europe is often presented without challenge and then used to justify some radical political solution. To my mind, it's using the same political "mind hack" that the the MAGA/alt-right in the USA have used (in this case concerning race, immigrants, global multilateralism, or social tolerance - "wokism" - in general).

For both, the veracity of the claims is apparently unimportant and uninteresting as long as the claim aligns with one's political orientation. The goal of these oft repeated untruths is to provoke indignation or anger - in order to drum up support for some radical political "solution".

This has exactly zero with being left out of economic progress and wanting it. They literally vote for people who are leaving them outside of all subsequent economic progress. And that was also their voting record in the past. What they actually voted for was culture war - disgust with trans specifically and hate toward anything that can be casted as liberal which includes science. It was wish for Christian autocracy and enforcement of associated values.

The feel good explanations are just that - feel good euphemisms. Acting on them failed in the past repeatedly. Politicians who tried to improve situation of these people were punished, repeatedly. Meanwhile, politicians acting in offensive and harmful way were rewarding even when they made lifes of their voters worst.

We really should stop projecting these good faith falsehoods when the are and were clearly false.

> Trump came with a "believable" story

If they believed Trump, they deserve everything they get. Sadly those who didn't believe didn't vote enough.

I don’t know enough about economic conditions in Europe to say something intelligent, but unfortunately I’m very pessimistic about the near- and medium-term future of America. There’s nothing on the horizon that will make life better for everyday Americans, who are currently struggling to keep up with the sharp rise in the cost of living in recent years. From tariffs to business uncertainties, all I see is life getting even more expensive, and we might reach a tipping point where everything falls apart. I’m also very concerned about the national debt and the dollar.

All I know is that the 1990s until now have been a bonanza for some people but increasingly difficult for many others. I blame this on the financialization of our economy, with housing policy in America’s coastal metro areas definitely not helping (municipalities restrict supply through zoning and other mechanisms, and the financialization of our economy only exacerbated matters by pouring gasoline on the demand side). This is a failure of our leadership class; I’m not just talking about politicians, but I’m talking about our wealthy, our corporate executives, and even ourselves when we have positions of influence. Collectively the leadership of our country has chosen maximizing their own material benefit at the expense of maintaining a livable society. The result is anger due to Americans increasly having a harder time just getting by while our “leadership” keeps adding to their power and wealth.

Due to anger over establishment politicians, the Republican Party has been completely captured by MAGA, and the Democratic Party has a very vocal left wing that came close to winning the 2016 primary and was a serious contender in 2020.

Unfortunately Trump on a good day is far more destructive than Clinton, both Bushes, Obama, and Biden on their worst days. Trump’s neo-mercantilist economic policies won’t bring prosperity, but unfortunately his stance on “culture war” matters have resonated with large swaths of the American electorate; we’ve long had problems with racism, xenophobia, religious bigotry, anti-intellectualism, and other related issues since the colonial era.

Moreover, despite Trump’s promises in 2016 to “drain the swamp,” Trump is backed by many prominent billionaires and other influential and powerful people. Trump is not a one-man operation; he would have no power without an entire apparatus of GOP politicians and a stacked Supreme Court.

The only thing keeping Trump’s popularity afloat is his relentless attacks on “enemies” of MAGA, such as immigrants, scientists, universities, unflattering media outlets, Democratic politicians, etc. But eventually the fallout of his reckless policies will trickle down to Trump voters in the form of higher prices for goods and services, and either when Trump runs out of enemies or when the MAGA base gets crushed by the weight of high prices and are looking for answers, what are Trump and MAGA politicians going to do?

Unfortunately I don’t see any easy solutions. A return to the pre-2017 status quo ante is only going to lead to the same leadership that led to such anger in the first place. However, staying the course is definitely going to lead to a crash. The solution is going to need to come from the people, but it’s hard for average people in America to compete against systems that entrench the power of our two-party system and that require massive amounts of money to effectively compete. There are no easy ways out of this mess.

Run a profit? What does that mean? What profitable business is currently available for an aeronautics and space agency that was never about making "profit".

Looking forward to SpaceX launching the next Voyager mission.