That's optimistic that you think anyone is going to prison in 2029.

https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1849951974944313590?lang...

This has been true in every industry and every company for the last 100 years. It's not even illegal, unless you're out there offering quid pro quo bribes.

I don't understand how anyone could disagree with this assessment. This is the most transparent bribe ever,

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Getty... ("Donald Trump speaks behind an engraved glass disc gifted to him by Apple CEO Tim Cook during an event in the Oval Office of the White House")

Nope, King of America is a lifetime position.

for starter, lobby groups cannot issue executive orders just start and stop tariffs and government grant willy nilly

Is it? Will it remain so? Things sometimes are until they aren't and the difference is sometimes impossible to distinguish. Better not to give fascism the benefit of the doubt it doesn't deserve.

Electoral power is not commutative

  [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism

I'd say it's the nature of power, politics and the existence of government. They start out small and then grow and attract corruption. You can only slow it down by having things like democracy (especially direct democracy) and separation of power.

The left isn't immune to feeling bitter disgust at titans of industry that openly pay bribes and tributes and lie on camera in service of political objectives in exchange for political and economic favors.

IMO, the solution is to demand constitutional and law-following behavior from both/all teams, but to be particularly careful to do that with your preferred side, as you might be prone to overlook those excesses.

lolwhat? “I don’t like what I imagined the left is doing so I’m going to turn our cities into police states?” In what world is that a reasonable justification? Might as well say it’s a bitter reaction to the tooth fairy.

    > Corruption definitely crosses the aisle.

And all that aside -- in what world is the appropriate response to perceived misdeeds by a political opponent to crank the dial up to 11 on running the government as your combination personal slush fund, army, and all-encompassing bureaucratic warfare organization?

I also would like the left's version of pardoning people who they directly do business with.

Those legitimately parrot the "both sides" stuff are terribly naive. No one who actually pays attention to what's happening thinks these parties are remotely similar right now.

"Perceived" is a very important word in that sentence. The "misdeeds" don't actually exist, they are only "perceived" as part of right wing manufactured victimhood.

it isn't possible for you to be so poorly informed that you think "Joe Biden's son told people who his dad was so they'd let him do a business deal" is in the same scale as:

- taking direct bribes from Qatar - the president and his family launching multiple cryptocurrency firms to do infinite fraud and money laundering - demanding and accepting direct bribes from universities and using taxpayer money as the cudgel - directly taking cash from randoms for pardons

etc etc etc

It's just that the conservatives are so much further along the authoritarianism scale that the liberals appear to be freedom loving democracy activists by comparison. But I guarantee you, if you were to drop the average US Democratic party politician into Germany, Australia, or Canada, they'd be considered to be so far right of center that people would question whether or not that politician even believes in democracy.

I think a lot of it comes down to motivations. The people running these companies have very little to gain from acting ethically and a lot to lose.

The only way out that I see is for the executive branch to eventually overplay its hand and anger enough MAGA voters to risk losing the House and perhaps the Senate, thus opening the door for the opposition to have the numbers to block legislation and even threaten impeachment over egregious violations of the Constitution.

Meanwhile SCOTUS has shown zero interest in taking action so if a CEO spoke up and Trump & Co. destroyed his business ... I would not blame them for thinking that the judicial branch will not save him.

In many ways SCOTUS's inaction has made all this possible, taken the usual path to resolving it away.

I've seen plenty of small businesses show signs of protest (in select cities of course), but they're not part of the American elite

the thing is that not only does the executive branch have a considerable amount of power, we are now finding out just how much power it has if it's 1) willing to go against norms and morals; 2) violate, twist or misapply the law figuring it'll take a while to make its way through the courts and it has a shot at winning; 3) bring the legislative branch into subservience with the threat of unleashing the full might of presidential power directly against their re-election campaigns; 4) go after companies (law firms, universities, media, businesses) with everything it can (law suits, withdrawing access/permits, etc.), and using whatever excuse (i.e., anti-semitism) as (thin) legal cover; and 5) staffs the bureaucracy with loyal cronies who will execute regardless of whether it's right or wrong, and purge everyone else.

The above could easily be describing Russia or China -- that's how bad it is now in the US. But Trump has exposed the weakness of the US "checks and balances" system that it prides itself on -- it only works if the president is someone who is willing to abide by its constraints. Look how easy it has been for a demagogue to upend it? And the only hope is that he'll be gone in 3.5 years, but that's if he doesn't find a way to stay in power longer or run things through Vance the way Putin did with Medvedev.

Of course, one look at Trump’s actual transactions in office should dissuade of that notion. After he made the preliminary trade deal with the EU, he bragged on TV that Europeans are investing $600 billion and Trump himself gets to decide where the money goes. It’s baffling that anyone would assume that’s how any of this works, but he clearly thinks the point of these transactions is to get more power and wealth for himself.

Edit: to his own detriment. Why bother with "deals" when you know it can change at any moment. Just put on a golden dog and pony show for the King and hope for the best.

We collectively give the wealthy extra protection, status, and influence. Basically every definition or subcategory of power.

When you do this, it creates a disgusting race to the bottom from those trying to reach the top. We are seeing the ultimate result of that: a mafia kingdom. A feudal clown show.

You will see a weirdly large amount of people supporting that here because a large number of people have conditioned morality out of their ideology. Or reduced it to a very superficial level, completely subservient to the almighty dollar. "Greed is good", "the ECONOMY", "my peers do it so it's okay". And in and on and on.

In short, many would be doing the same thing in the same position and they can't see just how amoral that is. And how it reflects the utter rot that is our culture.

Many people don't know is that the Nazi party was voted democratically into the government. They didn't win the majority but got most votes. They were majority in the Reichstag (Congress). One of the selling point was that Weimar Republic had lost World War I and the reparations paid to the Allied powers was a slap in the face and the country has fallen (aka country was no longer great, people were laughing at them etc ). Hilter wasn't even elected, he was appointed by the Nazi Party.

The Nazi Party then went on a spree - twisting arms, illegal detention etc to get what they want. Lot of people were complicit in their rise. As Martin Niemöller wrote:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

At this point there is no dearth of fools who think because they are above the "left" because their party is in power. If they continue to align or voraciously defend these intimidation tactics and tariffs etc they are going to be better off.

If there is a big learning to had here - History repeats itself. Mostly because people think they are better than people who came before them. People believe that the can get along with a person who cares nothing but for power. At this point, there is nothing which can be said or done to help them because they believe their enemies being better off is the win.

Because your experience with the government in a democracy shouldn't be dependent on whether the person in power decides you have shown sufficient fealty.

> unless you assume it will be used for punishing poorly cooperative companies.

Like they have so far?

You don't have to assume that. The US government has already made that policy quite clear.

It is fascist, though, only in the context of other actions by the administration.

If you look at various definitions of what facism means, you may see something like: "characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition" (from M-W).

A "loyalty rating" implements both economic regimentation (the insinuation that higher scoring companies have better favor) and suppression of opposition (that companies actively avoid being seen as opposition).

So this is text-book fascist behavior.

It's not hyperbole to envision the justice department looking the other way for high-scoring companies, and actively persecuting low-scoring companies. You're right in that this is already happening (like with e.g. Harvard), but implementing a score in the open makes it shockingly easy to carry out fascist directives across the government bureaucracy.

Most Americans love this idea of being powerful, which is why he won the popular vote. The rapes probably even helped him in some quarters. This idea also appeals strongly to a lot of HN - Warren Buffet openly talks about the importance of getting a "moat".

It's anti-competitive. In reality a more distributed power structure is much better for overall progress, and even for the monopolist in the long run (Example: Intel, Russia).

So are you getting a HAM licence then?