In the US people fight back. There are courts, NGOs, law firms, journalists, people can protest, can petition their representatives, etc, etc. It is unfortunate that someone is trying to become dictator, but the point of this country is that it doesn't become a dictatorship just because one person wants that.
But its not so much trump I'm concerned about, its the people using him (though he is using them in some kind symbiotic relationship), and that is project 2025, federalist society, christo fascist tech billionaires like Thiel, or even the CEO of ycombinator, that supports them, etc. There's a chance it could end with trump, they know that, so they're working on making sure it doesn't.
Fortunately, here in the US, one can still do stuff, and that action can actually move the needle. In China, you can do nothing. If you don't like what Xi is doing, tough luck.
My point is: it is very fashionable here on HN to complain about how the US is bad, or a tyranny, or unjust, or whatever. But out of all the countries in the world, the US still has the highest aversion to dictatorship and tyranny. People do fight. Look at Harvard. Columbia didn't fight, but Harvard did. Some people fold, but some fight.
The founding idea of the US is that people are imperfect. Some will always try to grab power. That's human nature. The solution is to have multiple checks and balances. They will not create a perfect society, but they'll reduce the likelihood of one group of people to take over, as it happened with the Nazis in the inter-war period in Germany. Just checks and balances are not enough, it's also the democratic tradition. It's the people willing to take a stand. And fortunately, such people still exist.
It's actually pretty normal for modern dictatorships to have all that too. During eras where common people and peer nations appreciate democracy and liberalism, the typical way of operating a dictatorship is to allow for nominal expression of all those things but to structure in limits on its efficacy. They happen, they're just made sure never exceed the regime's capacity to rein them in, and sometimes are even instigated by the regime as an alternative means of influence.
> it doesn't become a dictatorship just because one person wants that
Sure. And it also doesn't only become a dictatorship when those things are no longer visible. If you only see dictatorship as some abstract platonic ideal of complete repression of dissent, instead of as a concentration of power effectively beyond the reach of the demos and its guardian institutions, you'll miss most of its occurrences in the real world.
When the public or a segment are signaling concern about a dictatorship, it’s an alarm and signal that they see signs.
What is misunderstood: Once the dictator secures power, it’s far too late. The critics are long silenced, and all of the checks and balances have been hollowed out and made powerless.
Saying the former when the reality is the latter means your message will simply becomes ever more ignored the closer to a dictatorship we get and thus makes a dictatorship more likely.
> I’ll say the same is true for those that hold your point of view.
I aways find it so interesting that having a view that aims to be based on reality and not overly exaggerated fear mongering is seen as so negatively by both sides. I can't see that ending well for the US to be honest. Fear mongering is how you get dictators, left or right, and not how you get a stable democracy.
To paraphrase Ben Franklin: We have a republic, if we can keep it.
Being vigilant and on guard is a feature of the US and demanded of its citizens.
Of course, my family escaped a dictatorship and made our home in the US. So we have a better sense of these things.
The methods like ignoring the rule of law to grab people off the streets is a huge red flag.
> Of course, my family escaped a dictatorship and made our home in the US. So we have a better sense of these things.
Fascinating what people assume about others and then use that to discount the views of others if those views disagree with them.
Clearly you've got a lot of trauma but panic and excess anxiety are not healthy responses to that as they make your decisions irrationally biased. That's how you get lots of immigrants who escaped communist dictatorships voting for a right wing dictatorships in the US. Their trauma biases their world view so much that they panic and then cause an equally bad outcome.
Also, strawman. We’re pretty much done here.
Classic "bad faith, I'm done" when pressed into a corner after your No True Scotsman didn't land.
> constantly inserting “outs” in your wording,
So only your extrapolation of what I meant is correct irrespective of both the wording and what I meant?
This is like talking to someone with a red hat. So surreal how both sides are just as bad.
While there is truth in that, it is also important to note that there is no such thing as a clear-cut line where we go, ok this is it, now it's a dictatorship.
Which in turn means that it becomes easy to rationalize and say that because they aren't doing this or that yet, it can't be a dictatorship yet. And those goalposts keep moving.
So perhaps one analogy is like a recession. We never really know the economy is in a recession until it's already been in one for a while but it wasn't obvious yet, only in hindsight.
https://x.com/EleanorOlcott/status/1834109085450731530?s=20
"In 2018, 51,302 new startups were founded. Last year, that number was down to 1,202."
That's the cost of authoritarian centralization. But it would also be dishonest not to concede the other side of the ledger. A government that eliminates all challenges to its authority also doesn’t depend on coalitions or election cycles, so doesn’t need to bargain with public-sector unions, entrenched lobbies, or party factions to stay in power. That concentration of authority can give Beijing a longer planning horizon than governments that live inside a permanent 18-month election cycle.
That’s the structural trade-off: fewer constraints and more long-term maneuvering room, at the price of suppressing bottom-up initiative, i.e. entrepreneurship.
This is not a value judgment: it’s just the logic of political institutions. Centralized regimes can move quickly, avoid gridlock, and pursue 20- or 30-year industrial policy. But the same mechanisms that let them think long-term also deter the kind of decentralized experimentation that produces new firms and new ideas.
I dont think it has anything to do with Ma, but the complete collapse of Chinese VC after COVID along with property market bubble burst.
really? A billionaire can't afford UK's stamp duty??
kiba•2mo ago
However, this causes land speculation which drives the price of land up, and people do not want to develop properties because it would means investing in buildings which costs money to build and maintain and entails risk and ongoing effort.
The correct solution to this is a land value tax, which if implemented correctly, should drive down the price of land down to zero and force Jack Ma's family to either commit to actually investing in UK's economy or park their wealth elsewhere.
bmitc•2mo ago
trueismywork•2mo ago
andyferris•2mo ago
I'm not sure how to work this to everyday people's benefit - are the taxes to be so large punative that half of everyday home owners need to sell up? (I mean, the tax will only depress value if sales are avoided, or existing owners choose to sell, right?)
I'm probably in the "increase supply until no one else wants one" camp...
twoodfin•2mo ago
It has to act like a market rent paid to the government, or it can’t induce the behavior changes it’s supposed to.
Hard to believe Americans, at least, would accept that shift in property rights.
lotsofpulp•2mo ago
Yes, either you are rich enough to occupy land in an expensive area for a suboptimal use (usually means central to transportation and population), or you have to give it up to someone who can make use of it.
Note that homeowners who live further away from stuff are not impacted. It’s for underutilized lots that are being squatted on due to someone laying claim to it first decades ago, but that is not an efficient way to allocate resources in a society.
Hence, why China can develop rapidly to benefit 80% of its population, while other developed countries are stuck catering to 20% of its population who got theirs first (or really, their ancestors did).
twoodfin•2mo ago
That’s a property rights regime that applies to everyone. If you want to get rid of it you have to get rid of it for everyone, you can’t say “titles are no longer valid if the land they cover is valuable enough, but otherwise, out in the boonies, still good”.
If nothing else, that’s a Constitutional takings problem.
lotsofpulp•2mo ago
And property rights are very much a political negotiation (just before things get violent). The government takes a piece of everyone’s income with no problem.
And land owners use the most resources of everyone. All the military spend to protect their asset, all the education, police, and judicial expenses to keep an orderly society, all the energy to move resources around the land.
Right now, we take more, proportionally, from income earners (workers) who live in tiny apartments compared to rent seekers who squat on underutilized lots that use up a lot more of society’s resources.
twoodfin•2mo ago
Income taxes are transfer taxes: The government takes a cut of money moving from a labor buyer to a labor seller. Not unlike excise taxes or tariffs, though we needed a Constitutional amendment for Congress to do it.
Property taxes are property taxes. They’re premised on the notion that there’s a private owner of the property to be taxed, and those taxes fund services and protections via the elected government of the property holder.
If LVT requires rent-equivalent rates to work, you can call it a really high property tax, but that’s just linguistic games: The government is charging rent on property it now effectively owns.
What part of that do you disagree with? I took your comments to imply yes, in fact, under LVT the government effectively owns the land and charges rent on it, as it was in feudal times and perhaps should have continued to be so?
(Also, re: property taxes and takings, check out Tyler v. Hennepin. 9-0. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/22-166)
lotsofpulp•2mo ago
> If LVT requires rent-equivalent rates to work, you can call it a really high property tax, but that’s just linguistic games: The government is charging rent on property it now effectively owns.
In nature, might makes right. Whether you fight against someone else to protect your property, or pay a gang to not disturb you, or pay a democratically elected government to not have the sheriff’s department to remove you.
The concept of ownership and titles is very fluid depending on the situation, but what isn’t is the idea of paying for what you use. High earned income tax and low flat land value tax rates incentivize the opposite of a productive society. I would say it is more feudal than paying the government rent.
> (Also, re: property taxes and takings, check out Tyler v. Hennepin. 9-0. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/22-166)
This does not seem incongruent with the idea that everyone is renting the land. The important point is the government can take it and sell it to someone who will do something productive with it.
dragonwriter•2mo ago
No, in nature might is just might. “Right” exists only in the view of moral actors, not outside of it.
lotsofpulp•2mo ago
kiba•2mo ago
That leaves you with other factors in the consideration of purchasing real estate such as the price of the building itself, as opposed to the land.
numpad0•2mo ago
Isn't land values proportionate to population density? Whatever tax systems that intend to combat rising land values should force density on down trend, no?
lotsofpulp•2mo ago
LVT in an urban/suburban area incentivizes building more housing units per surface area. And a power law formula LVT would especially align incentives, as land that is worth more has even more incentive to be developed.
numpad0•2mo ago
It would make sense if your argument is that $1m/unit, 50-150 floors tall, 500 units total apartments intended exclusively for young and current childless dual income investment bankers households, seen everywhere in developed cities such as NYC or Shanghai or Singapore or likes, is exactly the intention of LVT and desired steady state of land price inflation control, but I assume it's not?
jjav•2mo ago
That's not exactly true.
Now sure, if everything else is equal then yes it is true. Building a small apartment building on the same land as a single house will result in more units than the cost multiplier of the build, so as you say, they'll be cheaper.
But everything else is never equal. It only makes sense to do such increased density in an area that is becoming more and more expensive and the delta increased density will make the area even more expensive.
NYC is the densest area in the US, and is not exactly known for the cheaper per-unit housing costs.
zukzuk•2mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
also take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
stavros•2mo ago
trollbridge•2mo ago
jdasdf•2mo ago
None of this is true.
Step by step:
>as it is fixed
Something not being able to be moved is a negative, not a positive
>finite
New land is created all the time. The netherlands has created an entire new province.
> and doesn't depreciate in value
Only true legally. I can assure you land does depreciate, as can any farmer that has used it to farm the same crop for years and now finds its yields reduced as a result.
>except through market trend
So, just like any other asset?
> it basically only go up as long as the economy itself grow.
Untrue, simply check any number of rural areas that have had the life drained out of them over the past 50 years.
Land is useful, but let's not pretend like it's something it isn't.
ageitgey•2mo ago
You're 'technically correct' but the total amount of land being created is so small as to be meaningless in a global sense.
Your arguments are fixated on extreme corner cases. I'm not sure what you are arguing for.
Xss3•2mo ago
waschl•2mo ago
Xss3•2mo ago
jdasdf•2mo ago
By that argument we don't even need to create any land at all. There is plenty of empty or nearly empty land all over the world. It may not be as desirable as specific places, but i can assure you the cost to make large swathes of land inhabitable by humans is comparatively low.
kiba•2mo ago
Also, Netherland did not create land, because ocean is a type of land. They merely improve the land to the point that it can be used by people walking around, but that also preclude the ocean to be used by other means such as aquaculture and building coral reefs which can be used to provide ecosystem services and sustenance to humans.
faidit•2mo ago
plumeria•2mo ago
They terraformed it :)
caminante•2mo ago
There's too much overlooked survivor bias with "I wish I owned real estate..." retrospectives. What people are really saying is that they wish they had speculated, but that's no different than "I wish I owned [NVDA]..."
Take homes values. On a real$ basis, "home prices show a strong tendency to return to their 1890 level[s]" [0].
1. People just move if things get expensive. Urban land area is only 2.6% of total US.
2. Tech improvements unlock cheaper and more durable homes.
What Jack Ma's doing is a completely different level of personal estate management and a flight to safety.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case%E2%80%93Shiller_index#Eco...
wakawaka28•2mo ago
>The correct solution to this is a land value tax, which if implemented correctly, should drive down the price of land down to zero
We have prices to help decide what is the most valuable use of a resource. Trying to implement a bunch of policy to cancel out price signals will lead to all kinds of dysfunctional situations.
Fixed percentage property tax based on market data and legitimate appraisals is the right kind of tax on land (or as correct as it gets; the ideal is that people pay for what public services they use and no more).
>force Jack Ma's family to either commit to actually investing in UK's economy or park their wealth elsewhere.
They are investing in the UK economy by owning land there. A mansion requires maintenance and property tax payments. The UK is not entitled to tell people how they must spend the fruits of their labor. If you'd rather the mansion not go to a foreign rich person, you could ban foreign purchases of mansions. But this would no doubt hurt the people who build and maintain them. Furthermore, Jack Ma probably has limits placed on him by his country. He may only be free to buy a mansion. He will no doubt use it... Leaving a country takes time.
If you want to be mad about land prices, be mad at the infinite deficits and credit bubbles being inflated in the West.
robocat•2mo ago
Isn't most land already 'taxed' by a mortgage? Or for a cash purchase it is 'taxed' by the opportunity cost of the investment? Plus rates (taxation) for commercial land in my city are also expensive compared to cost.
Yet these costs don't drive the price of land to zero.