3 ms·

Probably correctly; things get flagged often not because they don't deserve attention but because the HN user base is incapable of discussing them in a civilize

by kragen 1y ago

Probably correctly; things get flagged often not because they don't deserve attention but because the HN user base is incapable of discussing them in a civilized fashion. We'll see if this item turns out to be an exception, but I'm not especially optimistic. (In this case it seems to have been buried but not flagged.) ICE is not a person or corporation, so it cannot go bankrupt. If ICE is found liable, the US Treasury will pay the judgments. If the Treasury's debts are too heavy to pay, the US government can either raise taxes or, because those debts are almost entirely dollar-denominated, print money to pay them. While governments can certainly cease operations because they are unable to pay their employees, it's messier and fuzzier than the process you seem to be imagining. Markets consist of mostly expert bettors betting on future events. What would it look like if investors thought such a hyperinflationary cascade was likely? It might look like an all-time high dollar-denominated price on gold: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45417805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45417805

OutOfHere 1y ago
Each agency obviously has a fixed annual budget. It cannot be exceeded until the following year except by some limited reshuffling of funds. I am not saying that it's ideal for ICE to go bankrupt, only that it is important for it to have better intel and always respect human rights, failing which America stands much to lose.
- kragen 1y ago
  No, it is not correct that each agency has a fixed annual budget. If the head of ICE were to write a letter to Congress saying that they would have to close all the border checkpoints and lay off all the agents next month because they were out of money, Congress would have the option of appropriating additional funds from the Treasury, a so-called "supplemental appropriations bill", a process which in the US they use regularly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriations_bill_(United_States)#Supplemental_appropriations_bills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriations_bill_(United_St... and in particular this happened four times in "fiscal year 2024": https://www.govinfo.gov/features/federal-appropriations-fiscal-year-2024 https://www.govinfo.gov/features/federal-appropriations-fisc... This is an option they would almost certainly take, in preference to leaving the borders unguarded. The Federal Tort Claims Act governs the process: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45732 https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45732 I agree that ICE needs to start respecting human rights, but giving it better intel runs counter to that purpose, and getting damages judgments in courts will probably not affect it one way or the other.
zahlman 1y ago
> Probably correctly; things get flagged often not because they don't deserve attention but because the HN user base is incapable of discussing them in a civilized fashion. I tend to flag things because the submission (either the act of submitting it, the text of the thing being submitted, or both) seems aimed at incivil (i.e.: waging ideological battle, scoring points against a political outgroup) discussion. > (In this case it seems to have been buried but not flagged.) I don't know what you mean. As far as I'm aware there is no downvoting on submissions. > Markets consist of mostly expert bettors betting on future events. What would it look like if investors thought such a hyperinflationary cascade was likely? It might look like an all-time high dollar-denominated price on gold: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45417805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45417805 This seems like a big reach. USD might be weakening relative to a bunch of asset classes, but not so much relative to other currencies. And to the extent that USG might be expected to go back into printing huge amounts of money (COVID era or worse), it wouldn't realistically be because of lawsuits connected to ICE; even the "unprecedented" funding in the "Big Beautiful Bill" ($75 billion per https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-funding-big-beautiful-bill-trump-deportations/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-funding-big-beautiful-bill-...) is a small fraction of what the military costs, or social security. For other perspective, the total NYSE market cap is something like three orders of magnitude larger (https://siblisresearch.com/data/us-stock-market-value/ https://siblisresearch.com/data/us-stock-market-value/).
- kragen 1y ago
  You ask, very reasonably, "I don't know what you mean. As far as I'm aware there is no downvoting on submissions." I mean this: > If a user has 31 Karma, they can flag submissions. Although submissions cannot be downvoted, flags act as a "super" downvote and enough flags will strongly reduce the rank of the submission, or kill it entirely (flagging is supposed to be used for submissions which break the site guidelines, but that isn't always the case in practice). A submission that's flagged to death will have a [flagged] tag. So I mean it hasn't been tagged with "flagged", but it has been removed rather quickly from the front page. I agree that any hypothetical liability judgments against ICE are unlikely to have a major impact on the pressure to inflate the dollar. And I agree that other currencies are also fairly weak.

by kragen 1y ago

OutOfHere 1y ago

Each agency obviously has a fixed annual budget. It cannot be exceeded until the following year except by some limited reshuffling of funds. I am not saying that it's ideal for ICE to go bankrupt, only that it is important for it to have better intel and always respect human rights, failing which America stands much to lose.

kragen 1y ago
No, it is not correct that each agency has a fixed annual budget. If the head of ICE were to write a letter to Congress saying that they would have to close all the border checkpoints and lay off all the agents next month because they were out of money, Congress would have the option of appropriating additional funds from the Treasury, a so-called "supplemental appropriations bill", a process which in the US they use regularly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriations_bill_(United_States)#Supplemental_appropriations_bills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriations_bill_(United_St... and in particular this happened four times in "fiscal year 2024": https://www.govinfo.gov/features/federal-appropriations-fiscal-year-2024 https://www.govinfo.gov/features/federal-appropriations-fisc... This is an option they would almost certainly take, in preference to leaving the borders unguarded. The Federal Tort Claims Act governs the process: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45732 https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45732 I agree that ICE needs to start respecting human rights, but giving it better intel runs counter to that purpose, and getting damages judgments in courts will probably not affect it one way or the other.

zahlman 1y ago

> Probably correctly; things get flagged often not because they don't deserve attention but because the HN user base is incapable of discussing them in a civilized fashion. I tend to flag things because the submission (either the act of submitting it, the text of the thing being submitted, or both) seems aimed at incivil (i.e.: waging ideological battle, scoring points against a political outgroup) discussion. > (In this case it seems to have been buried but not flagged.) I don't know what you mean. As far as I'm aware there is no downvoting on submissions. > Markets consist of mostly expert bettors betting on future events. What would it look like if investors thought such a hyperinflationary cascade was likely? It might look like an all-time high dollar-denominated price on gold: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45417805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45417805 This seems like a big reach. USD might be weakening relative to a bunch of asset classes, but not so much relative to other currencies. And to the extent that USG might be expected to go back into printing huge amounts of money (COVID era or worse), it wouldn't realistically be because of lawsuits connected to ICE; even the "unprecedented" funding in the "Big Beautiful Bill" ($75 billion per https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-funding-big-beautiful-bill-trump-deportations/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-funding-big-beautiful-bill-...) is a small fraction of what the military costs, or social security. For other perspective, the total NYSE market cap is something like three orders of magnitude larger (https://siblisresearch.com/data/us-stock-market-value/ https://siblisresearch.com/data/us-stock-market-value/).

kragen 1y ago
You ask, very reasonably, "I don't know what you mean. As far as I'm aware there is no downvoting on submissions." I mean this: > If a user has 31 Karma, they can flag submissions. Although submissions cannot be downvoted, flags act as a "super" downvote and enough flags will strongly reduce the rank of the submission, or kill it entirely (flagging is supposed to be used for submissions which break the site guidelines, but that isn't always the case in practice). A submission that's flagged to death will have a [flagged] tag. So I mean it hasn't been tagged with "flagged", but it has been removed rather quickly from the front page. I agree that any hypothetical liability judgments against ICE are unlikely to have a major impact on the pressure to inflate the dollar. And I agree that other currencies are also fairly weak.