4 ms·

Elon is consolidating all of his property into one single megacorporation because he is confident that nobody will ever challenge this, given the current politi

by RIMR 4mo ago

Elon is consolidating all of his property into one single megacorporation because he is confident that nobody will ever challenge this, given the current political direction of the United States.

dvt 4mo ago
> the current political direction of the United States These kinds of comments reek echo-chamber parroting and zero substantive research. As someone that very much enjoys and carefully follows politics, the current political direction points squarely to Republicans getting absolutely pummelled in the midterms, effectively turning Trump's administration into a 2-year lame duck. What are you even talking about?
- paulryanrogers 4mo ago
  Will a midterm pummeling change the regulatory departments that oversee mergers and anti-trust?
  - dvt 4mo ago
    Obviously you're trying to be snarky, but I hope you realize that Congress does, in fact, have (fairly broad) statutory authority over executive agencies[1]. [1] https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45442 https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45442
    - RIMR 4mo ago
      And I hope you realize that while Congress has authority over a lot of things, that authority is being routinely overridden by the current presidential administration, including fundamental things like spending and declaring war. So it comes across as a bit foolish to assume that any Congressional authority actually exists, or will continue to exist into the future, since we have many examples now of where that authority seemingly doesn't matter anymore. Especially since the majority of Congress is in the same party as the current President, and is making no effort not to cede congressional authority to the executive branch.
      - dofm 4mo ago
        One of the things I find really interesting as a Brit is hard to put into words: Americans tell us that we don't have a constitution — when we do, it is just not wholly written down. (It is in part). We have a constitution that is flexible and precedent-based, but pretty stable, and it has emerged on top of the bits that are written down, and has amended them over time (for example, it is built in part on Magna Carta, but only two or three of its principles remain in law.) Notably a bit more of it got written when we agreed to be bound by the ECHR, but that was mostly absorbed into our understanding. It has taken us hundreds of years to get to this stability, and it is defended from attack from pretty much all sides; every government risks changing it and there is pushback each time, because you can't govern if there aren't rules. The rules are precedent and convention, and there are various authorities and archives that are consulted to work out what they are if people think they are at risk. We are regularly told by Americans that this is an intolerable thing; we need a written constitution or we can't know what our rights are! But those same Americans, right now, are engaged in exactly this process. You have a set of written rules that give Congress power over things, and you are currently evolving a set of precedents that suggest that the executive can simply wander past them and Congress somehow shows deference or refuses to assert its power in some situations. You're right at the start of building an uncodified constitution on top of the old one just as we did on top of Magna Carta. It's not entirely new to Trump; every President in my lifetime has pushed on this except maybe Carter. And sometimes they push back (Roe v. Wade was part of this uncodified constitution and probably needed to be a written amendment.) It could work out but it's important to understand that is what you're doing. And it's not just Unitary Executive theory or presidential immunity; the emergence of the Supreme Court's "shadow docket" is emblematic of the same process.
        DaiPlusPlus 4mo ago
        (Am British expat, btw fwiw) We had Boris Johnson and Liz Truss; the fact they happened at all demonstrates our system still has vulnerabilities. I’m no fan of venerating a written constitution either, but I have an anxiety about parliamentary-sovereignty: events like Brexit and BoJo demonstrate a need for something to bind parliament, lest we get a 21st century Oswald Mosley. Right now we have… decorum and monarchy: a firewall made of damp serviettes. Prior to Brexit, I feel there was some (if vague) kind of accountability from parliament to the EU - which is why/how Brexit revealed the fault-line in the Tories that split the proto-fash types from the amoral-business types to give us Reform/Restore today, and they’re uncomfortably popular. So what I’m saying is that Brexit weakened our accountability mechanisms more than people realize as the national-conversation focused only on economic impact and immigration. In summary: do not convince yourself that “it cannot happen here”; nor that current safeguards (if any) are sufficient.
    - someguynamedq 4mo ago
      Can it change? Yes. That's not the same question as will it change. And that is also not the same question as "will the change result in a different posture towards antitrust." When was the last time substantive antitrust action was taken that forcefully restructured a large company to a significant degree?
    - gbear605 4mo ago
      [dead]
- shipman05 4mo ago
  Going to do my best to respond to this while still following the HN guidelines: > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. RIMR says: > nobody will ever challenge this, given the current political direction of the United States It's obviously hyperbole to say that NOBODY will EVER challenge this, but I'd say it's directionally correct: 1. The Supreme Court is controlled by a conservative, pro-big-business majority that makes it very difficult for any legal attempts to challenge Elon's actions to survive litigation. 2. The United States Senate has a conservative, pro-big-business bias due its over-representation of rural voters and its internal norms (filibuster) 3. The United States House has a conservative, pro-big-business bias due to the gerrymandering efforts of Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country (which the Democrats have tried to counter and failed, see Virginia) 4. The conservative, pro-big-business Supreme Court has ensured that elections in the United States overall have a conservative, pro-big-business bias due to the unfettered spending allowed after Citizens United. So yes, the winds seems to be against Republicans and Trump in the mid-terms, but the structural biases of the government are still very much pro-big-business, pro-capital, and anti-regulation. It will take much more than a single mid-term cycle to reverse that trend.
- mcphage 4mo ago
  > the current political direction points squarely to Republicans getting absolutely pummelled in the midterms Even if so, are the Democrats really going to do the house cleaning required to fix this? Their recent history implies that they'll try to pretend things are running normally, until it all explodes in their face (again). Maybe I'm wrong, and they'll actually fight for the country, but... I'm not surprised that companies (and markets) are expecting them to just... not.
- mourgne 4mo ago
  Even if Congress may reverse things in the future, there are many opportunistic things happening right now, and it seems like the spacex situation is one of them. The emerging picture feels like a 'flood the zone' strategy (not by coordination, but by practical effect). While other commenters have pointed out lots of details that point towards the favorable structural environment going forward, another idea that roots my thoughts towards this is that by creating facts on the ground, they are defining the new starting point. Ultimately, reversing all of the different 'wrongs' or irregularities will be costly to both the opposition's political and attentional capital.
- jayd16 4mo ago
  Ah to have such hope. Even if I was this optimistic, the executive with a stuffed supreme court is not going to care what congress thinks. We'll sooner declare market manipulation a form of speech.
- dofm 4mo ago
  > the current political direction points squarely to Republicans getting absolutely pummelled in the midterms, I am not this optimistic and I think it is dangerous to be this optimistic. Even putting aside mischief, just as a matter of reality, the gap always closes. A loss, yes. Hopefully. A slap around the face, maybe. Perhaps enough to get a clear win in the House. A pummelling? Nah. I think they might still keep the Senate. Trump supporters falling out of love for him could well just lead them to focus their attention on down-ticket Republicans who figure out how to make them feel OK about their past choices, and since they need to feel OK, they will come out. Wholesale rejection of the party is unlikely since it is already splitting into two factions.
- SecretDreams 4mo ago
  Brother I'm not clear there will be a midterm election and I'm confident most of the electorate on both sides feel very disenfranchised voting and suspect the system is not working on the level.

by RIMR 4mo ago

Elon is consolidating all of his property into one single megacorporation because he is confident that nobody will ever challenge this, given the current political direction of the United States.

dvt 4mo ago

> the current political direction of the United States These kinds of comments reek echo-chamber parroting and zero substantive research. As someone that very much enjoys and carefully follows politics, the current political direction points squarely to Republicans getting absolutely pummelled in the midterms, effectively turning Trump's administration into a 2-year lame duck. What are you even talking about?

paulryanrogers 4mo ago
Will a midterm pummeling change the regulatory departments that oversee mergers and anti-trust?
- dvt 4mo ago
  Obviously you're trying to be snarky, but I hope you realize that Congress does, in fact, have (fairly broad) statutory authority over executive agencies[1]. [1] https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45442 https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45442
  - RIMR 4mo ago
    And I hope you realize that while Congress has authority over a lot of things, that authority is being routinely overridden by the current presidential administration, including fundamental things like spending and declaring war. So it comes across as a bit foolish to assume that any Congressional authority actually exists, or will continue to exist into the future, since we have many examples now of where that authority seemingly doesn't matter anymore. Especially since the majority of Congress is in the same party as the current President, and is making no effort not to cede congressional authority to the executive branch.
    - dofm 4mo ago
      One of the things I find really interesting as a Brit is hard to put into words: Americans tell us that we don't have a constitution — when we do, it is just not wholly written down. (It is in part). We have a constitution that is flexible and precedent-based, but pretty stable, and it has emerged on top of the bits that are written down, and has amended them over time (for example, it is built in part on Magna Carta, but only two or three of its principles remain in law.) Notably a bit more of it got written when we agreed to be bound by the ECHR, but that was mostly absorbed into our understanding. It has taken us hundreds of years to get to this stability, and it is defended from attack from pretty much all sides; every government risks changing it and there is pushback each time, because you can't govern if there aren't rules. The rules are precedent and convention, and there are various authorities and archives that are consulted to work out what they are if people think they are at risk. We are regularly told by Americans that this is an intolerable thing; we need a written constitution or we can't know what our rights are! But those same Americans, right now, are engaged in exactly this process. You have a set of written rules that give Congress power over things, and you are currently evolving a set of precedents that suggest that the executive can simply wander past them and Congress somehow shows deference or refuses to assert its power in some situations. You're right at the start of building an uncodified constitution on top of the old one just as we did on top of Magna Carta. It's not entirely new to Trump; every President in my lifetime has pushed on this except maybe Carter. And sometimes they push back (Roe v. Wade was part of this uncodified constitution and probably needed to be a written amendment.) It could work out but it's important to understand that is what you're doing. And it's not just Unitary Executive theory or presidential immunity; the emergence of the Supreme Court's "shadow docket" is emblematic of the same process.
      - DaiPlusPlus 4mo ago
        (Am British expat, btw fwiw) We had Boris Johnson and Liz Truss; the fact they happened at all demonstrates our system still has vulnerabilities. I’m no fan of venerating a written constitution either, but I have an anxiety about parliamentary-sovereignty: events like Brexit and BoJo demonstrate a need for something to bind parliament, lest we get a 21st century Oswald Mosley. Right now we have… decorum and monarchy: a firewall made of damp serviettes. Prior to Brexit, I feel there was some (if vague) kind of accountability from parliament to the EU - which is why/how Brexit revealed the fault-line in the Tories that split the proto-fash types from the amoral-business types to give us Reform/Restore today, and they’re uncomfortably popular. So what I’m saying is that Brexit weakened our accountability mechanisms more than people realize as the national-conversation focused only on economic impact and immigration. In summary: do not convince yourself that “it cannot happen here”; nor that current safeguards (if any) are sufficient.
  - someguynamedq 4mo ago
    Can it change? Yes. That's not the same question as will it change. And that is also not the same question as "will the change result in a different posture towards antitrust." When was the last time substantive antitrust action was taken that forcefully restructured a large company to a significant degree?
  - gbear605 4mo ago
    [dead]
shipman05 4mo ago
Going to do my best to respond to this while still following the HN guidelines: > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. RIMR says: > nobody will ever challenge this, given the current political direction of the United States It's obviously hyperbole to say that NOBODY will EVER challenge this, but I'd say it's directionally correct: 1. The Supreme Court is controlled by a conservative, pro-big-business majority that makes it very difficult for any legal attempts to challenge Elon's actions to survive litigation. 2. The United States Senate has a conservative, pro-big-business bias due its over-representation of rural voters and its internal norms (filibuster) 3. The United States House has a conservative, pro-big-business bias due to the gerrymandering efforts of Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country (which the Democrats have tried to counter and failed, see Virginia) 4. The conservative, pro-big-business Supreme Court has ensured that elections in the United States overall have a conservative, pro-big-business bias due to the unfettered spending allowed after Citizens United. So yes, the winds seems to be against Republicans and Trump in the mid-terms, but the structural biases of the government are still very much pro-big-business, pro-capital, and anti-regulation. It will take much more than a single mid-term cycle to reverse that trend.
mcphage 4mo ago
> the current political direction points squarely to Republicans getting absolutely pummelled in the midterms Even if so, are the Democrats really going to do the house cleaning required to fix this? Their recent history implies that they'll try to pretend things are running normally, until it all explodes in their face (again). Maybe I'm wrong, and they'll actually fight for the country, but... I'm not surprised that companies (and markets) are expecting them to just... not.
mourgne 4mo ago
Even if Congress may reverse things in the future, there are many opportunistic things happening right now, and it seems like the spacex situation is one of them. The emerging picture feels like a 'flood the zone' strategy (not by coordination, but by practical effect). While other commenters have pointed out lots of details that point towards the favorable structural environment going forward, another idea that roots my thoughts towards this is that by creating facts on the ground, they are defining the new starting point. Ultimately, reversing all of the different 'wrongs' or irregularities will be costly to both the opposition's political and attentional capital.
jayd16 4mo ago
Ah to have such hope. Even if I was this optimistic, the executive with a stuffed supreme court is not going to care what congress thinks. We'll sooner declare market manipulation a form of speech.
dofm 4mo ago
> the current political direction points squarely to Republicans getting absolutely pummelled in the midterms, I am not this optimistic and I think it is dangerous to be this optimistic. Even putting aside mischief, just as a matter of reality, the gap always closes. A loss, yes. Hopefully. A slap around the face, maybe. Perhaps enough to get a clear win in the House. A pummelling? Nah. I think they might still keep the Senate. Trump supporters falling out of love for him could well just lead them to focus their attention on down-ticket Republicans who figure out how to make them feel OK about their past choices, and since they need to feel OK, they will come out. Wholesale rejection of the party is unlikely since it is already splitting into two factions.
SecretDreams 4mo ago
Brother I'm not clear there will be a midterm election and I'm confident most of the electorate on both sides feel very disenfranchised voting and suspect the system is not working on the level.