The previous startup waves were built on top of expanded Internet access, mobile phones, and virtualization. This allowed low capitalized startups to create 10x better software. What you’re describing is marginally better software, you’re not going to beat Gmail by making it 10s faster. No one really cares about dark patterns and spam.
There will eventually be new waves that create opportunities for startups again, LLMs are like that in some cases, but I’d argue that mobile phones were by far a larger disruptive innovation than LLMs so far.
When Apple was a startup they were riding the personal computing wave, when they created the iPod and iPhone they were no longer a startup. Sure, if you have a billion dollars and thousands of engineers you can create your own waves.
I don’t think that ignoring these foundational innovations or trying to work against trends is generally good advice for startups though, it’s easy to think you’re really clever and smart and different but meanwhile the team that did “Airbnb for dogs” has sold for $1B
There is a difference between invention and innovation. Apple is often late to the party (mp3 players, smartphones, tablets, smart watches, wireless earphones, ...) but when they arrive they often shake things up with category-defining products.
There is a good argument to be made that Apple introduced the modern smartphone (Android switched to multitouch and a virtual keyboard in response to the iPhone[1]) and app store ecosystem.
It is an extraordinary achievement, especially considering the skepticism expressed by dominant incumbents such as Nokia, Blackberry, Palm, etc. in 2007. iPhone would, at best, have less impact than Windows Mobile.
iPhone was announced in January 2007 and shipped in June 2007.
Windows Mobile literally had a version called "Smartphone 2002" which you should be able to guess when that came out. You could buy a variety of devices in a vertical mostly-screen format running Windows Mobile for years before iPhone was even getting hinted at.
The main thing the original iPhone did for the smartphone market is popularizing capacitive multitouch screens that work well without a stylus.
> and app stores
The iPhone not only launched without an app store, Apple (and Jobs in particular) was famously hostile to the idea of even supporting third party native apps at all, insisting that web apps would be all that the platform needed. They didn't change their tune until October 2007 when they announced an upcoming SDK, it was made available to developers in March 2008, and it wasn't actually released to users until July 2008.
One could make an argument for Linux package managers being an "app store" in the mid-90s, though if you insist on it needing to sell commercial software then the various carrier-specific software platforms for J2ME feature phones starting in the '99-00 timeframe would be it. Carrier-agnostic third-party stores started to pop up a few years later, and the first official one from a phone vendor seems to have been Nokia Catalogs for Symbian S60 in 2006.
Android also had an app store from the beginning, but the launch of the whole platform was delayed long enough that Apple managed to get iOS 2.0 out with its app store before the first Android devices actually shipped.
A one year posture shift pdoes not constitute famous hostility. He dismissed app stores because the iphone didn’t have that feature yet. apple was the king of digital storefronts with the itunes store.
Wouldn't it be possible to privatize space in some way like land, and then enforce any damages to neighbor's 'land'/orbit?. Might involve some easements for 'right of way' into higher / intersecting orbit.
I mean you could... but good luck getting global agreement on that and realistically no. It is a thing that sounds nice and could look nice on paper but real world complications will result in issues pretty fast. Sounds like a great way to start a war as treaty violations will be inevitable and unavoidable.
If you divide up by altitude: it requires significant negotiation to place a vehicle (an arbitrary spacecraft or satellite) in any location.
If you partition by location (e.g. project current airspace upwards): your vehicles can't abide by these rules. They must orbit the planet. They will eventually go over most countries.
If you partition by orbit: you have to contend with precession. Craft drift[0,1]. This is because Earth is an oblate spheroid and not a sphere. It is also caused by angular momentum itself, so your orbit rotates. You will start in one and over time move into another. There's not much you can do about this and it is quite costly to maneuver (constant orbital maneuvering means an exponential increase in weight, complexity, and cost). Remember, the Earth does not rotate around in its axis in a fixed period of time, nor does it around the sun.
So really the laws of physics have you in a bind. Things are constantly moving and changing. So even the best laid plans will eventually lead to violation (and thus conflict) even through no ill-intent.
This is actually why a lot of (especially "hard") Sci-Fi has treated space travel as a global unification period. Because it becomes necessary in order to avoid conflict. This was a bigger discussion in the 60's and 70's when the initial space ventures were occurring and in the public eye, but has naturally drifted out of conversation as the underlying motivation similarly did. Though it stayed in conversation for domain experts who frequently content with this still.
A tenant is somebody paying to lease property, for example if you have a landlord, you're their tenant, and by analogy e.g. an Azure tenant is an organisation within the Azure cloud with a unique identifier.
A tenet is a belief or principle that is important to some group, for example the IETF's Best Common Practice series are not just RFCs describing a protocol or technology but instead statements of principle such as BCP 188 "Pervasive Monitoring Is An Attack".
It's also helpful shorthand. One of the reason there is no RSA KEX† in TLS 1.3 is that under BCP 188 obviously aiding bulk surveillance technology isn't acceptable, so when you have a liaison from the ACLU saying yes, get rid of RSA KEX and a representation from EDCO (Enterprise Data Center Operators, basically big old financial companies) saying it'll cost them too much money to lose RSA KEX so it should be reinstated in the late drafts for the RFC, there was no need to re-explain in great detail why the ACLU are right here because there's already a document explaining to anybody who is new to this.
† The RSA Key Exchange goes like this: We get the public key of a server from their certificate which they sent us, we pick a symmetric key at random and we encrypt our chosen key using that public key with the RSA algorithm, so that only the legitimate owner of the certificate can decrypt it, then we send that encrypted key to the server. Because they know the Private Key corresponding to the public key in the certificate they can decrypt the symmetric key we sent. This symmetric key is used for all further communication. This means if say, the Mad King's Secret Police obtain a copy of the RSA private key for the server at any time the Secret Police can decrypt every communication, even if the communications they're decrypting happened weeks, months or years before they obtain the key.
The funny thing is it is the autists, who don't respond well to emotional appeals. Is that all it is? That it is harder to influence high functioning ones?
Was he ever diagnozed? Because all his success is charizma and social skills based. This claim appears only when he needs to be excused. Also, it is super possible to be a harmful asshole and autist at the same time.
Musk also do not care about morals, ethics or laws based appeals.
I do not think he ever was. As you note, most of the 'accusations' come up without any real evidence. It is all basically the same story as with most remote diagnosis of all politicians that 99% talk show hosts play with their audiences.
FWIW, I personally do not think he has autism. I do think his mind works differently from a good chunk of the population though.
The previous silicon valley giants were to a large degree followers of Ayn Rand. This society selects, grooms and idealises a certain psychological profile.
A cadre of billionaires appears determined to institute fascism in the United States; there’s a very real chance they will succeed. Meanwhile, the climate crisis threatens the long-term survival of our species, yet efforts to steer us away from self-destruction are being actively sabotaged by the fossil fuel industry. This is to say nothing of the warmongering with China, another nuclear power.
The concentration of wealth (and by extension, power) really has become an existential threat to humanity.
More often than not, it's the other way around. Being born in the bourgeoisie, like Trump and Musk, grooms you into a certain way of thinking. You're told your whole life you are exceptional, above everyone else. No wonder they turn out like that. Read up on both of these guys' educations if you're interested in this.
Both Trump and Musk may have been born into “bourgeoisie“, but the connecting and relevant factor here is a highly traumatizing childhood with highly traumatized parents.
I don't know why you put bourgeoisie in quotes like it's a ridiculous concept.
With the kind of analysis you give we're stuck with surface level "oh they're just a bad batch", when they're pure products of a system that makes series of them. It's not like they are thousands just like Trump, ready to step in if he loses power.
The bourgeoisie has a material interest in installing fascism, which is why we're here. Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg are among the only ones to profit from the current circus.
It's not the first time it happens either, this has been proven times and times again. Look up the relations of Hitler and Mussolini with the capitalist class of their times.
I am not saying them having a shitty childhood had no influence on their politics, simply that it is not nearly enough to understand our current state of affairs.
From my understanding, it is not wealth that creates sociopathy, it is a traumatic childhood. For me it points to the origin, and thus the fix, which is why I find that distinction not only relevant but crucial. After studying a broad body of literature around the connection between trauma and violence and politics, I do believe this would indeed be “nearly enough to understand the current state of affairs“. What connects Hitler and Mussolini and Trump and Putin is not wealth but severe early childhood violence.
But by what mechanism can they attain power? That's what matters. Many sociopaths remain in the shadows.
Material support from the oligarchy absolutely connects Hitler, Mussolini, Trump and Putin. It is how they find the funding to get into power, how media is made to relay fascist propaganda 24/7, etc.
Serving the interests of the capital class, and only theirs, is what defines and enables fascism.
Slop language from LLMs (which haven't been fixed with the antislop sampler: https://github.com/sam-paech/antislop-sampler) is extremely obvious to those who use LLMs a lot. Overrepresentation of words from these lists is an example of the tells.
Honestly I was fooled, but looking closer, it is all suspicious and I agree. For example the author's other posts, and the relatively canned nature of each post with a clear thesis put into a prompt. The framing and language I guess was how you caught it.
I guess we won't care eventually as a society but I admit this all makes me uncomfortable, as someone that fell in love with the internet as a communication tool.
I really can't wait when reality flips and it's socially acceptable to save on my 45€ monthly internet fee and live offline again, exciting times we're heading towards
“And in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn't fully understand.”
— Alfred describing why the mob hired the Joker
It’s clear that both political parties in the US are captured by the investor class, the democrats didn’t even have an election to choose Kamala she was selected by their donors who preferred someone they could control over someone with the best chance of winning.
If the lesson people take away from this is that Republicans are just uneducated and naive, they’re missing the point. People were desperate for something different, they thought Trump was someone from outside of the system but they didn’t realize that the system is money and no one is outside of it.
There's a very good reason for this: those general elections cost states money. Money they have not budgeted to re-run a primary. In addition, in most states, the primary is framed in a legal process that does not allow for an "out-of-band" second election. It would, generally, have been illegal to re-run an election (at least using the physical voting apparatus of the myriad states) to choose an alternate when Biden dropped, which is why the party chooses via their own process.
And as far as I'm aware, that process was followed following Biden's announcement. I wouldn't accuse Republicans of being uneducated and naive if people didn't vote for Harris because "she never won a primary..." I'd accuse traditional Democrat voters of not knowing very much about the party they (nominally) tend to support. It'd be nice if civics weren't just something people's parents and grandparents did.
As for being an outsider... In 2024, I fail to see how voters would think a former President could be considered outside the system.
Biden should have simply refused to run again in 2024. There was already signalling to this effect in 2019, though it was never explicitly promised.[1][2] If he had just kept to that, there would have been plenty of time to run a primary and an actually strong candidate could have been selected.
My understanding is that Biden was very concerned about his legacy and there are rumors about the "no daylight" phrase he spoke with Harris on her campaign and probably part of the reason she lost. But Biden should have dropped down much earlier and will taint his legacy forever. At least he passed the infrastructure bill.
Not to rehash this for the 1000th time, but I really don't understand this point of view. Why assume that everything before the Biden drop-out was unchangeable and ordained by God?
It is very clear that, long before the primary, Biden was not fit to run again, probably not even fit to stay in office. A functioning party would have gotten their senile standard-bearer to at least not run again, ideally even step down and let his VP take office and build a relationship with voters. Either way, they could have run a real primary and therefore chosen somebody that Democratic voters might actually have been excited about voting for in the general election. This may even have been Harris, but a version of Harris with a much better shot at winning because she'd spent an additional year or so campaigning.
Why is this an impossible set of events? If it isn't, why not lay the blame for this colossally bad fuckup at the feet of the Democratic leadership?
I wouldn't, personally, have had any issue with such a scenario. My comment was in response to the pervasive and wrong idea that the Democrats could have "just" re-run the primary when Biden dropped after being elected in that primary.
I think people believe elections are internet-fast or internet-convenient, which is where this skewed idea comes from. They aren't, for reasons that should be obvious with some consideration about how elections are secured.
They could have had a mini primary leading to the Democrat convention in August and let the voters in the convention (electors?) decide from multiple candidates while taking polls into account, for example. Having a memory, I do remember people discussing the option of mini primaries. Harris wasn’t pre-ordained, she was just a bad decision that Democrat insiders made without input from the outside.
This would just be show anyway. Even with a "real" primary, the DNC's "superdelegate" structure means that party insiders essentially get to choose the candidate, just like in the 19th century (the mythical "smoke filled room").
The primary process itself is just for show, but a competent party would understand that it needs to have at least the appearance of legitimacy.
The last Democratic presidential primary that seemed legitimate to voters who were paying attention was 2008: 2012 was 2nd term Obama, in 2016 insiders ratfucked Sanders to pick Clinton, 2020 they did something similar to pick Biden, and then of course the disaster of 2024.
It's been nearly 20 years since we've had a "real" Democratic primary that at least advertised itself as a democratic process. Seems logical that Democratic voters would be skeptical about the so-called leadership of the party.
It's not precisely "just for show;" there are enough non-super DNC delegates that they can, in fact, outweigh the superdelegates if they have something approximating consensus. When it's a close race, the superdelegates can dominate the outcome.
But there's no reason to assume that anyone would have shown up to challenge Harris. The incumbent effect is very strong in both parties, and it's extremely rare to refrain from nominating the sitting first-term President, so there's no reason to believe the result of all of that wouldn't have been the successor the President recommended. Note that the initial Primary went landslide to Biden. American voters tend to go with recognizable names and tend to hew to tradition.
You're quite correct that relative to the GOP, the Democrats have a more elitist structure that consolidates leadership to party operatives. When you don't have that... Well, nobody in the GOP party machinery really wanted President Trump, but the GOP doesn't have superdelegates.
> 2016 insiders ratfucked Sanders to pick Clinton
This is a common hypothesis but Sanders never had the votes. He was about 3 million short of Clinton. While there's no doubt that the party preferred Clinton, the voters didn't show enough of a preference for Sanders to overcome that inertia. Again, American voters tend to go with recognizable names, and they already saw Clinton close to the White House (even if, as First Lady, she wasn't actually elected).
Were the Democratic voters even wrong? Clinton ultimately went on to win the popular vote. There's no particular reason to believe Sanders would have done so; we'll never know what that alternate reality would have looked like, but his opponents would have drilled in on his Jewish heritage and it would have gotten quite ugly (as Trump revealed, there's a lot of straight-up bigots who became politically motivated in 2016).
If this had happened, wouldn’t people say the result was not legitimate because they didn’t win real primaries, the donors easily gamed the mini-primary, etc? Maybe they were screwed as soon as anything unusual happened, and/or some people will find any reason to say Dem insiders play favorites, any reason for Trump to keep “Sleepy Joe” as his opponent.
The proportions matter and I think much fewer people would be saying the result was not legitimate if it was through some sort of campaign and primary process than an insider decision made through whatever backroom deals they did.
> And as far as I'm aware, that process was followed following Biden's announcement.
This is exactly the problem. The Democratic Party excuse is always "we're following the process". The results suck and then they wring their hands wondering how they lost the election. The goal should be to get power, and getting power requires nominating someone popular. Anyone who has paid attention to US politics for the last decade could have explained just how unpopular Kamala Harris would be.
Pushing too far in that direction results in a Trump wearing a different hat.
The Democrats do follow process. That's one of the key things that makes them Democrats in contrast to the demagoguery and power-at-any-cost approach that seems to have co-opted their colleagues across the aisle. I don't think the kind of people who would vote for a Democratic candidate at all actually want a rule-breaker (and if they do, we got one in the Oval Office right now).
Wrong. We do want someone who will break rules when the rules are there to stop the government from serving its' constituents. So glad they kept the filibuster; so glad they listened to the Senate Parliamentarian; so glad they followed the process and anointed Kamala. Look at where worshipping the process lead.
> Wrong. We do want someone who will break rules when the rules are there to stop the government from serving its' constituents.
Some of you do. Some of you don't. Most of you want of you presidents to obey courts at least.[1]
> So glad they kept the filibuster
In 2013 Democrats eliminated the 60 vote requirement for most nominations. In 2022 all but 2 Democrats voted to eliminate it for some legislation. Who kept it was 100% of Republicans, Sinema, and Manchin.
Some people who sounded like you said Democrats could have and should have blackmailed Sinema and Manchin to get 50 votes. They couldn't explain what would have stopped Sinema or Manchin from defecting to the Republicans.
Because once you start breaking rules you don't get to control when it stops.
If we're blackmailing Senators, what do we do when the courts step in to stop it?
Breaking the process leads to a pyrrhic victory. It's France going from guillotining the king to guillotining feminists. If that's one's goal, rejoice! The man in charge right now is the best opportunity since the adoption of America's Constitution in the first place to get there.
ETA: As a side question on this topic: let's assume the Democrats, upon finding that Biden wouldn't be willing to serve, found some way to re-run the primary. We'll magically ignore the massive cost to do so and the fact that it would be illegal to use the voting apparatus of most states in a surprise out-of-band second primary, and we'll magically assume they could organize and pull it off in time for the general election. Who would have come out of that process that would have beaten Trump?
We didn't get to control where it stops by following the process either, at least we could have had a hand on the wheel. You are advocating for bringing a knife to a gun fight.
For what its' worth, by the time Biden was elected, the party was already dead. It would have realized that in 2020 if Trump hadn't messed up COVID so badly. The best example of what I am talking about is Obama not seating Merrick Garland on the court and daring the Senate to stop him.
Believe me, I would have loved to have seen hands on wheels. It'd be great if people who cared about the Democratic party messing up would actually bother to show up to breathe some life into the party; party events are published, offices have addresses, local and state government positions go up for election far more often than Presidents do.
Instead, I saw Americans stay home, again, and Trump get elected, again. It would appear, sadly, Americans are getting the government they're willing to put in the effort to have. All the resources in the world to stop these circumstances and they didn't use them.
Ah, well. Pax Americana was a pretty good run. We got the Internet out of it. Hopefully, the reshuffling of global power into something that replaces it will be even better.
We gave Democrats the whole government in 2008 and 2020 - they refuse to wield power. But sure, blame the voters for being disaffected by their failure, I’m sure that’ll move things in the right direction.
There's nothing my blame or praise will do that the coming economic collapse won't.
And in the American system, where We the People consent to be governed by a government that derives its power from those people... Where else would the blame lie?
Do the post-hoc rationalizations matter? Kamala wasn’t elected in a primary and so the perception by many is that she was an illegitimate candidate. That perception translates directly to votes, the justifications for Kamala being the candidate do not.
When the choice was between a current VP or an insurrectionist and convicted felon, anyone who thought Harris was less legitimate for candidacy has a funny definition. (I guess I don’t believe in protest votes or third parties in this climate.)
Maybe subconscious feelings made people not bother to get to the polls to vote for her, but I don’t think there’s a sensible conscious argument to ditch her on this basis. In fact, people often say she failed for a reason that is almost an opposite of her unfairly replacing Biden – they say she acted just like him and wouldn’t differentiate herself from him.
I get it was unusual and maybe offensive the way she got nominated, but if a principled voter is going to weigh informal notions of legitimacy, the obvious choice is hold their nose and vote for Harris.
The most rational conclusion after the 2024 election is that most voters are not rational (or, more specifically, "models of their behavior need to prioritize something other than rational-self-interest").
It would be rewarding bad behavior though. Since there would then be no incentive to stop, voting for Harris would increase the likelihood of the Democrats continuing to skip primaries or promote candidates from within while ignoring their lack of popularity in the primaries.
I don’t believe in voting for the lesser of two evils. It’s a myopic viewpoint that doesn’t take into account long term consequences.
People can rationally look at the long term benefits vs short term risks and rationally vote for Trump. It is extremely hubristic to think that people who don’t agree with you politically are stupid or irrational.
> I don’t believe in voting for the lesser of two evils. It’s a myopic viewpoint that doesn’t take into account long term consequences.
I fail to see that position. There's always a choice between better and worse; even if the choice of better isn't what you want right now, it bends the arrow in the direction where the next choice starts from a better position.
Is your argument that there's a risk of local maxima? Perhaps. But I think it's hubris to imagine that if you bend the arrow down, you'll get to decide who survives the local minima to see whether there's a better maxima after it. That's a choice to put a lot of blood on one's hands.
Yes, local maxima. You cannot reward a political party when they skip the democratic process and appoint a candidate. If they repeat it again, hopefully they keep losing until they learn their lesson and we get a better set of people who can run the country well.
The issue is that the other side is actual fascism. There is significantly-above-zero threat that the "reward" America will get for getting the Democrats to "learn their lesson" is that they never get to usefully vote for a candidate again.
I would have preferred if the GOP hadn't put actual fascism on the table so that people had meaningful choice over policy (and, indeed, had Trump lost, perhaps it would be the GOP who would've learned their lesson that Americans won't tolerate fascism). But since they did, and America chose the GOP choice, we're now in a situation where the best we can hope for in 2028 is a vote to reject fascism instead of something better.
I don't think that gets us pointed in the right direction, sadly.
(In the larger sphere, the problem is people thinking all they can or should do is vote for President. There's a whole four years and several Congress and state elections in which to do something effective towards desired outcomes, but Americans get very drilled-down on the President only, to their detriment. Half the reason Congress is so sclerotic is most Americans can't be bothered to know who their Congressional reps are, let alone what they stand for).
I get it, I wonder if I am over-reacting too, but when they're shipping people to prison in the hands of a third world dictator for allegedly being gang members (we pinky promise but oops we made some mistakes), with no trial, against judges' direct orders, with US officials retweeting said dictator's giggle at doing it anyway... it feels different this time.
Back in the olden days of Bush or Obama, they would at least have a trial in a secret court with a judge who was maybe not rubber-stamping it, the public was pretty sure they were real terrorists, and the jailers (or executioners!) were Americans who faced consequences when they mistreated the prisoners.
That's fine. Hitler's first attempt to seize power was a failed 1923 coup. He ascended to the Chancellorship in 1933. Germans also heard about fascism for ten years and things were fine.
... until they weren't. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there sure are a lot of historians in America who have actually packed up and fled the country as of late...
> It would be rewarding bad behavior though. Since there would then be no incentive to stop, voting for Harris would increase the likelihood of the Democrats continuing to skip primaries or promote candidates from within
Speaking of myopia... so a voter considering voting Dem should have thought, "Well, if Biden died today she would become President for awhile anyway, and if he died after winning she would be president for the rest of his term, so she's halfway to being a presidential candidate anyway... but I'm really pissed they didn't re-run the primaries in ways that might not even be legal and would inevitably invite attacks on the legitimacy of the winner, so I'm going to teach them a lesson. I'm so mad I didn't get a chance to have a new-blood lefty or whoever I think is better than Harris but somehow didn't beat Biden, that I'd rather make it more likely for the far-right to win again. I won't vote for someone who disrespects democracy by accepting an unprecedented party nomination, I would rather the winner be the one who disrespects democracy by egging on violent attacks on the capitol, attempting fake elector schemes and pressuring the VP and state governors to throw the election, and violate campaign finance laws. I may be saddling myself and the entire country with a president I don't want, but at least I will have stood my ground stopping Democratic party insiders from upgrading a nearly-nominated VP candidate to Presidential candidate!"
That is the argument that I am saying is stupid and irrational, not being Republican or voting for Trump per se. I just don't see a reasonable, self-consistent argument from "I'd consider a Democrat, but they bent their own rules" to "I should let the non-Democrat who has broken laws win." That's emotion, insistence on following one rule at the expense of all others, and denial of political realities, not logic. And people are free to vote on feelings and perceptions, as I am free to argue they were stupid or irrational if they say this is their reason.
And yeah, some of those accusations against Trump haven't been proven in a court of law, but neither has the idea that Harris was illegitimate.
If you care about Dem ideology etc enough to follow their primaries, you would stick with the party even if they didn't yield exactly the flavor of candidate you prefer, not hang everyone out to dry with a far-right alternative in the generals. If you were content to let the far right win, it doesn't feel like you were truly invested in the Dems anyway, so why should they care how you would have voted in their primary re-run? Again, it's emotionally-driven, this desire or hope to use the party's power to get your candidate onto the ballot, and punish them if they don't do it.
Maybe I should be open to choices other than Trump or Harris, but I feel they're worthless in this climate, and I don't think your premise cares about them either. If you want to vote third party, why care whether one of the two parties followed their nomination rules?
It's also "fun" how Republicans whined about rule-breaking and denying the will of the people in this situation, then a few months later they're entertaining plans like putting up a strawman for president so he can resign and give Trump a third term by succession. (Which as I understand, most lawyers believe is BS, but these days... it might just work.)
> If you care about Dem ideology etc enough to follow their primaries
I don’t. I follow both primaries because that’s where almost all of the democratic process in the Presidential election happens. Once you have two candidates (third parties are obviously jokes), you get to choose between the two.
So, the primary process is very important to make sure democracy happens and I put a lot of importance in it. As should everyone.
And so, if a candidate does not win through that primary process, that candidate is illegitimate.
What is the point of a presidential ballot with only one viable and legitimate candidate? You're just throwing away your choice, because an old man tried to run and then backed out, and his party made possibly the least-impact change they could.
If Biden won and died on day 1 in the office, you'd still end up with "a president who never won the primary" but it wouldn't be the party's fault. Biden stepping down is approximately the same endpoint without dying; is it really logical to blackball the party over a possibility that could have happened accidentally?
Even supposing they legally could have done what you want, they were also legally permitted to do what they did. Harris was a candidate produced by the party following laws and its own procedures. You didn't like the outcome, but that doesn't mean it was not legitimate. Call it undemocratic if you want (though I'm not sure the normal primary process is democratic anyway), but it's legitimate.
> though I'm not sure the normal primary process is democratic anyway
That's a great point, and one I wish more voters understood. The primaries are very undemocratic, both of them. In most states, you can't even vote in both primaries because you can only have one party affiliation.
How much real choice do Americans have when the primaries determine, practically, the candidates and they can only lend their voice to one party's choice of candidate?
Let me give you a simpler, Occam's-razorish explanation: People who voted for Trump aren't stupid, or naive, or anything. They simply were unable or unwilling to accept the world changing around them regarding race, sexuality, welfare, climate, economy, foreign and domestic policies. They elected someone who told them "we'll go back to the old times one way or another, consequences be damned".
This is exactly what they voted for, what they were hoping for. They knew leopards would've eaten the face of a few of them, but it was somewhat expected, a calculated risk. There's a few casualties even when you win the war.
They saw something they could cling to, to avoid changes for the remaining of their lives, even if this meant destroying their country, the rest of the world or the future for the matter. And they replied with "Yes, we're fine with that".
TBF, that sounds a lot like "stupid or naive" with extra words. You can't rewind history. Not without a lot of death; the only way to kill a meme is to destroy every mind it's hiding in and burn every record it was recorded in. There's moving forward, developing the time that is now into a future time by refining and challenging the existing ideas; backwards isn't a desirable goal.
In particular, the "Make America Great Again" era they seem to hearken to was an era of massive industrial growth fueled by being the largest country untouched domestically by a World War. Getting back there would require burning half the world again. We shouldn't want that.
These are lessons history teaches consistently, and I'm sorry they apparently slept through that day of class.
> … but it was somewhat expected, a calculated risk.
The way many of them think of it is that illness and death due to disease, starvation, lack of medication, problem pregnancies, etc. are acts of god and a part of life. They don’t want relief from that, if it comes with a government that has the power to change things they don’t want to change.
It is true that Trump won his reelection with 49.8% of the vote, but that isn’t the same thing as 49.8% of voters. With only 63.7% of eligible voters casting ballots last November, Trump’s share of the vote narrows to just under a third of the electorate, significantly less than half.
But it is worth noting that an April 2024 NBC News poll showed Trump leading voters who say they do not follow political news by 26-points. Meanwhile voters who said they read a newspaper every day supported Joe Biden 70% to Trump’s 21%.[0] Additionally, a survey conducted in November 2024 by Northeastern University found that just 24% of Republican voters relied on news media, while the rest said they got their news from family and friends, as well as social media.
This means that while less than 1/3rd of eligible voters cast their ballots for Trump, only ~8.3% of the electorate entered the voting booth reliably informed, and then still chose to support him.
Interesting take. I believe this is a theme that everyone in the US is familiar with, but the idea that "big money is the enemy" and the reality of it has somehow not permeated through the general public enough. It seems that the Trump-voting public sees the Democrats as compromised rather than the Republicans, but even with this one action by Trump you can argue strongly that they are as well.
Likely because it enraged some Democrats with the reference to Kamala being unelected. It's back above 0 for me now, so it looks like the broader consensus is that this is in fact a good comment.
It doesn't anger anyone, it's just dishonest. The circumstances of her being the democratic candidate are well-document, you can't just say things that aren't true.
Biden won the primary, then he stepped down. That's the actual story, and if you don't include the teensy little detail you're being dishonest. As a reminder to everyone, choosing not to tell the whole truth is dishonesty.
> The nomination will officially be voted on either shortly before or during the convention itself. Unless a major Democratic figure mounts a serious challenge — which did not appear to happen within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement — the president’s endorsement of Harris will likely carry the day with delegates
You’re the one being dishonest. The democratic nomination wasn’t official until August, and to suggest the Democratic Party had no other option is factually incorrect and a revision of history that ignores the months the party and pundits spent discussing other options, as well as the legal argument the party itself made to justify choosing Harris.
Harris was the only option for the DNC unless major election laws would have been changed very late in the cycle (moving funds raised to another candidate - highly improbable). There’s a strong argument that the DNC was at fault for not preparing a suitable backup candidate in case of emergencies. There’s even an argument that such a thing was done deliberately so that voters would be stuck with Harris. Nevertheless, once Biden dropped out, she was the only practical option.
Two important notes: the RNC would have been just as screwed if the DNC had succeeded in putting a bullet in Trump’s brain. Also, Harris performed unusually badly during her presidential primary, stoking angers that she was not only unelected, but that she wouldn’t have been elected given the chance.
You’re conflating the option to move funds with the option to choose a different candidate. Harris was not the only option, anyone could have been selected up until the official nomination in August:
> The nomination will officially be voted on either shortly before or during the convention itself. Unless a major Democratic figure mounts a serious challenge — which did not appear to happen within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement — the president’s endorsement of Harris will likely carry the day with delegates.
The idea that Harris was the only option because they couldn’t move funding is absurd, we’re talking about an election for the highest position in the world. If the party wanted to choose someone else, they would have found a way to reallocate the funding or just eat the cost.
> There’s even an argument that such a thing was done deliberately so that voters would be stuck with Harris. Nevertheless, once Biden dropped out, she was the only practical option
Ultimately, if Harris wasn't a good candidate for the Presidency, then she shouldn't have been VP in 2020. That was where the issue lay.
There will eventually be new waves that create opportunities for startups again, LLMs are like that in some cases, but I’d argue that mobile phones were by far a larger disruptive innovation than LLMs so far.
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