Insider trading as a service. No one is going to take the US seriously for the next 50 years.
Waterluvian 40 minutes ago [-]
Or possibly ever again. Eras like this one can be what kills an empire/great power.
I think one of the greater risks to a power like the U.S. is getting old enough where it's felt like things always were, and therefore always will be. When there is no-longer a grandparent at the dinner table who can even tell you when his grandparent at the dinner table spoke about the before times.
rubyfan 36 minutes ago [-]
Right, the fact that the current administration had a 4 year hiatus only extended this period. Think about all the young people that grew up with this as normal.
reactordev 26 minutes ago [-]
Reinforced by the Parnas', Lambert's, Kirk's and Loomer's on TikTok. Ready to vote in the next midterms. Thinking 9/11 was an inside job...
> The Roman Empire lost the strengths that had allowed it to exercise effective control over its Western provinces; modern historians posit factors including the effectiveness and numbers of the army (check), the health and numbers of the Roman population (check), the strength of the economy (check), the competence of the emperors (check), the internal struggles for power (check), the religious changes of the period (check), and the efficiency of the civil administration (check). Increasing pressure from invading peoples outside Roman culture (check) also contributed greatly to the collapse. Climatic changes (check) and both endemic and epidemic diseases (check) drove many of these immediate factors.
c7b 6 minutes ago [-]
The decline of the Roman Empire, depending on how you define it, played out over centuries, if not a millennium. It is such a bad analogy for the kind of within-our-lifetimes collapse that is being speculated about here that it undermines the original concern. The decline of Germany as the leading scientific powerhouse in the first half if the 20th century would be a better case study imho.
ceejayoz 2 minutes ago [-]
> The decline of the Roman Empire, depending on how you define it, played out over centuries, if not a millennium.
Sure, and before COVID-19 pandemics often took years/decades to spread around the globe. Agriculture took thousands of years to develop; iPhones were invented twenty years ago.
Things move faster in a world of eight billion people who can get anywhere on the planet in 24 hours.
jebarker 2 minutes ago [-]
This is not convincing. Many of these are debatable when you actually pull apart what is meant then and now. But there’s also a long list of things that are different about the Roman Empire and US (and the world) today.
A_D_E_P_T 16 minutes ago [-]
You could look even earlier. There are a lot of similarities between Trump's style and Emperor Commodus's. And to paraphrase Cassius Dio, Commodus took an empire of gold and transformed it into one of iron and rust.
Every time I hear people praise the stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius I am reminded of the fact that he failed in his most important duty: To plan well for his succession.
leereeves 16 minutes ago [-]
The two worst Roman emperors ruled hundreds of years before the fall: Caligula from 37 to 41 CE, Nero from 54 to 68 CE.
Not many people could name, or recognize the name of, any emperor from the last hundred years of the Western Roman Empire.
So I don't think Rome is a good analogue for the suggestion that the Trump era is going to kill the USA.
ceejayoz 14 minutes ago [-]
Sure. We had Nixon.
Most collapses start slow, and I tend to doubt this one is finished.
Waterluvian 10 minutes ago [-]
I expect things to actually get better by some measures for a little while as the U.S. liquidates its holdings of international political and socioeconomic influence. A sort of short-lived glut from voluntary cannibalization.
mrits 36 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
geoduck14 27 minutes ago [-]
Please elaborate?
alephnan 14 minutes ago [-]
People are still buying German cars and Hugo Boss clothing aren’t they?
ceejayoz 12 minutes ago [-]
Germany made it illegal to display Nazi symbols and espouse their beliefs. (And hung a few.)
A bit of a lesson learned, in part, from not spanking the Confederacy's leadership enough.
micromacrofoot 5 minutes ago [-]
The messed up part is that it's not even technically insider trading as long as they release the same information publicly shortly after... so they're not actually breaking any laws. So much of the way the US government has operated is based on some shared standard of moral sense that the current administration lacks completely.
gchamonlive 27 minutes ago [-]
In most areas (drug enforcement, basic education, healthcare, gun culture...) nobody should have been taking the US seriously maybe since Reagan. Finance, science and war were the only areas you could count on the US but now they went full Roman on the rest of the world not even that anymore. War is the only thing that's left I think.
gota 21 minutes ago [-]
The US also arguably lost the Iran war. So far it can't claim any minor fraction of a victory, at least; seems to be the general consensus.
If everyone has the same conclusion, how is it an argument? Nobody thinks the US won in Iran except the morons that started it. Maybe bigOil feels like its a win as their profits are soaring???
gchamonlive 19 minutes ago [-]
It doesn't win wars, but it provides the necessary equipment for carnage and stalemates all over the globe. Remember war is just a pretext, the objective is always profit, so as long as a lost war is very profitable it's a success in their books.
dgellow 17 minutes ago [-]
> nobody should have been taking the US seriously maybe since Reagan. Finance, science and war were the only areas you could count on the US
That was plenty of reasons to take the country seriously! Also, the US has been the most powerful cultural exporter for a very long time. It’s still the case, whenever anything becomes huge in the US we get our local version in each European countries. Our far right parties are parroting American right politics, even copying the terminology as is
gchamonlive 14 minutes ago [-]
Have you seen the state of AAA gaming and blockbusters lately? Even music is being utterly destroyed by the streaming platforms and record labels greed, so yeah it might have been in the 80s up until the 2010s, but enshitification got the best of the US I'm afraid so not even culture anymore. It's just decacence.
It's not all US, but as you said things start in the US and trickles down across the rest of the world, so that's also true for its decadence.
realusername 19 minutes ago [-]
> War is the only thing that's left I think
I would have agreed until the Iran war, the US used up so much of the missile stock that even the army isn't fully intact anymore
> No one is going to take the US seriously for the next 50 years.
I hate this obvious pay-for-access thing as much as anyone, but this isn’t going to define the US for the next 50 years. The second the next president is in office every other country will adapt to working with them, just as been happening every 4-8 years.
ceejayoz 19 minutes ago [-]
The American population has demonstrated that they'll nominate an insane criminal to power at random. Twice! I think that's gonna stick longer than the Bush to Clinton style transitions.
Aurornis 16 minutes ago [-]
I’m talking about the people with decision making power and the businesses working internationally. I have no doubt that certain individuals in other countries will be holding grudges against the United States for the rest of their lives long after the country has moved on, but it doesn’t really have any effect. If you’ve spent some time traveling the world every country has older generations who have some grudge against other countries for events that happened prior to most people being born and the younger generations don’t care. The world changes and most people move on.
hgoel 11 minutes ago [-]
They're also talking about decision makers. They're going to operate with the consideration that Americans might elect another mad man. Anything requiring more than one presidential term's time will be much more carefully hedged.
ceejayoz 11 minutes ago [-]
> I’m talking about the people with decision making power and the businesses working internationally.
As am I.
At a certain point, you get bitten enough times that you decide the angry cobra isn't a great pet. It may be really cool, sometimes! But sometimes it hurts you, a lot.
> If you’ve spent some time traveling the world every country has older generations who have some grudge against other countries for events that happened prior to most people being born and the younger generations don’t care.
Some end this way, sure.
For an alternative, see Gaza.
ricardobeat 8 minutes ago [-]
The people with power put this government in place. The point is that there might be no “moving on” from here, just a new normal.
15 minutes ago [-]
CaptainZapp 11 minutes ago [-]
> The second the next president is in office every other country will adapt to working with them, just as been happening every 4-8 years.
That may well be, with one big difference.
Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again.
Aurornis 5 minutes ago [-]
> Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again.
How do you explain all of the people and countries who are currently trusting the US and their commitments?
This is always a strange belief to hold when the current evidence is so overwhelming against it. The rest of the world and the people making decisions know that this administration will come to an end. Something about each new headline convinced a small number of people that this one event is actually the end of the entire country for the next 50 years, against all visible evidence
whywhywhywhy 16 minutes ago [-]
If insider trading is your concern then the country hasn't been serious for a long time, everyone in government does it and it's never punished even when exploited to the levels of 9 figures of assets.
Should just be legalized at this point so we can all take advantage if they're all gonna get away with it.
A_D_E_P_T 14 minutes ago [-]
> everyone in government does it and it's never punished even when exploited to the levels of 9 figures of assets.
Statements like this are worthless without examples. Surely you can provide some? Hard mode: Don't mention Pelosi or Clinton.
chinathrow 15 minutes ago [-]
> Should just be legalized at this point so we can all take advantage if they're all gonna get away with it.
Is this satire?
stuaxo 14 minutes ago [-]
I fear not, look at which website we are on.
Lendal 27 minutes ago [-]
If a rival political party takes power in 2029 and they decide to do nothing about this, are they complicit?
If the cops drive past a mugging, observe, and then drive on past allowing the law to go unenforced, are they not just as corrupt as the robbers?
s_dev 20 minutes ago [-]
Was the Union army complicit in the crimes of the Confederacy by simply allowing them to drop their arms and walk away as well? The world is complicated and full of nuanced takes depending on context. That said:
>If a rival political party takes power in 2029 and they decide to do nothing about this, are they complicit?
Like this really does read as: I still blame the Democrats for the crimes of the Republicans.
The ultimate authority here is the US voters and they have chosen poorly again and again. They are complicit for sure as they chose both to empower Republicans and tie the hands of the Democrats with impossible standards.
BryantD 1 minutes ago [-]
Yes. That’s a great historical precedent — Reconstruction was a hotly debated topic and the more radical forms would have banned former Confederate soldiers for voting, for example. Many Southern states had military governors imposed by the Federal government.
Andrew Johnson pardoned almost all Confederate leaders, didn’t care about freeing slaves, and is one of the worst Presidents in history.
wildrhythms 25 minutes ago [-]
Yes
lotsofpulp 23 minutes ago [-]
Rival party is not equivalent to the cops.
Even if the rival party were to somehow control all 3 branches of government (which they will not), the voting records show a full 1/3 of American adults outright support this corruption (many of the cops themselves), and another 1/3 are willing to ignore it.
If you are in the 1/3 that does care about it, you are not going to have a good time trying to fight the other 1/3, many of whom make up the “law and order” department.
So the answer to both questions is a resounding no, because the world is more complicated than a comic book superhero movie.
llm_nerd 19 minutes ago [-]
This is such an amazing take because it is a constant in US politics. Like how in the world did you think it appropriate to pivot like this?
The standards for the Democrats are impossible perfection, regardless of the challenges.
The standards for the Republicans is...there are literally zero standards. Thieves, grifters, rapists, pedos, just the absolute worst human garbage imaginable, and somehow Americans convince themselves that if the Democrats don't (usually because they can't) do anything about it, clearly the Dems are the real problem, so it's time to vote Republicans. Just bizarre stuff.
I could give infinite examples where the slightest thing is a massive story about Democrat action or inaction, while every day is a new low in what the shit-pile that the modern Republican party gets away with. Benghazi is still constantly cited by the right, while Trump...Jesus Christ, every day is a thousand times worse. Astonishing levels of corruption and stupidity is just another Tuesday now.
It's amazing. Every framing somehow shifts like this.
swed420 9 minutes ago [-]
> The standards for the Democrats are impossible perfection
How do you figure? The previous Dem president literally promised, "nothing will fundamentally change" and that's exactly what happened.
We have a faux democracy / uniparty of capital interests where one "side" manufactures consent for the other.
rightwardRatchet++;
llm_nerd 4 minutes ago [-]
> How do you figure?
Biden was speaking to the people who ended up bankrolling Trump when threatened with slightly increased taxes, and who are going to dump billions into the midterms. When you're in a country that wavers around 50/50 every election (even when the choice is between competent government or a spectacularly incompetent shitshow of grifters, pedos and thieves), yes, there are limits to what you can realistically do in one election cycle.
In any case, it's actually hilarious that rhetoric like this "oh well actually the Dems are to blame because they haven't stopped them yet" is precisely why Republicans are gung ho in fighting against ranked choice ballots. A secret they've learned is to field some fringe bullshit candidates like Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr, Kanye, and so on, and they need the sort of idiots that vote for idiots like that to be throwing away their votes because "it's a uniparty of capital". Ranked choice ballots -- real democracy -- would threaten that.
Trump has repeatedly claimed ranked choice ballots are "corrupt", and House Republicans have repeatedly tried to ban it. Do you want to know why? Protip - it's because they rely on incredibly stupid voters.
RicoElectrico 3 minutes ago [-]
Same in Poland, sadly. Conservatives or rather "conservatives" can get away with way more...
beams_of_light 2 minutes ago [-]
I think most of us who have lived through many presidents understood that there was a decency required of the holder of the office that acted as the only true limit on their corruption. It's confounding that so many people in the US can't see it for what it is.
koe123 25 minutes ago [-]
Curious: are there any republicans left on HN? I have no concept of how you can defend this
jazzypants 58 seconds ago [-]
You're not going to get a real response. They're here. They literally just ignore it. It's too inconvenient of a truth. It's much easier to just point fingers at poor immigrants than to actually give a shit about the corruption of rich people.
urams 40 seconds ago [-]
Were you similarly upset when Trump was only on Twitter and Twitter had an API?
Not a Republican, but I support this behavior because I can't wait for more talent to leave the US
muglug 7 minutes ago [-]
Not a Republican by any stretch of any imagination, but here’s my attempt at a steelman argument:
I imagine these companies were already spending some amount on crawlers that would poll every N milliseconds to get an edge on some market-moving post. In turn I imagine Truth Social were also spending more serving this bot traffic.
Truth Social making $1M a month from it — a rounding error in Trump’s fortunes — doesn’t seem like a world-ending catastrophe.
Trump has done many bad things to erode trust in our institutions and government. When compared to him trying to overturn the results of an election, this too seems like a rounding error.
program_whiz 16 minutes ago [-]
(not a repub) I don't defend it, its outright fraud, but I also accept the reality that it is a more visible, and perhaps exaggerated, form of what has been ongoing forever.
Those who seek power seek it to:
1. Enrich themselves and their family
2. Wield it to achieve their means
The "pay to play" is rife everywhere. The contractors who get a sweet deal from local / fed government, the competition is stifled. The senators who make 10's of millions on insider information. The imminent domain cases where property is seized so corporation / donor can make millions. The "futures market" where insiders use their knowledge of product release date to swindle money for ordinary folks. The crypto scams, lotteries, casinos, street vendors, telemarketers, info-mercials, self-help gurus, snake oil sales, lemon peddlers, and more.
The truth is that the human system has not deviated far from the imposed hierarchy of feudalism / monarchy, we have only become better at concealing it, making it more potent in some ways. Power, corruption, opportunism, and greed are part of our nature. In an extremely large population with a democratic veneer, the levers of power become diffuse an ineffable, until they are blatantly shoved into our face.
In some ways I'm glad because its only through a constant vigilance and resetting the public vigilance that these kind of things can be controlled to any degree. Its an entropic force, seeping into the system at all times, only kept at bay by the disdain of the populace and fear in the hearts of the ruling elites.
Its definitely not a Republicans only phenomenon, the list on both sides of the aisle is embarrassingly long. But due to how our political system is setup, and human psychology, little will change by voting. People are tribal, and only have two choices in the matter, both of which are usually power-seeking corrupted. The prisoner's dilemma is giving the US a life-sentence.
317070 10 minutes ago [-]
> but I also accept the reality that it is a more visible, and perhaps exaggerated, form of what has been ongoing forever
Thanks for sharing this. It's a deep insight for me. I did not understand how the same people that were deeply skeptical about the state, ended up being so quiet when the state's corruption became flagrant and blatant. But this line of thinking makes a lot of sense.
spiderfarmer 7 minutes ago [-]
What will you vote in the midterms?
ratelimitsteve 16 minutes ago [-]
i suspect that, much like the rest of the world, HN has had a sharp increase in people who "don't do politics"
spiderfarmer 5 minutes ago [-]
In my experience only people from the US are afraid to exercise their freedom of speech when conversing with friends, family and colleagues.
“That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did
You deserved it.”
DaSHacka 17 minutes ago [-]
Borderline direct quote from Fauci during the trials these past weeks lol
jazzypants 24 seconds ago [-]
No one is talking about Fauci here. This kind of whataboutism is frankly disgusting.
Aurornis 28 minutes ago [-]
When I first heard saw headlines about this I thought it was so outlandish that it couldn’t possibly be real. Yet here we are.
It’s amazing how much corruption is occurring for so little money. A million dollars a month is peanuts for such clear graft.
23 minutes ago [-]
kubafu 45 minutes ago [-]
Official "insider-knowledge-as-a-service". No surprise who the first clients are.
micw 40 minutes ago [-]
Why is this not being stopped by us jurisdiction?
Or at least why does the rest of the world does not decouple from those markets?
mapt 22 minutes ago [-]
A video has been going around pointing out one of the consequences of the Strait of Hormuz closure.
Over the past few years, China has quietly purchased more than a billion barrels of oil from Russia and Iran at a discount in CNY rather than USD, pushing it into newly created strategic stockpiles that would be necessary for closure of a different Strait. After putting a strategic foot on the neck of refined product exports, they are now functionally acting as the largest part of the world's crude reserves, smoothing demand so that the global price does not spike and crash the global economy & global trade. If China was to keep up its normal buying cycle over the past few months, we would have easily seen >$200 oil. Instead, oil is a third that, and it's not even the limiting factor - refinery output drops on diesel from Ukraine's Kinetic Sanctions campaign are having a more significant bottleneck on petrochemicals right now than Hormuz.
Say what you like about the motivation, this is a form of global leadership of the sort that America used to specialize in, and every drop of oil traded in CNY rather than "The Petrodollar" weakens the USD as the anchor currency.
jasonjayr 28 minutes ago [-]
Hint: You will never see the folks enforcing action against this platform and the folks using and posting on the platform in the same room.
bamboozled 26 minutes ago [-]
They are decoupling, it's just if you just do it quietly.
owebmaster 18 minutes ago [-]
The answer is simple: the US is corrupt.
tho23u434079 13 minutes ago [-]
I'm surprised this isn't an impeachable offence.
spiderfarmer 1 minutes ago [-]
It is.
The US is over.
dole 2 minutes ago [-]
I remember when we gave a shit about "emoluments."
zparky 8 minutes ago [-]
not like that impacts anything anymore, apparently.
dayvid 25 minutes ago [-]
It's not even that much money for the reputational damage. Wild.
baggachipz 18 minutes ago [-]
Yes because Truth Social and its owner/head troll both had a stellar reputation to begin with.
Carrok 23 minutes ago [-]
What reputation?
25 minutes ago [-]
mrweasel 19 minutes ago [-]
Functionally I suppose it's the same thing, but are they paying for access to Truth Social, or early access to Trumps posts?
Are there anything else of "value" on Truth Social. I haven't signed up for Truth Social, but is there actually anything else going on, besides Trumps post. Would any company have any reason to be on the platform, if Trump wasn't?
mapt 10 minutes ago [-]
They are paying for early access to Trump's posts.
The first post they received after this system was turned on, was Trump literally posting "GREEN CANDLES. BEAUTIFUL GREEN CANDLES!!!"
This is an informal stock market term for asset values having a good day (or good minute, for that matter), with stock movements measured on a "Candlestick chart". This is a... not an admission, but a brag, that this is in fact an insider trading service, and that people who follow this insider trading service are going to make a lot of money. This is Trump announcing that he has rigged the stock market and you need to buy in right this moment if you want to remain competitive.
I am cautiously optimistic about this in some ways? Historically, the one thing you do not do in America is touch the money. There's now a hundred trillion dollars of capital that have an incentive for the lights to go out in the White House and to turn back on with JD Vance in a different seat.
ratelimitsteve 19 minutes ago [-]
we've reached the "yes, we're cheating, do something about it" stage of corruption
TrackerFF 36 minutes ago [-]
Why would anyone want to pay that much for something, unless it gives them some edge.
I don't know if it is still a thing, but in the world of penny stocks and crypto there used to be subscription pump and dump channels, where influencers would charge $x / month, and coordinate pumps. "Signal" channels, as they were named.
This can't be too different. If not even more straight forward insider stuff.
Either that, or it is just another way to bribe your way closer to Trump.
Business idea for Trump: Sell access to his Truth Social posts, but bake in some latency. Those that pay most, will get to see the posts first (via API). Then after X minutes of posting the posts will go live for everyone to see. How fast you want to see the post between publishing and public access, depends on how much you want to pay. The less latency, the more you need to pay.
davidmurdoch 3 minutes ago [-]
On paper, this is just standard enterprise API access most social media services offer. Isn't it?
HolyLampshade 31 minutes ago [-]
If I had to venture a guess (and full disclosure I’m not currently working in the space, and am not privy to conversations about actually buying this product), the 100k/m for whatever the contract duration is relatively low stakes to see if there’s utility in the data. Since there is no historical data the only real option is to buy, see if it makes a difference, and dump the product at the end of the contract if it doesn’t move the needle.
The seller is trying to push upfront sales by suggesting “These guys are doing it, and if you want to keep an edge you need to too”, (and journalists wanting to write about how corrupt this shit is are eagerly picking this up and boosting the signal by writing these sorts of articles).
In 5-6 months I suspect the consumer number to be down to 1-2 from the original batch, and those who are still paying will probably be doing so because the fact that the contract exists will probably slip through the cracks.
badatnames 23 minutes ago [-]
There is plenty of historical data, $100k is a steal for as long as situations like Iran persist. And now he is incentivised to ensure they do persist. Our fearless leader, ladies and gentlemen.
owebmaster 15 minutes ago [-]
> $100k is a steal
Literally
TheDong 25 minutes ago [-]
Even if it doesn't give any edge in terms of using the data, just paying money into Trump in more ways (i.e. a quasi-legal bribe) is enough of a benefit that I doubt many will drop it.
This is a lot cheaper of a bribe than i.e. the gold plaque Tim Apple gave to Trump too.
HolyLampshade 20 seconds ago [-]
The trading firms don’t really get anything from bribing Trump. That’s not to say hedge funds don’t want to tickle the big guy’s ego, but they don’t need “faster data” in most cases.
It’s less directly beneficial than most people think it will be.
fragmede 13 minutes ago [-]
That thing probably only cost like $50K, so more than that.
Aurornis 24 minutes ago [-]
I think you’re missing the point. The payment is for early access. The posts don’t go live for everyone else until after a delay.
This isn’t some penny stock group. It’s the president of the USA who has command of the largest army in the world and signals his intentions to make governmental moves with a large impact on the markets via these posts.
high_na_euv 26 minutes ago [-]
Trumps posts and actions have orders of magnitude more impact than random influencers with userbase of 5k
DougN7 33 minutes ago [-]
I’m sure you could make a ton of money on oil if you had a 30 minute heads up about whether Trump was going to bomb Iran or not on any given day.
101008 24 minutes ago [-]
Completely ignorant here, and I don't want to ask an AI (I don't trust them on these issues). Could you give me an example how you can make money with this information?
Again, question as someone who doens't live in the US so I am not used how you can profit from this. I guess it may be because a war may impact the market and you can invest (or the opposite) with this, but in my mind bombing Iran wouldn't move the market by much (the consequences would, but by then everyone is on the same page).
Thank you!
Aurornis 22 minutes ago [-]
Iran controls the straight of Hormuz, which is a key shipping channel for the world. It being open or not has an impact on all businesses which have to ship through it, which is a lot of them. Therefore it impacts the entire economy. The entire stock market goes up or down based on signals about the status of the war.
dana-s 15 minutes ago [-]
I'm also not the most smart there but there's this market thing of "futures", where I can say I'll buy 10 barrels for 10$ next month, then I can sell the "10 barrels for 10$" to others, if I know offer will be lower due wars, one can buy now and sell once it's lower, if it's going to have higher availability(or expectation of so), then there's those future things.
ceejayoz 22 minutes ago [-]
> Completely ignorant here, and I don't want to ask an AI (I don't trust them on these issues). Could you give me an example how you can make money with this information?
Place a Kalshi bet on the outcome of something that a Truth Social post just settled?
Short a company he's about to bash?
tstenner 19 minutes ago [-]
Trump bombs Iran -> oil price goes up. You buy oil futures before the bombing and get the price difference paid out.
owebmaster 13 minutes ago [-]
The answer is so obvious that you should try to figure it out by yourself as an exercise to avoid cognitive decline in the age of AI. Seriously.
salomonk_mur 30 minutes ago [-]
A 1 second head start is good enough.
morkalork 42 minutes ago [-]
$100k seems cheap for the potential front running
criddell 26 minutes ago [-]
Even if the front running fails, it's a cheap way to raise your profile with the president. I bet if you are paying $100k / month, your chances of the president taking your call go way up.
InsideOutSanta 32 minutes ago [-]
The amount of money you can make with this only depends on how much money you already have.
grey-area 30 minutes ago [-]
Corruption.
podgietaru 42 minutes ago [-]
A bribe.
amazingamazing 28 minutes ago [-]
Even before this insiders had access to the prez. I am glad this presidency is making very apparent the inherent flaws with the US government.
acomjean 20 minutes ago [-]
A teleprompter operator was making bets on what the president would say..
And thats just one that got called out. Grift is kind of the new normal sadly.
I remember someone getting into trouble for taking a trips in government vehicles. A time when scandal would cause people to stop being in politics...Seems quaint.
Capitalism implodes on itself, just as predicted..
patrickmay 24 minutes ago [-]
This isn't capitalism, it's pure corruption.
spiderfarmer 10 minutes ago [-]
Capitalism prescribes a limited role of government, to protect the rights of private citizens and maintain an orderly environment that facilitates proper functioning of markets.
This isn’t capitalism, it’s pure unfettered and uncontrolled greed.
nancyminusone 1 minutes ago [-]
"that wasn't real capitalism" hmm, where have I heard that before?
coreyh14444 52 minutes ago [-]
The most corrupt US administration in history and it isn't even close.
eterm 46 minutes ago [-]
It is completely unimaginable in comparison to previous administrations. Pre-trump, even just pre-2025 Trump, this would read like a parody of corruption.
jdw64 43 minutes ago [-]
Who knows? Maybe we'll see a new 'worst in history' every year from now on
HumblyTossed 30 minutes ago [-]
It's possible. The ultra-wealthy now have a blue print to follow.
raincole 22 minutes ago [-]
And the least corrupt US administration from now on.
ImHereToVote 35 minutes ago [-]
I don't think anyone would have predicted that Karl Marx would ever end up being as vindicated as he turned out to be.
Levitz 26 minutes ago [-]
The degree to which his works have been dragged through the mud by a bunch of people who insist on calling everything they don't like "capitalism" can't be overstated. The majority of people complaining about capitalism don't even have a coherent definition of it, it's a disgrace.
groundzeros2015 26 minutes ago [-]
Can you break down the participants in this story in Marxist terms?
ImHereToVote 14 minutes ago [-]
Sure. The bourgeoisie in search of more and more profit have nowhere left to go but ransack the heartland. Outward expansion has stalled at a wall called Iran.
yonaguska 34 minutes ago [-]
huh?
AndrewAndrewsen 31 minutes ago [-]
Read Marx, he predicted so many things that would happen during the late stage capitalism phase.
cassepipe 9 minutes ago [-]
And yet he gave us nothing in terms of what alternative economic would look like apart from a "a free association of workers" or something. Turns out it's a hard problem.
ImHereToVote 5 minutes ago [-]
Marx couldn't probably come up with a solution in the 19th century. That was far too early. Luckily Deng appeared with the solution.
stochastic-parr 28 minutes ago [-]
Except most marxists.
angelhadjiev 4 hours ago [-]
[dead]
jdw64 53 minutes ago [-]
I pay a dollar here and there to promote my homepage so people will actually see it. I guess being a president really helps. I wish people would just pay a dollar to read my posts someday
yourusername 50 minutes ago [-]
If your posts induce wild swings in the stock market i'll pay a dollar to read them a minute early.
jdw64 48 minutes ago [-]
I can't swings the stock market, but maybe I could change people's values...? That's too bad. It's a little sad to think my writing isn't even worth a dollar, haha.
Rendered at 13:47:43 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I think one of the greater risks to a power like the U.S. is getting old enough where it's felt like things always were, and therefore always will be. When there is no-longer a grandparent at the dinner table who can even tell you when his grandparent at the dinner table spoke about the before times.
Is there actually any good analogue for this era that caused a previous empire or great power to collapse?
> The Roman Empire lost the strengths that had allowed it to exercise effective control over its Western provinces; modern historians posit factors including the effectiveness and numbers of the army (check), the health and numbers of the Roman population (check), the strength of the economy (check), the competence of the emperors (check), the internal struggles for power (check), the religious changes of the period (check), and the efficiency of the civil administration (check). Increasing pressure from invading peoples outside Roman culture (check) also contributed greatly to the collapse. Climatic changes (check) and both endemic and epidemic diseases (check) drove many of these immediate factors.
Sure, and before COVID-19 pandemics often took years/decades to spread around the globe. Agriculture took thousands of years to develop; iPhones were invented twenty years ago.
Things move faster in a world of eight billion people who can get anywhere on the planet in 24 hours.
Every time I hear people praise the stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius I am reminded of the fact that he failed in his most important duty: To plan well for his succession.
Not many people could name, or recognize the name of, any emperor from the last hundred years of the Western Roman Empire.
So I don't think Rome is a good analogue for the suggestion that the Trump era is going to kill the USA.
Most collapses start slow, and I tend to doubt this one is finished.
A bit of a lesson learned, in part, from not spanking the Confederacy's leadership enough.
I like to read Bret Devereaux (from the frequently HN posted https://acoup.blog/) takes on this in his Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/bretdevereaux.bsky.social)
That was plenty of reasons to take the country seriously! Also, the US has been the most powerful cultural exporter for a very long time. It’s still the case, whenever anything becomes huge in the US we get our local version in each European countries. Our far right parties are parroting American right politics, even copying the terminology as is
It's not all US, but as you said things start in the US and trickles down across the rest of the world, so that's also true for its decadence.
I would have agreed until the Iran war, the US used up so much of the missile stock that even the army isn't fully intact anymore
I hate this obvious pay-for-access thing as much as anyone, but this isn’t going to define the US for the next 50 years. The second the next president is in office every other country will adapt to working with them, just as been happening every 4-8 years.
As am I.
At a certain point, you get bitten enough times that you decide the angry cobra isn't a great pet. It may be really cool, sometimes! But sometimes it hurts you, a lot.
> If you’ve spent some time traveling the world every country has older generations who have some grudge against other countries for events that happened prior to most people being born and the younger generations don’t care.
Some end this way, sure.
For an alternative, see Gaza.
That may well be, with one big difference.
Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again.
How do you explain all of the people and countries who are currently trusting the US and their commitments?
This is always a strange belief to hold when the current evidence is so overwhelming against it. The rest of the world and the people making decisions know that this administration will come to an end. Something about each new headline convinced a small number of people that this one event is actually the end of the entire country for the next 50 years, against all visible evidence
Should just be legalized at this point so we can all take advantage if they're all gonna get away with it.
Statements like this are worthless without examples. Surely you can provide some? Hard mode: Don't mention Pelosi or Clinton.
Is this satire?
If the cops drive past a mugging, observe, and then drive on past allowing the law to go unenforced, are they not just as corrupt as the robbers?
>If a rival political party takes power in 2029 and they decide to do nothing about this, are they complicit?
Like this really does read as: I still blame the Democrats for the crimes of the Republicans.
The ultimate authority here is the US voters and they have chosen poorly again and again. They are complicit for sure as they chose both to empower Republicans and tie the hands of the Democrats with impossible standards.
Andrew Johnson pardoned almost all Confederate leaders, didn’t care about freeing slaves, and is one of the worst Presidents in history.
Even if the rival party were to somehow control all 3 branches of government (which they will not), the voting records show a full 1/3 of American adults outright support this corruption (many of the cops themselves), and another 1/3 are willing to ignore it.
If you are in the 1/3 that does care about it, you are not going to have a good time trying to fight the other 1/3, many of whom make up the “law and order” department.
So the answer to both questions is a resounding no, because the world is more complicated than a comic book superhero movie.
The standards for the Democrats are impossible perfection, regardless of the challenges.
The standards for the Republicans is...there are literally zero standards. Thieves, grifters, rapists, pedos, just the absolute worst human garbage imaginable, and somehow Americans convince themselves that if the Democrats don't (usually because they can't) do anything about it, clearly the Dems are the real problem, so it's time to vote Republicans. Just bizarre stuff.
I could give infinite examples where the slightest thing is a massive story about Democrat action or inaction, while every day is a new low in what the shit-pile that the modern Republican party gets away with. Benghazi is still constantly cited by the right, while Trump...Jesus Christ, every day is a thousand times worse. Astonishing levels of corruption and stupidity is just another Tuesday now.
It's amazing. Every framing somehow shifts like this.
How do you figure? The previous Dem president literally promised, "nothing will fundamentally change" and that's exactly what happened.
We have a faux democracy / uniparty of capital interests where one "side" manufactures consent for the other.
rightwardRatchet++;
Biden was speaking to the people who ended up bankrolling Trump when threatened with slightly increased taxes, and who are going to dump billions into the midterms. When you're in a country that wavers around 50/50 every election (even when the choice is between competent government or a spectacularly incompetent shitshow of grifters, pedos and thieves), yes, there are limits to what you can realistically do in one election cycle.
In any case, it's actually hilarious that rhetoric like this "oh well actually the Dems are to blame because they haven't stopped them yet" is precisely why Republicans are gung ho in fighting against ranked choice ballots. A secret they've learned is to field some fringe bullshit candidates like Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr, Kanye, and so on, and they need the sort of idiots that vote for idiots like that to be throwing away their votes because "it's a uniparty of capital". Ranked choice ballots -- real democracy -- would threaten that.
https://www.adn.com/politics/2026/08/07/worlds-wealthiest-ma...
Trump has repeatedly claimed ranked choice ballots are "corrupt", and House Republicans have repeatedly tried to ban it. Do you want to know why? Protip - it's because they rely on incredibly stupid voters.
I imagine these companies were already spending some amount on crawlers that would poll every N milliseconds to get an edge on some market-moving post. In turn I imagine Truth Social were also spending more serving this bot traffic.
Truth Social making $1M a month from it — a rounding error in Trump’s fortunes — doesn’t seem like a world-ending catastrophe.
Trump has done many bad things to erode trust in our institutions and government. When compared to him trying to overturn the results of an election, this too seems like a rounding error.
Those who seek power seek it to: 1. Enrich themselves and their family 2. Wield it to achieve their means
The "pay to play" is rife everywhere. The contractors who get a sweet deal from local / fed government, the competition is stifled. The senators who make 10's of millions on insider information. The imminent domain cases where property is seized so corporation / donor can make millions. The "futures market" where insiders use their knowledge of product release date to swindle money for ordinary folks. The crypto scams, lotteries, casinos, street vendors, telemarketers, info-mercials, self-help gurus, snake oil sales, lemon peddlers, and more.
The truth is that the human system has not deviated far from the imposed hierarchy of feudalism / monarchy, we have only become better at concealing it, making it more potent in some ways. Power, corruption, opportunism, and greed are part of our nature. In an extremely large population with a democratic veneer, the levers of power become diffuse an ineffable, until they are blatantly shoved into our face.
In some ways I'm glad because its only through a constant vigilance and resetting the public vigilance that these kind of things can be controlled to any degree. Its an entropic force, seeping into the system at all times, only kept at bay by the disdain of the populace and fear in the hearts of the ruling elites.
Its definitely not a Republicans only phenomenon, the list on both sides of the aisle is embarrassingly long. But due to how our political system is setup, and human psychology, little will change by voting. People are tribal, and only have two choices in the matter, both of which are usually power-seeking corrupted. The prisoner's dilemma is giving the US a life-sentence.
Thanks for sharing this. It's a deep insight for me. I did not understand how the same people that were deeply skeptical about the state, ended up being so quiet when the state's corruption became flagrant and blatant. But this line of thinking makes a lot of sense.
“That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did You deserved it.”
It’s amazing how much corruption is occurring for so little money. A million dollars a month is peanuts for such clear graft.
Over the past few years, China has quietly purchased more than a billion barrels of oil from Russia and Iran at a discount in CNY rather than USD, pushing it into newly created strategic stockpiles that would be necessary for closure of a different Strait. After putting a strategic foot on the neck of refined product exports, they are now functionally acting as the largest part of the world's crude reserves, smoothing demand so that the global price does not spike and crash the global economy & global trade. If China was to keep up its normal buying cycle over the past few months, we would have easily seen >$200 oil. Instead, oil is a third that, and it's not even the limiting factor - refinery output drops on diesel from Ukraine's Kinetic Sanctions campaign are having a more significant bottleneck on petrochemicals right now than Hormuz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkA0bkb6ZO0
Say what you like about the motivation, this is a form of global leadership of the sort that America used to specialize in, and every drop of oil traded in CNY rather than "The Petrodollar" weakens the USD as the anchor currency.
The US is over.
Are there anything else of "value" on Truth Social. I haven't signed up for Truth Social, but is there actually anything else going on, besides Trumps post. Would any company have any reason to be on the platform, if Trump wasn't?
The first post they received after this system was turned on, was Trump literally posting "GREEN CANDLES. BEAUTIFUL GREEN CANDLES!!!"
This is an informal stock market term for asset values having a good day (or good minute, for that matter), with stock movements measured on a "Candlestick chart". This is a... not an admission, but a brag, that this is in fact an insider trading service, and that people who follow this insider trading service are going to make a lot of money. This is Trump announcing that he has rigged the stock market and you need to buy in right this moment if you want to remain competitive.
I am cautiously optimistic about this in some ways? Historically, the one thing you do not do in America is touch the money. There's now a hundred trillion dollars of capital that have an incentive for the lights to go out in the White House and to turn back on with JD Vance in a different seat.
I don't know if it is still a thing, but in the world of penny stocks and crypto there used to be subscription pump and dump channels, where influencers would charge $x / month, and coordinate pumps. "Signal" channels, as they were named.
This can't be too different. If not even more straight forward insider stuff.
Either that, or it is just another way to bribe your way closer to Trump.
Business idea for Trump: Sell access to his Truth Social posts, but bake in some latency. Those that pay most, will get to see the posts first (via API). Then after X minutes of posting the posts will go live for everyone to see. How fast you want to see the post between publishing and public access, depends on how much you want to pay. The less latency, the more you need to pay.
The seller is trying to push upfront sales by suggesting “These guys are doing it, and if you want to keep an edge you need to too”, (and journalists wanting to write about how corrupt this shit is are eagerly picking this up and boosting the signal by writing these sorts of articles).
In 5-6 months I suspect the consumer number to be down to 1-2 from the original batch, and those who are still paying will probably be doing so because the fact that the contract exists will probably slip through the cracks.
Literally
This is a lot cheaper of a bribe than i.e. the gold plaque Tim Apple gave to Trump too.
It’s less directly beneficial than most people think it will be.
This isn’t some penny stock group. It’s the president of the USA who has command of the largest army in the world and signals his intentions to make governmental moves with a large impact on the markets via these posts.
Again, question as someone who doens't live in the US so I am not used how you can profit from this. I guess it may be because a war may impact the market and you can invest (or the opposite) with this, but in my mind bombing Iran wouldn't move the market by much (the consequences would, but by then everyone is on the same page).
Thank you!
Place a Kalshi bet on the outcome of something that a Truth Social post just settled?
Short a company he's about to bash?
And thats just one that got called out. Grift is kind of the new normal sadly.
https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/07/trump-teleprompter-a...
I remember someone getting into trouble for taking a trips in government vehicles. A time when scandal would cause people to stop being in politics...Seems quaint.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-06-23-mn-2062-s...
This isn’t capitalism, it’s pure unfettered and uncontrolled greed.