The HN response to all this has actually been very strange to me. From my perspective, this presidency, and especially Musk working on DOGE, should be one of the most exciting, positive things discussed on here!
I would've thought this crowd would've loved lower taxes (more money to build things!), less regulation (less restrictions to build things!), and an unfamiliar friendliness towards the tech industry (more people to build things with!)... I'm really looking forward to building big things in this country in the next few years!
> The HN response to all this has actually been very strange to me.
Are you surprised that folks are generally dismayed that disruption-for-its-own-sake, particularly for governmental institutions that were never intended to either (a) run a profit, and (b) were generally intended for the public good, is seen more as chaos-mongering rather than a "good thing"?
Real lives are being impacted drastically, and overwhelmingly negatively, by this cult of optimization.
So, no, not surprising that, when the rubber meets the pavement, and real people lose their jobs, their education, their savings, their future... that perhaps, maybe the cult-of-optimization isn't all it's cracked up to be?
Direct testimonial from people who had research grants disrupted. It's not difficult to infer that now unemployed government employees are negatively impacted. There are more, not hard to find on social media.
Speaking as a European entrepreneur, the current administration’s dismantling of the government has made things extremely unstable and made certain I do not choose the US for where to do business in the coming months/years.
A Delaware c corp was on the table for our latest incorporation. Instead, it’ll be in Paris.
You’ve given free rein to some people to do wildly unstable shit and remove basically all accountability.
What’s happening right now is a bit like giving a young cto/ceo full root access to all of Google and he starts fucking around everywhere, promising to shut down all the unprofitable parts, he starts refactoring everything solo and rushing everything into production while removing all protections from everything else.
Sure, it’ll run leaner. It’ll make things cheaper as well. I’m also gonna not store my data on Google anymore and I’ll migrate out.
This is basically what happened to Twitter and now everybody’s left except the nazis. What exactly do you think that same strategy will do to the US?
I have to be honest— keeping your startup in Europe is, more often than not, a recipe for failure. The regulatory burden, risk aversion, and fragmented markets make scaling nearly impossible.
Even China fosters more innovation these days. Europe feels dead in the water when it comes to innovation, aside from mandating attached water bottle caps...
Europe lacks good frameworks for startups to succeed especially for first time founders. But nobody’s distracting our founders asking them to focus on bottle caps.
The climate is changing. US pulling away has forced Europe to accept that there’s other priorities than pure regulation. The draghi report had provided lawmakers, politicians and lobbyists with a useful tool to reprioritise.
And the US becoming a toxic swamp means it’s not a good bet for the future. So while what you say is true for the past, it no longer is.
Europe is capable of regulating it's businesses and maintaining fair competition. America fights against sensible legislation like GDPR, DMA and DSA while letting billionaires pay for preferential treatment in the cases of Elon Musk and Tim Cook.
Having worked at a number of (now failed) American startups, I don't see how Trump's administration will increase competition by reducing monopoly regulation. It's going to exacerbate current dysfunction in the software industry, reduce the number of educated professionals in America and raise the barrier to selling software and designing new, economically competitive hardware.
America's lack of serious competition is one of the reasons I don't start my own business. It's probably the reason half this industry works at a Fortune 500 company instead of being a freelancer or entrepreneur.
Here’s an exercise for you: put the comment you’re responding to in ChatGPT and ask if this response is a fair interpretation of it. Then, think about whether certain humans are more intelligent than AI.
I would've thought this crowd would've loved lower taxes (more money to build things!), less regulation (less restrictions to build things!), and an unfamiliar friendliness towards the tech industry (more people to build things with!)... I'm really looking forward to building big things in this country in the next few years!