I don’t really understand why so much of science is funded by the government instead of by private philanthropy. It seems like an obvious channel for corruption of science. Sure private donors have interest driven motives too but it would be diffuse across many areas not concentrated like a political party’s interests.
There's a reason the Americans discovered how to make atomic weapons first and it's because their researchers were living under a less oppressive state that wasn't motivated by anti-intellectualism and dumb ideology.
it truly is astonishing how idiotic or malicious so many of the posters on HN are in the face of this.
yes, actually, it is bad if a bunch of racist lunatics are personally in charge of things, and increase their personal power to make arbitrary decisions based on their stupid hobby horses or deeply dumb opinions.
yes, actually, this is different to when Biden or Obama or Bush presided over a functioning government, that had people you may or may not disagree with having some influence on things, this Trump Reign system is personalised autocracy.
yes, actually, it is bad if the government's sole agenda is "implement dumb ideas from dumb people" and "fuck the left/non-whites/immigrants/scientists".
it's especially dumb to be so unaware of why the world is so good now. it's not luck, it's centuries of hard work by our ancestors. why don't 50% of children simply die? because of medical research, healthcare, food subsidies, etc etc etc. why does the internet exist? because the US government funded a dumb thing for a while then a lot of other people and countries spent a lot of money and effort to make it this.
If it's government funded it was indeed always under political control, just that some prior politicians chose to let it drift.
Having politicians exercise more direct control over this type of spending is good and as it should be. The concept of people taking money via force from other citizens yet answering to nobody is dystopian. The sort of people who support this idea are often, it seems, those who suspect their ideas and plans are so deeply unpopular that people could not be easily persuaded to fund them directly.
All political systems, no matter how well-designed, function largely on the basis of norms. Norms are why the UK's political system is fundamentally stable; norms (like "loyal opposition") were what kept the US system stable. It is not possible to design a system that works when people don't act like they want it to.
It has always been my impression from a distance that Americans believe the federal system was perfectly designed and is inherently robust, when in fact there have been concerns from day one about what would happen if it fell into the hands of a leader who didn't care for the law.
And that's where you are now.
But re: the executive orders, actually it is not clear that they can do this. As with many of Trump's EOs it may simply be illegal because -- newsflash -- Trump is a crook and he has no intention of following the law if it limits him.
This is a man who tried a coup and who has broad immunity for anything he does that even looks like governance, so why would he let a little thing like the law trouble him? It didn't bother him when he exported people to El Salvador without due process. It doesn't bother him that his "emergency" tariffs almost certainly lack a legal basis.
I don't think the good faith reasoning about the system being broken by design really matters: the USA is falling victim to an accelerated Hungary-style fascist restructuring.
How would any of his actions, if looked at objectively, differ from the actions of one who was charged with the complete destruction of the United States of America.
He doesn't want to destroy the USA. Well not quite.
He does want to fundamentally change it into an domestic empire -- a monarchical executive ruling over vassal states that have their own governments but must pay tribute.
Well... he wants it to look more like a mafia arrangement because he was jealous of those guys back when he had a mafia lawyer in the 1970s. He likes to pressure people to do him little favours in return for protection (which is literally what he was impeached for the first time). He thinks he can direct industry to do what he wants (and it looks like industry kind of agrees). It is clear he intends to meddle in state law.
They, the people around him, believe in what amounts to a unitary executive that converges on a form of monarchy. It's more or less central to the belief structure of a far-right guru, Curtis Yarvin (who is an ex tech guy and a nasty little racist dweeb):
There are many Yarvinists in the executive branch. There are also many in the AI community, and Musk consulted Yarvin about The America Party.
Asserting control over academia is a Yarvin thing (and also a Viktor Orbán thing, because the model here is Hungary, quite deliberately, which is why e.g. Tucker Carlson and CPAC hang out there). That is what is going on here. They are injecting the executive into every part of academic life.
Yes, not quite. But all that would obliterate the idea of the good ol' USA quite well: "I see a new nation ready to take its place in the world; not an empire, but a republic; and a republic of laws, not men."
Hey, and what will stop these political appointees from terminating grants because the scientists publicly support Democrats? or criticized Trump's public policy? Or called Stephen Miller a Nazi?
And so now, I have to police my free speech and participation in the public sphere because I'm afraid someone might choose to nuke the lab. That's some bullshit there.
23 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 56.7 ms ] thread"The Trump administration has suspended the funding of Terence Tao and the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA."
You can't really enroll graduate students for a 5 year PHD project if their funding can be pulled at a moment's notice like this.
Wtf US
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/06/jd-vance-ohi...
yes, actually, it is bad if a bunch of racist lunatics are personally in charge of things, and increase their personal power to make arbitrary decisions based on their stupid hobby horses or deeply dumb opinions.
yes, actually, this is different to when Biden or Obama or Bush presided over a functioning government, that had people you may or may not disagree with having some influence on things, this Trump Reign system is personalised autocracy.
yes, actually, it is bad if the government's sole agenda is "implement dumb ideas from dumb people" and "fuck the left/non-whites/immigrants/scientists".
it's especially dumb to be so unaware of why the world is so good now. it's not luck, it's centuries of hard work by our ancestors. why don't 50% of children simply die? because of medical research, healthcare, food subsidies, etc etc etc. why does the internet exist? because the US government funded a dumb thing for a while then a lot of other people and countries spent a lot of money and effort to make it this.
That is the case with so much of what is happening now. If these things are possible, the system was already broken.
Having politicians exercise more direct control over this type of spending is good and as it should be. The concept of people taking money via force from other citizens yet answering to nobody is dystopian. The sort of people who support this idea are often, it seems, those who suspect their ideas and plans are so deeply unpopular that people could not be easily persuaded to fund them directly.
It has always been my impression from a distance that Americans believe the federal system was perfectly designed and is inherently robust, when in fact there have been concerns from day one about what would happen if it fell into the hands of a leader who didn't care for the law.
And that's where you are now.
But re: the executive orders, actually it is not clear that they can do this. As with many of Trump's EOs it may simply be illegal because -- newsflash -- Trump is a crook and he has no intention of following the law if it limits him.
This is a man who tried a coup and who has broad immunity for anything he does that even looks like governance, so why would he let a little thing like the law trouble him? It didn't bother him when he exported people to El Salvador without due process. It doesn't bother him that his "emergency" tariffs almost certainly lack a legal basis.
I don't think the good faith reasoning about the system being broken by design really matters: the USA is falling victim to an accelerated Hungary-style fascist restructuring.
Nixon looks like a boy scout by comparison.
Trump has been learning from Winnie the Pooh. How very Communist of him.
He does want to fundamentally change it into an domestic empire -- a monarchical executive ruling over vassal states that have their own governments but must pay tribute.
Well... he wants it to look more like a mafia arrangement because he was jealous of those guys back when he had a mafia lawyer in the 1970s. He likes to pressure people to do him little favours in return for protection (which is literally what he was impeached for the first time). He thinks he can direct industry to do what he wants (and it looks like industry kind of agrees). It is clear he intends to meddle in state law.
They, the people around him, believe in what amounts to a unitary executive that converges on a form of monarchy. It's more or less central to the belief structure of a far-right guru, Curtis Yarvin (who is an ex tech guy and a nasty little racist dweeb):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin
(He explicitly uses the word "monarch")
There are many Yarvinists in the executive branch. There are also many in the AI community, and Musk consulted Yarvin about The America Party.
Asserting control over academia is a Yarvin thing (and also a Viktor Orbán thing, because the model here is Hungary, quite deliberately, which is why e.g. Tucker Carlson and CPAC hang out there). That is what is going on here. They are injecting the executive into every part of academic life.
And so now, I have to police my free speech and participation in the public sphere because I'm afraid someone might choose to nuke the lab. That's some bullshit there.