[igorramazanov]

If a country changes course every four years, how can the success of a long-term project be ensured?

And what of its negotiating credibility? How can the other side trust that an agreement will hold in the future?

This is not a critique, but a genuine curiosity, because there's an obvious drawback with a system with opposing world views.

Unless, of course, something still unites them in the first place, with acceptable disparity on each side turning it into an advantage of flexibility and adaptability while keeping the focus on long-term ideas and plans.

[ghtbircshotbe]

This problem has already been solved. The legislature creates the laws, the executive executes the laws, and the judiciary interprets the laws. But now we're in a situation where the executive does whatever it wants including illegally shutting down congressionally created programs, the legislature lets it happen despite not having the votes to legally change the law, and the judiciary is also letting it happen when they aren't inventing new constitutional amendments. If you're asking how to prevent society from descending into authoritarianism, they've been trying to figure that out since Caesar at least.

[ecshafer]

Caesar was assassinated because the Senate was jealous Caesar's wealth, power, prestige and love by the people. Also because he wanted to redistribute land, threatening their own power.

[opo]

I don't think that is the consensus view of why Caesar was assassinated:

>...According to Suetonius, Caesar's assassination ultimately occurred primarily due to concerns that he wished to crown himself the king of Rome.[13] These concerns were exacerbated by the "three last straws" of 45 and 44 BC. In just a few months, Caesar had disrespected the Senate, removed People's Tribunes, and toyed with monarchy. By February, the conspiracy that caused his assassination was being born.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Julius_Caesar

[heavenlyblue]

lol I can see how in like 200 years we'll be hearing the same opinion about Trump!

[pjc50]

> The legislature

Congress 53/45 R; House 219/215 R

> creates the laws, the executive

Donald Trump (R)

> executes the laws, and the judiciary

SCOTUS (5-4 R)

> interprets the laws.

So Republicans create, execute, interpret, and enforce the laws. Congratulations on discovering how the party system works. Guess you're Big Poland (PiS) now. You can watch this on the news: Fox (R-Murdoch), CBS (R-Weiss), or read about it in the Washington Post (R-Bezos)

(snark aside, the situation where there's popular demand for authoritarianism is very dangerous, difficult to unravel, but like in Poland, it can be done once the public realize their mistake)

[Braxton1980]

Republicans don't have a sufficient majority in the Senate.

[ViewTrick1002]

They do. The 60 votes requirement is just a handshake agreement 50 votes + the vice president can remove at any moment.

[klooney]

It's so maddening. They just decided in like 2010 they didn't want to ever do anything again.

[int_19h]

Doing things puts you on the hook when those things fail. Politically it's much better to keep the limit in place so that you can make virtue signalling votes that are guaranteed to fail. That way you're seen as "doing something" but without having to be responsible for it.

[GetTheFacts]

>> The legislature >Congress 53/45 R; House 219/215 R

It's the Senate, not "Congress". Colloquially, "Congress" usually refers to the House of Representatives.

>SCOTUS (5-4 R)

> interprets the laws.

Actually, it's 6-3, not 5-4.

I get that you're not from or live in the US. Please understand, I'm not trying to insult or demean you. But you're making statements that are not true.

I believe the term is "FTFY." And you're welcome.

[dragonwriter]

> Colloquially, "Congress" usually refers to the House of Representatives.

"Congress" is the name of the whole bicameral legislature, not either one of the houses, though "Congressman" or "Congresswoman" refers to a member of the House of Representatives.

[GetTheFacts]

Sorry for the late reply. Reading comprehension not your strong suit?

GP said:

>> The legislature >Congress 53/45 R; House 219/215 R

I said:

>It's the Senate, not "Congress".

[llbeansandrice]

You are also wrong. Congress is both houses of the legislature. It’s the senate and the house of reps.

FTFY

[GetTheFacts]

cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47004438

[llbeansandrice]

If you're going to be snarky you should try being right.

You said

> "Congress" usually refers to the House of Representatives.

Which is incorrect and what I was responding to. Reading comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong suit either eh?

[km144]

But there is a way for even an aligned federal government to fight back against the slide into authoritarianism, even with an authoritarian president expanding the powers of the executive, and that is for the other branches to strongly advocate for their own power. The problem as I see it is that Congress literally does not care that they are ceding more power than ever before to the executive. Mostly I think this is due to the cult of personality aspect of Trumpism and the idea that you're basically either with him and in the party or against him and out of the party, so it's impossible to drum up support within the party to fight back against the wresting of power. But also it's because the Republican party has no interest in actually passing legislation because most non-budgetary directions they can go will result in incredible cross-pressure (healthcare reform, federal abortion bans, etc). They believe they are better off not doing policy and letting Trump do whatever.

[Freedumbs]

You need a mutex to constrain the natural tendencies. The mutex is regulation. Regulation has been defeated and we live in oligarchy (see: Gilens and Page).

[Throaway1982]

Ironically Caesar was merely the culmination of the ever-increasing centralization of wealth & power into fewer hands. He wasn't assassinated in order to restore freedom to Rome, he was assassinated by former elites who resented that they weren't in charge like they used to be. Civil rights actually improved, somewhat dramatically, during Rome's Imperial age.

[vvpan]

Which is largely why presidencies do not mess with the order they inherit too much (subjective statement I know). Most institutions and projects are not stressed and the government branches just keep doing what they always did. The current administration is an outlier, but we all know that.

[Gormo]

More to the point, it's why our political system does not give unilateral control over most of this stuff to the executive branch. That's the reason why the courts are regularly ruling against the administration -- they're pretending to legal authority they don't have in the first place.

[koolba]

> That's the reason why the courts are regularly ruling against the administration -- they're pretending to legal authority they don't have in the first place.

Lower courts. The track record of this administration at the SCOTUS is 90%.

[dragonwriter]

> The track record of this administration at the SCOTUS is 90%.

Its not quite that high of cases (21 out of 25 where the administration is a party in 2025, per [0], with one additional loss since the beginning of 2026 (Tangipa v. Newsom [1] seeking an injunction barring the CA redistricting map, where the administration wasn't in the heading but was a party as a plaintiff-intervenor.) Note that all of the decided cases at issue are interim orders (orders concerning actions before the final decision on the case, where the Administration either wants an injunction or wants to not have an injunction against it, mainly), and reading the track record of the cases that actually get decided on the interim docket neglects the effect of the Administration's losses there on which cases it could appeal it chooses not to so they never reach the docket at all, as argued in [2].

[0] https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/looking-back-at-2025-the-...

[1] https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/tangipa-v-newsom...

[2] https://www.scotusblog.com/interim-docket-blog/#the-federal-...

[Hugsun]

SCOTUS is indeed compromised.

[randomfrogs]

The Republican majority on the SCOTUS announced that Trump is immune from all laws, which is insane and not supported by the Constitution in any way, but directly lead to what's happening. If you tell somebody they won't ever be held accountable for breaking laws, why follow them (except for your internal moral compass, and we've established that Trump doesn't have one).

[dragonwriter]

> The Republican majority on the SCOTUS announced that Trump is immune from all laws

This is factually untrue; the Court, in Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024), held that the President has:

(1) absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for exercises of core constitutional powers, (2) presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for all official acts, (3) no immunity from criminal prosecution for unofficial acts.

This is—while still problematic—very far from the President being “immune to all laws”.

[ecshafer]

Lower courts have a lot more activist judges than SCOTUS. SCOTUS has fewer activist judges than they used to, and are now busy interpreting the law based on the constitution, not on what their own personal grievances are.

[Hikikomori]

5 current scotus judges are part of the federalist society. Do you believe only "leftist" judges are activist judges?

[ecshafer]

Federalist society is supporting textualist interpretation of the law. If you want the law to be different, then change the constitution. Having overly expansive interpetations of the constitution to make the law what you want is being an activist. Textualism is just going by what the law says.

[array_key_first]

They're interpreting the law based on how much they can contort the constitution to divert as much power to King Trump as possible while not completely thrashing their credibility.

[disgruntledphd2]

Importantly, they're using the shadow docket so that they don't need to decide officially, as that would bind their hands with a future Democratic administration.

Like, whatever happened to the Major Questions Doctrine?

[MichaelZuo]

The fact that it’s possible at all to inject plausible doubt, for even a few weeks, means that counterparties will be much more wary.

They will simply have less goodwill when an American team is on the other side of the table, and give less benefit of the doubt. (as compared to say if a Swiss team is on the other side of the table)

[Krasnol]

The problem is that the outlier might mark a beginning.

Seeing what's possible in this position, I doubt future US presidents will hold back.

[bruce511]

It doesn't matter I'd they hold back or not. The perception of political instability is enough.

If, as an investor, I'm asked to throw billions at a multi-year project, political risk is going to be on the PowerPoint.

You may think this current administration is an aberration, but it serves to prove that aberrations can happen. That the levers supposed to prevent this (congress, courts) are creaking. Sure a judge ruled for now, but this is a long way from finished.)

And that's enough to create doubt. Lots of doubt. The impact of this on long-term future infrastructure projects cannot be over-stated.

(Let's leave aside that this project was 6 years in the planning, during his first term, before construction start in 2022... which just makes the current behavior worse, not better.)

[johanvts]

Which is exactly why Orsted will now focus on European wind projects instead. American projects will have to be that more profitable/expensive in the future to compensate for the political risk. But I guess this is exactly the desired outcome for big oil, no outside competition.

[cucumber3732842]

Is that a bad thing though?

Like say you can develop a 1000 windmill offshore wind project. At "market rate" for performing that activity they lose you money or make you very little, say a percent or two, because offshore is just harder.

But with government partnership and doors opening they make money at a low estimate 3%.

This causes you to forgo the 200 windmills in a field project that would make you a positive 1-3% regardless of which way the political winds blow because why do that when you can deploy 1k of them in some bay and make money hand over fist simply by joining hands (more tightly than the land based small project would) with government?

And as a result nobody can do the 200 windmill project because, between you and all the other people chasing the 100@% projects the cost of engineering, site prep, permitting, other fixed costs for such projects, etc, etc. are based on what the market will bear, and it can bear a lot more when your amortizing things over 5x as many units.

So maybe the things that do get invested in are more sustainable and financially conservative, which would improve public perception of them vs these megacorp-government joint venture type deployments we have now.

[bruce511]

Political instability is a bad thing regardless of what is being invested in. It's just as bad for everything, not just windmills or sea windmills or whatever.

nothing is safe if the project can fail because the political winds change. Much less the political tantrums of the guy in charge who doesn't think you bribed him enough.

And when those obvious bribes are simply ignored by congress and the courts, thus validating it, the landscape for large projects of any kind get worse.

[piker]

There is a historical tide rolling in and out of presidential power. We’re currently in a high-power executive moment that began with the AUMF for Bush 2. The courts and Congress can act to curtail that authority somewhat and hopefully will. But a lot of the EO activity is ultimately just performative unconstitutional action that will be reversed, damaging as that process may be.

[gimmeThaBeet]

the aphorism that comes to mind with that prospect these days is: "populism is like cigarettes, it's not the first one that kills you, it's the last"

[hyperman1]

Indeed, the post-Trump period will have a choice to make. Either they continue the chosen path and dont regain trust no matter the next president, or congress and court add some serious limitations to the presidential powers so future dems and reps will never go Trump again.

I wonder if both parties see the need for that at this point. There still seems a lot of 'but we are the good guys' in both partys blocking deep reform. If I'm honest, it took 2 world wars to partially whack that attitude out of Europe, and it's slowly coming back.

[diego_moita]

> The current administration is an outlier, but we all know that.

No, it isn't. This administration is a rupture. It is the beginning of a new normal. Future presidents will try to emulate this guy.

You could say "outlier" when he lost in 2020. You can't say that after he came back. The American people wants this authoritarian populism. The SCOTUS enables it. And the world shouldn't trust both the American people and its crumbling institutions.

[graemep]

That could be a problem in itself. It certainly is here in the UK.

If you have two parties that have much the same policies you do not get necessary change and voting becomes meaningless.

[flakeoil]

The thing is that wether the ruling party is right or left there are limits to what they can do based on the real world we live in. For example there is a limit to how much they can lower or increase the tax. There is a limit to how much they can save on one thing and invest in another.

Often when a new party takes power, no big real changes are seen as it is not so easy to implement considering the real world. They have to go down some kind of middle path.

[infp_arborist]

Disagree. There are effective strategies for creating more sustainable economies and societies. Affordable housing, education, universal healthcare will make us all happier and healthier.

We know how to fix lots of problems, and money is orthogonal to the issue.

Sentences like "They have to go down..." are really a symptom of a static "there is no alternative" view.

[flakeoil]

> Affordable housing, education, universal healthcare will make us all happier and healthier.

Everyone would like that, but it is easier said than done.

> We know how to fix lots of problems, and money is orthogonal to the issue.

Great that you have the answer, so how do we fix it?

[cucumber3732842]

>Affordable housing, education, universal healthcare will make us all happier and healthier.

The past ~100yr of state policy has made a lot of economic winners out of people in these industries by putting it's thumb on the scale in their favor.

Any reversion to a "natural market state" or perhaps beyond, where the government weighs in to the advantage of those who do not make money on housing or healthcare would necessarily make loser out of all the people who right now benefit from the government having its thumb on the scale where it is currently positioned and they will fight tooth or nail to prevent this.

[infp_arborist]

Let's start by taxing the ultra-rich.

[graemep]

Its harder to implement change than to promise it, of course.

However, historically it made a lot more difference which party was elected.

In the UK in the 80s you knew that if you voted Labour things would bet nationalised, and if you voted Conservative things would get privatised. Since the centrist consensus (e.g. Blair and Cameron) emerged it makes a lot less difference.

That, IMO, is evidence that what has changed is not that the two parties are constrained from pursuing very different policies, but that they no longer wish to.

[exe34]

any ideas why they might not wish to?

[graemep]

I think they have adopted a common ideology. The people in the parties have become more similar over the years, as have the voters they appeal too.

A few decades ago a very high proportion of Labour politicians were former trade union leaders, for example. Conservative voters tended to be more rural and more affluent.

Now a very high proportion are professional politicians who have never really done anything else. They are all people who have done well through the status quo and do not want to change anything.

[iso1631]

A healthy state is an oil tanker - slow to steer, predictable in its direction, and it's broadly steered by public opinion rather than voting. With a large mandate you get to push a few polices through. Ideally if you get a leader pushing through a policy against his party's natural proclivities it's more likely to stick.

If you have a jetski which changes direction every 5-10 years that's terrible for long term investment, and terrible from a personal point of view too. Legalise gay marriage, then 5 years later it's oh no, lets make that illegal again.

Best to move to a stable country which isn't run by the whims of a dementia-laden madman.

[7952]

This applies to the UK particularly as a result of privatisation. Utilities, pensions and transport are completely dependant on previous government agreements that commit the public to long term expenses that sit outside tax. It takes debt of the government books, but also defuses responsibility. And becomes a necessary evil for getting anything done.

[mapt]

The US occasionally has mayors & governors who spitefully or corruptly trap their successors contractually in long-term commitments with private parties which are obviously bad financial decisions.

I argue that we have a reasonableness standard we can apply here - "Lack of consideration" is what might void a contract indenturing a 20 year old idiot in an unpaid MLM scheme.

Consideration of the public is a factor.

> "Chicago's 2008 parking meter deal, a 75-year, $1.16 billion lease to private investors, is widely criticized as a lopsided, "worst practice" agreement. The deal, pushed through in 72 hours under Mayor Daley, forces the city to pay "true-up" fees for lost revenue, resulting in over $2 billion in revenue for investors [so far] while the city continues to settle costly disputes."

[expedition32]

I am getting the feeling that Americans love "leadership without oversight". In my country we have a parliament on the national level whose single job is to make life miserable for whoever is in power and on the local level there are city councils who do the same.

[brightball]

The pattern I’ve observed throughout the US is that we have all those same things as well as citizens who can go to speak at various council meetings.

People are ignored, councils seem to rubber stamp things and the tactic at higher levels is to make a terrible decision and then attempt to use courts to delay any attempt to stop whatever the decision was. When it’s finally stopped, it will be done again slightly different and restart the lengthy court process.

[graemep]

I do not think it is those big and visible privatisations of utilities and transport that are the real problem (I am not sure what you mean about pensions though).

The big problem is long term outsourcing contracts, that serves to get the debt off the government’s books. If anyone else did it they would be required to show the debt under off-balance sheet financing rules, but the government gets to set its own rules and gets away with hiding the real situation. Gordon Brown did a lot of this so he could pretend to have balanced the budget.

Apart from central government a lot of local authorities have done this too. Sheffield's notorious street management contract (the one that lead to cutting down huge numbers of trees) is a good example.

[Braxton1980]

No, what you get is less radical change which I believe overall is better even if it can make solving some problems difficult

[onlyrealcuzzo]

That's a bigger problem the worse your system is performing.

[pjc50]

For that, you need to look to the press.

Political parties are mostly relatively small and under-funded huddles of second-rate individuals, who get told what to do by billionaire-owned media.

It's interesting how many and varied "minor parties" which are more genuinely grassroots have persisted in the UK despite the difficulty in scrounging up funding from the actual public, and despite FPTP being theoretically stacked against them. It's very different to the US, which despite all the talk of Federalism doesn't seem to have local parties at all?

[graemep]

Lots of things.

The US seems to restrict the ability of minor parties to stand for election far more than the UK does. It varies by state but from what I have read you need thousands of signatures just to stand in many states.

FTTP does also favour parties with a geographically concentrated base such as the Scottish and Welsh nationalists and the NI parties. Geographical variations in the US seem mostly to be about which of the two big parties people back.

[iso1631]

> The current administration is an outlier

Is it? What stops the next one being an outlier, or the one after that?

Its going to take decades to recover from the whims of the US population (the plurarity of whom voted for this)

[cucumber3732842]

>Its going to take decades to recover from the whims of the US population (the plurarity of whom voted for this)

What does "recover" even mean?

Are we supposed to back to the good ol' days when the <pick federal agency> could hold a press conference announcing some grand new plan with <pick industry group> key person and <pick billionaire> standing in the background smiling because they know their people ghost wrote it to their benefit and the press would unanimously gush about how good it is if not copypasta the press release entirely?

Institutions are basically bankrupt of trust in the eyes of the public. Between that and the modern information distribution landscape the status quo circa like 1930something-2010something where the administrative parts of the state could "just do things" without organized resistance by the parts of the public that were on the losing end is likely never coming back.

Whatever you, and everyone else, wants to use state power to accomplish will likely have to dial back their ambitions and prioritize in accordance with the new reality of how much you need to fight for each thing, basically realign policy targets to be closer to the fat part of the "what everyone wants" bell curve. Maybe from there there will be a decades long re-accumulation of trust, but we don't know what the world will look like in the future and that may bring us to a very different status quo than the one we're exiting.

I know we all like to whine and screech about billionares and moneyed interests, but I think the new status quo is probably a bigger problem for them and other "string pullers" than the median member of the public who's getting shafted by it. Remember, the "status quo" of the last 100yr is what created the problems we have to clean up today and in the future.

[Hendrikto]

> What does "recover" even mean?

Get back to the rule of law.

[cucumber3732842]

Yes, let's go back to when BigCo just removed mountains to get at coal, Dick Cheney's friends all got rich in Iraq and the Sacklers sold us all pills because they had convinced the relevant agencies that doing so was in accordance with the laws, rules and policies and well, the rest is history.

All this crap has been happening forever. It may very well be happening more now (probably is, IMO), but it's happening in the open. It's all being litigated. Every capricious decision that would have sailed right over the heads of the non-thinking morons with a simple stamp of approval, maybe a small lawsuit in particularly offensive cases, is now being scrutinized and seriously litigated, because the agencies and other "legitimizers" involves have burned through their stored trust, and now everyone is watching everything they do.

I see that as a huge improvement.

[Aziz_aze]

_How can the other side trust that an agreement will hold in the future?_ You can't, and US history is full of that. It's deeply rooted in US culture !

See for example the numerous wars against native Americans in the 19th century; even in some Washington US museum they admin the natives were not wrong when they had to assume any peace treaty was not worth the ink it was written with (and meant "we're only regrouping and will attack again in less than 5 years").

[pwarner]

I'm not advocating their system, but here's one pro for China obviously.

[chongli]

China doesn't have flip-flopping like this with its attendant massive waste. Instead it has endemic corruption which siphons off funds all over the place, perhaps with the exception of the big projects that command the full attention of central leadership.

[FranklinJabar]

> perhaps with the exception of the big projects that command the full attention of central leadership.

This is notably an area where the US is massively crippled. States can manage many year projects easier, but the federal government must conceal all such projects behind defense spending. Even that is wildly mismanaged (see: all the canceled naval purchases over the last two decades, and we still have an outdated, if large, navy)

[wolrah]

> Instead it has endemic corruption which siphons off funds all over the place, perhaps with the exception of the big projects that command the full attention of central leadership.

We also have endemic corruption siphoning off funds all over the place, ESPECIALLY in the big projects that have the attention of the current administration.

[int_19h]

From the business perspective, endemic corruption is preferable. Generally speaking, on societies like that, you know exactly how much you need to pay to which people to get things moving, so it can be budgeted for predictably.

[graemep]

One of the reasons why "democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others".

[dlisboa]

There are countless examples of democracies with endemic corruption. Democracy is not a cure to it.

[graemep]

Its not a cure, but if offers ways in which to cure corruption and allows people to challenge it.

[tehjoker]

Yet somehow they've managed to eliminate extreme poverty and challenge the U.S. in GDP. Sounds like cope to me. They couldn't do that with extreme corruption like we tolerate in U.S. allies.

[pjc50]

China is literally going through an "anticorruption" purge of the PLA right now. Zhang Youxia et al. The corruption in China has a very different shape than in the US.

(not sure what you mean by "corruption we tolerate in US allies"?)

[tehjoker]

Do you know who the U.S. allies with and funds? Every right wing dictator and criminal gang on the planet. We just don't like independent nations and left wing factions.

There is extreme corruption in the U.S. as well, but we've legalized it so it disappears in statistics.

[s1artibartfast]

Why not?

[monting]

They "eliminated" extreme poverty caused by communist control in the first place, by going to a capitalist system.

There were tons of economic low-hanging fruits by building out large infrastructure projects, which corruption happily siphoned off of.

The ROI of these infra projects have been gone for a while, yet they continued. Also it's been stealing intellectual property, trade dumping, exporting deflation. Soaking up the manufacturing oxygen of everyone else through subsidies, elite capture, then using the leverage gained and veiled threats against others to force them to yield resources, market access and political control.

[aboardRat4]

Emm... and what prevents the USA from doing all the same things?

[bojan]

Labour laws, for starters.

The conditions the average Chinese works in are abysmal, even from the American point of view.

[monting]

China benefited greatly from the US-led globalism order that's been going on since WWII.

Another way of saying it is China took the most advantage. And it has gone way overboard in taking advantage. So the backlash is expected and necessary.

Part of fixing things involve doing things that seem like it's destroying the order that the US created itself.

[KptMarchewa]

>They "eliminated" extreme poverty caused by communist control in the first place, by going to a capitalist system.

Not a fan of CCP but pretending like there was no extreme poverty in China before CCP is insane position.

[viccis]

More cope.

"They eliminated poverty... but at WHAT COST? They did good things but they trampled on the intellectual property of our beloved billionares? *sob*"

[monting]

The "good thing" they did, is stopping their actions which causes millions to starve. Which lead to people getting themselves out of poverty.

[clarionbell]

The disadvantage in their system, is if the the leadership makes a wrong decision, it will stick for much longer than 4 years, and it won't be challenged.

Now, recently, they had a very good run. This must be admitted and even celebrated.

But the aforementioned flaw is still very much present.

[SecretDreams]

Dictatorships work as long as they're benevolent, much like democracies work as long as they aren't bought.

[dominicrose]

It depends what you mean by work. Technology - among a myriad of other things - enables the worst dictators to stay in power, even if the country as a whole doesn't work.

[SecretDreams]

Work in my post was "work for the people".

[johanvts]

You can have a functional democracy and still do long term planning, the problem is the current US government. Its not a fundamental flaw in democracy.

[joe_mamba]

>You can have a functional democracy and still do long term planning

Sure, but that's contingent on

1) the voters being well educated and not easily brainwashed by various types of propaganda pushing them to vote against their own interests (see the Germans being anti-nuclear and pro-Russian gas since the 80s) and >

2) the voters being trusted and having an actual ownership in the country so that their votes affect them directly and also having a say in how their country is run, because if whoever gets voted into power just does the opposite of what the voters want "for their own good", then you're not a democracy anymore, you're just a well functioning state (if that).

Other than Switzerland, and maybe Denmark, I don't know any democracies that constantly function well and aren't plagued with issues.

[johanvts]

Populism is always a danger, but the current US administration is all about spite, no matter the cost. It is uniquely, outstandingly bad. Lots of places have working democracies that have managed to do long term planning.

[olerich]

Quite the opposite, a working, independent justice system guarantees rule of law and long term stability.

[ncr100]

Also, China can lobby indirectly through media manipulation, and relatively cheaply disrupt our already clunky-feeling Democratic governmental processes.

[cm2187]

It's a double edge sword. If the Boss has decided that the country should do X, it's much harder to make him reverse course if it's a bad direction. Zero covid and return to good old communism are two recent examples. For all their flaws and ineffectiveness, democracies are self correcting.

[expedition32]

I am from a country with 20 political parties and near constant political drama. It makes America look sane.

The answer is contract law. Pulling the plug out of a project costs money.

Obviously this still requires a level of sanity which may no longer exist in the US.

[neilwilson]

By only doing projects for which there is sufficient political support across the board, not the ones that are supported by a tiny vocal minority of the electorate.

Either we live in a democracy or we do not. Democracy determines the correct path by wobbling between two incompatible options - implementation and repeal. That which is implemented by one side, but not repealed by the other survives as the appropriate path.

There is no alternative to this - without abandoning democracy and universal suffrage.

Remember that democracy is the worst way to run a country, except for all the other.

[spacebacon]

The pitchfork bifurcation: https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5987495

[themafia]

> If a country changes course every four years

Dozens of new GW+ wind farms came online in the last four years. This concerns a few projects in a few particular locations that are exposed to federal interference. It has impacts on the market but the market is larger than these minor disturbances by an order of magnitude.

> while keeping the focus on long-term ideas and plans.

We have private business in this country. They're doing just fine.

[hvb2]

> Dozens of new GW+ wind farms came online in the last four years.

Thats not that much is it given the size and energy demand of the country? And that's over the past 4 years, you'll only see the true impact of this in the next 6 years.

> This concerns a few projects in a few particular locations that are exposed to federal interference

Markets are driven by a lot of feelings too. If you're trying to build a wind farm now, why on earth would you do that in the US? There are just many better options.

Your private businesses will happily skip over the US if they understand markets. Don't row upstream, find a place where your investment is wanted

[cm2187]

Electricity doesn't travel continents the way shipping containers do. So it's not like anyone wants to build a wind farm and wonders where in the world they are going to place it. Plus if you are a major single customer (eg datacenter, factory), you need reliable energy, so would be odd to build a wind farm. As far as I am aware wind farms only makes sense when you sell to the grid, and where there is an alternative on demand source of energy to take over the weeks there is no wind.

[hvb2]

> So it's not like anyone wants to build a wind farm and wonders where in the world they are going to place it.

No, but there's demand everywhere. So it's all down to how likely you are to get your money back?

And this is for adding power to the grid, if you have a major single customer you're already adding a ton of risk to your project... What if the datacenter is no longer needed after a few years or isn't completed ever?

[themafia]

> Thats not that much is it given the size and energy demand of the country?

What is it relative to these 5 projects?

> you'll only see the true impact of this in the next 6 years.

Are these the _only_ new projects that could _possibly_ be built in that time frame?

> a lot of feelings too

The feelings of those with money not of the general population.

> If you're trying to build a wind farm now, why on earth would you do that in the US?

You just said. "The size and energy demand of the country." Or are you proposing that no one would build unless we remove absolutely all risk for them? I'm not sure you and I mean the same thing when saying "private business."

> happily skip over the US

I believe this is a worn out trope. Please show some evidence this has actually occurred.

> find a place where your investment is wanted

Ah.. the "amazonification" of America. "Businesses shouldn't compete or take risks!" You seem to say. We must bend over and make them happy before they can deign to take our dollars. Perfectly modern and utterly ridiculous.

[hvb2]

> Are these the _only_ new projects that could _possibly_ be built in that time frame?

No, but a lot of the coastal waters are federal land (water? :D) which is why this is a problem to begin with. Wind at sea has a lot of benefits, no neighbors, nothing to interfere with the wind, typically very predictable power generation. So yes, you can build a lot on land, the US has plenty of space for that but that'll be subject to a LOT more pushback from the general public.

> The feelings of those with money not of the general population

And those with money are the ones making the investment decisions, no?

> You just said. "The size and energy demand of the country." Or are you proposing that no one would build unless we remove absolutely all risk for them? I'm not sure you and I mean the same thing when saying "private business."

You've followed all the rules, got all the permits, you're building and have invested x amount. And NOW the rug is pulled from underneath you? That's not a very comforting world to be investing in.

Or to put it in more general public sense. You want to build a house in city X. You get a plot of land, get an architect to draw up what you'll build, you get all the permits and are halfway through construction and THEN the city revokes your permit. You tell me, but I wouldn't try building anything there again because they are just unreliable. You go to the city next door.

> I believe this is a worn out trope. Please show some evidence this has actually occurred.

Happy to, compare these 2 charts.

USA: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/energy-st...

Europe: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/energy-st...

The US is basically just switching to gas power. And if you look at % of energy mix you'll see that wind is mostly flat as a % of the whole electricty generation. So yes, much much more money/investment is going into renewables in Europe. And as unpredictable as policy can be there too, they typically have the understanding to only change rules for NEW projects not existing ones.

> Ah.. the "amazonification" of America. "Businesses shouldn't compete or take risks!" You seem to say. We must bend over and make them happy before they can deign to take our dollars. Perfectly modern and utterly ridiculous.

Businesses should take risks and be rewarded for them. But take the building a house example above, would you agree that in general rules shouldn't be changed during the game/on existing projects?

[epistasis]

Private industry is not doing just fine, it's barely holding on due to massive uncertainty caused by erratic tariffs and farcical government overreach and direct meddling with corporations. All from Trump and his supporters, who are very nationalist but also appear to love socialism when it is national, such as with a 10% purchase of Intel by the US government.

If the Fed falls and monetary policy is subject to the political whims of a tyrant that only cares about himself, then we lost reserve currency stays and we are ducked so hard by simultaneous inability to continue the deficit and a need to pay back interest at far far higher rates. It would cause a spiral in the US economy like we have never seen. Or in the best case just a gradual switch from USD to other standin currencies causing a decade or two of recession in the US, best case.

So far most businesses have not jacked up prices from tariffs because they are hoping they can have the US Supreme Court overturn what look to be obviously illegal tariffs that should have been enacted by Congress rather than the king (we fought an entire revolutionary war over this!). If the Supreme Court doesn't overturn tariffs then we are at risk for inflation going up to 1970s levels.

The state of private business in the US is best represented by the meme of a dog sitting at a kitchen table saying "this is fine" while the house burns down around him. The firefighters may come, but they had better come soon.

[themafia]

> it's barely holding on

Where are you deriving this from?

> is best represented by the meme

Ah.. well that offers a guess.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I'm not sure I follow the questions. The success of a long-term project can be ensured through the procedures described in the source article: you set up a durable judicial system, and invest them with the power to require that the country uphold its end of the bargain, no matter how much its current political leaders might want to change course.

[aboardRat4]

>success of a long-term project can be ensured through the procedures described in the source article: you set up a durable judicial system, and invest them with the power to require that the country uphold its end of the bargain, no matter how much its current political leaders might want to change course.

That's an abuse of the judicial system. Politicians are elected exactly because the voters perceive a need to change the execution of government's functions.

The thing is, you cannot beat human moral qualities with formalist means. People who come to power by raising hatred towards their political opponents will always find a way to subvert policies even if not cancel them.

Long-term policies should be established through consensus among all parties, not though legalistic bureaucracy.

[watwut]

That is not an abuse of the judicial system. That is actual rule of law rather the rule of the whim.

Elected politicians can change laws and rules going forward, but there should be obstacles at changing past laws.

[PearlRiver]

Sure but they will still need to pay up the agreed contract price.

[SpicyLemonZest]

Perhaps you don't think legalistic bureaucracy should matter, but the voters' representatives in Congress don't agree. Under the Administrative Procedure Act, government agencies must produce legalistic bureaucratic reasons for their actions; they may not act capriciously to suit the whims of political leaders or transient desires for a change.

Congress certainly has the power to change this if they want to. But without something like the APA, private businesses exposed to federal regulation would struggle to make any plans beyond the current US Presidential term. So they do not want to.

[aboardRat4]

>Under the Administrative Procedure Act, government agencies must produce legalistic bureaucratic reasons for their actions; they may not act capriciously to suit the whims of political leaders or transient desires for a change.

Well, this is sort of against the spirit of the US constitution, at least as explained in the Federalist. I might even call it an abuse of the Legislative system.

I'm not speaking very confidently here, but by the spirit of it, the Congress should not do this much of micro-management of the Executive.

Surely the Congress should pass the laws which _prevent_ the Executive from doing stupid things, in particular collecting too much taxes, but it shouldn't really tell the Executive "do this, in this particular way".

To be honest, I suspect that the actual _reason_ every administration tries to undo as much of the actions of the previous administration as they can is because due to the amount of limits imposed on them by the Congress they they cannot do much else. Fighting the Congress is much harder than fighting the previous administration.

I seriously suspect that if the amount of regulation is decreased, it will actually be beneficial to long-term policy stability, because instead of fighting the decisions of the previous administration the current one would be busy with it's own projects.

[CamperBob2]

you set up a durable judicial system, and give them their own army.

That's the only way to work around Trump. According to the Constitution, no one can actually make the executive branch do anything it doesn't want to do.

[SpicyLemonZest]

No, that's not accurate. The courts frequently make Trump and his cronies do things they don't want to do, and prevent them from doing things they do want to do. Multiple such cases are described in the source article.

[vel0city]

> That does not end the Court’s concerns, however. Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated. This list is confined to orders issued since January 1, 2026, and the list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges. Undoubtedly, mistakes were made, and orders that should have appeared on this list were omitted. This list should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law. ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.230...

This is absolutely nuts to read, and yet isn't the first time we've read such kind of language in court opinions and publications with this administration.

[CamperBob2]

That state of affairs is seen as a bug, and is being fixed. [1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society

That aside: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/07/21/trump-cou...

Edit due to rate-limiting: that makes two of us.

[SpicyLemonZest]

If Trump defies 1 in 3 of the court orders against him, that still means judges successfully stopped him 2 times out of 3. I'm not interested in a discussion where we equivocate between what's true today and worst case scenarios that could become true in the future, sorry.

[fuzzfactor]

Yes, this particular court case could end up completely against Trump, that would be better than zero progress when it comes to making energy more affordable.

>raises the possibility that the order halting construction will ultimately be held to be arbitrary and capricious.

But guys like Trump aren't arbitrary or capricious.

There's a pretty good consensus that he would have to be a lot more sensible by nature to reach that level of sophistication.

[bdangubic]

you should have learned by now what trump et al are doing… these “cases” they are “losing” are just smoke&mirrors for the general public to go “see, they obey the law” on things they do not particularly give a hoot about. the ones they do care about no one is “stopping” - the way you can tell which one is which is when they completely ignore the constitution and any existing law(s) or when they hit up the judicial extension of their party - the scotus - to rubberstamp something. even there, once in a while, they’ll make a call to (often temporarily) “lose”

[SpicyLemonZest]

It seems to me that we're seeing precisely the opposite. Trump enjoys the appearance of inevitability, so whenever he finds something he cannot force through, he pretends that it doesn't matter to him and he never really cared about it in the first place.

I'd encourage you to make a list of the top 10 things you're worried he's about to do now, and check back in a few months to see how many of them came true. One big transition point in my thinking was in July of last year, when I remembered how much he'd bragged in March that the Department of Education would soon be shut down. He does a large number of terrible things, yes, but he also can't do most of the terrible things he says he's going to do.

[CamperBob2]

I'd encourage you to make a list of the top 10 things you're worried he's about to do now, and check back in a few months to see how many of them came true.

I don't have to "check back in a few months." Look at what he's accomplished in only one year: https://www.project2025.observer/en . Far more than he was able to do in his four previous years in office.

Trump is basically doing all the things that he wanted to do in his first term, but that were slow-walked, stonewalled, and sandbagged by the so-called "adults in the room." There are now very few if any of those adults left, and that includes judges who are willing and able to put a leash on him.

If you're not deranged, you're not paying attention.

[sirspacey]

you’ve landed on the core of politics

the shape of how things actually work is what’s left when constant churn (and now budget blocking) is a fact of life

[shimman]

No, this is the core of a particular brand of politics: neoliberal politics. Where the financialization of everything is what's most important. There was a time, still in lived memory, where the US government was able to complete many types of projects and it also coincided with the period of lowest economic inequality (the great compression), the expansion of civil rights, and had the highest taxes against the elites this country has ever seen.

Obviously if you hate democracy you'll want to destroy this system, which is what they've been working at for the last 50ish years.

[s1artibartfast]

Tax rates are not the same as effective taxes paid, and US taxes as a percent of GDP are at an all time high. This is besides the fact that gdp is many times higher, growing geometrically.

It is an interesting question of what changed in terms of ability to execute, but lack of funding isn't the answer. I suspect it is a combination of scope creep, application to intractable problems, and baumols cost disease at work.

[miki123211]

Don't forget vetocracy.

Every regulation, whether it's environmental, DEIA or anti-fraud, adds a few steps to each project. With enough regulations and enough steps, things just slow down to a crawl.

As governments and legal systems get older, they get into more and more situations where a bad thing happens, and the politicians must show that they've done something to stop a similar thing from happening again. Nobody can publicly admit that it's fine to letting a 5-year-old kid die once in a while, even if that would be the right call. This results in more and more layers of regulation being added, which nobody has an incentive to remove.

[myrmidon]

> Nobody can publicly admit that it's fine to letting a 5-year-old kid die once in a while, even if that would be the right call.

Sure, there are such cases, but a lot of regulation was written in blood, and the price that affected individuals or even our whole species paid was often monumental:

Having cancer literally eat the workers faces is not acceptable (=> radium girls), nor are mistakes like leaded gas or CFCs.

Everytime people advocate for big immediate gains from abolishing regulations, you can be almost certain that they are selling toxic snake oil.

Current US admin seems no exception, especially when comparing related promises with actual results (e.g. Doge).

edit: I'm not saying that pruning back regulations is bad, but it needs to be a careful, deliberate effort and big immediate payoffs are often unrealistic.

[solatic]

> Tax rates are not the same as effective taxes paid

Correct, but the tax system is nonetheless quite effective at setting behavioral incentives and disincentives. Higher income and estate tax rates incentivize capital being locked up in investments instead (for lower capital gains taxes); those investments put people to work and are subject to Labor negotiating higher compensation. Allowing donations to non-profits to deduct from other taxes allows private individuals (compared to a government bureaucracy) to more efficiently fund social welfare programs, which incidentally, also put people to work in the administration of such programs.

Funding government is not the sole goal of higher taxation rates, but rather, also how incentives in society are shaped.

[throwaway2037]

    > US taxes as a percent of GDP are at an all time high

I found this from the Federal Reserve: "Federal Receipts as Percent of Gross Domestic Product"

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

It looks pretty steady around 17%. It was as high as 20% in the late 1990s. However, this does not include state and local taxes. I could not find a source for it. What is your source of information?

[s1artibartfast]

I was thinking something along the lines of this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1CFpQ

However, my main point was to refute the idea of some mythical past where the government was massively more funded, and therefore more competent and capable.

This also ignores the effect of the growing pie over time, but that is somewhat a tangent.

If someone is referencing back to the 1930s tax rates, those total receipts were closer to 10% of GDP when things like the Hoover Dam and Interstate System were being built.

Today, the rates are closer to 30% and the GDP being taxed is 25-30 times larger, controlling for inflation.

To me, this suggests that the reason we can't perform infrastructure projects is not lack of funding

[s1artibartfast]

By way of analogy, imagine someone making a $20k salary that can do big things while spending 10% of their salary projects. However, someone making $600k, spending 30% of that on projects can't get get meaningful work done.

These are the proportions we are talking about. It begs a lot of questions.

Are the projects really comparable? Did competence change? Did the working environment?

[fuzzfactor]

Ideally they don't change course every 4 years, they change only people who become more adept at maintaining course as they go along.

Quite simply the US had founding fathers who were ahead of their time, and some uncharted waters ahead of it.

This set the example for the decent navigators who took the executive positions, but momentum can only last so long.

You need decent people to come along on a regular basis to refresh the progress.

The very system that allowed for a gifted individual to have an outsized positive outcome, has always posed a real vulnerability if the decency is compromised. Whether that is a "natural" lack of decency or if compromises escalate over time, that's a weakness which is magnified when it does show up.

Different presidents have had this problem from time to time.

When you start with a country where the big advantage is being ahead of its time with an emphasis on more decency than average, it doesn't take somebody completely behind the times or absolutely disgusting to do serious damage. Even dropping the ball one time can be a major setback.

Just ask every respectable President in history.

[epolanski]

> If a country changes course every four years, how can the success of a long-term project be ensured?

Sadly this is an inherent weakness of the US constitution. It's old and it was written at a time where we didn't have enough experience with democracies.

In a modern parliamentary democracy you vote parties which form coalitions and settle on one of the party leaders (in general the one with most votes) as prime minister.

This means that:

- other parties are still involved in the legislative process. In a presidential republic with the president holding executive power, other parties are not represented at all. Trump doesn't need approval on his actions neither by opposition nor his own party. In a parliament, many members will support continuity on many topics rather than change if it doesn't make sense. They still vote based on their conscience, not just on their affiliation.

- the executive depends on its effectiveness and for staying in power on the support of its parliament members. If some members of Giorgia Meloni's coalition don't like the direction she's taking they are not gonna vote her proposals and ultimately she may need to resign if she gets a vote of no confidence. Removing a president in countries like US is extremely difficult in comparison, and the executive has no checks, neither from opposition nor its own party to go in whatever direction a single individual decides to go.

Seriously, what Belarus, Turkey, Hungary, Russia, etc, all have in common? They are presidential republics. Single individuals hold too much power and have little checks from their own party members, let alone a parliament. It's no coincidence that the last parliamentary democracy to turn into authoritarian state has been Sri Lanka over 50 years ago: it's difficult for individuals to grab power, as there is a long checklist of things that need to happen. In a presidential one?

It's very simple: a single individual can claim popular mandate, building a personality cult is simple (you don't vote parties, you vote individuals), a single individual holds executive power and is very hard to remove.

Presidential republics are more effective than slow parliamentary ones, but we should ask ourselves if our focus in 2020s, in advanced economies where things are objectively fine, isn't slow refinement instead of sharp turns.

[theshrike79]

> Sadly this is an inherent weakness of the US constitution. It's old and it was written at a time where we didn't have enough experience with democracies.

(I'm not even American and I know this)

The constitution was meant to be a living document, adjusted over the years as the world changes.

But the very opposite happened, it became Holy Scripture, unchanging and never evolving.

The whole American system was based on the idea that the ruling class cared for "reputation", "honor" or "legacy". It was wholy unprepared for people who just don't give a fuck about all that and actively wipe their asses on existing rules and conventions.

Like going in front of Congress and just ... lying. Provably, verifiably lying. Zero recourse, the shame of lying used to be enough. And because of ancient decorum rules, the congress can't even say "you're lying" and google the facts right there and then, they have to do this idiotic perfromatic dance of asking the same question repeatedly and getting a word salad non-answer back for hours.

Or just not going for the inquiry because, why would you? There's no penalty past "losing face" for not going. Why bother.

The system was flawed from the start, but the people were still in there for the best of everyone so it held together and mostly worked. Politicians respected one another as people and humans, even though they differed in opinion.

I personally can't see a way back for USA without a massive purge in the government followed by actual ironclad laws and processes set in stone to prevent anything like this from happening again. Let congress google basic facts, let them call people liars to their face, give them their own execuitve branch that can drag people for hearings by force if needed.

And copy the German Federal Constitutional Court[0] system, they have term limits and people are nominated through multiple channels.

[epolanski]

It's also interesting how the constitution is only a holy grail when it comes to stuff the particular individual you ask about cares for.

So you end up talking with individuals where "the 2nd amendment says I can have guns, it's in the constitution" and "my favorite president should go for a third term, the 22nd amendment is just a technicality".

[exe34]

The 2nd amendment was only carved out to cater for school shootings and manly displays of virility on Facebook. I suppose maggats thought they would need it to rise up against a tyrannical government that protects minorities, but now that they have a fascist government, they tell us that the 1st, 2nd and 4th amendments aren't actually serious. You have to be nice to the members of the gestapo, if they get offended, they can kill you. if you hold a protest, they can kill you. if you carry your gun, they can kill you. they will face no consequences other than getting doxxed and going into hiding for a bit of a break.

[int_19h]

The original American political system is based, first and foremost, on the notion that political parties are bad and shouldn't exist.

Of course, it never really worked out that way. We're simply at the end of that very long line.

[JKCalhoun]

You attenuate the power of the presidency.

[titzer]

Wild that you're being downvoted. America was explicitly founded in rejection of the power of a monarch.

[Octoth0rpe]

> how can the success of a long-term project be ensured?

Well, for one by ensuring that 'long-term' means it starts at the start of a term and ends before the end of that term. At most that only rules out nuclear, at least wrt long term energy projects. And it's not like recent dem administrations were unfriendly towards nuclear. Vogtle 3/4 were approved early in Obama's term, and finished under Biden's.

[Sharlin]

"Long term" means decades when it comes to energy strategy, major infrastructure initiatives, and decarbonization. Four years is woefully inadequate for strategic planning, you’re operating on a tactical level at best.

[aboardRat4]

There is no reason to do long term projects with public funds. Private companies are not subject to the vagaries of democracy and can plan as long-term as they want.

[fch42]

Except funding is not everything that's needed for long term projects. There are other resources - workforce, supply chain integrity, legal entitlements and approvals, etc, that are all contributing to "plannable delivery" of long-term projects. And quite a few of these are very much subject to the vagaries of democracy.

Unless, of course, you assume (the ideal to be) an entirely anarchist business environment where whoever-with-resources can do whatever. Democracy, though, is not that.

[Sharlin]

Uh, okay.

[bradchris]

4 years gets you, historically, an 8-plex built in San Francisco. If you’re lucky. The ship is slowly turning, but that’s what institutional investors would call a short-term win in the most economically productive state in the USA.

I’m a supporter of it regardless of the cost, but for a “long term” project look at the California HSR, which was directly approved by voters 19 years ago and we’re still debating how to fund the majority of it, let alone actually build what we voted to construct and open in its entirety within 10 years.

[alextheparrot]

I mean, you could also frame this as an issue the electorate could actually prioritize instead of just hoping the courts work it out

[randomtoast]

> If a country changes course every four years, how can the success of a long-term project be ensured?

Simple. You begin constructing an offshore wind park when someone competent is president, pause the project for four years during Trump's term, and then resume work to complete it.