The Financial Times report is behind a paywall so I'm not sure how that evaluation was reached. Also there are a bunch of bizarre financial shenanigans Musk has freely pulled with zero scrutiny. Hard to gauge the full impact of the layoffs when the person at the helm is profoundly amoral and has no scruples about lying.
`Investors valued the platform at $44bn in a so-called secondary deal earlier this month, in which they exchange existing stakes in the company, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.`
and
`X’s revenues have dropped since Musk’s takeover, but it posted about $1.2bn in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation in 2024, according to two people familiar with the matter — roughly flat with the period before Musk’s takeover.`
> Weren't Microsoft just caught cheating trying to hire H1B's without looking for US based applicants first?
No they weren't. If this administration had strong reasons to believe Microsoft cheated and engaged in fraudulent practices, the DoJ would have opened an investigation leading to punitive measures. It's a dog whistle and red meat for "the base."
> Given that they are now saying they have 25% too many employees, perhaps they should be banned from hiring H1B's altogether until they're rehired however many they end up letting go ...
That's not going to happen. It's easier for them to send the jobs offshore. You could support banning American companies from hiring in other companies in addition to immigration. I'm sure that will work out great for the US.
> If this administration had strong reasons to believe Microsoft cheated and engaged in fraudulent practices, the DoJ would have opened an investigation leading to punitive measures.
Microsoft and other tech firms on the DoJ's list have already been suspended from permanent labor certification programs following their work visa fraud investigations so this just isn't true.
> That's not going to happen. It's easier for them to send the jobs offshore.
Microsoft's Government/Enterprise business depends hugely on their US presence and history. Offshoring more than they have already wouldn't just further tank the quality of their already-declining product catalogue further but it would disqualify them from federal procurement and compromising the privileged market access.
> No they weren't. If this administration had strong reasons to believe Microsoft cheated and engaged in fraudulent practices, the DoJ would have opened an investigation leading to punitive measures. It's a dog whistle and red meat for "the base."
Microsoft and Adobe are both already under investigation. Based on the preliminary findings, they've been suspended from participating in the Green Card program along with a host of other companies. [1]
> That's not going to happen. It's easier for them to send the jobs offshore.
It sounds like that's what the administration is demanding (i.e., hire more US workers before they can participate in the H1B program). [2]
Unlikely. MAGA brought on a massive cultural shift helped by Supreme Court and the media. There is no such equivalent on the other side. When you can simply buy elections and other influential apparatus there is no reason to go over to the other side. Any liberal/leftist victories will be temporary and they are simply not as ruthless, undemocratic, and anti-American as MAGA.
Not really. Multiple independent sources and reports have confirmed the damage done by Musk during his time at DOGE.
> Decisions about Ukraine go through Trump. Musk is in a delicate position - it is illegal for him, as a private businessman, to be a combatant, but he seems thrust into that position.
He is as "thrust" into that position as he was "thrust" into the DOGE role.
What are your thoughts on his illegal state-sanctioned intimidation of ex-FEMA CFO?
You're wasting your keystrokes; it's WalterBright, whose personal mission is to defend the idea that money is virtue, that those with money should be worshipped, and that anything other than laissez-faire capitalism is demonic.
Free markets drive prosperity, socialism does the opposite.
What are the most expensive things in the US? Healthcare, housing, and education. Those are the most heavily regulated and subsidized by the government.
What are the cheapest things in the US? Software (free), TVs, computers, consumer goods. The least regulated and subsidized.
thanks for demonstrating why arguing with you is a total waste of time; you have a very simple set of principles and apply them bluntly and draw the conclusions you want from them. it's childish.
lets not forget that this isn't a thread to argue about economics (which is quite a dull thing to be so enthusiastic about), so I'm not really required to have an argument. It's about how pathetic it is to lick Elon Musk's boots.
The real rationale for the change isn't fraud at all. Does it make sense that the administration is specifically concerned about fraud regarding hiring in tech sector while at the same time pardoning convicted fraudsters where the victims lose out on billions of dollars?
Does it make sense to declare the "America is full" and deporting people who have been granted asylum while welcoming white South Africans with open arms?
> On the flip side it always surprises me how rabid HN can be about throwing out H1B workers
HN had its mask off moment some time around the 2024 election.
HN's shift from a group of plucky Wozniak-like technological enthusiasts to a group of unicorn focused wealth seekers tracked the broader change from engineers being primary staffed with hobbyists to wealth seekers across society.
That change FAR predates the most recent election.
> HN's shift from a group of plucky Wozniak-like technological enthusiasts to a group of unicorn focused wealth seekers tracked the broader change from engineers being primary staffed with hobbyists to wealth seekers across society.
This is just what happens when communities get bigger, they become more reflective of the societies which the people are drawn from.
I do remember HN getting much nastier around 2015-16, and again around Covid, but this is just a reflection of society again and unlikely to be a purely HN thing.
If anything, in the 15 (fuck) years I've been hanging out here, it's amazing how well the community has held up.
This is not caring about their country, this is caring about their paycheck. They want higher salaries, damned' be what it does to competitiveness. It's nearsighted protectionism, that's what it is.
It's local maxima vs global maxima. Or 10% of small pie vs 1% of big pie, etc. More to the parent's point though, HN demographics have changed just like all other social media. It's not the SF Bay area tech scene anymore; it's a global townsquare like x.com. So it's hard to separate the signal from the noise.
...or the Bay Area scene has become - or no longer cares to hide its misanthropy, as examplified by senior leadership at YC, a16z and other places telling us how they really feel. Even Paul Graham went mask-off in the afterglow of Trump's second inauguration - February 2025 has some truly wild, victory-lap takes that almost seemed coordinated.
People should demand lower salaries, god damnit! What happened to the good old-fashioned Mission of the company? In fact that we ask for anything at all to get ahead on our housing and healthcare payments is morally abominable. When did HN get so... germaine. We must serve our corporate missions at any costs, and bring forth the future our Founders promise.
People are too afraid to challenge their billionaire bosses, so they go after immigrants, because immigrants seem like easy targets. It's basic human cowardice underneath.
Going after immigration is challenging their billionaire bosses. Whose bottom line do you think is benefiting from all the cheap labor immigration brings? I don't get how folks got so confused about this in the last 10 years.
> The gun lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the work fraud, on the American people by special interest groups that I have seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies—the militia—would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.
Sounds like you have been a victim of fraud. At least according to a former Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. To prevent more people falling prey to fraudsters, Justice Stevens recommends that this amendment should be repealed - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/john-paul-stevens...
> "Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. To prevent more people falling prey to fraudsters, Justice Stevens recommends that this amendment should be repealed"
I think you might be missing a sentence or a citation there, because Stevens was an associate justice, never the chief on SCOTUS.
Parent's link about Stevens was separate from the quote, which is from Warren Burger. And Burger was hardly a lefty. He was appointed by Nixon specifically to begin the work of dismantling the achievements of the Warren court.
Amen, I've ranted on HN about that a few times. [0] There is zero question that the Second Amendment was created as limit on the federal government interfering with individual states, and did not bar any state from whatever policy they chose for themselves. (Also, at that time, every state was already mandated by mutual treaty to have a "well-regulated militia" with state-appointed officers and state-funding, so the term had existing meaning.)
Whether that narrow scope is/should-be still true is trickier given the 14th amendments, although I believe it was wrongly included in the incorporation doctrine. [1]
[0] I know Google-search scoped to HN used to find them, and today it doesn't. The enshittification continues, is it time for me to start slowly scraping my own comment-history?
You have to account for the fact that several states have equivalent provisions in their constitutions, some of them explicitly protecting individual rights, and other states have added such provisions shortly after.
That is, the right was broadly recognized as an individual one and not just a state/federal interaction issue early on. The federal constitution didn't consider that case for the same reason why it didn't consider them for all the other amendments - it was simply out of scope there then. But given the historical recognition of the right at the time 14A was enacted, it makes sense to incorporate it.
> There is zero question that the Second Amendment was created as limit on the federal government interfering with individual states, and did not bar any state from whatever policy they chose for themselves.
Amendment 10, brought into force at the same time as amendment 2, says that the states can't infringe upon the right to bear arms either. That is very far from "zero question" as you stated.
> Amendment 10 [...] at the same time [...] says that the states can't infringe upon the right to bear arms either.
Uh, no. Just... no. Perhaps you've mixed-up the 10th and 14th, which occurred about a century later.
The 10th does the exact opposite of limiting state power, it says states continue to have all powers they didn't specifically give up by joining. It sets the default for when there's ambiguity, and it sets it in favor of not-the-feds.
> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
> There was a want hitherto, and there remains a want now, in the Constitution of our country, which the proposed amendment will supply. What is that? It is the power in the people, the whole people of the United States, by express authority of the Constitution to do that by congressional enactment which hitherto they have not had the power to do, and have never even attempted to do; that is, to protect by national law the privileges and immunities of all the citizens of the Republic and the inborn rights of every person within its jurisdiction whenever the same shall be abridged or denied by the unconstitutional acts of any State.
> Allow me, Mr. Speaker, in passing, to say that this amendment takes from any State any right that ever pertained to it. No State ever had the right, under the forms of law or otherwise, to deny to any freeman the equal protection of the laws or to abridge the privileges or immunities of any citizen of the Republic, although many of them have assumed and exercised the power, and that without remedy.
-- John Bingham, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 2542
> Such is the character of the privileges and immunities spoken of in the second section of the fourth article of the Constitution. To these privileges and immunities, whatever they may be -- for they are not and cannot be fully defined in their entire extent and precise nature -- to these should be added the personal rights guarantied and secured by the first eight amendments of the Constitution; such as the freedom of speech and of the press; the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances, a right appertaining to each and all the people; the right to keep and to bear arms; the right to be exempted from the quartering of soldiers in a house without the consent of the owner; the right to be exempt from unreasonable searches and seizures, and from any search or seizure except by virtue of a warrant issued upon a formal oath or affidavit; the right of an accused person to be informed of the nature of the accusation against him, and his right to be tried by an impartial jury of the vicinage; and also the right to be secure against excessive bail and against cruel and unusual punishments.
-- Jacob Howard, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 2765
It's correct to say that the second amendment was a limit on the federal government only as decided in Barron v. Baltimore (1833). Total incorporation was the intent of the 14th even though the courts ultimately re-affirmed Barron in US v. Cruikshank (1876) which was a 14th amendment case over the 1st and 2nd amendment. De Jonge v. Oregon (1937) overturned part of Cruikshank by incorporating the right to peaceable assembly from the 1st, later that year Palko vs. Connecticut created selective incorporation doctrine and incorporated double jeopardy from the 5th, and of course McDonald v. Chicago (2010) overturned the other part of Cruikshank by incorporating the 2nd. All this to say, incorporation doctrine is pretty convoluted. If you think that the 2nd amendment should not be incorporated but the rest should then that would make things even more absurd. There's just no way via either total or selective incorporation that you can exclude the 2nd without it becoming nine judges determine what rights the government grants you, thus defeating the entire purpose of the bill of rights.
> All this to say, incorporation doctrine is pretty convoluted. If you think that the 2nd amendment should not be incorporated but the rest should then that would make things even more absurd.
Please indulge me in a hypothetical. Suppose the 2nd amendment had almost exactly the same practical effect when ratified, but was phrased as: "The Federal government may not restrict any State maintaining its militia, nor seek to restrict or impair that state's supply of future potential volunteers and their armaments."
Would you consider that to be a rule about the fed<->people relationship (creating a personal right for all "potential volunteers"), or do you read it as a rule about the balance of power between fed<->state layers?
Does the difference between those categories matter when it comes to applying the 14th, and which fed-can't-do-X rules autogenerate new state-can't-do-X rules?
> [...] without it becoming nine judges determine what rights the government grants you, thus defeating the entire purpose of the bill of rights.
Maybe, but that's an appeal to consequences, the truth of something shouldn't depend on whether we like what it says about the universe... and that's a problem we already have.
If you change what the 2nd says then it would be interpreted differently. That would not have the same practical effect either, it would invalidate a chunk of the Militia Acts of 1792.
I understand that one side of this debate really looks towards the prefatory clause as somehow being operative, but that doesn't even mesh with contemporary usage of the pattern. Two very analogous examples:
> The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a State; it ought not, therefore, to be restrained in this commonwealth.
-- Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, pt. I, art. XVI.
> The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a State; it ought, therefore, to be inviolably preserved.
-- New Hampshire Constitution of 1784, pt. I, art. XXII
This was in fact a very common construction in early American legal history. While membership in civil society may impose civic duties and responsibilities the foundational philosophy underpinning these amendments, including the 2nd, is that civil society could not abolish natural rights. The right to self-defense is deeply rooted in English common law stretching back nearly a thousand years. We therefore arrive at my two original quotes from Representatives Bingham and Howard addressing what they considered a weakness in the original construction of the Bill of Rights for which the people had no redress; Howard even mentions the operative clause specifically. They are not the only ones to mention this either given the backdrop of Southern Black Codes.
> He should have the right to bear arms for the defense of himself and family and his homestead. And if the cabin door of the freedman is broken open and the intruder enters for purposes as vile as were known to slavery, then should a well-loaded musket be in the hand of the occupant to send the polluted wretch to another world, where his wretchedness will forever remain complete.
-- Samuel Pomeroy, Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 1182
> As citizens of the United States [blacks] have equal right to protection, and to keep and bear arms for self-defense.
-- James Nye, Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 1073
The Second Freedmen’s Bureau Act even plainly states that "the right… to have full and equal benefits of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty, personal security, and the acquisition, enjoyment, and disposition of estate, real and personal, including the constitutional right to bear arms, shall be secured to and enjoyed by all the citizens of such State or district without respect to race or color, or previous condition of slavery."
To say that incorporation doctrine of any variety would not incorporate the 2nd would be to ignore both founding era law, philosophy, and the context surrounding the passage of the 14th which would render it a useless doctrine.
Did you get a chance to read the paper? Did you read Section VII and footnote 51? If so, do you still believe that the article is "clamoring for more 'cheap' labor?"
And what other issues would you like to see besides housing and employment in the article?
Have you gotten a chance to read the paper? If not, you should consider reading it. They have explained it. It's got to do around the fact that domestic labor supply is inleastic but the foreign supply is infinitely elastic. You might want to focus on sections VI and VII for more details around their model and assumptions.
I think the interesting question then moves one level down: how well do those elasticity assumptions describe the actual H-2B labor markets in the study?
The Financial Times report is behind a paywall so I'm not sure how that evaluation was reached. Also there are a bunch of bizarre financial shenanigans Musk has freely pulled with zero scrutiny. Hard to gauge the full impact of the layoffs when the person at the helm is profoundly amoral and has no scruples about lying.
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