I hope majority of the voting population sees this for what it is. The question is is there anything that can be done about it. There is midterms but that's a long ways out, especially at the speed things are moving now. Congress isn't keeping the executive branch in check, neither is the judiciary.

The techno-libertarians I’ve interacted with were always painfully naive, with a simplistic worldview (that they thought was extremely learn’ed - mistaking their technical skill for broad intellect that understood politics to be “simple”).

If they haven’t grown up thus far, I doubt yet another logical inconsistency will puncture their shallow and hermetic understanding.

Or as I read it somewhere, “We’ve created a group of technical people who can solve any technical problem but can’t explain why Nazism is bad.”

The only thing that might pierce that veil is this: they believed they were not workers, but more like a priestly class, “self made” but immune to the travails of “everyone else”. The massive spike in layoffs, the economic slump, our increased taxes (via tariff), the rights erosions - might get them to recognize their mistake in understanding, but only if it strikes them personally (this gets back to the naïveté mentioned above).

from the technolibertarian side its great - many of the web2.0 companies were about breaking the law in some way(eg. uber, airbnb) and getting away with it. now there's a very explicit way to do so. there's also lots of change happening, so theres plenty of opportunity to make a quick buck and develop oligarchs similar to russia

This actually misses the mark. They don't need simply to be legal, they need to have been based upon an existing law or the constitution to be enforceable. In the US the executive can not create law.

That's the theory anyhow. As you mention, the courts now just obey the executive rather than acting as a check and balance as intended.

I think we have that question regardless.

> The US worked pretty well without them before?

The period between the inauguration of the first President under the US Constitution (April 30, 1789) and the first formal executive order (June 9, 1789) was 40 days, so I have no idea what you are thinking of.

EDIT: It’s worth noting that the first Act of Congress was only signed into law 8 days earlier than the first executive order was issued, so for most of the time before executive orders the executive had no actual laws to execute.

Genuine question: what are the legitimate uses of a presidential pardon? It always seemed strange to me, I don’t understand it.