Not too poor to buy things, only poor enough that you’ll consider it twice before buying another plastic piece of shit you don’t need off of Amazon. It’s absolutely messed up that the ONLY reason we can consume as we do is because we moved all the pollution and exploitation to where we can’t see it, so that we can consume with a clean conscience. I don’t know how you can defend this shit, because I can’t. If your country’s economy depends on the exploitation of the people of another’s that just colonialism disguised as free market trade.

China was an example because it’s the most well known one. Second I never said that the implementation was good itself, I just think the concept of universal tariffs is very much solid especially in terms of ethics (which Trump somewhat frames it that way, of course his intentions are both bad and not well thought out so it’s only superficial ) with the caveat that it results in short term destruction of wealth which depending on the point of view is not so bad. I at least don’t think the levels of speculation in our markets is good and anything that pops that bubble is a good thing.

I think it’s the one thing everyone can agree on.

But you have to be aware that it depends greatly on your point of view of how economies should work. Do the dynamics of economics exist simply to push up the GDP or do they exist to create abundance and prosperity that everyone can take part off? The current economic system as it works simply exists to push up the GDP increasingly through financial alchemy, speculative assets and debt. Neoliberals will hold that this is good, but I’m not convinced because my eyes and ears tell me different. This is not a sustainable economic system, even if it looks good on the surface. Or more specifically it is not a sustainable economic system for the middle class. It is schrodingers economy in a way, good and bad existing in superposition.

This is why China keeps gaining ground, they plan for the long term and have high tolerance for short term pain. Their corporations don’t sweat a bad year, look at Huawei for example. An American company I think would rather sell of its assets and give every exec a gajillion dollars before going though the trouble of rebuilding themselves from being banned from one of their largest markets. Our corps only plan on a quarter by quarter basis, our government on 4 year terms, and entire organizations change plans on a bad day at the stock market. It’s frankly ridiculous how short sighted we’ve become, and our economy really is emblematic of that short sightedness.

Right, that’s sort of what I meant but I always try to be a little more provocative because otherwise there’s no discussion. Tariffs are a good idea if you use them right, and plan on how they will be used strategically. I would still do it in a similar way that Trump did it, meaning it would apply to all countries but especially for those that keep wages low through exploitation and pollution, in such a way that the average cost of production in those countries for all major exports is the same as domestic production.

Right, that was a point I made in there somewhere. That the reality is that this will make billionaires more money which tracks with Trump. But even if that were somehow addressed the last part would still happen, it is a feature not a bug. The economic depression is necessary to burst all bubbles, and we have a lot of them, which in turn will make domestic production cheap enough that it is actually feasible. It does require the absolute implosion of markets and the destruction of all speculative wealth that exists in the system. The middle class will be the one to take the hardest hit in fact, not only because they will lose the value of their spending money, and their good paying jobs, but their retirement funds will be in tatters. Buuut if you see it through, at the end of the depression we should have a better functioning economy than what we have now. The problem is Trump simply does not have the spine nor the time to see it through and people really hate sacrificing the short term for an uncertain long term that doesn’t necessarily benefit them directly.

Anyways I think I rambled but I think the tariffs are actually a good very long term play if you are willing to cause a lot of shock and pain in the short term. We just don’t have the stomach for it, so maybe the artificially inflated economy is better. At least until the balloon pops anyways and we have no other choice but to suffer through the same depression but it is easier to stomach because there’s literally no other choice.

Golf isn’t that expensive. Not more expensive than any other hobby to be fair. He makes it expensive because he only plays in his own courses and overcharges the hell out of The White House. What they spend on renting golf carts alone is a fortune. He’s a crook, but he’s so open about it that it really doesn’t affect him. Any other president would be torn to pieces about this, because they likely have shame and would try to hide actions like this. Trump normalizes depravity.

That’s antisemitism!

This man has got to be the most punchable face in the entire world. Milhouse looking fuck.

You just know he pays black guys to fuck his wife in front of him.

What I find most fascinating/hilarous about this is “leftists” up in arms about this. This is like the most far left thing you can do other than actually seizing the means of production.

I am not exactly a leftist but I find the tariffs wonderful. Consumerism is a pox on the nation, this should fix this.

Why are we opposed to exploitation and pollution here at home but are ok when China does it because it allows us to buy a year’s worth of clothes every week for the price of single ethically produced garment??

Over leveraged billionaires are in trouble, BIGLY. If this continues they will be margin called and forced to start selling their shit. Of course the flip side is that liquid billionaires will come out of this richer than before. Probably the real plan behind this.

Also can we talk about how much of the economy was just fantasy? Billions, even maybe trillions of dollars of our economy is simply speculative value backed by mass delusion.

Turns out Trump may be a tankie after all.

The one problem is that it will not yield results within 4 years, so it will cause a whole lot of pain only for whoever is in power next to reverse it as soon as they take office. Hell this might not last till the end of the week for all we know.

I subsist entirely on the negative energy generated by people on the internet.

Also I just ate a sausage and egg sandwich and I eat about a pound of chicken every day because who the fuck needs ethics when you got muscles.

Beef is murder.

Edit: this was a joke that elicited the reaction I expect.

What a fucking shill. I’m downloading this right now.

Yep. Edge for work, Safari for personal.

Look they just don’t actually know how to make money out of it.

My intuition is that they should simply charge $3-5 per month and most users would probably choose it over every else if they prioritize privacy as a part of the sub. But I guess they are too afraid to charge for a browser.

Everything Arc does, Edge does as well. Is just not as pretty .

This is so cyberpunk.

Damn she didn’t get her tubes tied after plopping out two gremlins? Yeesh.

Edit: simmer down guys, it was a fucking joke.

It’s not validating them it’s about not letting them fester in the shadows where they can create social unrest like they are doing now. And it is a difference in opinion in a few ways, like I don’t hate trans people but I for the life of me no matter what cannot state that trans women are the same as a assigned at birth women. The fact that I had to sit and think for a moment there about which words to use so that it cannot be twisted through rhetoric highlights that. I have no hate against trans people though, I’ve even been involved with one. But to say that they are the same? I can’t trick my brain that way especially if they don’t pass. So you might say that it is a fact that trans women are women, but due to the lack of hard scientific evidence of that (and of what my own two eyes tell me) Im just gonna call it an opinion and disagree with you.

Also the reason the echo chambers are allowed to grow is because you live in a country in which freedoms of expression is a right, an almost holy one one would think, so it’s legal to say whatever hateful thing you want and be a part of hate groups. It’s enshrined in the constitution and that’s not gonna change. There’s no legal basis to disrupt them unless they act on their rhetoric.

The best you can do is not let them control the narrative and give them the spotlight a little in places where they will meet resistance so they can embarrass themselves like they always do. We used to bring the KKK on tv and they basically stopped existing for a long while after that.

This idea that letting someone speak in a forum is validating their opinions is ridiculous and is the reason we are where we are.

And the democrats stay silent which is an admission of their support. The republicans will keep twisting this knife like they always do with cultural issues ,and it will keep winning them points unless democrats come out and speak plainly against these issues or at least take the most neutral of stances. People dislike it so much they they’d rather vote for Trump or not at all than support trans women in sports or transitioning minors. This is the line that a lot of “common sense” liberals won’t cross and they so happen to be the kind of voters that win elections. I’m sorry to say but the trans community will need to keep fighting for at least a decade or two more I think.

It’s not a mode of thinking it’s a fact. As of this moment there’s no one who is even close to being a competitor to them. I’m not saying there can’t be one, but there isn’t one right now.

I don’t know, the man is hard to read. I’m extremely cynical and I don’t believe he’s genuine ever, but he gave an interview recently and he did choke up when asked how he was managing to run his companies. I don’t think he’s as good an actor to fake that.

The best conclusion I have arrived is that the man may well be completely self deluded and he might really believe himself the savior of mankind so he needs to get us to mars by any means necessary. Maybe because of the heavy drug use and obvious sleep deprivation, his sense of reality is probably warped. Or maybe the pressure from the Twitter purchase got to him and he broke because that’s when he absolutely went bonkers. He had to overleverage himself in order to do that and he even took money from the saudis.

All in all I don’t expect things to end well for him.