You forget what has already happened. Canada has escalated the trade war ... that cannot be explained by your reasoning. And the flaw is this: yes, Canada cannot seriously hope to defend against Russia without the US, and needs a US alliance, but they also see the US has no choice but to defend any Russian attack. Either that, or face Russian nukes in Ottawa. So, Canada escalates.
Plus, I get that it makes sense for you to think about it this way. But given the choice to get fucked militarily BUT get a few more euros now, I guarantee every EU government will choose to get fucked militarily. 95% of the EU countries only have to "sacrifice" in that OTHER countries get fucked militarily, so it's not a hard choice.
And that is before you factor in that Russia is not in any shape to attack any European nation of importance right now, not even Poland. In other words: the politicians choosing to act on the military problem or choose a quick buck ... will be out of office by the time their military decision matters!
And, lastly, I put forward the history of the UN. The great forum for international cooperation and making compromises in shared interests. The first 3 things the UN was going to solve with this cooperation-not-obstinate-refusal-to-accept-reality was the "Arab Issue" (now better known as Israel-Palestine), Kashmir (which under UN guidance has lead to such "successes" as the Partition wars, which when combined made more victims than WW2 according to some sources), and the Congo-Rwanda issue (which has raged on, with no-one actually caring after colonialism ended, and is now at risk of turning into a pan-African war involving every country from Morocco to South Africa). I'm glad they got all those issues solved to everyone's satisfaction before they were going to try forcing the US, EU and ... to cooperate because otherwise absolutely no-one would believe they have any chance whatsoever.
Besides: your hope that foreign governments will act in the interests of "the citizens of the world" (when the vast majority won't even act in the interest of their own citizens) ... what exactly is that idea based on? 12% of the world are free democracies and mostly do that. What about the rest?
What Trump and GOP said they'd do closely followed "project 2025" and the top level of tariffs proposed in that text was 10% ... and that was on China.
Trump is levying a 35% tariff on the penguins of Heard and McDonald Islands. No humans present, and also no clarification by the administration on who exactly is being taxed here ...
Trouble is, Trump is still popular. This pain will filter through the economy, but one would expect, it will filter through slowly. It may take 6 months, even 12 before it will really turn republican voters against Trump due to personal hardship.
The whole point was to know WHAT these actions were in response to. Was it threatening individuals? Groups? Was it lying about government actions? Was it dick picks?
WHAT is happening here? We don't know. And the government is not saying, beyond publishing how much they're doing.
And the law is not much help: they're punished for "causing offence", not even specified to whom (mayors seem to be overrepresented, although there seem to also be majors on the receiving end)
> WHAT is happening here? We don't know. And the government is not saying, beyond publishing how much they're doing.
It's the same for robberies, petty fraud, assaults, etc. Just the totals in broad categories are published.
There is a reason for that, privacy, personal details of victims and the actually innocent although accused. These are things that take time, money, resources to scrub from the public record and so are not publicly published.
The reporting done on robberies is done by reporters who understand the privacy laws and apply for access, by people that attend courts or pull transcripts and sign off on the privacy aspects.
Researchers get full unfettered access to entire databases on the same basis.
If you want to know more then take action to allocate funds to drill into the data, write to a newspaper and lobby for them to do the drudge work, approach universities that study crime stats.
Crime reporters, and interested general public, look at the Court dailies and attend hearings on subjects of interest. That's how the public hears about details of a spicy robbery, fraud, or assault. That or parties involved alerting reporters.
The fire retardant ... actually does retard the fire, right. A tiny bit of extra toxicity in trade for much less stuff getting burned may be worth it.
If you're looking for some negative on anything, you will find it. Always. The question should be if it's a net positive or not.
In reality people are just looking for something bad, so they can find something that was wrong/against the law, so they can blame them, so they can get money from them.
> The fire retardant ... actually does retard the fire, right. A tiny bit of extra toxicity in trade for much less stuff getting burned may be worth it.
And water does, too.
The real question is: is this extra toxicity worth it?
I understand your reaction, it's common. But irrational. It's akin to saying "If Trump can improve the country at the cost of some disagreement, then maybe it's worth it, so I voted Trump". What if he doesn't improve the country, and you just get the cost?
It's a good question to ask. You should just not base your opinion on the uninformed assumption you make ("I assume that because it may be worth it, then it actually is worth is").
> It's akin to saying "If Trump can improve the country at the cost of some disagreement, then maybe it's worth it, so I voted Trump"
Frankly in my opinion Trump got elected due to this attitude. Obviously, Trump or no Trump (and when he gets out of office, even if that's only when he dies) we will still have to live with MAGA people, right? They're not going to disappear. And, frankly, the ONLY break on republican power at the moment is that while they have power, they have to live with democrats. No choice. (yes, there's state and judicial power, but at this point there at best reminding Trump he has to live with at least some democrat viewpoints and laws. Not zero, but not much)
Imho Trump, and definitely Trump's actions, are the result of MAGA people shouting very, very loudly "NO COMPROMISE". And, why? Well, the democrat-supported demonstrations (Gaza, BLM, climate, and ...) were to some extent shouting the same. "NO COMPROMISE". No talking. The Gaza demonstrations were totally unwilling to discuss what conditions to force on Hamas, any at all, just as BLM demonstrations were totally unwilling to discuss solutions, just as ... The Gaza demonstrations were about winning, not about Israeli-Palestinian peace. The BLM demonstrations were about winning, not about compromise. And so on. They were just accusing everyone else of being horrible, depraved human beings that should essentially be murdered to the last man because of some (admittedly very fucking serious) mistake they made.
Then some evil election planner went to Trump, and pointed out that the 2016-2020 presidency would come with the ability to get the supreme court in the camp of whoever got elected president AND the 2024-2028 election provided 2+ years majorities in congress, in addition to the presidency ... and Trump (+ cronies) jumped on it. Yes, the goal was probably to get Trump in for 3 terms, so thank God for Biden. But there you are.
But then, at the tail end of Biden's presidency ... the economy showed clear signs of going down significantly (Trump is to blame for the MOMENT of the stock market crash, but imho ... at best 50% for it happening at some point), and the incumbent party was voted out, first in congressional elections, then in the presidency. As always happens in those circumstances. I believe over 200 years only twice has it been different (and one of those 2 times was WW2, so presumably it was a time the average house cat would have agreed there were more pressing matters than the economy)
And now we're here, sitting pretty, after years of shouting "NO COMPROMISE! NEVER" ... with the people we were never going to compromise with in power ... in congress ... in the senate ... and the orange tomato president.
Let's face facts here: we will be making a LOT of concessions before the 2026 elections, because why would republicans give us anything at all? (yes, because we still have to live together). After that less, but still making concessions until, hopefully 2028. People actually thinking about pros and cons, even when there's an easy target to blame, I hope THOSE will bring us forward.
Making a coalition of people who realize that for 2 to 4 years, we'll have to live with republicans in power, and then for at least 4 years hopefully they'll have to live with democrats in power again. People who compromise and live together, THAT is the way forward. And frankly, that answers all the republican shouting points too. A large people who compromise ... can take on China, because over there, there is no compromise, and with that complete morons in power, and zero loyalty. They cannot win against an army of soldiers that believe they'll be welcome in the country they fight for.
My point was really just to say that it's good to say "If this brings X at the cost of Y, then it may be worth it" (that raises great questions), but it is wrong to conclude just from that that it actually is worth it.
I see many people jump to this conclusion, and the logic is flawed. I mentioned Trump because I've heard many people justify their voting for Trump like this.
The correct way of doing it is:
1. "If this brings X at the cost of Y, then it may be worth it"
In your previous post you were making the argument that the cost was not even worth looking at, much less comparing, because that by itself, any compromise, would be bad (and lead to trump)
My point was that the logic "I can imagine that it may be worth doing X even if there is a cost Y, so it must be worth it" is wrong. If it may be worth it, it means that you need to investigate.
I've been to a lot of places and this is actually how the majority of the world looks. China looks like this. The Philippines looks like this. Turkey looks like this (though the streets are far cleaner than average for 3rd world or even 2nd world). South Africa looks like this. Congo, if you adjust your opinion of what richess is, and what poverty is, down, looks like this.
You can find far, far more luxurious hotels in South Africa or the Philippines than in Switzerland or England.
Some days I think the difference between 1st world and 3rd world is not so much wealth, but the division of wealth.
No ... they do not make the US poorer. Trade deficits make every other country poorer, but not in the case of the US. That's the "deal" that Nixon forced at Bretton Woods.
Why the difference? Because they're measured in USD: if a trade deficit makes the US poorer, the US can simply print dollars until they've recovered whatever they've lost, or more.
Another huge problem in the article linked: "a trade deficit is like buying stuff with a credit card". True, but I would emphasize VERY strongly that it's a credit card with a MINUS 4% interest rate.
The US gets to print money that is accepted worldwide (and countries accept that their central bank holdings, minimum X, get devalued at on average 4% per year), but the US side of the deal is that the US provides a market for worldwide goods and hoovers up excess production capacity of essentially the entire world. (there's more to it, like the world bank, but ...)
The deal is that this massively raises world economic output, as long as the US has massive, perhaps not unlimited, but massive trade deficits.
TLDR: for the US, the deal is, free money but you don't get to do protectionism. For the rest of the world, the opposite. Every dollar is accounted for BUT they can be as protectionist as they like (and they are). Oh and only the US gets to make huge loans to the rest of the world.
An issue with this is: all the free money in the US is disbursed through US banks and, essentially, put in the stock market (with a -small- percentage going to the US government). It took the banks 50 years, but they figured out how to keep it enough for themselves to make the system sputter. Of course, the issue the banks have is: the system has been sputtering since, oh, 2019 or so. If it breaks down, the stock market will not drop 10%, but 95% at least. THAT's the risk Trump is messing with.
But Trump is also right that it is Europe and China that broke the deal, not the US. China is trying to create a parallel reserve currency that they can print, the "digital Yen" (+ the belt and road initiative). Europe has created the Euro while remaining protectionist. Both are existential threats to the US' reserve status, but frankly, they're not really making a dent.
Now Trump wants to countries to work harder on their side of the deal WHILE reneging on the US part of it.
Musk is explainable. Tesla WAS going to fail, and that became inevitable long before the election. Musk was going to lose big whether Trump or Harris (or Biden) got elected. Granted, probably less dramatic and slower failure than what we see now, but it was always going to fall big. Musks' new design, the cybertruck is a disaster, and he would have been the first to know. BYD is eating Tesla's lunch ... and BYD is merely the first and currently highest profile of 10 Chinese companies coming out with electric cars.
And yet, I do think Musk is actually worse off in his current position than he would have been under Harris. Which shows, yet again, what a "great thinker" he is cough. He acted, because he's under threat, that makes sense, but his actions made his situation worse than it would have been had he done nothing.
Then again, in this market, I bet a lot of people feel like that.
Agreed that Musk would have been vastly better off with Harris, but I think his actions are purely reactive. It's not his fault that Harris lost. He's just trying to make lemonade, having seen early on that life was about to hand us all a lemon. For every normal person who refuses to buy a Tesla, he has to sell one to a MAGA cultist, and that is never going to happen.
The fact that his "lemonade" tastes suspiciously like pee is his fault, though.
Plus, I get that it makes sense for you to think about it this way. But given the choice to get fucked militarily BUT get a few more euros now, I guarantee every EU government will choose to get fucked militarily. 95% of the EU countries only have to "sacrifice" in that OTHER countries get fucked militarily, so it's not a hard choice.
And that is before you factor in that Russia is not in any shape to attack any European nation of importance right now, not even Poland. In other words: the politicians choosing to act on the military problem or choose a quick buck ... will be out of office by the time their military decision matters!
And, lastly, I put forward the history of the UN. The great forum for international cooperation and making compromises in shared interests. The first 3 things the UN was going to solve with this cooperation-not-obstinate-refusal-to-accept-reality was the "Arab Issue" (now better known as Israel-Palestine), Kashmir (which under UN guidance has lead to such "successes" as the Partition wars, which when combined made more victims than WW2 according to some sources), and the Congo-Rwanda issue (which has raged on, with no-one actually caring after colonialism ended, and is now at risk of turning into a pan-African war involving every country from Morocco to South Africa). I'm glad they got all those issues solved to everyone's satisfaction before they were going to try forcing the US, EU and ... to cooperate because otherwise absolutely no-one would believe they have any chance whatsoever.
Besides: your hope that foreign governments will act in the interests of "the citizens of the world" (when the vast majority won't even act in the interest of their own citizens) ... what exactly is that idea based on? 12% of the world are free democracies and mostly do that. What about the rest?
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