Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
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User ID: 1226
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6hr ago
"Yes-chad", I might say to all that. Yes, I want to destroy the degenerate, consumerist, metastasized economy. Yes, I don't want cheap garbage from foreign countries. America needs harsh medicine.
One recent point of hilarity is that while there's been a movement of people on the left taking onboard traditional right-wing critiques of left-wing economic policy, there's also been a surge of right-wingers adopting what are essentially leftist degrowth arguments with a trad gloss.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
I'm fairly sure consensus within the discipline is that corporate taxes mostly fall on labor and consumers. They're politically popular because tax incidence is illegible to most voters.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
Having a lever is more control than not having it, even if you never decide to pull it.
"Undermined by lobbying efforts" is a fully generally problem for any policy. It can happen just as easily with tariffs.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
If you are going to do protectionism, tariffs are better than subsidies.
I disagree. Subsidies give you (the protecting government) more control over whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. If, e.g., you're trying to build/maintain export competitiveness, with tariffs you're hoping domestic producers decide to do that instead of collecting rents from their captive market. With subsidies you can enforce export discipline by withdrawing support from firms who don't do that or rewarding successful firms.
(Both are, of course, susceptible to corruption or throwing good money after bad)
The primary feature of tariffs strikes me as aesthetic - the payer see the transfer as a tax rather than the indirect subsidy it actually is, the beneficiary gets to pretend they're not getting a handout, and fiscal hawks don't have to bear the indignity of seeing it on the wrong side of the government balance sheet.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
What if you don't import 100% of your electricity from abroad? What if you have quite a lot of domestic electricity production already? Why does it make sense to try and preempt potential future losses by simply forgoing the gains in the first place? As your other respondent noted, poverty is easy to maintain. That's a meager virtue.
Overall lfpr is in the dumps right now
The population is getting older and more people are going to college.
No idea where to find "prime age" lfpr but some links would be nice
FRED would be good place to start: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
This gets to both sides of the tariff problem. If you're going to give domestic producers license to collect rents instead of competing, they're going to do it. And on the flip side, you're not going to maintain global competitiveness by trying to rely on a fenced off domestic market (even a big one like the US) - domestic producers are all too willing to phone it in. You demonstrably can astroturf a competitive export industry, but it relies on pretty much the opposite of trying to bolster domestic markets. You're usually deliberately screwing domestic consumers and domestic workers for the sake of international competitiveness.
(You also have to be realistic about your circumstances. US post-war supremacy in manufacturing exports was in no small part the product of a confluence of events that are not really repeatable)
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
The fundamental error is supposing there's some huge reserve of able-bodied but idle people sitting around. Prime Age LFPR is near an all-time high. Most of the people who don't have a job have a good reason for it (e.g. caretaking, education, age, disability) or are looking for one.
Isn't that just... wonderful? Isn't that exactly what Trump's base voted for? Isn't that, quite literally, how you make America great again?
Why is it wonderful? I actually don't think Trump's base voted for a plan to make everyone so poor we have to flog the elderly and disabled back on the assembly line.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
Decoupling from electricity leads to antifragility as well.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
I find it baffling that Scott Bessent cannot see that this plan cannot mathematically work.
It's entirely probable that Bessent knows these plans make no sense but doesn't find any value in saying that out loud.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
American manufacturing is actually really strong
A relevant point to the "why do I never see 'made in USA' labels" is that US manufacturing strengths are not low-end consumer goods like textiles or plasticrap. The US does a lot of high-value manufacturing, but those products are often sold to other businesses.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
We have been told repeatedly for years by the experts that making any sort of adjustment, pushing any buttons on the control panel at all, to the global trade system would lead to complete economic collapse
We push the buttons all the time. Joe Biden pushed some buttons; Trump pushed some buttons last time; so did Obama and Bush and Clinton and...
What we generally avoid doing is pushing the Big Red Button.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
It is vaguely funny watching political and economic analysts try to make sense of this and talk about this like it's a serious policy and not Trump accidentally outflanking degrowthers from the left.
Unfortunately, the humor is somewhat attenuated by the reality that an insane octogenarian billionaire is trying to wreck my country and make me poorer to satisfy his autarky fetish.
The only saving grace is that Trump is fickle
In principle, Congress could shut this whole thing down, since his authority to do this is statutory and there is pretty blatantly not an emergency.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4d ago
I enjoyed it, but I will warn a) it is incredibly slow b) basically nothing happens.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5d ago
Due process only exists if the parties involved sign on to the process
The reason you have due process for this kind of thing is that there are a variety of potential issues, like "actually I do have legal residency" or "I don't have legal residency, but there are legal reasons not to deport me (like I'll be killed)" or "I'm not who they claim I am".
"Bad guys don't deserve due process" is misunderstanding the reason we have due process.
the government should not have to legally bother to deport you, just pack you up and ship you home.
The Trump administration is not simply shipping people back to their country of origin.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6d ago
The Revolutionary War was a separatist rebellion. It could also have been a revolution within the American colonies, but by and large wasn't - the major social/political developments in the colonies had already occurred and to a significant degree the cause of the rebellion was attempts by the British government to roll them back/redefine the relationship. The post-war social order wasn't identical to pre-independence, but it was pretty similar.
Contra your follow up remark, I would say that the Haitian Revolution was a real revolution, in that it totally upended the Haitian social order, in addition to being a separatist revolt against France.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard is about the unofficial prime minister of the world going on vacation with his boss and coworkers while trying to explain his job to his relatives.
The Human Division by John Scalzi is about, essentially, a second rate team of diplomats (well, they're billed as second rate; in the actual story they appear to be pretty good at their job).
Artifact Space/Deep Black by Miles Cameron is about the crew of a Space Indiaman, and while the main character has some personal issues, the crew overall is a pretty well-oiled machine.
A weirdo leftist failing to get you banned for sharing a conservative opinion seems like evidence in favor of my point.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
More or less what what @hydroacetylene said. I'll admit that there's an element of "I know it when I see it", but I think it's important to note that it's not just (or even primarily) a proxy for rural - most Red Tribers live in suburbs/exurbs, not rural areas.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
It's not a unified subset. It's a disparate collection of individuals with discriminatory beliefs which they nevertheless consider to be an integral part of their political identity, though you can point to specific groups in some cases. Religious conservatives are a big standout on the gender and sexuality front, but they're hardly exclusive. Insofar as there's a real unifying theme, it's the "facts don't care about your feelings" aesthetic that many conservatives (especially younger ones) adopt, which IME mostly ends up glossing prejudice as "realism".
To put it as plainly as I can: whenever you find right-wingers saying "I don't think I can be open about my political beliefs because I'll be ostracized", it's never about fiscal policy or foreign policy or even touchier things like immigration or criminal justice. You can think we should slash welfare or defend aggressive foreign policy or declare that Christianity is the one true religion and your left-wing peers at college may think you're an asshole (or a rube), but you're not going to be a pariah (nor is the TA going to mark you down on your essay). The sticking point is basically always about either gender/sexuality or race, and often beliefs that would be considered boundary-pushing even in conservative milieus. For example.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
I strongly suspect that in the arts/humanities side of things, expressing conservative views/tastes in assessments will literally often get you marked down
I don't find this to be true except in one very particular sense: there are a subset of bigots who are also conservatives who define conservatism in terms of their own prejudices, who arrive in a space that is extremely hostile to those prejudices and find that expressing them gets them in trouble. You're not going to get marked down for saying we should lower taxes or be tougher on crime, for using nationalistic iconography, taking a pro-American stance in history class etc... If you study philosophy, there's a good chance there will be literal fascists on the curriculum. You may find yourself as a distinct minority opinion and arguing with your peers a lot, which is undeniably an unpleasant experience, but the actual landmines tend to be homophobia and racism.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
I'm just going to refer back to what I wrote when this came up a few years ago, since nothing has really emerged that had changed my views on the subject (tl;dr Correia and Torgersen mostly precipitated the situation they claimed to be fighting because they were upset pulp wasn't winning awards, pre-2015 Hugo winners were totally fine):
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
10d ago
it's the most hard sciences that trend most conservative to my knowledge.
Looking at donations amongst professors, if there's an effect, it's very small.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
10d ago
Red Tribers have a great deal of use for knowledge. It's just usually directly applicable knowledge.
This is my point. I want to reiterate: I am not saying that Red Tribers are stupid or have no skills. I am saying they have a general disdain for knowledge production. Which, bluntly, the rest of your comment and my own personal experience does not dispute. Knowledge is either inherited or received from trusted community members, and updated only slowly. It's not just that they don't want to personally do academic research, they don't trust the entire process because it's not part of their epistemological paradigm.
I lived in a small Red town in the US for a number of years
So did I. I've lived in Red America in one form or another (it's important to note that "red tribe" != rural) for most of my life. I went to private evangelical schools until I left for college (to my original point, my high school's college counselor advised against going to any but a select list of private Evangelical colleges). Most of my extended family is from the rural Midwest. My perspective on this is personal, not sociological.
(Something I find deeply frustrating about this forum is that it is taken as a given that criticism of the Red Tribe or Red Tribe-adjacent things are coming from a distance)
This is contrary to the industrial policy rationale. The justification being offered for tariffs is to favor some companies/sectors more than others.
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