functor
22hr ago
There really isn't a lot China needs to import from the US. China mainly buys airbus jets and China has already been cutting back on American goods. China imports 140 billion USD worth of goods from the US. These tariffs are on about 0.1% of the global economy and people act like the sky is falling.
What I find most interesting is how many on the left have come out as supporters of free trade. Historically opposition to free trade has been a corner stone of left wing politics.
functor
1d ago
If china was just producing plastic junk it wouldn't be an issue. BYD can produce cars at a similar quality as American companies while using their enormous home market, their mineral and processing capacity and the fact that Chinese engineers cost 20% of what American engineers cost. Far more Chinese people in the 100-120 IQ range go into trades while the west unfortunately dumps low Iq people into these jobs while pushing the slightly above average into meaningless office jobs.
Free trade was great in 1950 when the US bought bananas and sold cars. It isn't great when almost everything can be produced in China, India, Poland or Vietnam. China can even compete with AI models and satellite systems. The US can't compete without tariffs. The US risks becoming a real estate bubble using debt to buy goods from Asia.
Free trade was based on American supremacy, the rise of tariffs is the US becoming one country among many. The US isn't a global empire any more, they are a sphere of influence and need to be self sufficient.
Also with covid and Ukraine we should have learned that self sufficiency is paramount and that the US shouldn't be dependent on convoluted global supply chains. Having several supply chains in the world with local suppliers is a lot less fragile.
functor
6d ago
European manufacturing is suffering. Also Europe is largely a lot cheaper than the US. Engineers in Milan made on average 35 000 Euro last year. French electricians make around 25000 Euros a year.
functor
6d ago
There are plenty of benefits.
Makes domestic manufacturing more competitive. The US economy can't be based on finance and a tech. Wall street and silicon valley simply don't employee anywhere near enough workers to satisfy a country with 340 million people. Having a few people make vast fortunes in the medical industry and insurance while a hundred million people sell services won't be sustainable. The US has rising income inequality and the fracture between wall street and average Joe has become way too large. If pollution happened in the same area as the consumers live we would have a far greener world.
Outsourcing increased the distance between owners and workers. American oligarchs have no connection to their workers in Vietnam. If they lived in the same city the connection would be a lot stronger. Boeing workers working at the same complex as the bosses in Seattle will be treated better than workers in Mexico.
Sovereignty: Being dependent on long international supply chains is a major risk. The world risks a bronze age style collapse if global supply chains break down. Imagine a war in Taiwan, a serious pandemic, a tactical nuclear war or a meteor shutting down a few key factories. It could upend our entire civilization. We could quickly find out that farms are dependent on some supply chain for some component we never have heard of but keeps us all fed and this factory has been knocked out. The number of suppliers that supply key components to medical care, the electrical grid, oil and similar is shockingly small. Many companies are dependent on numerous supply chains and if one of them broke down it could cause cascading effects. It may be more efficient to have 1-4 global suppliers of key components than to have dozens. However, it is far more anti fragile.
functor
9d ago
I disagree with the notion that the dissident right has a weak presence on tiktok. I am seeing lots of dissident right content on tiktok and the comment sections are on fire. Tiktok has more freedom of speech than most big tech platforms and has an algorithm that makes it a lot more likely for niche content to go viral. There is a reason why tiktok is overrepresented in producing memes and trends. Tiktok is more interconnected and users are less siloed into tiny communities than most other platforms.
The group that is missing on tiktok isn't dissidents, it is the mainstream republicans, never Trumpers and American enterprise institute types. These groups need to seriously take a look in the mirror and have a long think about why their message has a non existent resonance with tiktokers. Just because Dick Cheney wears a suit doesn't make him respectable.
functor
9d ago
That’s what second strike capability is for, to maintain the threat of MAD even if a stealth first strike successfully eliminates one of the parties. Russia maintains second strike capability in two ways: 12 nuclear submarines (nuclear here meaning armed with nuclear weapons, not just nuclear powered) and a system of road mobile ICBM launchers that would be dispersed out into the Siberian countryside in the likely event of a conflict.
Historically, the submarine commanders don't have the launch codes. The soldier's with the roadmobile ICBM launchers don't have the launch codes. A second strike has historically required authorization from the two of the three launch code holders. That system doesn't work with 10 minute launches.
Russia would have to go from 3 people having launch codes and two having to push the button and having 30 minutes of time to dozens of people individually having the power to do so.
functor
9d ago
Russia has the world's largest nuclear arsenal and have modernized their platforms. There is not much Soviet hardware left in the Russian arsenal.
Russia has a solution to the first strike problem, decentralization. If it takes 30 min for a nuke to reach Russia, then Russia can have the setup where two of the three following must vote yes for a strike: the president, the commander of the Russian military, the chief of the Russian military staff.
With 10 minutes flight time there isn't enough time to have that system. Russia won't give up on mad, instead they will start handing out launch codes to lower level people. These people have an absolutely awful incentive structure. If one of their peers fire they are better off if they fire asap. Most nukes are aimed at enemy nukes. If you think one of your peers will fire and a nuclear strike in imminent, your best option is to fire away at enemy nukes. Giving more people ability to push the button, giving them less time to verify the attack and giving them an incentive to react fast is absolutely awful.
Pulling out of the INF treaty and expanding NATO eastward could be the start of the worst chain of events in 65 million years.
For Russia this war is worth it if they think the risk of a nuclear exchange is reduced by even 1% over the next century which is 1/10000 per year.
functor
11d ago
That is because it doesn't resonate with you. The story does resonate for young, attractive women. Young attractive women face a lot of bitterness and resentment from older, less attractive women. The story is effectively a warning to young women and a lesson for them. If you are being backstabbed by other women, withdraw from social games and wait until you snag a high quality man.
It also teaches be humble, be kind to those around you etc even if you are an attractive women. Don't let that attractiveness turn you into a monster.
functor
16d ago
Rather the opposite. The ADL position is open borders, wokeness and diversity in the west, Israeli nationalism for Israel. The same billionaires who happily funded woke univerities and were pushing DEI in their companies want Likud running their own country.
functor
16d ago
In other words lets defend the interests of AIPAC and the ADL while allowing free speech for attacking white people. Funny how cancel culture was so problematic for republicans until it went against AIPAC interests.
functor
22d ago
They couldnt take a city in a year and pacify it even with exceptional brutality and completely cutting off Gaza from the rest of the world.
functor
22d ago
Israel is fighting a small group of arabs with no logistics and failing to do so while consistently pestering the US for support.
functor
23d ago
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Maga is a coalition of various groups Trump has managed to get onboard by promising them various things. He has an issue that he has Tulsi Gabbard, America first nationalists and voters who have nothing to gain from warmongering in the middle east in the same coalition as Israel-first jews. They are at odds with each other.
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Bombing countries to fight insurgencies doesn't work. Laos was bombed harder than any country in WWII with little effect. Afghanistan was bombed relentlessly for 20 years with US troops on the ground coordinating the fire. Bombing Yemen is not going to be more effective than bombing the taliban was.
functor
25d ago
In many cities it is as fast if not faster. Also for most things people don't need public transit, a short walk is faster than being stuck in a car. The mindset of a car being convient because it allows people to travel far comes from people living in a dead suburb.
functor
25d ago
Cars don't give freedom. They are the most regulated form of transport. They require licenses, insurance following strict rules on the road and high costs. Most of the time a driver is stuck in traffic. Police spend more time controlling drivers than any other mode of transport.
The issue in the US is a black crime issue. Instead of solving that issue the US has revamped its cities to socially isolate people by wasting vast sums of money on cars. The result is urban sprawl with low social cohesion with fat people driving around in cars with cops controlling them.
functor
25d ago
No issue on a cargo bike. Also I prefer fresher food that buying tens of kg of food that is meant to be stored for years.
functor
25d ago
Why do you even need an SUV to buy things? You could just walk a few blocks in a sensible city and get whatever you need. The SUV solves the problem the stroad created. The issue is that people live in suburbs that have the greenery and freedom of a city while having the services of a rural area forcing people to drive places.
The car based city layout makes people obese, is ugly as sin, and isn't functional as it is incredibly demanding to maintain.
functor
27d ago
Streaming is generally seen as reactionary and antiliberal in the public system.
But it is inclusive if we rebrand it as special ed.
functor
27d ago
Is it really that bad that 25% of students get individualized coaching? The IQ spread between a student with an IQ of 70 and one with an IQ of 130+ is far too great to teach them together.
The speed at which students will learn 9 years worth of material will vary vastly and the pain points and bottle necks in learning will vary vastly. It isn't at all surprising that at least 25% of students will be out of sync with the curriculum.
Rather the opposite, North America has too few countries. Quebec should be independent, California should be independent, The south should be independent as a minimum. Giant states are hard to keep together and don't work well. There is too little cohesion, decisions are made too far from the ground and the interests are too different.
There used to be a British colony, it split in 1776, then fought a war against itself in 1812 and then split again in the 1860s. The current state is that American politics is a mess with people living in completely different realities.
functor
29d ago
The idea that this would have been some great injustice towards the Iraqis and Afghans doesn't make sense. There is no moral superiority in not annexing territory and granting citizenship.
functor
30d ago
It really made sense after WWII when the US was 50% of the world's GDP, had fighter jets while most of the world was technologically barely in the 1800s and had nukes.
The US portion of global GDP and population has steadily been falling as the rest of the world has been catching up. China has greater industrial output than the US and are not a century behind the US in tech, in fact they are a head in certain fields. Other countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Saudi Arabia etc have developed at a far faster rate than the US. In 1950 the US was the sole supplier of many industrial goods, today the reliance on American products is reduced as there are alternative suppliers for most products.
Invading countries is substantially harder today than it was in the past. Britain could take a quarter of the world, no country could hold that much territory today. Defensive technology is simply too good. Even Houthi rebels have ballistic anti ship missiles.
The US won't be able to maintain its status as an exceptional unipolar hegemon in a world in which the US isn't as exceptional. The US might be more powerful than a specific country but isn't powerful enough to be everywhere at once. They simply can't enforce a world order globally. They can enforce it in a subset of the world but the US would be stretched thin trying to enforce it everywhere at once.
functor
30d ago
so the issue wasn't murdering a million Iraqis, wrecking the country for generations and level the countries infrastructure. The great crime would have been giving them two senators, social the protection provided by the US constitution? If anything the crime was not giving them some form of citizenship. The British empires had tiers of citizenship which granted colonials some basic rights and a basic status. Why aren't people in occupied parts of eastern Syria given any recognition by the US government?
Afghanistan was colonized for 20 years yet no Afghan had access to the US legal system or bill of rights. Veterans of a de facto US military can't get access to the VA.
functor
30d ago
This hasn't been that widespread. We are told 5% of the population belong to these minorities yet there aren't 4 million gay prisoners in Iran. The handfull who end up in prison seem to either be agitators, pedofiles or people who are doing their best to provoke the system.
Being self sufficient is a goal in itself. Being reliant on other countries is a risk.
It creates good jobs in the US.
More smaller mines and processing plants in different countries is less risky than having a globally centralized industry.
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