hydroacetylene
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User ID: 128
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
In the last 100 years? Definitely not. In 1925 bank deposits were uninsured, tariffs were common, and every major country had its own gold standard.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
There's a different party on each end of the trade. The route between those parties being protected benefits both and hurts nobody.
This is a classic free rider problem. It’s always better to have the other guy go crack skulls for you than to do it yourself.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Britain and France have every incentive to kill pirates to keep the suez open. So do Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
The federal government can’t survive the hit from losing the global hegemon world reserve currency thing. Onshoring or not.
Without the inflated standard of living delivered by being the global metropole, the US experiences a prolonged crisis which probably results in balkanizing.
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
Mortgage backed securities are different in that they actually had an effect different from people reading too much into them following a high-profile news story. You couldn’t have just ignored sub-prime mortgages in ‘08 the way you could have the virus in 2020.
hydroacetylene
17hr ago
DOGE checks? Dollars to donuts Trump can just mail them out before the judges intervene.
hydroacetylene
17hr ago
Soldiers need boots.
hydroacetylene
17hr ago
Sure, the US losing global hegemony means the end of the US, at least in practice(I would consider federal state failure to be the end of the US if not resolved in <5 years). But does the US actually stand in danger of losing global hegemony? Europe and Japan and SK know they can't go it alone(although they plausibly could if they stand together without the US, but who's going to coordinate that). Avoiding having to kowtow before Russia/China may be more valuable than whatever it is Trump demands.
hydroacetylene
18hr ago
The kinds of shitty jobs that illegals do in America are easy to get in Mexico, El Salvador, etc. These countries have many problems, but not that one.
hydroacetylene
18hr ago
Mexican tradesmen do not earn the same wage premium over other blue collar labor that they do in the developed world due to low social mobility and a high labor supply. And a law degree is probably not going to be transferable.
hydroacetylene
18hr ago
Illegals in the US do not earn $80k. They earn more like $35k. Yeah, that's a lot more than $5k, even in purchasing power terms(what's El Salvador's PPP- $17k? Definitely lower than Mexico's twenty-something thousand, I know that, but how much lower?) but it's a much smaller difference.
hydroacetylene
18hr ago
A 10% blanket tax on imports is a mild price increase on Amazon and an inefficient federal sales tax. Not big news.
hydroacetylene
18hr ago
I still don't care about coronaviruses or airplane cockpit security; the threats were wildly overblown by a single high-profile incident. We didn't need to respond to covid at all(and indeed, the correct response- both with the information available at the time and with benefit of hindsight- was to just shoot the chicken littles trying to shut down society over it and declare it 'not a big deal') and 9/11 can be safely considered a one off event.
So the real question becomes 'why are tariffs more like mortgage backed securities than covid?'
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
For watercress? It doesn’t have to be transplanted, I just put a few seeds in the media and harvest as it gets crowded. Some of the plants get big others don’t. It’s not a picky crop when it’s in water.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Hydroponics are cool; I have an indoor system that gives me watercress(expensive and hard to find where I live) year-round. I’ve thought about outdoor hydroponics, any thoughts?
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Societies with slavery have such low labor costs that it doesn’t really matter, and, furthermore, slavery removes a lot of the incentives behind productivity improvements. The alternative to a $4/hr slave cook is usually a $5/hr master chef.
You can speculate all you want(and the motte has a fetish for low labor costs), but in general more economically optimized societies aren’t eager to adopt slavery. The gulf states and apartheid South Africa were not models of economic efficiency, and that’s probably the closest thing to slavery in the industrialized world.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Green crops- plant the right one for your temperature range and keep it watered. Nitrogen fertilizer.
Tomatoes- plants from a nursery in a raised bed, with a cage. Keep it watered.
Fruits- generally take sandy soil, not clay. Usually takes a lot of water.
Peppers, okra- very heat tolerant.
Squash- needs good drainage, but also plenty of water. Probably best to plant in a berm or a pot that drains well.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
You thought 'the US spends less than a billion dollars on defense in total, yet also more than the next eight countries' defense budgets combined' passed the smell test?
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Most of the non-white babies born in America are hispanic, who make good citizens as a rule- hard workers, their talented tenth can easily keep up with the whites, can learn the million and one practical skills you need to run an industrial society.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Uh, the chief military recruiting populations in the US mostly come from regions that would be more likely to take their chances at jumping in a major state crisis.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
The record of the government is that trying to fix dysfunction with more money makes it worse.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
China didn't do well enough in their border war to seriously demand territorial concessions from Vietnam though, did they?
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Taiwan hasn't shown any willingness to fight before now, these aren't slavs(who, despite their many flaws, don't have that specific one). Taiwan would just roll over without American protection.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Thank you. I read the daughter comments first specifically to see if someone would point out where this new money was going.
The six conservative justices are more consistent than the liberals, but that does not make them perfectly consistent.
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