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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   21621 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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Yeah businesses that only exist because of free trade are not going to survive

That's essentially all of them.

No, it's not. We're talking about businesses with razor-thin profit margins and manufacturing chains spread over three continents - losing these and producing no home-grown alternatives might be a disaster but at worst removing global free trade takes us back to 1940 not 1440.

razor-thin profit margins

Well I never knew 'more excess profits for producers and higher prices for consumers' was high on the list of Trump priorities. Surprised that slogan never made it on the campaign trail.

On the face of it, yes:

Tiny profits -> lowest possible price for consumers -> GOOD

which is why it's been economic dogma for decades. However, 'tiny profit margins' is another way of saying that 'your business will go into the red if a butterfly sneezes'. Your profit margin is slack, it's robustness, it's the ability to invest without leveraging yourself to the hilt, and of course it's the ability to pay your workers more than Chinese peasants. Huge amounts of foundational innovation come from places like Apple, Bell Labs, Xerox where they had the money to try out new things.

I'm not saying that Trumpian economics is definitely a great idea, I'm just not yet convinced it's a bad one.

Your profit margin is slack, it's robustness, it's the ability to invest without leveraging yourself to the hilt, and of course it's the ability to pay your workers more than Chinese peasants.

It is not the last, because the cost of paying your workers comes out before your profit is calculated.

Precisely. If you have a very thin profit margin when you are (indirectly) employing Chinese peasants, you will have a negative profit margin if you start employing people who want higher wages. If you have a larger profit margin, then you can have more costs and still have some profit left over.

Not 1940. 1930. If we get to the modern 1940-equivalent we'll have bigger problems, like global thermonuclear war.

We're talking about businesses with razor-thin profit margins and manufacturing chains spread over three continents

Ah, so pretty much any manufacturing company.

Yes, modern manufacturing is hyper-optimised and very fragile. I think this fact is well understood.

The fundamental debate is whether this fragility + low cost + slow drain of skill is more or less desirable than trying to keep manufacturing at home, and whether the latter is possible at any decent standard.

It's hyper-optimized but it doesn't seem all that fragile seeing as we have shocks ALL THE TIME and things keep working.

I think that's overstating it, but yes most of the West's economy (in value terms) is configured for a free trade world, anybody paying attention during Covid knows this.

This is precisely the state of affairs that Trump wants undone.

Whether he has the balls to crash the American economy for years to make this transition happen remains to be seen, but it's definitely not impossible given that America has a large supply of ressources and energy.

Whether he has the balls to crash the American economy for years to make this transition happen

Isn't it more likely that even if he did have the balls to do this, he is simply liquidated sometime between then and now? I can't imagine all the powers that be and all the money involved just sitting back and letting him burn it all down just for the benefit of his own need to watch things burn.

President Vance is too much of a black box. President Johnson probably really does scare the cathedral for social-issues reasons. I think by the time we have an assassin getting that far as to put Rubio in power(and the cathedral can live with Rubio), it's an unprecedented situation that nobody knows what'll happen, so the cathedral won't do it.

That's the beauty of it: they already tried and that's how he got elected.

Not saying Trump is immune to bullets from well funded assassins, as opposed to the D team we got last time, but don't underestimate the ideological commitment of a second term president. Trump doesn't need to convince anybody anymore except congress insofar as it matters.

That's the beauty of it: they already tried and that's how he got elected.

No, I mean by someone who is actually capable of killing him. Think more the pratorians finally being done with a particularly insane emperor than a random assassin. This is something that is only going to be able to happen once as I imagine the second Trump is dead/out of office, Congress is taking away the president's tariff powers forever.

Edited to clarify.

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