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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   28485 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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I suspect traders are pricing in the possibility Trump will at least partially reverse course.

Yes, our expectation should be a global recession/depression with lots of international supply chain snafus. The market is currently saying surely Trump isn’t that reckless

I do think that's quite possible, but we lived through a bunch of supply chain snafus in the last five years (toilet paper, unloading at Long Beach, the Ever Given fiasco, Houthis, chip shortages) and I will admit those weren't great times but we did make it through them, and systems (capitalism?) were more robust than at least I expected.

Yes. This should seem to me, on consideration, not quite so dangerous as "shut. down. EVERYTHING" of five years ago. I expected Armageddon then, but things surprised me with their resilience. And this time - well, the question is whether the intransigence of Trump or the coherence of his coalition is greater than the public's fear of The Pandemic, but - it might be more easily taken back.

Of course, the cost of "shut down everything" turned out to be - inflation! Inflation sufficient to take down not just the sitting President, but the President after him! I'd rather we just didn't.

I'd rather we just didn't.

I think the problem is that we honestly just can't not. I think destructive nonsense like this has become an inevitability in some way, and it's going to keep happening until enough destruction has passed.

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