I compare what Trump is doing to the famous story of JCPenney. JCPenney was a mall slop store, and their core business model relied on pretending that all of their clothes were on sale when in reality that was just their normal price.
One CEO came in, and wanted to change the business model to low prices everyday. In my opinion, that was a good business move. Much bigger companies than JCPenney so have succeeded on low prices everyday, including Walmart and Target.
The problem is, there existing customer base expected fake sales and when they didn't see them they stopped coming. The result of this was a huge drop in sales.
A lot of advertisers take this to be evidence that you shouldn't make changes like that, and the return back and the ensuing recovery in sales is taken as an example of returning to normal after a bad decision.
The thing is, JCPenney still went out of business because that business model might have been making the money in the moment but it wasn't sustainable in the market that exists now. They needed to eat dirt for a few quarters and rebuild their customer base with people who weren't tricked by fake sales.
In the same way, it is entirely likely that high tariffs on countries like China will cause a major global recession. However, it's still the right thing to do. If the West wants to have things like labor law and environment regulation and reduction of carbon footprint they can't just keep on using China as a picture of Dorian Gray to cast all of our sins upon so we look like we're getting better by just getting them to do it for us.
Unfortunately, the two processes that are going on here don't act at the same speed. It takes seconds for an importer to call China and cancel their order, and it takes a couple quarters for that to burn its way through the economy. It takes years for a factory to be built, and after that it takes more years for it to get up to speed, to produce things at a profit, and to probably integrate into The national economy. Therefore, this really is an example of short-term pain hoping for longer-term game. Unfortunately, it's also an article of faith that it might actually work.
The idea that you can misread scary looking signs to be worse than they are is by no means a new one. In the epic of gilgamesh, the oldest story we have written down, has Gilgamesh and enkidu approached Humaba in the great cedar forest, and Gilgamesh had dreams that terrified him, but enkidu reassured him that they were actually signs of his ultimate victory, and he did ultimately prevail. Of course, in the same story and could do later interpreted his own dreams as a portent of his death and Gilgamesh tried to convince him that maybe the dreams meant something else but they did not, which shows that sometimes bad signs are just bad.
One CEO came in, and wanted to change the business model to low prices everyday. In my opinion, that was a good business move. Much bigger companies than JCPenney so have succeeded on low prices everyday, including Walmart and Target.
The problem is, there existing customer base expected fake sales and when they didn't see them they stopped coming. The result of this was a huge drop in sales.
A lot of advertisers take this to be evidence that you shouldn't make changes like that, and the return back and the ensuing recovery in sales is taken as an example of returning to normal after a bad decision.
The thing is, JCPenney still went out of business because that business model might have been making the money in the moment but it wasn't sustainable in the market that exists now. They needed to eat dirt for a few quarters and rebuild their customer base with people who weren't tricked by fake sales.
In the same way, it is entirely likely that high tariffs on countries like China will cause a major global recession. However, it's still the right thing to do. If the West wants to have things like labor law and environment regulation and reduction of carbon footprint they can't just keep on using China as a picture of Dorian Gray to cast all of our sins upon so we look like we're getting better by just getting them to do it for us.
Unfortunately, the two processes that are going on here don't act at the same speed. It takes seconds for an importer to call China and cancel their order, and it takes a couple quarters for that to burn its way through the economy. It takes years for a factory to be built, and after that it takes more years for it to get up to speed, to produce things at a profit, and to probably integrate into The national economy. Therefore, this really is an example of short-term pain hoping for longer-term game. Unfortunately, it's also an article of faith that it might actually work.
The idea that you can misread scary looking signs to be worse than they are is by no means a new one. In the epic of gilgamesh, the oldest story we have written down, has Gilgamesh and enkidu approached Humaba in the great cedar forest, and Gilgamesh had dreams that terrified him, but enkidu reassured him that they were actually signs of his ultimate victory, and he did ultimately prevail. Of course, in the same story and could do later interpreted his own dreams as a portent of his death and Gilgamesh tried to convince him that maybe the dreams meant something else but they did not, which shows that sometimes bad signs are just bad.
Takei is the same guy who said actions taken by the allies in a war against the literal third Reich were "fascist".
His takes would be taken out of a quarter gumball machine for being too worthless.
His takes would be taken out of a quarter gumball machine for being too worthless.
You know, I feel like one of the points of anything like the Olympics is to show what humanity is capable of, and whoever that was, that's pretty darn impressive.
There are so many individual movements there that I have never been able to do at any age and likely would not have been able to with any amount of training.
There are so many individual movements there that I have never been able to do at any age and likely would not have been able to with any amount of training.
One pet peeve I have is those devices that claim not to be vape pens, they claim that there's no vapor and that it's just flavored air.
Here's the problem: how exactly do you think air becomes flavored? Either a small amount of the chemical flavoring vaporizes under the mild vacuum when you suck on it, or small amount of chemical flavoring atomizes which is effectively the same thing for the purposes that they're talking about.
The key thing here is that flavor ends up in suspension, and then you inhale and it ends up in your mouth and down your throat and into your lungs.
Here's the problem: how exactly do you think air becomes flavored? Either a small amount of the chemical flavoring vaporizes under the mild vacuum when you suck on it, or small amount of chemical flavoring atomizes which is effectively the same thing for the purposes that they're talking about.
The key thing here is that flavor ends up in suspension, and then you inhale and it ends up in your mouth and down your throat and into your lungs.
"it's rude not to"
Yeah and it's also rude to ask for 50%.
You want 50% tip, the level of service I expect is black butler levels. Like the anime. "Sir, I used my demonic powers of hell to defeat your enemies." Ok you get 50%.
Yeah and it's also rude to ask for 50%.
You want 50% tip, the level of service I expect is black butler levels. Like the anime. "Sir, I used my demonic powers of hell to defeat your enemies." Ok you get 50%.
You'd listen to that more than most other windows startup sounds because windows 9x was as stable as that hot ex-girlfriend you had once and try not to think about anymore.
Ironically, it was quite the opposite that led to the rise of the national socialism. All the sexual liberation had people going "Holy shit we need some nazis because this shit is bananas"
Seems to me the root problem is the hollowing out of culture, and that's not something that you can legislate into existence.
If culture is failing then if it isn't social media it'll be something else. Culture and ideology must be stronger than the things that would tear it down, and we've got a fairly weak culture at the moment.
Effectively, if the dam is leaking, it's because we needed to build a better dam and it might be time to get to work before we all drown.
If culture is failing then if it isn't social media it'll be something else. Culture and ideology must be stronger than the things that would tear it down, and we've got a fairly weak culture at the moment.
Effectively, if the dam is leaking, it's because we needed to build a better dam and it might be time to get to work before we all drown.
Honestly, using base 10 for everything is actually super recent in historical terms.
For a lot of things throughout history going back the babylonians, things were base 60, the babylonians were base 24, and a lot of stuff in English history is based around these as well, which is why you'd have "sixpence" -- their entire money system was base 240 or something nuts like that. So the idea that other cultures would set up their number naming conventions on another base than 10 then look strange because of it isn't so insane.
We use base 60 more in our lives than you think -- 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours (which is divisible by 60) in a day, 360 degrees in a circle.
If you think about it, it makes some sense -- in a world before calculators, having a base that can be divided in many ways without getting into long division would be quite efficient, even if it doesn't match our number of fingers (or the number system we're using)
For a lot of things throughout history going back the babylonians, things were base 60, the babylonians were base 24, and a lot of stuff in English history is based around these as well, which is why you'd have "sixpence" -- their entire money system was base 240 or something nuts like that. So the idea that other cultures would set up their number naming conventions on another base than 10 then look strange because of it isn't so insane.
We use base 60 more in our lives than you think -- 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours (which is divisible by 60) in a day, 360 degrees in a circle.
If you think about it, it makes some sense -- in a world before calculators, having a base that can be divided in many ways without getting into long division would be quite efficient, even if it doesn't match our number of fingers (or the number system we're using)
The advice to change jobs every 2 years to make sure you optimize the amount of money you make intuitively seems like the sort of thing that is statistically true but is missing the bigger picture. It's the sort of thing that seems like it'll work for a while if some people do it, but if enough people are doing it hiring managers will start selecting against it.
Usually 2 years is the amount of time it takes for someone to actually be up to speed at their job, so spending 2 years training someone just to have them rush off at the moment they're actually useful doesn't seem like a good look.
My experience (and I'm not in silicon valley so take it for what it's worth), has been that karma has a tendency to throw opportunities to you every 4 years, and 4 years is long enough that your boss won't feel taken advantage of for training you. OTOH, 4 years often is enough runway for other opportunities to show up in the one organization.
It isn't like a hard time limit -- sometimes switching much earlier is the right answer if something you couldn't possibly live without happens, and sometimes those opportunities come to you and they're not worth taking, and sometimes you're in something really good and it's worth sticking around and becoming the old greybeard who knows what you're working on inside and out. But a hard 2 year career cadence will eventually start showing up on your resume, I suspect.
Usually 2 years is the amount of time it takes for someone to actually be up to speed at their job, so spending 2 years training someone just to have them rush off at the moment they're actually useful doesn't seem like a good look.
My experience (and I'm not in silicon valley so take it for what it's worth), has been that karma has a tendency to throw opportunities to you every 4 years, and 4 years is long enough that your boss won't feel taken advantage of for training you. OTOH, 4 years often is enough runway for other opportunities to show up in the one organization.
It isn't like a hard time limit -- sometimes switching much earlier is the right answer if something you couldn't possibly live without happens, and sometimes those opportunities come to you and they're not worth taking, and sometimes you're in something really good and it's worth sticking around and becoming the old greybeard who knows what you're working on inside and out. But a hard 2 year career cadence will eventually start showing up on your resume, I suspect.
You've still got one of the only decent instances on lemmy. I'm obviously not over there much, but it understands life is fun.
He reminds me of a male Kamala Harris, but I'm worried Canadians actually are dumber than Americans and will let him get a win anyway.
Sort of a sparse season of anime, tbh. On the other hand, we've had banger after banger for a long while, so it's kind of unfair to expect that every season (and not everyone like dumb trash isekai like I do)
People need to be careful when acting as if history started recently.
The US has had a number of protectionist regimes through its history, and many of them were far more potent than anything we're seeing out of Trump's Whitehouse.
In 1807, The Embargo Act effectively banned trade with Britain altogether. Considering that they were the biggest trader on earth at the time and the largest manufacturer, that would be like totally banning trade with China. This was done to pressure England and France to respect American neutrality during the Napoleonic wars. The embargos ultimately led to tensions which culminated in the war of 1812.
In 1828, very high tariffs between 45 and 50% were implemented to protect American manufacturing. This was called the "tariffs of abomination" and had major negative effects on the south, who relied both on European imports and exports, and faced reciprocal tariffs. The South eventually sought to nullify the tariffs in an early example of the tension between the north and the south which would ultimately lead to the civil war.
In 1832, those tariffs were dropped to about 35%. That was considered a compromise, but they were still considered quite high.
It wasn't until 1846 that tariffs dropped somewhat, and even then they weren't lower than Trump's across the board tariffs today.
Some of these embargo or tariff regimes did in fact have recessionary effects, and tariffs were the cause of some recessions not attributable to the debt cycle.
Reality is that tariff based protectionism is complicated. On one hand, global trade does tend to result in higher overall growth, so low tariffs are good in that regard. On the other hand, it can also result in markets that are somewhat exploitative and extractive -- if we extract materials such as metals or agricultural output and ship it elsewhere for value added processing, you almost end up with primary producers as colonial economies, only existing to enrich stockholders who are likely not even from this country (and in fact this practice of economies shipping out raw materials and shipping in finished goods has been called neocolonialism). It isn't a new idea -- Alexander Hamilton proposed a protectionist industrial policy in his Report on Manufactures as early as 1791, which recommended protectionist measures to protect against cheaper and more advanced British exports.
With tariffs being complicated, it's true that a lot of the instances above caused pain for Americans. The embargo act really hurt the US more than Europe. Industrial tariffs harmed the southern US and was likely one of the pressures behind the civil war, and the high tariffs in that period did absolutely cause a recession, as I've noted. However, it's also true that there were benefits for at least some Americans, with the US industrial base being reliant on early tariffs to compete with cheaper and more advanced British goods.
"Free trade" as a dogmatic mantra in the United States is relatively new in concept, and was practical in part because in the post-war period the United States dominated value added industries like manufacturing because most of the rest of the world had been bombed into dust in two world wars.
People who think Trump's protectionist tariffs make no sense simply don't know about a big chunk of America. If you replace a union factory with a strip mall, it's cold comfort to say "the global GDP went up. You should be happy." -- workers don't get paid in GDP, only the state does, and shareholders also benefit to an extent, but at the cost of local communities. Perhaps cotton is grown in America, processed in China, clothing is manufactured in Bangladesh, packaged in Singapore, then shipped back to the United States -- and that's fine for global GDP and share prices, but no local communities benefit.
Like it or not, extractive versions of free trade are considered neocolonialism, and even when it results in regions that are wealthy for a while, eventually it sends the wealth elsewhere and someone else capitalizes on that wealth. For an example, North America was focused on building value added industries early on, but South America was considerably more extractive. At first South America was considered wealthier since they were better capitalizing on natural resources, but today even a hollowed out America is still a more attractive place to live despite the fact that geographically, South America is still a place more suited to human florishing for the most part, given how much of the US is desert or swamp, and how much of South America is dense and green.
The bottom line here is that history didn't start in 1901, and there are a lot of examples of protectionist tariffs in the United States. Compared to those eras, the current tariffs by Donald Trump would even be considered relatively low. The post war situation of free trade between the United States and other countries was an aberration caused in part by extremely favorable conditions to the United States, but as the global economic system is normalized those assumptions may no longer be an important. That doesn't mean that tariffs are a entirely net good, or that they are entirely good for the entire country or entirely bad for the entire country, historically different economic blocs within the county had different opinions on the topic. All that being said, however, it should be obvious that the truth is more nuanced than protective tariffs simply being a stupid idea brought up by an idiot.
The US has had a number of protectionist regimes through its history, and many of them were far more potent than anything we're seeing out of Trump's Whitehouse.
In 1807, The Embargo Act effectively banned trade with Britain altogether. Considering that they were the biggest trader on earth at the time and the largest manufacturer, that would be like totally banning trade with China. This was done to pressure England and France to respect American neutrality during the Napoleonic wars. The embargos ultimately led to tensions which culminated in the war of 1812.
In 1828, very high tariffs between 45 and 50% were implemented to protect American manufacturing. This was called the "tariffs of abomination" and had major negative effects on the south, who relied both on European imports and exports, and faced reciprocal tariffs. The South eventually sought to nullify the tariffs in an early example of the tension between the north and the south which would ultimately lead to the civil war.
In 1832, those tariffs were dropped to about 35%. That was considered a compromise, but they were still considered quite high.
It wasn't until 1846 that tariffs dropped somewhat, and even then they weren't lower than Trump's across the board tariffs today.
Some of these embargo or tariff regimes did in fact have recessionary effects, and tariffs were the cause of some recessions not attributable to the debt cycle.
Reality is that tariff based protectionism is complicated. On one hand, global trade does tend to result in higher overall growth, so low tariffs are good in that regard. On the other hand, it can also result in markets that are somewhat exploitative and extractive -- if we extract materials such as metals or agricultural output and ship it elsewhere for value added processing, you almost end up with primary producers as colonial economies, only existing to enrich stockholders who are likely not even from this country (and in fact this practice of economies shipping out raw materials and shipping in finished goods has been called neocolonialism). It isn't a new idea -- Alexander Hamilton proposed a protectionist industrial policy in his Report on Manufactures as early as 1791, which recommended protectionist measures to protect against cheaper and more advanced British exports.
With tariffs being complicated, it's true that a lot of the instances above caused pain for Americans. The embargo act really hurt the US more than Europe. Industrial tariffs harmed the southern US and was likely one of the pressures behind the civil war, and the high tariffs in that period did absolutely cause a recession, as I've noted. However, it's also true that there were benefits for at least some Americans, with the US industrial base being reliant on early tariffs to compete with cheaper and more advanced British goods.
"Free trade" as a dogmatic mantra in the United States is relatively new in concept, and was practical in part because in the post-war period the United States dominated value added industries like manufacturing because most of the rest of the world had been bombed into dust in two world wars.
People who think Trump's protectionist tariffs make no sense simply don't know about a big chunk of America. If you replace a union factory with a strip mall, it's cold comfort to say "the global GDP went up. You should be happy." -- workers don't get paid in GDP, only the state does, and shareholders also benefit to an extent, but at the cost of local communities. Perhaps cotton is grown in America, processed in China, clothing is manufactured in Bangladesh, packaged in Singapore, then shipped back to the United States -- and that's fine for global GDP and share prices, but no local communities benefit.
Like it or not, extractive versions of free trade are considered neocolonialism, and even when it results in regions that are wealthy for a while, eventually it sends the wealth elsewhere and someone else capitalizes on that wealth. For an example, North America was focused on building value added industries early on, but South America was considerably more extractive. At first South America was considered wealthier since they were better capitalizing on natural resources, but today even a hollowed out America is still a more attractive place to live despite the fact that geographically, South America is still a place more suited to human florishing for the most part, given how much of the US is desert or swamp, and how much of South America is dense and green.
The bottom line here is that history didn't start in 1901, and there are a lot of examples of protectionist tariffs in the United States. Compared to those eras, the current tariffs by Donald Trump would even be considered relatively low. The post war situation of free trade between the United States and other countries was an aberration caused in part by extremely favorable conditions to the United States, but as the global economic system is normalized those assumptions may no longer be an important. That doesn't mean that tariffs are a entirely net good, or that they are entirely good for the entire country or entirely bad for the entire country, historically different economic blocs within the county had different opinions on the topic. All that being said, however, it should be obvious that the truth is more nuanced than protective tariffs simply being a stupid idea brought up by an idiot.