Comment by dragonwriter

What's the laden velocity of a spherical import with no air resistance?

  E.g. one explanation given for these trade policies is that trump sees a war with china down the line and is worried that china has tons of factories that could be converted to make ammunition while usa does not.

1. US will never outproduce China in ammunition

2. Alienating allies won't help the US produce ammunition

You're giving him too much credit.

Trump has always liked tariffs [alas, I can't find the source for this pre-presidency, its been blown out by current events]. He thinks trade is a zero sum game, and thinks that someone else set up the petro-dollar system.

Trump has consistently and reiliably always cowered away from war. Using other means to stop it (see russia, NK, China, Iran). Yes I hear the "we're going to invade x, y and z" but they never acutally came to anything (is that because of his advisors?)

Trump doesn't think about future capacity, only future pride. Does this change "make american stronger, and other weaker" is pretty much the only calculus that he's doing.

Trump's thinking is roughly as following:

"Why do we have taxes when we can use tariffs to raise cash and bring power back?"

"Why don't they buy from us?"(china/rest of asia)

"why are we spending money on them, when we don't get any money back? They are weak."(NATO)

"Why are we punishing russia, they are offering deals" (Putin offering cash deals)

There is no 4d chess. Its just a man who's pretty far gone, shitting out edicts to idiots willing to implement them.

It is the logic of schoolchildren. It is the simplistic logic of a teenager discovering Ayn Rand's wikipedia entry. (Grover Norquits came up with his tax pledge while in highschool.) The world is more complicated than any econ 099 exam.

The US are never going into a direct war with China, and China is never going into a direct war with the US. This is M.A.D in action.

At most we might see a proxy war over Taiwan (i.e. the US supporting and arming Taiwan, with sanctions against the PRC). The risk would then be a widespread disruption of global trade, at which point the US would not want to be dependent on the Chinese economy or factories in any way.

There is no logic to these things. This is the emperors new clothes, over and over again.

The proximate cause for these tariffs is not some future event. This is post fact rationalization.

The proximate cause is still the ongoing “information” war which determines the perceived reality that is litigated in elections.

Earlier politicians played theater, acting as if the red meat being fed to voters was real on TV, but dealing with reality as need be when it came to decision making.

This was a betrayal of voters, who saw their election efforts result in legislators who didnt do what they said.

Trump does what he says. He believes WWE is real, and acts as if it is. His base believes it is real, and now reality is crashing with the fiction.

The fiction will prevail, because his party has also been working to build the power to enact their will.

Everyone sees logic here, the same way that everyone saw the emperors clothes. The alternative is illogical.

This is the reason potential reasons “we dont know” have to be postulated (war / China can make more ammunition)

How will they project power into the Asia Pacific now they have tariffed their allies and probably forgotten about AUKUS?

I like this take a lot. I also think that America competing on manufacturing is obviously never going to happen.

>Trump sees a war with china down the line

So is destroying diplomatic relations with all their allies and trying to force ceding of power in central Europe to a former enemy who is allied to China?

Go on with ya.

He's a prick saving himself from prison whilst being willingly used to establish an oligarchic fascist state from the former USA.

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I wouldn't put 100% of the blame on the Democrats, here in Australia we are frequently voting for the least worst option not the best, and I'm not sure how the Democrats weren't the least worst option when compared to the other option

but for some reason a whole heap of people decided to stay home this time and this is the result, hope they still feel happy with their decision

> You have a narcissistic asshole in the White House who got elected because the Democratic Party fumbled the ball.

It don't want to sound too persnickety, but there is always at least one losing side in an election. It doesn't have to mean they dropped the ball, it could just mean people preferred the other option. Hindsight bias is wonderful, but you have no idea what would have happened if they'd run with a different agenda, they may have had a worse result.

Some corrupt members of Congress and the judiciary deserve some of the blame.

I don't think half the population drafted this policy, so I could easily think the specific construction of the policy is insane without believing half the country is.

There's been some reporting that even die hard Trump supporters don't believe a lot of what he says. This gives them the ability to pick and choose what they believe and allowed him to appeal to a larger group.

How someone would vote for someone they know is lying is beyond my comprehension, but here we are.

It is insane and they are insane.

https://nitter.net/KushDesai47/status/1907618136444067901

Because Trump won the vote, you believe that half the population understands and supports his every action. That doesn't follow. His shit still stinks. Pretty sure The Right now have to say how sweet it smells.

A large portion of the base, is aghast at his actions, until someone on the news comes up with the defensive talking points.

THIS is sanewashing.

People dont have to be insane to do this, they just have to listen to their trusted news sources.

There are two issues with this thinking:

1. It is authoritarian. Democratically elected leader's duty is to present the policies he plans to implement so that voters can decide if they want them implemented.

2. It is based on the "4D chess" myth - that the leader is way smarter than the rest and is capable of outsmarting other countries. The history shows that it is never true. The leaders are normal people. And the institutions are as good as the founding principles that are honored by them.

1) heads of state can in fact be incredibly incompetent 2) the goal could entirely be 'stay in power' (which can also be implemented incompetently!)

The UK for a good few years had a government which had both these attributes. They were only interested in policies which would appeal to their base, but eventually even those soured on them because the policies were implemented so badly.

"Very smart people"

https://nitter.net/KushDesai47/status/1907618136444067901

Occam’s razor is specifically a counter to this.

The simplest solution is the right one. You are projecting intelligence, because you are used to.

This is AFTER the US government has roundly fired thousands of their experts and workforce, AND has just told everyone of its intelligence and army rank and file that there are no repercussions for a massive dereliction of duty.

AND IT IS ONLY APRIL.

That formula just simplifies to trade_deficit/2*total_imports per country. It doesn't disprove anything it just looks fancier but the two extra terms are constants that simplify to 2. If you do the math it lines up for every country that didn't get the default 10% rate.

https://imgur.com/a/jBTiz7T

What’s QRT?

> arabic numerals

Soon to be "Numerals of America"

I’m afraid they’ll be learning about reverse Polish notation.

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