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Comment by jredwards

17 days ago

You're assuming he has any rationale at all

Leverage over importers, i.e. all of industry. If you're a captain of industry and want an exemption or a lowered rate, they you approach the deal table, cap in hand, with tears in your eyes and beg like a dog. "Please, sir..."

In return for a minor reprieve, you ensure your factory bathrooms and hiring policies are aligned with the president's agenda, among many other things. This can be a cudgel over the heads of the Apples and Costcos of this country who dare to defy the edicts of POTUS on social policy.

  • Other popular options are very publicly taking your card of the Party, writing odes and poems to the Great Leader, and give your firstborn daughter's virginity as a token of vassality.

    The problem is not so much that people don't like doing such things - they get by - it's that, at some point, enough people will start getting more favours than you do, and you'll start feeling the need to stage a coup, which is a lot of work.

    I wonder how it will work out in a world where tiktok is always there as a much less exhausting form of entertainment than revolutions.