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American Disruption

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Re: American Disruption

#21

Post by [deleted] »

neogodless wrote: post #6
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #4

Sure, but aren't we past rational debate on this point? Not only are the new trade policies irrational, it's quite possible that they're intentionally irrational as a bargaining or maneuvering tactic. We're not going to reason or argue our way out of this one. As I commented yesterday, there's a playbook for reshoring that's being totally ignored: First you invite industry to reshore via subsidies and preferential ac…

Hopefully we're never past rational debate. I mean, the people making decisions might be well past rational, but hopefully there's always a contingent of people putting deep, rational thought into what might be the best plan to utilize going forward. And hopefully good ideas keep spreading and somehow find their way back to the top. Before it's too late.

[deleted]

Re: American Disruption

#22

Post by OgsyedIE »

alabastervlog wrote: post #15
OgsyedIE wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preferences are independent of rationality, surely? If a guy with a finite lifespan has a preference for autarky, expansionist military invasions, racial hierarchies and a secret police regardless of the consequences and then rationally pursues those preferences in ways that are likely to bring them about before his death of old age, the guy doesn't qualify for the category "delusional" and instead fits into one of t…

One of his preferred "gurus" is a guy who pushed one of those self-help bullshit "if you just believe hard enough, you'll manifest your desires!" proto- The Secret frameworks, and he does appear to operate that way—strident bluster, declaring defeats and "white peace" as unqualified victories, willfully ignoring inconvenient facts, all that stuff. Like, look at the totally-bizarre sharpie incident in his first term,…

A certain amount of bullshitting is a rational strategy for sane, low-conscientousness actors with middling intellects.

Re: American Disruption

#23

Post by matwood »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #4

Sure, but aren't we past rational debate on this point? Not only are the new trade policies irrational, it's quite possible that they're intentionally irrational as a bargaining or maneuvering tactic. We're not going to reason or argue our way out of this one. As I commented yesterday, there's a playbook for reshoring that's being totally ignored: First you invite industry to reshore via subsidies and preferential ac…

If the goal was to really reshore there are a lot of ways to encourage companies to move in that direction. The CHIPS act is one but Trump wants to cancel it. And I'm sure there are others than can work, but broad based tariffs are not a solution.

Re: American Disruption

#24

Post by matwood »

exe34 wrote: post #20
morsecodist wrote: post #13

Talking about the merits of these tariffs kind of misses the point. The person who wrote this article is very smart. I am sure they are smarter than I am. He has produced a pretty solid analysis of trade policy. But in articles like this people ascribe their own motivations and goals to the tariffs that aren't actually there. Buried in this article is the assumption that the motivation of tariffs and trade policy is…

> The administration characterizes trade imbalances as countries taking advantage of us. it seems likely to me that they know their voting base is too dumb to understand, so they make up stuff that sounds good to get the support.

Like how they keep incorrectly characterizing VAT.

Re: American Disruption

#25

Post by jonnat »

morsecodist wrote: post #13

Talking about the merits of these tariffs kind of misses the point. The person who wrote this article is very smart. I am sure they are smarter than I am. He has produced a pretty solid analysis of trade policy. But in articles like this people ascribe their own motivations and goals to the tariffs that aren't actually there. Buried in this article is the assumption that the motivation of tariffs and trade policy is…

Worse than projecting one's values onto a rationalization of the new tariffs is to simply take the administration's rhetoric at face value. That other countries are "taking advantage of us" is just a talking point. We have to look at how the tariffs fit historical conservative programs. Republicans have long wished to replace our progressive income taxation with a flat tax system, but that's simply not achievable, even for Trump. Further decreasing tax rates from high earners and replacing revenue with tariffs to avoid the ballooning of the government debt, for which Trump was heavily criticized during the first term, may be the closest he can get to approximating flat taxation.

Re: American Disruption

#26

Post by tonyedgecombe »

morsecodist wrote: post #13

Talking about the merits of these tariffs kind of misses the point. The person who wrote this article is very smart. I am sure they are smarter than I am. He has produced a pretty solid analysis of trade policy. But in articles like this people ascribe their own motivations and goals to the tariffs that aren't actually there. Buried in this article is the assumption that the motivation of tariffs and trade policy is…

It reminds me a lot of Brexit. Politicians in the south of the country were warning that the financial sector (predominantly in London) would loose 100,000 jobs and people in the north were saying "oh, that sounds pretty good".

A few years later when that didn't happen to that extent I remember an interview with someone from a fishing port which lost a lot of business that previously went to Europe. They were complaining that Brexit wasn't hurting the right people and why are prices increasing all the time.

It seems no amount of logic is going to convince some people.

Re: American Disruption

#27

Post by spacemadness »

morsecodist wrote: post #13

Talking about the merits of these tariffs kind of misses the point. The person who wrote this article is very smart. I am sure they are smarter than I am. He has produced a pretty solid analysis of trade policy. But in articles like this people ascribe their own motivations and goals to the tariffs that aren't actually there. Buried in this article is the assumption that the motivation of tariffs and trade policy is…

Thank you. I see these coping strategies everywhere, from sources I would never imagine would try to find reason within the damage these will do. People want to feel like these are rational well thought out choices with experts behind the reasoning and that they must be missing something. Because how could the POTUS willingly cause so much harm to the country? So there is cope instead of coming to terms that this man is single handedly destroying the economy and their future.

Re: American Disruption

#28

Post by renewiltord »

Jochim wrote: post #11
neogodless wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the company spent its early years building its core technology and delivering a high-end experience with significantly higher prices than incumbent taxi companies. Eventually, though, the exact same technology was deployed to deliver a lower-priced experience to a significantly broader customer base; said customer base was brought on board at zero marginal cost Ironically, this was the plan laid out for Tesla early…

The Uber example is also an outright lie. They acquired those customers by burning billions of dollars to deliver rides below the cost of providing them. Then they raised prices beyond their competition to account for their ridiculous overheads.

Taxis still exist and are still more expensive. You pay for them to use bus lanes in SF and so on. Uber prices are not beyond the competition.

Re: American Disruption

#29

Post by turnsout »

af78 wrote: post #16
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #4

Sure, but aren't we past rational debate on this point? Not only are the new trade policies irrational, it's quite possible that they're intentionally irrational as a bargaining or maneuvering tactic. We're not going to reason or argue our way out of this one. As I commented yesterday, there's a playbook for reshoring that's being totally ignored: First you invite industry to reshore via subsidies and preferential ac…

Behaving irrationally, intentionally or not, is scaring investors away rather than attracting them. Seen from abroad, trust in the rule of law and property rights has been eroded. Today Trump sends randos to El Salvador, maybe tomorrow he will nationalize enterprises or other assets, with no meaningful opposition from the Congress and the judiciary? Germany is already pulling gold from the US, that had been stored th…

Amazingly, this is exactly what Russia has been trying to do for years now: introduce chaos and uncertainty. Capitalism can handle bad news all day long, but it can't withstand prolonged unpredictability and ambiguity.

Re: American Disruption

#30

Post by turnsout »

eduction wrote: post #14

This essay seems to be built on a flawed analogy. Clayton Christensen’s model of disruption (or models, counting his low end version) involves innovation by both the incumbent and disruptor. The disruptor’s innovation is immediately appealing to the low end of the market while the incumbent is focused on the high end. His example of Hong Kong factories manufacturing Fairchild chips doesn’t fit this template even thou…

Not to be a hater, but this is Ben Thomspon's style. Dial up the word count until people think your analysis is comprehensive, to disguise the fact that you're not saying anything substantive.
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