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Northern Ireland27258 Posts
Ever been confronted by someone a bit obviously off their fucking head on some kind of substance?
Ya wanna defuse the situation for rather obvious reasons. Thing is, these folks can be highly unpredictable.
You can be civil as fuck, hell even complimentary and boom, defused, you might even share a bit of craic. Alternatively, your obviously a weak target and get attacked.
On the flip side you can go all macho man aggression, and maybe the bloke is alright, but takes you escalating as a threat and responds in kind, and if you’d have sucked up you would have been fine.
This is crude microcosm is the entire problem here.
With such an unpredictable actor what the fuck is the correct response? I personally don’t really think there is one that’s actually predictable.
Is it the Keir Starmer/Claudia Sheinbaum approach, or is it the Trudeau/Carney or wider EU more aggressive response?
Who the fuck knows?
It’s a pretty bloody small list of things, but I’ll defend Keir Starmer on this. The ridiculous thing is I’d also defend him if he went absolute hardball versus Washington. This regime is so capricious, so incompetent that almost any strategy might work, or might not so I can’t really criticise what one people go with.
I have more general things I would personally prefer to see, in many domains don’t get me wrong. Although that stuff is more medium thru long term European policy, not the ‘dealing with Trump’ issue, which I mean is a clusterfuck even on a good day
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On April 11 2025 00:56 WombaT wrote:
Ever been confronted by someone a bit obviously off their fucking head on some kind of substance?
Ya wanna defuse the situation for rather obvious reasons. Thing is, these folks can be highly unpredictable.
You can be civil as fuck, hell even complimentary and boom, defused, you might even share a bit of craic. Alternatively, your obviously a weak target and get attacked.
On the flip side you can go all macho man aggression, and maybe the bloke is alright, but takes you escalating as a threat and responds in kind, and if you’d have sucked up you would have been fine.
This is crude microcosm is the entire problem here.
With such an unpredictable actor what the fuck is the correct response? I personally don’t really think there is one that’s actually predictable.
Is it the Keir Starmer/Claudia Sheinbaum approach, or is it the Trudeau/Carney or wider EU more aggressive response?
Who the fuck knows?
It’s a pretty bloody small list of things, but I’ll defend Keir Starmer on this. The ridiculous thing is I’d also defend him if he went absolute hardball versus Washington. This regime is so capricious, so incompetent that almost any strategy might work, or might not so I can’t really criticise what one people go with.
I have more general things I would personally prefer to see, in many domains don’t get me wrong. Although that stuff is more medium thru long term European policy, not the ‘dealing with Trump’ issue, which I mean is a clusterfuck even on a good day
The thing is, this is not an action of a single person, but an action of a country. Even dictator had limit to what he can do, let alone a president. Trump cannot do what he had done if there is no significant political power backing him. Many of us get carried away by the media narrative that "Trump is the sole problem". Thing do not happen / reverse just because Trump (or anyone) in / left office. Just 2 examples:
1, The trade war with China, started by Trump, continued by Biden, despite he is supposed to be "China Biden".
2, The war in Ukraine had not ended even though Trump wanted to stop it asap. Even though many would consider Trump is trying to force Ukraine to surrender.
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On April 11 2025 01:59 mounteast02 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2025 00:56 WombaT wrote:
Ever been confronted by someone a bit obviously off their fucking head on some kind of substance?
Ya wanna defuse the situation for rather obvious reasons. Thing is, these folks can be highly unpredictable.
You can be civil as fuck, hell even complimentary and boom, defused, you might even share a bit of craic. Alternatively, your obviously a weak target and get attacked.
On the flip side you can go all macho man aggression, and maybe the bloke is alright, but takes you escalating as a threat and responds in kind, and if you’d have sucked up you would have been fine.
This is crude microcosm is the entire problem here.
With such an unpredictable actor what the fuck is the correct response? I personally don’t really think there is one that’s actually predictable.
Is it the Keir Starmer/Claudia Sheinbaum approach, or is it the Trudeau/Carney or wider EU more aggressive response?
Who the fuck knows?
It’s a pretty bloody small list of things, but I’ll defend Keir Starmer on this. The ridiculous thing is I’d also defend him if he went absolute hardball versus Washington. This regime is so capricious, so incompetent that almost any strategy might work, or might not so I can’t really criticise what one people go with.
I have more general things I would personally prefer to see, in many domains don’t get me wrong. Although that stuff is more medium thru long term European policy, not the ‘dealing with Trump’ issue, which I mean is a clusterfuck even on a good day The thing is, this is not an action of a single person, but an action of a country. Even dictator had limit to what he can do, let alone a president. Trump cannot do what he had done if there is no significant political power backing him. Many of us get carried away by the media narrative that "Trump is the sole problem". Thing do not happen / reverse just because Trump (or anyone) in / left office. Just 2 examples: 1, The trade war with China, started by Trump, continued by Biden, despite he is supposed to be "China Biden". 2, The war in Ukraine had not ended even though Trump wanted to stop it asap. Even though many would consider Trump is trying to force Ukraine to surrender.
Yes, Trump is not a full dictator (yet), but his cult seems to follow any random insane shit he says or does. Trump is very clearly not the sole problem, and Trump can not mind control foreign countries.
But if Trump wants to do a stupid or insane thing that the US can do, it is very likely that that thing actually happens. So this situation is really not unclose to the "meth junkie" type of problem WombaT described.
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On April 11 2025 00:30 mounteast02 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2025 20:17 Gorsameth wrote:
Nothing mature about it, Trump got to place 10% blanket tariffs without a reciprocal response. Sad that the world is having to look to China of all places to teach America not to fuck around.
Well, everyone who did not put up any reciprocal response already lost, period. This round of tariff is just a classic chicken game, if you do not dare to fight back, you already lost. Just think about it, for any country that did not retaliate, they would start the negotiation with (at least) 10% tariff disadvantage, no matter how good their "negotiation skill" are, they are going to get / agree to a deal which is worst than the situation before the "liberation day". In another word, Trump succeeded in getting something without giving anything in return. The worst part is, why wouldn't Trump or other future US president pull the same trick again?
Err, define lost. If, like Lesotho, essentially your only export to the US is diamonds, and the US still wants diamonds, nothing changed for Lesotho, except that now US citizens pay 10% more tax on those diamonds. Sounds to me like the loser there is some poor American buying a wedding ring, not Lesotho.
And because the US imports a lot of stuff that they can't make themselves, like diamonds, a blanket 10% tariff is mostly just a blanket 10% sales tax for American residents. Obviously it's also a damper on the global economy: purchase power is finite, and if everything gets 10% more expensive (and Chinese things 125% more expensive) then Americans can just plain buy less. But by creating *more* losers your country doesn't become a winner just because you retaliated (ROAR).
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How can you conclude that nothing changes for Lesotho if Americans are buying less? If Americans are importing less diamonds because everything is 10% more expensive then that's a change for Lesotho, and not a good one.
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I guess the question is "Does this lead to americans buying fewer diamonds?" Acrofales thinks no, Blackjack thinks yes.
Diamonds are a weird market because i don't get why anyone would buy them, let alone at the prices they are sold at. It is all a massive marketing scam that you need to spend massive amounts of money on a shiny gem with a bit of blood on it to prove that you love the woman you want to marry.
But will americans stop believing in that scam if diamonds are 10% more expensive? Will they maybe buy a slightly smaller diamond? Or will they just pay 10% more because surely they love their future wife enough for that small additional bit, too?
If americans were rational customers here, they would just buy a Circonia for 1% of the price, or a lab diamond for 10% of the price. But they are not, so no idea what results a 10% price hike on diamonds have on their buying behaviour.
But ultimately, this isn't really about diamonds. It is about stuff that the US cannot produce on their own in general. Or stuff that the US cannot produce cost-effectively. Americans have the choice of going without or paying 10% more. Sometimes they may choose paying more, sometimes they may choose going without. Both effects are bad for americans, one of these effects is also bad for other people. None is good for anyone.
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On April 11 2025 04:18 BlackJack wrote:
How can you conclude that nothing changes for Lesotho if Americans are buying less? If Americans are importing less diamonds because everything is 10% more expensive then that's a change for Lesotho, and not a good one.
I figured diamonds are about as inelastic a product as you can find. The price has been artificially high for about a century now, and people keep buying them. Clearly price considerations are mostly irrelevant in the decision to buy a diamond or not.
That doesn't go for all products, but I kinda assumed it did for diamonds. Explaining the rest of my post was covered by Simberto.
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It doesn't change anything for Lesotho being able to import American goods it just means that they get poorer. Price considerations only care about the source of the diamonds and this is about particularly screwing over lesotho for no other reasons than to justify the arbitrary model of how to decide the level of tariffs on everything. If they put any real thought into this they wouldn't have tariffed the penguin islands.
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On April 11 2025 04:25 Simberto wrote:
I guess the question is "Does this lead to americans buying fewer diamonds?" Acrofales thinks no, Blackjack thinks yes.
Diamonds are a weird market because i don't get why anyone would buy them, let alone at the prices they are sold at. It is all a massive marketing scam that you need to spend massive amounts of money on a shiny gem with a bit of blood on it to prove that you love the woman you want to marry.
But will americans stop believing in that scam if diamonds are 10% more expensive? Will they maybe buy a slightly smaller diamond? Or will they just pay 10% more because surely they love their future wife enough for that small additional bit, too?
If americans were rational customers here, they would just buy a Circonia for 1% of the price, or a lab diamond for 10% of the price. But they are not, so no idea what results a 10% price hike on diamonds have on their buying behaviour.
But ultimately, this isn't really about diamonds. It is about stuff that the US cannot produce on their own in general. Or stuff that the US cannot produce cost-effectively. Americans have the choice of going without or paying 10% more. Sometimes they may choose paying more, sometimes they may choose going without. Both effects are bad for americans, one of these effects is also bad for other people. None is good for anyone.
So your conclusion is that it's both bad for Americans to pay 10% more but also bad for them to "go without" after you've made the claim that buying diamonds is a marketing scam? So going without buying into a scam is bad for Americans?
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On April 11 2025 04:40 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2025 04:18 BlackJack wrote:
How can you conclude that nothing changes for Lesotho if Americans are buying less? If Americans are importing less diamonds because everything is 10% more expensive then that's a change for Lesotho, and not a good one. I figured diamonds are about as inelastic a product as you can find. The price has been artificially high for about a century now, and people keep buying them. Clearly price considerations are mostly irrelevant in the decision to buy a diamond or not. That doesn't go for all products, but I kinda assumed it did for diamonds. Explaining the rest of my post was covered by Simberto.
Demand for natural diamonds has already been dropping sharply in part because the price point of lab grown diamonds has decreased over the last decade, so I don't think we can make any conclusions that diamonds are completely insensitive to price for Lesotho to be unaffected. I also incorrectly assumed you were making a broader point about tariffs in general as opposed to cherry picking the most inelastic product you could come up with to refute the idea that every country would be negatively affected by a 10% tariff.
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On April 11 2025 01:59 mounteast02 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2025 00:56 WombaT wrote:
Ever been confronted by someone a bit obviously off their fucking head on some kind of substance?
Ya wanna defuse the situation for rather obvious reasons. Thing is, these folks can be highly unpredictable.
You can be civil as fuck, hell even complimentary and boom, defused, you might even share a bit of craic. Alternatively, your obviously a weak target and get attacked.
On the flip side you can go all macho man aggression, and maybe the bloke is alright, but takes you escalating as a threat and responds in kind, and if you’d have sucked up you would have been fine.
This is crude microcosm is the entire problem here.
With such an unpredictable actor what the fuck is the correct response? I personally don’t really think there is one that’s actually predictable.
Is it the Keir Starmer/Claudia Sheinbaum approach, or is it the Trudeau/Carney or wider EU more aggressive response?
Who the fuck knows?
It’s a pretty bloody small list of things, but I’ll defend Keir Starmer on this. The ridiculous thing is I’d also defend him if he went absolute hardball versus Washington. This regime is so capricious, so incompetent that almost any strategy might work, or might not so I can’t really criticise what one people go with.
I have more general things I would personally prefer to see, in many domains don’t get me wrong. Although that stuff is more medium thru long term European policy, not the ‘dealing with Trump’ issue, which I mean is a clusterfuck even on a good day The thing is, this is not an action of a single person, but an action of a country. Even dictator had limit to what he can do, let alone a president. Trump cannot do what he had done if there is no significant political power backing him. Many of us get carried away by the media narrative that "Trump is the sole problem". Thing do not happen / reverse just because Trump (or anyone) in / left office. Just 2 examples: 1, The trade war with China, started by Trump, continued by Biden, despite he is supposed to be "China Biden". 2, The war in Ukraine had not ended even though Trump wanted to stop it asap. Even though many would consider Trump is trying to force Ukraine to surrender.
The Republicans not stopping Trump is better explained by the natural cowardice of the far right than it is by them backing him. Some republican politicians are stupid for sure but most of them are evil rather than stupid; they can see that Trump is making it up as he goes just as well as any of us.
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On April 11 2025 06:00 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2025 04:40 Acrofales wrote:On April 11 2025 04:18 BlackJack wrote:
How can you conclude that nothing changes for Lesotho if Americans are buying less? If Americans are importing less diamonds because everything is 10% more expensive then that's a change for Lesotho, and not a good one. I figured diamonds are about as inelastic a product as you can find. The price has been artificially high for about a century now, and people keep buying them. Clearly price considerations are mostly irrelevant in the decision to buy a diamond or not. That doesn't go for all products, but I kinda assumed it did for diamonds. Explaining the rest of my post was covered by Simberto. Demand for natural diamonds has already been dropping sharply in part because the price point of lab grown diamonds has decreased over the last decade, so I don't think we can make any conclusions that diamonds are completely insensitive to price for Lesotho to be unaffected. I also incorrectly assumed you were making a broader point about tariffs in general as opposed to cherry picking the most inelastic product you could come up with to refute the idea that every country would be negatively affected by a 10% tariff.
I guess there are enough products where you really don't want or can't go without. I didn't check explicitly but of the top of my head, coffee should be such an example. US citizens now just pay more for their coffee without any upsides. Right?
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On April 14 2025 16:57 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2025 06:00 BlackJack wrote:On April 11 2025 04:40 Acrofales wrote:On April 11 2025 04:18 BlackJack wrote:
How can you conclude that nothing changes for Lesotho if Americans are buying less? If Americans are importing less diamonds because everything is 10% more expensive then that's a change for Lesotho, and not a good one. I figured diamonds are about as inelastic a product as you can find. The price has been artificially high for about a century now, and people keep buying them. Clearly price considerations are mostly irrelevant in the decision to buy a diamond or not. That doesn't go for all products, but I kinda assumed it did for diamonds. Explaining the rest of my post was covered by Simberto. Demand for natural diamonds has already been dropping sharply in part because the price point of lab grown diamonds has decreased over the last decade, so I don't think we can make any conclusions that diamonds are completely insensitive to price for Lesotho to be unaffected. I also incorrectly assumed you were making a broader point about tariffs in general as opposed to cherry picking the most inelastic product you could come up with to refute the idea that every country would be negatively affected by a 10% tariff. I guess there are enough products where you really don't want or can't go without. I didn't check explicitly but of the top of my head, coffee should be such an example. US citizens now just pay more for their coffee without any upsides. Right?
Well the upside is the revenue goes to help fund the government so there’s not zero upside just like a sales tax or VAT isn’t simply making things more expensive without any upside. My point was you can’t just make a blanket statement that the tariffs are lose-lose. You wouldn’t say a tariff on cigarettes is a lose-lose because people will have to pay more or go without cigarettes. It might be a good thing to consume less cigarettes. There’s probably a lot of products from China that will suck to go without but there’s also a metric fuckton that we absolutely don’t need. Imagine the ecological shitstorm that is created from shipping the cheap plastic toy your kid is going to play with for 30 minutes before it breaks because it’s cheap plastic and then it’s off to the landfill. Or the ten pairs of jeans your wife ordered before returning 9 of them because she would rather have the FedEx guy haul her clothes around instead of going to the store to try things on. The idea of a sort of sin tax on such things is not terrible on paper. Just as making government more efficient is not a terrible idea on paper. The problem is Trump tries to implement these things with the temperament of an 8 year old.
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On April 14 2025 17:31 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2025 16:57 Harris1st wrote:On April 11 2025 06:00 BlackJack wrote:On April 11 2025 04:40 Acrofales wrote:On April 11 2025 04:18 BlackJack wrote:
How can you conclude that nothing changes for Lesotho if Americans are buying less? If Americans are importing less diamonds because everything is 10% more expensive then that's a change for Lesotho, and not a good one. I figured diamonds are about as inelastic a product as you can find. The price has been artificially high for about a century now, and people keep buying them. Clearly price considerations are mostly irrelevant in the decision to buy a diamond or not. That doesn't go for all products, but I kinda assumed it did for diamonds. Explaining the rest of my post was covered by Simberto. Demand for natural diamonds has already been dropping sharply in part because the price point of lab grown diamonds has decreased over the last decade, so I don't think we can make any conclusions that diamonds are completely insensitive to price for Lesotho to be unaffected. I also incorrectly assumed you were making a broader point about tariffs in general as opposed to cherry picking the most inelastic product you could come up with to refute the idea that every country would be negatively affected by a 10% tariff. I guess there are enough products where you really don't want or can't go without. I didn't check explicitly but of the top of my head, coffee should be such an example. US citizens now just pay more for their coffee without any upsides. Right? Well the upside is the revenue goes to help fund the government so there’s not zero upside just like a sales tax or VAT isn’t simply making things more expensive without any upside. My point was you can’t just make a blanket statement that the tariffs are lose-lose. You wouldn’t say a tariff on cigarettes is a lose-lose because people will have to pay more or go without cigarettes. It might be a good thing to consume less cigarettes. There’s probably a lot of products from China that will suck to go without but there’s also a metric fuckton that we absolutely don’t need. Imagine the ecological shitstorm that is created from shipping the cheap plastic toy your kid is going to play with for 30 minutes before it breaks because it’s cheap plastic and then it’s off to the landfill. Or the ten pairs of jeans your wife ordered before returning 9 of them because she would rather have the FedEx guy haul her clothes around instead of going to the store to try things on. The idea of a sort of sin tax on such things is not terrible on paper. Just as making government more efficient is not a terrible idea on paper. The problem is Trump tries to implement these things with the temperament of an 8 year old.
Dude, you are using cigar taxes as an example why it is not a bad bad ? I am not versed in american imports, but i am sure you can find plenty examples of imported goods that got hit by the tariff that are day to day needed for life (and not just a drug that we are trying to diminish its abuse) and they are going to be more expensive. The revenue the goverment is generating through it does not seem like it's going to go social funding (like tax on tobacco does), so you are not improving anyones living conditions with it.
And not to speak that the objective of the tariffs was to bring back manufacturing jobs, not to get an extra revenue for the goverment.
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*after years of cutting taxes on the rich at every available opportunity* the upside of paying more for coffee is that it helps fund the government
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serves those coffee addicted serfs right I say.
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On April 14 2025 17:41 Nebuchad wrote:
*after years of cutting taxes on the rich at every available opportunity* the upside of paying more for coffee is that it helps fund the government
That’s literally the upside of any tax…
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On April 14 2025 18:00 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2025 17:41 Nebuchad wrote:
*after years of cutting taxes on the rich at every available opportunity* the upside of paying more for coffee is that it helps fund the government That’s literally the upside of any tax…
Correct, yes, but as you probably should have been able to gather, the issue there is that this only functions as an upside specifically for the people who have ideologies in which funding the government is a good thing.
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On April 14 2025 18:07 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2025 18:00 BlackJack wrote:On April 14 2025 17:41 Nebuchad wrote:
*after years of cutting taxes on the rich at every available opportunity* the upside of paying more for coffee is that it helps fund the government That’s literally the upside of any tax… Correct, yes, but as you probably should have been able to gather, the issue there is that this only functions as an upside specifically for the people who have ideologies in which funding the government is a good thing.
You got me there
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On April 14 2025 17:41 Nebuchad wrote:
*after years of cutting taxes on the rich at every available opportunity* the upside of paying more for coffee is that it helps fund the government
And with those additional funds you can make the life of the rich even easier. There are really only winners here...
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EPT
