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this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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First, a bit of background: AFAIK, the US has been running trade deficits for years - (somebody please correct me if i misunderstood that). Trump is trying to stop that, mostly by just stopping trade altogether. Which, IMHO, is actually kinda sane.
I guess you can only understand the current developments with at least a bit of religiosity/seeing the bigger picture. The influential people in the US are all fundamentalist christians, which means they believe in "the second coming of god", as foretold in the bible. It means, god will come to earth, and transform it permanently. The good guys go to heaven, the bad guys go to hell, or sth.
I guess that they're trying to make that real by developing spaceflight and sending the "good guys" (in their own eyes) to Mars, while not really caring about what happens on Earth, if i understand things correctly.
This is my own view of it, as i have thought about it trying to make sense. I don't know whether it would convince anybody else, though.
I'm no economics expert, but in what way is that "kinda sane"? Even if manufacturing were to magically "return" to America, it would still rely on foreign trade networks/supply chains to supply the raw materials that America can't produce in sufficient quantity.
I don't understand this point either. The wto is an evil institution, but we have also seen that the results of protectionism are stagnation and the internal economy hitting its natural limits very quickly. This feels like mercantilist logic, which even Marx disliked.
Yeah, this is related to my other thought that the economy will stop growing anyways. This is because no fundamentally new technology is going to be developed in the future. (except a few minor contributions) . Let me explain: I believe that humanity has undergone three big developments since its beginning:
These kinda represent the three main branches of knowledge in the medieval age (theology --> abstract thought --> IT, law --> economies (especially of scale) --> heavy industry, medicine --> interacting with biological beings --> agriculture) or three of the four levels in aristoteles' worldview (minerals, plants, animals, ideas) representing (construction, agriculture, transport/machinery, information technology). If that is a philosophy/worldview you're into. I think we have kinda explored these levels (qualitatively), now anything that is left is quantitative growth, but such a thing is not meaningfully possible on Earth (for limited space) without destroying the planetary ecology, so i believe that spaceflight (settling Mars) is the only viable way to continue to grow the economy.
I believe it is a good thing that the economy grows as long as it is meaningfully possible. The economy must stop growing when it stops making sense. And on Earth, we're close to that turning point, i guess. That's why i'm actually okay with countries closing their borders: because i don't believe in any more progress through the trades can be done. Tell me if you have any more questions!
I think you are being closed off to unexpected developments. For instance fusion could make energy an essentially free good within the scale of current usage within the next century.
What would compel it do so? The logic baked into capitalism is to maximize capital as quickly as possible---there is no internal limit. Systemic collapse can limit it but that doesn't seem to factor into your reasoning.
We will find out soon enough.
I'm not really sure what you're saying. People have complained about "out-sourcing" jobs to China or India for a long time, because it means unemployment or fewer/lesser paid jobs for the people in america. Which, i guess, checks out economically. People have asked for labor to be "home-shored" (brought back to america) so that they can have jobs again. I don't see the problem?
And what about this point?
What's fundamentally stopping the people in the US from re-learning these things themselves? I don't really see why that would be impossible.
No American will do that work at a labor cost acceptable to the American consumer. Even if you were somehow able to "reshore" those industries (can't, not a knowledge issue, it's a capitalism issue), they would immediately go under
How exactly do you "relearn" to have natural resources that you physically don't have? Sure, you could process the materials that you need to use in America, but that won't change the fact they need to bring in from overseas.
no profit, dude
think of the capital expenditure required and potential profit gained as a percentage (it's most likely negative unless tariffs go up by few hundreds or even thousands of percentages and all loopholes are closed), and that's given the tarrifs stay, which is also unlikely.