12 ms·

So, a toddler is shaking a snowglobe. This entire section is full of people (not everyone, but several) analyzing it carefully, as if it were a scientist handl

So, a toddler is shaking a snowglobe. This entire section is full of people (not everyone, but several) analyzing it carefully, as if it were a scientist handling a moon rock inside the nitrogen environment of a glovebox. I can't see anything productive emerging from this post-hoc theorizing.

ivape 1y ago
We didn't even have more than one debate this election cycle going over economic policy. I was big Ron Paul fan on foreign relations, but whenever he went into economics you could see his views were just a little nuts. Practical fiscal conservatives were asleep at the wheel on this one. For those that went through Brexit, can you detail when the larger population realized it was stupid? That's the only pattern I can see the U.S matching at this point.
- glitchcrab 1y ago
  I couldn't put an exact time frame on it, but it took several years before the pro-Brexit politicians ran out of 'it will get better soon' arguments and the (majority of the) populace realised that they'd been had.
  - thechao 1y ago
    The MAGA ideologues can stay cultists longer than we can stay solvent? I'm in Texas, and I've got a neighbor, down the road, who was in custom home construction; he's out of business now. Why? He can't import lumber, reliably; he used to hire "under the table", and he bought small steel supplies in bulk from Alibaba. So... pretty much his entire business model is kaput. He keeps telling me that, any day now, Trump's 11D chess moves are going to make him (my neighbor) solvent again. He just sold his (white) truck, and is selling his house. Still flying his Trump flag, though.
    - reactordev 1y ago
      11D, got to wait for the 12D move to fix everything. /s
    - franktankbank 1y ago
      Big if true. One more ; ought to do it.
    - platevoltage 1y ago
      Sounds like the type that buys lottery tickets every week actually believing that they will hit one day. Just a matter of time.
    - silisili 1y ago
      I think this is probably the same phenomenon that makes people fall for romance scams despite the obvious red flags. Like a sunk cost fallacy for human emotion - is there a term for that? Nobody seems to want to admit they were wrong or 'had', so do the alternative - being had even more.
      - ivape 1y ago
        I think it has a lot to do with who you are admitting it to. Let say you know you are wrong, but you have to admit it to your enemy. Many emotional people would rather die than do that, hah (over my dead body!). Unfortunately, this is the end-state of arousing politics. There's a whole media industry around making politics emotional now days, and quite frankly we really need it to go back to boring men and women discussing boring things on CSPAN. It was never meant for the average American (or Britain), simply because it takes too much dumbing down to make it palatable for ordinary people. It's OKAY not to know what is the right thing to do about global trade. The political-media-industrial-complex survives by making people believe they actually know what they are talking about. It's very difficult to suggest to someone "hey, even though you invested thousands of hours ingesting this content, you actually don't know anything about it" - who wants to admit that, first to themselves, and second to your enemy? Your Ben Shapiros, your Tuckers, Rogans, Maddows, Jon Stewarts are part of the industrial complex. We need to find an off-ramp for people that lets them keep their dignity while accepting ignorance. I personally don't have any ideas on how to do this because here in tech, you either know your stuff or you don't, there's no ego when you don't know (you'll just look stupid).
        konstmonst 1y ago
        China did it better - most of their managers are engineers. US needs to make use of this pattern. Oh, and add an IQ and an EQ test as a requirement to being a president.
        silisili 1y ago
        You make good points. There is obviously the nature of admitting to enemies that you were wrong that you touch on. What I'm referring to is admitting to yourself that you're wrong, which seems much harder to do. I just experienced this recently even in comments. For the record, I'm not a Trump hater, I'm rather neutral on politics. But in a recent interview Trump made an absolute fool of himself re: some guys hand tattoos. I felt secondhand embarrassment even watching it. Yet there were so many defenders show up, to explain what he -really- meant, or that he knew it was wrong but was proving a point, etc. I just don't get the mindset. Sometimes it's ok to admit the person you admire made a mistake. But not in the US, apparently. Because too many people have tied not only their identity but income to it.
    - spacemadness 1y ago
      It sucks having some semblance of critical thinking skills as an American. It grows more painful every day and I'd rather just give myself a lobotomy at this point. I'm sure it felt similarly for many folks during Brexit who knew better.
    - segfault88 1y ago
      This is a quote from Carl Sagan: > One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - ethbr1 1y ago
        The first step to getting out from under a charlatan is admitting you were an idiot. Some people seem constitutionally incapable of ever doing that.
      - andrekandre 1y ago
        > It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. religion and fandom can be like this as well...
    - CoastalCoder 1y ago
      I'm curious how he reconciles his "under the table" payments with the Republican party's supposed "law and order" platform.
  - gm3dmo 1y ago
    The other 51 percent for are sophisticated economic analysts who ended up hoarding toilet paper and pasta during Covid.
  - tialaramex 1y ago
    Still plenty (nowhere close to a majority, but more than a few nutters) who are certain the problem is we didn't have a hard enough Brexit. The reason the scientific method is considered an actual discovery is that this whole "In light of new data I realise I was wrong" just isn't how we tend to behave. For many Leave voters, the fact they voted Leave necessarily means voting Leave was correct - some of them rationalise this as "I was lied to" => "Maybe Leave was the wrong choice but I was misinformed" plenty more reached "Leave was correct but politicians screwed up Leaving somehow, it's not my fault". The current iteration of the Nigel Farage party, named Reform, takes this sort of line. Once I was writing about the Achilles and the Tortoise story in GEB where the Tortoise rejects Modus Ponens and Achilles discovers, the hard way, that it's useless to argue any point with an interlocutor who rejects this principle. Somebody else on HN pointed out that most people probably would not accept Modus Ponens. And they're probably right, as hopeless as that outcome is.
    - navane 1y ago
      The Italian socialist opposed joining ww1. The nationalists wanted to join, and the Italians joined, on the British and French side. They fought so bad that the British had to send troops to the new Austrian - Italian front, effectively weakening the allied effort and thus the spoils of the war were none for the Italians. Who did the fascists blame, the nationalist for joining this folly? No, the socialists for sabotaging their efforts.
      - disqard 1y ago
        Thank you for sharing that! TIL that the resulting defeat was soundly milked by Mussolini and friends to rise to power. If at first you don't succeed, blame the Voices of Reason (and demonize them), until you do succeed.
        ethbr1 1y ago
        For some people, the most important goal isn't success but power. Failure is fine, as long as they retain power.
  - stouset 1y ago
    As an American, is that the generally-accepted viewpoint now? That Brexit was a mistake? If so, do people feel like it was an honest mistake, or do people generally believe that the politicians and businesspeople who supported it were either incompetent or hoping to benefit personally at everyone else's expense? Something else? I'm asking because I'd really like to believe that there's a point where a convincing majority of Americans will wake up and realize that Republican (and particularly Trump) politics are a sham and have been unabashedly so since at least the first Trump administration. I would like that, but I'm not hopeful at this point.
    - navane 1y ago
      I'm not in England but in mainland Europe and yes, I don't know a single person who sees Brexit benefiting the Brits. It was all lies and pandering for politicians benefits.
      - socalgal2 1y ago
        I always find it so confusing - the same people that want group X (Palestinans, Kurds, Tibetans, Catalonia, etc....) to have their own government/country, hate that Brits want to control their own country.
        wavemode 1y ago
        You're talking about two very different sentiments. People see leaving the EU as a foolish decision. But Britain has every right to make that decision if it wants. I don't know of anyone outside of Britain who "hates" that they left (in the sense of feeling anger or offense). In fact a lot of the sentiment tends to be more like "good riddance".
        nasmorn 1y ago
        Interestingly there seems to be even more foreigners working in London now than before Brexit. Just with less rights I guess.
        1y ago
  - WickyNilliams 1y ago
    I honestly think you are vastly overestimating how much buyer's regret there is, or even any sense of Brexit being wrong. Brexit wasn't wrong, it's everything else that was wrong! The politicians didn't enact it decisively enough. The EU punished us. The media lied about it. The "remainiacs" did everythig in their power to stop it. etc etc To many, Brexit is their political identity and it is a politics of blame and grudges
- gm3dmo 1y ago
  Long long before.
  - gm3dmo 1y ago
    > For those that went through Brexit, can you detail when the larger population realized it was stupid? 49 percent for sure knew and voted against.
- gorgoiler 1y ago
  It’s not fair to characterize Brexit — a ridiculously over simplistic yes/no referendum question — as being inherently bad. I think a charitable reading of your comment ought to replace Brexit with the subsequent implementation of Brexit by successive Conservative governments. That’s also quite possibly what you meant anyway, but it’s still worth saying aloud.
  - gmac 1y ago
    There are an infinite number of Brexits we didn’t get. We only got to try one. For most purposes I think it’s pretty reasonable to equate ‘Brexit’ with that one. Frankly, I don’t think any of the Brexits we stood any chance of actually getting could have been good: it was only a question of how bad the one we eventually got would be. And the problem with the less bad Brexits was: they would be less bad, but they would also be more directly comparable with no Brexit (e.g. “in order to improve trade we’re going to follow all the EU’s rules but not have a say in any of them”).
    - munksbeer 1y ago
      > (e.g. “in order to improve trade we’re going to follow all the EU’s rules but not have a say in any of them”). We de facto do that anyway, because most of our trade is conducted with the EU and companies aren't stupid. They don't want to design and build to multiple different standards, so they just adhere to EU rules for simplicity and cost reasons. But now we don't get a say in those rules.
      - gmac 1y ago
        True. But given that's true, it would be so much better to be inside the single market or customs union. But apparently those are still 'red lines' ...
  - ivape 1y ago
    I could have used wars as an example (Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam), but Brexit feels like more of a parallel as it's non-violent and somewhat economic. We will absolutely have a conclusive outcome for what we've decided to do as a nation. The unfortunate thing is we are not going to get back 4 years of our lives. It's just going to evaporate and that's the thing that political fervor masks. You got one life, you can spend it fighting China, I suppose. In the case of Europe, you can spend it exiting it, I suppose. There's a serious opportunity cost here that wasn't properly discussed due to the zealotry of both sides. Policy discussion seems to be something the masses cannot handle without clearly defining an "other". I feel Jeffersonian (bigoted) in suggesting that it's a mistake to give ordinary people access to this debate. Almost like letting ten year olds get involved in how mom and dad handle the mortgage.
- analog31 1y ago
  The Republicans successfully turned economic issues into social ones. Previously, immigrants were stealing our jobs. Now they're stealing our cats. The three pillars of the Republican party were conservatism, religion, and race. I'm not saying every R is concerned about all 3 of these, but that they couldn't win elections without all 3 of them. Over the past 50 years, traditional conservatism has been hard pressed to explain itself to the working class in light of the rising prosperity of liberal democracies, and has become further detached from reality. People are becoming less religious, and more racially diverse. I think the R's realized that they were running out of runway, and also figured out how to exploit nearly 100% dominance over the "new" media.
  - stock_toaster 1y ago
    Not to mention a _huge_ [1][2] increase in wealth inequality over the past 30 years as well. Instead of progressive taxes and taxing the rich more, you end up instead with tax _breaks_ for the richest and regressive taxes instead (tariffs, which are effectively a national sales tax). I guess the current tactic is to distract people with "those terrible immigrants are at fault" and DOGE and constant policy changes. [1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/#the-wealth-divide-among-upper-income-families-and-middle-and-lower-income-families-is-sharp-and-rising https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-... [2]: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/#the-richest-are-getting-richer-faster https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...
    - mcguire 1y ago
      The usual HN response to wealth inequality is "why do you care how much they have?" The answer is, of course, that money is power and the power that many of the wealthy are exercising is not to the benefit of most people.
      - MegaButts 1y ago
        You don't even need to think about money as power, you can just think about money as money. There's a far simpler way to think about wealth inequality. If you believe it's a problem, by definition the people holding the wealth are the cause of the problem. This isn't some social or philosophical construct - it's just basic deduction. So quite literally, the wealthy holding the money means less money to go around to everyone else. The more they hold themselves, the more is withheld from everyone else. You can have debates about wealth distribution endlessly because it's subjective and complicated, but you can't argue that the wealthy getting richer is good for anyone except the wealthy. Trickle-down-economics has already been established as propaganda at this point. I understand that wealth is not static in the world and it's possible to create wealth for everyone, but my point is money hoarding is definitionally the cause of wealth inequality.
- LightBug1 1y ago
  As per most things these days ... there's a core 30% of nutjobs who will not change for anything. Another 10-20% ride along with them and balance against the moderates and, together, they either shift the Overton window, or outright win. It'll take probably 5-10 years before the 10-20% own up to "being had". And, by then, the damage will have been done. And you'll only start to be thinking about how to repair it then ... and then that will take a generation to execute and recover from. Source: Brexit.
  - anigbrowl 1y ago
    It's also instructive to look at American attitudes toward the Iraq war. I'm pretty sure that many people who now say it was a terrible idea and that they voted for Trump because they don't want to be in any more wars were absolutely rock-ribbed supporters of it at the time. Asking if they think Obama did a good job in extricating the US from that conflict serves as a useful litmus test.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > It'll take probably 5-10 years before the 10-20% own up to "being had". Approval numbers are already declining rapidly on key issues. The main effects of tariffs haven’t even hit them yet.
    - LightBug1 1y ago
      Sure thing - might happen quicker. Hopefully. But honestly, there's one thing being "disapproving" and a whole different thing getting people to admit they were wrong. And either way - given it doesn't matter who disapproving any of us are - the 5-10 year time frame is realistic as given your political terms.
- rustcleaner 1y ago
  Ron Paul 2008 and 2012 taught me this whole thing is a farce of statecraft. Consent to governance has to be manufactured, alchemically transmuting vice and violence into virtue and victory. Meme Magick™ is more real than anyone could imagine, yet so elusive many will never touch it and know.
- tim333 1y ago
  I'm a Brit who went through Brexit. I think most people got the idea it was going to be economically stupid before the vote but the Brexit voters prioritized independence over that. Also just shaking things up because they were unhappy with how things were going for them personally. It was hard to be sure as there were so many options - hard Brexit, soft and so on that it was unclear what the deal would be. At least with Trump you can vote him out again whereas we are kind of stuck with Brexit.
  - WorldMaker 1y ago
    > At least with Trump you can vote him out again We hope. He keeps talking about ignoring the term limits set in our Constitutional Amendments. Jan 6 2021 was an ineffective coup attempt, but a coup attempt nonetheless. Heinlein's Future History saw Nehemiah Scudder win the last American elections in 2012. We've luckily made it a few elections past that date, and the Future History was not a prophecy and was a bit kinder in that you could escape to the Moon or Mars or Venus this decade. But it's hard not to fear the same sorts of theocratic and fascist "urges" are cyclically at play in the current decade and not worry about possible consequences, such as and including the end of the US as we know it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22If_This_Goes_On%E2%80%94%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22If_This_Goes_On%E2%80%94%22
anigbrowl 1y ago
This is a general cultural problem with liberalism at present. My social media timelines are absolutely full of Serious People analyzing how we got here and situating our present condition in historical and theoretical context. And they're mostly right! but what's lacking is any discussion of what to do about it. Even advocacy for legislative remedies or mass strikes are mostly dismissed in favor of throwing up hands and waiting for the midterm elections, as if the outcome were assured and a repeat of January 6 2021 were unthinkable. I can only conclude that a large part of the populace either can't believe what's happening or can't comprehend the implications.
- braiamp 1y ago
  Yeah, people would prefer to "coast it up" rather than doing something substantial. The weekend protests are literally self own, because you are protesting in the only "free time" that you can have.
  - brailsafe 1y ago
    There have been such a comical amount of protests over the last decade for every trite issue that it's hard not to feel like most of those people would defs not be there if they had any sort of other obligation or otherwise incurred a cost. Not to say that's the case with every issue, but there's a world of difference between the person showing up on a weekend for a bit to protest for climate action, hoping to end up in a photo, and the person protesting the actions of their home country's regime knowing that their government could abduct your family that's still there.
    - idiotsecant 1y ago
      I see people saying this a lot, and I guarantee during civil rights marches people were saying the same thing. It's a cynical and jaded and not very useful viewpoint, IMO. We shouldn't be gatekeeping the ability of the average person to publicly petition their government for a redress of grievances. That's kind of a core function of an engaged populace.
seivan 1y ago
[dead]
rustcleaner 1y ago
Get your Black&Scholes branded spear out and head to the pond for some trout!
- selimthegrim 1y ago
  Isn’t that Black and Decker (TM)
  - WorldMaker 1y ago
    The market already tore Sears apart. Black and Decker is a zombie brand that continues in our IP-focused globalized JIT retail wasteland that certainly won't be on shelves "7 weeks from now". (Though maybe your grandmother's Black & Decker still works long past its lifetime guarantee and we'll be fighting to find the last of those.) Also, I believe the above had an additional layer of an economics joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes_model
  - giardini 1y ago
    The tip fell off my old Black and Decker spear years ago. Shoddy materials. And my (formerly) trusty Black-Scholes model, based on the normal distribution, had to be replaced with a fat-tailed distribution model after the financial meltdown. Shoddy materials.
    - selimthegrim 1y ago
      I just think of the Indiana Jones scene where the monkey ends up being poisoned.
- 3rdDeviation 1y ago
  As in, go harvest some of that market volatility? Definitely looking on the brighter side of things, hat tip to you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes_model?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes_model?wp...
rayiner 1y ago
All the “smart” people have been going in the wrong direction for 40 years—pursing short term profits and encouraging wasteful consumption—so you got the toddler. Let that be a lesson. Our trade deficit in the 1990s was under 1% of GDP. Some people may not remember that time, but we had toys on the shelves, toilet paper, etc. Not at all what the doomers are saying will happen without unrestricted free trade. If trade deficits are so great, why does the EU try to maintain a consistent surplus? I can accept that Trump is an idiot and doesn’t know what he’s doing on trade. But I think the EU bureaucrats are pretty smart! I think the Germans and Chinese and Japanese are very sharp and have deliberately sought to maintain manufacturing-oriented economies with a large trade surpluses. You know who else ran large trade deficits? The UK: https://ercouncil.org/2016/chart-of-the-week-week-19-2016-uk-trade-balance/ https://ercouncil.org/2016/chart-of-the-week-week-19-2016-uk.... And it seemingly worked for awhile so long as people gave a shit about the pound and London banks, but that proved to be extremely fragile. The 2008 recession destroyed that and erased the UK’s higher standard of living.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  Can you link to one person with any sort of platform who has said "trade deficits are great?" Can you link to any left-of-center elected official who has advocated for "unrestricted free trade?" Or are you making these people up so you can win imaginary arguments?
  - rayiner 1y ago
    What is actually happening matters more than what anyone says. “Trade deficits are great” and “unrestricted free trade” reflects the status quo. The weighted average tariff rate in 2016 was just 1.5%. The trade deficit has grown to over $1 trillion. Minor surgical changes aren’t going to move the needle when you have an economy addicted to debt-fueled consumption of foreign goods. Anyone who isn’t proposing major structural changes is endorsing the status quo of “trade deficits are great” and “unrestricted free trade.”
    - sorcerer-mar 1y ago

ivape 1y ago

We didn't even have more than one debate this election cycle going over economic policy. I was big Ron Paul fan on foreign relations, but whenever he went into economics you could see his views were just a little nuts. Practical fiscal conservatives were asleep at the wheel on this one. For those that went through Brexit, can you detail when the larger population realized it was stupid? That's the only pattern I can see the U.S matching at this point.

glitchcrab 1y ago
I couldn't put an exact time frame on it, but it took several years before the pro-Brexit politicians ran out of 'it will get better soon' arguments and the (majority of the) populace realised that they'd been had.
- thechao 1y ago
  The MAGA ideologues can stay cultists longer than we can stay solvent? I'm in Texas, and I've got a neighbor, down the road, who was in custom home construction; he's out of business now. Why? He can't import lumber, reliably; he used to hire "under the table", and he bought small steel supplies in bulk from Alibaba. So... pretty much his entire business model is kaput. He keeps telling me that, any day now, Trump's 11D chess moves are going to make him (my neighbor) solvent again. He just sold his (white) truck, and is selling his house. Still flying his Trump flag, though.
  - reactordev 1y ago
    11D, got to wait for the 12D move to fix everything. /s
  - franktankbank 1y ago
    Big if true. One more ; ought to do it.
  - platevoltage 1y ago
    Sounds like the type that buys lottery tickets every week actually believing that they will hit one day. Just a matter of time.
  - silisili 1y ago
    I think this is probably the same phenomenon that makes people fall for romance scams despite the obvious red flags. Like a sunk cost fallacy for human emotion - is there a term for that? Nobody seems to want to admit they were wrong or 'had', so do the alternative - being had even more.
    - ivape 1y ago
      I think it has a lot to do with who you are admitting it to. Let say you know you are wrong, but you have to admit it to your enemy. Many emotional people would rather die than do that, hah (over my dead body!). Unfortunately, this is the end-state of arousing politics. There's a whole media industry around making politics emotional now days, and quite frankly we really need it to go back to boring men and women discussing boring things on CSPAN. It was never meant for the average American (or Britain), simply because it takes too much dumbing down to make it palatable for ordinary people. It's OKAY not to know what is the right thing to do about global trade. The political-media-industrial-complex survives by making people believe they actually know what they are talking about. It's very difficult to suggest to someone "hey, even though you invested thousands of hours ingesting this content, you actually don't know anything about it" - who wants to admit that, first to themselves, and second to your enemy? Your Ben Shapiros, your Tuckers, Rogans, Maddows, Jon Stewarts are part of the industrial complex. We need to find an off-ramp for people that lets them keep their dignity while accepting ignorance. I personally don't have any ideas on how to do this because here in tech, you either know your stuff or you don't, there's no ego when you don't know (you'll just look stupid).
      - konstmonst 1y ago
        China did it better - most of their managers are engineers. US needs to make use of this pattern. Oh, and add an IQ and an EQ test as a requirement to being a president.
      - silisili 1y ago
        You make good points. There is obviously the nature of admitting to enemies that you were wrong that you touch on. What I'm referring to is admitting to yourself that you're wrong, which seems much harder to do. I just experienced this recently even in comments. For the record, I'm not a Trump hater, I'm rather neutral on politics. But in a recent interview Trump made an absolute fool of himself re: some guys hand tattoos. I felt secondhand embarrassment even watching it. Yet there were so many defenders show up, to explain what he -really- meant, or that he knew it was wrong but was proving a point, etc. I just don't get the mindset. Sometimes it's ok to admit the person you admire made a mistake. But not in the US, apparently. Because too many people have tied not only their identity but income to it.
  - spacemadness 1y ago
    It sucks having some semblance of critical thinking skills as an American. It grows more painful every day and I'd rather just give myself a lobotomy at this point. I'm sure it felt similarly for many folks during Brexit who knew better.
  - segfault88 1y ago
    This is a quote from Carl Sagan: > One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - ethbr1 1y ago
      The first step to getting out from under a charlatan is admitting you were an idiot. Some people seem constitutionally incapable of ever doing that.
    - andrekandre 1y ago
      > It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. religion and fandom can be like this as well...
  - CoastalCoder 1y ago
    I'm curious how he reconciles his "under the table" payments with the Republican party's supposed "law and order" platform.
- gm3dmo 1y ago
  The other 51 percent for are sophisticated economic analysts who ended up hoarding toilet paper and pasta during Covid.
- tialaramex 1y ago
  Still plenty (nowhere close to a majority, but more than a few nutters) who are certain the problem is we didn't have a hard enough Brexit. The reason the scientific method is considered an actual discovery is that this whole "In light of new data I realise I was wrong" just isn't how we tend to behave. For many Leave voters, the fact they voted Leave necessarily means voting Leave was correct - some of them rationalise this as "I was lied to" => "Maybe Leave was the wrong choice but I was misinformed" plenty more reached "Leave was correct but politicians screwed up Leaving somehow, it's not my fault". The current iteration of the Nigel Farage party, named Reform, takes this sort of line. Once I was writing about the Achilles and the Tortoise story in GEB where the Tortoise rejects Modus Ponens and Achilles discovers, the hard way, that it's useless to argue any point with an interlocutor who rejects this principle. Somebody else on HN pointed out that most people probably would not accept Modus Ponens. And they're probably right, as hopeless as that outcome is.
  - navane 1y ago
    The Italian socialist opposed joining ww1. The nationalists wanted to join, and the Italians joined, on the British and French side. They fought so bad that the British had to send troops to the new Austrian - Italian front, effectively weakening the allied effort and thus the spoils of the war were none for the Italians. Who did the fascists blame, the nationalist for joining this folly? No, the socialists for sabotaging their efforts.
    - disqard 1y ago
      Thank you for sharing that! TIL that the resulting defeat was soundly milked by Mussolini and friends to rise to power. If at first you don't succeed, blame the Voices of Reason (and demonize them), until you do succeed.
      - ethbr1 1y ago
        For some people, the most important goal isn't success but power. Failure is fine, as long as they retain power.
- stouset 1y ago
  As an American, is that the generally-accepted viewpoint now? That Brexit was a mistake? If so, do people feel like it was an honest mistake, or do people generally believe that the politicians and businesspeople who supported it were either incompetent or hoping to benefit personally at everyone else's expense? Something else? I'm asking because I'd really like to believe that there's a point where a convincing majority of Americans will wake up and realize that Republican (and particularly Trump) politics are a sham and have been unabashedly so since at least the first Trump administration. I would like that, but I'm not hopeful at this point.
  - navane 1y ago
    I'm not in England but in mainland Europe and yes, I don't know a single person who sees Brexit benefiting the Brits. It was all lies and pandering for politicians benefits.
    - socalgal2 1y ago
      I always find it so confusing - the same people that want group X (Palestinans, Kurds, Tibetans, Catalonia, etc....) to have their own government/country, hate that Brits want to control their own country.
      - wavemode 1y ago
        You're talking about two very different sentiments. People see leaving the EU as a foolish decision. But Britain has every right to make that decision if it wants. I don't know of anyone outside of Britain who "hates" that they left (in the sense of feeling anger or offense). In fact a lot of the sentiment tends to be more like "good riddance".
        nasmorn 1y ago
        Interestingly there seems to be even more foreigners working in London now than before Brexit. Just with less rights I guess.
      - 1y ago
- WickyNilliams 1y ago
  I honestly think you are vastly overestimating how much buyer's regret there is, or even any sense of Brexit being wrong. Brexit wasn't wrong, it's everything else that was wrong! The politicians didn't enact it decisively enough. The EU punished us. The media lied about it. The "remainiacs" did everythig in their power to stop it. etc etc To many, Brexit is their political identity and it is a politics of blame and grudges
gm3dmo 1y ago
Long long before.
- gm3dmo 1y ago
  > For those that went through Brexit, can you detail when the larger population realized it was stupid? 49 percent for sure knew and voted against.
gorgoiler 1y ago
It’s not fair to characterize Brexit — a ridiculously over simplistic yes/no referendum question — as being inherently bad. I think a charitable reading of your comment ought to replace Brexit with the subsequent implementation of Brexit by successive Conservative governments. That’s also quite possibly what you meant anyway, but it’s still worth saying aloud.
- gmac 1y ago
  There are an infinite number of Brexits we didn’t get. We only got to try one. For most purposes I think it’s pretty reasonable to equate ‘Brexit’ with that one. Frankly, I don’t think any of the Brexits we stood any chance of actually getting could have been good: it was only a question of how bad the one we eventually got would be. And the problem with the less bad Brexits was: they would be less bad, but they would also be more directly comparable with no Brexit (e.g. “in order to improve trade we’re going to follow all the EU’s rules but not have a say in any of them”).
  - munksbeer 1y ago
    > (e.g. “in order to improve trade we’re going to follow all the EU’s rules but not have a say in any of them”). We de facto do that anyway, because most of our trade is conducted with the EU and companies aren't stupid. They don't want to design and build to multiple different standards, so they just adhere to EU rules for simplicity and cost reasons. But now we don't get a say in those rules.
    - gmac 1y ago
      True. But given that's true, it would be so much better to be inside the single market or customs union. But apparently those are still 'red lines' ...
- ivape 1y ago
  I could have used wars as an example (Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam), but Brexit feels like more of a parallel as it's non-violent and somewhat economic. We will absolutely have a conclusive outcome for what we've decided to do as a nation. The unfortunate thing is we are not going to get back 4 years of our lives. It's just going to evaporate and that's the thing that political fervor masks. You got one life, you can spend it fighting China, I suppose. In the case of Europe, you can spend it exiting it, I suppose. There's a serious opportunity cost here that wasn't properly discussed due to the zealotry of both sides. Policy discussion seems to be something the masses cannot handle without clearly defining an "other". I feel Jeffersonian (bigoted) in suggesting that it's a mistake to give ordinary people access to this debate. Almost like letting ten year olds get involved in how mom and dad handle the mortgage.
analog31 1y ago
The Republicans successfully turned economic issues into social ones. Previously, immigrants were stealing our jobs. Now they're stealing our cats. The three pillars of the Republican party were conservatism, religion, and race. I'm not saying every R is concerned about all 3 of these, but that they couldn't win elections without all 3 of them. Over the past 50 years, traditional conservatism has been hard pressed to explain itself to the working class in light of the rising prosperity of liberal democracies, and has become further detached from reality. People are becoming less religious, and more racially diverse. I think the R's realized that they were running out of runway, and also figured out how to exploit nearly 100% dominance over the "new" media.
- stock_toaster 1y ago
  Not to mention a _huge_ [1][2] increase in wealth inequality over the past 30 years as well. Instead of progressive taxes and taxing the rich more, you end up instead with tax _breaks_ for the richest and regressive taxes instead (tariffs, which are effectively a national sales tax). I guess the current tactic is to distract people with "those terrible immigrants are at fault" and DOGE and constant policy changes. [1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/#the-wealth-divide-among-upper-income-families-and-middle-and-lower-income-families-is-sharp-and-rising https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-... [2]: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/#the-richest-are-getting-richer-faster https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...
  - mcguire 1y ago
    The usual HN response to wealth inequality is "why do you care how much they have?" The answer is, of course, that money is power and the power that many of the wealthy are exercising is not to the benefit of most people.
    - MegaButts 1y ago
      You don't even need to think about money as power, you can just think about money as money. There's a far simpler way to think about wealth inequality. If you believe it's a problem, by definition the people holding the wealth are the cause of the problem. This isn't some social or philosophical construct - it's just basic deduction. So quite literally, the wealthy holding the money means less money to go around to everyone else. The more they hold themselves, the more is withheld from everyone else. You can have debates about wealth distribution endlessly because it's subjective and complicated, but you can't argue that the wealthy getting richer is good for anyone except the wealthy. Trickle-down-economics has already been established as propaganda at this point. I understand that wealth is not static in the world and it's possible to create wealth for everyone, but my point is money hoarding is definitionally the cause of wealth inequality.
LightBug1 1y ago
As per most things these days ... there's a core 30% of nutjobs who will not change for anything. Another 10-20% ride along with them and balance against the moderates and, together, they either shift the Overton window, or outright win. It'll take probably 5-10 years before the 10-20% own up to "being had". And, by then, the damage will have been done. And you'll only start to be thinking about how to repair it then ... and then that will take a generation to execute and recover from. Source: Brexit.
- anigbrowl 1y ago
  It's also instructive to look at American attitudes toward the Iraq war. I'm pretty sure that many people who now say it was a terrible idea and that they voted for Trump because they don't want to be in any more wars were absolutely rock-ribbed supporters of it at the time. Asking if they think Obama did a good job in extricating the US from that conflict serves as a useful litmus test.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > It'll take probably 5-10 years before the 10-20% own up to "being had". Approval numbers are already declining rapidly on key issues. The main effects of tariffs haven’t even hit them yet.
  - LightBug1 1y ago
    Sure thing - might happen quicker. Hopefully. But honestly, there's one thing being "disapproving" and a whole different thing getting people to admit they were wrong. And either way - given it doesn't matter who disapproving any of us are - the 5-10 year time frame is realistic as given your political terms.
rustcleaner 1y ago
Ron Paul 2008 and 2012 taught me this whole thing is a farce of statecraft. Consent to governance has to be manufactured, alchemically transmuting vice and violence into virtue and victory. Meme Magick™ is more real than anyone could imagine, yet so elusive many will never touch it and know.
tim333 1y ago
I'm a Brit who went through Brexit. I think most people got the idea it was going to be economically stupid before the vote but the Brexit voters prioritized independence over that. Also just shaking things up because they were unhappy with how things were going for them personally. It was hard to be sure as there were so many options - hard Brexit, soft and so on that it was unclear what the deal would be. At least with Trump you can vote him out again whereas we are kind of stuck with Brexit.
- WorldMaker 1y ago
  > At least with Trump you can vote him out again We hope. He keeps talking about ignoring the term limits set in our Constitutional Amendments. Jan 6 2021 was an ineffective coup attempt, but a coup attempt nonetheless. Heinlein's Future History saw Nehemiah Scudder win the last American elections in 2012. We've luckily made it a few elections past that date, and the Future History was not a prophecy and was a bit kinder in that you could escape to the Moon or Mars or Venus this decade. But it's hard not to fear the same sorts of theocratic and fascist "urges" are cyclically at play in the current decade and not worry about possible consequences, such as and including the end of the US as we know it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22If_This_Goes_On%E2%80%94%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22If_This_Goes_On%E2%80%94%22

anigbrowl 1y ago

This is a general cultural problem with liberalism at present. My social media timelines are absolutely full of Serious People analyzing how we got here and situating our present condition in historical and theoretical context. And they're mostly right! but what's lacking is any discussion of what to do about it. Even advocacy for legislative remedies or mass strikes are mostly dismissed in favor of throwing up hands and waiting for the midterm elections, as if the outcome were assured and a repeat of January 6 2021 were unthinkable. I can only conclude that a large part of the populace either can't believe what's happening or can't comprehend the implications.

braiamp 1y ago
Yeah, people would prefer to "coast it up" rather than doing something substantial. The weekend protests are literally self own, because you are protesting in the only "free time" that you can have.
- brailsafe 1y ago
  There have been such a comical amount of protests over the last decade for every trite issue that it's hard not to feel like most of those people would defs not be there if they had any sort of other obligation or otherwise incurred a cost. Not to say that's the case with every issue, but there's a world of difference between the person showing up on a weekend for a bit to protest for climate action, hoping to end up in a photo, and the person protesting the actions of their home country's regime knowing that their government could abduct your family that's still there.
  - idiotsecant 1y ago
    I see people saying this a lot, and I guarantee during civil rights marches people were saying the same thing. It's a cynical and jaded and not very useful viewpoint, IMO. We shouldn't be gatekeeping the ability of the average person to publicly petition their government for a redress of grievances. That's kind of a core function of an engaged populace.

seivan 1y ago

[dead]

rustcleaner 1y ago

Get your Black&Scholes branded spear out and head to the pond for some trout!

selimthegrim 1y ago
Isn’t that Black and Decker (TM)
- WorldMaker 1y ago
  The market already tore Sears apart. Black and Decker is a zombie brand that continues in our IP-focused globalized JIT retail wasteland that certainly won't be on shelves "7 weeks from now". (Though maybe your grandmother's Black & Decker still works long past its lifetime guarantee and we'll be fighting to find the last of those.) Also, I believe the above had an additional layer of an economics joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes_model
- giardini 1y ago
  The tip fell off my old Black and Decker spear years ago. Shoddy materials. And my (formerly) trusty Black-Scholes model, based on the normal distribution, had to be replaced with a fat-tailed distribution model after the financial meltdown. Shoddy materials.
  - selimthegrim 1y ago
    I just think of the Indiana Jones scene where the monkey ends up being poisoned.
3rdDeviation 1y ago
As in, go harvest some of that market volatility? Definitely looking on the brighter side of things, hat tip to you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes_model?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes_model?wp...

rayiner 1y ago

All the “smart” people have been going in the wrong direction for 40 years—pursing short term profits and encouraging wasteful consumption—so you got the toddler. Let that be a lesson. Our trade deficit in the 1990s was under 1% of GDP. Some people may not remember that time, but we had toys on the shelves, toilet paper, etc. Not at all what the doomers are saying will happen without unrestricted free trade. If trade deficits are so great, why does the EU try to maintain a consistent surplus? I can accept that Trump is an idiot and doesn’t know what he’s doing on trade. But I think the EU bureaucrats are pretty smart! I think the Germans and Chinese and Japanese are very sharp and have deliberately sought to maintain manufacturing-oriented economies with a large trade surpluses. You know who else ran large trade deficits? The UK: https://ercouncil.org/2016/chart-of-the-week-week-19-2016-uk-trade-balance/ https://ercouncil.org/2016/chart-of-the-week-week-19-2016-uk.... And it seemingly worked for awhile so long as people gave a shit about the pound and London banks, but that proved to be extremely fragile. The 2008 recession destroyed that and erased the UK’s higher standard of living.

sorcerer-mar 1y ago
Can you link to one person with any sort of platform who has said "trade deficits are great?" Can you link to any left-of-center elected official who has advocated for "unrestricted free trade?" Or are you making these people up so you can win imaginary arguments?
- rayiner 1y ago
  What is actually happening matters more than what anyone says. “Trade deficits are great” and “unrestricted free trade” reflects the status quo. The weighted average tariff rate in 2016 was just 1.5%. The trade deficit has grown to over $1 trillion. Minor surgical changes aren’t going to move the needle when you have an economy addicted to debt-fueled consumption of foreign goods. Anyone who isn’t proposing major structural changes is endorsing the status quo of “trade deficits are great” and “unrestricted free trade.”
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago