4 ms·

My whole professional life I have lived in a world where business was done in most of the world-- more or less-- according to American rules of law and trade.

My whole professional life I have lived in a world where business was done in most of the world-- more or less-- according to American rules of law and trade. I have benefitted enormously from being able to buy things from all over the world when they are cheaper and sell the things I make to most of the world. I have family members who think America should be first. They love it when the US snubs other countries. In general they are people who are retired, work for the state or local government, or don't do things that generate much wealth. So they are really oblivious to how the world order has benefited their country. But maybe that is because I benefited and they didn't.

trhway 9mo ago
> America should be first America had been first all the time since at least 1945 while driving the globalizaton. What can be more "first" than extracting all possible kinds of value - cheap labor, educated immigrants, mineral resources, transaction fee from whatever goes through the financial networks, profit from the global trade flow, etc. - from the rest of the world? >But maybe that is because I benefited and they didn't. "didn't"? Having one of the best retirements in the world immediately comes to mind. MAGA is about mythically great 50s or 60s i guess. Back then the technological complexity of the time allowed to have "in-house" all the technologies needed to build even most complex products. Today the "house of 340 million" is too small to fit all the tech needed for even moderately complex modern products. The tech pyramid became much higher and has much wider foundation. As a result, tariffs hit most strongly the domestic manufacturing which needs all those imported components/materials.
- pseudohadamard 9mo ago
  >MAGA is about mythically great 50s or 60s i guess. No, it's not, and that's what makes it so powerful. Everyone gets to decide for themselves when America was great. For some it's before the Civil War, when the darkies were working in the fields picking cotton and knew their place. For others it's the 1940s when the US was kicking ass in Europe and the Pacific and other countries knew their place. For some it's the 1950s when women were barefoot and pregnant and also knew their place... you can probably see a bit of theme here. In any case everyone gets to choose their own imagined golden time when A was G, typically at the expense of others (women, African-americans, minorities, other countries, ...). And you can even see which era the different groups prefer, e.g. the tradwives want to be back in the 1950s when women were unpaid domestic servants, etc.
- georgeecollins 9mo ago
  I think we agree! My point was that America was first, but you only saw that if you were doing business at a corporate level, particularly in things like tech or finance. If you lived in a small town, you saw your manufacturing shut down. If you lived in a big city you knew people who were doing business all over the world with great success. And also I agree that the whole country benefited economically. But its hard to see that when your region is doing badly.
  - trhway 9mo ago
    >But its hard to see that when your region is doing badly. May be proponents of globalism should have financed those voters travel to other countries to see what real "doing badly" looks like. In US, as far as i see, whenever/wherever somebody is struggling, doing badly, it can mostly be attributed to 2 problems - 30 or something years stagnant minimum wage, which today is several times less than minimally reasonable, and tremendous limitations on housing construction, both problems are inflicted by politicians on the regular people.
    - orwin 9mo ago
      Politicians decide wages private companies pay people?
      - _DeadFred_ 9mo ago
        Private companies invented 'the company store' and paying their labor in script so that labor never had a means to leave (your pay is useless outside of the company town). Politicians got rid of company pay choices and made them pick from a list of options after it was established companies couldn't be trusted to make the wage choice on their own. So yes, and for good reasons. Unless your argument is that companies should be allowed to pay in useless company scrip? Government oversite is so necessary and has become so pervasive and successful that Conservatives are like fish that don't believe water exists. They assume our successful heavily regulated Capitalism is the default state of Capitalism.
      - surgical_fire 9mo ago
watwut 9mo ago
Billionaires and farmers selling abroad love this administration. The small enterpreneurs and wall street voted for it the most.
- esseph 9mo ago
  https://www.kcur.org/environment-agriculture/2025-09-25/china-trade-american-soybean-farmers-limited-options-sell-grain https://www.kcur.org/environment-agriculture/2025-09-25/chin... https://farmaction.us/china-stopped-buying-u-s-soybeans-the-real-problem-started-decades-ago/ https://farmaction.us/china-stopped-buying-u-s-soybeans-the-...
ndhcvs 9mo ago
Doesnt matter what they think. Go check the headlines in British or French news papers from pinnacle of Empire to unravelling and the level of ignorance and cluelessness will be staggering. The chimp troupe has 3 inch chimp brains to process reality. That brain has hard limits on how much info and change it can process and how quickly it can update existing beliefs. In groups beliefs these update rates and limits slow processing down even further. So incoherence is the norm and story tellung is the survival hack. Once you get that you stop focusing energy and time on the unpredictable and uncontrollable.
beej71 9mo ago
I know an America-First who runs their own business and imports a ton from China. Now they're feeling the pain, but I'm not sure it's changing any minds. It runs deep.

trhway 9mo ago

> America should be first America had been first all the time since at least 1945 while driving the globalizaton. What can be more "first" than extracting all possible kinds of value - cheap labor, educated immigrants, mineral resources, transaction fee from whatever goes through the financial networks, profit from the global trade flow, etc. - from the rest of the world? >But maybe that is because I benefited and they didn't. "didn't"? Having one of the best retirements in the world immediately comes to mind. MAGA is about mythically great 50s or 60s i guess. Back then the technological complexity of the time allowed to have "in-house" all the technologies needed to build even most complex products. Today the "house of 340 million" is too small to fit all the tech needed for even moderately complex modern products. The tech pyramid became much higher and has much wider foundation. As a result, tariffs hit most strongly the domestic manufacturing which needs all those imported components/materials.

pseudohadamard 9mo ago
>MAGA is about mythically great 50s or 60s i guess. No, it's not, and that's what makes it so powerful. Everyone gets to decide for themselves when America was great. For some it's before the Civil War, when the darkies were working in the fields picking cotton and knew their place. For others it's the 1940s when the US was kicking ass in Europe and the Pacific and other countries knew their place. For some it's the 1950s when women were barefoot and pregnant and also knew their place... you can probably see a bit of theme here. In any case everyone gets to choose their own imagined golden time when A was G, typically at the expense of others (women, African-americans, minorities, other countries, ...). And you can even see which era the different groups prefer, e.g. the tradwives want to be back in the 1950s when women were unpaid domestic servants, etc.
georgeecollins 9mo ago
I think we agree! My point was that America was first, but you only saw that if you were doing business at a corporate level, particularly in things like tech or finance. If you lived in a small town, you saw your manufacturing shut down. If you lived in a big city you knew people who were doing business all over the world with great success. And also I agree that the whole country benefited economically. But its hard to see that when your region is doing badly.
- trhway 9mo ago
  >But its hard to see that when your region is doing badly. May be proponents of globalism should have financed those voters travel to other countries to see what real "doing badly" looks like. In US, as far as i see, whenever/wherever somebody is struggling, doing badly, it can mostly be attributed to 2 problems - 30 or something years stagnant minimum wage, which today is several times less than minimally reasonable, and tremendous limitations on housing construction, both problems are inflicted by politicians on the regular people.
  - orwin 9mo ago
    Politicians decide wages private companies pay people?
    - _DeadFred_ 9mo ago
      Private companies invented 'the company store' and paying their labor in script so that labor never had a means to leave (your pay is useless outside of the company town). Politicians got rid of company pay choices and made them pick from a list of options after it was established companies couldn't be trusted to make the wage choice on their own. So yes, and for good reasons. Unless your argument is that companies should be allowed to pay in useless company scrip? Government oversite is so necessary and has become so pervasive and successful that Conservatives are like fish that don't believe water exists. They assume our successful heavily regulated Capitalism is the default state of Capitalism.
    - surgical_fire 9mo ago

watwut 9mo ago

Billionaires and farmers selling abroad love this administration. The small enterpreneurs and wall street voted for it the most.

esseph 9mo ago
https://www.kcur.org/environment-agriculture/2025-09-25/china-trade-american-soybean-farmers-limited-options-sell-grain https://www.kcur.org/environment-agriculture/2025-09-25/chin... https://farmaction.us/china-stopped-buying-u-s-soybeans-the-real-problem-started-decades-ago/ https://farmaction.us/china-stopped-buying-u-s-soybeans-the-...

ndhcvs 9mo ago

Doesnt matter what they think. Go check the headlines in British or French news papers from pinnacle of Empire to unravelling and the level of ignorance and cluelessness will be staggering. The chimp troupe has 3 inch chimp brains to process reality. That brain has hard limits on how much info and change it can process and how quickly it can update existing beliefs. In groups beliefs these update rates and limits slow processing down even further. So incoherence is the norm and story tellung is the survival hack. Once you get that you stop focusing energy and time on the unpredictable and uncontrollable.

beej71 9mo ago

I know an America-First who runs their own business and imports a ton from China. Now they're feeling the pain, but I'm not sure it's changing any minds. It runs deep.