5 ms·

The fact that this all happened by choice is really something. It's like witnessing a self-decapitation.

SilverElfin 7mo ago
It’s not a self decapitation exactly. I think Trump, his family, his corporate donors, and other friends are all willing to sacrifice everyone else - including the lead America had - to make themselves rich and powerful. Every single decision to spend - defense, ICE contracts, AI, approvals of anticompetitive acquisitions, changes to regulations, etc - is making that circle richer at our expense. They don’t care if American supremacy is lost or if the dollar crashes or if the national debt becomes a crisis. As long as they have their wealth. The public is being decapitated, not them.
- refurb 7mo ago
  How does sacrificing America's lead make American oligarchs richer? That doesn't even make sense.
  - vincnetas 7mo ago
    basically make decisions that make no sense but benefit you financially. Sample. you run a printing business. you dont own it just run it. you sell your main printer and assign a performance bonus to your self. next month your business is closed because you dont have equipment to print, but you also have your bonus in pocket.
  - bijowo1676 7mo ago
    just like stock trader, you can get rich from going long, you also can get rich by shorting the economy (selling short). this is what trump is doing: selling America short
  - toyg 7mo ago
    It does, it's textbook "banana republic". Dictator and close circles enrich themselves, everyone else gets poorer. US voters were so worried that South America would come to them, that they have become the worst of South America.
    - refurb 7mo ago
      Well we know the US doesn't have a dictator, so that's not a good example. This all sounds incredibly hand wavey "oh, they just do things that benefit themselves but tank the US economy". From what I've seen all the oligarchs in the US got rich when the economy was doing well. Do you have a specific example of someone who got rich by "tanking the US economy"?
      - toyg 7mo ago
        > we know the US doesn't have a dictator Even most dictatorships don't "have a dictator". They have a "great leader" that coincidentally gets voted in again and again, for whom constitutions are amended, and who happens to have his own "revolutionary" irregular militias, not-so-secret police grabbing people on the streets in plainclothes (or worse), a subservient parliament rubber-stamping decrees, etc etc. Even without some of that, the "unitary executive" theory, as implemented by George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump, is effectively a temporary dictatorship in all but name. > all the oligarchs in the US got rich when the economy was doing well. You can make bank when things go bad. Look up the European currency crisis of the 90s, when folks like Soros amassed their billions. Or the few who got 2008 right. Whoever is betting with incredible timing on Trump's unexpected policy shifts, every other week, is definitely not getting poorer. And when the economy tanks, assets get cheap - which is great if you have accumulated cash.
        refurb 6mo ago
        No, actually those countries do call them dictators - I’m not aware of any similar to what you’ve described. A very few select oligarchs got rich during the European currency crisis - and anybody oligarchs got hammered. How do the oligarchs decide? Do they meet in secret?
  - heavyset_go 7mo ago
    Look at post-USSR Russia
  - AngryData 7mo ago
    As an analogy, you can pump the yield of your crop fields by 50% if you are willing to deplete the soil and cash in on 100 years of careful building of the topsoil layer. The person doing it wins out in the short term 10 years, but society loses out long-term when they gotta spend another 100 years of much lower yields to build the top soil back up to healthy levels. Meanwhile the 10 year guy already made his money and sold off whats dregs are left to seek the next snatch and grab operation.
- consumer451 7mo ago
  That's fair. I agree. I was thinking of the USA as one actor. The USA votes, or chooses not to, and that has effects.
  - SilverElfin 7mo ago
    True. In that sense the voters have self decapitated. I can’t understand how the Trump administration still has support from 40% of the country (per polls). I could understand voting for him due to some issue a voter has strong feelings about. But now we have seen it all play out and it’s a disaster leading to national ruin. And there is no talk of impeachment, trials, and accountability for everyone in his circle. So I guess that 40% DOES choose to self decapitate.
    - b3ing 7mo ago
      They don’t care when the media on am and talk radio, evangelical and mega churches, and all the conservative news tells them what to believe
      - consumer451 7mo ago
        Media that is never critical towards one side is what started all of this. A politician's kryptonite is when their voters find out that they lied or were hypocrites. That is a universal truth. Single party media outlets like News Corp, Sinclair, Euronews, and so many others have broken that system entirely. My test to see if someone is a shill/moron is to simply ask them to say one obvious bad thing about "their side." If they cannot, it becomes clear that they are not worth listening to.
        andsoitis 7mo ago
        What’s the worst thing, in your mind, about “your side”, assuming you have one.
        consumer451 7mo ago
- dartharva 7mo ago
  Weakening your own domain to get powerful sounds clearly contradictory, yet there are so many examples of elites doing exactly that despite the fact that doing so must've required foresight and planning elaborate enough to not blind them from the consequences.
  - throwaway290 7mo ago
    > Weakening your own domain to get powerful sounds clearly contradictory No because it's relative. If people around you get weak then you get more powerful automatically. If you get more powerful and people around you also get more powerful then you are in the same situation. So if power is what you want you destroy others at the same time as building your power. What trump is doing is logical. He isn't living in china or russia. he doesn't care if they get stronger. he cares if people around get weaker relative to him and cronies who are in on it. and that works
- bijowo1676 7mo ago
  The worst part is that I dont see a meaningful opposition to Trump. if American political system allows President to do that and allows such President to be elected, than such system deserves to die.
- IAmGraydon 7mo ago
  Funny enough, that's capitalism, isn't it? Survival of the most ruthless, and morality is a weakness. Are we surprised he was born out of this?
- ETH_start 7mo ago
  The US lead over the EU in per capita productivity has massively grown over the last 20 years. There's no indication of waning American power. America has produced 70 times more stock market wealth if you look only at companies created within the last 50 years than the EU. And this is not all paper wealth. If you look at technological sophistication, whether that's frontier AI models, leading-edge pharmaceutical drugs, total amount of compute, or the space industry, the U.S. has grown its lead over the EU over the last 50 years. It's because the EU has largely fixated itself on reducing wealth inequality by punishing those who succeed. It's safety-maximalist approach to private industrial action has also hamstringed industry — see Germany closing all 17 of its nuclear power plants. The US doesn't really need to do much except not sabotage itself to maintain its lead. Like in all nations, laissez-faire (French for "leave it alone") allows the private sector to do the rest.
  - overfeed 7mo ago
    > It's because the EU has largely fixated itself on reducing wealth inequality by punishing those who succeed. It's actually because America pivoted[1] from manufacturing to higher-margin services (financial, tech[2]), and generations of American Diplomats had negotiated trade deals that ensure American services are never shut-out or hobbled in most countries. American companies won't look so special,or be nearly as profitable, once they lose their default status that allow them to siphon money from all over the globe -including Europe 1. https://americanbusinesshistory.org/2022-updated-largest-companies-charts/ https://americanbusinesshistory.org/2022-updated-largest-com... 2. Silicon valley caught lightning in a bottle. Other American locales repeatedly tried and failed to replicate it - so it rules out American legislative attitudes as the vital ingredient.
    - ETH_start 7mo ago
      If you're familiar with American capital markets and global venture capital, you'd know that it had almost nothing to do with these trade deals. They had a marginal impact. The amount of capital available to startups and established companies at all stages of their development was the main difference. And the difference between the US and EU in that regard came mostly from the US simply not sabotaging itself the way the EU did with extremely high taxes on the top income earners, as part of an agenda to reduce wealth inequality. The fact that the tech industry concentrated in Silicon Valley is simply due to network effects. Regardless of which locale became the Schelling point for U.S.-based technology companies, that locale would have succeeded, because of the national economic policy it operated inside of.
themafia 7mo ago
America just experienced a leveraged buy out.
refurb 7mo ago
Not really. It has more to do with gold is now worth almost 3x what it was 2 years ago. And before you get too excited, this "news" from the World Gold Council. A consortium of gold mining corporations. Clearly it's a pump article "have you bought gold yet? everyone else is! why not you!?!?"
- consumer451 7mo ago
  Are you saying that the USA is doing just great and there is nothing for anyone to worry about? Are you saying that the price of gold just spontaneously went up? From over hear it seems like the age of Pax Americana is over, and gold at ~$4,600 is one of the results.
  - rustystump 7mo ago
    No, but it was due for a correction for a while now. That correction has sparked extra speculation because everything is gambling now. Ofc those with an incentive of higher priced gold will tell to buy gold. Only time will tell if they were right.
- onion2k 7mo ago
  Not really. It has more to do with gold is now worth almost 3x what it was 2 years ago. It's not like we've suddenly found new and exciting uses for gold though. The reason the price has gone up is because the demand for it has gone up, and the reason why demand has gone up is because people want an alternative to U.S bonds. A bunch of pump articles wouldn't be enough to lead to a 3x price increase.
  - refurb 7mo ago
    > the reason why demand has gone up is because people want an alternative to U.S bonds That makes no sense since the amount held in US bonds is not that different. The only change is that the gold that people held has gone up in value. It's not different than holding Google and Apple stock, and when Apple stock goes up people say "oh, it's because people don't want Google stock". That's not true at all.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
somenameforme 7mo ago
You're seeing the result of something that's been decades in the making. You can see a simple table of dollar reserves here. [1] They've been consistently falling year over year for the past 27 years. And it's not like 1999 was anything particular. Rather the uptake leading up to 1999 as a peak was a result of shenanigans that happened in 1971 [2]. That's when the USD became completely unbacked by anything, enabling the government to start going arbitrarily far into debt. That had short to mid-term positive impacts and long-term catastrophic ones, as is the typical strategy in modern times. People always exaggerate the impact of geopolitical things, because it feels like the biggest thing ever, especially when you're relatively young. But in reality we're always onto nonsense after nonsense. Countries have the wisdom and view to appreciate this, and so respond to geopolitical stuff (in action, not rhetoric) far more gradually than people do. They're certainly not going to just dump all their dollar reserves because of a single misguided war or even misguided president, or they'd have been gone long ago. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency#Global_currency_reserves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency#Global_curren... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system#Nixon_shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system#Nixon_sho... [2] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
- consumer451 7mo ago
  I hear you, the world is always ending. But, I am well past mid-life, I am a huge beneficiary of Pax Americana, and 47 feels like something truly different. Maybe it's just the end of a long pattern, but it is still the end. US-led NATO is dead, and the stability of the USA is dead, therefore the dollar's dominance is weakening. Don't take my word for it. Listen to Mark Carney at Davos.
  - ivell 7mo ago
    I think there is a realization that (1) US' checks and balances do not work, (2) Trump is not a "mistake" of voters and can repeat again. This is the main reason that things are different. Most presidents were reasonable in their hegemony, and Trump's naked aggression makes everyone to hedge against US.

It’s not a self decapitation exactly. I think Trump, his family, his corporate donors, and other friends are all willing to sacrifice everyone else - including the lead America had - to make themselves rich and powerful. Every single decision to spend - defense, ICE contracts, AI, approvals of anticompetitive acquisitions, changes to regulations, etc - is making that circle richer at our expense. They don’t care if American supremacy is lost or if the dollar crashes or if the national debt becomes a crisis. As long as they have their wealth. The public is being decapitated, not them.

refurb 7mo ago
How does sacrificing America's lead make American oligarchs richer? That doesn't even make sense.
- vincnetas 7mo ago
  basically make decisions that make no sense but benefit you financially. Sample. you run a printing business. you dont own it just run it. you sell your main printer and assign a performance bonus to your self. next month your business is closed because you dont have equipment to print, but you also have your bonus in pocket.
- bijowo1676 7mo ago
  just like stock trader, you can get rich from going long, you also can get rich by shorting the economy (selling short). this is what trump is doing: selling America short
- toyg 7mo ago
  It does, it's textbook "banana republic". Dictator and close circles enrich themselves, everyone else gets poorer. US voters were so worried that South America would come to them, that they have become the worst of South America.
  - refurb 7mo ago
    Well we know the US doesn't have a dictator, so that's not a good example. This all sounds incredibly hand wavey "oh, they just do things that benefit themselves but tank the US economy". From what I've seen all the oligarchs in the US got rich when the economy was doing well. Do you have a specific example of someone who got rich by "tanking the US economy"?
    - toyg 7mo ago
      > we know the US doesn't have a dictator Even most dictatorships don't "have a dictator". They have a "great leader" that coincidentally gets voted in again and again, for whom constitutions are amended, and who happens to have his own "revolutionary" irregular militias, not-so-secret police grabbing people on the streets in plainclothes (or worse), a subservient parliament rubber-stamping decrees, etc etc. Even without some of that, the "unitary executive" theory, as implemented by George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump, is effectively a temporary dictatorship in all but name. > all the oligarchs in the US got rich when the economy was doing well. You can make bank when things go bad. Look up the European currency crisis of the 90s, when folks like Soros amassed their billions. Or the few who got 2008 right. Whoever is betting with incredible timing on Trump's unexpected policy shifts, every other week, is definitely not getting poorer. And when the economy tanks, assets get cheap - which is great if you have accumulated cash.
      - refurb 6mo ago
        No, actually those countries do call them dictators - I’m not aware of any similar to what you’ve described. A very few select oligarchs got rich during the European currency crisis - and anybody oligarchs got hammered. How do the oligarchs decide? Do they meet in secret?
- heavyset_go 7mo ago
  Look at post-USSR Russia
- AngryData 7mo ago
  As an analogy, you can pump the yield of your crop fields by 50% if you are willing to deplete the soil and cash in on 100 years of careful building of the topsoil layer. The person doing it wins out in the short term 10 years, but society loses out long-term when they gotta spend another 100 years of much lower yields to build the top soil back up to healthy levels. Meanwhile the 10 year guy already made his money and sold off whats dregs are left to seek the next snatch and grab operation.
consumer451 7mo ago
That's fair. I agree. I was thinking of the USA as one actor. The USA votes, or chooses not to, and that has effects.
- SilverElfin 7mo ago
  True. In that sense the voters have self decapitated. I can’t understand how the Trump administration still has support from 40% of the country (per polls). I could understand voting for him due to some issue a voter has strong feelings about. But now we have seen it all play out and it’s a disaster leading to national ruin. And there is no talk of impeachment, trials, and accountability for everyone in his circle. So I guess that 40% DOES choose to self decapitate.
  - b3ing 7mo ago
    They don’t care when the media on am and talk radio, evangelical and mega churches, and all the conservative news tells them what to believe
    - consumer451 7mo ago
      Media that is never critical towards one side is what started all of this. A politician's kryptonite is when their voters find out that they lied or were hypocrites. That is a universal truth. Single party media outlets like News Corp, Sinclair, Euronews, and so many others have broken that system entirely. My test to see if someone is a shill/moron is to simply ask them to say one obvious bad thing about "their side." If they cannot, it becomes clear that they are not worth listening to.
      - andsoitis 7mo ago
        What’s the worst thing, in your mind, about “your side”, assuming you have one.
        consumer451 7mo ago
dartharva 7mo ago
Weakening your own domain to get powerful sounds clearly contradictory, yet there are so many examples of elites doing exactly that despite the fact that doing so must've required foresight and planning elaborate enough to not blind them from the consequences.
- throwaway290 7mo ago
  > Weakening your own domain to get powerful sounds clearly contradictory No because it's relative. If people around you get weak then you get more powerful automatically. If you get more powerful and people around you also get more powerful then you are in the same situation. So if power is what you want you destroy others at the same time as building your power. What trump is doing is logical. He isn't living in china or russia. he doesn't care if they get stronger. he cares if people around get weaker relative to him and cronies who are in on it. and that works
bijowo1676 7mo ago
The worst part is that I dont see a meaningful opposition to Trump. if American political system allows President to do that and allows such President to be elected, than such system deserves to die.
IAmGraydon 7mo ago
Funny enough, that's capitalism, isn't it? Survival of the most ruthless, and morality is a weakness. Are we surprised he was born out of this?
ETH_start 7mo ago
The US lead over the EU in per capita productivity has massively grown over the last 20 years. There's no indication of waning American power. America has produced 70 times more stock market wealth if you look only at companies created within the last 50 years than the EU. And this is not all paper wealth. If you look at technological sophistication, whether that's frontier AI models, leading-edge pharmaceutical drugs, total amount of compute, or the space industry, the U.S. has grown its lead over the EU over the last 50 years. It's because the EU has largely fixated itself on reducing wealth inequality by punishing those who succeed. It's safety-maximalist approach to private industrial action has also hamstringed industry — see Germany closing all 17 of its nuclear power plants. The US doesn't really need to do much except not sabotage itself to maintain its lead. Like in all nations, laissez-faire (French for "leave it alone") allows the private sector to do the rest.
- overfeed 7mo ago
  > It's because the EU has largely fixated itself on reducing wealth inequality by punishing those who succeed. It's actually because America pivoted[1] from manufacturing to higher-margin services (financial, tech[2]), and generations of American Diplomats had negotiated trade deals that ensure American services are never shut-out or hobbled in most countries. American companies won't look so special,or be nearly as profitable, once they lose their default status that allow them to siphon money from all over the globe -including Europe 1. https://americanbusinesshistory.org/2022-updated-largest-companies-charts/ https://americanbusinesshistory.org/2022-updated-largest-com... 2. Silicon valley caught lightning in a bottle. Other American locales repeatedly tried and failed to replicate it - so it rules out American legislative attitudes as the vital ingredient.
  - ETH_start 7mo ago
    If you're familiar with American capital markets and global venture capital, you'd know that it had almost nothing to do with these trade deals. They had a marginal impact. The amount of capital available to startups and established companies at all stages of their development was the main difference. And the difference between the US and EU in that regard came mostly from the US simply not sabotaging itself the way the EU did with extremely high taxes on the top income earners, as part of an agenda to reduce wealth inequality. The fact that the tech industry concentrated in Silicon Valley is simply due to network effects. Regardless of which locale became the Schelling point for U.S.-based technology companies, that locale would have succeeded, because of the national economic policy it operated inside of.

themafia 7mo ago

America just experienced a leveraged buy out.

refurb 7mo ago

Not really. It has more to do with gold is now worth almost 3x what it was 2 years ago. And before you get too excited, this "news" from the World Gold Council. A consortium of gold mining corporations. Clearly it's a pump article "have you bought gold yet? everyone else is! why not you!?!?"

consumer451 7mo ago
Are you saying that the USA is doing just great and there is nothing for anyone to worry about? Are you saying that the price of gold just spontaneously went up? From over hear it seems like the age of Pax Americana is over, and gold at ~$4,600 is one of the results.
- rustystump 7mo ago
  No, but it was due for a correction for a while now. That correction has sparked extra speculation because everything is gambling now. Ofc those with an incentive of higher priced gold will tell to buy gold. Only time will tell if they were right.
onion2k 7mo ago
Not really. It has more to do with gold is now worth almost 3x what it was 2 years ago. It's not like we've suddenly found new and exciting uses for gold though. The reason the price has gone up is because the demand for it has gone up, and the reason why demand has gone up is because people want an alternative to U.S bonds. A bunch of pump articles wouldn't be enough to lead to a 3x price increase.
- refurb 7mo ago
  > the reason why demand has gone up is because people want an alternative to U.S bonds That makes no sense since the amount held in US bonds is not that different. The only change is that the gold that people held has gone up in value. It's not different than holding Google and Apple stock, and when Apple stock goes up people say "oh, it's because people don't want Google stock". That's not true at all.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

somenameforme 7mo ago

You're seeing the result of something that's been decades in the making. You can see a simple table of dollar reserves here. [1] They've been consistently falling year over year for the past 27 years. And it's not like 1999 was anything particular. Rather the uptake leading up to 1999 as a peak was a result of shenanigans that happened in 1971 [2]. That's when the USD became completely unbacked by anything, enabling the government to start going arbitrarily far into debt. That had short to mid-term positive impacts and long-term catastrophic ones, as is the typical strategy in modern times. People always exaggerate the impact of geopolitical things, because it feels like the biggest thing ever, especially when you're relatively young. But in reality we're always onto nonsense after nonsense. Countries have the wisdom and view to appreciate this, and so respond to geopolitical stuff (in action, not rhetoric) far more gradually than people do. They're certainly not going to just dump all their dollar reserves because of a single misguided war or even misguided president, or they'd have been gone long ago. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency#Global_currency_reserves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency#Global_curren... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system#Nixon_shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system#Nixon_sho... [2] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

consumer451 7mo ago
I hear you, the world is always ending. But, I am well past mid-life, I am a huge beneficiary of Pax Americana, and 47 feels like something truly different. Maybe it's just the end of a long pattern, but it is still the end. US-led NATO is dead, and the stability of the USA is dead, therefore the dollar's dominance is weakening. Don't take my word for it. Listen to Mark Carney at Davos.
- ivell 7mo ago
  I think there is a realization that (1) US' checks and balances do not work, (2) Trump is not a "mistake" of voters and can repeat again. This is the main reason that things are different. Most presidents were reasonable in their hegemony, and Trump's naked aggression makes everyone to hedge against US.