4 ms·
You're 90% of the way there. The US is also sovereign and if things would become really bad the government would just ban exports. Ireland wasn't sovereign an
by oblio 19d ago
You're 90% of the way there.
The US is also sovereign and if things would become really bad the government would just ban exports.
Ireland wasn't sovereign and it turns out, as much as other countries act brotherly (not that the UK really did), nobody really cares about you like you care.
- WarmWash 19d agoBanning exports would be legitimately catastrophic geopolitically. Tariffs are mostly just politics and pretty heavily partisan. Banning oil exports would be objectively evil.
- AgentOrange1234 19d agoI think banning oil exports would never happen since oil shareholders would scream, but why would it be evil?
- orwin 19d agoSome countries rely on oil imports to produce agricultural products, and suddenly cutting them off the global market would kill hundreds of millions from hunger over the next year. Look at what happened in Cuba. Without china giving them old solar panels and used batteries, they would have revolted already. They still have a huge food insecurity issue for next year, especially if the huricane season gets bad.
- WarmWash 19d agoBecause the US started this mess, and it would essentially shift all the cost onto other countries who had no part in it.
- anovikov 19d agoIn US oil exports were banned till 2016 did you know?
- downrightmike 19d agoThe UK parliament thought it a good moral lesson Irish should starve because they were the wrong religion
- oblio 19d agoIn modern times we have a special word for what they did, but I've noticed British people are <<extremely>> touchy when it's used.
- tonyedgecombe 19d agoBritain was barely democratic at the time of the famine. It’s silly to blame the current generation for something their ancestors did. Even if the people you are complaining about were alive then they were unlikely to have any influence over the situation.
- oblio 19d agoOuch, I found the touchy Brit. > It’s silly to blame the current generation for something their ancestors did. As silly as it is, it's a widespread practice around the world.
- tmnvix 19d agoDepends what 'sovereign' implies. The will of the people? Or maybe the will of those that lobby government the hardest (e.g. oil companies)? If the latter, then export bans might not arrive anytime soon.
- cryptonector 19d ago'Sovereign' here means that the US govt is able to impose export restrictions, not that the People's will or special interests' desires are relevant. Of course 'can' != 'will'.
- tmnvix 19d agoInterestingly, my dictionary gives the following (amongst other definitions of course): > possessing supreme or ultimate power: in modern democracies the people's will is in theory sovereign.
- cryptonector 19d agoYour dictionary is wrong. For example, in the UK Parliament is sovereign, not the people. That's effectively how it is in representative democracies or republics where there is no fast representative recall mechanism. The U.S. Constitution doesn't say that Congress is sovereign, but the effect is the same. For that matter, the U.S. President has a great deal of power.
- oblio 19d agoSovereign doesn't mean any of those in this context. It means that the US can set its foreign and domestic policies as it pleases. How it decides those policies is another matter.