• 1 Post
  • 37 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 13th, 2023

help-circle

  • No, again.

    I didn’t make a stance, I didn’t say they’re not that bad. I asked why everyone immediately shit on them, and then I asked for more information when your examination seemed contradictory in one area.

    You keep putting words in my mouth and getting angry at me for them.

    You gave me a reasonable explanation at first, and then when I asked for clarification about a part that seemed contradictory to me, I was immediately met with anger, accusations, and a repeated claim that all my questions had been answered.

    Someone else actually gave me a pretty decent answer, but then they deleted their reply before I could follow up with them 😢. It was more about posturing than about economics (although when governments posture, economics are always impacted)




  • What?

    Why am I getting down votes?
    How am I shitting on anything? What am I even shitting on? \

    All I’m doing is asking “why do we shit on teriffs and treat them as inherently bad?”
    Im trying to have a discussion in good faith, and rather than having any of my questions explained or answered I’m just down voted and vaguely demeaned.

    I’m being very clear I do not support whatever shit trump is doing, I’m trying to understand why people just hate tariffs.
    I don’t understand how, if the importer bares all tariff costs, what would disincentivize a foreign nation from exporting to us since they bear no increased costs. Why would this not just appear as a decrease in demand, from their perspective?


  • It feels like this (common) argument it’s trying to have is cake and eat it too, so maybe you can help me understand.

    As you, and everyone, say: the financial burden of the teriffs are paid by the importer and passed to the consumer, rather than being paid by the exporting country or exporter - so what is the disincentive for those countries to continue trade with us? They’ll see a decrease in demand, but is that really a disincentive? I don’t understand how both of these things can be true and have the same cause, at the same time.

    The problem is outsourcing, and teriffs are an attempt to make outsourcing less appealing. I understand your analogy, but that’s the problem: we’re encountering Goodhart’s Law. We’re optimizing for GDP, and you’re right that’s teriffs will result in lower optimization, but in chasing GDP numbers we’ve failed to consider where the money is getting allocated. The lawyer could save money by hiring foreigners, but hiring locals helps people in their community. (Not saying foreign workers are bad, just trying to reuse your analogy). I don’t think we should get too preoccupied with economic efficiency, as long as we can ensure the waste stays domestic.

    I’m not confident teriffs are actually a good idea, and even if they were I don’t trust Trump to implement them. What I’m trying to do is push back and get clarification about why people are acting like teriffs are inherently bad.









  • Yeah, I know I shouldn’t expect much from a site like that, but since it’s shared here I felt like I should shine a little light on the deeper issues.

    This kind of superficial “journalism” rage-baiting boomers for clicks is really frustrating to me. Shit like this is brain-rot at least as bad as Tiktok is. It has always existed, but the extent to which it has replaced actual analysis and investigation is depressing.

    Yes, the parents are partially at fault, of course. But as you indicated, there are significant societal pressures that force families into dynamics like this and it’s not realistic to expect an overwhelming majority to be able to resist it, alone. And since we’re not about to engage in class-based eugenics, it’s up to society to give them a serviceable ladder to climb out of their situation.

    So, TLDR; I wanted to shine a light on deeper issues, so that people don’t think that this is solely a moral failing of parents, and that they DO understand that we have a collective responsibility to help families.



  • I mean, that’s kind of my point - in situations like that, it seems like using Tiktok is small potatoes compared to the more significant issues that’d cause problem behavior. The Tiktok consumption is just another symptom, and if it wasn’t tiktok it’d be some other escape mechanism.

    To me, the article seems lazy, complaining about a superficial problem without spending effort to even consider or mention underlying root causes that could give rise to it and must be solved first.

    And to be clear I’m not blaming the parents, they’re not the “root cause” I’m talking about. They’re victims too, in large part. They and their kids are stuck in a harmful cycle, and people with the ability to break that cycle are unwilling to do so.


  • What does “on tiktok” mean?

    Unsupervised with their own accounts? I feel like that’s difficult to believe. Watching a few tiktoks before dinner with their parents? That doesn’t really strike me as a problem.

    While I don’t entirely disagree with the author, I feel like this is a far too superficial look at what is a larger societal problem: young people have checked out.

    He makes the argument that mental health is in decline, and I’m not sure if that’s true or we’ve just removed the stigma from therapy… But of more concern to me is that young people just DGAF, and I think that’s because older generations have left nothing for younger generations to inherit, besides ruin. Kids 5-7 aren’t gonna understand that, but they’re gonna pick up the vibes from their parents.