@admitsWrongIfProven the contemporary Catholic church is a hierarchy, but not an autocracy. it is incapable of coercing even its adherents, let alone the rest of us.
yes, it’s the identity of the new hierarch that will send a signal.
it's weird how the catholic church now has a moment when it has to decide whether it wants to accommodate or pointedly resist a global trend toward authoritarianism.
“Beneath his facade of talking about healthy living and wellness, Kennedy is actually a eugenicist. He insists that viruses and bacteria only kill people who don’t eat healthy and exercise by his lights—essentially rejecting the germ theory of disease.” @ryanlcooper https://prospect.org/health/2025-04-23-trump-administration-objectively-pro-cancer/
remember when we were a confident, generous, hopeful country?
under bukele it is starting to seem like "el salvador" was ironically named.
so, we are living under a fascist administration, but at least this is legal.
Sandwich board advertising “THC SLUSHY”
@light I don’t think that can be done. I mean, in general we do want to go for “the public chooses ends, experts define means”. but “the public” is too inchoate a creature to reliably choose ends, what it says depends upon the institutions and other particulars of how you ask. so we have to constitute an abstraction of the public more coherent and consistent than the latest outrage. Which is, eg, the role of a legislature, and the motivation often for bicameralism. 1/
@light Which is why it’s a profound catastrophe that our legislature is functioning so poorly. Legislatures are our main institution for both meaningfully constituting and representing the public, but doing so with some coherence and constancy. Our constitution wisely makes the legislature supreme in power. But if it fails to function, our system suffers a kind of brain death. /fin
@light institutions. like our bicameral legislature. our independent courts. and yes, our executive agencies, by putting up more or less resistance to sharp turns based on their judgment and experience of the domain. of course, with consensus or persistence, the public can impose any signal above all of these.
"since JFK and especially since Carter/Reagan, the US has been losing its ability to tax the rich. It has increasingly chosen to tax the rest of the world, moving industry, in particular, to other countries. Those countries made what the US needed, and sold it to them in US dollars" @ianwelsh https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-proximate-cause-of-revolutions-is-inability-to-tax-the-us-is-losing-that/
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego Some changes are good, and some changes are bad. Some good changes can be made quickly. In social affairs, most changes should be made over time, because people with real lives and plans have to adjust to them, will be hurt — badly, seriously, sometimes fatally — by abrupt unexpected changes. In a democracy, you have to actually persuade people that the course you’ve set is good, if it is to endure. 1/
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego (That last, actually, is my biggest critique of Biden’s industrial policy. He did good things that were off to a good start! But he inadequately promoted those good things, and inadequately educated the public about their deliberate, not-so-quick time tables. So, after an election, all his genuinely sprouting seeds are getting ripped to shreds.) /fin
@realcaseyrollins @Phil @diego There’s no such thing as a “tariff deficit”. Pre-Trump formal tariffs were very low in both directions among developed countries, but the US ran a large trade deficit.
Working to balance the overall deficit, carefully and over time, would have been wise policy. Balancing *individual, bilateral* deficits is just stupid, let alone trying to do it so abruptly.
@realcaseyrollins @Phil @diego Do you think Europeans do not perceive the US as bullying? Again, it’s ordinary that interacting with governments, especially foreign governments, is difficult, businesses resent it, and always perceive, often not wrongly, discrimination in favor of the home team. 1/
@realcaseyrollins @Phil @diego But I don’t think US tech giants, which dominate European markets and use Ireland to avoid most US taxes, have been so hard done. /fin
@realcaseyrollins @Phil @diego Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” do not offset actual tariffs. Those “tariffs” do not exist. They assume that a bilateral trade deficit is ipso facto evidence of non-tariff barriers, and use a miscomputation to offset the combination of (usually very small) formal tariffs and the hypothetical non-tariff barriers they’ve deduced. 1/
@realcaseyrollins @Phil @diego The computation is structured not to replicate others tariffs, but to discern the rate which, under some probably incorrect assumptions and with almost definitely incorrect inputs, would push each bilateral relationship to balance. (Note: This is for the now-suspended “reciprocal tariffs”.) /fin
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego i don’t have the wealth to make bets on such a scale. the Bryan Caplans of the world usually stick with $100.
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego I participate in financial markets to put money on my views. Unsurprisingly, I’m short US equities, long foreign currencies, and long gold atm. Lower equities and a weak dollar might have been good developments, if the means of achieving them had not been so destructive. I don’t think I’m interested in making Bryan Caplan style interpersonal bets.
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego sayeth the glorious mad intoxication of the destroyer.
when you, and we, wake up from your hangover, all that will be left is the destruction.
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego Have you paid attention to what our tech giants do to Europe? You only see “bullying” one way. Believe me, I’ve dealt with Europe’s difficult bureaucracies. They impose it on one another, at the country and individual level, as much as on trading partners. But you feel special, because it’s a lot of work to deal with them. Surely they’ve singled you out and bullied you.
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego MAGA is nothing more or less than a wrecking ball driven by pathetically un-self-aware personal resentments. It is a movement of disappointed toddlers wrecking what other kids have built with their blocks.
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego Non-tariff barriers are what the administration says have been so unfair (because formal tariff rates of many partners it’s punishing have been low)! But any policy is a nontariff barrier or subsidy. Almost no policy or regulation is orthogonal to trade. The only way to address misunderstandings and disputes over nontariff barriers is to adopt a norm of balance. Then they stop mattering.
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego The biggest bully in public affairs I have ever encountered is the current US administration. And believe me, I mean to smack back in any way I can.
Our trading partners have not been bullies, even though we have allowed ourselves to — it was always under our control, Dorothy! — to trade with them on foolish terms.
@Phil @realcaseyrollins @diego Developed countries tariff one another very little, until now. Tariffs extraordinary limited role should be sectoral, not country by country. It might (usually not, but it’s not incoherent) make sense to, say, tariff batteries to protect an infant industry in the US. (Subsidies are usually preferable.) Bilateral tariffs make basically no sense, basically ever.