While it's fun to bash Trump, there's an important lesson here.

aociswundumho said:

Trump has a vision of taking America back to a time when most people worked in factories, and he's actually trying to force that vision on the rest of us. His use of tariffs is a clear example of government central planning, just on a small scale. He's using state power to try to reshape the American economy according to his own personal preferences.
It’s important to understand that tariffs are built on the same logic as central planning: the belief that government officials should override voluntary exchange and market signals to engineer a particular economic outcome. That’s the dangerous idea behind it.
Thankfully, Trump only has limited power, because this is still a free country. The U.S. is not a socialist state with a centrally planned economy.
But let’s think about how much damage he can do using only tariffs. Then imagine if he had control over the entire economy: wages, prices, raw materials, labor markets - every input. That would be a disaster. And we already have a name for that kind of system: socialism, which is public control over the means of production.
Trump is demonstrating to us why socialist countries are so poor - and why their people are often so miserable that the government has to build walls to keep them from escaping.
If you want prosperity, and the freedom to buy what you want, from who you want , then the answer is capitalism and largely free markets, not state control or central planning.

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aociswundumho said:

Trump has a vision of taking America back to a time when most people worked in factories, and he's actually trying to force that vision on the rest of us. His use of tariffs is a clear example of government central planning, just on a small scale. He's using state power to try to reshape the American economy according to his own personal preferences.

Click to expand...

aociswundumho said:

Trump has a vision of taking America back to a time when most people worked in factories, and he's actually trying to force that vision on the rest of us. His use of tariffs is a clear example of government central planning, just on a small scale. He's using state power to try to reshape the American economy according to his own personal preferences.

It’s important to understand that tariffs are built on the same logic as central planning: the belief that government officials should override voluntary exchange and market signals to engineer a particular economic outcome. That’s the dangerous idea behind it.

Thankfully, Trump only has limited power, because this is still a free country. The U.S. is not a socialist state with a centrally planned economy.

But let’s think about how much damage he can do using only tariffs. Then imagine if he had control over the entire economy: wages, prices, raw materials, labor markets - every input. That would be a disaster. And we already have a name for that kind of system: socialism, which is public control over the means of production.

Trump is demonstrating to us why socialist countries are so poor - and why their people are often so miserable that the government has to build walls to keep them from escaping.

If you want prosperity, and the freedom to buy what you want, from who you want , then the answer is capitalism and largely free markets, not state control or central planning.

Click to expand...

aociswundumho said:

Trump has a vision of taking America back to a time when most people worked in factories, and he's actually trying to force that vision on the rest of us. His use of tariffs is a clear example of government central planning, just on a small scale. He's using state power to try to reshape the American economy according to his own personal preferences.

It’s important to understand that tariffs are built on the same logic as central planning: the belief that government officials should override voluntary exchange and market signals to engineer a particular economic outcome. That’s the dangerous idea behind it.

Thankfully, Trump only has limited power, because this is still a free country. The U.S. is not a socialist state with a centrally planned economy.

But let’s think about how much damage he can do using only tariffs. Then imagine if he had control over the entire economy: wages, prices, raw materials, labor markets - every input. That would be a disaster. And we already have a name for that kind of system: socialism, which is public control over the means of production.

Trump is demonstrating to us why socialist countries are so poor - and why their people are often so miserable that the government has to build walls to keep them from escaping.

If you want prosperity, and the freedom to buy what you want, from who you want , then the answer is capitalism and largely free markets, not state control or central planning.

Click to expand...

phoenix2020 said:

I think you are somewhat conflating individualism vs. collectivism with free market vs. centrally planned and democracy vs. authoritarianism. There are relationships between these spectra but they do not all mean the same thing, and they do not always line up properly. Trump is a sociopathic narcissist and therefore cares little about having a position regarding individualism/collectivism or free-market/centrally-planned-market, he only cares about being the one to wield the power. This is why tariffs are announced, delayed, enacted, escalated and removed seemingly at random--it is the very act of being the one who issues non-stop edicts that brings him pleasure. Tariffs were just the tool that popped into his mind.

Put differently, Trump doesn't care about people working in factories any more than he cares about people working white collar jobs. He just wants them kicking back a percentage to him, while pulling their strings every now and then just to show them that he's the CEO, the boss, and that he can.

Nothing about an individualist or collectivist society makes one or the other more or less vulnerable to autocracy, or limits its reach, as is readily demonstrated by MAGA--a group of tens of millions of supposedly fiercely individualistic people who nevertheless have sworn such loyalty to one person that they self-censor themselves and readily give up their freedoms as a tithe to their leader.

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j brown's body said:

Basically, you're saying he's going to give the us the negative characteristics of a socialist state while we remain a capitalist state with the ownership of the means of production remain in private hands.

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KingLeo said:

The US has for decades been a blend of socialism and capitalism and for the most part it has worked well.

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The Mark said:

I personally tend to think that capitalism cannot be trusted to run itself,

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aociswundumho said:

Neither does Trump, hence the tariffs.

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aociswundumho said:

Trump has a vision of taking America back to a time when most people worked in factories, and he's actually trying to force that vision on the rest of us. His use of tariffs is a clear example of government central planning, just on a small scale. He's using state power to try to reshape the American economy according to his own personal preferences.

It’s important to understand that tariffs are built on the same logic as central planning: the belief that government officials should override voluntary exchange and market signals to engineer a particular economic outcome. That’s the dangerous idea behind it.

Thankfully, Trump only has limited power, because this is still a free country. The U.S. is not a socialist state with a centrally planned economy.

But let’s think about how much damage he can do using only tariffs. Then imagine if he had control over the entire economy: wages, prices, raw materials, labor markets - every input. That would be a disaster. And we already have a name for that kind of system: socialism, which is public control over the means of production.

Trump is demonstrating to us why socialist countries are so poor - and why their people are often so miserable that the government has to build walls to keep them from escaping.

If you want prosperity, and the freedom to buy what you want, from who you want , then the answer is capitalism and largely free markets, not state control or central planning.

Click to expand...

Diving Mullah said:

He's swinging the pendulum entirely in the opposite direction by enacting a corporate capitalist fascist state where only a handful of corporations—accountable exclusively to him—are permitted to operate.

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aociswundumho said:

Trump has a vision of taking America back to a time when most people worked in factories, and he's actually trying to force that vision on the rest of us. His use of tariffs is a clear example of government central planning, just on a small scale. He's using state power to try to reshape the American economy according to his own personal preferences.

It’s important to understand that tariffs are built on the same logic as central planning: the belief that government officials should override voluntary exchange and market signals to engineer a particular economic outcome. That’s the dangerous idea behind it.

Thankfully, Trump only has limited power, because this is still a free country. The U.S. is not a socialist state with a centrally planned economy.

But let’s think about how much damage he can do using only tariffs. Then imagine if he had control over the entire economy: wages, prices, raw materials, labor markets - every input. That would be a disaster. And we already have a name for that kind of system: socialism, which is public control over the means of production.

Trump is demonstrating to us why socialist countries are so poor - and why their people are often so miserable that the government has to build walls to keep them from escaping.

If you want prosperity, and the freedom to buy what you want, from who you want , then the answer is capitalism and largely free markets, not state control or central planning.

Click to expand...

BirdinHand said:

You’re an anarchist who would have us at the whim of whichever band of overlords happened to gain control over whatever geographic region we live in.

Your posts indicate that you don’t believe in ANY government whatsoever.

So, . Not interested in any “lessons” from someone who consistently posts from mindset. Thanks.

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aociswundumho said:

Trump has a vision of taking America back to a time when most people worked in factories, and he's actually trying to force that vision on the rest of us. His use of tariffs is a clear example of government central planning, just on a small scale. He's using state power to try to reshape the American economy according to his own personal preferences.

It’s important to understand that tariffs are built on the same logic as central planning: the belief that government officials should override voluntary exchange and market signals to engineer a particular economic outcome. That’s the dangerous idea behind it.

Thankfully, Trump only has limited power, because this is still a free country. The U.S. is not a socialist state with a centrally planned economy.

But let’s think about how much damage he can do using only tariffs. Then imagine if he had control over the entire economy: wages, prices, raw materials, labor markets - every input. That would be a disaster. And we already have a name for that kind of system: socialism, which is public control over the means of production.

Trump is demonstrating to us why socialist countries are so poor - and why their people are often so miserable that the government has to build walls to keep them from escaping.

If you want prosperity, and the freedom to buy what you want, from who you want , then the answer is capitalism and largely free markets, not state control or central planning.

Click to expand...

CaughtInThe said:

People in our country you're not going to work for $5 a day.

That you don't know that is very telling.

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The Mark said:

I personally tend to think that capitalism cannot be trusted to run itself, and requires regulatory and legal limits to prevent the excesses it naturally trends towards, which will harm people.

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Questerr said:

They will when they are destitute serfs in @aociswundumho Neo-Feudalist dream world where any attempt to unionize or protest for better pay and conditions results in rich owners sending private mercenaries to kill enough of them of scare the rest into silence. After all, the rich owner will just be responding to socialist aggression of the workers so his use of force will be justified.

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j brown's body said:

Basically, you're saying he's going to give the us the negative characteristics of a socialist state while we remain a capitalist state with the ownership of the means of production remain in private hands.

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Ikari said:

Free market capitalism does have a level of oversight to it. Even Hayek argued that, something that many people who try to evoke "Austrian Economics" seem to forget (likely because none of them have actually read Hayek).

The troubles come in with government trying to steer and control markets, not with oversight in general.

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Questerr said:

It's almost as if the problem is authoritarianism and the solution is to limit individual power, to include economic power.

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