PRESIDENT TRUMP

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author=Liberty
On the other hand, this will likely give China the leeway to get more power and it's a pretty open provocation towards them too

Yeah, this is the bad part that comes with the death of the TPP.
When the TPP was on the table, it meant that the US and a lot of countries peripheral to China would have de facto trade arrangements. If China tried to throw their weight around in the region, like they've done a lot with claiming ownership of the entire South China Sea, they would also be infringing on US interests.
When the TPP was killed, there should've been something else in it's place. Instead it's back to a free for all, and China can move in on Taiwan or whoever without setting off any tripwire alliances. America's trend of giving the next century to China continues unabated.

Yeah, I know. Just when you thought "Yay. Against all predictions, Trump did something good", he still fucked up.
Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
author=Liberty
What's his stance on transgenders using bathrooms? If he's against it, then I don't think that's a good thing, personally. I mean, unisex bathrooms should be a thing anyway - not like we don't already do that in our own homes. I'm sure we're more than capable of dealing with that shit outside the house. :shrug:


His personal position is the laws have caused a lot of problems for cities that enforced them while the problem it is allegedly solving was basically nonexistent to begin with, but I do not think this is the position his administration has taken/will take.
author=Dyhalto
author=Liberty
On the other hand, this will likely give China the leeway to get more power and it's a pretty open provocation towards them too
Yeah, this is the bad part that comes with the death of the TPP.
When the TPP was on the table, it meant that the US and a lot of countries peripheral to China would have de facto trade arrangements. If China tried to throw their weight around in the region, like they've done a lot with claiming ownership of the entire South China Sea, they would also be infringing on US interests.
When the TPP was killed, there should've been something else in it's place. Instead it's back to a free for all, and China can move in on Taiwan or whoever without setting off any tripwire alliances. America's trend of giving the next century to China continues unabated.

Yeah, I know. Just when you thought "Yay. Against all predictions, Trump did something good", he still fucked up.
Well, TPP was basically dead in the water before Trump ever took office. So it would be disingenuous to lay the blame on whatever the fallout is on Trump's feet.

The TPP was a pile of shit masquerading as a trade agreement, and I am glad it is dying/dead, and I am going to lay the blame on the corporations and their lobbyists and the braindead politicians that fought for it/got bought off for it for that fiasco, where it belongs.

E:
manufacturing is going to come back to North America over the next decade, too, because a robot costs the same in China as it does in USA, but to find space to build an accessible factory in China is at a premium, but to find space in USA you just have to look out a window in, say, Wyoming.

For every job lost to outsoucing, 8 jobs are lost to automation.

I have no idea how we are going to collectively cope with this new industrial revolution, where we will essentially have the CEO turn a crank and produce the same (or more!) economic output of a corporation, that used to take scores of human workers.

Put your kids in the arts, humanities, craftmanship, or any job that requires empathy (nursing, long term care, counseling, psychology) or creativity (game design (!), scientific research).
author=harmonic
We should make the UN irrelevant by pulling out US influence and support.

I would honestly love to see you try. The US contribution amounts to ~620 million USD. That's twice as large as the next contributor's Japan, sure, but is still only 11%, or so. It wouldn't take that much extra spending to fill in most of the gap: if China were to, say, double their contribution from 140 to ~300 million, and we + Japan, Turkey and key EU countries would give extra 20-30 million each, that already covers more than half. In return, all of these countries get to paint the USA as a literal self-declared rogue state, while your Security Council seat will be vacated, and up for grabs - an opportunity no reasonably powerful state would miss.

Just imagine the possibilities: it might go to Japan by the virtue of them being the current largest donor (though China would likely object a lot to that). It might be given to Brazil as the uncontroversial option, but I don't think they want it as hard as India or Turkey do. Erdogan has been wanting to cement his legacy like this for years, and Modi certainly wouldn't pass this chance up as well. They might not contribute too much to it now, but I doubt any sum would be an object for them if it'll help attain such a clear prize. Whatever happens next, though, one thing is clear: Israel is going to have fun fending off UN resolutions with a far less reliable Brexited Britain veto at best - no veto at all if Britain somehow gets a Labour PM.

author=Dyhalto
author=kentona
quotes by Sideshow Bob and Marvel's Loki
Not to poo-poo your contribution to the discussion, but I think we all need to be getting away from these conjectures of cultural pessimism. There is no craving for subjugation or deep-rooted desire for a strongman. If anything, the recent Women's March proves that it's completely the opposite. That deep down, people will step up when the going gets tough.

Honestly, I think kentona is closer to the truth out of you two here. If there's no "desire for a strongman", then how do you explain the success of Philippines' Duterte, who was elected on the platform of encouraging vigilantes to wipe out drug crime, and now that he's been succeeding at the cost of ~7,000 dead people last year, his popularity is unprecedented? Of course, he's been notably far-sighted on many other matters, from birth control to relationship with China, and history will probably judge him kindly, but it is nevertheless a good counterpoint.

In my view, it again comes down to the perennial parable of the carrot and stick. People don't just need to believe you'll give them carrots and be good to them; they also need to think you'll protect them and be capable of using the stick on those who are against them, and prospective leaders who cannot do that are considered weak and do not last. The Women's March seems more like a response to clear deficiences of Trump the person, whose victory was enabled by the ever-growing polarization of the US politics that also normalizes the march (and polarization itself is a consequence of the outdated system; in particular, its lack of the mandatory vote that only empowers the extreme wings of majority parties.) It doesn't really disprove the underlying principle. After all, what does the whole "Nasty Woman" meme signifies, if not the desire for a strong and combative female leader who'll fight to protect the rights and priorities of the person using it? It's the same principle, and it may well work soon enough: after all, I see no logical reason not to call Marine Le Pen a "Nasty Woman", should she win this May in France.

Though, I'll still say that "the desire for subjugation" and the Loki quote is tosh, a rough equivalent of the "false consciousness" back in Marxist theory. Both are/were little more then condescending narratives people tell themselves to justify the systems they grew up with in opposition to others, and to banish the thought their preference might not be based on anything stronger then habit. Having experienced growing up in two substantially different countries, and avidly reading up on others since, it's truly fascinating how much collective morality can shift and adjust across times and places, defying the simple linear scale categories people use by default. My favorite recent example was the shock that registered on people's faces in Russia whenever I told them of prison camps for refugees on the islands around Australia, (almost) entirely normalised by the proudly free Australia itself.

EDIT:

author=Dyhalto
Instead it's back to a free for all, and China can move in on Taiwan or whoever without setting off any tripwire alliances.

Taiwan is going to be interesting case soon, because Trump and co. will eventually find out that pursuing rapprochement with Taiwan and pushing back against the (irrelevant) island bases is going be practically impossible at the same time, because Taiwan has exactly the same territorial claims; all it lacks is the ability to enforce them, though it does make its own shows of strength every once in a while. Ideally, of course, China should accept there's little point in bringing back Taiwan (and before you say Crimea, 70 years apart is not 20 years) and let them be independent. In a perfect world, there could've been some sort of a bargain where China agrees to that in response to the other island claims being settled and USA/West accepting DPRK will remain a nuclear-armed nation as long as it exists, thus simultaneously pouring cold water over the most volatile flashpoints in the world. We don't live in that world though, and have to make do with the present interesting times.
Yellow Magic
Could I BE any more Chandler Bing from Friends (TM)?
3154
So what exactly are executive orders? From what I read they appear to be legally binding documents that circumvent Congress...is there no catch at all for the President? If so, that's messed up, especially since the current President is signing, quite frankly, very dodgy stuff.
Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
Executive orders can bypass Congress to a certain extent, but they can't exceed the President's legal authority (people argue as to where the line is.) The President can't use EOs to change the law, or ignore a law that Congress has passed. And only Congress can authorize how federal funds are allocated, which puts a limit on anything a President can do that requires funding. That's why Trump can't use EOs alone to order 'the Wall 'be built. He can't authorize spending for it.
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
Yellow Magic
So what exactly are executive orders? From what I read they appear to be legally binding documents that circumvent Congress...is there no catch at all for the President? If so, that's messed up, especially since the current President is signing, quite frankly, very dodgy stuff.


Executive orders cannot function unless they're supported by existing law. If an executive order cannot be supported by an existing law, it won't go through. In Trump's case, he's already signed an executive order that isn't supported by existing law that has the contingency that it will go through if what it cites becomes law. Specifically, the EO in question scales back enforcability of the punitive requirements of the Affordable Care Act.

For the Wall executive order, Trump can demand the Wall be built, and because there's no law saying you can't build a wall, it has to be built, but he can't dictate how the wall will be built because he doesn't have that authority.
author=kentona
I have no idea how we are going to collectively cope with this new industrial revolution, where we will essentially have the CEO turn a crank and produce the same (or more!) economic output of a corporation, that used to take scores of human workers.

Nah, humanity's had this "problem" since the dawn of civilization. Once upon a time, it took everyone in the village to work a field. Then somebody invented the plow which let one person do the work of umpteen. That freed people up for pottery, house building, blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, so on and so forth.
Every time a new advent is upon us, people try to consider the restrictions of the old and apply them to the paradigm of the new. And every time, people just migrate into new sectors of economic activity that were previously unheard of.
This fact applies to the environment too, on subjects like finite resources and "carrying capacity". 20 years ago, people predicted that WW3 would be over fresh water. Now we can make ocean water potable. People thought we'd reached Peak Coal in the 19th century and the Industrial Revolution was at an end. So much for that.

I would strongly add Skilled Trades to your list though. They will always be practical and in-demand, no matter the alterations of technology, as will the various Engineering disciplines.
I don't think we're at the point yet where there won't be enough jobs for the world. Automated manufacturing machines still require automated manufacturing machine technicians, designers, distributors, etc.

author=NTC3
Honestly, I think kentona is closer to the truth out of you two here. If there's no "desire for a strongman", then how do you explain the success of Philippines' Duterte

Duterte's election is an ad hoc reaction to a rampant problem of crime and corruption. We, in the West, went through a similar fight-crime-with-a-vengeance phase in the 70s, but it was only expressed through vigilante movies like Dirty Harry, Death Wish, and the public discussion those controversial movies produced.
But in the Philippines' case, you said it yourself with your mention of differing collective morals. Responding to violence with a greater force of violence is one of the easiest principles to understand and, while the Philippines may not be the most uneducated place in the world, they're collectively not-savvy enough to disavow themselves of that demagogy and pursue the higher intellectual road.
So really, it's not a good counterpoint at all. The "desire for a strongman" seems to be rooted more in a lack of intellectualism than some inexorable human characteristic.

But since I mentioned demagogy, I really don't know much about the Philippines. I haven't looked into it at all. One Philippino guy I know seems to think highly of Duterte, so I give him the benefit of the doubt, but he strikes me as nothing more than a cultural populist demagogue, which is the worst kind of demagogue.

The thing about crime is, the more you fight it directly, the worse it gets. This isn't liberalist sociological conjecture talking. It's just supply and demand. As the risk of a career in crime increases, so does the lucrativeness. And with higher denominations of money passing hands, bigger guns will join the fray, and the battle against crime will only exacerbate.

The real way for Duterte to fight crime would've been a massive jobs plan for the country. A New Deal or WPA for the Philippines. If people can get a job easily and provide comfortably for their family, they won't need to consider crime. You'll never get rid of crime altogether, but if you can make it impractical compared to the law-abiding alternative, it can be substantially diminished.

Personally, I think you're wrong about history judging him kindly. Even if his heart is in the right place, and he's picking his enemies carefully, his heavy-handed policy is not only doomed to fail, but likely to make the situation worse.
But again. I haven't been paying that much attention. There might be more to it than I see.
Yellow Magic
Could I BE any more Chandler Bing from Friends (TM)?
3154
Thanks Solitayre and piano for the information.

If the Executive Order by itself can't affect much, I wonder what existing law is in place that helped prevent immigrants and Green Card holders from seven countries from re-entering the US. It's cool that a US judge has halted the deportations for now, but what can't help but feel apprehensive about the future of such people living in the country. Well, fingers crossed for them anyway...
author=kentona
E:
manufacturing is going to come back to

For every job lost to outsoucing, 8 jobs are lost to automation.

I have no idea how we are going to collectively cope with this new industrial revolution, where we will essentially have the CEO turn a crank and produce the same (or more!) economic output of a corporation, that used to take scores of human workers.


Put your kids in the arts, humanities, craftmanship, or any job that requires empathy (nursing, long term care, counseling, psychology) or creativity (game design (!), scientific research).
Agreed. Such an important point, yet hardly ever mentioned.

I still find myself wondering if Trump knows all this and is being purposely reductive on job displacement, or if it's authentic ignorance. In fact, most of his platform is a red herring.

I'm not sure I share Dhyalto's opptimism that new jobs will emerge indefinitely with technology though.

This sounds a bit nonsensical, but beyond just a rediscovered appreciation of the humanities, I think the automation/AI explosion requires a very large ideological shift in how we deal with human labor. Ultimately (probably well-within our lifetime), we're not just going to be discussing factory robots or self-driving cars...even "white collar" work will be lessened. We don't have any political systems capable of absorbing that. Most of our usual productivity, or work that involves human drudgery, can no longer be the foundation of basic income and survival. That is...unless we want terrifying wealth inequality that's far beyond even what we see nowadays.

Unfortunately, the Protestant ethic and the presumed "virtue" of human labor (the belief that it has inherent value) is so deeply entrenched in the American psyche, most people can't entertain or even imagine an alternative. Unless government conditions change, I'm not sure the transition will be easy or even possible. Until then, I guess we're stuck with very artificial tariffs/trade restrictions to band-aid the problem. And that's a huge part of why Trump's platform is so terrifying; he sees everything in terms of the absolute of economic result, not human well-being and morality.
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
I'm with Blindmind in thought. There will always be that manual labor mentality instilled as well as the simple fact that a lot of "no-name" companies won't be able to purchase such things for a good amount of time.
With that comes the more realer death of small business.

Obviously there is always a good deal of people who specifically don't buy from mass production companies, but they are a niche in the grand scheme.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=kentona
I have no idea how we are going to collectively cope with this new industrial revolution, where we will essentially have the CEO turn a crank and produce the same (or more!) economic output of a corporation, that used to take scores of human workers.


We've already figured this one out, we've been doing it for decades. We put the extra people into marketing. Instead of hiring people to make your products, you hire people to convince customers to buy them instead of buying competitor products. The competitors are then forced to do the same thing, and try to top them, which creates more and more marketing jobs up to the limit of each company's gross income.

This is why as consumers we feel bombarded with commericals and advertisements everywhere we go and during everything we do - because that's the replacement for manufacturing jobs that we've figured out as a society. And it generally works out ok! Ads are admittedly annoying, but the jobs don't have manual labor, so overall it's a very good tradeoff.
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
Yellow Magic
Thanks Solitayre and piano for the information.

If the Executive Order by itself can't affect much, I wonder what existing law is in place that helped prevent immigrants and Green Card holders from seven countries from re-entering the US. It's cool that a US judge has halted the deportations for now, but what can't help but feel apprehensive about the future of such people living in the country. Well, fingers crossed for them anyway...


U. S. law has always allowed customs and INS to disregard green cards. There are a number of laws already in place that allows customs to deny entry into the U. S., even of naturalized and born U. S. citizens. Since we're banning green card holders from entering, I wonder how long it will be before we start banning naturalized and born citizens from entering.
author=Blindmind
I'm not sure I share Dhyalto's opptimism that new jobs will emerge indefinitely with technology though.

This sounds a bit nonsensical, but beyond just a rediscovered appreciation of the humanities, I think the automation/AI explosion requires a very large ideological shift in how we deal with human labor. Ultimately (probably well-within our lifetime), we're not just going to be discussing factory robots or self-driving cars...even "white collar" work will be lessened. We don't have any political systems capable of absorbing that. Most of our usual productivity, or work that involves human drudgery, can no longer be the foundation of basic income and survival. That is...unless we want terrifying wealth inequality that's far beyond even what we see nowadays.

Ah, but there's more to it. As technology advances, so too does the education requirements for the workforce increase with it.

The occupations of 1,000 years ago didn't require much in the way of training. The handful of highly skilled jobs were covered by nobility or the wealthy. Further down the ladder, people could apprentice and learn a trade, but the vast majority would pull their weight in the fields, the ships, the lumbermills, and so on.
During the industrial revolution, the uneducated could still make a living pulling levers and pushing buttons, but machinery needed design, installation and maintenance, and that required a massively expanded capability of the workforce. The social situation accommodated it such that if you wanted to be a millwright, you didn't have to look for an old millwright who might like you enough to take you in. Fifty of you could go to school, become millwrights, and get jobs.
Where are we today? Well, we're pretty much at the point where a High School education alone is worthless. Post-Secondary Education is mandatory. All of us have anecdotes where we saw a Help Wanted retail job that required some kind of college degree, and our reactions were "WTF?!" That's not a particularly good case, but it's the direction things are going. It's one of the reasons I believe post-secondary education should be free.

And with the expansion of people's skillsets comes a general expansion of their mind, and that by itself will bring about new technologies, new opportunities, new frontiers, etc, because people will simply be able to see more. Not everyone will be a prodigy, but if 1 in 100 do something different, and many tens of millions go that route, then things are bound to happen that us non-prodigies could never see coming.

Really now. 1,000 years ago, people said they'd never cross the sea. It was too vicious. Now, we're saying we'll never cross space. Shit is too far. Balogna.
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
Dyhalto
Really now. 1,000 years ago, people said they'd never cross the sea. It was too vicious. Now, we're saying we'll never cross space. Shit is too far. Balogna.


NASA says we can get to Mars in 39 days (it's coming back that's a problem because space travel with current technology relies largely on the alignment and positioning of astral bodies, and Mars and Earth change position quite a bit in relation to each other over the the course of a month and a fortnight). The Alcubierre warp drive is considered to be a practical model.

Meanwhile, Trump is asking academics if it's possible to put a man on the moon.

To directly reply to what you're saying, making post secondary school free relies on an existing system that is outdated. What we need to do is increase the educational requirements of main schooling. Why aren't most kids learning trigonometry in high school? Why aren't they learning general physics? Psychology? Business sciences? The courses exist. In today's society, they need to be mandatory and education needs to shift focus on them instead of just giving them lip service. Teach basic maths and science in primary schools and STOP teaching them in high school. Move on. High schools don't move on. The basic maths and science keeps going on and on and on, and no wonder kids aren't learning anything. The schools won't teach!
Decky
I'm a dog pirate
19645
You guys are touching upon a theme that I want to explore in a game: what happens when the entire society is overqualified for the menial labor jobs?
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Dyhalto
Most of our usual productivity, or work that involves human drudgery, can no longer be the foundation of basic income and survival.
I don't think that will ever happen, but if it does, it's fine. People who don't contribute to a society have no right to be supported by that society. If they're not capable of doing anything that can't be done by robots, then they shouldn't exist.

Maybe we have finally figured out a solution to our overpopulation problem. Just ban childbirth until the number of people matches the number of jobs. Of course, changes to number of people in the world will lag 50 years behind changes to number of available jobs, but we have proven remarkably good at making up stupid bullshit jobs in the meantime. And unemployed people will be fine anyway because of McDonald's and Walgreens and homeless shelters and free clinics. (At least in first world countries. Third world countries don't have that stuff, but also don't have robots, so it works out.)

A society is probably only responsible for your suffering if it's causing you to be worse off than you would be as a hermit with no societal contact.
I think more people would be going out and focusing on arts and creativity, but also travel - like you said, there's other countries that need higher-end workers so we'd probably see a lot of highly educated people spilling into those countries, taking the work that would have been done and filling those positions. Cultures would end up overlapping, colliding and building more towards a single being instead.


Also, people are always going to be needed to care for other people (those robots they're making to do that shit are creepy as fuck), so nursing, doctoring, counselling and the like will still require jobs. Same with the sciences - we'll continue studies into the stars, into the mysteries of life, into robotics and enhancing ourselves and the world around us.

There'll always be areas for volunteer work open, too - helping others, helping the environment, helping each other. Religion might flourish since the churches have paid positions, too.

And hell, robots are gonna break down a lot so people will be required to fix the damn things.

It'll be an interesting time to be alive and watch the world, though. Terrifying in some ways, amazing in others.
author=pianotm
To directly reply to what you're saying, making post secondary school free relies on an existing system that is outdated. What we need to do is increase the educational requirements of main schooling. Why aren't most kids learning trigonometry in high school? Why aren't they learning general physics? Psychology? Business sciences? The courses exist. In today's society, they need to be mandatory and education needs to shift focus on them instead of just giving them lip service. Teach basic maths and science in primary schools and STOP teaching them in high school. Move on. High schools don't move on. The basic maths and science keeps going on and on and on, and no wonder kids aren't learning anything. The schools won't teach!
Yeah, I completely agree with you, but Post-secondary will still be necessary for specialization's sake.
On improving the setup for a person's mental foundation from K-12, you're right. It'll be a tough sell though, for two reasons. One is the current political process. The Democrats undervalue the role of education of their potential voter base, and the Republicans downright want people stupid and backwards because that's how demagogy works.
The second reason is the current generation of parents who're spoiling their kids rotten. Every time a class or subject comes up at school that's "hard", a parent comes flying into the teacher's lounge to yell and scream. I'm all for the PTA and good relations, but schools and teachers have lost a lot of ground.

@LockeZ
That's Blindmind's quote, not mine.
And I'm not sure if your post is meant to be a joke or not ಠ_ಠ
FYI, Overpopulation is a myth. The idea that the world has a carrying capacity stems from Malthusianism, a crappy and fraudulent ideology spread by the titular Thomas Malthus. He posits that, unchecked, population growth outpaces food production and will lead to a "population crash". Problem is, his theory completely neglects advances in technology and has been proven wrong again and again and again, for over 200 fucking years, but people still subscribe to the idea.
His writings are very popular with oligarchs, the super rich, and so on, because his "solutions" tend to revolve around privileges and restrictions based on class, and it indirectly confers on them the role of administrators of the human race. That's why you see it permeate the mainstream of what you read in the newspapers, see on TV, see in movies, etc.

Earth may indeed have a maximum population. But we're nowhere near it.

e:
author=Liberty
Cultures would end up overlapping, colliding and building more towards a single being instead.
Yep. That's human civilization in a nutshell. 200 years after Rome conquered Gaul; "Mommy, what's a Gaul", "I don't know".
I think humanity will eventually reach a point of such cultural and racial saturation that we'll just be "humans".
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
Oh, I'm not saying that post-secondary schools aren't necessary. I'm saying that high schools would better maintain their relevance if they'd get with the damned times. You know, this is one of the bad things about public education: government dictates what is taught. Public schools need to be held to certain standards, but once they reach those standards, the government needs to get out of the way.