It’s pretty low on the list. Oh, and what do you say about those who carp about United Fruit and all that sort of thing? Can’t have it both ways. Globalism IS imperialism.
Mexico is - in theory at least - a democratic republic. If they don’t like how their government treats them they should vote the bums out. If that does not avail, then overthrow them. Either way, they need to take responsibility for the sad state of their own societies.
It can be. It doesn’t have to be.
True enough, but while people all over the world are failing to take responsibility for themselves, everyone else has to deal with the fallout. I think you overlook a rather fundamental reality: Mexican leaders are a reflection of Mexican people. The people voted for them. They truly do represent them. If the people kicked them out, they’d be instantly replaced with … more Mexicans, who would carry on doing the exact same things.
I was suggesting a practical, win-win scenario: instead of exploiting Mexico as the weak and venal shithole that it is, Trump could put pressure on them to just stop it already (‘it’ being whatever they’re doing) with a nice carrot-and-stick combination. Might not work, of course, but look what we tried with the Third World already:
Doesn’t work. So why not try something different?
I’m all for it, but they’ll be calling it cultural imperialism. Rather than get in a pointless semantic argument, I’ll just concede the point. Then I’ll up the ante by pointing out everything else that qualifies.
That’s how we make imperialism cool again. The new narrative: national sovereignty is something you have to earn.
And we reserve the option to invade and take over if ever we decide that they’re a failed state.They crossed the border after Pancho Villa. Hot pursuit. If the Federales can’t maintain order, then we will.
That’s exactly what it is. And then a couple of generations later, they’ll be pretending they invented it.
Worked out just fine in England. Lots of cultural imperialism imposed upon us from eg., the Romans; various Nordic/Germanic types; the Dutch. And the Americans, I guess. Embrace the imperialism, that’s what I say.
I think UK citizens should be more worried about the EU commission trying to undermine UK’s sovereignity over Brexit’s choice, compared to Donald Trumps internal policies.
I think the UK can hurry up out of the EU like most people from the EU at this stage. Nobody forced the U.K. To have a referendum and certainly nobody is forcing the UK to remain part of the EU…many will be happy to see em move on instead of blaming everything on Europe.
I’ll be surprised if Airstrip One ever manages to extricate itself completely from the clutches of the mainland. More likely it will be a pretend brextrication along the lines of two systems, one uberocracy crafted to fool the proles into believing their voices count while allowing the Party to get on with its work.
I’m sorry Im not sure what you think Brexit means, it means they are out, we remainjng Europeans will then be happy not to be blamed for ‘all the bad stuffTM’ but I’m sure the tabloids and Boris Johnson will do their best to continue to blame somebody…anybody…but themselves.
The EU didn’t create bankers and zero hours.
Like all good citizens I believe what I’m told but until I’m told otherwise I’m going to believe that Out means In. Been there, done that.
I don’t think they’re blaming everything on Europe. As far as I can tell, the issue boiled down to one of sovereignty. The Brits are/were sick of having laws imposed upon them from abroad without rhyme or reason.
It’s a pity, because the EU project started off well. There are all sorts of things that Europe could have done productively as a loose federation of states. The Common Market was basically a good idea. Technical standardization was a good idea. Round about when the ERM came into being, it started to get silly. The suits were clearly sitting around (with their pen and their phone, as Winston puts it) thinking, OK, what do we do now? So they started coming up with all sorts of nonsense that simply wasn’t going to work and didn’t have any purpose.
Nation-states exist for very good reasons - geographical, cultural, economic. There are some rules that will work just fine in Austria that make no logical sense in Spain. Or vice versa. For better or worse, the British just want to take back some control over their own existence. Or at least the illusion of it.
[quote=“IbisWtf, post:113, topic:157785, full:true”]
I can agree with the idea that people with a better education will be more likely to understand how economy and politics work, but in practice this doesn’t always turn out to be true. It’s similar to what happened in the Uk for Brexit: who’s more entitled to make a decision that will hugely impact the economy of a country? The working class or university students?
And as it happens in most elections, the losing side blamed it on the inability of the “winners” to fully understand the issue. I still get upset when i think of some university students from London who said that reitred people shouldn’t be allowed to vote because they’re old and the future should be decided by younger generations. I mean ffs, some of those retired people fought or were born during World War 2, I’d say they still have the right to express their opinion.[/quote]
In fact, the older retired population, even if not more educated “intellectually”, are certainly more educated by experience in that Brexit vote. They know how good economics was established in their own independent way before subjecting their economy to EU policy; they lived it. Younger voters grew up majority of their lives under the EU umbrella, they have little to compare, they don’t know how better or great things could be again. Their national pride and confidence in their abilities hadn’t been given a chance to bud.
It’s a mixed bag because you’re looking at different people. Protectionism as fully practiced in the 1700s was called mercantilism, because it only seemed to help merchants. But consumers, which the whole of any country is, even merchants, get shafted by this much lower proportion of people in a country that are merchants. Therefore, you aim for the welfare of the consumer, which represents the whole country. When you aim for merchants, they only make up a fraction of the country, and shuck the rest of the country.
This is what worries me about Trump, he sees thing more from a view as a businessman than a consumer who isn’t a businessman.
Adams Smith said that even though Great Britain might exercise good trade and economic policies in general, many of the colonies in the empire were not very successful because the governors chosen were usually of the merchant class and implemented protectionist policies to protect those interests to the disadvantage of the development of the natives.
Finney singled out North Korea because they are know for Juchae, which means a fierce kind of independence from foreign economic invasion whatsoever. I suppose they don’t even allow foreign merchandise in the country at all, except as perquisites for high-level government officials
Correction the English and Welsh voted for it the Scottish and Northern Irish did not. In the case of Nortern ireland it could create huge problems and division politically and exonomicallly.
Scotland may very well leave the UK too to ‘take back control’. In these two cases the U.K. faces huge uncertainty and a major ‘loss of control’.
All the regional govts have been told to sit down and go along with our plan…they have no control whatsoever.
Maybe the islanf of Ireland should ‘take back control’ of Northern Ireland by its own referendum (as agreed by the Good Friday agreement) even if cannot militarily.
But personally I have no problem with U.K. Voting to do what they want it’s all the horrible migrant and Europe bashing in the media and by politicians that everybody else is sick of. The UK is a VERY unequal society and that’s not Europes doing. You want to take back control then take back control get your land back from the toffs who own one third of it for a start! The EU didn’t tell the UK to ramp up housing and education costs and gut working legislation and benefits either.
Also it’s not as if people were asked did they want to leave all the single market over immigration etc…that’s the government deciding that. Obviously they should put this to another vote to establish priority for the masses now that the implications are beginning to sink in and the lies about the NHS and having your cake and eating it were exposed.
At this stage the rest of Europe will be pretty happy when then the U.K. has moved on and attached it’s ship to project US little brother or whatever (except Ireland where it just creates more headaches).
The rest of us are happy enough in the EU or some kind of loose arrangement with the EU for the incredible advantages and benefits that brings us. The UK is not even going for a Norway or Swiss arrangement and that’s just stupid to be frank. That’s one of the main reasons the GBP had dropped so much as it has huge economic implications economically (if using the currency as a crude guide has knocked 20% off every British person relative to when they were part of a stronger economic system).
The idea that the U.K. Leaves the EU (by FAR its biggest export market) and can now freely trade on better terms with places like India and the US is ludicrous. Already India wants to link immigration to trade, and the US has turned protectionist so they will also want their pound of flesh when signing any trade agreement.
Even granting that, he understands more than his predecessor, who had no appreciation for business or consumers.
Oh, and lots of business interests opposed the new guy from the start. Granted, they were geographically concentrated. But they were businessmen.
The appealing thing about The Donald is that he seems at least to make an attempt at empathizing with people from a very different economic background than him. Bill Clinton did that too. “I feel your pain” and all that jazz. But Il Douche just preened and lectured and condescended. Then he turned sour.
Bubba was way more convincing, though. But The Donald is still good enough at it.
By the way, to make it in business you need to have some understanding of the customer. The Donald’s problem is his customers were mostly the rich, and he’s turned on the rich. That he could even attempt to connect with middle America shows a great deal of imagination and daring. And given his disadvantage he hasn’t done all that badly.
The sad fact is that Americans are in a protectionist mood. Maybe they don’t know what’s best for them, but the fools who have been kicked out certainly didn’t know better.
Not the POTUS I wanted, but we could have done worse.
No one can bring The Donald down. There’s just no one out there with the savvy. But he can self destruct.
Brian: I did say the illusion of control 
Governments manipulate people and screw them over for their own ends. That’s the way it’s been forever. The eternal struggle of humanity is to make sure the leadership (we seem to recognise leadership as a necessary evil) are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. It’s never going to be “solved”. Brexit was just something that needed to be done for its own sake; it wasn’t never going to be a cure-all for Britain’s home-grown problems, even if some people thought it would be.
I quite agree about Ireland and Scotland. The existence of Northern Ireland as UK “property” is ridiculous. Scotland has markedly different culture and geography that would operate fine as an independent state (although didn’t they recently decide the opposite?). As I said, there are good reasons the world splits up into countries. Personally, I think smaller is better as long as neighbouring states can co-operate instead of squabbling. The EU project was a noble attempt (originally, at least) at making that happen. And then it all turned to shit.
You might want to read “The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Europe’s Money” by Bernard Connolly. The guy has a huge axe to grind (he was fired from a senior position in the EU) and never misses an opportunity to mention it, but if you can get past the shower of aggrieved spittle, it’s full of insider facts about how the EU actually works.
Is that a deliberate choice? Weren’t there some negotiations along those lines prior to Brexit? I get the feeling that the option isn’t even open to them. The EU are saying: this is the package, take it or leave it.
I wouldn’t agree that it all turned to shit , it lifted living standards for 100s of millions of people in my opinion and reduced costs and opened up opportunities for moving to other countries and also helped keep europe peaceful.
Much of the EU is prosperous. It can be a little over reaching but we don’t have to combine militarily or have lost our sovereign status …yet.
But there are definitely problems in the EU not necessarily all of the EUs making. The one speed Euro hasn’t gone very smoothly though.
It’s nice to think that a small country can be very independent and forge its own way but even the U.K. with a relatively large population and economy could struggle a bit outside of the single market. It will be an interesting experiment anyway.
I don’t agree with the EUs blanket freedom of movement and think it should have more control of refugees from outside of EU but I don’t think it’s worth throwing the baby out with the bath water. You win some you lose some.
It’s all pretty much done and dusted now U.K. Parliament ratified article 50 so time to move on with the new realities and make the best of it for all our nations (whether that means in or out of U.K. Or EU or whatever).
Yes, I do understand all this and it keeps me positive. On the microeconomics side, cutting taxes, cutting regulations, he should make the economy roar, which should obviate any countervailing protectionist measures, which is on the macroeconomics side of the equation.
Particularly with strength of the dollar and interest rates, however, I’ve heard very conflicting things. Trump has been quoted as saying as a businessman, he prefers low interest rates, which are similar to protectionist concerns and causes consumers to spend more, which will keep our economy in the same morass Obama superintended. Then again, he is quoted as idolizing a Volcker-type for the Fed. Volcker raised interest rates up to 20% back in 1980 under Reagan, in order to defeat that monster inflation and perpetually low interest rates, which monster we face today. But these two things are in conflict with each other, which way will he finally go? I’m waiting to see.
I’ve already heard that the fed are keeping interest rates intact, but they gotta go up, we have to endure a recession to get back to normal. If Trump is courageous enough to bite the bullet on this recession, then he will achieve similar to Reagan, who also had to do the same. His first 2 years were economic chaos, and deliberately so. Same with President Harding in 1921, he superintended a depression deliberately to fight inflation, which lasted 1 year before we got the roaring 20s.
He’s playing the long game…
[quote=“rowland, post:138, topic:157785, full:true”]
He’s playing the long game…[/quote]
Dictators always do.
[quote=“jotham, post:137, topic:157785, full:true”]
Yes, I do understand all this and it keeps me positive. On the microeconomics side, cutting taxes, cutting regulations, he should make the economy roar[/quote]
History says otherwise.
Truman tax hikes led to prosperity.
Reagan tax cuts led to recession.
Clinton tax hikes led to prosperity.
Bush tax cuts led to recession.
Obama tax hikes led to prosperity.