I do not know this for sure, and need to do some more research to find out whether this is in fact true.
However, I strongly suspect that a similar (or at least historically-rhyming) phenomenon took place after the explosion of the printing press. It takes time for people to accommodate new information technologies into their social expectations, and I would expect the time before the new technology is fully-integrated to be especially-full of grifting, miscommunication, and all sorts of confusion.
I've been thinking exactly along this line, just as a calibration exercise. Obviously humans have long been capable of believing all sorts of crazy shit for all sorts of crazy reasons and expressing themselves in all sorts of crazy ways, and yet we're still here. I'm curious what past adaptations have looked like, at least to give me some copium that this is all a temporary malaise.
I have seen arguments that the Protestant Reformation and all the wild and wacky religious doctrines that spun out of the small-d democratization of access to the Christian holy scriptures was one such process of grift/miscommunication/confusion consolidating into new social structures. Of course, that's not massively hopeful, as the Wars of Religion killed like a third of the population of Germany, and a lot of people other places too.
"This NPC dialogue tree tactic extended to a hilarious comment to Simon’s post by Eugine Nier where he begrudgingly acknowledges I’m an atheist but nevertheless claims I “appear to be a cultural Islamist”:"
This is similar to claims of "dhimmitude" leveled at Middle Eastern Christians and others who don't agree with neocon talking points about their home countries, "self-hating Jews" at Jews who don't parrot Zionist talking points or "Putinversteher" (Putinunderstander) which is used in German political discourse on anyone seeking anything other than Total Victory.
You have a valid point here: that people lazily pattern match and respond to the pattern they associate you with as opposed to responding to your actual argument. However the substack catfight is cringe, just yesterday I saw Jesse Singal engaged in the same kind of thing and at some point writing posts directed at an individual “who?” hater should be beneath you.
Whether or not the interlocutor respects you and your ideas or not.
If they don't, and you're communicating with a wall, it's just masturbation. Or in the case of a blogger like yourself, public masturbation. I appreciate the points you're making and I especially appreciated this article because of the links to many of your previous posts I hadn't yet read, but it's still a gay-ass catfight, and the same points can be made better in a less cringe context.
I thought about this feedback and don't think I agree with the filter. A lot of the disagreement I write about tends to be along a dishonesty or similarly dishonorable axis, so right away any respect (mutual or unilateral) is out of the question.
I'm a fan of LessWrong and The Sequences obviously, but what I find that field lacking is more direct examinations of straight-up dishonesty. We can always discuss examples in a vacuum, without reference to real-life examples, but I find those examinations either don't land as well or get dismissed as unrealistic.
The filter I've generally used tends to be "is this localized drama, or can I draw some broader lesson out of it". It's imperfect, and obviously I'm prone to motivated reasoning to justify public masturbation episodes, but I'm open to refinements.
There's one thing, at least, which I can respect from Eugine Nier, and that's that he consistently maintains the same identity across internet platforms, rather than hiding behind a succession of pseudonymous masks. But the upshot is that I remember him specifically as a person utterly incapable of having an intellectually honest discussion going back over a decade now.
I agree that opposition to free trade would be an undesirable development, but I'm skeptical that the GOP is actually becoming anti-free trade. Rather, it seems the argument that Trump has made before is that free trade isn't currently taking place because other countries have mercantilist trade practices, and the US should retaliate. Hence, Argentina and Australia were exempted from Trump's tariffs last time around because they responded to the threat as desired. In a sense, no country practices free trade since trade is (sometimes inadvertently) always subsidized, whether directly or indirectly (such as through the regulatory environment).
This is a confusing and ambiguously-worded comment. Are you claiming that Trump's end goal is to use trade tariffs solely to force other countries to lower theirs? Several problems with this argument:
1) Trump does not appear to understand what tariffs are. He seems to think that it's a money transfer that foreign countries pay the US to "do business here". It's why his complaints are a garbled soup of complaining countries are "ripping us off" without a clear articulation of what exactly he's talking about.
2) Trump has never expressed support for free trade as the end goal. If he has, I'm happy to be corrected.
3) Using high tariffs to force other countries to lower their own trade barriers does not have a good track record of actually working. The most effective moves towards free trade have always been diplomatic agreements (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade_agreements_of_the_United_States). Second best would be to just lower your own tariffs, because free trade provides tremendous benefits even if the other countries retaliate with tariffs.
To clarify, I'm personally not pro-tariff; I'm just saying that most of the arguments I hear presented in favor of them are tactical rather than ideological. More specifically, advocates tend to argue that a free trade regime doesn't currently exist with most countries and want this corrected. Hence, countries that caved to US demands last time (Australia, Argentina) were exempted from tariffs under Trump.
1. I think the clearer articulation is one that's been applied to various countries over the decades. In the 70s and 80s Americans complained about Japan's mercantilist trade regime wherein Japan would shield its domestic industries and consumer market to artificially drive up domestic profits so that firms could cheaply flood goods into foreign markets and exploit trade openness overseas. People accuse China of the same strategy today.
2. In an interview with Piers Morgan, he said he wants free trade but remarked, "We don't have free trade" and went on to lament what was mentioned above.
3. I agree that tariffs aren't going to work with the country that's the most routinely lambasted for unfair trade practices (China) since they can just manipulate their currency. Nonetheless, it already seems to be cracking open Canada's markets.
Beyond that, I'm skeptical genuine free trade will ever exist as long as nation-states exist, as governments create different regulatory environments, which will inevitably benefit certain firms over others.
I hope this clarified any ambiguity. I'm conflict-averse and therefore often hesitant to straightforwardly disagree with real people.
Please, I heartily encourage you to disagree with me and wish to accommodate that however I can!
Most of the arguments I've encountered from the true believers were just denials ("tariffs will actually lower prices" etc). This is corroborated by how Trump talks about it. The tactical arguments are sanewashing, coming from the more aware talking heads, usually a variant of "Trump won't _actually_ impose tariffs, it's just a bluff" or something similar.
Argentina only received a temporary steel exemption, for reasons unknown to me. Australia appears to have successfully lobbied for a steel exemption by claiming they have "specialty steel", and referencing the close military alliance with the US. I'm not identifying a coherent strategy here. That's corroborated by Trump's misunderstanding of how tariffs work.
I think the confusion in your comment remains: you're lumping in several distinct practices that are not necessarily related or predicated on each other. I understand this can be a complicated subject and that's made worse by the pretextual arguments interest groups make when they seek special favors from the government. It's unpopular for them to straightforwardly say "please help us keep our prices high by protecting us from competition" and so they necessarily couch and obfuscate it.
Ty for replying. I'll list the following for the purposes of clarifying my points:
1. Trump has claimed he's not anti-free trade because free trade isn't taking place right now since other countries are exploiting US trade openness while shielding their domestic markets from US products.
-I partially agree with this. Specifically, I think he's right in that free trade is more of a theoretical ideal that can be realized to varying degrees on a spectrum than something that takes place in reality. Moreover, because markets only exist as long as there's a regulatory body in the form of the state, trade between countries won't be truly free trade since it's always subject to the terms of bilateral or multilateral treaties (unless a common market is established; I'm in favor of this with Canada in particular).
-I generally disagree with using tariffs to force reciprocity on the part of other countries because US consumers still benefit on net from access to cheap foreign products even if US producers don't get access to foreign consumer markets. Ultimately, the fact that Canada shields its telecom and dairy markets from the US hurts Canadians, not Americans. Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, China can cancel out the consequences of tariffs through currency manipulation, so they're an ineffective instrument against the country whose trade practices Trump most inveighs against.
2. Trump isn't in favor of total autarky.
During his first term, Trump negotiated USMCA, and one of his major goals was to get a free trade agreement with China. He receieved a lot of criticism on the latter, as people suspected he'd sacrifice support for Hong Kong and Taiwan to achieve it, and I doubt he'll ever get it since China won't have much to gain from it (though in fairness he did get a phase I agreement last time).
-Generally Trump is opposed to multilateral trade agreements (such as TPP) and favors bilateral agreements since they give greater leverage to the US in negotiating terms. He takes issue with the terms of existing agreements but isn't against free trade deals in principle (otherwise he wouldn't have negotiated or tried negotiating any last time).
3. There's a diversity of opinion on the topic right now. Within the admin Vivek opposes protectionism, and within the commentariat Ben Shapiro does. Nevertheless, overall opinion has gone the other way, and Trump's undoubtedly going to proceed with it as he did last time. However,since MAGA's built around his charisma rather than around a commitment to any principles, things could go either way in a post-Trump GOP. Historically the GOP was more protectionist (Harding, Hoover, Nixon according to critics, and even Reagan who used tariffs extensively against the Japanese auto industry). In the 90s and 2000s it went in the opposite direction. The 2030s could go either way.
Before you read the tea leaves on Trump's claims, the main thing that needs to be addressed is Trump's incoherence when he discusses tariffs. He has repeatedly denied that American importers pay the tariffs, a completely delusional position to take. He has also repeatedly floated the idea of funding the federal government primarily from tariffs (as used to be the case in the 1800s), which is inconsistent with claiming that he thinks tariffs are a temporary stepping stone to a world of free trade.
Because of all this, I do not believe he actually understands what free trade actually is, or how exactly tariffs work. My own position is that he has a simpleton zero-sum understanding of international trade, where various countries elbow each other to get ahead. My position is consistent with the observed facts.
I'd not say I'm reading the tea leaves. Rather, I'm looking at what Trump did in his first administration and listening to what he's said in interviews over the decades to try to examine his underlying principles.
Vis-a-vis his claims about American importers, I don't see it as connected to my point (namely that Trump in principle isn't anti-free trade. Instead, he thinks international trade as it currently takes place is ripping America off). I agree that the empirics of that particular belief of his are delusional, and I don't see that as being inconsistent with what I've said (that Trump isn't anti-free trade in principle but rather sees current arrangements as unfree trade. His view isn't empirically accurate, but that's a matter of facts, not of principles). If he disagreed with free trade in principle, he wouldn't have negotiated USMCA.
His idea of funding the federal government is--as far as I know--one that he's adopted after leaving office. I recall him saying it to Joe Rogan, but I'm unfamiliar with him saying it before this election cycle. When we actually look at his record, we can see that he signed a free trade deal with Canada and Mexico (though it looks like he's no longer content with its terms) and that he attempted to negotiate one with China. I'm skeptical he could actually even take serious steps to implement his new idea since doing so would cause inflation to skyrocket and massively disrupt supply chains. Instead, he'll probably try to look as if he is without actually doing so, just as he did with the Muslim ban. As you know, instead of a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," he banned travel from a set of countries. If I were to try to read the tea leaves, my prediction is he slaps tariffs on commodities that his advisors are the most willing to countenance then claims it as a revolutionary victory. Ultimately, we won't know until he takes office.
As a resident of a fairly protectionist country that nevertheless has an FTA with the US, I think he's not wrong that many countries shield domestic industries from US competition. However, as I stated previously, I don't think it really matters for Americans since the people hurt in this arrangement are the people living in artificially uncompetitive markets rather than Americans.
I do not know this for sure, and need to do some more research to find out whether this is in fact true.
However, I strongly suspect that a similar (or at least historically-rhyming) phenomenon took place after the explosion of the printing press. It takes time for people to accommodate new information technologies into their social expectations, and I would expect the time before the new technology is fully-integrated to be especially-full of grifting, miscommunication, and all sorts of confusion.
I've been thinking exactly along this line, just as a calibration exercise. Obviously humans have long been capable of believing all sorts of crazy shit for all sorts of crazy reasons and expressing themselves in all sorts of crazy ways, and yet we're still here. I'm curious what past adaptations have looked like, at least to give me some copium that this is all a temporary malaise.
I have seen arguments that the Protestant Reformation and all the wild and wacky religious doctrines that spun out of the small-d democratization of access to the Christian holy scriptures was one such process of grift/miscommunication/confusion consolidating into new social structures. Of course, that's not massively hopeful, as the Wars of Religion killed like a third of the population of Germany, and a lot of people other places too.
"This NPC dialogue tree tactic extended to a hilarious comment to Simon’s post by Eugine Nier where he begrudgingly acknowledges I’m an atheist but nevertheless claims I “appear to be a cultural Islamist”:"
This is similar to claims of "dhimmitude" leveled at Middle Eastern Christians and others who don't agree with neocon talking points about their home countries, "self-hating Jews" at Jews who don't parrot Zionist talking points or "Putinversteher" (Putinunderstander) which is used in German political discourse on anyone seeking anything other than Total Victory.
Yep, it's widely applicable. It just follows the more generic template of "someone disagrees with me > they must have an ignoble reason to do so"
You have a valid point here: that people lazily pattern match and respond to the pattern they associate you with as opposed to responding to your actual argument. However the substack catfight is cringe, just yesterday I saw Jesse Singal engaged in the same kind of thing and at some point writing posts directed at an individual “who?” hater should be beneath you.
How do you distinguish a catfight from a more legitimate disagreement?
Whether or not the interlocutor respects you and your ideas or not.
If they don't, and you're communicating with a wall, it's just masturbation. Or in the case of a blogger like yourself, public masturbation. I appreciate the points you're making and I especially appreciated this article because of the links to many of your previous posts I hadn't yet read, but it's still a gay-ass catfight, and the same points can be made better in a less cringe context.
What would the less cringe context look like?
I thought about this feedback and don't think I agree with the filter. A lot of the disagreement I write about tends to be along a dishonesty or similarly dishonorable axis, so right away any respect (mutual or unilateral) is out of the question.
I'm a fan of LessWrong and The Sequences obviously, but what I find that field lacking is more direct examinations of straight-up dishonesty. We can always discuss examples in a vacuum, without reference to real-life examples, but I find those examinations either don't land as well or get dismissed as unrealistic.
The filter I've generally used tends to be "is this localized drama, or can I draw some broader lesson out of it". It's imperfect, and obviously I'm prone to motivated reasoning to justify public masturbation episodes, but I'm open to refinements.
I don't know how Simon managed to post that whole screed and think, "Yeah, *he's* the tribalist."
There's one thing, at least, which I can respect from Eugine Nier, and that's that he consistently maintains the same identity across internet platforms, rather than hiding behind a succession of pseudonymous masks. But the upshot is that I remember him specifically as a person utterly incapable of having an intellectually honest discussion going back over a decade now.
Wow, that's some true commitment.
I agree that opposition to free trade would be an undesirable development, but I'm skeptical that the GOP is actually becoming anti-free trade. Rather, it seems the argument that Trump has made before is that free trade isn't currently taking place because other countries have mercantilist trade practices, and the US should retaliate. Hence, Argentina and Australia were exempted from Trump's tariffs last time around because they responded to the threat as desired. In a sense, no country practices free trade since trade is (sometimes inadvertently) always subsidized, whether directly or indirectly (such as through the regulatory environment).
This is a confusing and ambiguously-worded comment. Are you claiming that Trump's end goal is to use trade tariffs solely to force other countries to lower theirs? Several problems with this argument:
1) Trump does not appear to understand what tariffs are. He seems to think that it's a money transfer that foreign countries pay the US to "do business here". It's why his complaints are a garbled soup of complaining countries are "ripping us off" without a clear articulation of what exactly he's talking about.
2) Trump has never expressed support for free trade as the end goal. If he has, I'm happy to be corrected.
3) Using high tariffs to force other countries to lower their own trade barriers does not have a good track record of actually working. The most effective moves towards free trade have always been diplomatic agreements (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade_agreements_of_the_United_States). Second best would be to just lower your own tariffs, because free trade provides tremendous benefits even if the other countries retaliate with tariffs.
To clarify, I'm personally not pro-tariff; I'm just saying that most of the arguments I hear presented in favor of them are tactical rather than ideological. More specifically, advocates tend to argue that a free trade regime doesn't currently exist with most countries and want this corrected. Hence, countries that caved to US demands last time (Australia, Argentina) were exempted from tariffs under Trump.
1. I think the clearer articulation is one that's been applied to various countries over the decades. In the 70s and 80s Americans complained about Japan's mercantilist trade regime wherein Japan would shield its domestic industries and consumer market to artificially drive up domestic profits so that firms could cheaply flood goods into foreign markets and exploit trade openness overseas. People accuse China of the same strategy today.
2. In an interview with Piers Morgan, he said he wants free trade but remarked, "We don't have free trade" and went on to lament what was mentioned above.
3. I agree that tariffs aren't going to work with the country that's the most routinely lambasted for unfair trade practices (China) since they can just manipulate their currency. Nonetheless, it already seems to be cracking open Canada's markets.
Beyond that, I'm skeptical genuine free trade will ever exist as long as nation-states exist, as governments create different regulatory environments, which will inevitably benefit certain firms over others.
I hope this clarified any ambiguity. I'm conflict-averse and therefore often hesitant to straightforwardly disagree with real people.
Please, I heartily encourage you to disagree with me and wish to accommodate that however I can!
Most of the arguments I've encountered from the true believers were just denials ("tariffs will actually lower prices" etc). This is corroborated by how Trump talks about it. The tactical arguments are sanewashing, coming from the more aware talking heads, usually a variant of "Trump won't _actually_ impose tariffs, it's just a bluff" or something similar.
I tried to discern your claims about Trump's trade war and it all seems erratically implemented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_tariffs
Argentina only received a temporary steel exemption, for reasons unknown to me. Australia appears to have successfully lobbied for a steel exemption by claiming they have "specialty steel", and referencing the close military alliance with the US. I'm not identifying a coherent strategy here. That's corroborated by Trump's misunderstanding of how tariffs work.
I think the confusion in your comment remains: you're lumping in several distinct practices that are not necessarily related or predicated on each other. I understand this can be a complicated subject and that's made worse by the pretextual arguments interest groups make when they seek special favors from the government. It's unpopular for them to straightforwardly say "please help us keep our prices high by protecting us from competition" and so they necessarily couch and obfuscate it.
Ty for replying. I'll list the following for the purposes of clarifying my points:
1. Trump has claimed he's not anti-free trade because free trade isn't taking place right now since other countries are exploiting US trade openness while shielding their domestic markets from US products.
-I partially agree with this. Specifically, I think he's right in that free trade is more of a theoretical ideal that can be realized to varying degrees on a spectrum than something that takes place in reality. Moreover, because markets only exist as long as there's a regulatory body in the form of the state, trade between countries won't be truly free trade since it's always subject to the terms of bilateral or multilateral treaties (unless a common market is established; I'm in favor of this with Canada in particular).
-I generally disagree with using tariffs to force reciprocity on the part of other countries because US consumers still benefit on net from access to cheap foreign products even if US producers don't get access to foreign consumer markets. Ultimately, the fact that Canada shields its telecom and dairy markets from the US hurts Canadians, not Americans. Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, China can cancel out the consequences of tariffs through currency manipulation, so they're an ineffective instrument against the country whose trade practices Trump most inveighs against.
2. Trump isn't in favor of total autarky.
During his first term, Trump negotiated USMCA, and one of his major goals was to get a free trade agreement with China. He receieved a lot of criticism on the latter, as people suspected he'd sacrifice support for Hong Kong and Taiwan to achieve it, and I doubt he'll ever get it since China won't have much to gain from it (though in fairness he did get a phase I agreement last time).
-Generally Trump is opposed to multilateral trade agreements (such as TPP) and favors bilateral agreements since they give greater leverage to the US in negotiating terms. He takes issue with the terms of existing agreements but isn't against free trade deals in principle (otherwise he wouldn't have negotiated or tried negotiating any last time).
3. There's a diversity of opinion on the topic right now. Within the admin Vivek opposes protectionism, and within the commentariat Ben Shapiro does. Nevertheless, overall opinion has gone the other way, and Trump's undoubtedly going to proceed with it as he did last time. However,since MAGA's built around his charisma rather than around a commitment to any principles, things could go either way in a post-Trump GOP. Historically the GOP was more protectionist (Harding, Hoover, Nixon according to critics, and even Reagan who used tariffs extensively against the Japanese auto industry). In the 90s and 2000s it went in the opposite direction. The 2030s could go either way.
Before you read the tea leaves on Trump's claims, the main thing that needs to be addressed is Trump's incoherence when he discusses tariffs. He has repeatedly denied that American importers pay the tariffs, a completely delusional position to take. He has also repeatedly floated the idea of funding the federal government primarily from tariffs (as used to be the case in the 1800s), which is inconsistent with claiming that he thinks tariffs are a temporary stepping stone to a world of free trade.
Because of all this, I do not believe he actually understands what free trade actually is, or how exactly tariffs work. My own position is that he has a simpleton zero-sum understanding of international trade, where various countries elbow each other to get ahead. My position is consistent with the observed facts.
I'd not say I'm reading the tea leaves. Rather, I'm looking at what Trump did in his first administration and listening to what he's said in interviews over the decades to try to examine his underlying principles.
Vis-a-vis his claims about American importers, I don't see it as connected to my point (namely that Trump in principle isn't anti-free trade. Instead, he thinks international trade as it currently takes place is ripping America off). I agree that the empirics of that particular belief of his are delusional, and I don't see that as being inconsistent with what I've said (that Trump isn't anti-free trade in principle but rather sees current arrangements as unfree trade. His view isn't empirically accurate, but that's a matter of facts, not of principles). If he disagreed with free trade in principle, he wouldn't have negotiated USMCA.
His idea of funding the federal government is--as far as I know--one that he's adopted after leaving office. I recall him saying it to Joe Rogan, but I'm unfamiliar with him saying it before this election cycle. When we actually look at his record, we can see that he signed a free trade deal with Canada and Mexico (though it looks like he's no longer content with its terms) and that he attempted to negotiate one with China. I'm skeptical he could actually even take serious steps to implement his new idea since doing so would cause inflation to skyrocket and massively disrupt supply chains. Instead, he'll probably try to look as if he is without actually doing so, just as he did with the Muslim ban. As you know, instead of a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," he banned travel from a set of countries. If I were to try to read the tea leaves, my prediction is he slaps tariffs on commodities that his advisors are the most willing to countenance then claims it as a revolutionary victory. Ultimately, we won't know until he takes office.
As a resident of a fairly protectionist country that nevertheless has an FTA with the US, I think he's not wrong that many countries shield domestic industries from US competition. However, as I stated previously, I don't think it really matters for Americans since the people hurt in this arrangement are the people living in artificially uncompetitive markets rather than Americans.