The high-level handwavy economics definition of competitive advantage is having a lower opportunity cost than your competitors, i.e. your competitors either have bigger fish to fry, or you genuinely can deliver your product at lower prices than your competitors can.

To a large extent, both fall away when your competitor is a well-capitalized conglomerate. A conglomerate is both well-equipped to seize upon profitable opportunities as they arise (effectively turning your carefully planned and profitable startup into free market research) and willing/able to subsidize an inefficient new business unit until it can drive you out of business and monopolize your market. In an economy so unequal and dominated by large corporations, the only durable competitive advantages are the ones conferred by governments: copyrights, trademarks, patents, and to a much lesser degree, trade secrets. Any other kind of ‘moat’ can be bought.

A non-durable but possibly good-enough competitive advantage is whether you can develop a business unit more efficiently than your competitor can. But that’s only a hopeful statement if the business you want to be in is digging moats for conglomerates to buy at a discount.

Honestly, nobody could have foreseen the depths of depravity of the US government working with finance to inflate these asset bubbles. It’s bewildering and horrifying. Buffet was right to be skeptical about future stock market growth, but that was also published 10 days after Glass-Steagall was repealed.

Buffets pretty smart, he also knows how much boosting he got from 401ks. If boomers had retired as young as their parents the stock market would look a fair bit different too. That’s another thing nobody could have really predicted.



One objection to calling it “populism” (without adjectives) is because there are many populist movements. Including socialism. There are also left-wing nationalist movements, mostly those seeking sub-national autonomy, and even nationalists that see socialism as a way to eliminate undue foreign influences.

I just call it fascism now. :shrug:

I think if Trump wanted to limit China's ability to disrupt global markets, most of the EU and many other countries would be in on it. Pacific-facing countries may call it something like the Trans-Pacific.. hmm, partnership? Or something that would reinforce and bolster trade relations between all countries not Chinese in the Pacific area.

The thing is, Trump is either the largest moron ever or is actively working to disrupt western relations for Putin. Which is anyone's guess, I prefer 50/50. No sane person ever would try so hard to piss of the EU, as the North America/EU alliance is by far the strongest trade alliance in the world, if you could even call it an alliance anymore. Powers combined, though, they could knock down China a few pegs. But hey.

The thing about tariffs, too, is they don't work when one country tariffs another. They work best when a large collective of countries work together to tariff with consistent goals. The more we can ally countries together to fight Chinese bull****, the more that stuff works.

What Trump is doing is the exact opposite, he's hurting U.S. interests* while basically doing very little to bother anyone else.

*by U.S. interests, I mean manufacturing and other red state industries. Sorry Trumpists, many of you are going to lose your jobs if the trade war gets out of hand.

Well, yeah, exactly: even left-wing "populist" movements try to "disrupt the political and cultural elites' hold on power and elect leaders that more directly pursue the interests of "the masses" against the more privileged classes in society" (to quote myself). It's partly why "centrism" -- effectively a synonym for establishmentarianism -- has become a dirty word in certain quarters. (And, to an extent, the term populist is also often intended to draw a similarity between the far-left and the far-right, designating both as parallel alternatives to the establishment).

The different terms capture different elements of the movements that are arising as the establishment parties of Western democracies lose their uncontested grip on the levers of power.

It sounds like globalization is just an upgrade of the size of firms from the level of corporations to the level of states, trying to earn monopoly positions of their own industries over global trade. And each state has every incentive to help their own industries to extract more revenue.

“western capitalist democracy, choose two”

Looks like Mueller formally indicted 12 Russians for the DNC hack.

And squarely claims they are GRU and not some rogues.

Will be interesting to see if Trump continues his meeting with Putin later on.

Oh hi, Tenshu

Hi saberopus! All grown up too? :p

Everyone had to grow up, since fuhrer Trump caused all of the Toys R Us stores to close.

Did you ever learn how to sing?

Mitt Romney, actually. Leveraged buyout using bonds sold to commercial/investment banks that bundled them into derivatives (and given AAA ratings, of course) and resold to/foisted upon the pensions and retirement funds that they manage.

So, in other words: failed fuhrer Mitt Romney caused all of the Toys R Us to close, and your police pension paid them to do it.

GOP brought Rosenstein impeachment papers to the floor today. lol. Party of traitors.

“lol”

Edit: Treason? In my Conservative party? It’s more likely than you think!

whyyyyyy

lol, leave it to joncy to take a flippant jest and find a way to blame it on republican chicanery

I’m sure there are lots of Democrats in private equity, too.

Really, though. I just wanted to explain why it actually happened. It’s not my fault that it was Mitt Romney’s company that did it.

It's amazing we have literal America-hating traitors as leaders of our country, and there are still people who'd prefer them over Democrats. The Republican machine truly won the propaganda war for people to still be this confused.

Like, the GOP is attacking a man investigating a literal foreign attack on our dignity, political system, and people. Theyre literally going to fire a man to protect a person who's obviously under some kinda threat from Putin, literally risk our political infrastructure just for a continued advantage. This is how countries fail, because people become so corrupt they "begin" attacking the legitimacy of our institutions.

The passage of time is playing a big factor too. It wouldn't surprise me if one of the reasons Trump so regularly tweets "NO COLLUSION" is that he knows the media and social media response will contribute to fatigue and indifference among the public. It's been really difficult to wade through all the alarmism and the non-stop coverage of the Russia scandal, and since the story has spun off onto all these other weird tangents (Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen), it's only contributed to the sense that it's not worth following the story. Plus, its easy to get inured to some of the traitorous behavior, since the goal posts keep moving.

It's wild that there is a stigma around firing/impeaching Mueller but not Rosenstein. It probably has something to do with the firing of the special prosecutor during the Sunday Night Massacre being regarded as an historical precedent for deeply suspicious behavior from a president that eventually led to his removal from office.

Hopefully it's not because they want to replace him with someone who will be more willing to fire Mueller than Rosenstein is.

You're right, and worse for Trump I think that the fatigue thing is wearing off a bit. Trump can't escape the spotlight and duck down until people forget, he's still our president after all. Now, it's easy to find articles which summarize how the investigation is going, and there doesn't seem to be an end to who's corrupt anymore. Nobody except bootlickers or morons trust anything Trump or his people say now. With Manafort in jail and so many guilty pleas, I think everybody who has followed even a little bit feels in their gut that Trump is guilty.

It's worth noting that Mueller has said outright that he does not believe he has the legal authority to indict a sitting president and that Trump is not a target of his investigation.

The truism still holds: impeachment is a political process. For a while, people thought that if it was discovered that Trump had done something criminal it would make it easier to argue that he should be impeached, because it would make it more difficult for GOP senators to continue to support him. I really don't think that holds anymore: the days are long gone when GOP Senators like Jeff Flake and Bob Corker were publicly criticizing Trump and talking about how unhinged and crazy he is. Republicans accept that Trump is their guy, and the two seats on the Supreme Court (and there will probably be more) only prove that it was worth making a deal with the devil.

If I had to put down money on it, I'd say we're not getting rid of this guy except through the ballot box. The GOP base is more loyal to Trump than they are to Congress, and so bucking Trump is too much of a liability for GOP senators (and for the party as a whole) at this point for impeachment to happen. I don't think it matters what Trump does. At this point, even firing Mueller probably only gets him a few slaps on the wrist.

I wonder what the percentage of legislators and high-level bureaucrats have knowingly violated some ethics rule at some point. It kind of makes one wonder where it would all end.

Kind of reminds me of the French Revolution (should we just have a permanent commission to list off names of traitors to the republic?). Of course it makes perfect sense for the Republicans to point the finger at Hilary Clinton, which is a tacit admission of guilt in a certain sense, because it implies the reasoning, "Both sides are surely guilty of something, but why don't you look at my opponent first?"

I think that the public in general (apart from the rabid dogs on either side) understand this and are tired of it. Republicans are crooked, no doubt. Democrats are crooked too, no doubt. What's more interesting (and more relevant) than who crooked is how they are crooked, and how does the "little guy" get shafted the least. I think that's a large part of why Trump was able to pull so many votes - the mindset seemed to be "everyone on the inside is crooked, maybe an outsider will be crooked in a different way. What we have had for years is obviously not working, let's try something different, even if it's not necessarily obviously better."

These are entirely different notions of crooked, mate.

Trump is the anti-Talleyrand tbh.

Like, if the Republicans want to be amoral, traitorous sacks of self-serving ****, so be it. But can't they at least be good at their craft? They can't even be ****ty right.

Ugh, its not even cool that we have fascism. It's fast food fascism. Full fledged fast food fascism. The five f.

Republicans are so bad, mate.

What else should American fascism be?

The situation in Germany is not looking good. http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2018/07/philosopher-yitzhak-melamed-johns-hopkins-victim-of-anti-semitic-attack-in-bonn-and-then-a-victim-of.html#more

So, earnest question (for like Eversor), what would a properly reformed conservative party actually look like? As in, let's say in 2020 pro-Trump conservatives were magically dumped in a well, and replaced were people who genuinely believed in a kind of intellectual conservatism, and weren't beholden to their donors. What kind of policies would they seek? I don't just mean principles like "smaller government", here I'm looking for concrete policy decisions.

https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1017814258363654145



That is disturbing. Hopefully religious/race-based violence doesn't take off there.

To answer Trump's question though: because Obama was terrified of seeming too partisan. He wanted to seem even-handed during the election.

Other than all of the anonymous Americans stated to have committed crimes in the indictment, and all of the Americans who have already been indicted, and all of the Americans who haven't been indicted yet.

Lol, that sentence looks weird in print.

Something about the idea of that man participating in some kind of Socratic dialogue just seems unrealistic.