I generally take hawkish military-inspired postures seriously where they are actually appropriate. Where even serious thinkers go wrong is not realizing they’re doing the economic equivalent of “honor-based” strategy.
Something no modern military would ever do on battlefield.
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Sometime between the US Civil War and WW2, military conflict evolved from honor-based to calculated, industrially efficient total war. Honor-based militaries were routinely wiped out against this model.
Neoliberalism was “total war” doctrine in economics *and it works*
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Going back to 19th century honor-based, symmetric protectionist bilateral trade duels is going to go down as the most spectacular economic own-goal in history if it is pursued to the bitter end. It will eclipse the previous most spectacular own-goal: China’s pre-modern one.
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This is one area where Trump’s thinking is transparent, the logic clear, and origin obvious. He’s thinking like a real estate slumlord with a huge insecurity around his own awful record as an “entrepreneur”, built primarily on a core competency of working the courts and tax laws.
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He genuinely thinks “winning” in business is about scamming unsuspecting marks, getting away with it in courts, and generating personal income by gaming taxes and debt rather than creating wealth through innovation.
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Subconsciously he realizes he’s missing something. Hence the Bezos Derangement Syndrome.
Unlike Bezos, he has no clue how to play in a world shaped by a developing China (a good thing for the world) and actually win.
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Why Nations Fail is still probably the best read on how global economic leadership is actually won, by creating win-win where you win more than others. The US is increasingly starting to look like the failed state examples in that book.
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When I travel in India, I can always tell when shopkeepers are trying to scam me, since I grew up there and have an idea of what things should cost. But because I earn in USD, I often just pay rather than bargain. It’s not worth the trouble for me to beat the “unfair” scam.
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For me, getting clever and taking 15 minutes to bargain a $10 item down to the local “fair” price of $5, when it costs $50 in the US, feels like a waste of time. For the vendor, it’s a successful 2x scam. For me, it’s an 80% off bargain that I don’t feel like driving up to 90%
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