David
Angus McIntyreTrump's plan to use tariffs to force agricultural producers to move production to the United States, while simultaneously using the army to expel the workforce they need to do so is really some next-level strategic genius thinking.
mackenzian@angusm Cosmic facepalm for all the unnecessary suffering up and down the food production chain.
Lesley Shashaty@angusm I'm at the point where I feel the plan is simply to dramatically reduce the population. I still can't quite figure out how that will help him"
@LShashaty It might be misguided to assume that Trump HAS a plan, except to flatter his ego by LARPing at being president, and to fatten his bank accounts by diverting public funds to them.
Some of the people around him, however, probably have plans, and a significant goal may be to immiserate as many people as possible in order to divert more money and power into their own hands. Trumpβs ham-fisted meddling with the economy probably serves that purpose well enough.
fdr@angusm @LShashaty Tariffs can have exemptions, and those will be for sale
PassengerHonestly I think this is the real answer. The thing that every dictator wants is a harsh law which is written to apply universally but actually enforced selectively, and this is a great example of that.
Sovereign is he who makes the exception, and all that.
BeeCycling@angusm @LShashaty I agree. He doesn't have a plan or even a guiding ideology to base a plan on. He just says he'll do things that will appeal to his base, even if they're blatantly in conflict with other things he says he'll do. Like all populists he promises simple answers to complex problems. When he can't deliver he'll blame someone else.
Morten Kjeldgaard@angusm @LShashaty Also: Getting the DOJ to drop all charges against him.
PG1958WILLNOTCOMPLY πΊπΈπ·π΄πΊπ¦π΅πΈ
Molly Cantrell-Kraig πΊπ¦His myopia is filtered through the lens of racism. Elimination of Black and brown bodies is his goal. Their humanity is immaterial to him; their contribution to society/the economy irrelevant. Trump believes BIPOC lives do not matter and have no value, and heβs willing to sacrifice the world to satisfy his prejudice. His owners seek to literally profit from Trumpβs weakness and vanity.
Charlie StrossMyopia is the act of seeing β the channel. Malice is the filter.
random thoughtsAlso when most likely to die are the elderly and unhealthy MAGA crowd.
The same plan he followed in the COVID outbreak - killing his own followers. No idea why.
Patrick H. Lauke@angusm he'll replenish the workforce with forced births/prison chain gangs
robcorneliusIts all doublespeak. "Immigrants coming to the country and claiming benefits take all our jobs"
Simon Richter@angusm 1. use prisoners
2. tighten marijuana laws
3. give more discretion to law enforcement
None of these are even unconstitutional.
skry@GyrosGeier @angusm They will force a lot of government workers out of jobs, including military.
They want people on Medicaid to work for their healthcare.
They want children to remain largely uneducated and to dismantle education economics.
They aim to put millions of "illegals" into prison-camp populations.
They are already causing many women to bear as many children as possible (until they die in labor with the final child, like breeding stock of yesteryear).
Codhisattva@Codhisattva @angusm That's what I'd bet on: round up the illegals in camps, fail to deport them (where's going to take them?), so try them for illegal immigration and turn them into convict labour, i.e. slaves. Which is going to do wonders for wages in the agricultural labour sector (but not in a good way).
@cstross @angusm and wonders for the profits for the few megacorps. Sysco and Cargill already have prison based processing plants so this will just be scaling. AP investigated this for 2 years and released a sprawling condemnation.
Prisoners in the U.S. are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands
In a sweeping two-year investigation, The Associated Press found goods linked to prisoners wind up in the supply chains of everything from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour and Coca-Cola.
Brian Baresch@angusm This would mean millions of city and suburban Americans will essentially be forced to work on farms. If only something like that had been tried on a similar scale, we'd have an idea what to expect.
Rasmus Olsen@angusm, I believe the impracticality of mass deportation is probably a feature, and not a bug. Mass incarceration already provides a significant forced labour workforce for US agriculture; it is a simple legal operation to turn undocumented agriculture workers into slaves in situ. https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e
Hidden prison labor web linked to foods from Target, Walmart
In a sweeping two-year investigation, The Associated Press found goods linked to prisoners wind up in the supply chains of everything from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour and Coca-Cola. They are on the shelves of most supermarkets, including Kroger, Target and Whole Foods. Theyβre also exported. The prisoners who help produce these goods are disproportionately people of color. Some are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work β or face punishment β and are sometimes paid pennies an hour or nothing at all. They also are excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job. And it can be almost impossible for them to sue.
Graydon@angusm In the MAGA imagination, there's a large urban population who do nothing but drugs. As a result, MAGA thought holds that re-enslaving them to perform agricultural labour would be doing them a favour and only foolish leftist nonsense about human rights prevents this sensible solution.
This is not quite the same thing as the "enslave every leftist" take or the "food crisis = infinite authority (because everyone will panic)" take, but all three sets of ideas slosh around together.
NazaniChristian Dominionism includes a whole bunch of ideas about how you can tell God loves you because you have slaves. It turns into ideas about how forbidding slavery is against God's will.
MAGA is a sincere and fervent effort to bring back the bronze age "women, cattle, and slaves" status mechanisms for its adherents. (Which is not the only thing it is, but it surely is that.)
@graydon @angusm
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AlexxKay@cstross @AlexxKay @Nazani @angusm There wasn't a religious position that someone who looked like them could only be a slaveβ¦
There was a big tangle of social customs to economically integrate freedmen, come to that, which advantaged the former master and was normal and common.
Rome was an authoritarian horror; it wasn't as bad as a cult that wants to force God to end the world having control of nuclear weapons, and it didn't contain something as bad as the dominionist position on slavery.
Thanasis Kinias@cstross
I believe it was hereditaryβitβs from Roman law IIRC that the Christian world got the principle of βpartus sequitur ventremβ (i.e. a child born of an enslaved woman is born enslaved, regardless of paternity).
But be that as it may, manumission was indeed routine and the descendants of freedmen enjoyed full citizenship...
@AlexxKay @Nazani @graydon @angusm
SysAdmin1138@cstross @Nazani @graydon @angusm Once again 1750s are a better fit for their goalsβindentured servitude is still a thing (for whites from bad countries and criminals) and slavery (still a penalty for certain crimes.) The "forced good works shrive the soul" idea was absolutely present, and the vindictive corner of empowered white justice was running most things.
White criminals from the cities get sent to prison labor for shorter terms (indenture) and black criminals get stacked sentences that amount of life in service. All it takes is different sentencing practices, and they get their free labor.
@sysadmin1138 @cstross @Nazani @angusm Their _directly profitable_ labour. The idea is, was, and ever shall be, world without end, amen, to have all the money; God's love may be infinite but the material manifestation of it is not and they want all of it for them specifically. (Perpetually trembling on the brink of self-awareness, your default mammonite.)
The US is one tiny change in the law away from debt peonage, too, and it's already corporate policy that they have it.
@graydon @sysadmin1138 @Nazani @angusm Debt peonage: just generalize the point that you can't declare bankruptcy to get out of student debt in the USA to all personal debt. That'll do it. Leave bankruptcy to corporate entities (and by extension, their elite owners).
@cstross @sysadmin1138 @Nazani @angusm Classically, the mechanism was making debt hereditary.
It's not, presently, but most companies will try to get you to pay the debts of a dead relative and it often works because people don't necessarily know debt isn't hereditary.
I have no idea if a "debt is hereditary" or a "never-a-borrower-nor-a-lender-be no personal bankruptcy" law is easier to get past this USSC, but I'm sure there are folks in the financial sector with opinions.
@graydon @cstross @angusm
"the U.S. Department of Education owns or guarantees nearly 93% of all student debt, it forgives or discharges federal student loan debt after the loan servicer gets a death certificate.
On the other hand, private lenders donβt have an administrative discharge process for private student loans when the borrower or cosigner dies. So the remaining balance will still be owed, & the lender may go after the borrowerβs estate, cosigner, or surviving spouse, depending on state law."
"the U.S. Department of Education owns or guarantees nearly 93% of all student debt, it forgives or discharges federal student loan debt after the loan servicer gets a death certificate.
On the other hand, private lenders donβt have an administrative discharge process for private student loans when the borrower or cosigner dies. So the remaining balance will still be owed, & the lender may go after the borrowerβs estate, cosigner, or surviving spouse, depending on state law."
lemgandi
Alan Langford π¨π¦π§€π§ζ
oliparch
John Weeks 
@johnweeks @angusm Trump is not so much a Russian asset as a Putin property.
Putin's primary goal is to control the sole nuclear power. He wants to reduce the United States to a condition where it cannot maintain or field nuclear weapons. Once put into that context, MAGA policies make sense, in that they will contribute to the owner's objective.
(The people advancing MAGA are organically violent idiots doing bad insecurity management; the job Trump's been given is to give them power.)
Beggar Midas@angusm Part & parcel of what happens every time a political cult achieves power primacy. What's going to really cook your noodle is when they blame it's inevitable failure on their political opponents & rivals. Use it as justification to round them up, criminalize & eventually eliminate them too.
Hrm. Suddenly seems like it's not so stupid after all, does it? From a power consolidation viewpoint. I believe the military would refer to that as 'shaping the battlefield'
Hrm. Suddenly seems like it's not so stupid after all, does it? From a power consolidation viewpoint. I believe the military would refer to that as 'shaping the battlefield'
eighthourlunch@angusm It's where genius goes all the way around the wheel and rests on brain death. Wheel of misfortune.
Jaime Robertson@angusm He and the rest of the MAGAts want to bring back slavery and child labor.
Ian McKellar
DirtyOldTown@angusm Hungary has already tried this combo... food price inflation peaked at 48% in late 2022.
(It's going back down now... now that they're allowing migrant workers back in.)
OldFartPhil@dirtyoldtown @angusm You'd think one of Trump's "best people" might have heard about this, considering how much the MAGATs love Orban.
Silphium@angusm groceries are about to get very very expensive. even bacon.
Boots Chantilly
@angusm Clearly the plan is to return Americans to literal peasantry, dowries, etc. powered by DRM-choked John Deere equipment that shuts itself off everytime it goes out of range of the nearest Starlink.
Karel Brits πΊπ¦ π΅πΈ π¨π©@angusm Meanwhile he's selling merchandise like wathes and guitars that obviously have at least parts from China, if they aren't even fully made/assembled over there. "You alle have to Make America Great Again, but not me."
Barbara Monaco@karelbrits @angusm He chose a guitar manufacturer that uses multiple parts from overseas to rip off Gibson Guitar's Les Paul design.
Gibson guitars are made exclusively in the US with American parts.
Gibson guitars are made exclusively in the US with American parts.
Joe Hill π΅πΈπΊπ¦
@Barbramon1 exactly: his guitars aren't Gibsons and are made with parts from out of the USA. @angusm
@karelbrits @angusm
Looks like Customs intercepted an entire shipment of βtrump guitars.β
Lazarou Monkey Terror πππ@angusm it's Brexit level strategy
SilvertipGrizz@angusm β¦β¦β¦.. and Putin smiled β¦β¦β¦