Welcome to the Zero Sum Era. Now How Do We Get Out?
13 points by uxhacker 4 months ago | 5 comments- uxhacker 4 months ago
- smcin 4 months agoI think it's always been the ugly reality that factions in US politics aren't in the business of helping others, and it's less phony now to acknowledge that. Example: look at how many pious words were uttered about the US opioid crisis since 2010, by everyone from Obama to Trump to Biden to Hillary. Why were the Sacklers never criminally prosecuted, and allowed stash their assets abroad a decade before settlement negotiations? How is it "El Chapo" Guzmán or obscure figures like Joseph Kony could be brought to justice, but somehow not the Sacklers? How is it prosecutors could figure out the chain of command for the Abu Ghraib scandal, but not the opioid crisis? Why was the derailment and toxic leak in East Palestine, Ohio ignored by both media and Congress like it wouldn't have been if it was a plane crash? Why was Norfolk Southern allowed operate a longer train with 149 freight cars, including 20 hazmat, with only three employees, one of them a trainee, and defective bearings? Going back to when the Biden admin legislated to forbid the rail strike in 12/2022. Yet Biden wanted to cosplay wearing union caps throughout his presidency. I don't see how the performative phoniness on any side is useful to political discourse.
- Animats 4 months agoThe hard way. Manufacturing.
- jpcom 4 months agoPrecisely. Henry C. Carey, Abraham Lincoln's chief economic adviser, would say that the article's platitudes about "interdependence" miss the fundamental issue - it's not interdependence itself but the _type_ of interdependence that matters. Carey's economic nationalism recognized that exporting raw materials only to import finished goods creates colonial-style dependency, not prosperity. Carey's "harmony of interests" demanded domestic manufacturing capabilities that transform local resources into higher-value products, creating what he called "association" between producers and consumers within the same economic sphere. When we outsource manufacturing to non-democratic nations with concentrated labor power, we're not creating mutual benefit but establishing extractive relationships that hollow out our productive capacity. True economic resilience comes from rebuilding local manufacturing prowess that completes the production cycle domestically - something the globalist narrative conveniently ignores while democratic nations gradually surrender their self-sufficiency in the name of "efficiency." Carey's approach would actually transcend zero-sum thinking by creating genuine wealth through productive transformation rather than mere exchange, in turn unlocking fresh potential for growth, when nations develop their complete productive capacities instead of competing for shares of existing production.
- jpcom 4 months ago
- aaron695 4 months ago[dead]
- powerapple 4 months agoAI + Robotics, let's stop slaving other people, start slaving robots.
Every era is zero sum, depending on who you are listening to and care about