So far, every country in the world has had one of two responses to the Trump tariffs. The first one is: "Give Trump everything he asks for (except Greenland) and hope he stops being mad at you." This has been an absolute failure. Give Trump an inch, he'll take a mile. He'll take fucking Greenland. Capitulation is a failure.

But so is the other tactic: retaliatory tariffs. That's what we've done in Canada (like all the best Americans, I'm Canadian). Our top move has been to levy tariffs on the stuff we import from America, making the things we buy more expensive. That's a weird way to punish America! It's like punching yourself in the face as hard as you can, and hoping the downstairs neighbor says "Ouch!"

And it's indiscriminate. Why whack some poor farmer from a state that begins and ends with a vowel with tariffs on his soybeans. That guy never did anything bad to Canada.

But there's a third possible response to tariffs, one that's just sitting there, begging to be tried: what about repealing anticircumvention law?

If you're a technologist or an investor based in a country that's repealed its anticircumvention law, you can go into business making disenshittificatory products that plug into America's defective tech exports, allowing the people who own and use those products to use them in ways that are good for them, even if those uses make the company's shareholders mad.

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[–] 84 points 10 months ago (19 children)

It's obviously the right idea, Cory's been saying it to anyone who will listen for months if not years, but it would depend on governments doing something. How can it possibly happen then, if there aren't powerful corporate interests hiring lobbyists to say it in a way that politicians can hear?

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  • [–] 26 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I'm not sure how far you read, but he argues that it would only take one country's legislature to set this off and reap the rewards of nurturing a fully open alternative to the US big-tech stack.

    With the US pissing off pretty much everyone else and losing allies by the day, it will only be a matter of time before the doors are blown open on this.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    It's a speech. He has a hypothesis at best, and expertly lays out one way for it to go.

    If one country did it, they'd try to give them the Venezuela treatment.

    Don't get me wrong, I think the overall concept has incredible legs, but the finer details of tit-for-tat and retaliation aren't quite fleshed out.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago

    It's why things have to happen in a certain order. You can't do the more aggressive economic actions against the US until after certain conditions are in place. First you need to cut dependency on the US for anything essential. Food and strategic resources like aluminum, steel, and energy. You also need a strong enough military to make any US military action costly for the US.

    Once those conditions are met you can take further action. Hitting the US tech sector is more of a middle option. Manipulating the US bond market is the nuclear option.

    Currently these options aren't on the table since the US can kick out the legs of that table if you tried to play those cards. But many things are quietly changing around the world while Americans are obsessing over Epstein files, Trump playing battleship, and Hegseth and Rubio fucking around with tinpot South American dictators.

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  • [–] 27 points 10 months ago (14 children)

    Be the change you want to see: start lobbying government for it.

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  • [+] 14 points 10 months ago (13 children)
  • [–] 24 points 10 months ago (8 children)

    It surprises me from time to time just how cheap some of these politicians sell out for. If I could get together with my neighbours all contributing $50 and buy a legislator or two, we could probably get funds for a stadium.

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  • [–] 16 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    "The former Royal Bank of Scotland submitter who was offered sushi rolls in exchange for helping try to rig the Libor rate-setting process has been banned by the UK's financial regulator." https://www.ft.com/content/23868e36-0095-11e6-ac98-3c15a1aa2e62

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Without being able to read that article, I choose to interpret that quote as if a renown personal chef was on offer for a number of years to provide world class sushi rolls whenever the mood strikes.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    It's worse than that. It was one batch of rolls, specifically yesterday's rolls.

    Read the Bloomberg Chats That Got a Former RBS Libor Trader Paul White Banned for Life - Business Insider – https://www.businessinsider.com/read-the-bloomberg-chats-that-got-a-former-rbs-libor-trader-paul-white-banned-for-life-2016-4

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    People can get arrogant enough to think that they won't get caught.

    Emmanuel Clase was a Major League pitcher making ~$5M per year. He got caught intentionally flubbing pitches for $5000. 5M a year gone now to get a few thousand dollars. Why would someone be that stupid?

    Because they don't think they'll get caught.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    You and a bunch of other people together do. You're not changing anything on your own.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    That's the type of mentality that keeps individuals from even attempting to build a large gathering of like-minded people to actually push for a change. Yeah, I'm not doing any kind of damage by myself, but that should not keep me from trying, and asking others to also try. Fuck that defeatist mindset.

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