This "pay up for trade access" is similar to the tributary system of feudal China. Every year, neighboring countries of China like Korea, Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam sent envoys to Imperial China, paying gold, women, and exotic products, in return for recognition of their sovereignty (subject to the supreme authority of Chinese emperor), military protection, and access to trade routes within China.
It is interesting to see the resurgence of such imperial practices in modern-day America. I think it worked out quite well for the Tang dynasty, but arguably that was because all East Asian feudal states were authoritarian monarchy back then. A logical next step would be for POTUS to declare himself as the supreme leader of the world, emend educational materials to propound the idea that the US is superior to other tributary states, quell all internal cries of undemocratic practices, and ban books that promote historical knowledge to avoid unnecessary dissent.
> This "pay up for trade access" is similar to the tributary system of feudal China. Every year, neighboring countries of China like Korea, Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam sent envoys to Imperial China, paying gold, women, and exotic products, in return for recognition of their sovereignty (subject to the supreme authority of Chinese emperor), military protection, and access to trade routes within China.
The most irritating thing is that I specifically didn't want to see a return to form for this for China, but I never imagined that America in the 21st Century would somehow get there first. It was just out of fucking nowhere.
How could people NOT see this coming?
The prospects for the working class disappeared when you moved manufacturing to China. The population was subsequently dumbed down because there was no money for schools(except for the rich elite).
Probably because you’re talking about a whole different thing than what I was responding to. America shaking down Japan and Korea to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars wasn’t even on my bingo card for 2025, but perhaps your bingo card was more prophetic.
> but perhaps your bingo card was more prophetic
Usually I read these “how could you/they not see this coming?” statements less in reference to a specific occurrence and more like “Given this man’s profound and enduring disinterest in history, culture, economics and the global political process, along with his demonstrated venality, how could you not see that bad things would happen, this being an example…”
> prospects for the working class disappeared when you moved manufacturing to China
I think the prospects of the working class died with the crisis signaling the end of the USSR and by extension communist/socialist circles. After all it was the only counter-balance that instilled a baseline fear of violent uprising from the workers class in the heart of the wealthy class.
And in a way the final nail came with the free reign liberal policies that followed with Thatcher e Reagan, not so much about offshoring in itself.
The true problem is money in politics. No, this has nothing to do with Musk. Musk is just visible, but it's been going on in the US for a long, long time.
Other countries have limits on campaign donations, for example at the federal level in Canada:
* no donations are allowed by corporations
* individuals may only donate $1750 to the party, and $1750 to the local candidate
* people running for office can donate to their own campaign, to the tune of $5000
* leadership candidates (eg, for Prime Minister) can donate $25k to their own campaign
That's it.
https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=pol&dir=lim&do...
All of these donations are heavily regulated, amounts of $100 I think require disclosure.
Another example, lobbyists must be registered. If you have lunch with a lobbyist, they can't pay for your lunch, you can't pay for theirs.
All of this takes corporate influence and most importantly the need for "big money" out of the equation.
Things such as third party advertising are covered too:
https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=pol&dir=thi/ec...
With overall limits at the federal level from all third party contributions at $600k, and $5k per district:
https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=pol&document=i...
You want the "working class" to have more of a say? Make candidates beholden to normal people to get elected. Destroy the machinery of big-business donations for campaign, and campaign management funding.
That's it. That's the biggest, most significant fix, right there.
>...After all it was the only counter-balance that instilled a baseline fear of violent uprising from the workers class in the heart of the wealthy class.
Are people claiming that the USSR provided a valid counter-balance for the working class? At any rate, if the chances of political violence have actually decreased in democracies due to the end of the USSR, isn't that a good thing?
Yes! Western states had to ensure that life was better in a Capitalist country. Hence unions were tolerated, along with human rights, rule of law, anti corruption etc etc.
Unions have never been tolerated - they seized what little power they have through actual economic force. The kind that no king or government can oppose for long.
Human rights and fighting graft don't have very much to do with the USSR, unless you ignore the centuries or history there before the Communist Manifesto was even written.
Neither Trump, nor anybody in the Republican party is, and has never been, and will never be some kind of champion of the working class. If you're in it, you're just a useful idiot to him.
What you're seeing isn't a consequence of the working class finally acting in its interests by getting behind a billionaire slumlord and conman. What you're seeing is the consequence of billionaires figuring out that if you distract the working class with divisive identity politics and plain old bullshit (Trans athletes! The gays grooming your children! Antifa supersoldiers stealing elections! Socialist death panels killing granny!), you can swindle it out of anything.
Trump and his friends would have had no legs in a society that hasn't been thoroughly and irreparably broken by this stupidity and the normalization thereof.
I didn’t say people are acting in their best interest.
> This "pay up for trade access" is similar to the tributary system of feudal China.
The two systems are fundamentally different. In the ancient Chinese tributary system, based on the principle of "厚往薄来" China's reciprocation had to exceed the value of the tribute, thereby providing tangible benefits to the tributary states. This practice even led to later restrictions on the frequency of tribute missions from certain countries
> A logical next step would be for POTUS to declare himself as the supreme leader of the world
Well, he is already positioning himself for being at least the US DFL, already suggesting a 3rd illegal mandate:
https://www.trumpstore.com/product/trump-2028-hat/
And the US, being the most powerful country in the world, barred, maybe China, the next step is not so far-fetched.
I wish the western allies would dump their US bonds to drive bond yields into the ground and threaten US budgets, like the military one, that relying on cheap debt.
But this is a difficult decision to make, do you sacrifice possible (less likely) future earnings to destabilize a super power to save it from fascism but in turn risking a power vacuum to your disadvantage?
Id take this gamble but im a mere democratic citizen, that doesnt care about global pro-fascism support, like other right leaning governments do.
>I wish the western allies would dump their US bonds to drive bond yields into the ground
Dumping bonds would increase supply and drive down prices, but that increases yields because yields is the difference between the price you paid vs the face value of the bond.
*Bond yields for the US.
When US bonds enter the secondary market at a discount, buyers are inclined to prefer them over the US-offerend ones who need to raise interest rates to stay competitve, so making them more expensive for the US.
Bond yield is the return an investor will realize on a bond, so driving down prices decreases yields. Sure, it can increase the absolute value of yield as it heads into the negative...
No, because "yield" almost always refers to yield to maturity.
Undermining the USD doesn't help. Vacuum politics are not better. Vacuum politics lead to where we are today. Too many years of choosing "the least bad option" doesn't lead to a good place.
Let's take all this negative energy and do something better than criticize. Let's harness the energy into good action. What's something we all can agree is good for everybody and start a discussion around that? I'm not saying all crticism is a bad thing. I'd just like to see us all work together to accomplish something good.
I'll try to get the ball rolling, but if somebody has a better ball, I'm happy to go there.
I prefer free trade. I think everybody benefits if we lower trade barriers. But it needs to be "fair". Allowing corporation A to dump hazardous refuse cheaply into the river, but denying the same to corporation B is not fair to B and not all around good. So are there any good ideas about how to allow goods from different jurisdictions to compete by the same rules without Nationalistic interference?
They hardly need to dump them. Merely not buy as much as they're expected to.
It may have happened during the week of "liberation day" when tariffs were announced, resulting in reduced bill buys.
https://fortune.com/2025/05/11/bond-vigilantes-most-powerful...
Unfortunately there are all kinds of interdependencies that would make such a move quite risky. But you're right in that that is one way in which the screws can be put on.
On the other hand, continuing to hold the bonds might also be risky...
Include also gunboat diplomacy, like done to Japan (“black ships”) or opium to China.
I think what's most interesting to me is that they're also the party who's favorite amendment was written specifically to quell the rise of such leaders. They have explicitly talked about how that amendment was to protect the US from demagogues and autocrats.
They've been fairly quiet about that recently and I'm curious how they'll make that pivot. It's only a matter of time before someone on the left starts suggesting their constituents exercise that right in at least a symbolic nature. I've seen a rise in the exercise of this right by socialist groups and other radicals. But even if it is all symbolic it sets the stage for a powder keg moment. But if the right doesn't restrict this right then how far can they go and keep their heads?
It's morbidly fascinating and terrifying to me how they so successfully turned the right's worst nightmares into wet dreams. I do wonder, how far can it go? But I've never not wanted to know the answer to a question so much in my life. Please, I do not want to find out[0]
[0] no, you can't literally answer this. It can only be learned through the experience. So don't reply to me as if you have an exact answer, you only have speculation. But if you have a time machine, I'd appreciate next week's lotto numbers (and the week after ;)
> But if the right doesn't restrict this right then how far can they go and keep their heads?
They've already started talking about banning trans people from owning guns (based on the wildly bigoted premise that being trans is a dangerous mental illness).
If that goes through, I would expect to see other queer people next on the list, with similar justifications.
Or possibly they'd just jump straight to banning all left-wing people from owning guns, based on their declaration that we're "domestic terrorists". (Yes, they're talking about doing that, too.)
> "They've already started talking about banning trans people from owning guns"
They've (I mean sitting Congressional representatives, not randos) have escalated their rhetoric considerably since that (*is* it rhetoric?)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... ("MAGA lawmaker calls to forcefully mass institutionalize trans people: ‘We have to get them off the streets!’" (September 17))
> "“We have to do something about this. We have to treat these people. We have to get them off the streets, and we have to get them off the internet, and we can't let them communicate with each other,” he insisted."
> "“I'm all about free speech, but this is a virus, this is a cancer that's spreading across this country,” Jackson concluded. “That’s going to do great damage to normal, hard-working, law-abiding people.”"
> "The hard-right lawmaker, meanwhile, is not the only member of Congress who has seemingly called for transgender people to be locked up in mental institutions."
> "Speaking to reporters earlier this week, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) – who spearheaded the effort to bar trans women from using Capitol Hill bathrooms that don't correspond with their sex assigned at birth – repeatedly used anti-trans slurs while saying transgender people are “mentally ill” and “should be in a straitjacket.”"
Actual Nazi language. Aligns with the Fox News hosts talking about bringing back Aktion T4,
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20... ("Fox News host apologizes for remarks about killing mentally ill homeless people")
> "Kilmeade added: “Or involuntary lethal injection or something — just kill ‘em.”"
Stop giving them ideas!
> A logical next step would be for POTUS to declare himself as the supreme leader of the world, emend educational materials to propound the idea that the US is superior to other tributary states, quell all internal cries of undemocratic practices, and ban books that promote historical knowledge to avoid unnecessary dissent
My brother in Christ, you Americans do this already and have been doing this at least since the end of WW2. Ever wondered why communism couldn't spread in Northern Europe, South America or many places of Asia?
> supreme leader of the world, emend educational materials to propound the idea that the US is superior to other tributary states, quell all internal cries of undemocratic practices, and ban books that promote historical knowledge to avoid unnecessary dissent.
You mean just make what is already de-facto practice, de-jure ?
Yay, how benevolent our new masters are.