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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Yeah, I was agreeing with the person I responded to, and my comment related to the person they were responding to. Obviously this format can leave that a little unclear. Basically, two comments up from mine was this disingenuous argument that Netflix is trash, and that’s just wrong, but it’s an argument I see used about any number of things here on Lemmy, and to me, it dilutes the argument, because you’re clearly coming from this place of bias right out of the gate.

    I just think it’s okay to say a product itself provides a good service, but that they’re fucking it all up by injecting shit into it, to the point that, regardless of how quality the product may be, the injected shit is so repugnant that I would abandon this quality product for it.



  • Yeah, here and Reddit, I find myself nodding along often enough, and that’s when I know I should perhaps adjust my viewpoint, just for the sake of making sure I’m not just nodding along. It’s unfortunate you’re perhaps being brigaded a bit, but it doesn’t matter. I say what I’m gonna say, people can think whatever. I like to think that we can come here speak on things, have philosophical discussions, but it feels like sometimes the whole discussion has been aimed in a certain direction before it even got underway.



  • The US consumers base is bigger than the next like six or seven countries combined, China included. If a country exports literally anything, you can bet the US is one of their larger trade partners, if not the largest. We just love buying shit here and had the money to do it. So I’m just saying, this shit is gonna hurt everybody. If you build something, odds are someone in America will buy it. The US imported $3.2T worth of goods in 2022, and if that shit dries up, all those places need to find someone else to sell that shit to.

    I say this thinking this is all dumb, and if the issue was China, as it’s purported to be, and which is something I can totally get on board with, why not just go to trade war with China? China is heavily reliant on American consumerism. The US sent 150b in goods to China, but bought 536b back. With no other of America’s trade partners is the gulf so big. Mexico and Canada combined, the next largest two, were less.

    I dunno, I’m just an idiot. I think things are much more complicated than folks on here and Reddit make them out to be. And that’s excluding the plethora of other obvious negatives from this administration. I think we all need to buckle up, and it doesn’t matter where you’re from.


  • I think that definitely sounds reasonable, and I think, if there’s any hope for these tariffs to actually meet their stated purpose, the government of the US would need to just say, if working conditions don’t meet the same standards, there will be additional tariffs. I think that’s exactly where tariffs ought to be applied, when some country takes advantage of, essentially, human rights. We don’t have the right to stop them, but we do have the right to tax their products for it, to the point it’s not worth it.

    Obviously, that’s not how things will go.


  • That last part for sure resonates. I can’t remember if I said it here or elsewhere, but our prices have been subsidized by substandard working conditions in China, there is no way around it. And all because large corporations wanted to make more money. And we, as consumers, shouted a resounded “hell yeah” to those Chinese suicides at Foxcon, because we wanted cheaper components and cheaper phones.

    And so I basically don’t know how I feel about anything. I try to be more cognizant about what I buy, where it’s from, how it’s made, but the speed and ease, and basically not having to think, sometimes trumps those thoughts.


  • The only silver lining I see to the tariffs is that it could end up sticking it to all these large corporations who fought hard to move operations out of the US, to places they knew couldn’t meet US worker standards, in order to save money. Obviously, US consumers will feel the pain, but we’ve been buying products subsidized by Chinese suicides in Foxcon factories, and so perhaps it’s a comeuppance.

    Disclaimer: I don’t know what’s going on.