"Is there any actual US policy to get Russia to accept a ceasefire? Or is the US is an ally of Russian imperialism?"

"Ukraine has proposed a ceasefire without conditions. Russia will almost certainly reject this and try to dictate to [US Special Envoy Steve] Witkoff that the US help Russia achieve colonial control of Ukraine, something that Russia could never achieve on its own.
    "Then we see if there is any actual US policy to get Russia to do what Ukraine has done, to accept a ceasefire, or if the US is an ally of Russian imperialism and this whole process has just been a cover story for American submission to Russian wishes. If Witkoff comes back from Russia endorsing Russian demands regarding Ukrainian sovereignty we have our answer.
    "Russia has no more right to dictate anything that happens inside Ukraine than Ukraine has to dictate what happens inside Russia. And the 'root causes' of this war are all inside Russia, as the Russians are reminding us."

~ Timothy Snyder

Let's not ban social media for sub-16-year olds

WHEN AUSTRALIA PASSES LEGISLATION, we're often not far behind.

Australia's Orwellianly titled Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act was passed last year. 

The Act's aim is to ban under 16-year olds from social media.

The social media ban was rushed through Parliament with no real inquiry into the nature of the problem it was supposed to solve or the likely effects of a ban. Evidence from mental health experts on the question of whether and how social media use is harmful is at best inconclusive, as far as I can determine.
    But the advocates of a ban haven’t worried too much about that. They’ve relied on casual correlation and on the testimony of instant experts, with no particular expertise in the mental health of young people. ... most notably Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haidt.

Twenge peddles bullshit based on so-called "generational analysis"— on the assumption that being a "millennial"/"Gen Z"/"Gen Y"/"Gen Jones" is any more effective than astrology. (Indeed, as one review of her latest book concludes, "for serious scholarly work, five-year birth cohorts, categorised by race, gender and class background, are much more useful. For entertainment purposes, astrology is just as good and less divisive.”)

Jonathan Haidt is other alleged expert relied upon. Haidt was good on teenagers' need for more independence — here he is not only bad at the data, but is arguing against his own earlier conclusion. In Mike Masnick's summary of the situation:

Six years ago, NYU social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt co-authored 'The Coddling of the American Mind. 'In the book, he and Greg Lukianoff argued that parents are doing a real disservice to their kids by overprotecting (coddling) them, rather than giving them more freedom and allowing them to make mistakes and learn.
    This year, he’s back with a new book, 'The Anxious Generation,' arguing the exact opposite in the digital world: that social media and smartphones have made kids under-protected, rewiring brains and increasing teenage depression rates.
    Haidt tries to address this obvious contradiction in his book with the standard cop-out of the purveyor of every modern moral panic: “This time it’s different!” He provides little evidence to support that.

"Unfortunately for those seeking an easy solution," says Masnick "the data doesn’t support Haidt’s conclusions."

[A]s a quick summary: he’s wrong on the data, which undermines his entire argument. Almost every single expert in the field who does actual research on these issues says so. Candice Odgers ripped apart his misleading use of data in Nature. Andrew Przybylski, who has done multiple, detailed studies using massive amounts of data going back years, and keeps finding little to no evidence of the things Haidt claims, has talked about the problems in Haidt’s data. Ditto Jeff Hancock, at Stanford, who recently helped put together the National Academies of Sciences report on social media and adolescent health (which also did not find what Haidt found).
    Indeed, one thing that came up in looking over the “strongest” research in the book was that (contrary to some of Haidt’s claims), data outside of the US on suicide rates seem to show they’re often (not always) going down, not up. Even worse, the data on depression in the US showing an increase in depression rates among kids is almost certainly due to changes in screening practices for depression and how suicide ideation is recorded.
    As my review notes, though, the problems with the data are only the very beginning of the problems with the book. Because, in the first part of the book, Haidt misleadingly throws around all the data, but in the latter part, he focuses on his policy recommendations.

It's those very policy recommendations that Australia has just followed! 

It's not just pseudo-psychology based on bad data: "even his former co-author, Greg Lukianoff, pointed out that Haidt’s proposals clearly violate [the US's] First Amendment."

So fast and loose on both data and free speech!

CANDICE ODGERS IS ONE researcher whose data, she says, from "studies on the impact of phones and social media on children, including a 'study of studies,' conclude that social media is good for some kids, helping them find like-minded individuals. It’s mostly neutral for many kids, and problematic for only a very small group (studies suggest less than 10 percent)." In other words, as she notes in her review of Haidt’s book 

the evidence suggests the causality is likely in the other direction.

Ouch.

A recent debate pitted Odgers against Haidt, where — as he watched his argument crumble — he had to admit that she knows the data better than he.

This matters, because this bullshit will be coming here soon. You can count on it.

A judge in a Florida court this week summarises how absurd the bullshit is.  Masnick commentates the brawl:

The transcript reads like a master class in dismantling moral panic arguments. When Florida’s lawyers stood up in court to defend the law, they reached for what they clearly thought was their strongest argument: “Well, Your Honor, it is well known in this country that kids are addicted to these platforms.”

But Judge Mark Walker, chief judge of the Northern District of Florida, wasn’t buying what Florida was selling. His response cut straight to the heart of why these kinds of claims deserve skepticism, and some of it was based on his own childhood experience on the other side of a moral panic:

MR. GOLEMBIEWSKI: Well, Your Honor, it is well known in this country that kids are addicted to these platforms. This is a mental health —

THE COURT: It was well known when I was growing up that I was going to become a Satanist because I played Dungeons & Dragons. Is that — I don’t know what really that means. You can say that there’s studies, Judge, and you can’t ignore expert reports that say X.

The D&D reference isn’t just an amusing comeback — it’s a federal judge explaining through personal experience why courts shouldn’t accept “everybody knows” arguments about harm to children. After all, lots of things have been “well known” to harm children over the years. It was “well known” that chess made kids violent. Or that the waltz would be fatal to young women, or that the phone would prevent young men from ever speaking to young women again. I could go on with more examples, because there are so many.

When Florida’s lawyer tried to argue that social media was somehow different — that this time the moral panic was justified — Judge Walker was ready with historical receipts:

MR. GOLEMBIEWSKI: Kids weren’t reading comics — millions and millions of kids weren’t reading comics eight hours a day. Millions and millions of kids weren’t listening to rap music eight hours a day. There’s something different going on here, and there’s a consensus —

THE COURT: The problem, Counsel, that’s a really bad example, the comics, because there is an entire exhibit in Glasgow where they barred comics in the entire country because somebody decided that comics were turning their youth against their parents and were causing them to engage and worship the supernatural and stuff.

So, I mean, I guess that was the point the plaintiffs were making is from the beginning of time, we’ve targeted things under some belief that it’s harming our youth, but doesn’t necessarily make it so.

But, go ahead.

That trailing “but, go ahead” is savage. I think I’d rather curl up in a ball and try to disappear in the middle of a courtroom than “go ahead” after that.

"This is the best recession ever."

"This is the best recession ever. No one has ever created a better recession than me."

~ satirical comment from @evracer, commenting on Trump's risible interview with Maria Bartiromo denying the effect of tariffs' chaos. As another says, "You know it’s bad when the Fox News comments have turned on Trump."

"The Trump administration, citing our own work, proposes a 'benchmark' for an optimal tariff. We think this is a very bad idea."

"The Trump administration ... [is] citing our own work, propos[ing] 20% as a 'benchmark' for the US optimal tariff. We think this is a very bad idea. ...

"The 'optimal tariff argument' builds on the idea that countries have market power, and so can benefit from exercising it. ...

"As a matter of academic debate, it is certainly interesting to understand why, in the absence of any international rules and institutions, a country may have incentives to exploit its market power by being protectionist. As a matter of actual policy, however, such considerations provide a misleading picture of what the overall impact of US tariffs would be. The reason is foreign retaliation.

"The optimal tariff argument assumes that when foreigners face higher trade barriers in the United States, they sit idle, get poorer, and do not impose their own tariffs on US goods. This won't happen. ...

"[T]he new Trump administration ... view[s] tariffs as a game of chicken. ... The game of chicken, however, is the wrong metaphor to think about trade wars.

"Trade wars are best viewed as a prisoner's dilemma. Instead of staying silent, prisoners are always tempted to testify against their partner in crime in exchange for a more lenient sentence. By doing so, however, they all end up in prison for longer. Similarly, because each country has some market power to exploit, they have incentives to raise trade barriers, regardless of what the other countries do. The problem is that, when they all do so, none of them succeed in making their imports cheaper and they all end up being poorer. ...

"The world trading system that emerged after World War II was designed precisely to keep countries' beggar-thy-neighbour impulses in check and avoid repeating the trade wars from the 1930s. It allowed countries to sustain trade cooperation for decades. ...

"Pursuing a policy of raising tariffs would most likely lead to a new global trade war. Its consequences, unfortunately, are not hard to predict. It would mean less trade and, most importantly, less international cooperation on the big issues of the day: war, poverty, and climate change."

~ Andrés Rodríguez-Clare and Arnaud Costinot from their post ''A very bad idea': Two economists respond to White House citing them on 20% tariffs'

"But it is difficult to remain silent in the face of events that affect our lives fundamentally."

"Anne Salmond's ... 'Newsroom' column berat[es] people for having views on the Treaty of Waitangi when they cannot even read the Māori version of the treaty. ... that even when customs, laws or treaties impinge on your daily life, you cannot hold any views on these matters if you are unable to read the relevant documents in their original form.
    "It is safe to say that this view would come as a bit of a surprise to Biblical scholars who are not well versed in all of Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew and Latin. Clearly no Hindu or Buddhist can have any views on their own religion if they cannot read Sanskrit. And no one can say anything about Islam if they are not familiar with Arabic.
    "[Equally] immigrants to countries like France or Germany can express no views on tax or social welfare policies if they cannot read, write or speak the language.
    "This is obviously ridiculous and highly parochial. I have a feeling that even Anne Salmond understands the frivolity of her argument.
    "[She] is engaging in is what the philosopher Harry Frankfurt calls 'bullshit.'
    "This is where intellectuals and policy makers, who have no good answers to valid questions from regular people, essentially resort to using jargon to sidestep the matter....

    "But it is difficult to remain silent in the face of events that affect our lives fundamentally."

~ Prof. Ananish Chaudhari from his post 'Inability to understand te reo Māori does not prevent people from asking questions about race relations in New Zealand'

FACTCHECK: Climate Version

The Climate Realism site fact-checks February's climate stories. These are their top five corrections:

They suggest that "what’s disappearing faster than glaciers is US participation in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."

Our prediction is that the glaciers will outlast the climate hoax.

I reckon they'll be right about that too.

PS: Other notable February climate fact-checks:

• The Guardian says, "There Are Identifiable 'Climate Tipping Points' for 'Climate Catastrophes: 
WRONG:"The premise that we are approaching dangerous and unprecedented climate tipping points is unsupported by history or present data."
• Earth.Com says, "climate change is causing cocoa production to fall in West and Central Africa." 
THIS IS FALSE: "Data show that cocoa production has increased during the last few decades of modest warming, rather than falling. Part of the reason for this is improved growing conditions in those regions and carbon dioxide fertilisation."
• The Washington Post says, "Rats Are Thriving in Cities—And Climate Change Is Helping Them.” 
THIS IS FALSE: "Rats have always lived among and thrived with human populations. As cities have grown, so have urban rat populations, benefitting from mismanaged waste, ineffective pest control policies, and urban decay, none of which have anything to do with CO₂ levels."
• The New York Times says that "Climate Change is Causing High Coffee Prices." 
THIS IS NOT BORNE OUT IN THE DATA. "Coffee production data show that there has been a steady increase over time, despite—and perhaps due in part to—increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and the slight warming of recent decades."
• A recently published (and trumpeted) paper identifies a catastrophic "tipping point" for the Greenland ice sheet. 
BUT HERE'S THE PROBLEM: "This scenario is entirely model-driven, with little to no real-world validation. And, more importantly, it hinges on assumptions that stretch the limits of scientific credibility."
• And finally, "for years, climate scientists have assured us that NOAA’s homogenised temperature datasets—particularly the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN)—are the gold standard for tracking global warming."
HOWEVER: "A recent study published in Atmosphere has uncovered shocking inconsistencies in NOAA’s adjustments, raising serious concerns about the reliability of homogenised temperature records. ... [The] findings reveal a deeply concerning pattern of inconsistencies and unexplained changes in temperature adjustments, prompting renewed scrutiny of how NOAA processes climate data."

"Europe is at a critical turning point in its history."

“President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, My dear colleagues,

"Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened. Washington has become the court of Nero ...

"This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

"The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin—but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

"Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media. 

"This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution. 

"I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor. 

"Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops. 

"Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military-service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign. 

"Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it. 

"And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin. 

"The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it. 

"What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force. 

"This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favour of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.

Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada; yours are Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe; his is Taiwan and the China Sea. 

"At the parties of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, this is called 'diplomatic realism.' 

"So we are alone. But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second-largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated. 

"Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war. 

"The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands ...  

"It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books. ...

 

"Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. ... But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament. 

"We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left. 

"They argued again yesterday in the National Assembly ...  They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin. ...

"Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react. 

"Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical. 

"The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks. 

"But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads. 

"The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again. 

"Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost. 

"The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century. 

"Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.”

-Claude Malhuret speaking to the French Senate Tuesday March 4 2025.

 

Acronym advice

I like the Associated Press’s style guide advice on acronyms:

Do not follow an organisation’s full name with an abbreviation or acronym in parentheses or set off by dashes. If an abbreviation or acronym would not be clear on second reference without this arrangement, do not use it.

Names not commonly before the public should not be reduced to acronyms solely to save a few words.

Good writing must be clear. Too much writing is too often crammed with acronyms for too little space saving, leaving writing filled with ‘jargon monoxide’ or worse. If the acronym is well known—NASA, FBI, CIA—then leave it. Otherwise, write it in full. 

There is no 'leader of the free world' anymore.

"There's no leader of the free world anymore. ...

"[T]he Trump Administration's ... stupid trade war isn't about leverage to get other economies to open up; it is old fashioned autarky* ... the economics of hardened Marxists and moronic economic nationalists ...

"[I]t is however the moral depravity of the line on Ukraine which deserves the most opprobrium.

"There is no morality in surrendering to an aggressor all that it has [grabbed] so that you have 'peace' while the aggressor rebuilds...  and at the same time your erstwhile ally has blackmailed you into signing a predatory deal to hand over resources [without even] vague promises of security. ...

"[T]o be even-handed between Russia and Ukraine is a complete moral inversion. [Trump] has been excoriating about Zelenskyy, but said nothing negative at all about Putin or the behaviour of Russia. ...  He has only demanded that Ukraine stop....

"Of course everyone wants the war to end. It could end tomorrow if Putin just decided to end it and withdraw. But he's a psychopathic kleptocrat who feeds young Russian men (from poor backgrounds) and North Korean men to their deaths. ...

"If the war does ends soon on [Trump's terms, with a capitulation to Russia granting it time to rearm and come again] then it will only prolong the inevitable. Russia can spend a few years rearming, and use its renewed economic potential after sanctions are lifted by the US, to steal military capability and be ready for another attack. ... 

"[Contemplate this:] If the territorial integrity of sovereign states doesn't matter in Ukraine, then maybe it doesn't matter anywhere that the Trump Administration doesn't care about, and that includes any country—in Europe, Asia, in the Indo-Pacific ...

"[T]he cost ... of letting it be known that the US is isolationist and won't act to protect any nation states from attack ... is going to be much higher than the tens of billions taken to bolster Ukraine. 

"Even Marine Le Pen is critical of Trump on Ukraine, because by and large, European countries want to ensure defence against the predatory criminal gangster state to the east that treats its neighbours with impunity.

"Perhaps a deal will be struck,... [Perhaps] Europe will do all it can to support Ukraine. Regardless, it is now a time for small countries everywhere to acknowledge that it's all on now — that the US doesn't care if you are attacked, that you have to fend for yourselves with any other allies.

"There is no 'leader of the free world' anymore."

~ Liberty Scott from his post 'There's no leader of the free world anymore'

The toddler-in-chief speaks

"Trump’s [first] speech [to Congress] was a performance of contradictions—proclaiming the virtues of capitalism while advocating economic controls, calling for individual rights while violating them, and celebrating American greatness while embracing policies that betray its foundations.
    "Nowhere was his dishonesty more blatant than in his discussion of Ukraine. He claimed that both Ukraine and Russia were ready to negotiate and that his leadership would end the war. This is a lie. Trump is not offering peace—he is offering surrender. ...
    "Trump’s immigration stance was another betrayal of America’s principles. ... America was built by those who arrived with nothing but a willingness to work and build a better life. Trump’s vision replaces that with state-controlled borders and tribal loyalty. ...
    "Tonight, he claimed America is entering a “golden age.” That is another lie. His economic policies increase state control. His foreign policy rewards dictators. His governance breeds chaos. If America is to remain great, it must reject the strongman tactics Trump embraces. He does not seek to restore America’s greatness; he seeks to twist it into a closed-border, state-run, nationalist machine where power—not principle—rules.
    "His promises of peace will lead to more war. His economic plan will lead to more government. His leadership will bring more instability. Trump is not America’s saviour—he is its greatest betrayer."

~ Nicholas Provenzo from his post 'My Hot Take on Trump’s Address to Congress'

PS: Trump’s speech to Congress exposes "two foundational fallacies that surround his protectionism." Don Boudreaux explains:

One fallacy is that tariffs are used against foreign countries. In fact, tariffs are used against the citizens of the government that imposes the tariffs. Canadian tariffs, for example, are taxes on Canadians’purchases of imports, and U.S. tariffs are taxes on Americans’purchases of imports. And so while foreign exporters do suffer when the U.S. government raises tariffs, the bulk of the suffering is by Americans – by American families who pay higher prices for food, clothing, and other household goods, and by American producers who pay higher prices for raw materials and intermediate products used in production here in the U.S.
    Moreover, these higher prices at home are by design: U.S. tariffs will not cause American manufacturing and agricultural outputs to rise unless these tariffs increase the prices that Americans pay for these outputs. When Trump and other protectionists deny that Americans will pay higher prices as a result of tariffs, they are either lying or displaying frightening economic ignorance.
    The second fallacy is the frequently heard excuse that Trump’s tariffs are bargaining chips to compel other governments to step up actions to stop the flow into America of illegal drugs. Yet last night, Trump himself identified other countries’ tariffs – which, again, ‘rip off,’ not Americans, but their own citizens – as the principal justification for his tariffs.
    In short, Trump insists that, because other countries use tariffs to rip off their citizens, he’s going to use tariffs no less harshly to rip off Americans.

PPS: And a question for you is if you are an advocate for capitalism and also, somehow, still, an apologist for the toddler ...

Trump and Capitalism. #economics pic.twitter.com/2RsqkOFYgN

— Michael Liebowitz (@Lieboisout) March 5, 2025

Adrian Orr irresponsible to the last

"What of yesterday[, when Reserve bank governor Adrian Orr up and abruptly left]?

"... We had brief press releases from the Bank and from the Minister but no real answers. We are told there were no active conduct concerns – although there probably should have been, when deliberately misleading Parliament has happened time and again, and just recently – and yet the Governor just disappeared with no notice on the eve of the big research conference, to mark 35 years of inflation targeting that he was talking up only a week or two ago, (I also know that one major media outlet had an in-depth interview with Orr scheduled for Friday – they’d asked for some suggestions for questions). And with not a word of explanation. 

    "If you simply think your job is done and it is time to move on, the typical—and responsible – way is to give several months of notice, enabling a smooth search for a replacement. 

    "He could easily have announced something next week, after the conference, and left after the next Monetary Policy Statement in May.

"Instead, it is pretty clear that there has been some sort of 'throw your toys out of the cot and storm off' sort of event, which (further) diminishes his standing and that of the Bank (but particularly the Board and its chair). 

    "It all must have happened so quickly that we now have this fiction that Orr is on leave for the rest of the month ... After several hours of uncertainty, the Board chair finally decided to hold a press conference, which he didn’t seem to handle particularly well and (I’m told—I only have a transcript—in the end he too stormed off) we still aren’t much the wiser. ...

"I guess it is probably true that Orr can’t be forced to explain himself, although since he is still a public employee until 31 March I’m not sure why considerable pressure could not be applied. But even if he won’t talk the answers so far from either Willis or Quigley really aren’t adequate. You don’t just storm off from an $800000 a year job you’ve held for seven years, having made many evident policy mistakes and misjudgments, as well as operating with a style that lacked gravitas or decorum etc, with not a word. 

   "Or: decent and honourable people, fit to hold high public office don’t.

"... I had heard a story—apparently well-sourced—that the Bank had actually been bidding for a material increase in its funding, on top of the extraordinary increases of the last five years ... and Orr has long been known more for his empire-building capabilities than for his focus on lean and efficient use of public money, But ... [it] surely it can’t be the whole story.

"Comments by Quigley suggests that perhaps Orr was getting to the end of his tether, and some one or more recent things made him snap, reacting perhaps more than a normal person would do faced with the ups and downs of public sector life. It seems highly likely the budget stuff, and the desire to keep pursuing whims, was part of it, but it can hardly have been all. 

    "I don’t suppose he felt any great compunction about misleading Parliament so egregiously again…..but he should. And all this time – having stormed off with no adequate explanation—Quigley declares that he still had confidence in Orr.

    "Surely yesterday confirms again that both of them, in their different ways, were unfit for office.

"[Not to mention] the latest estimate of the losses to the taxpayer from the Bank’s rash punting in the government bond market in 2020 and 2021. $11 billion dollar in losses. Three and a bit Dunedin hospitals or several frigates or…..all options lost to us from this recklessness, undertaken to no useful end, and a loss which Orr endlessly tried to play down (suggesting it was all to our benefit after all), and about which not one of his Monetary Policy Committee members—one now temporarily acting as Governor—either dissented or gave straight and honest contrite answers. 

    "It has been 43 years since a Reserve Bank Governor was appointed from within. That is an indictment on the way the place has been run."

~ Michael Reddell from his post '$11 billion and out'

"What if people with 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' in 2016 were right about pretty much everything, but premature about the timing?"

"What if people with “Trump Derangement Syndrome” in 2016 were right about pretty much everything," asks Nick Catoggio, "but premature about the timing?"

The Pax Americana is in flames and burned almost beyond recognition. And with a majority in both Houses of Congress willingly removing the Executive's constitutional guardrails against more destruction—politically, economically, globally—it sure does seem like Trump 2.0 is "shaping up to be what doomsayers thought his first term would be."

Yikes!

Just look:

• Trump will appoint a Cabinet of lunatics. He did try in Trump 1.0. But eventually almost all left in a fit of sanity, leaving only their distaste at the buffoon. 
Not so this term, in which "Kash Patel is the Senate-confirmed head of the FBI, joining embarrassments like Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as America’s key policymakers."
• Trump will engage in grotesque corruption. Trump 1.0 did try, but that pales into insignificance compared to "the breathtaking grifts he’s running now. Just yesterday, he announced a new 'U.S. Crypto Reserve,' a blatant scam to use taxpayer money to boost the value of investments held by his crypto-bro fans. 
Meanwhile, the main bureaucratic 'reform' initiative in his administration is being run by a mega-billionaire with immense financial interests in industries regulated by the very agencies whose databases he’s been rummaging through for weeks."

Also: 

• Trump will let grudges and vendettas drive his policies. Check: To a degree unmatched in his first presidency, Trump’s new government brazenly divides politics into friends and enemies. Friends show their appreciation; enemies are apt to lose every public privilege that it’s within his power to deny them.
• Trump will govern chaotically and malevolently. Check: "never did the first President Trump embark on a policy project as haphazard and destructive as DOGE, and not until Election Day 2020 did he do anything as nakedly malicious as pardoning violent loyalists."
• Trump will destroy NATO and the American-led international order. Check: "It took until his second term, specifically this past Friday, for him to fully immolate the United States’ credibility as leader of the free world."

Check, check, and check again.

Trump 2.0, summarises Catoggio,

is what you get when you take Trump 1.0 and subtract nearly every element of accountability. Since his first term in office, the president has gained a considerable degree of legal impunity from the Supreme Court, almost limitless political impunity from his supporters and the cowards in Congress who represent them, absolute administrative impunity from the slavish cronies with whom he’s staffed his government, and electoral impunity from the fact that, one way or another, he’ll never face voters again. ...
    And so, six weeks in, Trump’s second term as president already looks like the sum of all fears that [never-Trumpers] felt nine years ago. If there ever were such a thing as irrational 'Trump Derangement Syndrome,' it died in the Oval Office on Friday.

You'll remember what happened then? You know, that the Western Alliance was split asunder  on national television in a fit of Ukraine-splaining”?

Shaking down Ukraine for mineral interests had a distinct Trump 1.0 feel, not unlike when he demanded that allies with U.S. troops stationed on their territory increase their payments to Washington. Because he perceives no strategic American interest in allying with liberal nations, he needs to believe that it’s in our financial interest to justify continuing that alliance. He’s a famously transactional politician; if you want something from him, you need to hand him some sort of victory, ideally involving cash.
    But dressing down Zelensky publicly on Friday had more of a Trump 2.0 feel. It wasn’t about finances. If it had been, Trump wouldn’t have refused to proceed with the minerals deal after things went south in the Oval Office. It was about 'respect.' Zelensky didn’t show enough of it, supposedly, and that was reason enough for the president and vice president to burn down the transatlantic alliance that’s prevailed since World War II on live television.
    If I had told you in 2016 that America would switch sides in a major war involving Russia and part of the reason would be that the guy we’re allied with didn’t wear a suit to a meeting, you would have accused me of the most hysterical case of 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' you’d ever seen. Yet that’s what happened.

Yes, Orange Man really is Bad.

Really Bad.  You might even say: deranged.

I can't help but think back to 2016 when life-long Republican, the late humorist PJ O'Rourke endorsed Hillary Clinton.: 

I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises. It's the second-worst thing that can happen to this country, ... She's wrong about absolutely everything. But she's wrong within normal parameters.

"If Trudeau and other politicians want to send Trump a message about tariffs, putting tariffs to zero is the solution."

 

"If Trudeau and other politicians want to send Trump a message about tariffs, putting tariffs to zero is the solution. Nobody wins a trade war, but you can win by not engaging in one.
    "Show the US that you do not believe tariffs help and that not levelling them leaves your economy stronger. Show them the power of free trade.
    "But, no, apparently Canada and everyone else would prefer to make it worse by taxing their [own] people. ..."

~ Dwayne Davies from his post

Why America (and New Zealand) Should Be on Ukraine's Side and Not Putin's Side, explained in 8 minutes.

 

"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore."

Hannah Arendt (14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) 

German historian and philosophe 

"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore.
    "A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong.
    "And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want."

~ attributed (incorrectly) to Hannah Arendt

NB: The Hannah Arendt Centre says "the spirit of the quote is very much in line with Arendt’s own thought. But as far as I can tell, Hannah Arendt never said this or wrote this. She did, however, say many similar things. ..."

The closest in spirit and content, and also the most easily available, is from an interview with Roger Errera in 1974, what turned out to be Hannah Arendt’s last public interview. Arendt spoke about the importance of a free press in an era of mass manipulation of truth and public lying: She said:

"The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please."

The key point in Arendt’s statement is that as lies multiply, the result is not that the lie is believed but that people lose faith in the truth and are increasingly susceptible to believe anything. When cynicism about truth reigns, lies operate not because they replace reality but because they make reality wobble–a phrase Arendt employs in her essay Truth and Politics. In that essay, Arendt argued that mass lying undermines our sense of reality by which we find our bearings in the real world: 

The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.

The Arendtian point is that constant lying by a propaganda machine does not lead to the lie being believed but leads, instead, to cynicism.

Which is all that the liars need. 

"...a thin-skinned, malicious toddler with poor impulse control."

 

"So even if you think Zelenskyy made a fatal error by actually telling the truth about the predicament his nation finds itself in, even if you think the mineral deal—with no security guarantees—is brilliant, the fact remains that the administration mishandled the situation. Remember, Zelenskyy is a politician too. And for the better part of an hour he was asked to sit there as Trump painted a false moral equivalence between Russia and Ukraine and was dismissive of Ukraine’s plight and the history that led to this. If you actually want a deal, maybe don’t do that in public? I mean, the Ukrainians are watching too.
    "In response to Zelensky’s bait-taking, [commentator Rich] Lowry says that Zelensky 'made an excellent point, but he wasn’t there to be right or to win an argument.' Fair enough. But this is yet another situation where others are to blame for not fully adjusting to the fact that Trump is a thin-skinned, malicious toddler with poor impulse control. It’s always someone else’s fault for not enabling or humouring him sufficiently.
    "You know who knows Trump is easily baited into childish outbursts? J.D. Vance. And either out of cynicism or petulant incompetence, he acted on that. ...

"This disaster never should have been possible in the first place. [For starters, this was supposed to be a photo op. Lots of arguments happen behind closed doors between world leaders. They were supposed to head into a meeting to hammer out the details on this mineral deal. Instead, Trump took 40 minutes of questions, some from MAGA loyal 'journalists' who asked him stuff like how he mustered so much 'moral courage' and what not. But then,] Trump’s position is that we should make a profit over Ukraine’s misfortune. That’s why he insists America should get its money back 'plus.' As in we should get back the '350 billion' we gave to Ukraine (a wildly inflated and inaccurate numberTrump cannot be talked out of using) plus a little extra for our troubles.
    "That’s grotesque.
    "Even as a rhetorical negotiating ploy, it’s grotesque. In his inaugural address, John F. Kennedy Jr. said, 'Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.' That might have been overly grandiose, but it was directionally right for the leader of the free world to draw those lines. Trump’s—and most emphatically Vance’s—position is 'We might help you out, we might not. It all depends on our cut'."

~ Jonah Goldberg from his op-ed 'Dishonor and Incompetence in the Oval Office'

PS: From Paul Wells: 

"Donald Trump’s empty heart makes him crave a breathtaking amount of sucking up, all the time.
    "The big thing that everyone noticed when the sucking up became too insufficient, was that Trump and JD Vance jumped Volodomyr Zelensky in the Oval Office because, Vance said, Zelensky is ungrateful for American support. On that score, here is video of Zelensky thanking America again and again and again, for years:

"NZ urgently needs the support of retired individuals or those whose livelihoods are not yet affected by government or iwi control."

"New Zealand is facing a significant freedom of speech crisis. Across the country, people dependent on their business or employment income are being intimidated into silence regarding the influence of the tribal elite over many aspects of our lives. It’s not just about expressing personal opinions but about elected representatives, public servants and private business operators being silenced when it comes to the facts. ... [see for just a few examples: Real Estate agent Janet Dickson's court fight over licensing modules; so-called 'cultural safety' and 'cultural competence' requirements for nursing and teacher registration; 'Mātauranga Māori' being taught as science in schools; proposed 'competency standards' for pharmacists, & creeping tribal control over state assets]    

    "That’s why NZ urgently needs the support of retired individuals or those whose livelihoods are not yet affected by government or iwi control. You have the freedom to speak up for those Kiwis who feel unable to do so themselves. I encourage anyone, who can, to take up this cause, as the consequences for New Zealanders—including Māori who are not part of the leadership elite—will only worsen if this takeover continues."

~ Fiona Mackenzie from her article 'Too Intimidated to Speak Out?'

Another National tax grab

Leadership aspirant Chris Bishop headed to Auckland recently to tell us of the grand plans he will very kindly allow us to build. But before that, a new tax.

David Farrar kindly ssummarises. I unkindly fisk ...

Bishop says: "Congestion stifles economic growth in Auckland, with studies showing that it costs between $900 million to $1.3 billion per year. Congestion is essentially a tax on time, productivity, and growth. And like most taxes, I’m keen to reduce it."

Yes, congestion stifles economic growth. Yet little has been to arrest it. And over the last dozen or so years councils and transport ministries and bureaucracies have done everything to promote it, with transit lanes, bottlenecks, speed humps, speed restrictions, cycle lanes, bus lanes, no-right-turns, no-left-turns, pedestrianisation, beautification ... anything but combat traffic congestion.

Sit beside almost any major Auckland thoroughfare and you'll see that useable traffic lanes at rush-hours have nearly halved, while traffic has nearly doubled. A few nights back around 10pm a friend and I sat beside Hobson St — a near-motorway that once had six lanes or so allowing motorists to get out of the city on her motorways. Those lanes are now halved (with beautification works, don't you know, as part of John Key's bloody Convention Centre white elephant) and even at 10pm motorists were in a jam.

Will Bishop improve mobility?

Will he hell: he intends instead to make mobility more expensive.

Bishop says: "The government will be progressing legislation this year to allow the introduction of Time of Use pricing on our roads."

As commenter Bill says on Farrar's thread: "OK so another tax. Is there no problem the government thinks can’t be fixed without more taxes?

"We the motorists already pay for the roads with petrol tax and registration fees. How much of this money has been spent creating traffic bottlenecks, humps, removing free left turns etc? How is any of that helping with congestion? This latest tax proposal should be vehemently opposed. The money squandered on all the traffic obstruction should instead be spent on facilitating the uninterrupted flow of traffic. It sounds like they want to tax motorists to fix a problem that they themselves created. This is not incompetence, it is villainy."

Bill is right.

Bishop says: "Any money collected through time of use charging will be required to be invested back into transport infrastructure that benefits Kiwis and businesses living and working in the region where the money was raised."

Bishop is bullshitting.

Nicola Willis is so short of the readies already that she'll be overjoyed to grab as much of this windfall as she can. And if not her, then as soon as things are "bedded down," your next finance minister will have his or her hand in your pocket to root around in your small change. Don't doubt it.

Bishop says: "Modelling has shown that successful congestion charging could reduce congestion by up to 8 to 12 percent at peak times."

As every hired modeller knows, modelling will show whatever the modeller's hirer wants it to show; it all depends on the parameters chosen for said model. Sure, make something more expensive and (depending on one's marginal utility) then less of that thing will get utilised. But if the marginal utility of getting around is high enough (and it probably is) then Bishop's new tax will just make getting around more expensive. And we'll still be congested. And poorer.

Bishop says: "New Zealand can raise our productivity simply by allowing our towns and cities to grow up and out."

Well, duh.

Some of us have been arguing for years that up-and-out will make Auckland both more liveable and affordable. (Productive? That's an odd one to claim.) But with developers and builders having to sit on their hands while Bishop's bureaucrats rewrite the RMA to say what councils will allow developers and builders to do — to relieve the uncertainty since Bishop and his boss canned the MDRS — it seems like we're as far away as ever. And that uncertainty is hardly making developers and builders more productive ...

Bishop says: "My aspiration [for Auckland] is ..."

You know, frankly, it doesn't matter a shit what Bishop's aspirations for Auckland are! Because given the piss-poor popularity of his boss, and the pathetically slow promise to abolish and replace the RMA (to protect property rights, we're promised, and to finally give some certainty to those developers and builders) then  it will be too damn late this term for any changes at all to be made, and next term he'll have lost his chance.

And this time, three years from now, we'll all be sitting here in exactly the same position.

Only by then we'll (maybe) have a new train set.

And we will have bloody Bishop's new tax.

'A Day of American Infamy' [update 2]

"In August 1941, about four months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill aboard warships in Newfoundland’s Placentia Bay and agreed to the Atlantic Charter, a joint declaration by the world’s leading democratic powers on 'common principles' for a postwar world. ...
    "The Charter, and the alliance that came of it [including the supply of military equipment to Britain by Lend-Lease] is a high point of American statesmanship. On Friday in the Oval Office, the world witnessed the opposite. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s embattled democratic leader, came to Washington prepared to sign away anything he could offer President Trump except his nation’s freedom, security and common sense. For that, he was rewarded with a lecture on manners from the most mendacious vulgarian and ungracious host ever to inhabit the White House.
    "If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky. Whatever one might say about how Zelensky played his cards poorly — either by failing to behave with the degree of all-fours sycophancy that Trump demands or to maintain his composure in the face of JD Vance’s disingenuous provocations — this was a day of American infamy.
    "Where do we go from here?"

~ Bret Stephens from his editorial 'A Day of American Infamy 

PICS: Bottom, war leader Winston Churchill at the White House 3 January 1942, wearing his air-raid suit (Imperial War Museum); top, a war leader at the White House with two thugs (Getty Images) 

UPDATE 1: 

"What does seem clear is that Trump is putting an end to the foreign policy the United States has pursued since the end of World War II. Indeed, his worldview seems to rest on two assumptions that run directly counter to the way in which, for all the serious differences between them, every president since 1945 has thought about America’s role in the world.
    
"The first is that Trump has a fundamentally zero-sum view of the world. America’s relationship with allies like Japan or the United Kingdom has been based on the assumption that both sides would benefit from the partnership. In particular, America would provide its allies with a security guarantee; in return, it would enjoy international stability, reap the benefits of free trade, and have huge sway over the rules governing the world order. Even if the United States might be a net contributor in the short run, expending more for its military budget than its partners, these alliances would over the long run serve the country’s 'enlightened self-interest.'

"Trump, by contrast, seems to believe that every deal has a winner and a loser; since American allies in Europe or East Asia are not unhappy about the current arrangements, this must mean that it is his nation that’s the sucker. ...

"The second assumption shaping Trump’s foreign policy is his belief that spheres of influence are the natural, and perhaps even the morally appropriate, way to organise international relations. ... [and] that maintaining an alliance structure that ignores spheres of influence is naive, needlessly costly, and fundamentally sentimental. ...

"Panama and Greenland are in America’s sphere of influence, and so Trump believes that he is entitled to make outrageous demands on them. Conversely, he seems to regard Ukraine as falling into Russia’s natural sphere of influence ...

"If Trump gets his way, the world will become much more transactional. America’s erstwhile allies in the western hemisphere will either need to learn to stand on their own feet or to pay financial tribute to their protector. Those which happen to be located in the vicinity of the world’s most powerful authoritarian countries will need to accommodate themselves to the diktat of Beijing or Moscow ..."

~ Yascha Mounk from his post 'Help Me Understand... The New World Order'

UPDATE 2:

"In light of the events of the past week [which includes the US siding with Russia and North Korea on a UN resolution condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and a three-ship Chinese naval circumnavigation of Australia], the Washington faction of NZ's Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade faces a new and major problem. ...

    "President Donald Trump’s affection for dictatorial regimes; the brutality of his transactional approach to international affairs; and his apparent repudiation of the 'rules-based international order' in favour of cold-eyed realpolitik; makes it difficult for America (and its increasingly apprehensive allies) to retain their footing on the moral high-ground.
    "It is difficult [therefore] to criticise the transactional elements of the relationships forged between China and the micro-states of the Pacific – the Cook Islands being only the latest in a succession of Chinese-initiated bilateral agreements negotiated in New Zealand’s 'back yard' – when the United States is demanding half of Ukraine’s rare earths in part-payment for the American munitions supplied to counter Russian aggression.
    "What those three Chinese warships have produced, however, is a much more compelling argument for aligning New Zealand’s defensive posture in general and its military procurement in particular with Australia’s. In the much colder and more brutal world that is fast emerging from the collapse of the 80-year-old Pax Americana, only the Australians can be relied upon to protect us – and only then if they are satisfied that the Kiwis are pulling their weight."

 ~Chris Trotter from his post 'What Are We Defending?'

So, what's a doge?

Canaletto: The Doges' Palace and Piazza San Marco, Venice

 oil on canvas by Canaletto; in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence

This may come as a shock to your average Magat, or Dogeling — whose knowledge of world history is as frail as their economic understanding — but a doge is historically nothing to do with government efficiency, and everything to do with statism and dictatorship.

No. surprise, right?

From Encyclopaedia Britannica:

doge, (Venetian Italian: “duke”), highest official of the republic of Venice for more than 1,000 years (from the 8th to the 18th century) and symbol of the sovereignty of the Venetian state. ...

In Venice the office of doge (from Latin dux, “leader”) originated when the city was nominally subject to the Byzantine Empire and became permanent in the mid-8th century. According to tradition, the first doge was Paolo Lucio Anafesto, elected in 697.

From the 8th to the 12th century the doge’s power was extensive ... and became more and more powerful, with hereditary successions, conflicts and violent deaths. ...  By the 15th century the office had assumed the character of prince subject to law.

You can see why Magats in inappropriate leader-love with their leader would like the idea of a prince, subject to no law.

 Maybe the rest of us could refer instead to the dog that is it really is.

The marvellous price system

 

"[I]in a system in which the knowledge of the relevant facts is dispersed among many people, prices can act to coördinate the separate actions of different people ...  It is worth contemplating for a moment a very simple and commonplace instance of the action of the price system to see what precisely it accomplishes ...
"Assume that somewhere in the world a new opportunity for the use of some raw material, say, tin, has arisen, or that one of the sources of supply of tin has been eliminated. 

    "It does not matter for our purpose—and it is very significant that it does not matter—which of these two causes has made tin more scarce. All that the users of tin need to know is that some of the tin they used to consume is now more profitably employed elsewhere and that, in consequence, they must economise tin. There is no need for the great majority of them even to know where the more urgent need has arisen, or in favour of what other needs they ought to husband the supply. If only some of them know directly of the new demand, and switch resources over to it, and if the people who are aware of the new gap thus created in turn fill it from still other sources, the effect will rapidly spread throughout the whole economic system and influence not only all the uses of tin but also those of its substitutes and the substitutes of these substitutes, the supply of all the things made of tin, and their substitutes, and so on; and all his without the great majority of those instrumental in bringing about these substitutions knowing anything at all about the original cause of these changes. 

    "The whole acts as one market, not because any of its members survey the whole field, but because their limited individual fields of vision sufficiently overlap so that through many intermediaries the relevant information is communicated to all. 

    "The mere fact that there is one price for any commodity—or rather that local prices are connected in a manner determined by the cost of transport, etc.—brings about the solution which (it is just conceptually possible) might have been arrived at by one single mind possessing all the information which is in fact dispersed among all the people involved in the process. ...

"The marvel is that in a case like that of a scarcity of one raw material, without an order being issued, without more than perhaps a handful of people knowing the cause, tens of thousands of people whose identity could not be ascertained by months of investigation, are made to use the material or its products more sparingly; i.e., they move in the right direction. 

    "This is enough of a marvel even if, in a constantly changing world, not all will hit it off so perfectly that their profit rates will always be maintained at the same constant or 'normal' level....

"I have deliberately used the word 'marvel' to shock the reader out of the complacency with which we often take the working of this mechanism for granted. I am convinced that if it were the result of deliberate human design, and if the people guided by the price changes understood that their decisions have significance far beyond their immediate aim, this mechanism would have been acclaimed as one of the greatest triumphs of the human mind. 

    "Its misfortune is the double one that it is not the product of human design and that the people guided by it usually do not know why they are made to do what they do. But those who clamour for 'conscious direction'—and who cannot believe that anything which has evolved without design (and even without our understanding it) should solve problems which we should not be able to solve consciously—should remember this: The problem is precisely how to extend the span of our utilisation of resources beyond the span of the control of any one mind; and therefore, how to dispense with the need of conscious control, and how to provide inducements which will make the individuals do the desirable things without anyone having to tell them what to do."

~ FA Hayek from his famous 1945 article 'On the Use of Knowledge in Society.' Hat tip Russ Roberts from his recent EconTalk interview of Peter Boettke, “Who Won the Socialist Calculation Debate? — and David Henderson who notes: "When I taught this, I paused at the sentence, 'I am convinced that if it were the result of deliberate human design, and if the people guided by the price changes understood that their decisions have significance far beyond their immediate aim, this mechanism would have been acclaimed as one of the greatest triumphs of the human mind.'”

 

"Consequently, there is no incentive for the politicians to change their behaviour. It is for this reason we see tariffs consistently fail as a negotiation tool."

"To listen to protectionists, one would think tariffs are something of a miracle drug. Anything and everything can be solved by tariffs. Prices too low? Tariffs will raise ‘em. Prices too high? Tariffs will lower ‘em. Sprained knee? Just take two tariffs and call me in the morning. ...

"Take, for example, the argument that tariffs can be used as negotiation tools. The argument goes that you can threaten another nation with tariffs, impose the costs of the tariffs on them, and force them to bend to your will (whatever that will may be). ...

"[Yet] politicians face a different set of incentives. The major issue with many tariff supporters’ models is that they improperly model these incentives. This is a side effect of collectivist thinking; we must always remember that a 'nation' is a useful abstraction, but ultimately is made up of individuals who choose. A 'nation' never, ever chooses. And a government is not synonymous with the nation or the people located therein. ...

"Consequently, there is no incentive for the politicians to change their behaviour. It is for this reason we see tariffs consistently fail as a negotiation tool.

"Indeed, so-called trade sanctions and tariffs end up having the opposite effect. The American embargo of Cuba entrenched the Castro regime. Tariffs and embargoes on Iran failed to halt their nuclear program or weaken the regime. Putin still wages war in Ukraine despite (or because of?) trade sanctions. Perhaps most damningly, the Chinese government developed DeepSeek as a direct response to Trump’s original 'economic statecraft' against the Communist Party (continued by Biden).

"Adam Smith recognised this problem. In the 'Wealth of Nations' ... he notes that tariffs could be a potential tool to negotiate lower barriers in other nations. ...   Such negotiations could work, he states, but could also lead to war ...."

~ Jon Murphy from his post 'The Political Problem of Tariffs'