We all have a need for respect. Don't deny it, don't fight it, just try to adjust it so that you have a need for respect from those that you respect.

I love the thrift store. I see it as a rejection of the fashion comparison rat race.

Morality as safety.

The universe is far, far too vast and complex for the human mind to hold it in our consciousness. “Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.”

But of course this is terrifying. Bad things happen and we don’t know why, we don’t know how to guarantee our own or our loved ones safety. We don’t like not understanding, and so we create models for understanding that our human brains can handle but that are of course very, very simplified. Often this takes the form of religion, but not always, sometimes it takes the form of philosophical, moral, or political righteousness.

Righteousness as a means to process and manage the chaos of the universe as we experience it.

Here the idea is that you will be safe from bad things happening, or at lease not liable or accountable for them happening, if you are righteous enough. And so if you adhere strictly to the morals, then all is well.

I absorbed this thought pattern in childhood from my, at the time, very religious parents, and it worked for me… until I got Hashitomots. When I was a kid and I would be concerned with bad things in the world my parents would tell me “yes, but don’t worry, that won’t happen to you.” the connotation being that I am righteous and good and so am safe from the bad things in the world. I believed this, until this certain bad thing happened to me. Being told that I had a chronic illness was not supposed to happen, I did all the right things. I took care of myself, I was a good person…. I was righteous. I remember the moment very well, sitting on the couch of my house in Greta NSW, hearing those words on the phone broke my understanding of the world. This wasn’t supposed to happen to me. Not me, I am righteous.

Ever since then has been a slow and steady process of unlearning that thought pattern and learning how to process and handle the inherent volatility of the universe from the human perspective. It’s tough, it’s very scary. I can not keep my self or my loved ones safe. I can influence our safety a lot, but I have no real control.

No matter how righteous we are, we are not safe. Not in this world at least. ...It’s a though one.

When bad things happen to others, or when we have disagreements with other, or even when bad things happen to use, we can attribute those bad things to moral failings in others. We can blame the degradation of our relationships on others. It isn’t our fault as we held to your morals, it was their fault as they were immoral.

While this line of thought brings a lot of comfort, and a provides a frame work for making sense of the universe and life, it separates us from others. Of course morality exist and we should pursue it, but when we turn to it for safety, we limit our ability to grow and connect.

This thought process kills curiosity and genuine connection. When we disagree with someone, it’s not that we might be missing something, it’s not that they might face different logistics in the world and thus have different strategies that work for them… it’s that they are in a state of moral failing. And when someone disagree with us, we assume that they are finding us to be in a state of moral failing.

This thought process also prevents accountability and growth. Taking accountability for our actions requires us to admit that we may have been in error in some fashion. But then we might have to admit that we have or had some sort of moral failing. And we can’t do that, because then we are subject to the volatility of the universe, we lose our safety.

When we think like this we lose our curiosity, there is only sorting into moral buckets.

Often these moral buckets form and then ossify, and so things that do not look, sound, or feel to us like our already defined buckets of morality get dismissed.

Because of our sorting everything into moral buckets, others are unable to feel genuine connection to us or to trust us. We will only assist others when we find them to be in the ‘right’, to be in a state of righteousness. Otherwise, we dismissed them as being in error and needing moral or philosophical correction. This means that they can not ask us for assistance or understanding with issues that do not fit into our predefined moral buckets.

In this way, we chose our righteousness, our safety, over knowing and helping others.

90% of political meme's are just intentional misunderstandings of an opposing moral philosophy.

As we spend all day pondering tariffs and monetary policy, let’s not forget that we aren’t here to make winning bets, we are here to eliminate this situation entirely.

The mission is to eliminate the possibility of this scenario, where one group of people in fancy suits can decide for us what the world economy is going to look like. We are here…. Or at least I am here, to remove this concentration of power.

I do not get my sense of value from my face. ...and I hate the way foundation feels on my skin, so ya, totally working for me!

I wore eyeliner at mine!

People talking about no-makeup selfies, and I'm just out here on decade 4 of my no-makeup life.

Yes! This is a good one. I would support this use of tariffs, but I don't get the impression that is what is happening here.

All my thoughts on tariffs...

Protecting local industries:

While tariffs are an over all loss for the economy of a country, they can be effective at propping up a specific industries. The problem with that is then that you are encouraging domestic business to produce things that they don’t actually have a competitive advantage in producing. The classic example of this is sugar cane. Sugar cane is not produced in the States when left up to the free market. We just don’t have the optimal climate for it. We could enact tariffs which would cause US citizens to buy sugar cane from local producers. This would be at a much higher cost to those consumers, and we would suffer wasted resource from inefficient domestic production as we have encouraged American producers to spend their time on things that they aren’t actually good at. What is the opportunity cost there? What could those businesses have been producing instead that would make a lot more economic sense?

National security:

Now a common concern here is that things we need to produce certain things for safety and/or security. ‘we have to produce xyz in the country as a matter of national security.’ Two thoughts on this, one, I want countries to be interdependent, we are less likely to kill each other that way. And second, I think it would likely be far more efficient to just have a branch of the gov maintain factories that can produce xyz than it would be to distort the national economy to produce those things.

Taxes:

As it relates to taxes, yes tariffs bring revenue to the US gov, but that is still money coming from citizens. So it becomes a question of what is the more efficient way to tax US citizens, or which method of taxation distorts the economy the least? ...that gets complex, but this does not bring about a reduction in taxes paid by US citizens, it would just change how that revenue is collected and which parts of the economy are paying more.

I find the idea of switching from income tax to tariffs interesting, but, one, I have absolutely no faith that the gov would actually remove the income tax after enacting enough tariffs to cover the revenue(if we even could), and two, I think the distortion on the economy could be much worse than an income tax.

Other countries:

Any other country enacting tariffs faces the same situation. They are also experiencing an overall loss in their economy. Some places are doing it specifically to protect certain industries, and their reasons for doing that are varied. Maybe they want to grow that industry, maybe they also have some national security concerns, or maybe it's just plain corruption and the CEO of some big company's kid is married to the presidents kid and their industry gets special treatment. ...I think all of the above happens.

The motivation:

I can only guess at what Team Trump is thinking with these tariffs, but I find the idea that this is to encourage domestic production to be unlikely as these tariffs are not targeted and are very unrefined. If there is a grand plan to this I would imagine that it is either to force the reduction of interest rates(perhaps for debt refinancing), or to use as a bargaining chip with other countries.

I am 42! 🥳 I am, momentarily, the answer to life the universe and everything ️✨

And I'm feeling pretty fabulous despite having mixed wine with Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters 🥂

Star Trek TNG is always going to be my favorite sci-fi, but as I get older I’m more drawn to the bizarre sci-fi’s, Red Dwarf, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, etc. Those are just more inline with reality. You’re lost in some bizarre little corner of the universe, you’re stumbling around in your pajamas, mildly confused… no one knows why we are here or what we are doing. You just carry on and have a lovely time!

Ugh, ya, you're having a rough week. Lo siento!

I do have a degree in Economics... this is my week!!!

My concern about Trump isn’t so much about his policies, (the disrespect for the judiciary and due process is VERY concerning) but my big concern with Trump is his effect on common culture and values. He speaks from a point of view of hierarchy and violence. This mindset regresses human progress.

Sometimes I’m on work calls and doing intro stuff and telling people I do ABC, and XYZ, etc. and then later I’ll mention that I have kids and often people will say “O wow, how do you do it all!?!?”

I can “do it all” because I have a real partner.

Not just a husband, but a full family and life partner. Someone who is a real father to our children, and someone who actively encourages and helps me.

Because I don’t want to “do it all”, that’s bullshit, I want to be well supported. And I am 🫶

Tariffs are bad for the economy of the country placing them. it's like punching yourself in the face.

Tariffs are bad. Not to mention pretty contrary to that whole free markets idea.

With tariffs you get wasted resources from inefficient domestic production (not to mention the dangers of encouraging domestic businesses to produce things that they don’t actually have a competitive advantage in producing), higher prices, dead weight loss… It’s just a very bad idea.

Lots of details are in this video...

https://youtu.be/Gr-Ld7DnBZQ

A personal theory on cults/religions/conspiracy theories...

“Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.”

We are not our bodies, and our lives here are temporary, but we can’t actually comprehend the universe. I’m guessing that we do not need this human form to exist, there is “something more”, but that it is something outside of time and in so many dimensions that the human brain doesn't stand a chance at comprehending it. But still, on a deep level, we know this. We all have this deep vague knowing that this isn’t all there is. This is why that scene from the Matrix hit us all so hard.

"Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain — but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life — that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there. Like a splinter in your mind — driving you mad."

We are desperately seeking an answer that we can't actually have. That does drive us a bit crazy and leads us to accept very incomplete and flawed, and often dangerous, simple human answers. These answers come in the form of cults and religions.

Do you value free speech?

Do you value due process?

Do you value a balance of power in gov structure?

I would really like to belong to a cult or find religion... on some level I think that's true of all of us. Human's are wired like that. But I'm just far too much of an analytical bitch to ever actually buy into it. ...and so I'm just consistently lonely in that kinda way 🫤

Ya I really gotta fix those zaps.

ya there are layers of wrong. But this is where the narrative is at.

This is the state of the red pill narrative... women's rights are communist, down with the commies!

How do I get off this thread?

We tend to think of the world as a hierarchy, but really it’s more of a mesh network.

When you are an employee you think you are not at the top of the hierarchy because you have a “boss”. Then you open your own small business and quickly realize that you now have a dozen “bosses” and have to spend a lot of time looking for more! Then you decide to raise a bunch of money for a new business, and find that every so often you have to explain yourself to a group of investors. Unless you want to go live alone in the woods, you’ll always be accountable to someone.

Those who are at the top of one hierarchy are at the bottom of another. When you zoom out you’ll see that the world is a mesh network.

Don’t try to avoid accountability, just be a good person and do work that you love 🫶

Be careful y’all. When you exaggerate or misuse words, or deny the obvious, it make your arguments seem less credible that they deserve to be.