Governments love war, so much, that the whole purpose of a Government is to create war. They are the instrument of violence in society, of the highest level. The smallest Government is a night mugger, who just randomly stumbles on people and robs them. But when this system gets organized and grows tremendously, it starts to fight with other Governments. You know like 1 thief stealing from another thief, but the only who suffer are actually the victims.
In cyber warfare, one state sponsored hacker group hacks another state's innocent civilians or businesses, which affects civilians. And as a retaliation, that Government will counter hack the aggressor Government, by hurting their citizens. Yes.
Are the civilians innocent? Well they do support their Government's behavior after all, even though taxation is forced, it's not like you see massive protests against certain things. People are too complacent or dumb to resist.
Now the newest form of warfare is trade wars, and it looks like it's happening between US and China.
Trade Wars
China is well known for it's massive export policy, and their cheap goods, which are in some cases pretty decent quality. So you have a global superpower that exports decent quality goods, for ultra low prices, and you have the US which barely exports anything now except foreign interventions.
Alright, so I get Trump's position, he wants to give the jobs back to Americans, by brining back the jobs from China, through imposing tariffs, which is a direct interference with the Free Market.
Oh so a Government wants to interfere with the Free Market? Who would have though that? But the Free Market has a very weird and annoying aspect of being more efficient than the Government, which means that in the ultimate war between Freedom and Government, Freedom will win.
Now will this happen before WW3, WW4, WW5? I don't know. For all I know is that this battle could last millions of years. But eventually, something more efficient will always replace something less efficient. And we can't have iron age violent theft based societies in the modern age, so everything has it's end.
So in this trade war case, the Free Market will probably win, and the Free Market is ironically now on the side of Communist China.
Ramifications
Alright so the logic is that since China exports so cheaply, and puts a tariff on US imports, while the US doesn't have tariff on Chinese imports, which effectively discourages US imports to China, and encourages Chinese imports to US.
Trump wants to equalize that and wants to put a tariff on China imports, and that souds fair.
So imagine hypothetically we start with a simple 1% tariff. So both sides have a 1% tax on all imports from the adversary region, and then the following scenario happens:
- Since the situation is equal after the US puts a 1% tariff, China wants to maintain the dominance and increases it to 2%.
- US responds and increases it to 2%, so both sides 2%-2%
- China increases it to 3% to have advantage again
- ........
- US increases tariffs to 600%
- China increases tariffs to 601%
- .......
- US increases tariffs to 6000%
- China increases tariffs to 6001%
- .....
- And you get the picture.
And the only loser will be the civilians of both countries. It's no wonder, that they say that the biggest casualties of war are civilians. If you look at WW2, most people who died were civilians, while Hitler hided himself like a coward in his bunker.
Currency Wars
Now of course trade war cannot happen without currency manipulation, so picture the analogy described above, but add to it currency devaluation.
So whenever 1 party increases it's tariffs, the other party will devalue his currency severely, probably by the tax amount to cancel out the tax effects. So if US adds 1% tax to China import, then the CNY will be inflated 1% to cover the costs of import. And similarly the US does the same in the opposite case.
So what will Trump's policies accomplish. Probably Dollar devaluation at best, and global hyperinflation at worst.
I mean you don't need to be a genius to figure out that this is a race to the bottom. Governments are destroying themselves, on their own, just sit back and watch.
So who will end up being the winner? Bitcoin, and the other cryptocurrencies. If you think BTC is now being pumped up by Chinese who are fleeing the CNY devaluation? Well then wait and see what will happen when the real trade wars begin.
A 1 million $ Bitcoin, is not entirely out of the picture. Only the Free Market can stop all the wars.
This is the prime example of why money and politics don't mix. Good post.
Indeed. But on the contrary, it's a shame that consumers are not considering politics when they spend their money. What they should be doing:
You don't need to boycott PP, just tell people to use Bitcoin or Steem Dollar.
And by boycotting the other companies, that makes up most of the US economy. I am not sure that would be beneficial. But yes, too much power is concentrated in monopolistic behemoths hands.
Some diversity is needed in the corporate sector. Perhaps some blockchain projects.
It's always amusing when someone says "sure I'll join the boycott because the competing options are better anyway". That's not boycotting. A boycott means stopping the use of PayPal (in this case) particularly in cases where it otherwise makes sense to use PP for a particular situation. The advice to use crypto-currency is independent from the boycott, regardless of whether the advice is viable or not.
Furthermore, you cannot use crypto-currency to pay an organization that only accepts PayPal. Any method of transfer that might land PP money in the recipients hand ultimately still feeds PayPal.
That's very patriotic of you.
Boycotts are for people to practice ethical consumption. If one nation happens to be home of many unethical suppliers, it doesn't obviate the harm done by patronizing unethical suppliers.
If you want a positive angle, think of it as rewarding the economies of countries that aren't saturated with unethical suppliers.
Ridding the corporate sector of bad players is a good thing, of course even if diversity is temporarily reduced to make room for ethical players to replace them.
I agree, but the I just pointed out that it has to be a smooth transition to not hurt the economy.
Either way, decentralized payment systems will dominate, if not BTC then something else, and PP will be left out of the game, unless they transition their business to become like an online crypto wallet, like Blockchain.info.
PayPal is not going to be broad-sided by crypto-currency and then sink. They're probably working out how to a piece of the action as we speak, as this is fundamental to what corporations do. Consequently, it would be faulty to think a boycott is not needed.
Good, but then we won, because we made them change their business plan.
It's either adapt or go extinct, but by them adapting to us, we have the upper hand.
PayPal's business plan is not the rationale for the boycott. Have another look at why boycott Paypal if you haven't already. It's the repression of people's freedom and extreme neoconservative politics that's a problem. Adapting to the market is precisely what enables those evils to continue.
Well, once BTC goes wild, then they will seriously have to rething their policies.
Besides the rights organizations do more good with the donations, than PP does bad with their fees. They could accept BTC only, but that will cut off a large portion of their funding. So until BTC goes mainstream, they are stuck with PP.
But once BTC goes mainstream, it will all change, and they will either adapt, or their business is over:
https://steemit.com/freedom/@profitgenerator/change-the-world-using-minds-not-swords
You tend to be right and I guess you're right again on this one.
Thanks
We do have another export...debt. Beside war, debt seems to be our biggest commodity. We keep mortgaging chunks of our children's (and now our grandchildren's) future. Great article- upvoted!
I look at the moral issue which we buy cheap goods at expense of another human being slave labor.