[sentientslug]

Every time this happens people say it’s different. See: COVID pandemic. And we know the V shaped recovery that came after that. Of course that shouldn’t be interpreted as a predictor of what’s to come next (because it’s not), my only point is to say that the same rhetoric pops up frequently during downtowns since forever.

[Aurornis]

This is different. It was entirely avoidable. Entirely predictable. Entirely preventable.

Hell, it’s mostly reversible if the administration would own their mistake. But they won’t.

That’s the problem: This is not a natural disaster or even a reaction to a market-created crash. It was orchestrated by the people who were supposed to be doing the opposite.

I don’t believe claims that the United States is doomed or other hyperbole. I do believe that this is firmly different than anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes though.

[viraptor]

After the initial COVID phases nothing major really changed long term as far as the world balance goes though. Everyone got affected, everyone started recovering. Things may have been uneven, but not like now, right?

[pton_xd]

That's his point. In the moment, everyone panics and thinks XYZ catastrophe is the end of the world as we know it. In hindsight, it never is.

But who knows?! Maybe this is the time...

[roenxi]

> In hindsight, it never is.

Up until WWII happened I doubt many people would have believed that sort of death and destruction was right around the corner. They'd just had WWI and weren't expecting that settling the unsettled business from that would be around 3x worse, break the European colonialists and ... I don't know how wiped out Jews in Europe were, but it was a painful experience although I assume some survived. The property damage was also extensive.

High tariffs isn't going to be the end of the world & this particular stage of crisis doesn't look very important. But the overall geopolitical crisis we're in as everyone realigns certainly could end the world as we know it. Both in the literal and worst case senses. Few went in to WWII chuckling and saying that they were going to break their own power permanently, but that is what a lot of participants ended up doing.

[pton_xd]

Just a comment, every catastrophe has victims, survivors, and lasting consequences. I didn't mean to trivialize that in my response. Regardless, life goes on.

[roenxi]

In the sense that members of the human race will survive, sure. That Woodward book out recently was suggesting a double-digit chance for a nuke to get used in Ukraine. Hopefully he is prone to making things up - seems possible that life would not have been going on in at least some regions.

I simultaneously take comfort from the fact that no-one else seems as worried as me and dread from the fact that it'd be the 3rd world war that people just walked into because they weren't taking the threat seriously enough. We appear to have been watching insane policy come out of the US diplomatic establishment for a good decade now. And the crisis is still escalating.

[Tadpole9181]

A disease did that. Nobody knew the details, there was fear it wouldn't stop. The markets groaned and creaked under the weight of the fear and uncertainty. But with the vaccine and the reduced lethality of new strains, a disease becomes a nothing. Recovery began because nothing was in the way, the bad thing was gone.

The people in charge of the government did this. The people who will still be in charge of the government. The bad thing is not gone. The bad thing has no end in sight. And the bad thing is doubling down.

[j4coh]

The bad thing is saying it’s no problem to stick around for a third term and beyond, and that it wants to go to war to annex territories from the closest trading partners who might be able to mitigate the impact of the trade war.

[Ekaros]

The cause really was not the disease and even loss of life from it. It was actual real world disruptions shutting down normal operations. Lockdowns, quarantines and so on. Goods stopped moving. So it is obvious that trade would slow down and thus profits would be hit, directly leading to stock prices correcting.

[chewbacha]

At the time, there was trust that the government wanted to assist the recovery. They have lost the benefit of the doubt. This actually feels malicious.

With Covid, recovery came as Covid was removed. With Trump, recovery can come with…