Thank you. Is there a transcript? I'm specifically interested in whether he's making an actual argument around trade, or if he's speaking metaphorically.
> serious in a techno-accelerationist manner, specifically around anticircumvention laws
So not serious as a policy proposal but serious for playing to his base. Got it. Disappointing coming from him. But I guess we all have to tend to our power.
> you have a level of pessimism that would prevent anyone from trying anything innovative
Dead wrong. I’m a risk taker. I wanted to see Doctorow’s argument because I respect him and would love if the numbers allowed for constraining Washington.
Dismissing a stupid proposal for being wrong isn’t rejecting solutions in general. In this case, it’s pointing out that Europe escalating a trade war for copyright reform doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you’re rallying folks to that cause.
I think it's ridiculous framing to call this Europe escalating.
The US has been escalating non-stop for a year. This would be Europe responding for once. Constraining Washington is in their interest as Washington is a malign actor now.
He can't actually believe it. He's pretending like he doesn't know how numbers work, and burying it in words. There's a difference between a 1% tariff, a 2% tariff, and a 25% tariff. Just like there's a difference in forcing you to accept anticircumvention laws and forcing you to give up Greenland.
> Well, they're saying that they won't take our coffee unless we give them anticircumvention. And I'm sorry, but we just can't lose the US coffee market. Our economy would collapse. So we're going to give them anticircumvention. I'm really sorry."
> That's it. That's why every government in the world allowed US Big Tech companies to declare open season on their people's private data and ready cash.
> The alternative was tariffs. Well, I don't know if you've heard, but we've got tariffs now!
Comparing having any tariff to having your house burned down is pretending that it's not possible just to have your barn burned down. Or to have a window painted over. Or to have to trim the branches on your trees. Which ask is going to push you to the point where you give up your coffee industry? Nah, let's pretend not to know that all of this can be quantified, and that Hungary has any real leverage over the US on its own.
If the US is asking too much from Hungary, Hungary can go to China or India - but China or India can ask for anything marginally less than what the US asked for, or can even agree with the US to ask for exactly what the US asked for. And Europe has cut itself off from Russian resources for ideological reasons, so it can't even take advantage of the fact that Russia's market for its resources is somewhat limited.
He's suffering from applause addiction. China can do what they want because they are not a dependency of the US. Europe is. If anything, with all of his invective about Orban (because Orban is ideologically unpleasant), Hungary is in a better position than Europe as a whole because the Orban government doesn't have the self-destructive Russophobia that the rest of Europe does. Hungary can choose at any time whether to be in Europe or to rely on Russia, and China. That's more leverage than Europe has.
I think they meant he feels like saying “fuck you,” even if it burns down the world around him. That’s a real human impulse. But it’s important to distinguish folks who want to watch the world burn from those floating serious solutions.
Trump threatened an extra 10% tariffs on countries that don't think the US should be taking over Greenland. Who knows what dumb reason he'll come up with next?
Under this regime, the US is eventually going to develop into something similar to Japan under Sakoku - a nonfactor in international trade, due to a self-imposed embargo.
Of course it'll hurt former US trade partners (and the US itself even more!). But it's coming either way, whether we suck up to Americans or not. With that in mind, we might as well just do what we want since the US is for some reason voluntarily giving up power over us.
> serious for playing to his base. Got it. Disappointing coming from him. But I guess we all have to tend to our power.
What “power” does this blogger/sci-fi writer have? Who is “his base”? What responsibility to affect meaningful trade regulation did he abdicate when he said a thing you didn’t agree with?
Folks whose pet issue is IP reform, presumably. If that’s your drum, beat it. But it’s good context for anyone tuning in that it’s going to be your beat.
> What responsibility to affect meaningful trade regulation did he abdicate
What are you talking about? Where was this responsibility suggested?
All I did was point out hyperbole for what it is. Doctorow is speaking metaphorically. He isn’t literally suggesting tearing up trade agreements over IP because he isn’t an idiot.