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[Culise]

I wouldn't oppose it, but the idea of justices is supposed to be that these are legal experts rather than political gladhandlers; term limits won't help increase the expertise on the court.  On the flip side, the Supreme Court has been the home of partisan politics since John Marshall and his fait accompli to Jefferson, which rather undermines the notion of the justice as a politically-disinterested legal expert.  From a viewpoint of most harm due to the possibility of partisan politics, while I'm loathe to skirt so close to the old "starving children in Ethiopia" fallacy (forgot the technical term), I'd suggest that term limits for our Representatives and Senators might also be a more immediately pressing consideration in terms of practical effect.

[Max™]

Yeah, as much as I dislike some of the stuff going on in those crusty old heads, there is a huge body of legal knowledge represented there. No real gain from kicking them out regularly, while Congresscritters and Senators seem to have caught a nasty case of DoNothingItis, so unplugging it and plugging it back in again might help?

[Reelya]

Maybe apply some of their vaunted capitalistic performance-review based stuff to congressmen? Link their pay to how many sessions and votes they cast and their involvement in committees, generation of reports and studies.

It was mentioned that they spend most of the time wrangling investors for their next campaign, and not on actual governance, so term limits would help. But I think a great compromise solution might be to disallow consecutive congress or senatorial terms, but still allow the candidate to run again later. So they'd be incentivized to spend more time in government getting results, then they have their off-time spending their own money to plan for their next campaign run.

I was reading recently that the Heritage Foundation had a generational change a few years back. The previous generation's leadership were mostly PhDs and the like, the current generation's leadership are younger guys with MBAs. They've brought in a very MBA work ethic, all about KPIs, scorecards and performance reviews. The old guard Heritage people have literally spat the dummy about how they can't work under these conditions, despite the irony that this is the exact thing they've been agitating for since Day One that should happen to all public employees.

[NullForceOmega]

I dunno, if the US imploded their own economy by embargoing everyone and subsequently collapsed, it might be a net positive for the world.

You know, other than the fact that we are sitting on adequate reserves to keep functioning at full bore for fifty years, leaving the rest of the planet spent and unable to function.

Look, I get that the US isn't exactly popular right now, and that you specifically (and many others) would like for the world to stop hanging on our every word.  But the attitude you are displaying here is just making things worse, the anti-US words you write make us more likely to rally behind someone like Trump who spouts nonsense that seems xenophobic.  Back off the US hate and try to remain objective here.

[Reelya]

The USA could keep functioning at full bore for 50 years without any external inputs into the US economy? You're dreaming. How much of the shit you buy at Walmart, or anywhere else is actually "Made in USA"? The first thing you'd have going on is emptying of store shelves as people rush to stock up on everything, you'd have a ballooning black market, massive inflation and empty store shelves with scenes like the 1970's Soviet Union economic collapse.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world would see an immediate production surplus (the USA imports more than it exports), meaning price cuts for materials and goods. This would lead to increased consumer consumption growth in the rest of the world, which would offset the lost markets fairly quickly compared to what the shortages in the USA would do. Consumers will snap up bargains due to surpluses much quicker than you can engineer an entire supply chain to compensate for shortages in basic products.

The one "good" thing that would happen is the sudden devaluation of the US dollar to be worth about a penny. This would be great for the Feds. The US debt would be render worthless overnight, and new money could be printed. And it would be good for employers. Since $15 "minumum wage" would now be literally 15 cents. This would help in creating the sweatshop-like conditions needed to resupply the USA with basic products to replace those lost from imports. But a lot of the culture would be annihilated. Say goodbye to car culture, because few people will afford cars and you'll have to go for public transport. Say goodbye to American AAA games and Hollywood blockbusters, because those rely on foreign markets for much of their profits. They just won't be as viable as investments as they are now.

As for the rest of the world, the complete disappearance of the USA might hurt for a few years, but basically the world economy would realign around new markets. We would lose a customer, but we also lose a competitor. There are countries which have a trade deficit with the USA, but there are other countries which have a trade surplus with the USA. Logically, we'd just start trading with each other instead. Certainly in very short order the 7 billion of the rest of us would economically outpace the 300 million isolates in their Trump Fortress.

[NullForceOmega]

I made a stupid ragepost here, I'm removing it because I'm not thinking clearly and should step away.

[Dorsidwarf]

SNUP

E: Never mind

[Wolfhunter107]

I dunno, if the US imploded their own economy by embargoing everyone and subsequently collapsed, it might be a net positive for the world.

Can you give it a break?

[Baffler]

The only thing more completely ridiculous than expecting the rest of the world to only "hurt for a few years" if one of the most valuable markets in the world, all of the infrastructure it supports, and all the security it brings disappeared overnight, is thinking it would happen in the first place. A slightly increased cost of doing business here doesn't even come close to negating the advantages it brings, and for all the people who complain I don't see anyone lining up to give up their livelihoods over it. Nor does anyone here think that shoring up the walls and barring the door would be a good idea, despite what people trying to win their election campaigns would have you believe.

[Reelya]

It's equally silly to talk of a "a slightly increased cost of doing business here" if the USA was to lose all their trading partners. My point was that the rest of the world would see commodity surpluses, whereas the USA would see big shortages. The effects would be very different.

Overall, the US has a $40 billion/month / $500 billion dollar/year trade deficit. Which is <1% of the non-US world GDP. Many countries grow by more than that in a single year. Since 2000, many countries have seen GDP double or triple. A 1% drop is within normal operating procedures. But the trade deficit is the aggregate. There would be two aspects to the loss of trade:

- loss of US export markets. You guys won't sell as much heavy machinery, tanks and planes. Foreign buyers will have to shop around. But they have the entire world's industrial nations to shop with. So they won't take long to replace them, and this will be a job creator to boot. Meanwhile, exactly who in America is going to buy your massive surplus of export war machines? Plus, we can make games and movies ourselves. The lack of the next Michael Bay blockbuster or less Superhero drivel isn't going to kill anyone.

- loss of US import markets. This means big production surpluses for other countries. The first thing you'd do is start offloading that stuff and looking for new markets. Meaning price cuts. Sure there will be job losses, but consumer expansion offsets a lot of that. Meanwhile, the USA would see hoarding like never before, and empty store shelves, then needs to replace the entire production process for all good with locally mined and produced alternatives. How much coltan deposits do you actually have and how long before you've replaced the entire Asian semi-conductor industry with your own version?

So, no it really is arrogance to think you guys would be perfectly fine but everyone else would be permanently fucked by splitting yourselves off from the rest of the world.

[TheBiggerFish]

Going to be blunt and uneloquent here: this discussion is stupid. Can we please move on to something else?

I agree with this guy.

[penguinofhonor]

My dad is more economically powerful than your dad.

[Strife26]

Setting new standards for stupid, pointless points and an utter dearth of anything close to useful discussion: vote today's America thread.

[Max™]

My dad is more economically powerful than your dad.

Oh yeah well my zombie cyborg president is scarier than yours!

That reminds me of a slight problem with my campaign: I can not be trusted when a microphone and camera are presented to me.

The missus and I were walking out of the library after a day of reading and so forth when one of the local news crews walks up and asks us if we knew Reagan died.

'No.'
"Do you have any thoughts about that?"
'Honestly I'm surprised, I thought he was a cyborg.'
"Oh... uh, what would you say his greatest accomplishment was?"
'Breaking Russia.'
"Well, ok, thanks for your time."

Suffice to say I didn't end up on the segment, I don't even know where this stuff comes from!

[Reelya]

My dad is more economically powerful than your dad.

I don't think that's a good comparison. We're talking 1 country vs the rest of the world here. I guess Americans think that if America is on one side, and "Rest of the World" on the other side, then it's a 50/50 debate, huh?

Any single country that walls themselves off is clearly going to do a lot worse than the rest of the world who didn't. It's North Korea logic to think otherwise, and the fact that anyone can seriously consider otherwise is the interesting part. I'm thinking American exceptionalism here.