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[Reelya]

BTW there wouldn't be USSR-style shortages via tariffs. The shortages happened because USSR tried to literally stop inflation existing by "Royal Decree".

When demand outstrips production then you get inflation which rebalances things. The USSR government react to inflation (from the 1973 oil crisis) by decreeing Price Controls. Nothing actually changed in any USSR factories, they were exactly the same before and after the crisis. So, when the value of the USSR currency fell during the oil crisis, USSR refused to let the prices on essentials rise. This meant that all essential items were vastly under-priced. People were lining up because they were flush with cash and wanted to get the bargains while they lasted. Basically it would have started with hoarding, but as soon as shops started to run out the black market street-price would have risen, leading to greed and basically ensuring you couldn't produce the stuff fast enough.

The thing with the Soviet stores ending up with nothing but plastic buckets is usually explained as "the soviet system couldn't respond to needs of consumers" but that's bullshit. They knew how many buckets people bought, and would replace that exact amount. The actual deal is that when the price controls kicked in, everyone grabbed perishables and commodities from the stores, and stuff with zero black-market value like plastic buckets was all that was left in the stores.

[Neonivek]

So to the people who are talking about Trump killing LGBT rights and such just remember that Hillary woulda let hundreds of thousands of people in who consider it their holy duty to murder LGBT people.

>_< there is just too much wrong with this... I am blown away...

But I'll put it this way... Fresh Islamic voters are more for Trump's politics... And we have Trump in office.

"Ohh no Hillary might have slightly affected LGBT rights inconsequently by NOT being a bigot! Thank goodness we have Trump who will have a tangible effect on it"

Or another way: "Hillary would allow more Islamic Voters who would vote for a candidate like Trump is far superior then having Trump in office"

[Telgin]

I'm willing to give him one chance to not screw up, but arg, this is damn stressful somewhat......

I'm not hopeful at all.  Even if Trump himself turns out to be far less awful than he has campaigned, the Republican party is going to control all facets of the federal government soon.  That's going to probably cause all kinds of collateral damage.  ACA will be gone without a doubt and who knows what will replace it.  Probably lots of regression on social fronts too.  I haven't kept up with the details as much as my friends, but one of them told me that Trump has sworn to elect a supreme court judge that would try to undo marriage equality, and supposedly Pence wants to federally fund homosexual conversion therapy.

So, people voted for Trump for a lot of reasons I guess.  Say, economics, since that's a highly cited issue.

It's like reaching for a banana and getting the banana, the gorilla holding the banana and the jungle he's standing in.

I'm sure lots of people who voted for Trump want all of that undone too, but I really, really wish it were possible to break some of this madness up into smaller pieces.  Why should people have to get theocracy too if they want conservative economics?  It's ridiculous.

[ein]

So to the people who are talking about Trump killing LGBT rights and such just remember that Hillary woulda let hundreds of thousands of people in who consider it their holy duty to murder LGBT people.

So yeah, maybe Trump might set back your rights, sorry about that. But it seemed better to keep out the Deus Vult. Its far from perfect, but it was the best option available.

way to sound like an insensitive, ignorant, xenophobe there chum

yeah i'm sure refugees would've had more of an impact on the nation than the actual fucking gov't many of whom, need i remind you, consider it their holy duty to murder lgbt people

[smjjames]

I certainly fucking HOPE it's okay

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/who-is-in-president-trump-cabinet-231071

Would be good if he could get Duncan Hunter outta here at least, still curious about press seceretary because, well, it seems like he'd choose himself......

fucking dammit, I'm gonna play stellaris to take my mind off of this, this is fucjing damn stressful.

[Frumple]

BFEL, we'll not even talk about the racist bullshit you just spouted. I'll just note, again, that the VP that trump chose is a man who has advocated draining funding from other programs to fund LGBT torture camps. If you're worried about Deus Vult so far as LGBT rights go, they're already here, and they just got elected VP. You're not going to manage to equivocate someone that campaigned on improved LGBT rights with someone that has given support for the torture and murder of them, or the people that support him. Sorry. The equivalence is false, again.

Frumple, I actually agree with Phmcw. Not that I disagree that there's been an attempt. It's just been unsuccessful. When I was talking to the owner of a small restaurant chain where I am right now, it was fascinating to hear him describe the town he grew up in as almost entirely fed by the manufacturing industry. Those jobs had since left, and he was holding out for them to come back.

Isp, the bit I quoted from you before was you saying there was no attempt. "They just let them suffer and be miserable for several decades and didn't expect much of it." There was no "just", no "let". There was no lack of expectation. There has been a generations long campaign to try to fix this shit.

And man, I sodding know they tried and haven't succeeded enough, just as I know the other side of our politics have spent the entire time fucking sabotaging our government and in extension our country and doing a better job of it. I know people some damn how blame just about the only folks that haven't been in practice trying to make their lives worse for not being some sort of bloody omnipotent, omniscient, uber politicos.

I said not a single goddamn thing about it being good enough. Just that they're the ones that have been trying, and stuff like what I quoted from you is a direct repudiation of the actual goddamn reality of this country and it drives me up the wall. I'm well bloody aware folks like you talked to have either not noticed, willfully ignored, or actively fought against attempts to improve their lot in life. Sometimes in good faith, even, thinking whatever they were doing was going to be a better outcome. Doesn't change what they've been missing, ignoring, and trying to ruin. And as mentioned, it's been one of the things that's been more frustrating about this election than any goddamn thing else. We see lines like you laid out, supporting that world view that's been utterly sodding disconnected from what's actually been happening in these rotting hellholes. That said nothing had happened, nothing was being done, in the face of years of things happening, years of things being done. That said the democrats ignored them, did nothing, when they're just about the only ones that have paid attention to anything except further fucking them and their communities or even bloody tried to.

[smjjames]

Or maybe I'll go smash some planets in Universe Sandbox

[Phmcw]

BTW there wouldn't be USSR-style shortages via tariffs.

Those happened because the USSR government react to inflation (from the oil crisis) by decreeing Price Controls. That then causes the "street value" of an item to be much higher than the shelf price, which leads some people to over-buy for profit on the black market, and for hoarding. So you get shortages even if there was zero change in production or supply.

In fact Russians lining up for blocks to buy something implies that they all have money in their pockets and want to spend it: i.e. Russia was having an unsustainable demand-boom because they stopped inflation by royal decree. Nothing actually changed in Russian factories from before or after the "shortages", this was all about price and a government trying to deny market realities. Inflation acts to slow down demand for an item to match supply. Without allowing inflation to exist, you get the "USSR-style shortages".

They had queues because the rulers didn't give a shit about you having to trade between yourself for basic supplies. They were building weapons and gave the peoples enough to keep their support.

Had they really wanted they'd have avoided that, but why bother working really hard when you can slack off without consequences. Hell, they had a proposal to numerise their whole supply chain, and it failed because of political infighting.

[Reelya]

The queues literally existed for a few months. They were because of the price controls, US propaganda aside. The price controls were initiated for populist reasons. That's the opposite of not caring what the people thought.

They had queues because the rulers didn't give a shit about you having to trade between yourself for basic supplies.

That couldn't be more opposite of how the Soviets actually thought if you tried. If you gave your friend a cigarette for $1 they wanted to know about it. The whole logic behind the Soviets was that all trade is enacted by the state for even the smallest goods. If they really didn't give a shit they'd have left all this to private shopkeepers to worry about. You can tax private shopkeepers.

[Phmcw]

The queues literally existed for a few months. They were because of the price controls, propaganda aside.

The price controls were initiated for populist reasons. That's the opposite of not caring what the people thought.

They care about what they thought, just not about having sane supply lines.

There is some kind of minimum energy law at play in society : peoples, organizations, and of course the political class won't expend a lot of effort to have something they can have in a simpler way.

That's the whole point of competition in capitalism, and the huge issue of any kind of communist system.

Edit : peoples got around it by barthering between themselves for item that were scarce : empty the shop for any ration that are present, then exchange them for what you need/want.

[Reelya]

But the point was that the items themselves were really no more scarce after the shortages as before. The amount of bread people could eat didn't change, nor did the amount of bread that was produced. That does prove that this was about other factors (currency control blunders) rather than production and demand.

The basic facts are pretty different to the usual spin you hear.

- USSR currency falls internationally due to increased cost of oil imports
- Inflation starts to kick in
- Soviet leaders are worried rising prices will erode popular support
- Soviets enact price controls at government stores (which was all the stores)
- this costs the Soviets money, but they balance it by printing more, making underlying inflation worse
- Demand soars, as effectively, everything is on permanent Black Friday sales prices
- Soviet citizens with lots of cash (government printing more money, while collecting less revenue) start hoarding
- Black market kicks in, ensuring no amount of production increase can fill rising demand
- long queues form, not because you can't get stuff, but for three reasons
--- 1) the government good are insanely cheap by now, because the prices are fixed and the ruble is in free fall
--- 2) you can cash in on the black market if you grab all you can, otherwise, blackmarketers gouge you.
--- 3) usuable goods keep real value, so converting rubles to goods at the store hedges against the inflation, which encourages hoarding mentality.
- Stores run out of everything except, visibly, crap like plastic buckets, which have no black-market potential, so TV USA can point to excess buckets in empty Soviet stores as proof "communism" can't work out how much production is needed, unlike the magic of capitalism, which can count buckets in and buckets out, apparently.

That's the real full story. Stuff about how the factories didn't know how many people wanted buckets so over-produced those and not what people wanted is bullshit. Underlying supply and demand, as in actual production and needs weren't part of this situation.

[Erkki]

https://twitter.com/chiru_no/status/796244186387324930

What is wrong with these people? They find out that there are people in the world who dont agree with them, so they'll hurt themselves and blame somebody else?

[Silverthrone]

How the hell is the EU supposed to deal with all those US refugees

Turns out, Sweden's refugee policy would allow Mexican-Americans (and anyone whom Trump has threatened) to seek asylum!

If Nanaimo, British Columbia doesn't work out, I heard Oslo is nice.

Oslo is in Norway, a different country, and they are rather restrictive. On the other hand, Oslo is a rather American city, by Scandinavian standards.

Don't count on the asylum. Country's full, I'm afraid. The restrictions are tightening, and they don't seem likely to budge in a long while. There is a similar deep, deep divide on the matter, too, considering on how poorly the migration has been handled for the last ten years. Hell, there are roving bands of Afghan sex offenders (minors, although it's fair to assume that many have lied) in most major cities, and the general establishment and media are more concerned about the (warranted) xenophobia that creates rather than the victims and the collapse of law and order on the streets, cooing "But it'll play in the hands of the nationalists!! Hush-hush, for the Greater Good!" day in and day out. There is a terrible, terrible backlash building on account of all this. The establishment, left and right (but mostly left, due to their monumental influence), has abdicated from every single responsibility it could. What they feel is "right" is more important than what is necessary to run the country. And people are getting fed up.

It's what happens when people start dismantling a nation state because they want their cosmopolitan "world citizen" fantasy to come true. When you let anyone in, no questions asked, with no demands or overwatch of their behaviour and attitude, because it "feels right", because of oh so humane policy founded on luuurv herp derp humanitär stormakt. Most countries have pretty big backlashes brewing up, and I think the big Trump-Splash^tm is going to set them off. At this point, that might be for the best.

In brief; If you are escaping an ugly election and a worrying precidency, Sweden will not be the best choice. The next election is in two years, and it will be very, very ugly. You're welcome to try, though. If you do, contact me, and we can form a paramilitary militia for sensible people together.

(Not to mention; dealing with American/Mexican asylum seekers wouldn't be too difficult for the EU, not in comparison with Sudanese or Afghan asylum seekers.)

[birdy51]

A small brightspot.

Minnesota Just Elected The Country’s First Somali-American Muslim Woman Legislator

https://twitter.com/chiru_no/status/796244186387324930

What is wrong with these people? They find out that there are people in the world who dont agree with them, so they'll hurt themselves and blame somebody else?

It's a matter of control and the lack of it. A lack of an outlet for emotional distress causes individuals problems. That lack of control manifests in the need to harm themselves via physical pain; enough so that the pain response overrides that of the emotional one.

[nenjin]

We survived 8 years of Bush and a Republican controlled Congress. Only got us two wars we haven't finished and made us the laughing stock of the world. Guess we'll have to hope we weather it again with as much or less drama.