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[McTraveller]

@ggamer - get involved in local politics.  You can make a significant local impact that way, and the barriers to entry are really low.  For instance, it's very common in small townships to have elections with only 1 candidate for some position.  The difficulty of getting involved scales with population of course; if you live in a large city, the opportunity for greatest impact is likely to get on an elected official's staff.

[Folly]

it genuinely feels impossible for anyone the 99% to affect any sort of lasting change on the political landscape at large.

fixed

Changing the political landscape is easy, so long as you're prepared to throw giant wads of cash at it.

[thompson]

Why do you think rich Chinese are scooping up foreign real estate?

Putting assets outside the reach of the party, presumably. Could be about diversifying their own investments or an investment fad. There's a large industry built around selling real estate to the Chinese. This makes it easier for them to do, and like any bubble, early investors are no doubt boasting about their considerable gains back home. The cycle becomes self-reinforcing. Nothing unusual about this. I'd expect other developing countries to do similar as they boom.

Regarding Trump's love of dictators, there a very simple alternative explanation: it's much easier to do a deal under the table if there are fewer intermediaries. Trump's idiot act is very convincing though, so assuming malice may not be necessary.

[Reelya]

Considering that angle, it's possible that Trump is taking the long-term view here. But i mean purely for himself.

How many hotel chains are the Kurds going to let him build vs Turkey?

[nenjin]

*fast forward two years*

"The Kurds are--I mean really, they're the greatest. Smart, very smart, like me. Hard working, smart. They know how to get things done."

[Karnewarrior]

I doubt that'll take two years. It'll maybe take a month, depending on how fast people can convince him the drop in support from the republicans will hurt him more than not having Turkish hotels.

[thompson]

I doubt that'll take two years. It'll maybe take a month, depending on how fast people can convince him the drop in support from the republicans will hurt him more than not having Turkish hotels.

How many billions of dollars were the Republicans proposing to give him? I must have missed that news.

[Karnewarrior]

Nothing directly, but 4 more years of being able to exploit the office of the president to create revenue streams from his companies can add up to a lot of extra income. More, potentially, than the Turks can offer him alone.

[MrRoboto75]

Holding the G7 at his roach motel, for example.

Or the billion and one golf trips at the course he owns.

[Telgin]

He decided to not host the summit at his hotel last I heard, but I'm still shocked.  He must have found some other way to make money off of it.  I don't believe anyone was able to convince him it was a bad idea.

[Zangi]

Whichever media station he watches after his breakup with Fox and Friends.
Probably still Fox, but he won't admit it.

[sluissa]

I'm not discounting that the whole thing was a cash grab and a cash grab alone, and I'm not suggesting it might not have been that as well(especially given the poor business that golf course has had), but the whole thing just stinks of paranoid control freak more than greedy bastard. He wants it at a Trump property because he knows the Trump properties. He'd rather put it at some place he has some certainty of the quality than let it be handed off to someone else he doesn't trust. (And at this point he probably doesn't trust anyone, except maybe his kids.) His image is much more important than profit. That's pretty clear at this point and he just wants to be sure that a big event like the G7 doesn't lead to his image being tarnished any.

Doesn't excuse it. Doesn't make the attempt any better. But I just don't see it being a purely profit oriented motive, especially after he made the promise up front that it'd be done at cost.

Having typed all that out, I'm almost certain I'm giving him too much credit, but that's how I want to read it while giving him the benefit of the doubt.

[Telgin]

Where would something like that normally be hosted?  If he punted it to somewhere that has done it before then he could at least just play it down as historical precedent.

[smjjames]

Looking at wikipedia, some of the early ones were held at the official (UK) residence, former official (Germany) residence, and a state guesthouse (Japan). They're often held in historically significant places, sometimes resorts, a couple times were museums and one was a library. Most have been held at some resort or other (likely because of the accommodation requirements), sometimes ones with historical significance, sometimes not. Once or twice it was held at a convention center.

I suspect that as long as Trump doesn't hold it at one of his resorts, nobody will bat an eye at it. The only real common threads here as far as 'normally hosted' are a major city (usually, but this is likely a consequence of logistics than any sort of precedence), a resort or other (most of the time), and historical and/or cultural significance of some sort (most of them). There's not a huge lot of precedence and logistics and security requirements are really the main factors driving it here.

I'm not discounting that the whole thing was a cash grab and a cash grab alone, and I'm not suggesting it might not have been that as well(especially given the poor business that golf course has had), but the whole thing just stinks of paranoid control freak more than greedy bastard. He wants it at a Trump property because he knows the Trump properties. He'd rather put it at some place he has some certainty of the quality than let it be handed off to someone else he doesn't trust. (And at this point he probably doesn't trust anyone, except maybe his kids.) His image is much more important than profit. That's pretty clear at this point and he just wants to be sure that a big event like the G7 doesn't lead to his image being tarnished any.

That's probably a good chunk of his thinking. He's also said that he still thinks of himself as being in the hospitality business (which is fine since that's the background he's drawing on) and wants to give the best, which is also totally fine, but given his background, you'd think he'd be able to suss out equally grand places to host it at besides his own resorts and what places he can trust the most other than his own thing.

[nenjin]

Apparently Trump has now backed down from hosting it at the Doral.