Summary
Trump warned automakers not to raise prices after announcing a 25% tariff on imported vehicles starting April 3, claiming the tariffs would be “great” and benefit U.S. manufacturing.
Industry leaders, including GM, Ford, and Stellantis CEOs, expressed concerns about inevitable price increases, with experts warning tariffs could add thousands to car costs.
Auto suppliers stated that absorbing tariffs is impossible, and dealers fear affordability challenges for consumers.
While the United Auto Workers union support the move as a job creator, trade groups predict higher prices and fewer manufacturing jobs.
So basically government price fixing. Isn’t USA supposed to be the pillar of libertarian capitalism?
Libertarian police
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
Still one of the absolutely best things I’ve ever read; always reread in full.
Not even. He’s not doing anything to prevent prices from going up. He’s just whining at businesses for refusing to cut their margins to fund his government.
It’s funny. There’s a couple of think thanks - the Fraiser Institute, the Hoover Institute, in collaboration with the CATO Institute - that are constantly putting out papers saying how America hasn’t gone Libertarian Capitalist enough. Historically, the two places in the world they consider “Most Libertarian” have been Hong Kong and Singapore.
However, over the last decade, they’ve been forced to delist both of these locations as Chinese business investment flooded in and American financial interests were shoved out. So now their new favorite spots are Switzerland, New Zealand, Luxembourger, and Ireland. Incidentally, these institutes are filling up with White Nationalists and other ultra-orthodox Christian Conservatives who refuse to acknowledge any country with brown people in it might have civil or economic liberties. The current issue of their annual newsletter blames a great deal of this shift on pandemic response and subsequent economic relief during the downturn. But there’s plenty of ink spilled denouncing any country that’s breaking away from the MAGA mindset, particularly Canada, China, and Mexico.
As our relationships with the BRICS and the various Latin American, African, and Southeast Asian states have deteriorated, our ability to recognize them as free and liberal have decayed alongside them. And the criticisms internally ebb and flow with the state of domestic politics - Obama ushering in a low-watermark for American liberty, for instance.
Funny story.
A while back someone posed a question online. They wanted to know why all Socialist countries fail? I answered that they don’t; look at Canada. They told me that I was a fool, because the Heritage Foundation had showed that Canada was freer than the USA. I asked why we shouldn’t have Canadian style health care? They never got back to me.
Reminded because of the folks you cited.
Cool little story and all, but Canada is the furthest thing away from socialist.
Socialism is not when the government does stuff. And the more stuff it does, it doesn’t get more socialist. Even if it does A LOT of stuff, it still won’t be communism.
Socialism/communism is the method and path through which the working class will liberate itself. It’s the death of classes and class struggle through the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Where did you get the impression that the Marxist definition of socialism was even relevant here? Bringing philosophical jargon into colloquial conversations is basically trolling at this point since philosophical/social studies jargon often use words that have zero semantic overlap with their colloquial counterpart.
Proselytize all you want but if you “um akshully” socialism in a colloquial conversation you will look like an unwashed cave troll at best.
More precisely, to use Marx’s definition: socialism is when workers own and fully control the means of production.
Government services: not socialism, no worker ownership or control.
State capitalism (like China and the former USSR): not socialism, no worker ownership or control.
Historically, the closest things we’ve seen to socialism so far are worker-owned co-operatives and city- or provincial-level anarcho-syndicalist systems such as the Spanish Anarchists before the fascists murdered them. Some grassroots movements like Podemos and Occupy have also attempted to implement such systems, with brief and limited success.
Again going back to Marx, he expected socialism to be an emergent phenomenon as late capitalism in the most advanced economies becomes unsustainable (he didn’t anticipate the transition from feudalism to state capitalism in Russia and China, or its leaders fraudulently calling it socialism). You’ll see more attempts to implement worker ownership and control, and you’ll see those who get fat off the existing system do everything they can to smack those attempts down. That’s where we are now. Then there will be a sort of phase transition that might take the form of a revolution or might be a less brutal change.
Now, whether Marx and his successors are correct in his prediction, only time will tell.
You know, I really don’t care how you define the system as long as it works.
I have been people argue about ‘socialism’ vs. ‘social democracy’ vs ‘communism’ since I was in grade school and none of it has done a drop of good for anyone whatsoever.
While people on the Left are wasting time arguing, the people on the Right are voting. They are the ones who keep winning because they keep their eyes on the prize.
Donald Trump is literally throwing people in jail for speaking out, and expanding the Gaza genocide right now, and you’re focusing on how I define 'socialism.
If you’re unable to clearly define your terms, you’re unable to think correctly. Knowing what you’re talking about is a good in and of itself.
That voting is a downstream consequence of a long program of mass manipulation and propaganda, backed with voter-suppression measures. Unless you address that root cause, lecturing people about not voting is a pointless distraction.
Making a couple posts didn’t take long, and education is part of the process. There can be no revolution without revolutionary consciousness. If you become capable of thinking more clearly, maybe you’ll someday be in a position to affect events in a more constructive way.
You never answered the main point.
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It never has been. US capitalism has always been the kind that actually exists in the wild: corrupt, subsidy-consuming, protected by regulatory capture, and inextricably entangled with the workings of the government.
Libertarians’ ideas of what capitlalism is fail to reflect any historical situation anywhere, since their simplistic models fail to consider second-order effects, non-linearities and human nature. But coupling with other systems is inevitable, and there is no economics that exists independently of politics. Karl Marx got a lot of things wrong, but he knew that key fact.
Trading through coercion.
Aka the mafia … backed by muscle and violence
Do as we say … or you’re going to have some trouble with your knees … you don’t want trouble with your knees do you? … wouldn’t want to have an accident with your knees
Also every existing state.
Awful nice automotive industry you got here. Be a damn shame if a training accident dropped some bombs on your factory. A real shame, it’d be.
Extortion.