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The Trump administration has crafted a draft bill — ordered by the president — that would declare America's abandonment of World Trade Organization rules, according to Axios. The bill essentially provides President Donald Trump — who has argued for a better position for the U.S. in big trade pacts — a license to raise U.S. tariffs at will, without congressional consent and largely outside of the international rules governed by the WTO. The bill, titled the "United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act," would give Trump unilateral power to ignore the two most basic principles of the WTO and negotiate one-on-one with any country.
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'FART' Bill Indicates Trump's Intention to Dump WTO
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would
be a merrier world.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:10PM (13 children)
When did something as academic as economics become a matter of "belief"? Shouldn't we try to do what we know works instead of picking an economic God like there's no way to know what actually happens in the afterlife?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:51PM (10 children)
In post modernism, everything is a belief and there are no "truths".
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:08PM (6 children)
Except that fundamental premise, of course.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:07PM (5 children)
Any time I hear someone say "postmodernism means there's no truth herpaderp hurr how did they come to that conclusion they're stealing the concept durk-a-derrhhhh" I immediately do a mount /dev/hazuki/face /mnt/desk.
Postmodernism, as distinguished from the modernism that came before it, simply implies a rejection of a teleological impulse behind human history. That is, ideas like Marxism's dialectical materialism, which every illiterate RWNJ pig jackoff on this site would peg as "postmodern" due to not knowing what the hell they're talking about. Postmodernism proper only means that there's no concrete end goal in sight, that we have to make it up as we go along.
It does *not* even imply, let alone explicitly call for, epistemological scepticism. Now that this has been made clear, I expect not to see that sort of laziness out of you or anyone else who could reasonably have been expected to read this again. Let's be less wrong, shall wel? And incidentally, I'm not a postmodernist; you can perhaps call me a neo-Modernist, if there is such a thing.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Informative) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday July 03 2018, @10:04PM (1 child)
https://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/postmodernism.htm [allaboutphilosophy.org]
Is there a better source that you would recommend as everything that I've read seems to agree with this including wikipedia:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmodernism-philosophy [britannica.com]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday July 04 2018, @03:41AM
If they truly don't believe there is a such thing as absolute truth, they have rather neatly torpedoed their justification for believing this in the first place. Gotta have an axiom *somewhere* yanno...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday July 04 2018, @01:26AM
Sorry to disagree, but what you state is one possible implication of postmodernism, but certainly not the only one. I've known many academics in many field who would identify with the "postmodern" movement, and many of them believe strongly in relativism of various degrees. The most hardcore definitely believe constructs like "truth" and "logic" are merely products of one possible Western rationalist philosophy (particularly analytic philosophy), and "deconstructing" truth and even notions of single concepts of "fact" are very commonly accepted as part of the methodology for escaping the legacy of a narrow-minded perspective (often also characterized by such folks as Eurocentric, imperialist, and colonialist).
When I first encountered hardcore relativism in the academy a couple decades ago (and it was around for decades before that), I was worried about the implications, one of which was the deconstructing of truth that could ultimately be used by fascist political movements. Alas, the rhetoric and methodologies of the far left academics has now been appropriated by right-wing forces as we now have entered a "post-truth" era in broader culture... The vision of the late 60s deconstructionists has now finally come to fruition, just used for political purposes they never acknowledged could happen.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:34AM (1 child)
You're ruining a perfectly serviceable joke by taking it seriously.
Are you kidding? That my favorite activities are fishing and napping is widely known. In the past eighteen years or so I've turned down far more work than I've done. Laziness isn't just a trait with me, it's my life's ambition.
Okay, okay. I know you meant intellectual laziness. I don't really put any serious thought into postmodernists because I view them as absurd but mostly harmless as long as they don't go trying to proselytize it out to the general population. So I don't have much to say about them unless someone drops me an easy setup for a joke.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday July 04 2018, @09:01PM
Except they are proselytizing it out to the general population.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:42PM (2 children)
No "truths" doesn't mean no "facts". We figured out how to address the bias of human belief by relying on facts in the 17th-18th centuries; it's called Rationalism. And while I'd be the first to complain about the lack of the Scientific Method in the squishier fields like economics, it's a hell of a lot less subjective than mere "belief".
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday July 03 2018, @10:26PM (1 child)
All facts are subjective as there is no objective reality. My truth is different than your truth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @11:56PM
And my truth is that your truth sucks monkey balls.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:19PM (1 child)
Economics was never that much more rigorous than religion to begin with, mostly because, like most or all organized religion, it's based on false assumptions. The idea of the rational actor and the possibility of limitless growth, exponential or otherwise, are the two chief culprits here. The assumption that all economics is a zero-sum game or worse is a plausible third. All of these are effectively idols.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday July 03 2018, @11:59PM
That's more or less what I came here to say.
I was somewhat shocked when a friend's son applied for an economics job in our national Reserve Bank and was not even given an interview, because his master's degree in economics was from the "wrong" university.
It turns out they only accept economics grads from one particular university, because they have learnt the "correct" things.
From what I understand there are various high priests in economics and there have been schisms over the years, so he was excommunicated.
Don't worry though. He works as a builder, and is doing very well for himself.