Troy Presley

Economic Crises and the Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes Cambridge Core - Asian Studies - Economic Crises and the Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes

So. I wrote a dissertation on how economic crises can lead to the breakdown of authoritarian regimes.

Here are three key point to keep in mind as you watch the news this week 🧵

This is really true. My current government sources the past eight weeks have risked so much more and done so much more than I have. I have just been their voice.

That first week when my sources risked so much, I really struggled accepting I was getting so much attention and they never would.

Just read a Cato piece going after Trump’s tariff policies. If this freight train gets derailed, this tariff obsession looks to be the one that does it (unless they do touch the Social Security stove).

Similar dynamics to why big studio movies follow predictable patterns even when it’s obvious movie goers’ are begging for something original…

Why make a bet on something big when you can get a near guaranteed outcome with low-effort slop? Especially if powerful people will fight you the whole way

By the end of this administration there might be like a half dozen agencies sitting in a quantum superposition of "legally existing" and "functionally abolished" and unless SCOTUS protects them they will just forever operate only when Ds are in charge and disappear when Rs are

This is one of the greatest things I have ever seen

Always one of my favorites

My employer just threatened me with tariffs because their trade defect with me is too big… and then told me I should let the company annex my house if I want the tariffs removed

X post by Timothy Snyder (@TimothyD ...), posted 6 hours ago. The post reads, "The people Attorney General Bondi is calling 'terrorists' have had no trial and no chance to defend them. We do not know they are. Ignoring the Constitution does not make us safe. It puts us all in peril."

I know this first hand. When I was a child, my entire community was branded as spies and sabateurs, justifying our internment inside barbed wire camps for years without due process, trial or charge.

They want the unreviewable power to grab people and render them to a foreign gulag.

Monday's blog post (17/03) is now posted (17:43 EAST) - Tariffs and more – Part 2 - billmitchell.org/blog/?p=62434 #mmt

The number of digits in Pi

Exactly

Babylon bee saying “federal just appoints himself president” and elon musk saying “seriously, this is essentially what’s happening!!”

the fact that these people think determining legality is supposed to be a presidential power is the whole fucking problem in the first place

since she was 8 months old
www.jsonline.com/story/news/l...

If Canada is unified enough to tolerate it, the Canadian government can, first, fill their strategic oil reserve to the brim, then subsidize the oil workers enough to keep the plants in good shape until this stupid trade war ends or alternate foreign buyers can be arranged.

nothing like having idiots install an ancient operating system on your country so none of your rights work anymore

History repeats itself

The deal is I punch you in the face

How about I give you $50 instead

Nope, I want to punch you

I’ll buy you dinner but no violence

Sorry, I really like to punch

Ok, what if you slap me medium-hard

It’s a punch in the face or nothing

Ok fine, punch me. I can’t be blamed for obstructing a deal

It is legal to criticize the president. It is legal to criticize the president's actions. It is legal to criticize the president's advisors. It is legal and patriotic and the blood of a healthy society to hold those in power accountable, and even to mock them. Remember it.

YouTube video by Real Progressives The Death of the Left? w/ Steve Hall & Simon Winlow

Folks keep saying we need some media of our own

But then we don’t support them.

So here’s a few to follow

🧵

1/. youtu.be/pZSXGSDgtyQ?...

AOC should announce a primary against Schumer tonight.

An economic measure (eg GDP) is used to assess how we are doing
As well as being a bad measure (eg costs of the cyclone are added to it) it has become an end in itself
We need a measure of wellbeing which increases with good things and decreases with bad things eg Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)

Not to mention that Dems, as a party, don’t have far to fall in approvals anyways… might as well take advantage of the *one* good thing about that.

They won’t fold, but there could be ownership changes. Particularly X is in that danger because Musk’s purchase used Tesla stock as collateral, and depends on Tesla’s valuation.
If that happened, the Saudis could end up with an uncomfortable level of ownership of X.

That is the true evil of too much wealth inequality… the fear of falling from the heights is so great that even “good” people are too tempted to pull up the ladder. Perpetuating the cycle.

Just this

Although I’d count myself as one of them, and don’t think it’s always bad, this is definitely the dark side of the global cosmopolitan “citizen of the world” mentality… you’re not bought in to local outcomes enough to stick your neck out to fix things.

To be clear, I’m not trying to defend my initial simplification as an all encompassing explanation of international trade with no caveats. It was meant to be an easy to understand version of the previous concept that is “true enough” without using jargon.