• @JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world
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    24 months ago

    Subsistence living

    I don’t disagree with your point but I think this argument could have been more compelling. The way you’ve phrase it here almost makes these tariffs sound good to a socialist and we don’t want to accidentally push people to the other side. Basically, your intentions are great but execution could have been just a hair better if you don’t mind a bit of pedantry from someone who has studied debate for a few years:

    A lot of us want to be producing everything we need and giving away/trading what we can. That sounds ideal. We need to be certain how how we do it though. Tariffs are a bandaid to a bigger, more systematic issue. We need to build up the infrastructure required to take care of our people, create the systems to ensure our people are taken care, and export every bit of excess. We also need to make sure people don’t say they’re going to do that (Like the orange and the melon did) and then turn around and do the opposite (like the orange and the melon did).

    If you’d like, I can give you a some more specific pointers on what to say to be more effective as well (bring solutions along with problems)

      • @JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world
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        14 months ago

        That’s because you’re probably smart enough to hear what they’re meaning and not take it at face value. Not everyone is, so we need to pick very careful words. Subsistence living is something that sounds nice to a lot of socialists, so we can’t call our enemies policy subsistence living. We need to call it what it really is, isolationism. They didn’t build the infrastructure required for subsistence living first

          • @JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world
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            24 months ago

            You’re right, subsistence living in an individual level is impossible. There’s a lot of Americans though, and they could do subsistence living if they worked together. Again, you and I aren’t disagreeing. We just need to make sure to use the right words. Even if subsistence living isn’t a commonly held thought, it’s one with a more positive connotation than Isolationism. We should use words with negative connotations to describe negative bills

              • @JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world
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                23 months ago

                Yes, you’re right. I’m being pedantic. I should have forewarned that, my bad.

                And you’re also right that people tend to tune out negative words. At first, sure. But, assuming you’re American, I bet I could cause some cognitive dissonance in you if you I use the right ones. Isolationism isn’t one of those yet, but in 30 years we need that word to sound the same as “Feudalism”

                  • @JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world
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                    13 months ago

                    I can’t say for sure how much indoctrination has happened, but I remember hearing “isolationism” as a sort of bogeyman in history classes. So there’s at least that for some people