r/politics • u/sweatycat New York • 1d ago

California to Negotiate Trade With Other Countries to Bypass Trump Tariffs

https://www.newsweek.com/california-newsom-trade-trump-tariffs-2055414
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u/pomonamike California 1d ago

It’s kinda crazy that we are a second-level political division when by ourselves we would be one of the economically biggest nations on the planet.

It really doesn’t make practical sense when we have to bend the knee to certain senators that were voted in by fewer people than live in say… Riverside.

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u/AndyVale 1d ago edited 1d ago

I remember discussing this with an American acquaintance saying I didn't get the electoral college. For many millions of Californians their vote is worth less than someone in one of the smaller states.

He retorted "so the farmers in Wyoming shouldn't be listened to over the liberal techies in California?"

Because I had recently read some stuff on the topic, I pointed out that California actually has an enormous amount of agricultural workers. I couldn't remember the exact stats but it was a sizeable amount.

They immediately pivoted to that being why Californians' vote shouldn't count as much, because they didn't understand as much about other issues.

You can't win when somebody makes up the rules as they go along 🤷‍♂️

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u/ToastyJackson 1d ago

You can literally just flip the argument when they say dumb shit like that. They’re worried about the “tyranny of the majority” telling the minority what to do, but if that’s how it works, the current system is a tyranny of the minority where the majority is at the whim of the minority. If your only options are tyranny, there’s no justifiable reason why it shouldn’t be a tyranny of the majority so that more people are happy.

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u/AlwaysShittyKnsasCty 1d ago

This is amazing, actually. I’ve never thought about it in this way, and your conclusion is quite logical. Very nice.

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u/gakule 1d ago

Unfortunately logic still doesn't actually convince conservatives. They just get mad and stomp away.

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u/AlwaysShittyKnsasCty 1d ago

What’s that quote? “You can’t out-reason a person who didn’t use reason in the first place.” That’s not the quote, but it’s in the ballpark.

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u/gakule 1d ago

I like to use "you can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into" - but yours is a fun way to say it with potentially a more devastating subtlety to it

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u/AlwaysShittyKnsasCty 1d ago

Nope, yours was the one! Haha. I’m just an ineloquent misrememberer.