Since when did offering people a bad choice equal "coercion"?
And why does everybody always assume that poverty equals stupidity?
For all we know, the vast majority of these test subjects are thinking, "sure, it's a sketchy deal, but in this cruel world a man's gotta make tough choices sometimes. Me? I'm happy to be able to sacrifice my body for the sake of my family's wellbeing. If this were the Stone Age, I wouldn't even have this opportunity."
It's not like the article gives us any indication that they're not thinking this. In fact, the author seems to be stuck somewhere between "making up shit to worry about" and "bothering to find out what the situation actually is". This merits serious consideration how?
As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, no law was broken.
As far as the NSA reading my email, I'd be honored. But then, I sincerely doubt they'll find anything worth going to the trouble.
Anyway, it's the nature of government to have to do some things in secret. I understand, accept, and approve of this. I remain unconvinced that Bush is doing anything out of the ordinary for presidents to do, as I remain unconvinced that he's doing anything particularly egregious.
Really, it doesn't even have anything to do with Bush at all, for me. I'd feel the same way if it was Clinton, or Kerry, or any other faction leader who was president at the time the order was signed.
Why don't you take it to court? If it's truly so obviously unconstitutional that any layman can glance over the Bill of Rights and find the problems, then you should have no trouble getting a lawyer willing to take the case.
And you shouldn't even really need to find a lawyer, either. There must be hundreds--if not thousands--of lawyers already working overtime on the biggest, easiest case of their careers: trivially prove before the Supreme Court that the Patriot Act is unconstitutional.
There can be only two reasons this isn't happening: Either all the lawyers are stupider than you are, or you have no fucking clue what you're talking about.
The domino theory in this case is that a stable democratic regime in Iraq will spread to neighboring regions.
Since a stable democratic regime has not yet been firmly established in Iraq, it's a little early to discuss the success of the domino effect.
Meanwhile, it's natural to expect that factions opposed to the spread of stable democratic regimes will take advantage of this transitional period to do whatever is in their power to prevent the plan from succeeding. For example, perpetrating violent attacks against Iraqi civilians and security forces on a regular basis. Or appointing hard-liners to positions of power in the hopes that their policies will stem the tide (and possibly have a direct influence on the plan).
Because, you asshat, neither of those stories have a significant technological factor.
Interesting NSA activities, on the other hand, are properly part of Slashdot's editorial portfolio.
You must be a liberal. Find an organization that does one thing, badly, and immediately complain that it hasn't bloated to the point where it can do everything badly.
I think that in this case, there was only one step involved: He signed an order instructing the NSA to eavesdrop on certain international calls originating from the U.S., something the NSA actually has the legal authority to do. My understanding is that the presidential order was used to expedite the approval process, something that the President has the legal authority to do.
Not that such eavesdropping is strictly necessary, of course. Nobody planning a terror attack would ever make contact with a compatriot outside the country.
You can't ask the ones that have been in accidents. They're all dead, due to the high fatality rate of motorcycle accidents.
Which strongly implies that the guy teaching the class knows something the dead guys didn't know, and that you should listen carefully to everything he tells you.
Perhaps with an open algorithm, however, they could have the whole academic community take part in tweaking it to make it not worth most people's while.
I can't decide which is cuter, nor more amusing: your idealism, or your naivete'.
When the Chinese put their collective wills to doing something it get done, it's just a matter of which millenium, that's all.
Okay, sure. In some millenium where no other world powers have any naval or air power to speak of, no recon satellites, and a century of global warming has made the northernmost latitudes much more temperate (without simultaneously submerging the land bridge and/or melting away the ice bridge), the Chinese could collectively succeed with such an invasion plan. My point wasn't that it couldn't be done, just that even if they did everything right, the operation would be so resource-intensive, and have so many points of catastrophic failure, that it would be doomed anyway (unless no world power opposed it and the arctic was much more hospitable than it currently is, as I mentioned above).
I mean, the majority of their forces would be occupied with logistics--transporting supplies to the invasion force. And the entire force would be strung out across thousands of miles of inhospitable wasteland. And anybody along the way could break the chain just by focusing a small fraction of their forces on it. Have you ever looked at a map of the region? Have you ever noticed how far they'd have to march, just to get out of Russian territory? Have you ever wondered how they'd defend their homeland, after sending all of their fighting people on a death march through Siberia?
I hope the Canadians do get them hooked on beer, it'll make them wish they never came to the United States.
Sadly, I don't think it would work out that way. Last time I checked, both Canada and the U.S. have large Chinese populations, who seem happy to be here in spite of our taste in beer (terrible though it may be).
I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say.
I think what you're saying is that people work better in a quiet, non-disruptive environment.
What I have been saying is that Google seems to think that people work better in a team environment, and that given Google's success, I think they might be on to something.
Is there anything I haven't made clear, about my thinking on this?
Can you imagine the logistical nightmare of marching several million people from China to the U.S. via the Arctic?
I hardly know where to begin. In order to secure their supply chain, China would need naval and air power they just don't have. In order to sustain such an invasion force over such distances in such conditions, they'd need wealth on an unprecedented scale. In order to have even a slight hope of success, they'd need to conceal the early stages--the first few months or years, that is--of their march from the rest of the world. I honestly cannot imagine a single aspect of this idea that is even remotely possible or sane.
What few survivors made it to the Canadian border wouldn't be invaders, they'd be refugees. The Canadians, bless their hearts, would welcome them with blankets and bad beer.
For one thing, defending an Island against invasion is one of the most efficient forms of warfare there is, and Taiwan has a modern military with which to do the job.
The Chinese government would have to sealift a substantial invasion force which, as I've said couldn't prevail against one or two--let alone five to seven--U.S. carrier groups. Most of the invasion force would be sunk before ground troops were even involved, and the rest would be easily defeated by the Taiwanese forces on the beach.
Where else could China go? Nowhere else by sea, for the same obvious reasons that have prevented them from invading Taiwan.
They could invade the Korean peninsula. Then they'd have to deal with a similar situation (the assault of a choke point--the peninsula itself in this case, rather than the beaches of Taiwan), and they'd be up against another modern army in a strong defensive position. They'd also be susceptible to air strikes, artillery, and cruise missiles during the entire campaign, all courtesy of the U.S. Navy. Again, a difficult proposition, even without involving U.S. ground forces.
They could invade southeast Asia, I suppose. That might be... interesting. But it wouldn't be the end of the world, and it probably wouldn't solve any of their major problems. (It would also, probably, be more trouble than it's worth.)
Eastern Russia seems like their best bet. It's remote, frozen, and thinly defended by a weakening and disorganized Russian government. It's also full of natural resources that China could make much use of in their industrial development.
That's what I expect to see: China and Russia bickering over north-central Asia. It might even involve nuclear weapons. It won't signify a major threat to world peace of stability, though.
Strangely, going "all in" in the Middle East would require very little commitment of our naval power.
Stranger still, China's huge army can't really go anywhere interesting except by sea.
Strangest of all, China does not have the naval power to compete with a U.S. carrier group, let alone overcome the approximately seven U.S. carrier groups that customarily loiter in that part of the world.
Why these carrier groups customarily loiter in that part of the world is left as an exercise to the reader.
It doesn't pick up any energy at all from falling. In fact, it loses energy potential when it falls.
It gained energy potential by being lifted up to the top of the waterfall in the first place. That energy potential was gained at the expense of whatever system lifted it up there in the first place. The lifting system had to lose energy equal to (actually, slightly greater than) the potential energy gained by the water in this process.
Thus, the total energy budget of the universe breaks even, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics is obeyed yet again.
You're right that wall sockets and whatnot would be Layer 1. For some reason, I always think of NICs as being Layer 2, because the Layer 2 protocols deal (in part) with NIC functionality and operation. So I naturally made the same mistake mapping wall sockets to the OSI model.
Oh, there's no doubt in my mind that baboons are violent creatures with an almost human-like aptitude for using whatever tool is at hand to deliver savage beatings in a spontaneous and effective manner.
But please note that baboons have not used their opposable thumbs (nor their clearly not-quite-human-enough brains) to devise advanced-technology hammers of their own, nor chains of any kind. Nor have they shown any interest in or ability to use those hammers to construct low-income housing for less well-off baboons. There's also a distinct lack of baboons using chains in bicycle drivetrains, internal combustion engine timing mechanisms, or even in the service of powerful machine guns (which you'd think that baboons would be pretty interested in).
Things like modern hammers and linked chains of metal loops are human-devised tools, not baboon-devised tools. The fact that baboons have figured out how to use them for the most primitive of applications--bashing things--doesn't do much to convince me of their smartitude and Alien-impressing tool-using capabilities. Wake me up when baboons use their thumbs to get properly into the Stone Age.
I mean, several species of Ape have opposable thumbs, and the last time I checked about the only tool they've mastered is the ant-scraping twig.
I'm sure that will totally impress the Space Aliens, when they arrive.
"Well, we have a couple technology-oriented species to choose from, on this world."
"Really? Have you figured out which one is worth negotiating with?"
"It's difficult to determine. You see, they both have opposable thumbs, which they have each used to devise clever tools. One species has devised internal combustion engines, heavier-than-air flight, electromagnetic forcefields (used mainly for information transfer), and rudimentary artificial biological manipulation."
"That sounds promising. What about the other species?"
"Well, the other species has devised a method of using twigs to scrape the insides of insect hives, harvesting the hive-creatures as food."
"Ooh. I see what you mean. That is a tough decision. What about these aquatic-type species? I see they have a richly artistic culture, based on beautifully poetic songs."
"True, but they don't have opposable thumbs. As you know, it all comes down to opposable thumbs."
"Good point. Shall we negotiate with the hairless apes, or the hairy ones?"
"I admit I'm stumped. If it's all right with you, let's just flip a coin."
Because of course it's all in the thumbs. The differences between rat and human brains are totally irrelevant.
I mean, you can't even flip a coin without opposable thumbs.
And that's what I'm refering as ignorance- you have *no* way of knowing what you perceive is correct. Ultimately, all we really have is a collection of myths- some of which mirror reality better than others, but all of which are valuable as insight into the reality that is bigger than all the myths combined.
See, this is where I keep getting confused.
First of all, by your own logic, you have no way of knowing if I "have *no* way of knowing if what I perceive is correct". So why claim it as a matter of fact, rather than as a matter of your own personal opinion?
Second, you claim that some myths "mirror reality better than others", but this contradicts your thesis that we have no idea what reality is, let alone whether or not we're mirroring it accurately at all.
Then you claim that these myths give us valuable insight, even though your logic rejects the very notion of value altogether.
Finally, you claim that there is a "reality that is greater than all the myths combined", but again your own logic is (ironically) absolutely clear that you cannot possibly have any idea at all if reality is really that great, or even that it exists at all.
You keep talking about certain things as if they are equally true for both of us--the nature of reality, the value of our myths, the limits of human perception and enlightenment. But your own logic insists that these kinds of objective facts are impossible.
Given the rate of change over the past 50 years, I find it hard to believe that current events have set us on an unavoidable course to nuclear apocalypse 50 years from now.
A lot of things can and will change between now and then.
Besides, I can think of at least one obvious solution to this problem: "Restructure our debt or we'll nuke you silly. After all, it's not like you've left us anything to lose."
Anyway, are you seriously saying that armageddon is inevitable, and that the great powers of the world, the leaders of the U.S., China, the WTO, and the United Nations have all completely overlooked this, and that where they have failed you have been clever enough to see it all?
And are you, in fact, claiming that not only are you so much cleverer than the Chinese and U.S. leadership who signed us up for this unavoidable apocalypse, but that since you in all your cleverness are completely unable to figure out any way to save ourselves, it must be the case that nobody else is going to be clever enough to save us either?
Because it really does sound like you're claiming both that you are possibly the smartest person on the planet, and that not even smartitude of your caliber can solve this problem.
You'd think that someone with this kind of power in their subjective reality would prefer to believe in a world full of love and peace. Yet you seem to have a fetish for grim and depressing subjective truths instead. Have you ever wondered if the problem isn't the trade deficit at all, but rather your perception of the trade deficit?
Slashdot Mirror
Since when did offering people a bad choice equal "coercion"?
And why does everybody always assume that poverty equals stupidity?
For all we know, the vast majority of these test subjects are thinking, "sure, it's a sketchy deal, but in this cruel world a man's gotta make tough choices sometimes. Me? I'm happy to be able to sacrifice my body for the sake of my family's wellbeing. If this were the Stone Age, I wouldn't even have this opportunity."
It's not like the article gives us any indication that they're not thinking this. In fact, the author seems to be stuck somewhere between "making up shit to worry about" and "bothering to find out what the situation actually is". This merits serious consideration how?
So would you say that the current situation in Iraq is the lesser of two evils, vis a vis the situation in Iraq under Saddam Hussein?
As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, no law was broken.
As far as the NSA reading my email, I'd be honored. But then, I sincerely doubt they'll find anything worth going to the trouble.
Anyway, it's the nature of government to have to do some things in secret. I understand, accept, and approve of this. I remain unconvinced that Bush is doing anything out of the ordinary for presidents to do, as I remain unconvinced that he's doing anything particularly egregious.
Really, it doesn't even have anything to do with Bush at all, for me. I'd feel the same way if it was Clinton, or Kerry, or any other faction leader who was president at the time the order was signed.
Why don't you take it to court? If it's truly so obviously unconstitutional that any layman can glance over the Bill of Rights and find the problems, then you should have no trouble getting a lawyer willing to take the case.
And you shouldn't even really need to find a lawyer, either. There must be hundreds--if not thousands--of lawyers already working overtime on the biggest, easiest case of their careers: trivially prove before the Supreme Court that the Patriot Act is unconstitutional.
There can be only two reasons this isn't happening: Either all the lawyers are stupider than you are, or you have no fucking clue what you're talking about.
I think it's a matter of patience.
The domino theory in this case is that a stable democratic regime in Iraq will spread to neighboring regions.
Since a stable democratic regime has not yet been firmly established in Iraq, it's a little early to discuss the success of the domino effect.
Meanwhile, it's natural to expect that factions opposed to the spread of stable democratic regimes will take advantage of this transitional period to do whatever is in their power to prevent the plan from succeeding. For example, perpetrating violent attacks against Iraqi civilians and security forces on a regular basis. Or appointing hard-liners to positions of power in the hopes that their policies will stem the tide (and possibly have a direct influence on the plan).
So according to this stirring quotation from Goethe, geniuses are often labeled as insane.
But then, insane people are also often labeled as insane.
Despite your stirring contribution, I fear we are no closer to understanding whether or not Nietzche was insane.
Because, you asshat, neither of those stories have a significant technological factor.
Interesting NSA activities, on the other hand, are properly part of Slashdot's editorial portfolio.
You must be a liberal. Find an organization that does one thing, badly, and immediately complain that it hasn't bloated to the point where it can do everything badly.
I think that in this case, there was only one step involved: He signed an order instructing the NSA to eavesdrop on certain international calls originating from the U.S., something the NSA actually has the legal authority to do. My understanding is that the presidential order was used to expedite the approval process, something that the President has the legal authority to do.
Not that such eavesdropping is strictly necessary, of course. Nobody planning a terror attack would ever make contact with a compatriot outside the country.
yuo si R teh dumb.
Simply because we scientific sorts cannot be bothered to calculate the actual quantity of monkeys necessary.
Well, as far as the works of Shakespeare go, we have been able to confirm that we have more than enough monkeys to get the job done.
You can't ask the ones that have been in accidents. They're all dead, due to the high fatality rate of motorcycle accidents.
Which strongly implies that the guy teaching the class knows something the dead guys didn't know, and that you should listen carefully to everything he tells you.
Perhaps with an open algorithm, however, they could have the whole academic community take part in tweaking it to make it not worth most people's while.
I can't decide which is cuter, nor more amusing: your idealism, or your naivete'.
not as insane as sailing here and landing an invasion force in 'Frisco bay would be.
Please note that "less insane" does not mean "sane" or "feasible".
Remember these are the same people who built the only manmade stucture visible from Earth orbit.
No, they're not.
When the Chinese put their collective wills to doing something it get done, it's just a matter of which millenium, that's all.
Okay, sure. In some millenium where no other world powers have any naval or air power to speak of, no recon satellites, and a century of global warming has made the northernmost latitudes much more temperate (without simultaneously submerging the land bridge and/or melting away the ice bridge), the Chinese could collectively succeed with such an invasion plan. My point wasn't that it couldn't be done, just that even if they did everything right, the operation would be so resource-intensive, and have so many points of catastrophic failure, that it would be doomed anyway (unless no world power opposed it and the arctic was much more hospitable than it currently is, as I mentioned above).
I mean, the majority of their forces would be occupied with logistics--transporting supplies to the invasion force. And the entire force would be strung out across thousands of miles of inhospitable wasteland. And anybody along the way could break the chain just by focusing a small fraction of their forces on it. Have you ever looked at a map of the region? Have you ever noticed how far they'd have to march, just to get out of Russian territory? Have you ever wondered how they'd defend their homeland, after sending all of their fighting people on a death march through Siberia?
I hope the Canadians do get them hooked on beer, it'll make them wish they never came to the United States.
Sadly, I don't think it would work out that way. Last time I checked, both Canada and the U.S. have large Chinese populations, who seem happy to be here in spite of our taste in beer (terrible though it may be).
I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say.
I think what you're saying is that people work better in a quiet, non-disruptive environment.
What I have been saying is that Google seems to think that people work better in a team environment, and that given Google's success, I think they might be on to something.
Is there anything I haven't made clear, about my thinking on this?
You're kidding, right?
Can you imagine the logistical nightmare of marching several million people from China to the U.S. via the Arctic?
I hardly know where to begin. In order to secure their supply chain, China would need naval and air power they just don't have. In order to sustain such an invasion force over such distances in such conditions, they'd need wealth on an unprecedented scale. In order to have even a slight hope of success, they'd need to conceal the early stages--the first few months or years, that is--of their march from the rest of the world. I honestly cannot imagine a single aspect of this idea that is even remotely possible or sane.
What few survivors made it to the Canadian border wouldn't be invaders, they'd be refugees. The Canadians, bless their hearts, would welcome them with blankets and bad beer.
There's no need to fight a land war in Asia.
For one thing, defending an Island against invasion is one of the most efficient forms of warfare there is, and Taiwan has a modern military with which to do the job.
The Chinese government would have to sealift a substantial invasion force which, as I've said couldn't prevail against one or two--let alone five to seven--U.S. carrier groups. Most of the invasion force would be sunk before ground troops were even involved, and the rest would be easily defeated by the Taiwanese forces on the beach.
Where else could China go? Nowhere else by sea, for the same obvious reasons that have prevented them from invading Taiwan.
They could invade the Korean peninsula. Then they'd have to deal with a similar situation (the assault of a choke point--the peninsula itself in this case, rather than the beaches of Taiwan), and they'd be up against another modern army in a strong defensive position. They'd also be susceptible to air strikes, artillery, and cruise missiles during the entire campaign, all courtesy of the U.S. Navy. Again, a difficult proposition, even without involving U.S. ground forces.
They could invade southeast Asia, I suppose. That might be... interesting. But it wouldn't be the end of the world, and it probably wouldn't solve any of their major problems. (It would also, probably, be more trouble than it's worth.)
Eastern Russia seems like their best bet. It's remote, frozen, and thinly defended by a weakening and disorganized Russian government. It's also full of natural resources that China could make much use of in their industrial development.
That's what I expect to see: China and Russia bickering over north-central Asia. It might even involve nuclear weapons. It won't signify a major threat to world peace of stability, though.
Strangely, going "all in" in the Middle East would require very little commitment of our naval power.
Stranger still, China's huge army can't really go anywhere interesting except by sea.
Strangest of all, China does not have the naval power to compete with a U.S. carrier group, let alone overcome the approximately seven U.S. carrier groups that customarily loiter in that part of the world.
Why these carrier groups customarily loiter in that part of the world is left as an exercise to the reader.
It doesn't pick up any energy at all from falling. In fact, it loses energy potential when it falls.
It gained energy potential by being lifted up to the top of the waterfall in the first place. That energy potential was gained at the expense of whatever system lifted it up there in the first place. The lifting system had to lose energy equal to (actually, slightly greater than) the potential energy gained by the water in this process.
Thus, the total energy budget of the universe breaks even, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics is obeyed yet again.
Nice!
You're right that wall sockets and whatnot would be Layer 1. For some reason, I always think of NICs as being Layer 2, because the Layer 2 protocols deal (in part) with NIC functionality and operation. So I naturally made the same mistake mapping wall sockets to the OSI model.
Oh, there's no doubt in my mind that baboons are violent creatures with an almost human-like aptitude for using whatever tool is at hand to deliver savage beatings in a spontaneous and effective manner.
But please note that baboons have not used their opposable thumbs (nor their clearly not-quite-human-enough brains) to devise advanced-technology hammers of their own, nor chains of any kind. Nor have they shown any interest in or ability to use those hammers to construct low-income housing for less well-off baboons. There's also a distinct lack of baboons using chains in bicycle drivetrains, internal combustion engine timing mechanisms, or even in the service of powerful machine guns (which you'd think that baboons would be pretty interested in).
Things like modern hammers and linked chains of metal loops are human-devised tools, not baboon-devised tools. The fact that baboons have figured out how to use them for the most primitive of applications--bashing things--doesn't do much to convince me of their smartitude and Alien-impressing tool-using capabilities. Wake me up when baboons use their thumbs to get properly into the Stone Age.
It's a joke:
"What if we described electrical power in terms of the OSI model?"
Riiight. It all comes down to opposable thumbs.
I mean, several species of Ape have opposable thumbs, and the last time I checked about the only tool they've mastered is the ant-scraping twig.
I'm sure that will totally impress the Space Aliens, when they arrive.
"Well, we have a couple technology-oriented species to choose from, on this world."
"Really? Have you figured out which one is worth negotiating with?"
"It's difficult to determine. You see, they both have opposable thumbs, which they have each used to devise clever tools. One species has devised internal combustion engines, heavier-than-air flight, electromagnetic forcefields (used mainly for information transfer), and rudimentary artificial biological manipulation."
"That sounds promising. What about the other species?"
"Well, the other species has devised a method of using twigs to scrape the insides of insect hives, harvesting the hive-creatures as food."
"Ooh. I see what you mean. That is a tough decision. What about these aquatic-type species? I see they have a richly artistic culture, based on beautifully poetic songs."
"True, but they don't have opposable thumbs. As you know, it all comes down to opposable thumbs."
"Good point. Shall we negotiate with the hairless apes, or the hairy ones?"
"I admit I'm stumped. If it's all right with you, let's just flip a coin."
Because of course it's all in the thumbs. The differences between rat and human brains are totally irrelevant.
I mean, you can't even flip a coin without opposable thumbs.
Actually, in the OSI model, the Power Cord is at Layer 1, the physical layer of the power sytem.
Things like wall sockets and the power port on the back of your workstation would be Layer 2.
And that's what I'm refering as ignorance- you have *no* way of knowing what you perceive is correct. Ultimately, all we really have is a collection of myths- some of which mirror reality better than others, but all of which are valuable as insight into the reality that is bigger than all the myths combined.
See, this is where I keep getting confused.
First of all, by your own logic, you have no way of knowing if I "have *no* way of knowing if what I perceive is correct". So why claim it as a matter of fact, rather than as a matter of your own personal opinion?
Second, you claim that some myths "mirror reality better than others", but this contradicts your thesis that we have no idea what reality is, let alone whether or not we're mirroring it accurately at all.
Then you claim that these myths give us valuable insight, even though your logic rejects the very notion of value altogether.
Finally, you claim that there is a "reality that is greater than all the myths combined", but again your own logic is (ironically) absolutely clear that you cannot possibly have any idea at all if reality is really that great, or even that it exists at all.
You keep talking about certain things as if they are equally true for both of us--the nature of reality, the value of our myths, the limits of human perception and enlightenment. But your own logic insists that these kinds of objective facts are impossible.
Given the rate of change over the past 50 years, I find it hard to believe that current events have set us on an unavoidable course to nuclear apocalypse 50 years from now.
A lot of things can and will change between now and then.
Besides, I can think of at least one obvious solution to this problem: "Restructure our debt or we'll nuke you silly. After all, it's not like you've left us anything to lose."
Anyway, are you seriously saying that armageddon is inevitable, and that the great powers of the world, the leaders of the U.S., China, the WTO, and the United Nations have all completely overlooked this, and that where they have failed you have been clever enough to see it all?
And are you, in fact, claiming that not only are you so much cleverer than the Chinese and U.S. leadership who signed us up for this unavoidable apocalypse, but that since you in all your cleverness are completely unable to figure out any way to save ourselves, it must be the case that nobody else is going to be clever enough to save us either?
Because it really does sound like you're claiming both that you are possibly the smartest person on the planet, and that not even smartitude of your caliber can solve this problem.
You'd think that someone with this kind of power in their subjective reality would prefer to believe in a world full of love and peace. Yet you seem to have a fetish for grim and depressing subjective truths instead. Have you ever wondered if the problem isn't the trade deficit at all, but rather your perception of the trade deficit?