April 29, 2025

Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1481

RIP Dave Allen, Shriekback's new album, musings on the tariff situation.

Hello hello hello. Good morning. Hello. Hello. Hello. What is up. Tuesday. Whoo. My fingers hurt, my hands hurt, trigger fingers everywhere, my arms both hurt, not sure why my left arm has started hurting these past months, joining my tennis-elbow-and-fucked-shoulder-riddled right arm. Just hunky dory. Aging is awesome.

Listening to Shriekback this morning, Dave Allen, formerly of Gang of Four. I had heard he died this month but didn’t really process it yet, didn’t all click for me. Then Hugo Burhnam from Gang of Four said at the end of the show that they were selling things for their old comrade Dave Allen, who recently passed and his family was now burdened with a load of healthcare bills. And then Emma looked him up on Wikipedia and reminded me of what I used to know: that Dave Allen left Gang of Four and started Shriekback, which was one of my favorite bands in High School.

I also knew, from a Shriekback deep dive about five years ago, that Shriekback has basically kept releasing albums this whole time. They were mostly difficult to find, not on streaming and self-released, but they were all still really really good. And so I checked in yesterday and sure enough, new Shriekback album, in 2025. Dude got one more album out from his deathbed. Titled Monument and so far it is awesome.

Also all the late-period Shriekback albums are on Spotify now. But not the hits. Their 1990 greatest hits album is on there, but “Nemesis,” “Everything that Rises…” and “Fish Below the Ice” are all blacked out. “My Spine is the Bassline” is on there, though. Weird.

I remember hearing “Everything that Rises Must Converge” for the first time in my friend Val’s garage and I was just like “Oh my god how does anyone make music like this this is amazing.” I mean, I was sixteen. But still. Oil and Gold is such a banger of an album.

RIP, Dave Allen.

Not to be confused with Dave Allen, producer of the Cure, Depeche Mode, Human League, etc. A perpetual source of confusion in my youth.

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Been thinking about these tariffs, the supposed impending doom of all shipping from China having stopped. People claiming shit is going to hit the fan in a couple weeks. Are they right? Quite possibly! Does seem the most logical conclusion of literally all ships from China just… not coming here any more.

But I have found time and time again that the global economy is such an infinitely complicated affair, more complicated than anything mankind has ever previously built, that it often behaves in unexpected ways. I mean, I’m not saying the shit won’t hit the fan, but I am saying it… might not?

(Well, everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What this book presupposes is... maybe he didn't?)

Plus, of course, Trump could undo it all, and I suppose he will, once the shit hits the fan. But someone might actually get to him in advance and convince him in advance. Who knows.

And then we have airplanes, so I suppose if he backs down, even if all the ships have stopped coming, we can kick it into high gear and stage some sort of a Berlin Airlift of cheap Temu shit to save us Americans from ourselves. Tide us over until the ships start sailing again.

Inspired by Spencer Wright’s absolutely fantastic entry into his Scope Of Work newsletter, yesterday, I decided to spend a little time looking at all the shit around me, while sitting at this desk, and figuring out where each thing was made. It was surprisingly hard! Lotta things don’t have labels on them anymore, or I can’t find them. I thought that was, like, a law? But I suspect a) a lot of the labels are on the packaging, and b) people break the law.

But even with the uncertainty, it was extremely clear that the vast majority of this shit was made in China, or from Chinese components. Apple was actually a mixed bag: Trackpad: Vietnam, keyboard: China, Mac Studio: Vietnam. Airpods Max: unclear. China, Malaysia or Vietnam. Monitor: China. iPhones: China. But of course anything not made in China is made from Chinese components.

Of the other electronics at my station here, my Yamaha monitors were made in Indonesia, my Caldigit thunderbolt dock was made in Taiwan, and everything else was made in China.

I have two mugs on my desk: a Spiritualized mug and an Apple mug I bought from the Apple corporate gift shop on One Infinite Loop like twenty years ago. Both, miraculously, still have their “made in China” labels.

The desks are Ikea and I read a book once about Ikea’s insane forest management and domination in eastern Europe, so I assume that the substantial portion of the desk is not from China, but I can find no labels, and I assume all the metal hardware is from China. Like many companies, it does not say anywhere on Ikea’s website where their shit was made. Just “designed in Sweden.” Which did this first, I wonder: Ikea or Apple. Ikea, I think? Maybe that’s where Steve got it from.

The clothes on my body: socks, underwear, sweater, slippers, shorts: China. T-Shirt: Nicaragua.

Even the food around me. I had a beverage and a can of magnesium gummies my sister convinced me to buy a year ago. Neither actually says they are made in the US, both are distributed by American companies. Fishy. Seems kinda crazy you can’t find out where the food you consume comes from!

What does all this mean. I don’t love that a ton of shit I own comes from authoritarian countries. And I think that the great bargain Bill Clinton et al made by allowing China into the WTO was, in the end, a failure. I am old enough to remember a world before everything we bought came from China. I remember being told that China could not sustain its authoritarianism as it connected to the global economy. It was all wrong. I like ole Bill but it was mayhaps one of the larger geopolitical mistakes of the last century.

But, you know, moral flexibility, the populace is not the government (feeling that one a lot lately over here), and pulling China out of poverty was the fastest, easiest way to pull a billion people out of poverty. Mixed bag, there.

And I don’t love the absolute environmental devastation of the exhaust of all these ships and planes moving shit all over the world and it is really bad and the more you research it the more horrific your realize it is and my god people need to make zero-emissions freighters.

But, then, that’s not gonna actually be that hard technically? We just need the will.

I remember when Bush fabricated the second Iraq war about WMDs, I was sorta torn: not about the WMDs but about the concept of freedom and democracy. It was very obvious that Bush was not, like, methodically trying to find the place on the planet where he could most spread democracy or something. He had his own agenda. But on the other hand, maybe you could spread Democracy? Huh I wonder how that worked out I literally have no idea if Iraqis even vote. Oh hey, they do. That’s nice. Somewhere in there, in Bush’s crappy motivations and obvious imperialism, there was a sliver of a chance that maybe he could accidentally do some good. And I guess I do sort of feel that way now?

Ish?

In his great article, Spencer quotes Alexis Madrigal and I think it makes an important point:

Do I want to pull the plug on the whole thing? I think the answer is no. We live in history; what has happened has happened. The American economy could have developed in a way that was less financialized. We also could have dealt quite differently with American manufacturing. We could have not kept the dollar as strong as we have. We could have done lots of stuff, but we didn't. We instead built this thing, this economy. And I don't know that you can unwind it quite so easily.

This is the world we’ve built. We have to work with what we have. It should have gone differently. It didn’t. We probably could have dreamt up a better situation than an entire planet being reliant on semiconductors that are only made on one single geopolitically fraught island that the world’s largest country is hellbent on invading. That seems suboptimal. Almost like the invisible hand of capitalism is a lie!

But I refuse to believe the only way for smart people to get out of a problem is to rip it up and start again. Fucking iterate dammit. Make meaningful improvements. Work on it instead of fucking it up.

Were I magical president king of the US, I don’t think I would get rid of all the new tariffs on China. I would make them smarter, do them differently, add predictability, add a climate component. But I do think, broadly speaking, it is bad for a country to be dependent upon an authoritarian country for all its goods, and I do think it’s bad to sail ships all over the world spewing exhaust just to move stuff around that could be made closer? It is bad! Whomever makes Fiji water should go to jail! It is insane!

And yeah, maybe we are not gonna bring the iPhone back to America any time soon, fine, okay. We should apply steady pressure, though, over time, to get it out of China. Oh hey. We were already? And it was working? Cool, cool.

But also maybe we don’t need to have coffee cups, t-shirts and bamboo back scratchers imported from China. I am pretty sure Americans can make this shit here. It is not rocket science to make a back scratcher.

I would probably do some sort of layered tariffs, lower rates, but still existent, on unfinished components, higher rates on fully manufactured stuff. Higher rates on shit that is dead-easy to make elsewhere and not reliant on China’s technical prowess. I would IRA the hell out of R&D for zero-emissions container ships and I would put higher tariffs on stuff that came here in environmentally detrimental ways, including air freight. I would beef up labor protections and demand a better audit trail (Naomi Klein will forever be in my veins).

These tariffs would phase in over time to give people time to deal with them, to accept the new reality and to do the work to get themselves unaddicted. These things take time.

And I don’t think there is a single Democratic politican saying anything at all about any of this other than being backed into a corner and painted as a “China supporter” by whining.

It is so exhausting being an thoughtful person who routinely shouts “we could fix this in a smart, better way” into the void while insecure turds with daddy issues and jowls stagger around like bulls in a China shop saying they’re gonna fix things. Why is sophistication and nuance so fucking boring to so many people? Why is Andor so unpopular? I don’t know, man. I don’t know.

It is… something, a new feeling… to sit here and think we might not be able to buy anything in a few weeks. I feel like I should prepare but I don’t even know how. I don’t know where the shit I consume is made. I don’t know what I can live without. I don’t know if it’s real. I don’t know, man, I don’t know. I read these threads from people who are stocking up on everything and being so pro-active and I just think “eh.” I know they are probably right and if they’re not, like, so what, they just bought a bunch of shit they’re gonna eventually need anyway. But it just seems so… tawdry.

Are you stocking up?

I asked Jane in the car this morning if she liked being a kid and she said yes, because you don’t have to work. I told her but at least adults don’t get told what to do all the time and she said “but you can’t do what you want either.” Very true, Jane. Very true.

Got a noise and metal playlist for you today. Finishe dit off yesterday with this new (to me) band Pyramids, who are, like, metal shoegaze but not in the normal Deafheaven way, also melodic, also sing in Spanish, also have, like, breakbeat techno beats reminiscent of, like, Third Eye Foundation anyone remember them? Oh ha and actually I see this is bookended between them and Deafheaven, so that works. Love the new Planning for Burial. Thank you Doug for this local POLLUTE. band they are a hoot.

Okay bye gonna go listen to like four more Shriekback albums.

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Thanks for reading.

And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!

Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.

Agency: The definitive guide to starting a consultancy

The Economics of Star Trek

Man Nup: A Groom’s Guide to Heroic Wedding Planning