Neutral behavior is not desired. The admin desires to take unilateral, unchecked action without repercussions, while controlling the narrative. Enact tariffs while publicly stating "everything is fine."
"Why are you making us look bad by sharing the facts of the actions we're taking?" is how you can think of this. Never assume rational and good faith behavior from bad faith actors. Watch what someone does, not what they say. The words are free and meaningless.
Well, in the literal sense it would be neutral to be transparent, but "political" in the sense that the White House is using means "you're being mean to me."
That's what I would think. Though, as other users have pointed out, Amazon is being selective about what what they show. If they really wanted to be transparent and neutral, they'd need to show everything that makes up the price (how much the seller/manufacturer gets paid, what Amazon's cut is, how much goes to the payment processor, etc.)
Personally, I think it would be pretty great if they showed all that, but I don't see that ever happening.
Yeah, I agree it's different, but it's all selective transparency. They're willing to be transparent about things they can directly blame on the government (tax, tariffs) but not other things that influence the price (Amazon's markup, the payment processing charges).
It would be better if they showed all of that, IMO.
No, that's not the same thing. Tariffs are taxes collected by customs agents (no matter how much this administration wants to pretend they aren't), and taxes already show up as itemized additions to your receipt, unlike margins and seller fees.
To me that just means they're already doing selective transparency. They treat government influences on price as different than other factors that influence the price.
Every receipt I’ve ever gotten in my life has separated tax, and I don’t recall I’ve ever seen seller margins or anything like that on a receipt before.
Yeah, I'm not saying Amazon is the only one doing this. But I am saying that if they're saying that consumers deserve transparency, this just scratches the surface.
No, seriously: "political neutrality" as a concept is inherently and fatally flawed.
The closest you can ever attempt to come is either
a) maintain/support the current status quo—this is obviously a big problem for anyone the status quo is not serving
b) tailor whatever you're saying/doing to try to cleave to the exact current center of the political landscape—this is obviously going to be very fraught and highly subjective; no one actually does this
Anyone who says they're "apolitical" or who tells you to make something "politically neutral" is nearly guaranteed to be just a beneficiary of the status quo advocating for preserving it, often without even realizing that's what they're doing.
Ultimately, it's much more honest and positive in the long run to be honest about your own biases and, yes, be as transparent as possible.
This is false. Or at least it's almost totally false.
I can try to judge things by whether they are true or false, accurate or misleading, good or bad ideas, regardless of who said them.
Yeah, I fail sometimes - partly because I do have biases, and partly because I don't have infinite amounts of time and energy to dig in to find out the truth. Still, I don't judge what the administration says by which brand of administration it is. I prefer my news sources to be straight rather than slanted.
And I can say that without being a supporter of the current status quo. I find Trump's bullying to be reprehensible.
"I can employ reading comprehension and bullshit detection skills on any text" is not the same as saying "any text is neutral", nor even "it is possible for a text to be neutral".
My statement says nothing about the ability of any particular reader to use their learned skills of discerning fact from falsehood to judge what is true. It says that even if you (for any value of "you", including me!) think what you are writing is "neutral", that is, at best, and with 99.9% certainty, because it conforms to the current status quo and/or your unconscious assumptions and biases.
