This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The ongoing riots in the UK and the senseless destruction they have caused remind me of Bertold Brecht's famous poem he wrote in response to the 1953 East Germany strikes. While Brecht, himself a communist sympathizer, initially intended his poem to be a satirical polemic about heavy handed work quotas it recently struck me that he might have been more correct than even he had anticipated.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "to dissolve" as "to become dissipated or decomposed". After seeing the behaviour of the rioters right now as well as the rhetoric that has been coming from that class of people over the last few decades one must wonder if the right solution isn't really to dissolve the people. By this I don't mean immersing them in sulphuric acid until dissolution but rather dissipating their population density as a fraction of the whole country until there is no longer enough of a critical proportion of people which can light the fuse so to speak. There's a reason why even though there are far more "natives" in London than Sunderland the violence in the former has been more chickenhearted and more easily put down.
These rioters are generally low human capital people who take out a lot more over the course of their life than they put in. It's not scientists and lawyers you see giving the middle finger to police officers and pushing garbage bins in their general direction. I think it is perfectly fair to say that as a group they are best characterized as failures who have disappointed their betters and what's more don't even think there is anything wrong with their current state and behaviour. They are even confused and disoriented about the flashpoint of the current disorder: unlike what their prejudices told them the person who killed the three girls in Southport was not a fresh off the boat Muslim migrant but rather a black Welsh 17 year old child who had been born in the UK having a schizo moment. The true facts about the stabbing coming out did not placate their desire for an orgy of violence in the least.
Furthermore they live off the tax contributions of people like me and instead of being thankful for what they are given they blame us for making the country worse and want to bleed us even more. I like to quip that if the majority of people want to see a human parasite they would be better served by looking in the mirror instead of the Times Rich List and I think that applies perfectly here.
Another good example of a city that had some riots is Manchester; when the thugs tried their trade there they were met with swift counter protests bigger than what they could muster and were forced to disperse, leading to no public damage. It appears that the violence only really gets out of hand in the minor cities where the concentration of "natives" is too high. To prevent future riots the obvious solution is to reduce this concentration or namely, to dissolve the people.
Whenever there is dissolution there must be a solvent. And what would make the best solvent here? The usual answer provided by the left is something like "integration" where rich and well off people are asked to live amongst the lower classes in the hope that they will have a civilizing effect on the poors. Normally this is done by mandating the building of housing intended for poor people very close to housing occupied by the well off. While this may work at preventing tantrums from being thrown in the first place it won't do very much to quell them if they happen: a bunch of effete button pushers (Note: I count myself as among this group) doesn't put the fear of God into anyone. They would never have the guts to go up to the rioters and do this (choice moment: the rioter responding with 2 fingers when asked how many brain cells he has).
Instead the best solvent you can get is someone who will also stand up to debauchery when it rears its ugly head: migrants who are unafraid of giving it just as good as they get (see above video). And what's more, unlike the low tier "natives" who Great Britain is saddled with because they were born here the non-natives are all people who were either themselves selected by the UK as being positive for the country or descendants of such people which means they still have a portion of the net positive genetics (I'm ignoring refugees here because they make up a very small proportion of total migrants and something tells me the rioters of today wouldn't be happy if illegal migration stopped but legal migration continued at the same levels as today).
In fact a more reasonable word for these migrants would be "elects", since they are the chosen. Each and every single legal migrant in the UK has been collectively chosen as being worthy of being allowed into the country. They should be accorded the respect such an honour deserves instead of being told that they don't belong here. In fact the reason so many of them were chosen in the first place is because the "natives" have continued to disappoint the real decision makers day in day out for the last however many decades where importing so many migrants was the only choice left to keep a stable state going: firstly refusing to take care of older family members and foisting them onto the state and then refusing to have enough children if they're net contributors/having too many children if they aren't net contributors. Any attempt to talk sense to these people about how a welfare state with sub replacement birth rates and no migration is unsustainable was (and is) met with fingers in ears and "na-na-na can't hear you". Is it any surprise that with such a badly behaved lower class the elites decided to do away with them like you do with a bad employee and get someone new?
And we shouldn't forget that many of the migrants had far worse starting conditions than the gentlemen throwing bricks but through industry and positive sum contributions to human flourishing have managed to make something of themselves, only to be looked at enviously by the people who previously have been appropriating the wealth of the successful and now want to get even more at the elects' expense.
So yes, the elite class in the Western world has taken Bertold Brecht's words to heart. When confronted with unruly and disruptive lower classes it really is simpler for them to dissolve the people and elect another. I for one am looking forward to the consummation of this process; we'll probably end up with fewer riots at least.
What do you actually do as a self-described effete button-pusher? Something in finance I'm guessing. Much of finance has nothing to do with the real economy, it is an actively parasitic element. This is especially so in Britain, where the pound is propped up by a bloated financial sector to the detriment of real industries. We do not need enormous derivative and collateralization schemes to advance technological civilization. Things ran just fine (indeed they ran better) back before financial services was prestigious and lucrative. Indeed, the lesser sons of well-to-do families did a far better job running the financial system than the galaxy-brain quants and managers running it now. This financial experiment of 'lets transfer our industries to poor countries to exploit labour differentials' was the most idiotic decision in human history, it was naked looting of national strength for private gain. Only now are the astonished thieves in the economic and political class realizing the extent of their folly. Only now are they beginning to understand what happens when they break the social contract.
Things ran just fine before millions of Indians and Africans were imported to Britain. Indeed, the country was one of the greatest world powers, at the forefront of science and industry. There was next to no crime. There was a strong social contract. There were no Pakistani rape gangs aided and abetted by the same anti-racist ideas that aid you.
These same people that you keep sneering at are descended from the ones who saved India from Imperial Japan, who would probably have been somewhat less lenient with the affirmative action quotas. Do you feel no shame in constantly abusing your benefactors?
All of the problems the elites are flailing and failing to manage are purely self-inflicted. Demographic decline? Maybe they shouldn't have tried so hard to lower fertility due to 'overpopulation'. They could've kept making houses so that young people could've had families (but that would've lowered real estate appreciation). Refusing to take care of older family members? They installed the pension system, they made the perverse incentives. Their whole job is to lead, that's why they get their privileges and pay.
They were selected because some greedy university wanted to pump up its income by selling access to a higher-wage labour market. They were selected because they keep labour costs down and pump up property prices. They were selected because some Labour politician wanted to rub the Right's nose in diversity, like you've been saying.
The elites have indeed been mashing 'defect' as hard as they can and are clutching pearls the moment their subjects begin to retaliate.
I am a finance professional as you guessed correctly. I make sure our markets stay functioning smoothly which has positive knock on effects elsewhere. Britain is a net importer, the common man benefits greatly from the pound being as strong as it is, if it were to collapse his energy bills would skyrocket to the levels of 2022, but permanently. Plus I pay huge taxes directly paying for the common man's lifestyle.
If this is the case then how come they were all outcompeted by us? Those people can still try and enter the industry, it's just that when you have a 1v1 on a firm level where one has galaxy brain quants and the other has upper class art history majors the quants send the art history majors packing (side note: I'd probably say I know more art history than your average art history graduate from a non top ranked university, so it's not even like they can hold their own on their chosen field; this isn't me bragging about how much art history I know, it's me dissing the quality of the average art history course).
I agree all of those problems are caused by the actions of elites (mostly because I see elites as the actors while the proles are the acted upon). Lack of housebuilding in particular has been a very big issue. I blame the acceptance of left wing blank slatist ideology for this though instead of any desire to defect against society. The elites of the time genuinely believed what they were doing was best for society. Fortunately they are capable of learning and nowadays you'll easily find many examples of elite human capital speaking out against each of those past mistakes.
Why is Britain now a net importer? Britain was the workshop of the world, they produced everything! Now they're a financial hub with a few high-tech gems like ARM and Deepmind (foreign owned of course). They just dropped out of the top 10 manufacturers for the first time despite being the ultimate incumbent.
Because the old financial system was working to advance the national interest, not just their own private interests. Or at least they weren't sufficiently efficient in pursuing their own private interests that they could harm the country. Yes it is more economically efficient to shut down the British car industry and import from Thailand, from the perspective of the individual company or consumer. But it is not a good thing for the country as a whole to lose industries, lose jobs and end up with deprived areas, mass unemployment and welfarism. Take the case of the last British steel mill getting shut down by Tata because it was unprofitable... I have no doubt that makes financial sense for Tata. But what happens if you have other industries that need steel, where are you going to get dense, integrated supply chains and knowledge-sharing effects? You're not going to get them, Korea will get them. Suddenly Britain is less competitive overall and imports are even higher. Each step of the deadly spiral seems very reasonable yet it ends in collapse, capital flight and brain drain. The pound is too high but can't be lowered without greatly affecting living standards, so more and more industries erode and the problems get worse and worse.
In South Korea and China they repressed the financial system, they forced banks to provide capital for industrial and technological development even where it was less immediately profitable than other areas. Now they're highly developed, advanced manufacturers with huge numbers of robots per worker. Britain has fallen behind in automation because they chose a quick-fix approach of importing cheap labour to drive growth. It's not remotely sustainable in the long run, it's only that from the perspective of a firm it must seem like a great thing. Bring in more consumers and keep wages down, no need to raise investment and compromise profits in the short-term! Never mind the impacts on productivity...
Private gain is not necessarily good for the country. A well-functioning financial system supports other national industries like an organ, it doesn't consume them like a cancer.
More options
Context Copy link
No, it is more likely that you engage in parasitising on actually useful industries, do thinly veiled hazard or legally steal money.
Yes, some parts of financial sector are useful, but judging from your hutzpah I guess that you are engaging in Enron-type activities.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think I should just copy paste my favorite talking points because they keep getting validated: urban elites side with foreign migrants against rural poor because political capture is the win condition for urban elites, taking from the till as they pretend to dispense the spoils.
Foreign migrants are not self selected for automatic contribution, at least in the west. The exploitable loopholes of family reunions and illegal crossings allow for an endless volume of low human capital migrants, especially mirpuris and roma for the UK, to enter unchecked and unmonitored.
The big difference is that the urban elites are happy to loudly decry white trash as the true threat, but will not say a single word about crime by foreigners. Pretending it doesn't happen makes it worse, claiming that the foreigners are actually British and therefore the crimes represent British values just makes the difference in framing more obvious.
Countries can do without a surplus of chip shops, phone sellers and cab drivers. Muslims aren't council workers or fruit pickers, and more focus will hone in on the migrant breakdown to make sure migrants are indeed 'selected' for optimality.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link