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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29639 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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The California model.

I just got back from a brief trip to California that didn't include the parts where the violent drug zombies live. It was a lovely vacation. California is absolutely beautiful.

Let me introduce the secrets to California's success.

  1. Be blessed with the most amazing geography and weather anywhere in the U.S. and maybe the world

  2. Be the center of the world tech and entertainment industries

  3. Make a deal that baby boomers get to live out their natural lives in splendor and grace while a complete population replacement happens beneath them

As a wealthy tourist, it was all very nice. Whereas the coast of Florida is loaded with aggressive traffic and people, the coast of California is dotted with pleasant beach communities. All the houses cost like $3 million dollars so no one can afford to live there. Despite the best weather and scenery on the planet, the population is going DOWN. People are friendly and nice. The restaurants are full of white retirees, still paying $1000 in annual property tax on their $4 million house they bought for $200,000 in 1981. 95% of the workers are Hispanic. I have no idea where they actually live. But the quality of service was very high and prices were reasonable (at least compared to Seattle).

A quick 5 minute drive from Santa Cruz and you're in a beautiful redwood forest. No houses or people here. Just a beautiful state park with miles of trails. I saw a school group with an earnest white teacher explaining tree rings to a group of about 20 young students. 100% of the students were Hispanic.

People are actually leaving this state, the state that has everything, that was dealt a hand of aces. Productive citizens are taxed at eye-popping rates to prop up the seniors and the underclass. It works for now. It seems kind of similar to what's happening in Europe and where the rest of the U.S. is headed as well.

In any case, I had a wonderful time. I highly recommend California as a tourist destination.

offtopic: is there some alt history fiction where China or Japan colonize California before Europeans (maybe by sending their convicts there)?

Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Years of Rice and Salt" has some of this. The premise is that the Black Death killed 99% of Europeans in the 1300s, instead of 30-50%.

Also Journey to Fusang by William Sanders, a much lighter book in tone.

New resident of California as of this year; was unexpectedly sent here by my work.

As far as I can tell, the workers live 2-3 to a room in rented houses, which is why many neighborhoods of East Palo Alto have 5-6 cars parked in front of 1000 sq ft (100 sq m) 3br houses.

I was in Asia over the holidays, and the food there is better (at least to my tastes), costs 1/5th as much even without counting taxes, tip, and the bevy of surcharges they add (somehow a prix fixe dinner advertised at $95 a head costs over $270 for 2), and much more conveniently located.

Honestly, I hate it here already and am looking to leave at the first good opportunity. Until then, I'm living well below my means to minimize my exposure to the 9-10% sales tax rates, driving a 20-year old car, maxing out my contributions to tax-advantaged accounts and investments in general, and trying to pay as little in taxes as possible.

A new buyer of said 3 million dollar home would be subject to property taxes in the ballpark of 40k a year. I almost wish we could level the entire area south of I-280 and redevelop it into a megacity with housing for 20 million people according to Chinese urban development practices just to spite the nimbys.

Wasn't something like that the canonical origin of Night City, of Cyberpunk fame?

I almost wish we could level the entire area south of I-280 and redevelop it into a megacity with housing for 20 million people according to Chinese urban development practices just to spite the nimbys.

You don't even need to import Chinese development practices, you can just retvrn to the housing principles of your European ancestors. Paris proper has a density that is 3x the density of SF proper and it doesn't even have any residential high-rises and only one office high-rise.

Wait. How?

I’m willing to believe that they’re so much more dense, but I want to understand the mechanism. Is it heavily mid-rise? Is it the reduced car infrastructure? Has their density trended up or down in the postwar era?

I’m willing to believe that they’re so much more dense, but I want to understand the mechanism. Is it heavily mid-rise? Is it the reduced car infrastructure? Has their density trended up or down in the postwar era?

Mostly 6-story residential vs 2 as the default. You don't see many single-family homes with garages in Paris proper.

For comparison, SF proper is 800k people at 19k/square mile, Inner London is 3.4 million at 28k/square mile, Paris proper is 2.1 million at 52k/square mile, and Manhattan is 1.6 million at 75k/square mile. SF is mostly 2-story single-family houses. Inner London is mostly 2-3-story rowhouses. Paris is mostly midrise apartment buildings, Manhattan is a mixture of midrise and highrise. You can see an almost perfect linear relationship between building height and population density.

It is heavily mid-rise with minimal street parking, and the flats are on the smaller side, 30-40sqm or so for a 1-bedroom flat.

You can't compare the cost of food in other countries and meaningfully say "the food prices are better there"--you're implicitly comparing them against your US salary. If food costs 1/x, but if you lived there you'd be making 1/x your salary, it's not really cheaper at all.

Yeah, being a rich foreign tourist is a very different position than being a permanent resident.

The nature conservation movement didn't get started in the US until California was in play, so I think that's a major reason a lot of beauty is still left. Though some propaganda at the Redwoods Forest says 99% of the redwoods were cut down.

You could imagine how that spirit can make the state intolerable to live in today.

There’s a few confounders. It’s not a coincidence that conservation gained prominence as the American frontier closed. And it was part and parcel of the Progressive reforms which gained ground in that era. Frankly, I think that spirit beats the alternatives.

I highly recommend California as a tourist destination.

My family lives in California, so I've visited almost everywhere except LA (which I've universally heard is a shithole I don't want to see).

It feels like a different country. It's the same currency, abiet effectively devalued by 15%. But I very much enjoy visiting - the food is almost universally excellent, people are kind as long as you pretend to be a leftist, etc. There's just a lot of stuff to do.

I have no idea where they actually live.

20 people to a three bedroom trailer.

The secret side effect of high housing costs is extreme crowding in lower income households. They need the income from renting out bedrooms to keep paying their own way. And people can’t afford their own place, so they rent rooms, often to share.

I’ve seen people on here wondering how low functioning but not actually dangerous people can be homeless; don’t their extended families take care of them? There’s no room, quite literally, in these households. Couches are being crashed on by someone who can contribute, or a more sympathetic dependent. Bedrooms are rented out for the cost of apartments in more normal cities. You don’t see the same scenes in place like houston where housing costs are more reasonable, because low income households can accommodate people like that.

One of the major complaints against the progressive elites is that they are shielded from the consequences of their ideology. Victor Davis Hanson writes about it often.

For instance, the 9th circuit is in San Fransisco. However the employees that matter can afford homes in safe areas and don't have to park on the street. So it's easy for them to write off things like car break ins as no big deal. They see the situation as overprivileged whiners complaining, not failures of their policies.

People at Stanford view air conditioning as a decadent luxury, because it never gets hot. People in Fresno swelter in the heat due to high energy prices supported by those Stanford profs.

https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/1482~557/Comparison-of-the-Average-Weather-in-Fresno-and-San-Francisco

Trump support is a hard sell because Trump is in many ways a reaction to California style policies. Widespread acknowledgement of failure would need to precede Trump support.

But many of the key early Trump supporters were from California. Steven Miller, Mike Cernovich. I could find a lot more but I've spent enough time on this.

Bay Area housing is expensive because its workers tend to be far more economically productive than most areas in the US.

Reason not to be reactionary: it allows me to live in the Bay Area, with the alternative being stuck in the same shithole podunk town where I grew up and the only nightlife after 9PM is hanging out at the local Walmart.

South Bay is really rough in terms of nightlife (mostly because the majority are 30s married Asian/Indian programmers). San Francisco is pretty fun if you know where to look.

Most of the US outside of NYC and some party cities like Miami and New Orleans (whose scenes are both very much an acquired taste) has terrible nightlife.

I love to shit on the Bay Area as much as the next rightwinger, but its nightlife is nowhere near as dead as Seattle's.

Who said anything about major?

Just gotta know the right people and right sketchy warehouses to go to.

The point, though, was about the complete lack of anything to do in most parts of the US, not about how Bay Area nightlife compares to NYC and LA.

Reactionary politicians in the US rarely talk about housing. It's certainly not a big part of Trump's rhetoric. In the US, talking a lot about housing problems is more associated with the economic left, people like Bernie Sanders.

So even putting aside the fact that California Democrats tend to view Trump as being nearly Hitler-esque, and the fact that reactionary politicians are unlikely to actually do anything about these problems if elected (as you correctly point out elsewhere, this does not explain why people don't vote for them more), the fact of the matter is that addressing housing problems is just not something that US reactionary politicians emphasize. So it is not surprising that this is not a big factor in how many people vote for reactionary politicians in the US.

Greg Abbott has a propaganda push about trying to reduce housing prices. Someone immersed in Texas politics- or heavily into the YIMBY scene- would probably be aware of it.

In practice a lot of the actual programs he’d point to are populist signaling, but Austin is the only major city with declining apartment rents while the city grows.

I think Texas has it right with the high property taxes. 2% or whatever it is a year forces average old people who suddenly find themselves with a house worth a few million to sell quickly and downsize, that money typically makes its way in part to children and grandchildren or is just spent, all of which are good.

New Jersey has high property taxes and is still a dump, but that may be just a consequence of proximity to NYC and an uncommonly high (for America) level of corruption rivalled only by Illinois and the Deep South.

Our high property taxes are also correlated with—if not the cause of—our unusually good schools.

Our schools actually spend way less than the national average, in a way that’s not particularly correlated with performance. High property tax revenue is probably not a contributing factor.

Wait, really?

Maybe I’m just making assumptions from my time in the schools here.

Yes. Texas’s schools underspend the national average by a lot and the better districts tend to be on the low side of the average, except for highland-park level eyepoppingly wealthy areas. And even in those cases, the extra money usually goes to athletics.

How could you see this and not be reactionary?

Simple, by recognising that the problem isn't Indian and Asian workers but ratherer old and retired whites who fight tooth and nail to keep property tax for themsleves much lower than what an Indian or Asian tech worker would have to pay to live in literally the same house.

Correct, housing prices are artificially high because it’s illegal to build houses. That, in turn, is mostly because old white people use their political power to make it so.

And joined in an unholy bootleggers and baptists coalition with the environmentalists. CEQA might be the most economically destructive law ever written.

Who do you think goes to all the public hearings on building permits and bitches that the new rowhouse or apartment building "destroys the character of the neighborhood?" Who do you think leverages historic building designations to keep anything from being built? Who do you think files the CEQA lawsuits (okay, that's mostly unions pissed off that developers don't want to use "prevailing wage" labor).

Said old retirees also prevent new housing construction

I don’t understand why Trump isn’t more popular

It's pretty commonly accepted that the housing issue is caused by restrictions on building new housing. It's been Democratic leaders like Scott Weiner and Gavin Newsom that have been pushing hard to remove these restrictions. Trump's party on the other hand has been actively fighting against this, calling it some kind of war on the suburbs.

It used to be almost all white and now it’s just insanely wealthy tech workers who are probably majority Indian and Asian

However, I get the impression that being priced out isn't what you (or the original poster) are mainly focused on here, rather this demographic change. Well, that's easy to address---contrary to what you might think if you spend a lot of time in places like this forum, most Americans and definitely most Californians care that people have similar values and ideals as them rather than that they look superficially similar. "Why aren't more people being radicalized because my personal and unpopular aesthetic preference isn't being satisfied?"---that question answers itself.

What do those numbers look like for white-collar work?

Cause I don’t think the pool of immigrants picking fruit in the Central Valley (or cleaning toilets in Google HQ) are really driving prices, no. In a supply-choked market, the wealthier buyer is more important.

Didn't we establish that California is losing population? Have a look at housing price growth over the same period.

Incorrect, the bay area has been losing population since the pandemic, albeit at a slowing pace.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mercurynews.com/2024/03/14/bay-area-counties-continue-to-see-population-losses-but-2023-was-smallest-drop-since-exodus-began/amp/

And the population becoming insanely wealthy like the Bay Area has because of tech and wealthy people moving in from all over the world can shift the demand curve to the right even if the population stays the same.

Okay but prices have been marching up in the face of declining population, so clearly people moving in from all over the world is not a factor. Perhaps you wish to bite the bullet and say that it's bad that people are getting rich in the bay area because they have higher willingness to pay?

Most of the US has gotten much richer and has also gained population. Prices are particularly so much higher in the Bay Area because it’s impossible to build new housing in the Bay Area. In other words, demand has increased everywhere but supply has been flat (or even negative given depreciation of the existing stock) particularly in California, due to incumbent local NIMBYs.

I'm sorry, but this is just sloppy demagoguery. If you're being priced out because supply is artificially restricted to such brutal extremes as housing in California, you don't blame the other people who are similarly being screwed over, you blame the people causing the artificial restriction! Anyone telling you otherwise is probably manipulating you.

This is going too far the other way. If your food supply is limited, you could cut down more of the forest for farmland or you could just refrain from inviting the next tribe over for dinner!

To put it another way, I like my hometown the way it is, I like the countryside the way it is. Yes, we could concrete over ever more of my small country, or build more hideous skyscrapers. Or we could just stop inviting in hundreds of thousands of foreigners every year.

I don't know the situation in your country so that very well might be true. However, it is definitely not relevant in California where there actually is huge space for building more housing without much disruption (as many other posters have given various arguments for).

In addition, people tend to overestimate how full their cities/countries actually are. There are very few places in the world that are as densely populated as Somerville, Massachusetts which is a super pleasant place looking like this on Google streetview. No skyscrapers needed and with that density, the countryside can be kept clear too. I suspect that your country could build housing for hundreds of thousands of more people while still only looking like Somerville and avoiding what you want to avoid.

Thanks for the serious reply.

The country is England, just for the sake of clarity. I might be wrong, but Somerville looks like a pretty standard suburb to me, I think we’re already building in at least that level of density in most areas. Here is a randomly chosen town street. It is nice, though :)

We seriously lack accessible green space anywhere near the big cities, which are constantly expanding. And big chunks of land are rock moorland and difficult to build on (including most of Scotland).

You have to tear down old buildings and start building massive multi family units

This is putting way too high of a standard. Buildings are demolished and replaced all the time! If you don't allow this, you get nonsense like the "historic laundromat" in San Francisco. Putting all the cases like this together, there's a ridiculous amount of space in San Francisco itself for more housing when so much of the city looks like this.

Buildings are torn down and rebuilt all the time as they age and wear out. In the absence of zoning restrictions, homes in high-demand areas would be replaced piecemeal with taller and denser structures over a period of many years. We don't need a massive government intervention to flatten entire neighborhoods and remake them from scratch, we just need to give people the freedom to build what they want on their own property and market forces will take care of the rest.

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The entire sunset district could look like Manhattan. It’s not like we don’t know how to build buildings that are taller than two stories. It’s a completely self-inflicted space constraint.

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Houston, TX is about 25% foreign born and has way cheaper housing than any major city in CA. There's plenty of space in CA to house everyone even if the population doubled or tripled. The problem is regulations that restrict supply.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Forever

https://protectcoyotevalley.org/

In east Alameda countythere's enormous amounts of empty space. Much of the prime real estate in Santa Clara county is warehouses or other industrial areas, and much of the bay area is really shitty SFHes built on shoestring budgets in the sixties.

That's off the top of my head.

If California Forever alone (lol) was developed to Barcelona's density (note we are not even talking high rises here) it could fit 3.4M people.

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Houston also has the loosest zoning rules anywhere in the country.

The space is above the map. Open up Google maps and plop yourself down to street view just about any residential area of San Francisco: the buildings are three stories tall at the highest with the vast majority being two stories. Plenty of space if you go vertical.

If builders are confident they'll actually be allowed to build, the market price will be high enough that most people will want to sell. Those that don't won't, but many will for the right price.

No, you simply have to allow people to develop their own property.

There are plenty of people who want to sell, the problem is that their neighbors have made it illegal to build higher density on their own land.

There is plenty of undeveloped land on the edges of SF and LA. Between SF and Petaluma, for example, there's a ton of empty land. But more importantly "open land" is not a prerequisite for building housing, since you can build vertically. SF would have way more housing if it wasn't preventing people from tearing down "historic laundromats." Housing is affordable even in the densest parts of downtown Houston where there is no "open land" to develop. Conversely, the area of rural Northern California where I grew up has tons of open land, yet housing costs are much higher per square foot than downtown Houston.

I don’t think that’s a fair statement if the belligerents here.

One can support exclusionary zoning and still make building easier compared to the status quo ante (there are a million ways to cut red tape besides allowing multiple family building in single family zones — some of them are indirect). Also one can support ending exclusionary zoning without making building easier (eg 80% of units must be affordable).

Not sure which way it all cuts.

There are two reasons why I think the description is fair

  • First, the "war on the suburbs" rhetoric specifically talks about how "your investment and lifestyle may soon come under attack." This isn't just about exclusionary zoning; it's about anything that could significantly depress housing prices
  • Second, Republican organizations have been using "war on the suburbs" are rhetorical demagoguery against almost any policy to increase housing supply: see this as another example.

Up zoning is great for property values. The nimby argument is not due to property values but rather "neighborhood character".

The honest rhetoric is “you don’t want a bunch of poors (largely black) underclass to move into your neighborhood making it crime ridden, destroying the schools, and crushing property values.”

That is different from “my home value decreased a little because there is more inventory because there is more building.”

The first thing is a catastrophe as it kills your investment and lifestyle. The second is a minor nuisance that on balance may be positive to you.

The white nationalist guy had me thinking about this a lot when they did the full discussion. You can’t just make whites holes by doing things to mitigate black crime. More policing makes a neighborhood feel worse. Many of the small crimes and generally annoyance of the lower class blacks that will find there way in will make the neighborhoods less desirable. People will do things to mitigate the undesirableness by doing nimby things or moving to the suburbs. The mitigations themselves have costs (longer commutes/more pollution). We would probably build our cities more like Buenos Aires which is chill and dense with very walkable communities.

I don't want my neighborhood torn down to make 5-over-ones packed full of 300 square foot apartments for NEETs even if they don't cause crime and make property values go up.

Except the actual regulations in question are often things like ‘allow duplexes and triplexes in single family zones’, which NEETS will not be living in except as a dependent, and they could easily live as dependents in single family homes as is the stereotype.

Few people want to build the Kowloon walled city.

Except the actual regulations in question are often things like ‘allow duplexes and triplexes in single family zones’

That's just the start, the foot in the door. As @Tomato said, "the entire sunset district could look like Manhattan".

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If that’s a priority for you there are tons of places in the country where demand is low enough to allow that. It’s totally crazy for us as a society to empower someone to prevent his neighbor from doing what he wants to do with his own land in the most productive, in demand location on the planet.

If that’s a priority for you there are tons of places in the country where demand is low enough to allow that.

I'm already living in my home. Let the NEETs have their pods elsewhere.

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Second, Republican organizations have been using "war on the suburbs" are rhetorical demagoguery against almost any policy to increase housing supply

You know why? Because it hits home. It takes some people a while and some never catch on, but a lot of people in the suburbs have figured out that the "sprawl" that leftists often decry is their home.

House prices are high because of policies that people like your parents voted for. Hispanics, Asians, and Indians aren’t voting for zoning restrictions and fighting tooth and nail for Prop 13 and similar policies. At least guys like Newsom are wielding power at the state level to force lazy freeloaders (65 year old whites) to make California livable for normal hardworking people (30 year old Hispanics).

Any time 50%+1 voter wants to they can repeal prop 13. Somehow these last few many decades they've declined. I don't like blaming voters from decades ago since other voters continuously chose to stick with it.

And you know what? This will only happen when California's voters are minority white (and when that happens a Prop 13 repeal will follow shortly). Older whites use their entrenched position in western countries to benefit themselves at the expense of more dynamic and younger non-white immigrants, it's a tale as old as mass immigration itself and California is no different to the other places this is happening, see how the UK is using the taxes of the young (disproportionately non-white immigrants) to pay for the social care of the old (disproportionately white "natives", especailly so because non-whites are more likely to believe in filial responsibility and take care of their parents instead of thrusting them upon the state).

Past whites brought about Prop 13, present whites are tacitly voting to continue it but fututre non-whites will be the ones who get rid of it and free California from all the deadweight loss and misery this policy causes each year.

I'm sure that the wealthy home-owning Indians and Asians are voting for policies that keep their home prices high. But most wealthy homeowners in the areas you're thinking about are old white people. Indians and Asians are mostly renters. If you have some data on what they're voting for I'd be very interested.

Idle Hispanics and Blacks are not living in the Bay Area and are certainly not the reason that your parents' old home sold for $3m. That's such a ridiculous thing to say to be honest, I'm sort of shocked that you connect these two things. Hispanic immigrants, particularly those in the Bay Area, tend to work really hard and be model citizens compared to the natives.

Bay Area prices are high because incumbent (mostly) white people don't allow new construction.

Whites pay significantly more in than they take over their lifetimes

Is this before or after you include the imputed damages of tens of thousands of dollars each year they cause by hogging desirable accommodation near jobs after they retire and forcing actually productive working age people to live further away and waste time on commutes (or alternatively pay through the nose to live a pretty shitty life centrally)?

  • -20

It's pretty bold to move to a white country and then complain about white people "hogging the accommodations." What are the imputed damages of your homeland being a place that can't accommodate white people because it's such an undesirable place the live?

Isn't it whites that created the desirable accommodation and the jobs? The entire industries in question? The institutions that allow economic prosperity?

You're complaining that the people who developed the world economy, implemented free trade and organized mass migration aren't getting out of the way quickly enough, so you can reap more spoils from a presumably highly paid software job?

I have to admire your straightforwardness and consistency in this position.

Only real things count, not stuff you just make up, even if you use fancy names for making stuff up like "imputed damages". No one has an obligation to sell you their home just because it would improve your commute and they're not commuting any more.

No one has an obligation to sell you their home just because it would improve your commute and they're not commuting any more.

They have made it illegal for their neighbors to use their land how they want to use it (e.g., build higher density apartment buildings). Nobody is forcing granny to sell her home; granny is preventing other people from doing things with their own land. That's a real economic harm.

It can be true that you don't have an obligation to do so AND that socially that does result in additional costs on productive people. You don't have an obligation to drive a less polluting vehicle, nonetheless the government can force you to do so (or tax you if you drive a more polluting one) if it thinks the benefit is great enough. Companies don't have an obligation to keep manufacturing in America as it is more expensive but it might be a good idea to force/tax them to do so anyway etc. etc.

Not having a personal obligation doesn't negate the fact your choices may be sup-optimal for society at large in other words.

Not having a personal obligation doesn't negate the fact your choices may be sup-optimal for society at large in other words.

And so what? No one is obligated to get the short end of the deal to achieve Kaldor-Hicks optimality.

Again, obligation is irrelevant. Whether you are morally obligated or not is orthogonal to whether you should (from the point of view of your fellow citizens) be forced to do it, by your government.

Everything from taxes on up follows from there. If (and it is a big if!) the housing issue caused enough problems and if (again another huge if!) forcing boomers to sell would solve it, then their personal moral obligations don't matter a hoot.

Civilization is built on forcing people to make sup-optimal (for them personally) actions in service to the greater good. Personal moral obligations don't come into it. That's why not following the law has to have consequences, because we don't naturally choose to do so. Very few people would pay their tax burden fair and square if it were based on their personal moral obligations only. Throw the fear of the IRS into it however..

Thats why people need to care what their peers believe they should do even if they themselves believe they have no personal obligation to do so. Because we can and are forced to comply every day with laws we feel we have no personal obligation towards. Its the foundation of modern civilization.

You may not be obligated to get the short end of the stick, but that has no impact on whether you will or should (from a societal pov).

Society is not there ro ensure every single person gets the best possible personal outcome. It suceeds because on average people are better off, but that distribution is not likely or guaranteed to be fair. It just needs to be fair enough to be stable.

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How could you see this and not be reactionary?

Everyone wants in on the housing ponzi scheme we've spent the last half century propping up. The tides have only started shifting very recently as younger people start to cotton on that they're going to be left holding the bag if nothing changes.

Beyond that, Americans are rich enough to mostly vote on values and the bipartisan consensus is anti-housing anyway, so there's little reason to go right in California unless you're also anti-immigrant.

I'm guessing this is South Bay or thereabouts. The Dumbarton bridge marks the beginning of Asian (south and east) tech town. Indians and Chinese tech workers are eating up the area from Palo Alto to San Jose back up tp Fremont. But that is silicon valley proper, so it's hardly surprising.

The rest of California and the Bay Area is not infested with Indian and Chinese tech workers taking over.

Definitely could have had some better word choice there. "filled" seems to replace "infested" just fine.

Wow, does sideswiping an entire group of people as an "infestation" not count as being overly antagonistic here?

Gah, I knew I should not have used that phrase. I even paused for a good 10 seconds before choosing that word. All the others were no better (run over, taken over).

Yes, I am indeed implying that these filthy 1st gen Indian immigrants are coming to the bay area, taking tech job, stealing our american women and making good money. (sweats profusely).

I made a demonstrative wojak. You're welcome.

Backseat modding does.

You guys are allowed to mod however you want---it's your website. It's just dishonest to pretend to be a neutral "place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases" when there's a pretty clear bias in which groups you're allowed to use this kind of antagonistic language against and which you aren't.

Whatever you guys might claim to be, this seems to be a place where it's ok to call an immigrant group an infestation but not to say that the antebellum south was an execrable culture.

You've already gotten a response from two mods, but let me add mine:

  1. We don't claim to be "neutral." We claim to (attempt to) be fair. Not the same thing.

  2. You are bitching about a post not being modded when in fact it was modded. As we have told people many times (and you're not new here), we sometimes don't get to posts right away. Sometimes we want to see what another mod thinks, sometimes we don't want to deal with a borderline low-effort shitty post because we're not feeling in the mood to deal with annoying anklebiters and we're hoping some other mod will shin up. Sometimes we're all busy and no one has gone through the queue in a day or two. If a post is less than 24 hours old and hasn't been modded yet, it's premature to start hollering about how the mods are totally biased.

You can do that just fine without getting modded.

Antagonism isn’t just the word you choose. It is about attacking the people with whom you’re speaking.

Do you think there are no Indian or Chinese, bay-area tech workers on this forum? I thought part of conceit of a public forum like this is that you are talking to some notion of "everyone". Either way, I'm definitely sure there aren't any antebellum southerners on this forum (they're all dead), so it's still super confusing why my linked comment wasn't also not antagonistic by this standard.

  • -12

I understand your concern, but look at it in context.

infested with Indian and Chinese tech workers

I said that

Indian or Chinese, bay-area tech workers

and I am one of them (though I wanna leave the bay area asap)

It is a phrasing we use among ourselves all the time. It is easy to be self-deprecating when you're making bank.

this seems to be a place where it's ok to call an immigrant group an infestation

Yes, I can call my own group of people whatever I want. I was being edgy, sure. But, you're making quite the leap, going from 1 mis-used word to accusations of chattel-slavery era racism.

The point is: report, don't engage. The rules explicitly do not support defensive/retributive rules violations.

Whatever you guys might claim to be, this seems to be a place where it's ok to call an immigrant group an infestation but not to say that the antebellum south was an execrable culture.

You have either fundamentally misunderstood or are fundamentally misrepresenting the thread you linked. You are in fact allowed to say that the antebellum south was an execrable culture, and many people have said here it many times before. You can in fact argue that Confederate statues should be torn down, and you can even argue that people who think otherwise are bad; many people have argued that here many times before. You do in fact have to be careful about how you talk about any group here, and quite a few anti-woke people have in fact been banned for failing to do so properly. The objection in that thread, as described to you repeatedly at the time, was that you were conflating people to object to the destruction of Confederate memorials with slave owners.

I think the antebellum south was an execrable culture, and holding the history constant to the start of the Civil War, I prefer our actual history where their society was destroyed through mass violence to counterfactuals where it might have been allowed to fade away peacefully, continuing to perpetrate evil throughout its decline. Further, I think that destroying Confederate monuments is both stupid and evil here and now. I'd be happy to discuss either opinion with you as time permits, as either side of either opinion fit comfortably within the rules here.

The objection in that thread, as described to you repeatedly at the time, was that you were conflating people to object to the destruction of Confederate memorials with slave owners.

I never conflated these two groups in that entire conversation and repeatedly tried to explain that I didn't. From the very first post, I tried to be very clear that I was only talking about the antebellum south:

The Confederacy/Antebellum south is one of these---one of the worst cases of hereditarian, anti-egalitarian nonsense in modern-ish history.

This is in fact the main issue. If you try to argue many points on this forum, you get pattern-matched and rounded-off to a very different point that is actually objectionable. You can take however many pains you want to say that you are just talking about the antebellum south, and even the moderation team thinks that you are somehow also talking about the modern south. Like how are you supposed to interpret the group that's being teabagged by melting down a statue as something other than the group led by the person the statue represented?

In the case here, a similar effect creates huge blindspots when applying the guideline:

You do in fact have to be careful about how you talk about any group here

How is "infested with Indian and Chinese tech workers taking over" at all being careful while talking about a group? Pointing this out, however, gets conflated with other crying wolf about racism, so this rule about not casually and unjustifiably sideswiping large groups of people doesn't really get applied properly.

I never conflated these two groups in that entire conversation and repeatedly tried to explain that I didn't.

Reading the conversation, it looks to me like you did in fact conflate the two groups.

Destroying the statue was teabagging the outgroup plain and simple. The moderate voice in every statue controversy has consistently said something to the effect of "move them to a museum" which is what happened here. What this event (moving to a museum and then destroying it) shows is that there is no quarter to moderates in the culture war. It's very much in line with the friend-enemy distinction principle.

As a southerner who was on team "move them to a museum", I'm genuinely disgusted.

"the outgroup" in this comment is pretty clearly referring to contemporary people, not the Confederate slavers. The context of the entire comment is about people in the present day.

Your reply:

Can someone explain to me why teabagging this particular outgroup is a bad thing? Drop the moral relativism: some cultures/societies are so execrable that symbolically "teabagging" them is great. The Confederacy/Antebellum south is one of these---one of the worst cases of hereditarian, anti-egalitarian nonsense in modern-ish history.

(bolding mine.) He's talking about one thing, you respond with a line that makes it seem like he's talking about something else. That doesn't make for good discussion. Especially when you follow it up with:

no quarter to moderates in the culture war.

What exactly do you mean by "moderates" here? Not hating a person who rebelled to support slavery isn't what I would call "moderate".

I find it doubtful that you were actually confused by what he meant by "moderate". If you want to argue that such people aren't actually moderate, you can present an argument. You offer a declaration, framed uncharitably. This is building consensus, and it also makes for bad discussion.

You seem to have a habit of writing posts in a way optimized, intentionally or not, for maximizing heat and not light. You also seem to have a pattern of conversation centering on moral outrage that people might possibly disagree with you. If you are actually interested in discussing why someone might not want confederate statues destroyed, or why they should want them destroyed, that's something we can do here. It would help to start from the assumption that people might reasonably disagree with you.

How is "infested with Indian and Chinese tech workers taking over" at all being careful while talking about a group?

It's not, and he has in fact been warned. On the other hand, at least it's not an uncharitably-framed argument over definitions of words. The person you're complaining about is pretty clearly a racist, and they aren't hiding it or being weaselly about it. That's actually preferable to the alternative, which is why we have the "speak plainly" rule, and, as I understand it, is one of the reasons we tolerate significant amounts of vitriol toward parties who are not actually present in the discussion.

More comments

Fair enough. But towns like Edison NJ, Redmond WA, Sunnyvale CA & Fremont CA sit on a whole another tier. (afaik)

nice place with good schools

The schools are good because the people are rich and the residents are hard working. If the schools are to stay good, it makes sense that newest generation of rich and hard working people are moving in.

good schools is 10x in prices

Nimbyism strikes again. Enough place for everyone, but SFHs screw everyone over. Especially true in places like OC and SD, where the populations could 5x without space being an issue.

I think a lot of people are radicalized by being priced out of the place they grew up (I've had coworkers who certainly were) but it's not clear to me how this translates into support for Trump. Mostly I think this translates into support for YIMBYism, which I think is on the rise across the country.

I just don't see the causal chain from voting for Trump to the home prices in someone's hometown going down. The President just does not have that much power over local home prices or land use. To the extent CA Democrats are responsible for the housing crisis in the state, they are also passing a bunch of bills to try and fix it.

Isn’t the answer “the people voting are different than the displaced people?”

Young white men vote trump.

Fact check "Young white men vote Trump": Mostly True

"For example, young White men supported President Trump by 6 points (51% vs 45%)"

https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/election-week-2020#the-views-of-young-trump-voters

Though you're also correct in that young people vote Democrat and that young white men don't overwhelmingly vote Republican: Young White voters preferred Biden by 6 points (51% vs. 45%).

How could you see this and not be reactionary?

Answer: Boomers.

Boomers don't see it because they are the beneficiaries of it.

Imagine a boomer living in Monterrey. Their house is worth $3 million. They pay almost no tax and in fact receive large checks and free health care from the government. Services are high quality because of an army of low-wage immigrants. The town isn't crowded despite its magnificent natural environment. Nothing has been built in 30 years.

There's an eerie lack of children but that's a small price to pay.

It's like when all the old union workers sign a contract to grandfather in their benefits while screwing the new workers. And it's why the Democratic party is now the party of the old, upper middle class whites. The high/low coalition makes the present comfortable for these wealthy boomers while replacing their society wholesale over time.

it's why the Democratic party is now the party of the old, upper middle class whites.

That seems doubtful. Trump won the >$100k/yr vote in 2020* and his electoral coalition was significantly whiter and older than Biden's.

*not by a huge margin, admittedly, but the divides aren't huge in any income group; either major party trying to position themselves as the party of the poor/working class is typical American posturing where everyone wants to be rich but no one wants to be Rich.

California’s housing problem and people’s political views on it is completely orthogonal to national party differences. It’s caused by local zoning restrictions which is basically older incumbent homeowners versus younger new entrant renters. Through demographics it’s probably accidentally related to national party affiliation but that’s likely weak and completely incidental. Whether the locals like Trump or not has nothing to do with whether they’re in favor of multi family apartment building construction. The state (Democrat) has implemented pro-building policies that short-circuit local power to restrict it but again you should think of this as largely orthogonal to D vs R. Viewing this as a Trump-related culture war issue totally misses the mark IMO. (I’m responding to your comment but this goes for everyone in this thread).

I don't disagree - as I said in another subthread, the anti-housing consensus is bipartisan. Rationale is sometimes different (although sometimes that just a gloss on the same underlying motivations). At least in California, voting for the GOP isn't going to indicate a significantly different housing policy and the CA GOP has the usual array of conservative beliefs that make it a less than credible option for defection.

Trump won the >$100k/yr vote in 2020* and his electoral coalition was significantly whiter and older than Biden's.

I believe you are incorrect. [This Nate Silver article] specifically says it went the other way. More importantly, and to @jeroboam 's point ... the realignment is still happening.

@jeroboam - Re: your fact about major corp's donations; It was the NYPD and ... The United States Marine Corps. God Bless the Alcoholic Gun Cult.

I believe you are incorrect. [This Nate Silver article]

I can't really evaluate this because the reference link is absent, but every source I've been able to find shows Trump beating Biden with high income voters by ~10 points. e.g.

Whoops.

Link: https://www.natesilver.net/p/how-culture-trumps-economic-class

From the article:

In 2020, something unprecedented happened in recent American politics: Democrats won the wealthiest voters, or at least the wealthiest subgroup that the exit polls tracked that year (people making $100K or more). Among poorer voters, the story is more complicated. Biden did just a hair better with the white working-class than Clinton — not a lot better, but enough to get him over the finish line in the Upper Midwest — but considerably worse than her with Hispanics and slightly worse among Black voters.

NYT exit polls indicate the opposite. Also, a 2022 House Exit Poll for another example of the GOP winning high earners.

I'm far too lazy to run around aggregating a bunch of exit polls, but it doesn't really matter that much because whatever the exact tilt they're all pointing the same way. Namely, that the spread on voting by income level may be electorally significant (not hard when margins are so low), but it is not demographically substantial (i.e. if you were to get a random sample of any of the strata, roughly half would be voting for each major party). Thus, my initial point remains the same:

either major party trying to position themselves as the party of the poor/working class is typical American posturing where everyone wants to be rich but no one wants to be Rich.

Saying one party is the party of the working class because slightly more than half of voters go for the other party while slightly less than half go for the same seems like it's drawing too strong a conclusion from too little evidence. Whichever poll you reference, characterizing the conflict as one of pure class comes across as slightly farcial. It is, however, consistent with my theory that the liberal-conservative conflict is sectoral (in particular, merchants and gentry versus professionals) and normative.

less charitably: the "realignment" is conservative wishcasting that more reflects how suburban conservatives would like to see themselves. It's part of the broader populist-conservative 'just a little guy' routine where Trumpists pretend that they have no power or influence. Admitting that they're actually well-off and influential would puncture the fantasy that they're rebels against the empire instead of engaged in a peer conflict.

Saying one party is the party of the working class because slightly more than half of voters go for the other party while slightly less than half go for the same seems like it's drawing too strong a conclusion from too little evidence. Whichever poll you reference, characterizing the conflict as one of pure class comes across as slightly farcial. It is, however, consistent with my theory that the liberal-conservative conflict is sectoral (in particular, merchants and gentry versus professionals) and normative.

There's some parts of this that I might try to nitpick or reframe, but, broadly, I think this is well argued and an astute analysis.

Re: your fact about major corp's donations; It was the NYPD and ... The United States Marine Corps. God Bless the Alcoholic Gun Cult.

It's crazy how total the left's demand for control is. They will not rest until they control literally every institution.

They already have the universities, nearly all major corporations, the media, the bureaucracy, the non-profit sector, the rich, the technology sector, and the legal system (minus the Supreme Court). But we are assured that just a single election could usher in a right-wing fascist dictatorship. It's delusional.

Please tone down the outgroup-booing. This is waging the culture war, not discussing it.

The party realignment is still in mid-swing. I have faith this narrow Republican majority is largely an artifact. Previous party alignments took decades to play out. For example, Texas elected Democratic governors as late as 1990!

The trend is clear. Democrats are for rich white people and the underclass. Republicans are for the others.

100k is very middle class today. Amongst the posh, Democrats are so utterly dominant its comical. I can't find it on Google (because of course I can't) but someone looked at political donations from every large employer. The majority of donations went to Democrats for every employer except for the NYPD and maybe one other. That's right, even supposedly "right wing" corporations like Exxon had more Democratic donors than Republican ones. Amongst tech companies and universities, Democrats held an edge of something like 10-1.

The elite is all in on the Democratic party. And that is truly new. Back in the day, there were a substantial subset of WASP-y Republicans in the northeast and California. They are utterly gone. I know these people. They vote blue now, no matter who.

Until said reversal actually manifests, calling its absence an artifact seems premature. Predicting the Democrats are going to become the party of rich white people is one thing (which I still find doubtful, but nevertheless). Saying the Democrats are already the party of old rich white people is factually inaccurate when the GOP has a distinct advantage with high income voters (approx. 10 points), white voters (approx. 10-15 points), and older voters (approx. 5 points, higher when talking about really old voters).

Amongst the posh, Democrats are so utterly dominant its comical.

This seems to hinge on gerrymandering 'elite' (and related terms) in ways that include a lot of middle income people from major cities while excluding high income people from the suburbs and major cities (and fits into a broader pattern of conservatives denying their own political power). The regional gentry that dominate the Republican Party don't like to think of themselves as 'elite', even though they often make more money (in many cases, significantly more money) than the urban professional class that mirrors them in the Democratic Party.

Like, I'm not really sure what you mean by posh here, since that's a British term without clear American analogy (maybe some New England Old Money, but they're frankly not very relevant). I'm guessing you mean affluent metropolitan professionals, but that's just a guess. Or maybe Ivy League students, but then you're not really comparing SES, you're comparing children to parents.

I can't find it on Google (because of course I can't) but someone looked at political donations from every large employer.

Assuming this is true (and I will grant that it is facially plausible), it is evidence for the merchant/gentry class vs professional class divide. It's not evidence for Republicans being poorer or more working class.

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