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 -
A New York Times article currently entitled “The New Climate Gold Rush: Scrubbing Carbon From the Sky” (modern NYT headlines tend to shift with the winds of likes and comments) discusses the innovative corporations and world governments looking to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for profit. On its surface, this is a potentially radical net-positive accelerant for humanity driven by its financial upside, in the same tradition as asteroid mining, child tax credits, and electric vehicle subsidies.
The comment section gives us a valuable insight into how the online progressive retiree set (many of them early architects and evangelists of the modern Left) see this news within the context of their worldview… and here it’s particularly interesting. I want to highlight one comment that’s emblematic of the general tenor there:
Here we see plainly spoken a bedrock concept underlying many political ideologies that rarely breaches the surface: apocalyptic socio-political shibboleths cannot be resolved without the perceived antichrist(s) paying the cost. The motte: “There is a crisis all humanity should unite in resolving…” The bailey: “… only insofar as it upsets people I dislike.”
This response also seems to chalk up another point in favor of the “modern-politics-as-religion” thesis, with a (literally) puritanical association (even causation) between hard work and salvation. Those who circumvent this process are perceived with the equivalent spite of their ancestors imagining a sinner who never feels the fires of hell (or Salem, as it were). As a great Mottizen (@CrispyFriedBarnacles - thanks @ActuallyATleilaxuGhola) once reminded us, “Massachusetts was founded by, functionally, the Taliban.”
Copy pasting my response from a few days ago:
I think this is a real thing. People have some internal sense of justice in which the wages of bad behavior is suitable negative consequences. And then they notice people engaging in "bad" behavior and working sensibly to avoid bad outcomes, like gay men taking PrEP or something, and get offended. The wicked were supposed to get their just rewards, but now some technological solution dodged it.
In the prep case it's "wait so I'm paying $20,000 a year just so a gay guy can have unprotected sex for free, but the same people who mandated that are talking about using insurance costs to make driving unaffordable for me?
Insurance and government action have moral hazards it makes perfect sense to get upset about. Like if the government pays a guy to buy solar panels made from coal in China, then pays him a subsidy to make power with them, then pays him to suck the CO2 from the chinese coal out of the air with that power.
Every step of that technological solution makes me poorer for no benefit to anyone except the parasite.
To what extent is the health insurance company allowed to tell you what you can and can't do?
Let's assume, arguendo, that eating red meat and animal fat really does cause disease and increase costs. Does the insurance company have a right to drop you for eating red meat or are they obligated to pay for your quadruple bypass?
But we're getting it both ways. They're pushing for "discouraging" activities they oppose while forcing us to subsidize the health risks of activities they support.
Smoking makes your insurance go way up because they specifically allowed it in the ACA, but doing meth and raw dog anal with 20 strangers a week doesn't.
If they get their single payer option you can bet they'll be charging extra for smoking, meat, guns, and weightlifting, but not for obesity, fentanyl, weed, and 1000 man gangbangs at the national bugchaser convention. And it will all be decided by Science™, so disagreeing will make you a science-denying conspiracy theorist.
Insurance companies care about how much they have to pay out. Their actuaries will compute the cost of being a steak-eating gun owner and determine it is almost nothing. They'll pass that miniscule cost onto their customers. It's not like they're going to fact check you or drop your health insurance because you had two servings of beef rather than one.
To the degree they care about weight lifting or martial arts or other masculine forms of health, I would think they would like it because it makes you cost them less if you are generally healthier.
But sure, they can't discriminate against raw-dogging enthusiasts but can against cigar enthusiasts, so it is a little unfair. But it isn't some insidious plan to punish you for being a stereotypical conservative guy with a weight bench and some guns.
You're talking about things that would happen in a free market economy. Health insurance... is not.
These are private companies and they employ actuaries to do real work. Short of government mandates forcing them to discriminate against stereotypical conservative men, they won't proactively harm their business by dropping you as a customer without financial reasons or charging you wrong.
Sir, over the last decade we've seen private companies ban, debank, and blacklist their customers on several occasions. Doing so either does not hurt their business, or in the event it does, they don't care about it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link