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 -
I think there are two separate though somewhat linked questions in the whole debate over Vivek's recent extremely controversial post:
I think that the answer to #1 is a very complex one and largely boils down to what you value. Clearly high-skill immigrants who assimilate benefit the economy, but they also take away jobs from possible US native-born competitors. A lot of one's answer to this question will depend on whether you want to maximize your at least short term market value and are willing to accept a sort of socialist nativism to try to maximize it, or whether you value other things more. There are also obvious questions of the possible dilution of culture by immigrants, fears of future race wars, and all sorts of complicated issues.
I would like to focus on #2. Is the Asian work model actually better than the US one? To me, the answer is pretty clearly no, and this is what offends me mainly about Vivek's post. The whole idea that Americans are too lazy and we should have a work ethic more like Asians.
I don't think many would doubt that the Asian work ethic is in many ways personally damaging to people who follow it. It is both emotionally and physically damaging. I have met more Asians who complain about that work ethic than Asians who support it.
But does it even bring objectively better economic results? To me the answer seems clearly to be no, it does not. Take Japan for example. It has had more than 70 uninterrupted years of peace and capitalism, yet despite its Asian work model, it has never managed to economically catch up with the US. Now to me it seems clear that Japan is in many ways a better place to live than the US is - it has much lower levels of violent crime, it seems to have a better solution to finding people housing, and so on. But I think those things, while correlated with their work culture, are also potentially separable from their work culture. I see no fundamental reason why Japanese could not adopt a more Western type of work model while also retaining the low violent crime rates and the better housing situation.
Japanese have less per-capita wealth than Americans. If working constantly was truly superior, then why do they have this outcome? Of course America has many advantages, like a historical head-start on liberal capitalism and great geography and winning wars and so on. But it's been 70 years now... the geography is what it is, but certainly modern Japan has not been plagued by a lack of capitalism or by wars or by authoritarianism. If they slave away working so hard, or pretending to work so hard, all the time, then why are they still significantly poorer than we are? To me this suggests that the Asian work model is not essentially superior to the Western one, and it would not only be personally damaging to me if we were to import it here in the US, but it would not even make up for that by yielding better economic outcomes.
It's not just that. If the argument was "Yes, some native-born Americans will lose their jobs to immigrants, but the economy will improve overall for everyone," it might be an easier sell to those who aren't ethnonationalists. But I don't see a lot of evidence that middle class whites or working class Latinos or lower-class blacks benefit from a bunch of H1-Bs flooding certain markets, to say nothing of illegal immigrants. All that wealth they generate seems to mostly circulate within their own community or get sent back home. So it's not just techbros crying that they got laid off for an Indian H1-B and unable to see how America is benefitting by recruiting the "top 0.1%" as Elon would have us believe. It's that the techbros get laid off and their replacements aren't actually doing anything for "America"; they are generating wealth for themselves and their masters.
As for Japan, I agree with you that the Asian work model is not categorically superior to ours. (I have long pointed out, before it was fashionable, that all the people praising how great Japanese and Korean and Chinese kids are at math have never actually interacted with them in a classroom and tried to get them to produce an original idea that wasn't rote-memorized from a textbook.) However, I'll also point out, for those with short memories, that the 80s was the decade of Rising Sun. Japan was ascendant and buying up half of California, and a frequent meme was that Japan had lost World War II and was now winning the economic war in revenge. Why did their economy end up tanking in the end? It's complicated and I won't pretend to have a concise answer for that, but I will say that very few people were predicting it back then; if there were signs of an inherent weakness in the Japanese economy that would spell their eventually failure (as many people are now saying is true of China), they weren't obvious. Look at how many near-future SF tales from the era depicted Japan as the future global superpower. (Just as many people today now think it will be the Chinese century, though I think there is more justified skepticism of this as well.)
I don't know why you think that the wealth circulates in their own community - they buy goods and services like any other Americans. Cognizant H1Bs aren't getting haircuts from other Cognizant employees.
They do send remittances, but what's wrong with that? Taking money out of circulation in America reduces the price level.
It's my understanding that taking money out of circulation is bad for the nation's economy, but I am open to explanation as to how it's actually good for billions of dollars to be earned in the US and sent to other countries.
I don't think it does! Think about it this way - say I make a dollar, and then send it to India. Either that dollar makes its way back to the US, or it doesn't. If it does make its way back to the US, then that's as good as the guy who earned it spending it. And if the dollar doesn't come back to the US, from the perspective of the 'real economy' I created value for others and asked for nothing in return, which is even better! (This is the reduction in the price level)
More like burning it.
No? With respect to the health of the economy, it's consumption whether the guy buys a $100 thingy and enjoys it himself, or pays $100 to have some thingy shipped to India. There might be other concerns not directly about the economy but OP was talking specifically about economy
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