site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30935 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It seems to me politics are especially bad at countering inflation. People may be pissed off the "government isn't doing enough" to fix it. However, the levers the government can easily pull to fight inflation (raising taxes/interest rates, cut transfers/subsidies, lower consumption/wages) won't gain them any popularity points. Even worse, there are plenty of socially-desirable policies that'll make inflation worse: tax cuts, raises, loan forgiveness, more transfers. I'm grateful our system is even capable of doing unpopular things like raising interest rates. If monetary policy had heavier democratic influence, I'd worry high inflation would just be the long-term equilibrium.

Ontario's leader is under heavy fire for playing hardball and preventing educational workers from getting large raises. I don't know the details well, but couldn't one argue this is what fighting inflation looks like?

The question remains: what mechanism would be especially good at countering inflation?

Say we have an nRX-approved philosopher-king who holds absolute political power. What are his options if he decides to keep inflation level? It doesn’t seem amenable to single, decisive actions, so he’s left with the same interest rate, tax, or command economy options. I suspect those will cause roughly as much suffering/ if implemented decisively rather than by a democratic half-measure.

Then again, I’m not terribly well versed in economic history. How effective was austerity at fighting inflation? If it failed, was that due to wreckers political will, or to outside economic forces?

I think the framing is wrong. Inflation is a trailing indicator resulting from either or both an increase in the money supply and a decrease in the supply of goods indexed. It seems like we've had both of these things, some from governmental actions and some from actions it would have been difficult or impossible for government to prevent entirely although could have mitigated them better. Inflation is prevented before it happens and just grown through after the fact. The nRX approved philo king would have done many things differently resulting in more manageable inflation, among which include more carefully managing the money supply and creating more robust supply lines, for example building these chip plants domestically a decade ago.

Keeping supply stable seems like something that could be achieved by an NAP-king. It’d be more expensive, in the short run, than our free market solution. That’s not inflation, but paying a price for antifragility. So that works towards keeping inflation down.

What does the NAP-king’s ideal money supply look like? Are you thinking of something as technocratic as @IGI-111’s digital deflation (or a more conventional version of literally decirculating currency)? I’m trying to get a handle on what deflationary policy looks like without the constraints of politics.

I'm unusually for liking crypto but also recognizing some inflation is probably ideal to shift the balance somewhat against creditors and in favor of borrowers. I would however like this rate of inflation to be stable and predictable, which is in theory what the current fed is tasked with as the problem isn't as simple as just having the money supply grow linearly because the overall size of the economy and number of participants isn't static. I think something like the fed should exist but with constraints, more than anything being forbidden from printing more money for the sake of paying for policy, perhaps the inflation targeted money would go straight to the federal budget as a base tax on all cash holders but anything more than the exact amount measured to keep inflation at an ideal level would need to be raised through taxes or debt.

I find @IGI-111's suggestion strange and don't think it'd work very well in practice.

I don't think stable, predictable inflation shifts the balance between creditors and borrowers. Lenders would just increase the nominal interest rate to get the same real interest rate.

The reason economists today support a small, stable rate of inflation is that it keeps money circulating and prevents deflation, which would be disastrous economically.

It does shift the balance in favor of borrowers generally because it puts pressure on creditors to lend money or watch their capital depreciate. It's a component of why deflation would be disastrous economically. If it costs you every day you are cash heavy then you're going to be much more willing to lend.

As long as the long run rate of deflation is less than the real interest rate paid on other safe, liquid dollar denominated assets like treasuries that doesn't really matter much. I don't think you understand someone holding cash is essentially already lending their resources out at 0% interest.

This is the best explanation I can think of for what we're talking about.

To be clear I'm not for monetarism, my preferred way of doing it is to use sound money instead of trying to plan the size of the money supply.

But if you're going to plan, that's how I would do it.

instead of trying to plan the size of the money supply.

The money supply isn't set by God - someone is choosing it. If you use a gold standard, that is likely to be foreign gold speculators - or in the most famous case of an inappropriate monetary contraction with megadeath consequences, a foreign central bank.

Seriously, the reason why monetary policy is hard is that the use of money as store of value and money as medium of exchange conflict - money which is hoarded is not circulating. Stablish prices and fullish employment require a stablish supply of circulating money, but the demand for hoarded money can vary rapidly due to speculation. So you either need sufficiently and predictably high inflation that the demand for hoarded money is consistently negligible relative to the demand for circulating money, or you need to vary the supply of money to match hoarder demand.

The classical gold standard that actually existed, as opposed to the one which modern goldbugs think should have existed, depended on the ability of the big fractionally reserved central banks (the Bank of England, the Banque de France, the Reichsbank before WW1, the Federal Reserve Banks after WW1) to print money - particularly to carry out their lender-of-last-resort function. The NBER paper I link to makes the argument that when the Banque de France tried to move closer to a full-reserve gold standard without deflating the French economy (in effect by redeeming GBP and USD for gold and hoarding the gold), it crashed the system causing the great depression.

What is this place?

This website is a 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. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats