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 -
Of course that direct access to every bank account's balance would very much help the fed do its job. Maybe you remember that there was talk of the fed having it's own cryptocurrency, where it could see everyone's balance and every transaction that was taking place, this would eliminate the huge measurement error in basically all the metrics that we care about. With a cryptocurrency we could compute local inflation rates in real time, and the fed's interest rate could be continuously set to achieve whatever outcome we want. The only teensy weensy little downside is that you let the government have complete access to all balances and transactions that occur.
Not without building out an insanely complex goods tracking system and tying it to every payment system. Specifically, every good sold would need to be tagged with adequate metadata for the BLS to replicate CPI calculations. Instead of
product category: grocery(as distinguished from "product category: alcohol" necessary to enforce certain rules) you'd need{'type: 'flour', 'quality': 'organic', 'amount_in_oz': 32}.The only major CPI category this could be used to directly track that I can figure out is medicine, but that's because we don't actually track inflation of medical spending, we just track medical spending and treat all increases as inflation. I.e. if open heart surgery used to cost $100k and people bought 1, but now it costs $80k and people buy 2, that's treated as 60% inflation. That means that actual inflation (cost increase of a fixed basket of goods) in the period of 2000-2020 was significantly lower than CPI reports.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link