site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   34879 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A little over a week ago, I talked about Alex Tabbarok's review of a new book, "The Licensing Racket", which does a deep dive on occupational licensing, specifically when the boards that control the licensing process are, themselves, controlled by licensed professionals within that industry.

I just listened to the author, Rebecca Haw Allensworth, get interviewed on the Short Circuit Podcast. It's worth a listen, above and beyond the snippets that Alex pulled from her book. She very intuitively conveys exactly how these things function and why. She literally just started going to their meetings (often the only non-industry-insider present), watching what they did, listening to what they talked about, and getting a sense for how they actually functioned in the real world. I want to point out a couple things that I didn't really bring out in my prior comment.

First, just another anecdote. Some handyman installed a Ring camera. He just bought the camera at Sam's Club. They're designed to be super easy to use; meant to be pretty much just plug-and-play by consumers. His great sin was that he put on a business card that he could install Ring cameras. For this, he was dragged in front of a licensing board for installing security systems. "This could be competition." When some people on the staff suggested that they could be lenient, because after all, he only did it once, the response from the board was, "...that we know of." Maximum fine. You have to scare anyone else who could even think about competing with you.

Anyway, everyone is aware that, right in everyone's face, there is a huge conflict of interest with these boards. The author says that industry folks talk about how they can totally manage it. "Hats", they call it. When you sit on the board, "you take your industry professional hat off and put on your board member hat". Of course, it's easy to say that; it's much harder to actually do it. They find themselves constantly coming down extremely hard on anything that smells like competition, but when it comes to one of their own, when their people are actually harming consumers, they suddenly find mercy and leniency. As mentioned before, they play the two-step of, on the one hand, playing up the super scary dangers of unlicensed people (i.e., people who haven't paid their dues to the cartel) doing anything, while on the other hand, saying that it's soooo critical that people have access to their services (like medical care, where there is a 'shortage'), that they just have to keep bad professionals out there harming consumers. "Better to have a butcher for a doctor than no doctor," but god forbid a foreign doctor or anyone who hasn't paid their dues to their particular cartel. Their own will get second, third, and fourth chances. When they actually need to dive in to a complaint, they only meet once every month or two, so they'll spend one day every month or two working on it, and if it's a case that needs five days of work, eh, they'll get around to figuring it out within a year, maybe. Even when they know it's a bad professional causing harm to consumers; even saying things like, "We know he'll be back again." The author says that often times, these folks don't get stopped by the board; only the most egregious cases get stopped - and those often get stopped by criminal proceedings in actual courts of law! In the meantime, they're out there taking patients and prescribing...

In the interview, they draw comparisons to labor unions. Obviously, both have the tangible impact of raising wages for their profession. She cites one of Morris Kleiner's books, saying that union membership has gone from super high in the 1950s all the way down to where it is today... but licensing goes in the exact opposite direction - super low in the 50s, way up to being quite significant today. That said, everyone knows and acknowledges that unions are self-interested; the overt point is to vindicate the interests of its members. They get a seat at the table with management to hash out a relationship. It's expected to be somewhat adversarial, and there are a bunch of rules governing how that interaction is supposed to work. But licensing boards aren't like that. Instead, we basically just declare that the 'union' is actually the government. They're in charge of the whole shebang. They essentially 'make law' in the area. It's an entirely new way of organizing labor in society, and it just sort of happened, quietly, while everyone smiled and trusted that a "Board of experts" was looking out for them.

Which is why there is only one guiding light holding them back via anti-trust action - North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC. The board was sending cease and desist letters to folks offering teeth whitening in malls. You know those things that you can just buy at Costco and do at home? Yeah, they were basically just selling it and maybe helping folks put it on. They were "practicing unlicensed dentistry". The Supreme Court acknowledged that when a state licensing board is primarily composed of active market actors, they are not immune from anti-trust regulation unless they're being actively supervised by the State. Of course, we haven't made most of these boards become actively supervised by the state; the union/cartel still controls most of them. They just make sure they have a cartel union Board lawyer present when they're making decisions, who sometimes tells them that they shouldn't do certain things that could attract too much anti-trust attention (apparently, they do really often want to do stuff that would be egregiously anti-competitive, so these lawyers still have to tell them no reasonably often). Of course, how one thinks about the strength of these constraints depends significantly on how one views the anti-trust mechanisms in government. In my estimation, you have to be pretty overtly egregious, and do so by policy, for them to rouse into action.

It's all pretty crazy to hear. Whatever role you thought licensing boards were doing, they're not doing that. They're doing the absolute bare minimum to protect consumers and the absolute maximum to protect their own interests. Why wouldn't they? Incentives do what incentives are. The system is what the system does. It doesn't do what you thought it might do, no matter how much you might hope that it did.

Whatever role you thought licensing boards were doing, they're not doing that.

Hey now, I'm sure plenty of people here hated occupational licensing before it was cool. The Institute for Justice has been suing some of the more absurd boards around the country for 15 years, but its still common for a cosmetology license to require 1500 hours of training vs 300 for an EMT. Louisiana famously had an onerous flower arrangement license, scaled back since 2010ish. Not until 2020 did Florida scale back its ~1000hour license for interior residential decorating. There was a country-wide movement to pare back licenses for braiding hair. The ring cam anecdote is new to me.

The Gist recently had an interview with a journalist looking into occupational licensing. Might be the same author you referenced. They got into the weeds about how doctors who become drug addicted, drug peddlers, or do some patient related sex crimes maintain there licenses, often going to work in prison jails when nobody else will hire them.

One of the things I was pretty interested in when visiting various less developed nations is that there was a surprising lack of visible homelessness. Example: Thailand. There were no homeless on the streets outside of extremely and visibly disabled people (missing arms/legs/eyes, severe mental disabilities, etc). I suppose it's easy to stay off the streets if you can just go buy some coconuts and sell the juice on the street without a gaggle of PMCs following you around issuing fines. The barrier to entry for commerce seemed to be minimal at the actual worst.

Now I look at the US with many of its large cities overrun with homeless encampments, hear about bullshit like some jurisdictions enforcing a "flower arrangement license" and it really makes me disgusted at the evil we have wrought.

In the third world the difference between countries with lots of homelessness and little homelessness is typically how easy it is to squat land around the cities. Even in the poorest places you won't see that many homeless people if anyone can go 20km in the direction of the poorest urban settlement and build a shack right after the last round of shacks. Much wealthier third world countries that restricts such settlement will have lots of visible homelessness.

is typically how easy it is to squat land around the cities

Note also that "squatting land and building a shack" is just a specific form of development in general; when the commons outside the city are enclosed (for reasons that are real- like lack of physical land or lack of accessible water- or fake like environmentalism or democratic capture), prices skyrocket.

Was in Bangkok a week ago and saw many homeless people, and several beggars who might or might not have also been homeless, including children. One man, as you say, was disabled and seemed to have had his hands removed or maybe they never developed, but most seemed relatively whole. This does not necessarily contradict your point, but even Japan, for example, has homeless people, and Osaka used to have fairly visible encampments around the castle until they were bussed out for the World Cup years ago--to who knows where. I've seen homeless people in most larger cities in Europe, in Harare, Bulawayo, Johannesburg, Durban, etc.

I saw a homeless beggar in China once. Two Chinese cops were standing over him and very kindly talking to him. Completely blocking his begging attempts. I didn't observe this for long, but I saw no one cross those two cops to give him money.

So I spent a solid chuck of time in Thailand and was struck by all the severely disabled people. This is approx 2008. I thought about giving them money because you can't fake missing all 10 fingers and open wounds. A bit of googling led me to news posts and forums alleging that these people are essentially slaves to the local mafia. They are bussed in to beg, and kept in a pitiful state to earn more.

a gaggle of PMCs following you around issuing fines

The people issuing fines for unlicensed flower arrangement are not, generally, PMCs. They’re florist shop owners.

American homeless aren't (generally) aspiring florists and coconut peddlers stymied by regulations, they are the people Thailand, at best, just lets die, and quite often executes.

Or pushes into places away from the tourists, Latin America style, to do drugs among themselves.

Thats death on a longer timeline, generally.

Flowers are an insane business, so it's flower wholesalers actually, usually as a way to protect their laundering operations. There are a couple of florists, but most florists are the female version of model train enthusiasts, and their shops act as tax write offs for their husbands.

but most florists are the female version of model train enthusiasts,

Excellent analogy. And fucking scary. I once met an actual "foamer" and my spidey sense went off like an air raid siren.

A what now? Is that like an anorak but more antisocial?

Well sure, my point was that it was decidedly not-PMC business owners.

I know, I just know about that ridiculous industry so I wanted to build on your comment. I tried to write it so it would seem more like an addition than a correction, but I failed.

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