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 -
One topic that I was thinking about lately is regarding tariffs and some sort of hidden cognitive dissonance behind the whole policy. It seems to be a clash of different type of worldviews, one being the so called industrial policy, which is a policy where a nation creates favorable environment to grow domestic behemoths and grow their domestic economy. There are multiple examples of countries employing this type of policy such as South Korea, China or even Japan back in the day.
On the other side of the spectrum you have standard economic theory in favor of free trade. It has formidable range of theories for why this is ultimately the best policy, the most important one being the concept of comparative advantage.
Now to get back to the cognitive dissonance stuff, there is one huge question. If you are in the latter camp where you oppose tariffs and trade regulations - why are these people not against retaliatory tariffs? From this standpoint it seems as if you are shooting yourselves in the foot. If USA imposes tariffs on some goods like steel, then you can actually take advantage of that in free trade framework: buy state subsidized steel from USA to build your own infrastructure and factories for cheap, and then use this advantage to sell things you produce back. And even if USA decides for some broad tariff regime, it still enables you to use this advantage to sell goods to other countries. Under this framework the only country punished should be USA and the rest of the free trade world should be winners.
The other side of the cognitive dissonance is that in fact at least during last few decades a lot of economists are actually pro industrial policy. You can easily find articles like these where protective measures are praised. The same goes for EU, which explicitly aims to subsidize certain industries.
I think that the most interesting example here is China, which especially subsidies the basic production capacities: energy, steel, concrete, basic chemicals etc. These basic commodities tend to "supercharge" the rest of the economy, mostly as they are hard to transport and thus create at least local monopolies. It also benefits and/or suffers from so called double marginalization problem, as costs of goods at the bottom of supply chain propagate positively/negatively throughout the rest of the economy. Moreover creating complete supply chain in certain place increases intangible "know how". You can then have experts on the whole supply chain working collaboratively with each other to produce superior goods cheaper. Think of Detroit being the old car hub or Silicon Valley as a hub for software or Hollywood for entertainment industry.
To be frank I am leaning more into industrial policy side now, especially since COVID-19. Noah Smith has an article defending such a policy for national security reasons. But in the end with how complicated the supply chains are, this becomes almost an impossible conundrum. Just take chip production issue: you have to have mining facilities for pure silicon and other valuable minerals. Then you have to have companies designing new chips in research labs. Then you have companies capable of producing highly sophisticated lithographs capable of producing high-end chips, such as ASML in Netherlands. Then you have to have companies capable of producing said chips such as TSMC in Taiwan. The whole system is very fragile and even one of the chains in the links proves security risk. The same goes for pharmaceutics or other technologies.
Isn't that basic game theory? A retaliation might hurt you, but it beats the alternative in the hypothetical pay-off matrix where you meekly accept unilateral tariffs. At the very least, it dissuades future trading partners from considering tariffs when you have a reputation for tit-for-tat.
I would agree, but only in case when tariffs actually have some impact on targeted nation. Again, the free trade doctrine would mean that tariffs are bad just for the country enacting them. There is no game theory where you have two players and one just shoots himself in his foot. The other player either does not care, or maybe he can use the now injured other player to take advantage of. He should definitely not "retaliate" by shooting his own foot. It does not make sense.
So even if adopting this game theory framework - if tariffs are so universally bad, why interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake? And if tariffs are so effective that they help the enemy player at your own cost, then tariffs are actually useful and good at least in some case and we can have honest discussion who is benefiting and who is losing given certain trade framework. That is the core of the cognitive dissonance I am talking about.
I'm no economist, but my understanding is that tariffs harm both parties. If, likely due to ideological reasons, someone makes a mutually negative sum decision, then you're justified in punishing them.
So they're not just shooting themselves in the foot, the spread from the shotgun is hurting the other party too. They're making a mistake that hurts you too, and you'd very much prefer they didn't do that, even if you're agnostic on whether you want them better or worse off.
Furthermore, despite obvious structural problems the USA is economically much healthier than the EU, Canada & Mexico.
So from a leverage / bargaining position tariffs make a certain sort of sense; we are much more well placed to absorb the hit and bounce back. It’s like a Mexican standoff where one person has a Kevlar vest and the other person has the shakes from alcohol withdrawal.
It’s completely in line with the “Daddy’s home” / “My house my rules” vibe that sustains the MAGA movement. Trump has been entirely consistent in his sentiment that the USA has been taken for a ride by its supposed closest allies and partners, and it’s time to play our hand. He’s been saying it for like thirty years, it’s his most deeply help political belief as far as I can tell.
We are stronger than Canada, Mexico, the EU, China, and Japan. We are not strong enough to pick a fight with all of them at the same time! The only sane trade policy for industrialization is to encourage trade within the Americas, with our friends, with whom we exert outsized influence as opposed to the EU and the Pacific. Free trade has very clearly worked in this context as evidenced by the comparative economic success of the US. The extent to which it hasn’t is the extent to which we should fuck with it (not much) which I was under the impression that we already resolved under Trump 1.
How much has Canada actually taken advantage of the US?
At the end of the day, the US will not be a net exporter and have the strongest currency in the world.
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