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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   Edited 3yr ago   36477 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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Quite the opposite. It is, in many ways, wise to prioritize the votes of land over people. People are silly, particularly when they get packed in. OTOH, the interests of land and cattle are less silly, and more fundamental.

You believe the interests of people are less fundamental than the interests of cattle and land?

I assume not.

Not the one you asked but I will argue yes.

The farther you get from the mud and the blood, the less skin you have in the game, the more lawyers of abstraction that exist between you and the world, the less "fundamental" your interests become.

If the entire staff of Goldman Sachs dropped dead tomorrow there might be some momentary disruption in the stock market but society would continue as it has. If the entire staff of Tyson Foods dropped dead tomorrow much of the US's eastern seaboard would starve. Goldman Sachs might have a higher stock valuation than Tyson but Tyson is more fundamental. A society can survive without stock-brokers and think-piece writers but it can't survive without food.

Edit: that should have been "layers of abstraction" but serendipitous typo was serendipitous

What makes a rancher's interests more intrinsically valuable than a plumber's, policeman's, teacher's, or doctor's?

The land and the food.

"We are the Lorax, we speak for the trees. If DCers think they can do as they please, the trees 'bout to start speaking Vietnamese"

Please speak plainly.

Vâng thưa ngài

Most of your posts have been "hot takes" and low effort sniping. This post in particular picked up three reports. Not everything you write has to be a long effort post, but at least some of them should be.

Three day ban for now. Use the time to browse themotte more and get a sense for the level of discussion around here.

I am not trying balance moderation for a single discussion thread.

Technologically, cities are amazing. Politically, they are a disaster. Every city in history would be best served by a rural dictatorship running it. BLM is the most recent example of this problem, but it has existed since at least the 1700s when Jefferson wrote extensively to the same end.

Jefferson is a bad example to use as your role model, not just because of the "he was a white slaveowner yadda yadda." His entire self-conceit as a "gentleman farmer" who envisioned a nation of gentlemen farmers was a pastoral fantasy. His fantasy was not economically feasible at the time, and certainly isn't now. (And regarding the slaveowning, his model absolutely required slavery to make it sustainable, especially for the elite of which he was a member.)

Arguments about the rural/city political divide should probably not be based on the musings of an 18th century philosopher/politician who repeatedly demonstrated the value of his own principles by breaking them every time he had to make a hard choice.

Every city in history would be best served by a rural dictatorship running it.

Singapore and Hong Kong are merely the most obvious exceptions. More seriously, one of the things that makes early modern Western Europe generally, and Northern Italy (which was the richest bit of Europe at the relevant time, hence the Renaissance) in particular globally unusual is the degree to which cities were not run by monarchies with a largely rural power-base. Max Weber wrote the book about this - it certainly looks like a pre-condition for the transition to capitalism.

During America's rise to power, New York was run tolerably well by Tammany Hall and the only reason why the rural areas were run better was because they were de facto run by railroad barons who took their orders (and their capital) from J P Morgan Sr in New York. Functional big-city municipal government remains the norm in the 1st world outside the United States.

How do you feel about Plato and Aristotle?

So why does Jefferson's hypocrisy have any relevance? Surely if it hits him it hits far more important pillars.

I don't think that's a particularly abnormal habit.

So you can see why I brought it up then yes? Your objection as presented was far more generalized than it needed to be.

but it has existed since at least the 1700s when Jefferson wrote extensively to the same end

For those who want to read an exact quote from Jefferson (and a parallel I found in Aristotle): https://old.reddit.com/r/SlowHistory/comments/sa1rmd/jefferson_on_the_virtue_of_the_farmer

Jefferson was sufficiently lacking in the rural virtues that he preached that he died bankrupt and his children (by Sally Hemmings, who he had intended to free) were sold by auction.

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