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 -
An alternative is unlikely unless we solve scarcity emotions using technology and/or massive shock-driven consciousness changes like in Star Trek (hyper-advanced tech and WW3). Basic mammal nature in the presence of scarcity is to priviledge oneself, one's family, and one's friends over others. This usually only fails to hold true in the presence of extremely powerful emotional ideological or political forces like nationalism (where one emotionally feels like the entire nation is one's family) or political authoritarianism (where you are forced to fight for the government because they will hurt you and maybe your loved ones if you don't). And those have their own negative consequences.
Communism could work if we were all near-constantly on an MDMA trip type of immediate feelings of love, but I'm not sure that the average human is even physically capable of being like that without some of the hardware burning out. Some spiritual teachers have claimed that they have gotten there without drugs, but whether or not they are telling the truth, the fact is that clearly even if they did reach it, they have consistently failed to teach that state to anything more than a tiny fraction of the human population. Although I will say that, even by trying, they have probably helped humanity. Modern Western morality is much better than the morality of 2000 years ago, which was basically "tough shit if you're poor or crucified, I guess the gods don't like you lol".
All that said, I do find it funny that most modern proponents of meritocracy do not challenge what is probably the biggest modern source of un-meritocracy in the West, which is inheritance. Even the most wild-eyed free market libertarian who advocates for pure meritocracy typically does not call for all humans to be put on a truly level playing field, which could only be done by forbidding parents to pass on their wealth to their children. And the truth is that, whatever you think about passing on wealth to children, all meritocratic ideologies that accept inheritance are at best just nipping around the edges, and not addressing the biggest un-meritocratic phenomenon in the whole human world.
Alright, no one else is so I'll defend inheritance. It's not about the rights of the heir, it's about the rights of the deceased to decide where their fruits go. Defending meritocracy, especially from a libertarian angle, doesn't commit you to preventing a person from doing with their earthly possession whatever they want in the last moments of their lives any more than it commits you to finding the person who would be the best CEO of amazon and installing him against their will and the will of the board.
Is the act of giving your wealth to someone who hasn't earned it meritocracy maxing? Probably not. Is having a system of ownership that incentivizes those with the most merit to earn as much as they can because they love their kid and want to pass on wealth to them merit maxing? Maybe, arguably. But it's also the pro liberty thing to do and libertarians are perfectly reasonable in coming down on the side of allowing inheritance.
Looking at our mundane problems and existential threats (ex: climate change) the biggest problem is people not thinking long term.
Inheritance helps force people to think longer term than their own lives.
That has value!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
In the UK we have inheritance tax at 40% and the Left is indeed hugely against inheritance. The main reason people hate it is because it double-dips: you get taxed when you earn money and you get taxed again on the same money when you pass it to your children. VAT also double-dips of course but it's smaller and built into the price so people don't notice, whereas inheritance tax hits you with a huge bill plus interest when you're grieving the loss of a parent.
People work hard to try and pass on as much as they can before inheritance tax kicks in.
Although in practice the vast majority of what gets caught by IHT is middle-class housing wealth that was not, in fact, taxed the first time.
It’ll be caught by capital gains tax later, I think?
EDIT: perhaps not, Capital Gains apparently only applies to the appreciation of value post-inheritance.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I agree we need to solve scarcity emotions. In broader terms, we need to teach kids to mature out of infantilism, and we need to teach codependent adults to deprogram, relearn, and develop/mature into fully functional adults. Tech can help if used helpfully, but it's not required. The process is the same as coming out of a cult and taking back on the responsibilities of adulthood.
LOL, love it! Yeah, good feels can do what mountains of argument can't even touch. But communism? No. No way of thinking about these things that prioritizes material stuff first and higher over the far more important things and issues like every living being, their preciousness and integrity, intangibles (except you can feel them) like love and practices like honesty and collective experiences like peace, safety, freedom, and a bunch beside is ever going to "fix" anything or escape the vicious cycles.
Really good point about inheritance.
I see nothing about an alternative to the principled deprivation of ownership tho.
More options
Context Copy link
Negative for what?
'Work' in what sense? I don't think that most if any of the problems with communism resolve to 'people don't care about each other enough'.
Probably going to need to define 'meritocracy' here because this doesn't make sense to me. Under that rubric, surely an even greater source of 'un-meritocracy' is allowing parents to even raise their own children? We'd all be on a much more 'level playing field' if children were taken at birth -- or, better yet, cloned en masse under expert supervision (some moms drink after all) -- and raised in batches by the state.
What sort of 'merit' are you trying to select for?
Anyway, I think the children of the rich are in aggregate substantially genetically different from the children of the poor and the two serve different functions in the societal organism. It's good for more-capable people to receive more resources, as this allows them to more fully develop their potentials, which benefits us all. Why we would want to change that, I do not know. It could certainly be improved, but I think we're much more likely to break important things in the process of attempting that, and it's still not clear to me what it is you'd be trying to accomplish in the first place.
'Meritocracy' as I understand the concept means that the more-fit are more likely to end up in positions capable of making use of their virtues, not that everyone gets an equal chance, which is an incoherent idea to begin with. What would that even mean? And why would it be a good thing?
More options
Context Copy link
I do agree, in theory, that inheritance tax should be 100% - a dead man’s belongings is a far more legitimate source of funding for the state than a man’s salary. My dad’s money is not really my money, while my salary, or my stock gains, are. But I worry about the distortion – of course most people would then spend wildly and die with nothing, and nothing would be gained.
OP, you know, we have places for people like you. Communes. Go there and share, show up all the psycho squares. Jokes aside, I really think you should, it’s the nicest, most cooperative, failsafe, beneficial way to determine who’s right. Can’t break anything (except dreams) and it’s a fun adventure.
Money is just a way to affect the world. Taxation is fractional slavery--the government is confiscating some of our power and using it to serve its own ends.
No, your dad's money is not really yours--it's his, and he's choosing to give it to you. He's decided to exercise his power that way rather than some other, shorter-term way. Why should the government have any more right to confiscate money intended for this purpose than money intended for any other purpose?
Because he’s dead, for one. A man’s right to dispose of his money as he pleases considerably diminishes with his passing. I don't consider a corpse an equal citizen.
Then, it’s more of a value thing, but I think a man should pay his own way. Not rely on handouts, be they from the state or his family. I think this is good, results in a more productive & happy society. I’m more of a minarchist than a social democrat, however even I find inherited wealth inequality unfair. Heirs give wealth a bad name. The populace would be less supportive of high taxes if that contingent was reduced to zero.
Well, it wasn't a corpse that wrote the will. The reason we generally honor contracts, wills, and arrangements even after the passing of the one who made them, is because when they were alive they had the right to make those decisions about the future. It's not that that right remains when they pass--it's that at the moment they made the decision/signed the contract, they had the right, and that moment is what matters.
If, for example, I sign a contract to rent out movie rights to a book I wrote, and then became brain-damaged and incapable of signing future contracts, you can't retroactively go back and order my rent contract be voided because I'm now incapable of consenting to the contract. Even if I now lack that right, what matters is whether I had it when I signed the contract.
Wills do not honor the rights of dead people--they honor the rights of living people to make contracts which remain in force when they die.
The alternative would be really weird. Say that rather than giving the money to you, he gives it to an architect with plans to carve his face into a mountain somewhere. When he dies, can that architect simply run off with the money, since the contract is no longer in force? Do contracts generally become null and void when someone dies, or only if they involve money going to people's descendants?
Yes, generally, they should be voided. Dead people should not (and in practical terms, do not, because they're inanimate) have the power to coerce the living. Your mortgage payments are usually voided with your death. Your IP rights should also be voided.
Again, it's not that dead people have power to coerce the living. It's that living people have the power to coerce each other in the future, including in futures where they're dead.
When I take out a loan, I'm getting money in exchange for signing a contract obligating me to pay it back over time. If I die, the contract should remain in force, or it prevents the contract from being made in the first place, and deprives me of my current right to sign such contracts.
IDK what you're talking about here. It's not like the mortgage goes away. The bank gets its money back, often when the home is sold. If mortgage payments were actually voided, banks would never give old people mortgages in the first place.
Semantics. I don't believe you should have such 'current rights', because they are future 'dead people's rights'.
I find it ludicrous that some dead people control giant foundations for decades when they are incapable of enforcing their will or even reacting to things. It's like worshipping a statue. Fake veal or whatever the christians call it.
They get insurance that pays off if the borrower dies.
Not semantics. I currently have a mortgage. I think I have a right to make mortgage agreements that involve the bank getting its money back in the event of my death.
That's just not true.
At their most fundamental level, one important thing laws need to do is reflect reality. And in reality, there are innumerable ways to do things that echo for generations after your death.
The death itself is fundamentally unimportant. It's not like it matters that much whether you die and send your money to an NGO, or send your money to the NGO 1 second before death--either way you're choosing, while alive, to give your money to an organization with long-term plans.
What's the alternative? Confiscate the money from the NGO because the donor died soon after donating? Require that all organizations only make year-long plans, because nobody has the right to plan further in advance than that?
I get the complaint about unaccountable NGOs, and dead people exerting overly much influence, but you're taking this to quite an extreme.
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
More options
Context Copy link
I do not support pure meritocracy or communism :) I am just pointing out a very common blind spot in many meritocracy supporters' views.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is because we don't want to optimize for consumption, production, or accumulation within single human lifespans. Not for nothing do we have the proverb: “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”
I understand your logic and I think it has a lot of truth to it but that said, I still find it silly when people talk about how we should have more meritocracy but do not want to address the fact that some people are born with 1000 times more resources than others.
"Merit" is not defined as "the person with the largest pile of money at death."
More options
Context Copy link
That is not the true objection of those who do talk about that, considering they do not sing the praises of billionaire orphans and refugees, but rather want to take from them more than they want to take from a dissolute trust-fund kid.
Well sure, but that's not me and my point. That's those other people. I'm not claiming that taking all of the billionaires' wealth would improve society, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't unless it was done in some completely unrealistic sci-fi fantasy way, I'm just dunking on people who claim to be all about meritocracy while ignoring inheritance.
I view inheritance as part of meritocracy. If you have an inheritance, excluding adoptees, chances are high that your parents are some variety of high-quality stock and you will be too. If you, the inheritor, are not well adapted to present conditions then you’ll lose all the money and it makes its way to everyone else anyways.
I consider that there would actually be a lot more meritocracy if there was an effective way to keep coffin-dodgers from spending down most of their children’s inheritance just to hang on to another 4 or 5 years of rapidly decreasing life value. I also reserve blame about this for descendants who are unwilling to just let Mom and Pop die with some dignity.
I agree that the practice of inheritance is eugenic. And it is probably going to make a better society than a pure meritocracy where everyone is raised by the state starting with no assets (will people still be motivated to make the enormously outsized contributions that make a billionaire, if they cannot pass it down or take it with them?)
But the point of the word "meritocracy" is distill the concept of rewarding people for their individual accomplishments, and explicitly avoiding rewarding them for "higher order" traits (parents, race, sex, age, disability, etc) that correlate well with actual useful contributions and achievements (growing a company, solving an open problem in maths, constructing a house, etc)
"Well-adapted" is a spectrum. Yes, if the inheritor is a total moron, he will throw away everything passed down on gambling, drugs and alcohol. And if the inheritor is as competent as the progenitor, they will preserve all the wealth. Somewhere in between these levels of adaptedness, there is someone who would not be able to create a large amount of wealth for themselves, but could preserve it.
If you really don't give someone any advantage from an inheritance, then people wouldn't go to such lengths to give their children inheritances.
If you just replaced the word "meritocracy" with something like "utility" or "a better society", I would agree.
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
More options
Context Copy link