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 -
I'm also a Bryan Caplan fan. I really like his arguments against education, his arguments for having more kids, and, more recently, his arguments against feminism. I also like his thoughts on living as a contrarian in a conformist world; I would have benefited A LOT from reading those when I was younger, and it makes me feel a deep sense of kinship with him. And I enjoy the way he applies economic reasoning everywhere. He's a must-read for any rationalist, in the same tier as Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, or Richard Dawkins.
The biggest disagreement I have with him is open borders. I mean, I can kind of see it if you are an universalist utilitarian who thinks everyone has equal value, but I still can't understand how he possibly thinks norms and institutions like strong property rights, non-nepotism, etc. would survive. But that's OK, every great thinker is guaranteed to have at least one idea you strongly disagree with, because the kind of mind that looks for heresies in one area looks for heresies everywhere. I can disagree with Caplan about immigration just like I disagree with Scott about polyamory or disagree with the Dreaded Jim about anime. Rule thinkers in, not out.
I think he is sort of viewing everything from 500 feet as though every person acts a as a perfect automaton blindly acting exactly like every other person as a perfectly rational being. TBH I find the same flaws in most theoretical constructions— they ignore that humans are not little Spock’s running about perfectly enacting logical self interest. It also tends to elide the degree to which relationships between people and groups of people tends to totally change how people perceive their self interest and make choices.
The entire conversation about feminism and anti-feminism falls apart if you introduced a single wrinkle— humans tend to form these crazy things called families. And thus a lot of “rights” type arguments don’t work because every right asserted on one member of a family without imposing either a constriction or duty on someone else in that family. So if you say “well, women shouldn’t have to do all the housework, the cooking, the cleaning, the child care, because she is equal to the man,” you immediately have a problem because somebody has to do that stuff. So now you’re putting this on the other adult in the relationship— the man. But then he claps back with his own rights claims “why should I have to do all this? Why is it my job to do the laundry?” She wants to have a career, but someone else has to support her to make that happen. If one person could get a huge promotion by uprooting and moving to New York, you either move everyone or you don’t.
These simple mistakes always floor me because they’re pretty obvious. It’s not possible to ignore the individual choices, nor possible to ignore the relationships between people that inform those choices. The entire edifice is built on two lies — first the notion of an individual without tastes and preferences that don’t lead directly to maximizing utility on every axis, and second the idea that every man exists by himself with no relation to others around him. They’re both absurd. Humans have cultures that shape their preferences, and they have relationships with other people, not just families, but communities, cultures, political systems, and so on.
Even with regard to education, I think he’s right — in America especially, because the expense of college has made it that way. We have a fairly unique relationship with college. I’d argue we’ve basically turned it into a very expensive career casino in which you bet 4-5 years of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars (over the course of the loan) on the chance that a given combination of the right school, major, activities, internships, and GPA will grant you a middle class career. And really a lot of his (correct) understanding of education works best in the American system where the entire point of our college system is to get a credential, get a job, and never think about that stuff again. In that context, attending Yale courses, but not getting the credentials is a waste of time and money. But if we’re talking about aristocratic students who for various reasons don’t need college specifically to get a job after college, they aren’t looking at college in the same way. They’d see the education part as more important as a way to impress people, as a sign of prestige, or a way to find a spouse. They would read the readings they are interested in, and maybe wouldn’t care as much about the diploma. Attending a lecture at Yale is much more intrinsically valuable when the diploma doesn’t matter.
Again, the context matters in how this stuff happens in the real world. If you want people to choose the education over the diploma, you need to make the education cheap and the diploma matter less.
This no longer works, and has not for generations. A man making such a complaint -- or worse, pointing out that as the main (or sole) source of external income, he's doing a lot for the household already -- by doing so proves himself a boor and probably a wifebeater. That has been part of the influence of feminism on culture; a man is obligated to do his share of everything, and his share is whatever the woman says it is.
I tried this one weird trick called "going to church" and through that met a hot girl in her 20s (I was mid-late 30s) who was excited about homemaking and being a mother. Rolls her eyes at the word 'feminism'. More people should try it.
Her take is that I'm already working hard to support us and she's obviously biologically/psychologically better-suited to making babies and cleaning the house. Why would she expect that of me?
My mom taught me to never buy a household/kitchen appliance as a gift for a woman, as that would somehow be denigrating. But for Christmas I bought my wife the snazzy new vacuum cleaner she'd had her eye on and she just loves the thing to pieces. Vacuums the house twice a day.
Turns out women can be really happy to be women, and act as the natural compliment to men, when no one raises them to hate the idea. Our next baby is due any day now and I'm working hard to expand my business to more than cover all the new expenses that will bring. I can do this because she supports me as I support her. I come home to a clean (and pleasant-smelling) house, good food, thriving children, and usually a decent massage before bed. Really takes the stress of the day out of me before I fall asleep. Getting up the next day and rocking hard comes easy.
Meanwhile, last night, I was hanging out with a mixed crowd when a lonely, bitter, circa 35-year old woman I've been acquainted with for several years -- has a professional career and a house -- was crowing about some article she'd read regarding how men are feeling bad about 'falling behind' economically. The satisfaction in her voice was palpable.
Teach your children well.
Just saying, look! Turning away from Christianity has been a social disaster on a scale previously impossible to imagine. I'd rather be single than try to date a secular woman. Meanwhile the landscape is dotted with little islands of sanity where men, women, and families are still quietly humming along in harmony and deep cohesion. Isn't the protocol obvious?
How does it work for those who don't have a business?
Don't want to be glib here. It's a serious question, I have a lot of sympathy, and wish to treat it (and you) with respect.
I can't imagine not having a business. When I was younger I worked some corporate jobs and found them soul-crushing. Not just for all the obvious reasons, but also because of the total disconnect between effort and reward. Working for myself I never know how much I'll make in a year -- and that's a good thing!
I know exceedingly few people who are making 'real' money (>$200k/year) except that they have their own businesses. Those few tend to be high-level FAANG engineers. The rest are tradesmen or some other kind of independent contractor. This makes sense. The purpose of a company is to generate profit for the owners. Ergo, unless you're an owner, you will be paid the precise minimum amount the management thinks possible, and will always be vulnerable to getting replaced or otherwise eliminated. The people paying you have many incentives to do that. Never mind the psychic burden of constantly having to play their asinine games to try to avoid the chopping block.
"Just go start a business lol" isn't helpful advice. But the fact remains that small (even personal) businesses have comparatively massive potential upside. If you find the right niche for yourself, every day is suddenly a golden opportunity for advancement. It's a much better way to live, at least IME. I recall reading somewhere that self-employed people are 1) much more stressed and 2) much happier.
Especially in the coming era of AI agents, finding any skill that you can sell independently is going to be worth looking into.
Beyond that it's hard to give advice. There are already many people in my life, whom I know well and care about, for whom I'm always trying to solve this problem. Brothers, friends, etc. Owning my business is high-status but working for me isn't, so I get in a weird bind with trying to give them a leg up. My profit margins are insane and I can generally pay favored people several times the going rate, but am reluctant to do so because that just gets them stuck in a position of dependence upon me which is not the goal.
Perhaps the only real encouragement I can offer is that I've never known anyone who was set on going independent who didn't ultimately make it one way or another. In many ways it feels to me like becoming an adult, striking out on your own, learning hard lessons, and ultimately reaching a sort of maturity.
This was certainly the case for me. I'm the typical 'dropped out of school to start a business' bro, and as is typical that business burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp. But, yes, the fourth one stayed up.
If you want to pursue it, there are plenty of resources for small business education and usually some pretty good local networks. Online 'entrepreneurial' spaces are generally full of blowhards and grifters but sometimes yield good information.
I wish you all the best.
Thanks for the well wishes, but my question was not a veiled request for personal life advice, as I've already noted downthread. I'm meant it quite literally: you must be aware that even if all people were capable, they could not all have businesses. (Disregarding weird economical models where everyone is their own boss but also has a side job where they work for someone else). So, how does your advice to go full Christian provider husband for a homemaker 10 years your junior work for those who are not so financially independent and stable? How much credit can those "little islands of sanity" really give to Christianity, and how much do they owe to being, simply put, rich?
There's a separate question of the self-honesty of converting, but that's a separate question.
The idea that both parents working makes a huge financial difference is overblown IMO. I read somewhere that something like 80% of the 'extra' income a second working spouse brings gets lost amidst taxes, additional expenses related to commuting, outsourcing domestic labor, and so on. Is the remainder really worth giving up all the wonderful things that come with having a stay at home spouse? We get to raise our own kids, eat fresh, healthy meals, live in a clean house, and so on. What's that worth?
To your point, most of the families in our parish (which is heavily blue collar) seem to struggle financially to maintain this lifestyle. In some cases mom works part or even full-time, but especially given the exorbitant cost of childcare (and the deplorable state of the schools) this is generally seen as something to be avoided if possible. It's simply a question of priorities. And, since the women are generally not working, they help each other out a lot with childcare and so on. It's truly a joy to walk into a home and find women sitting around a table chattering and having fun while preparing a meal, while kids zip in and out.
Almost every (secular) couple I can think of where both partners work full-time could easily downsize a bit and be much happier, imo. The main hangup is often (as in the case of my sister) that women have been so psy-opped into thinking this is low-status that they can't be at peace with it. This is monstrous and the people responsible should pay. As to my sister, she openly complains about how much she hates her job, misses her kids, and pays for daycare, but explicitly refuses to quit because she wants to set a 'good feminist example' for her daughters, who seem to spend most of their time on iPads and in front of the TV while eating junk food because both parents are so burned out all the time.
One I'd be really happy to field.
Is it a psy-op or sometimes people just like to complain but their revealed preferences tell otherwise? It could be either way imo.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link