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've been thinking about why some people are terrified of Trump while others, like me, are more indifferent. I mostly tune out Trump news because I assume much of it involves scare tactics or misleading framing by his detractors. When my wife brings up concerns about his supposedly authoritarian actions, my general response is that if what he's doing is illegal, the governmental process will handle it - and if it's legal, then that's how the system is supposed to work. I have faith that our institutions have the checks and balances to deal with any presidential overreach appropriately.
This reminded me of a mirror situation during 2020-2021 with the BLM movement, where our positions were reversed. I was deeply concerned about social media mobs pressuring corporations, governments, and individuals to conform under threat of job loss, boycotts, and riots, while my wife thought these social pressures were justified and would naturally self-correct if they went too far. The key difference I see is that the government has built-in checks and balances designed to prevent abuse of power, while social movements and mob pressure operate without those same institutional restraints. It seems like we each trust different institutional mechanisms, but I can't help but think that formal governmental processes with built-in restraints are more reliable than grassroots social pressure that operates without those same safeguards. Furthermore, the media seems incentivized to amplify fear about Trump but not about grassroots social movements - Trump generates clicks and outrage regardless of which side you're on, while criticizing social movements risks alienating the platforms' own user base and advertiser-friendly demographics.
I don't like trump because he's made my situation materially worse and is likely to continue to do so. I don't like trump because he profits the outgroup at the expense of the ingroup. I don't like trump because I'm ideologically and morally opposed to his positions. I don't like trump because I think he is, personally, a very immoral individual.
In principle, you could convince me that any particular complaint is overblown. There are plenty of immoral, harmful, outgroup people I don't feel nearly the vitriol for. But Trump is the perfect storm; He's not just a villain, he's a villain that gratuitously kicks puppies. Sure, the media environment contributes to what you call "terror", but that's strictly adaptive. Everyone on my "side" would agree, sober-minded, that Trump is the single most important political figure to oppose. Adding a component of emotional motivation increases the time and pleasure in doing so. Consider any ideological cause leftists and liberals are interested in: creedal citizenship, wealth redistribution, climate change, alphabet people, etcetera. Assuming conflict theory, it's obvious that "Depose Donald Trump" is the first step in promoting any of them. The only reason to do anything else is if you believe in mistake theory instead-- but Donald Trump is congenitally incapable of admitting mistakes (except in the "fifty stalins" sense) which means any attempt to find common ground just gets ran over by his conflict theory instead.
But how? Unless you are a rulebreaker or someone who gets money from the government for non-poverty or oldness related reasons you cant have been. If you are amongst the rulebreakers, certainly you knew you were, right? The rules as written are much harsher than the Trump rules. The third option is tariffs.
If you are a government subsidy for non-poverty reasons-er, well that could always have ended at any time right? Was your work nonpartisan? Like were you researching how to grow trees with wood 2x as strong in 1/18 the time? Or were you doing something else?
The tariff affected I see and understand. Its a rapid change in the business environment, and those always suck. If you can show me an approximately equal amount of outrage about the passage and implementation of Obamacare you are certified fresh to complain about the Trump tariffs.
Tarrifs and fewer immigrants increase cost of living. Plus he's personally annoying, and that counts.
Were you born after 2008? because people were definitely Big Mad. The outrage reduced over time, but only because Obamacare is actually decent policy. (And if you want to argue that, explain why even Trump still hadn't gotten rid of it.)
Anyways, if you want to make a 1-to-1 comparison the outrage about Obamacare is definitely bigger than the outrage over tarrifs. Immigration and healthcare are flamewar lightning rods, but barely anyone actually cares to discuss trade policy.
I'm a government contractor. I believe my work is relatively nonpartisan, though if I doxxed myself maybe you would find a reason to disagree. But apparently the trump administration doesn't, because the contract I'm on got renewed... just, after a whole lot of time-and-money-wasting nonsense.
A rare return from the field of economics is the fact known for >200 years that increasing the supply of labor literally only ever benefits the ownership class. The idea of foreign laborers as beneficial because they make goods cheap is somewhat reversing causality. Goods have to be cheap because we have so many foreign laborers. If people couldn't afford the staples, they wouldn't buy them. The outcomes from there are: goods cost less, or workers are paid more, or revolution.
"Cheap goods" are an illusory benefit. You shouldn't be thankful big ag can bring in >100,000 H-2A workers so your strawberries are only $5 a pound. You should be furious that your compensation hasn't scaled proportionally so you can afford strawberries at $10 or $15 or $20 a pound; you should be furious at the greed of banks and corporations, at the incompetence and corruption in government, that has allowed the rampant inflation from the probably $0.50 a pound strawberries cost in 1970. Or the $0.25 for bread and the $1.25 for milk.
Your stresses over cost of living are the direct consequence of these three events:
Also bankers being bankers, amidst all that.
This should be an entire post. In brief, the wealthy have too much to lose by the ACA being repealed, and the #1 way to improve healthcare in this country is to deport >50 million people.
Set aside the immigrant/native question for a minute. Is it your belief that killing half the workers in the US would make the other half materially better off? Because that is the implication of your claim.
(A: it won't, of course, because, broadly, more labor => more production => more Stuff That People Want)
It doesn't matter if you make $10 an hour and strawberries cost $5 or you make $100 an hour and strawberries cost $50. The way you bring down the price of strawberries is by producing more strawberries. Repeat x1b across literally everything.
In the spherical cow hypothetical of half the supply of labor vanishing with literally no other negative effects, yes, quality of life for the remaining would improve profoundly. This isn't a matter of "belief," it's history and biology. Wherever civilized and sufficiently stable nations have recovered from sudden and large declines in population, golden ages have followed. It's ecological succession as applied to humans.
Not to be taken as personally misanthropic--I'm quite pro humans, quite pro there being many, many more. The US is simply not presently equipped for its number of inhabitants, and this is not a problem that can be solved without first deporting 50 million people.
You describe the mechanism. Yes, flooding supply is how you decrease prices. I'm not denying the mechanism, I'm saying its benefit is illusory. Abundant cheap offshore labor is how you produce abundant cheap plastic garbage. We wouldn't need abundant cheap plastic garbage if bankers hadn't destroyed the value of the dollar, if the owners hadn't outsourced so much labor, and if those same owners hadn't stalled out worker compensation.
That's all the economy is, now. The ongoing attempt to outrun the consequences of those decisions.
I'm going to have to ask for a citation, because this seems like an extraordinary claim and contrary to basically every historical example I'm aware of. What's the mechanism here? It is true that the recovery that follows an apocalyptic event will seem like a golden age compared to the apocalypse. However, the fact that hitting rock bottom leaves nowhere to go but up does not mean hitting rock bottom is welfare enhancing.
(I have a weird feeling you're going to pick the Black Death, but maybe you'll surprise me).
What are you actually trying to say? Like, what is the counterfactual scenario you are proposing? You say the benefit of material abundance is illusory, but also seem to expect that things would be better if instead of having more stuff workers were paid better. Is your position "actually, things would be better if we had less stuff"? If so, you should say that. If not, there's a basic problem where higher worker compensation and lower prices are isomorphic. If worker compensation rises but the amount of goods remain the same (per your stipulation) the result is the inflation that seems to incense you.
I guess “golden ages” are just the dead-cat bounces of civilizational history.
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