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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   42602 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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I'd agree that for better or worse the 'capital T' Traditional world is dying. I think an important factor that's often overlooked is that the ubiquitous preindustrial peasant sustenance economies that dominated almost the entire globe 200 years ago are gone entirely or radically diminished today in Europe, America, East Asia and increasingly the developing world as well.

This. How would modern "trad" society look like? How would modern industrial infrastructure, both hard and soft, run on traditional feudal principles? I am not aware of any trad engaging with this question at all.

How would modern industrial infrastructure, both hard and soft, run on traditional feudal principles?

I'd say, start with looking at the UAE and at Imperial Japan — the latter in particular shows combining rapid industrialization with predominantly feudal social structures. (I'll also remind people that the majority of marriages in Japan were arranged — either by families or through the traditional omiai matchmaking system — all the way until the late 1960s. I also recall at least one author comparing the lifetime employment, and loyalty to the company, of the 1980s Japanese salaryman to the feudal fealty of their ancestors a century or so prior.)

Now, I know people will argue that the UAE only works because of oil — I've encountered proponents of strict "deterministic" correlations of political forms and technological abilities who've baldly asserted that "the moment the oil runs out" every single modern building in Dubai will literally crumble into dust and the population will be "back to riding camels and living in 1800s conditions the very next day."

As for the criticisms I get on Japan as model, I must once again note that there is a huge difference between "you can't mix feudal social norms with industrial technology because social and technological determinism make them fundamentally incompatible and doom the attempt to collapse from the internal contradictions" and "you can't mix feudal social norms with industrial technology because the US will bomb you into submission if you try."

(Also, I might add that you're just not reading the right sci-fi.)

Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary both went through phases of industrializing without that much added social liberalism; of course they lost a war so we can’t see how the experiment would’ve turned out.

It's worth noting Dubai isn't that dependent on oil and has successfully diversified according to Wikipedia only 5% of Dubai's revenue comes from oil.

True, but the GDP Abu Dhabi, which makes up more of the UAE's economy than Dubai, is still predominantly based on oil exports. Whether Dubai's wealth is sustainable or not without Abu Dhabi's economic engine is still in question.

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