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 -
Caps on high skill immigrant workers might be worth the tradeoffs, but I think we as a society should acknowledge they are serious tradeoffs.
Let's say the US has X amount of specialized talent and thus they can only do Y amount of productivity with in a year. If companies in (or investing in) our country are so productive and there's enough market demand that they want to do creation over Y, then limiting access to talent over X puts a cap on growth.
Now I know, the general response is "because those jobs should go to the locals!" but the thing is, talented local people already have jobs. If they're hard working and capable, then they're mostly already doing their part in achieving Y (or doing something else in another industry) because companies want them.
As any hiring manager knows nowadays, the job pool is mostly incompetents, liars, lazies, addicts, or otherwise unwanted because of a serious flaw. It's the same way that dating apps like Tinder are mostly used by the unpleasant and unwanted, the good ones are already picked through. Of course just like the apps there's often some amount of pickings but they're limited and get scooped up quick of course and we're still overall limited to Y production. Even during periods of layoffs, companies don't tend to fire their best talent, they fire the weaker ones so even picking through those is still trying to find a diamond in the rough.
Now maybe that's what we as a society want, jobs programs for the lazy drug addicted idiots being put in roles above their worth, and we're willing to sacrifice efficiency in key industries for it. And maybe it's worth it if we put hard limits on economic growth and only allow Y production no matter how much market demand exists. Maybe it's worth it in the same way that some leftists felt promoting some minorities above their skill level was worth it.
But that's a discussion with some hard tradeoffs is it not?
This is a false premise on a number of levels. Productivity is the value generated per worker. Production is the total amount of goods and services created. Production is a function of a number of different inputs - labor, capital, land, etc. If a company needs to increase production in an environment with a constrained labor market, it can do that by increasing productivity. In other words, investing capital into technology, automation, and other labor-saving improvements. Production can also be increased by offshoring low-value components of the supply chain to other countries, like mineral extraction, textile manufacturing, etc. Of course as we have seen this needs to be done judiciously to avoid building our own competition in unfriendly countries.
If your new venture is creating more value than whatever these people are already doing, do the capitalist thing and poach them. That's the free market at work - businesses with higher margins can afford to attract labor from companies or industries that are generating less value. That's part of how productivity increases, generating more value per worker by having workers move to higher value positions.
The vast majority of employees are "on the market". Just offer them more money. It's that simple. People hop jobs all the time, especially in hot industries like tech. Even if they aren't officially looking, it's easy to put the word out that you're hiring and have your staff refer people into your hiring pipeline. What's more common is that companies have unrealistic expectations - they want 90th percentile employees at 50th percentile pay and mediocre benefits.
This is a bullshit false dichotomy. How about just incentivizing the 72% of STEM grads who don't work in a STEM job to actually work in STEM, if we have such a skills shortage?
This number includes social science majors (for whom there are no jobs in their chosen field) and people who work in management (who would not necessarily be better off as ICs).
Where are you getting that from? This would be a rather unconventional use of "STEM". Not saying you're wrong, but finding out would require a lot more clicking into his link, than I can do right now.
Ctrl f "social" bro
It's got science in the name.
So does "pseudoscience".
"Very droll, minister."
Hopefully the Census is capturing the legions of pseudoscience majors in this statistic as well.
It does, you pointed it out yourself.
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