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 -
@DaseindustriesLtd and @Bingbong are both partially right but a big reason is actually just that after the dotcom bust in 2001 the dollar had a decade of extremely, uniquely, ahistorically poor performance against pretty much every other currency (both EM and developed market) that distorted nominal dollar-denominated GDP figures.
For example, the pound went from being $1.45 in 2000 to $2.01 in 2007. The British economy wasn’t hugely stronger and this was a low point for Silicon Valley stocks, the cause was a bunch of investment and trade flow stuff, reallocation out of the US toward emerging markets and big commodity producers, the Australian and Canadian dollars did very well, US equity markets had a lost decade. The Euro also did well. That kind of thing. The GFC was the beginning of the end of this process but it didn’t really finish until after the oil boom finally ended in 2014.
After 2014, trillions of dollars in speculative capital flowed into American capital markets from the entire world because of the tech sector. That wasn’t unprecedented - the same thing happened in the 1880s and 1890s with European money headed for railroads and some other American industrials. But the reverse flows boosted the dollar artificially, exaggerating although not inventing comparatively more advanced American prosperity. Those capital inflows boosted every aspect of the American economy in comparative terms, making for a tighter labor market and therefore higher wage growth, more consumer spending etc in a virtuous cycle.
But European weakness doesn’t date back to 2014 or even 2009. If anything, there’s probably some kind of macro story around the unfathomable economic costs of German reunification and early Eurozone labor market distortion in the late 90s and early 2000s that was obscured by that asset reallocation discussed above but I don’t know enough to tell it.
More options
Context Copy link