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 -
H1Bs now require a $100k payment per year (I believe, seeing some remarks saying it might be per visa) to the government due to Donald Trump executive order, plus if you are currently overseas and hold a H1B you need to pay $100k effective immediately on your next entry into the USA if you are not within the country by the 20th of September.
As a foreign non-Lawyer I don't know how effective this is going to be/liable to be immediately derailed in the courts, but I do think it's a positive step towards ensuring skilled immigration is used for the genuinely effective instead of ye olde 'I can import a foreigner who I have more power over at a 10% discount rate to domestic workers'. I'm also deeply skeptical of the 'productivity' of the vast majority of tech H1B hires and wish them the best of luck in attempting to offshore the competencies required to make AI-powered Grindr for Daily Fantasy Sports
I think the modal American at this point has just had enough of the velocity of the demographic changes. And the short-term lockout effect where we seem to be importing the upper middle class rather than growing our own natives into it. Long-term it’s probably true that this kind of immigration is good for the economy and makes the pie larger for everybody, but it’s just too much too fast. Every professional job given to an immigrant is a loss for an American that could have grown into it, and god forbid the company actually trains people into it.
So I don’t really care about these immigrants, many of them my coworkers, who I agree are clean and relatively polite, orderly, etc. I want America to feel American, these people do not feel American, they are civil but distinctly not American.
My 22-year old cousin joined the wave of CS grads and had an absolutely brutal time finding a job. He’s probably not FAANG-level but he can absolutely do any of the bullshit WITCH jobs or be a database maintainer for some bank or insurance company. He was ready to go be a car mechanic like his father until he was lucky enough to get a bank to hire him on a temp basis about one year after he graduated. In real-time, this is the cost of the H1B program and the disgusting fraud associated with it. A young man, born in America, trying to better himself through education so he can be better than his car mechanic father, and he had to scratch and claw to find a temporary CS job in the 21st century in America despite being 100% capable because we somehow decided actually millions of dudes from India were necessary instead. Now play this out on a widespread scale in the aggregate and we see how damaging this shit actually is.
The average person who thinks this (ie falls victim to the lump of labor fallacy) is frankly too stupid to make it to the upper middle class, and even if stopping H1B immigration miraculously didn’t simultaneously reduce labor demand, would never be in the running for a good tech job anyway. The right model for these kinds of people is that they are peasants who in other eras would’ve been fine with a low status peasant job, but in the era of social media cannot stomach that reality and so are lashing out.
The Trump movement is so obviously a movement by and for losers-in-denial. Everything that happens is easily understandable in those terms (the extremely cringe Charlie Kirk lionization is a perfect example of this).
Too combative by half.
Please review the rules on the sidebar.
This guy reads far too much like Alexander Turok. I suppose that there is a case to be made that he is genuinely a Hannia-ite Elite Human Capital stan but those people are annoying and impossible to argue with, because all they do is cast their opposition as disgruntled resentful proles. That is the definition of bad faith and should be more proactively clamped down upon.
If he is Turok then we should be thankful that he has been gracious enough to return, as Turok never should have been banned in the first place.
You only think that because you're a resentful poor person. /s Woke right, woke right!
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