site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29390 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

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.

9
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

California YIMBY, "Governor Newsom Signs Historic Housing Legislation: SB 79 Culminates Eight-Year Fight to Legalize Homes Near Transit" Also covered in Politico, LA Times, CalMatters, SF Chronicle, SF Standard, Berkeleyside, Streetsblog SF... this is a big deal. (Part of a long-running series on housing, mostly in California. Now also at TheSchism.)

To quote the Governor's press office, "HUGE NEWS!! YIMBY'S REJOICE !!". Signing statement here, press release from Scott Wiener here. Bill text here.

For more details about how we got here, see this recap from Jeremy Linden, the vote lists from CalMatters, and my previous recap from when SB 79 first made it out of committee. This was the last of ten veto points this bill had to pass, and it changed markedly over the process: most counties were exempted, ferries and high-frequency bus routes without dedicated lanes no longer count, projects over 85 feet must now use union labor, there are now below-market-rate set-asides, and other such bagel toppings. It only applies to "urban transit counties", those with more than fifteen rail stations; that's only eight of California's fifty-eight counties: Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Santa Clara, Alameda, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Mateo, but those counties contain sixty percent of the state's population.

But of those ten veto points, it passed five of them by a single vote. (It depends exactly how you count.) Every compromise, every amendment, every watering-down was necessary to get this across the finish line. Aisha Wahab, Senate Housing chair and villain of the previous post, switched her vote to support SB 79 in the final concurrence in the Legislature, as did Elena Durazo, Senate Local Government chair, who had also opposed it originally. This has, as noted above, been eight years in the making. It will largely go into effect next July 1.

Newsom also signed a variety of other housing bills, though none were specifically as important as SB 79: AB 253 allows for third-party permit approvals if the city drags their feet, for example.

This completes a remarkably victorious legislative cycle for the YIMBYs. Along with surprise CEQA reform, Jeremy White of Politico called it: "from upzoning to streamlining to CEQA exempting, the biggest housing year I've seen in 10+ years covering Sacramento".

California has a climate similar to Mediterranean countries.

Italy

built

this

Instead of being inspired by Italy:

california

built

this

Clearly there is a lot of California building regulation that needs to be tossed out. Especially LA is such a wasted opportunity and it could have been one of the nicest cities in the world.

Pre-car urban design is indeed quite different from post-car urban design. The US had walkable "streetcar suburbs" in the early 20th century. Most middle class and above people left them with great haste once car based suburbs were invented and they degenerated into slums.

I think we should legalize building more such places and I'm very skeptical about how many and what sorts of people will occupy them. They may turn into yet more brighted urban slums. But we should accept that risk rather than building so little so rarely in cities.

Pre-car urban design is indeed quite different from post-car urban design. The US had walkable "streetcar suburbs" in the early 20th century. Most middle class and above people left them with great haste once car based suburbs were invented and they degenerated into slums.

My area has several streetcar suburbs; some still aren't slums and they others didn't become slums until the civil riots riots. The ones which are slums the ones which are still "walkable", though buses have replaced the streetcars. You have your main street with all the businesses you might need -- your check-cashing place, your bodega, even a bakery and a nail salon. But of course most people who would call themselves YIMBYs don't want to live there.

I grew up in a town that used to be a streetcar surburb 100 years ago. Looking at those old photos, it's almost like looking at a steampunk fantasy. All the streets that I know as sort of grungy, run-dow stripmalls, are full of very dapper gentlemen and their elegant female companions. They must have had to walk a bit to get there, but that's no problem since they were all (apparently) quite thin and fit. They don't seem to have any concern at at all for crime.

I would dismiss this as just some historical quirk, except that I've also experienced the same thing in real life- in Japan. Pretty much the same thing- low crime, low stress, low car ownership areas with mass transit, high trust, and lots of people walking in fancy fashions. They have other problems too of course (getting groceries every day with no car in a declining economy is no joke), but they still manage to make it work.

Conversely, I've experienced the opposite, living in a somewhat wealthy neighborhood in Mexico. There, razor-wire fences and private security guards are the norm. Plenty of cars and material comforts, but absolutely no social trust.

I feel like (economic wealth) and (social wealth) are almost two independant variables, with very little relationship to each other. In the US, we've gained the former at the expense of the latter. It didn't have to be this way.

Keep in mind that an old photo, especially with people in it, may have been staged. Here's a similarly-aged picture of one of the suburbs I referred to, probably not staged; note the people are blurred.

A lot of those Italian buildings are centuries old. Where as most of California's cities rose up in the last two centuries, especially the last one.

So why not compare it with China instead? They've created cities even faster than USA, and their cities are still much closer to California's design and Italy's.

This is one of those things that sounds easy in theory, but in practice, with the needs of the city you will rarely get city design of Europe unless that's the goal you want to achieve from the start. Which would probably require extremely restrictive building laws.

And speaking of roads, I know people shit on "Just one more lane" road design, but in my experience driving in Italy it has the opposite problem of roads which really do need an extra lane or two, because on a two lane road, one is full of trucks, so you're constantly stuck in traffic. And in general the quality of their roads is much worse than the surrounding countries'.

You posted a picture of an industrial park, which is full of factories and warehouses. Italy has those too but you didn't post a picture of that. Italy also has highways but you didn't post a picture of those either.

What is this supposed to prove exactly? The Italian locations look pretty, but the Californian infrastructure is more useful.

The personal automobile (and every consequence of it, including the specifically American suburb) papers over the cracks of an unusually violent and dangerous first-world society, and has since the 1950s and 1960s.

America can transit, but that would require confronting the actual problem.

Uh, Italy and France use more public transit than the US does, but that's because America is richer(much richer when you account for the greater cost of gasoline in those countries). I mean, what country can you point to where lots of citizens choose public transportation over automobiles for non-economic reasons?

And that's leaving aside that most transit systems in America don't even really try to attract middle class ridership, they're aimed at the poor, jurors, and college kids. This is because most people prefer to be in a private space even when that means you have to drive, and the middle class in america by definition has no difficulty affording cars.

I mean, what country can you point to where lots of citizens choose public transportation over automobiles for non-economic reasons?

NYC, Toronto, Japan, Germany, London, presumably some tier-1 Chinese cities like Shenzhen or Shanghai, Hong Kong/Singapore(maybe?)

"Jurors." Interesting choice. Hm, is this literally true or is it meant to signify anti-sprawl boomer liberals who value civic participation or something? (Or possibly unsuccessful albeit decent, basic people with nothing better to do with their time? But even those folks mostly have cars.)

I’ve been given a free bus pass with juror summons every time.

Downtown courthouses often don't have good parking options, especially short-term. If you live (and maybe even work) in the 'burbs, when you have to show up downtown for one day, or maybe a week, the bus or train isn't a terrible option. For me, the most convenient option is to park at the office and take the bus directly downtown from there.

I could take the bus (directly!) to work, but it's 3x the time commitment as driving, and there isn't any shelter from sun/rain at the stops at either end. So I drive. On nice days I'll bike.

I haven't taken the bus literally anywhere else in the city I live in.

I mean, what country can you point to where lots of citizens choose public transportation over automobiles for non-economic reasons?

Personally, costs aside, there are a lot of European cities where I would rather travel by public transport than driving a car. Driving a car in a big city is not my idea of a great time even if I do not get stuck in a traffic jam. Then there is always the problem of finding a parking spot, which can quickly eat up any time savings from being able to take the most direct route with the car.

Currently, I commute by car because my commute is 10min by car, 20min by bike, or 30min by public transport. If public transport was 15min instead, I would prefer that -- 5 minutes of being at home is not worth 15 minutes of watching videos while on public transport to me.

For people who go to the city for a drink, taking a car is not a great option, obviously.

I will grant you that once cars are fully autonomous, a lot of the downsides will disappear, as the car can keep you entertained en route and then dropping you off before searching for a parking spot. Still, the amount of people you can transport with a metro if you have a train every two minutes is rather impressive, and I do not see cars with one passenger per vehicle replacing that.

I regularly take the train (NYC metro area). I could easily afford to drive. But train is a lot easier and I can work etc.

Most of the people on the commuter train are not poor or college kids. Maybe ant one point they are jurors but I imagine that was a typo.

Germany and Japan both feel like they would qualify.

It's the whole American car centered bullshit that led to California being the way it is. LA is completely unwalkable for example. The US has produced some of the best architects and urban planners in the world, it's a shame that the cult of the (oversized, let's not forget) car has left them in thrall to malign interests in the name of "convenience".

We need cars so that we can live in suburbs, and we need suburbs because all the urban cores were taken over by the black underclass after the end of segregation.

Repeal the Civil Rights Act and then we can talk about walkable cities.

So, this is exactly the sort of thing that can get brushed off as being simple bigotry; you just seem to prefer a level of segregation which cities don't provide. But I think it's worth thinking about.

When I wrote out my theory of The Four Failures of blue governance, the first thing I listed was Safety and Order, and I think there's a real tendency for people to talk past each other here; urbanists are particularly fond of saucy memes on that front, but you're literally half as likely to meet an untimely end in New York City as you are in rural America; the murder rate is comparably low, but car crashes make the big difference.

But that's unsatisfying in the same way that someone pointing out complete apathy in the face of brazen and repeated theft being given a lecture about wage theft; it's just whataboutism.

I came across this thread recapping Left Behind in Rosedale, which details how white people violently resisted the integration of their neighborhoods because they feared they would be the victims of violent crime, and then their neighborhoods were integrated, and the people who couldn't leave were violently victimized by the black people who moved in, and below that, the social capital, the ability to know your neighbors and go outside at night and feel safe, all of that just vanished. And it's left some kind of scar that the official narrative here is that white people resisted integration for absolutely no reason, and then we had integration, and the good guys won. Because that's not what people experienced. Just like the official narrative is that there was no reason for purity taboos either.

There are plenty of ideas about how to make things better well outside the right (The Atlantic ran this; Jennifer Doleac writes extensively on the topic; Noah Smith and Matt Yglesias do as well), and as far as we can tell, crime really is way down from the 90s. But how can there be any credibility without reckoning with the past?

Crime really is down compared to the crack era, and New York City is reasonably safe, even after COVID-era backsliding. It's not the only city in the country, though. Chicago in particular has a much higher murder rate, with Philadelphia not far behind. And not to leave red state cities out -- both Dallas and Houston are pretty bad. And Atlanta's will knock your socks off (well, strip them from your corpse, most likely)

Repealing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 probably is neither necessary nor sufficient. But you do need to refuse to allow racial considerations to interfere with stopping serious crime, which might involve some of the law around that act.

There's Left Behind in Rosedale and Philly War Zone; I've heard stories similar to the latter about Baltimore also. "White flight" was in large part ethnic cleansing, and we're still dealing with the results of that.

The blacks don't help, but this isn't fully true. People prefer living in suburbs and driving cars because it's just better for them. Even if all black people were to disappear tomorrow, there would still be suburbs and cars. At most it would add a marginal amount to the populations of dense cities.

I will absolutely tear down civilization before I live in the world Europoors and "walkable cities" types want for me. If I have to visit the grocery store more than once a week you won't need to use public transit to see someone get set the hell on fire.

I just get my food delivered when I want once a week for the in-store price plus a nominal (literally $2) delivery charge, which is viable for the store because of how dense a city is.

I'm in the suburbs and I can get my groceries delivered also, though the charge is $15. Density doesn't make delivery viable; it reduces the area in which delivery is viable. When I can order shit from China for $11 (even after everything Trump has done) you know you don't need a dense city to do delivery. Though I admit it wouldn't be viable to do perishables that way.

I literally live across the street from a large grocery store in the densest part of one of North America's biggest cities and the only time I go more than once a week is when I forget something, in which case, it's really nice it's right there...

I genuinely don't know what windmill you're tilting at right now

"You'll live in the pod, eat the bug, and only shop at cornerstores that don't have all the groceries you'd like to buy in one trip" isn't a WEF conspiracy lol

As a European I am confused: Do Americans not have stores and supermarkets near them?

Depends on exactly where you live. Bear in mind for most Americans it's forty celsius outside for months at a time, so 'walking' is not quite the same thing as in Europe.

I can walk to two grocery stores near me. I grew up being able to bike to a grocery store and a convenience store- and I see the neighborhood preteens biking to QT for slurpees all the time. But most Americans drive to the store. So it's probably partly cultural.

Generally, US zoning strictly separates residential uses like single-family houses and apartment buildings and commercial uses like supermarkets and convenience stores. Ultra-dense places like New York City may allow apartment buildings and convenience stores to exist in the same zone, but they are relatively rare.

For a representative example of zoning that might be used by a random town in the US, see the International Zoning Code. For a comprehensive comparison of US and foreign zoning, see Zoned in the USA.

I watched a video and the first YT comment was an epiphany about the Residential/Commercial/Industrial zoning in Sim City:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=WNe9C866I2s

American zoning is even weirder than what I thought, discovering that the zoning from Sim City was not a weird oversimplification for the sake of gameplay but actually based on the USA was a shock.

Not just bikes:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ

That would do it. Where I live the residential tower blocks often have at least one commercial outlet on the ground floor, such as groceries, barbershops, hardware store, etc. That's in the suburbs - in the city center the ground floor is often entirely businesses.

Klaus Schwab's nightmarish visage emerges on the projector screen, staring down on you like a god from on high

You vill enjoy fresh food from local stores rather than chemical slop from Walmart.

You vill have a healthy waistline.

You vill have a walkable neighbourhood with trees and park amenities.

You vill commute via bus, train or ferry in safety from lowlives - ve have dispersed them

And... you vill be happy.

Sounds like a setup for a common joke.

Schwab's vision comes to pass but

The food is the same, only more expensive, lesser in variety and the "local stores" are merely subsidiaries of WalMart

The waistline is also the same

The sidewalks are barely navigable due to the kiosks trying to sell you something, the crowds, and the homeless beggars

The parks are dilapidated, the trees are dead (having cracked all the sidewalks before giving up the ghost), and the parks are dominated by drug users and/or aggressive panhandlers.

The commute is by bus, but there is no safety.

And when you ask Schwab about the utopian world he promised... "Oh, zat was zhust ze demo."

“I will flee like a rat to the suburbs and abandon the civilization my forefathers built because getting rid of homeless psychos and dealing with violent crime seems like too much work”

Who can be surprised at 70 years of total failure on the American right when this is the common mindset? Out of sight, out of mind, and all the while you fade into irrelevance.

“I will flee like a rat to the suburbs and abandon the civilization my forefathers built because getting rid of homeless psychos and dealing with violent crime seems like too much work”

  1. My forefathers never lived in those cities. Mostly they lived in rural areas and small towns. Well, some lived in Jersey City for a time, but you'd have a hard time finding its golden age to point to; it was a dump when they lived there too.

  2. Even if I had a solution to homeless psychos and violent crime, I do not have the power to implement it. I am neither omniscient (to come up with the solution) nor omnipotent and neither is not a valid source of shame.

  3. There are a lot of people with power who support the homeless psychos and violent criminals.

  4. Number 2 is true of "the American right" in general. "Red Tribe" / "Blue Tribe" derives from the old rural/urban split. And the left, largely through it's association with minority groups, has pretty much pushed the republicans out of positions of power in the major cities. Every once in a while New York City will elect an authoritarian Republican to sweep away some of the excesses, but they always return to form (and the city council and all other structures remain solidly Democratic). Other cities don't even do that.

  5. Even if none of this was true and the cities didn't have crime and bums, they still have far too many people in far too little area. There will always be conflicts over the limited resources, and they will always be settled by the politically powerful in favor of their clients. So maybe instead of Ramón and Dante's gangs monopolizing the parks by pure menace and police indifference, it ends up being Ralph and Buffy and their friends who somehow manage to get a city permit for its exclusive use every weekend and all the holidays.

  6. Rats, who thrive on the discards of human society, are known to prefer urban areas to suburbs.

The joke is that the US is already a mess from the perspective of outsiders. Economically and technologically advanced, socially backwards. Any actual improvement is so unimaginable to Americans they come up with these warped eschatological narratives about civil war or apocalypse, or they twist themselves around to see this weird lifestyle as normal and any change as a threat. Like a nation of people who tunnel and dig in refuge from a self-inflicted disaster, only to be dazzled and frightened when they see the sun or feel fresh air, rebelling against surface.

Economically and technologically advanced, socially backwards.

That's what the Europeans say as they stagnate in all ways. They can keep telling themselves that. Personally I enjoy watching people find out the opposite, as they realize the joys of having a place where they don't have to deal with their neighbor's noise, or worry about annoying their neighbors with their own. Of being able to get from one place to another without worrying about timetables, or transfers, or weather, or how to carry stuff with them. Of a grocery store that has everything they need for a week or more in one trip. Or even of natural areas larger than a square block and not filled to the brim with people.

They can keep telling themselves that

Americans don't seem to believe this today but there are many outsiders who visit America and really dislike the country, not out of jealousy or poverty but genuine dislike for how society works. This was before Trump too.

New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco... they came, they saw, they don't like it.

Europe is stagnating. Why is this? In large part its due to US influence, US NGOs, US foreign policy. For better and for worse, the US leads the West. Yet there's this kind of schizo American attitude about their role in the world.

One day America is the best and greatest country ever, leader of the free world. The next day the lazy Europeans won't pay for their own defence (suppression of Russia) - they need to buy more weapons from America. Oh and go deal with Russia by yourselves, we're not interested in that anymore. Now it's time to bomb the Middle East and stir up some chaos there. Next, pivot to Asia - the vassals must enforce sanctions against China. Who cares whether this is in their economic interests. Australia needs to buy some submarines (we won't actually hand them over though because after taking their money to build the docks, we're still too clueless to build the damn subs). After that, everyone needs to copy American cultural norms and racial hysteria. Import some sub-Saharans, get some diversity (the refugees from our retarded wars we make you join will do for starters). Copy everything down quickly, you need to be woke... no now you need to be anti-woke. And why are you so poor, unlike us?

Europe and other US allies may well have retarded and despicable governments but the US has a special, higher level of responsibility for how it wields power.

More comments

Yeah I shop regularly at Costco. There's no "walkable Costco infrastructure". I'm not carrying a small bag with one day of groceries. I use my car instead.

There is actually one downtown Costco in Vancouver apparently.

It's still not really walkable -- although I think now there's literally condo towers right on top of it, so I guess if you were in one of those it would work. Otherwise it's several blocks from anywhere people really live. (and of course those towers are not great for going places other than Costco -- or the hockey arena I guess)

If your grocery store is 2 minutes down the road going to it multiple times a week is not an issue. In fact it's preferable because you can get stuff when you want it and not have it clogging up space in your home.

The problem with this is that now you are a captive customer to that one store.

I know this well -- I lived in a "walkable neighborhood" with just such a store. It had insane prices, long lines and shitty product. I did have a car and I make enough that food & sundries isn't a huge fraction of my budget, but seeing far poorer families get completely ripped off by these people was radicalizing.

This is like super-basic game theory: a situation where most customers can easily change which store they patronize is one in which stores compete on price/quality/service far more than one in which customers walk to one and cannot easily substitute.

Where on earth do you live that's somehow walkable but also has literally exactly one grocery store?

Walkability is enabled by density and density by definition means there's lots of stuff around, I am within 4 city blocks of 3 (soon 4) big box grocery stores, at least 3 fruit markets, and if you expand that radius to a ~15 minute walk you can add at least 2 more big box stores and 2 entire neighborhoods of places defined by their vibrant collection of grocers and other food stores.

I have not one but multiple stores within 2 minute walking distance.

This might work, but I doubt stores that close together can match the selection of the one I have to drive five minutes to. It probably takes a minute or more just to walk across the store. Some of it is duplicative (multiple brands of milk), but you'd still lose selection pretty fast.

Yes they can

Source: I live in downtown Toronto very close to three grocery stores only marginally smaller than the suburban ones

Living a block from (the entrance of) a Walmart is actually an amazing thing for QOL if you can manage it. I walked to Walmart a lot when I was living right next to one.

I think we should build housing on the roofs of megamarkets like walmart and costco.

I think we should build housing on the roofs of megamarkets like Walmart and Costco.

There was a news story about this back in 2023.

The nation’s first mixed-use development to feature 800 apartments above a Costco Wholesale store is in the works in south Los Angeles.

The community will include 184 apartments, or 23% of the total units, dedicated to low-income households. There will be a mix of offerings at 30%, 50%, and 80% of the area median income (AMI) levels, with the exact unit allocation still be to be finalized. Plans call for the remaining 616 units to be non-subsidized affordable and workforce housing, serving households around the 120% to 150% AMI levels.

The project is being developed by Thrive Living, a national real estate firm that acquires underutilized properties in urban markets with significant housing affordability gaps. The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles is a partner in the project.

Like Thrive’s other projects, the development is privately financed without the use of government subsidies such as low-income housing tax credits, according to officials.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held for the 5035 Coliseum development last September. Construction is expected to take up to two-and-a-half years as the team transforms an old commercial site into a new retail and housing community.

However, Google Maps does not indicate that construction has progressed very far.

23% of the total units, dedicated to low-income households

I live in a nice area specifically to get away from "low income households". This is such a poison pill.

I've lived on top of a supermarket before. It's not ideal because of all the noise, especially early morning deliveries. Lots of crashing and banging.

More comments

Huh, nice.

I don't wanna go to a tiny ass overpriced bodega. I want Walmart. Unfortunately due to physical limitations it's impossible to have everyone live 2 minutes from a decent sized store.

10-15 minute walk is doable depending on the urban layout but that's pushing the distance where you start considering driving.

I don't wanna go to a tiny ass overpriced bodega. I want Walmart.

Comments like this make me suspect anti-urbanists have no idea what dense urban areas are actually like. I live five minutes from a full-sized grocery with substantial better (and higher quality) selection than Wal Mart is going to give me. I can add about 5 min to add another two. All three deliver as well if I feel like contributing to the downfall of America, and I also have access to dozens of more specialized retailers.

10-15 minute walk is doable depending on the urban layout but that's pushing the distance where you start considering driving.

This is half of why Americans are obese. (The other half is what they buy inside). If you're driving to avoid a 10 minute walk, it better be December in Minnesota.

This is half of why Americans are obese.

Obesity is a complicated subject. To claim that this is even half the reason is a high level of hubris.

Obesity is a complicated subject in that the question "why do Americans live sedentary lives and have terrible diets?" is one without an obvious answer or easy solutions. It is not a complicated subject in that the proximate cause of the obesity epidemic is that Americans live sedentary lives and have terrible diets.

If you're driving to avoid a 10 minute walk, it better be December in Minnesota.

Or August in Texas.

A 10 minute walk is chill but a 10 minute walk carrying tons of groceries in my bare hands is not chill

Comments like this make me suspect anti-urbanists have no idea what dense urban areas are actually like. I live five minutes from a full-sized grocery with substantial better (and higher quality) selection than Wal Mart is going to give me.

There isn't a full-sized grocery store in Manhattan. There are a few in Philadelphia, but very few people are within 5 minutes of them.

“Full sized” in terms of product volume or selection? In terms of volume of fresh, OK quality food the average Manhattan Whole Foods has more than a huge big box store in a poorer part of the Midwest. It’s bleak out there, the fact that NYC doesn’t have 37 shelves of 48-pack soda isn’t a downside.

More comments

I want Walmart. Unfortunately due to physical limitations it's impossible to have everyone live 2 minutes from a decent sized store.

A two-minute walk will very literally not get you across the parking lot of the local Wal-Mart Supercenter, but that's not quite a physical limitation. Let's take a closer look.

A two-minute walk is about 160 meters (at 3 mph), which means there is 80240 m^2 within a two-minute walk of any specific point. Given a population density of 100k/square mile (0.039/m^2) (fourth highest in the world), that would mean 3100 people in range of the store.

Locally, each Wal-Mart serves 100k people. You can play around with the numbers a bit by counting Wal-Mart or Costco or etc, and also reduce their required population, and also increase the density above 100k/mi^2 and also this, and also that, but it gets really hard to make up a >30-fold difference by playing around the edges like that.

A 10-minute walk would be approximately possible, but not two.

I have lots of room for food in my large house. I don't even go to the store and pick it up off the shelves myself, I order it from Wal-Mart and have them stuff it in the trunk for me. I will absolutely sell out to transgender wokies, or Sharia law types, or literal fascists before I carry home my one little bag of groceries with like a stalk of celery and a baguette sticking out the top like someone living in some Old World city originally designed for donkey carts.

Recently, I've been giving some thought to the question of what I would do if an intermediate amount of shit hit the fan, such that I couldn't just drive as much as I want but grocery stores were still available. The solution I hit on was the adult-sized cargo tricycle, which is an actual thing that multiple companies offer, and it seems like a decent option for transporting stuff in a degrowth future. Of course, then we're back to the problem of having a big bulky vehicle that needs parking space while you're shopping, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The solution in that case is carpooling. You can get an additional three or four Mad Max cannibals to the grocery store if you just allow them to hang from the sides of your dump-truck-with-a-flamethrower.

[Standing ovation]

Right-materialists unite! Economic growth is all.

All I'm saying is, if you want me out of my hobbit hole you better bring a flamethrower.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats