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 -
That's too funny. Did the most incompetent offspring of the head of the city council read Wikipedia under "rent seeking", and decided to do a 100% speedrun?
That has to be a scam, like Blackrock buying up trailer parks to get a captive customer base. I bet the electrical mains are to small for a heat pump without district heat, and I bet the price of the land explodes after you've been paying their interest rates for them for 15 years...
It's appropriate to be cynical, and I 100% agree about the heat pump arrangement being effectively a mandatory ripp-off, but fortunately the Erbbaurecht is legally very restrictive and they have already made some unusual choices that they can't take back. First, setting the price of the plot so low now means that possible later price explosions are mostly irrelevant for the yearly payment, since that is instead entirely bound to the VPI, i.e. the general inflation index. The same goes for rate of 2%: Typical is between 3-5%, so this is not just at the lower end, it's even below. The rate is entirely fixed, by contract, for 99 years. This part is genuinely beneficial to us and they have little leeway to screw us over. There are even several clauses protecting us should we struggle to pay otherwise.
It makes sense however once you know more about the structures behind the scenes: The plots of lands themselves originally belonged to the church and they now want to use them to generate some alternative income stream. As I've talked about before, modern church employees tend to be very progressive and not very religious. So they were easily talked into extremely generous conditions under the excuse of social housing. The "public" utility company, on the other hand, is a private company that is merely owned by the city. So they are relatively free to re-distribute significant income to (usually high-ranking) employees, and any further profit goes to the state (I've just checked, they indeed have gotten a decent profit the last few years). And I don't think anybody will be surprised to hear that they, too, are very ideologically progressive.
So it's in practice a re-distribution scheme from old church assets towards one (large) part ideological progressive pet projects, one part towards well-off Bildungsbürgertum, and one part to the state.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link