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 -
GDP (or rather, what GDP is actually trying to measure, economically valuable output), doesn't compound. Countries hit points of diminishing returns, hit points where they are up against the edge of technology and the pace slows down, hit points of bad government, and other countries catch up because they don't have to invent anything new, they just rapidly adopt other inventions. Hence, how Japan caught up with the West in about 70 years, or how China is now blowing past the USA. If a country has good government, economic output converges toward what smart fraction theory would predict.
Consider this simple fact though: out of a billion plus people in countries all around the world, in countries of all different economic situations, in countries that were never colonized, or threw off colonial oppressors long ago, or had gentle transitions from colonialism, all different circumstances, there is not a single black owned and operated company that can produce an engine block (nor anything more technologically sophisticated than an engine block, like a jet turbine or a CPU). It's going to be pretty hard to be good at war without engine blocks and jet turbines.
Being good at modern war requires intelligence, and the lower average intelligence of subsaharan Africans is hardly tenuous, but this is well-trodden ground for people on this forum. You can start with Chapter 13 and 14 of the Bell Curve, a book that was "argued against" but never "debunked" (after spending a very long time evaluating the arguments from both sides, many years ago, I came to the conclusion The Bell Curve actually understates the case).
The last thing this forum needs are long AI assisted gish-gallop posts based on stuff the poster did not even read, think about, verify, and synthesize.
Thank you for your response, here's what I think of it
I'm really confused and maybe I need you to explain further but I am firmly of the belief that GDP compounds. It's also easy from my perspective that early wins/advantages leads to "snowballing" or sustained comparative advantage. And extension from that is others can close the gap if they don't have to go through the slower innovation/invention process and can achieve "faster compounding". I would attribute to China blowing past the USA in terms of manufacturing and certain technologies is because clearly they put way more focus and intentionally built the foundation for it in the past and now the future. Also we have to account that currently China has more people than the USA, that is undoubtedly an advantage.
Ok, I would like to invoke my Argument 1 and say I will wait for an African polity that "has good goverment". I actually think that time isn't too far away, optimistically it will happen soon (so 1 or 2 decades), at worst I do think it will happen before I die (which should be about 40-60 years away). The invading part though I'm not sure would ever actually happen.
Unfortunately I don't know mechanic skills, but I do believe a "powertrain" is more complex than an "engine block". I found Piston Automotive which is black-owned and "supplies powertrain systems, front-end cooling systems, chassis systems, BEV and PHEV battery packs, and interior systems for the automotive industry." and is a pretty big company. I'm sure I can find more. We can also find multiple car manufacturers in Africa that are black-owned (the first one I picked had a white-ish looking founder actually but the second and third one are very black-looking). You are right that there are currently no black-owned aircraft manufacturer that I can find. I do find lots of black-owned companies in the tech world. I think my Argument 2 is strong here, automotive industry is known to be capital-intensive, requires high vertical integration, if we just talk Africa, that's a lot of demand for a continent where 40% still living below the poverty wage.
Let me attempt at a rewording of my conclusion:
My Argument 2 and 3 mostly expresses my bailey, Argument 1 mostly expresses my motte. Unfortunately, HBD is not well-trodden ground for me so thanks for the linked book. I've only occasionally read HBD stuff because of the usual QCs around it, but I didn't focus or really think about them. I suppose as of the last year I have been focusing on great powers competition (in the current world) so the QC comment crossed my bailey.
Let me expand.
Well after World War II, northeast asian countries were maybe 60/40 for good government? China and North Korea bad, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan decent. And then a generation later, China got a decent government. How come African countries have flipped tails 50 or 100 times in a row? That said, I think there have been African countries with decent enough government.
I said owned and operated. Are the engineers black? Are the technicians black? That they are have a black front-man and are bragging about being "minority owned business" (a designation which potentially gives them all sorts of bonus points in getting various contracts) does not mean anything. It's pretty telling there are no photos of anyone but the owner... Maybe Linkedin, can help us out, yep, here is the VP of Engineering: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-miller-48350a12 The actual workforce looks very white: https://www.linkedin.com/company/piston-automotive/people/
What I mean is that there is no company with blacks at every important position in the engineering and production of some complex technological product.
China, India, South Korea, were all very poor, and then they figured out how to build more and more technologically complex products and sell them and then they got richer.
Touche. So I'll examine a few Sub-saharan car manufacturers and taking out the South African ones.
Scrolling through the Linkedin people listing, I see plenty of engineers, product designer, technician, etc. Are they small? Yes, but the question was are there any black owned and operated. Are they at very real risk of just being bought out by the bigger international players? Yes, but that just comes back to my Argument 2. I think these are good enough examples to satisfy your criteria.
You are right, and I don't have a good answer for this other than Argument 1. My instincts tells me that maybe there is an argument to be made of good governance appropriate for the timeframe or something about culture, there are plenty of other Asian countries that wasn't as successful. Bad for me but it seems like African countries might not be able to use the same playbook those countries used to pul themselves out of poverty](https://youtube.com/watch?v=tqZGsnUgCPA). Sorry for the chain of thought here but it's also something I'm grasping at. Time will tell whether I'm right or yall are right anyway.
PS: I agree Piston Automotive wasn't a good choice (I didn't do a deep enough dive), but to me they're clearly shows that they're black-owned but full of white workers
I said "owned and operated that can produce an engine block." Every time I learn about some breakthrough African company that is now making automobiles, it turns out that they are just doing final assembly with the engines being imported.
Innoson vehicles -- assembles cars from parts, engine blocks are imported source and source: "Car seats, steering wheels and engine blocks still had their fresh wrappings from shipping containers."
Kiira Motors -- uses engines from Cummins, an American company.
Katanka Group "The Living Apostle Who Sold The Media On The Myth Of 'Ghana's First Car' To the extent that the cars are produced in Ghana, it appears to be matter of final local assembly of components that have been stamped out and largely prebuilt in China. It would seem Kantanka's unique contributions amount to little more than the badges and trim, a fact that has escaped news coverage to date." Read More: https://www.jalopnik.com/the-living-apostle-who-sold-the-media-on-the-myth-of-g-1784458558/
Katanka Motors is defunct. It appears it was a partnership with Western companies so who knows how much they actually made themselves when they were in business.
Thank you for the research. I absolutely stand corrected.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Honestly, one of my niggling doubts when I didn't take a stance on HBD was how the hell North Korea - despite appearing like an Africa-level basket case - was able to get nukes and survive being an incredible pain in the ass. It fit uncomfortably well with general East Asian competence, just for evil. Then again, of all cases listed, that's probably the one you can blame on geography the most.
If they didn't have Seoul in their sights and China at their backs they would likely have gotten stomped by the US regardless. But it always raised uncomfortable questions.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link