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 -
Will it? I'd expect any company leaving Europe to delete their stuff before selling off the datacenters. Sure, the authorities could sweep in and compel the local employees to prevent this from happening, but this would be a rather blatant expropriation of intellectual property without a fig leaf of "this company is voluntarily leaving because they are no longer willing to comply with local laws, too bad!"
There's also the point that asymmetric tit-for-tat doesn't require identical fields of retaliatory regulation. If EU authorities target US operators to open up competition space in the EU markets, US authorities can target EU banks that the EU would count on to finance those EU operators. The EU financial sector can make far more money by accessing the US financial markets than by servicing EU operators cut off from the US financial system, and EU attempts to try and set up dummy-financial companies still run into the issue that, at some point, those nurtured companies are expected to access private capital investments. Which, by the nature of the global markets, will want access to the US financial system and US markets and US consumers to grow faster than a company that exists solely on EU government dole.
The reason the Russian expropriations of McDonalds or Irish airlines were able to 'work' is that the Russian banks are already cut-off from western financial sectors, and so have little to lose. Even then they have, and will, pay high opportunity costs for the credit close offs, such as we're seeing with the Chinense economic takeover of the Russian market. The EU would have to cut off the US financial sector as a self-own to open up an equivalent policy space, and that still wouldn't address the issue of the incentive structure from the US side (i.e., paying people more than the Europeans).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link