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 -
Aristotle talks about this in the Politics. He argues that, when it comes to paying citizens to take part in politics, the worst outcome is when the state pays for participation in such a way that those without productive work to do or assets to supervise have unlimited time to engage in politics, but the productive citizens are distracted from politics by their private concerns. This seems to me an obvious failure mode of UBI, even if most recipients just become consoomer-addicts.
But that's already here: anything the government pays for (or mandates employers/society at large pay for) that doesn't have a mandate for results, or UBJs (universal basic job) for short, enable this.
This is the reason the education-managerial complex is the way that it is; it exists because the people without productive work to do (as in, 1950s housewives) got bored and demanded it be created. This is why the workers of those jobs oppose any measure of standards (and those that are imposed are gamed into uselessness re: graduation rates), and the people who actually try tend to find themselves behind the political power curve (this failure mode is fractal).
The defense of UBI is that it allows you to send these people home with the intent of imposing standards on the jobs they were pretending to do- but zoom out and you find yourself/your society's productive efforts captured again by people who have nothing but time to try and rent-seek/insert themselves into every space they aren't welcome, so it's probably a wash on balance.
And inb4 "but the 19th Amendment enabled this, just repeal it", it really didn't; that was simply an expression of the law changing to reflect the conditions on the ground at the time (the bored women at the time had enough men on-side to enforce it). The 19th Amendment comes after the 18th Amendment.
Yes, absolutely, though there are more central cases than education. This is why boomers schizo out over "paid protestors", because they can't realize that it's one level of abstraction up for that: many of the people protesting have jobs, but NGO or whatever jobs which pay them for make-work while demanding they hold the type of politics which would get them out protesting.
Their salary (social security/OAS/your local equivalent thereof) depends on them not realizing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link