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 -
It's amusing that Goldman Sachs is your example of companies that currently hire Korean PhDs, given that Goldman was originally a company that hired Jews in a competitive marketplace where Jews were discriminated against. At that time Goldman mostly specialized in back office low visibility work - if the Jews get the numbers right, it's fine.
Also in common knowledge that has been memory holed, various popular left wing policies such as minimum wage and Davis Bacon were created to prevent a "race to the bottom" that resulted in greedy businesses hiring negros for cheap.
The general argument against this goes back to Becker, and it relies on a principal/agent problem. Consider a discriminatory firm which is driven out of business by competitors hiring cheaper negros. The former employees of this failed business do not exit the marketplace. Instead, they become employed by other businesses and continue to be racist. This racism may involve things like funneling the best sales opportunities to other white employees, shirking work when on a team project with negros, that kind of thing. The net result is that these racist employees drive down the productivity of black workers. That's the Beckerian theory.
(I use the term "negro" throughout much of this post to emphasize to the reader the time period I'm discussing.)
There's also the issue of network effects which I think is more modern. E.g. if your customers or suppliers are racist, a non-racist profit maximizing employer may put black employees in less visible positions. Literally all of the modern examples of this that I can think of result in discrimination against political conservatives:
Cloud hosting and other SAAS providers (e.g. Cloudflare) refusing to service conservative businesses (kiwifarms, parler).
Companies that "own the consumer" (Android store/Apple store) blocking access to consumers for conservative businesses (parler, veritas).
Passive shareholders funneling non-specific demand for investment to companies that engage in performances leftwing stuff (ESG). A famous example is giving Exxon a higher ESG rating than Tesla. "Indexing is communism" is the economic argument against indexing, but also "Indexing is globohomo."
Employees conspiring against political conservative coworkers, along the lines of Becker's theory. (I have personally witnessed an attempt by employees at getting a conservative fired, which luckily failed due to rigid company policies.)
More options
Context Copy link