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 -
Seventeen days ago, silver was $90/oz from APMEX. That was list price of a 1oz round, shipped and everything. Spot price was ~$80.
Today, it's $120 shipped, $110 spot, over +30% in a little over two weeks.
Gold is at $5185 for a single round delivered to your door, up from 4650, or 11%. Using spot it's about 12%.
Is this hyperinflation? Is this de-dollarization? A bubble? Does this have anything to do with Venezuela? With Iran? Taiwan? AI?
I'm honestly grasping at straws here, because metals aren't supposed to do this. I've been worried about the specter of hyperinflation since 2008, but it never really materialized, and so my worries were able to be soothed by looking at the lack of hyperinflation in reality.
You can't even tell anything happened in 2008 when you look at the money supply, but you can't help but notice that we've nearly x5 the money supply since December 2019.
Then again, silver is a useful metal. It gets blown up in missiles, it gets used in microchips and electronics, solar and battery technology, and more. Business building these things will simply pay the price for the metal they need and then use it, driving the price up regardless of speculation, but I can't believe that the usefulness of silver has quadrupled in the time since it was going for $25/oz.
China recently added export controls on silver in 2026.
The US added silver to the Critical Minerals list in November 2025.
Declining confidence in the US leads foreign investors to look for alternative investments to US treasuries/dollars.
Part of the move could just be short positioning being forced to cover. When the price moves quickly in a short time and there are a lot of people using leverage then margin requirements can cause some positions to be forcibly liquidated - which causes the price spike to go even higher for a short period of time.
The amount of silver shorts vastly exceeds the amount of silver. China sits on a substantial amount of the world's physical silver. China could very well decide to play a game of chicken against the short sellers by wildly buying silver even at high prices. Their silver gains in value as the price climbs and a silver short squeeze is every silver investor's dream. Silver going parabolic would undermine wall street and strengthen the resource rich part of the world.
China doesn't want to replace the dollar with the Yuan, they want a decentralized world with a global reserve currency that isn't controlled by one single entity. Precious metals make an ideal reserve currency for them.
People have been writing this same post since 2008. Probably 1958. And it goes something like JPM is short a lot of it and will go bankrupt etc. Yet JPM is not bankrupt.
Silver still does one of these parabolic moves once a decade. Everyone hyperventilates about the silver conspiracy. A year later it goes back to trading on supply and demand.
JPM isn't bankrupt but the "monetary crank" portfolio of gold, silver and bitcoin still easily outperforms the S&P or JPM stock.
They are also negative societal EV. And the crank portfolio all depends on what time frame you pick.
Negative EV in the sense that spending real resources digging metal out of ground, building a basement to store it in, and paying guards to guard the metal are all resources that could be used doing things like digging metal out of the ground to build high speed rail.
Bitcoin has one interesting thing though. GPU tech is on the same tech tree as build AI. Sometimes doing science for science sake works out. And bitcoin sort of was an enabling tech for AI.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link