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 -
I’d definitely be on board with reasonable limits on the types of food you can buy on EBT gibs. I don’t think it’s reasonable to allow people to use gibs for luxury goods or empty calories in the form of junk and snack foods. To be honest it might be more reasonable to simply give out the benefits as those kinds of foods so they have less option to trade for stuff or abuse the system. My thinking is that basic meats like ground beef or chicken canned or frozen veggies, cheap bread and basic Kraft cheese product are probably good enough to live fairly healthy, especially if you’re allowed to buy other stuff to supplement the diet for flavor or whatever. It’s hard to abuse the system when you’re getting canned corn and ground beef. It’s a pretty bland diet, you can obviously live off of it, but not something that you’d choose if you had better options.
Cheap bread isn't very healthy to have as a major component of your diet. Ought to be rye bread or the like, if we're trying to design something people can live on indefinitely with no adverse effects to their health.
I mean we can quibble about the bread. GV whole wheat is less than $2 a loaf. But even if you go with white bread it’s better than cookies.
More options
Context Copy link
Cheap bread is likely universes better than straight up pillaging the junk food aisle or whatever. Also provides more incentives to get off the system as I believe a decent amount of Food Stamp luxury purchases is then used to essentially arbitrage via selling 'plates'
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think if the government gave out a few standardized food items to every benefits recipient, that would actually heavily encourage trading. They'd basically be minting a currency, except instead of coins that all contain the same amount of silver, it's bags that all contain the same amount of Kraft cheese product or whatever. There'd be big opportunities to take those items and smuggle them back into the regular supply chain en masse for cash, or sell them to people who want a reliable source of cheap Kraft cheese product.
Ideally, if you want to prevent trading, you want to give people stuff that seems valuable to those people, but worthless to everyone else. So they're incentivized to consume the items themselves rather than try to sell them. The mushroom "superfoods" described in OP actually seem like a excellent example of this principle in action.
This essentially already happens with the 'plate' system of selling meals for cash to fellow members of the low-end economy and a lot of resale of nonperishables like baby formula. Also it's competing with literal currency whilst this'd ostensibly allow for curation of a relatively efficient system that might save massive longterm spending on healthcare, in theory.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link