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 -
They parasitize on society by allocating where goods and services go.
Finance has done tremendous damage to the Western world. They offshored vital industries (that alone is civilizational-scale treason) and they drain away highly capable people from the hard sciences that actually create wealth.
They presided over a merger-acquisition/shareholder-first equilibrium that encouraged a race to the bottom in capital investment and R&D. Encouraging companies to fail the marshmallow test is a deeply wrong thing to do.
Then there's the rush into land appreciation. Land in high-demand cities is an amazing financial asset, it's impossible to make any more of it! Land can't be taken away, it's fixed in place. The financial sector has capitalized on this and directed enormous amounts of capital into loans to bid up land values, rather than developing industry. This was a major trend over the 20th century. Across 17 advanced economies, the share of mortgage loans in banks' total lending portfolios doubled over the past century: 30% in 1900 to 60% in 2014. Credit is elastic while land is fixed - the result is land prices rising. Only a small fraction of the mortgage lending is for new builds (less attractive to banks since they're without a proven price) so the bulk of this enormous mortgage lending ends up bidding up prices on existing houses.
Industry can go bust for all kinds of reasons, it's risky, there's a need for constant competition and improvement, capital depreciates and creditors might lose out in bankruptcy. Most businesses fail. But house prices go up! And a bank can always take back the house if they default on their mortgage. Bidding on land is lucrative for banks, bad for society.
Why are banks directing trillions to making housing less affordable, anchoring workers to fixed mortgages, suppressing fertility? So they can make a few % higher returns. It's terrible pointless waste.
There are presumably many good people in the financial sector and parts that are less damaging (VCs to an extent) but the whole ethos of the sector is corrupt and anti-social. Privatized gains, socialized losses. The financial sector has been doing the wrong thing with great effort and skill and dressed it up as the right thing. VCs might well decide to put their money into 'making sports betting more addictive' because that's more profitable and safe than 'making incredibly intricate lenses for semiconductors.'
See also: https://business.columbia.edu/sites/default/files-efs/pubfiles/12925/Rajgopal_economic_implications.pdf
Damn these people. Their stupid greed isn't even helping their own companies! They're sacrificing their own companies interests just to stay ahead of earnings expectations, an almost totally imaginary, abstract number. By definition you are always supposed to take a positive NPV project in ultra-financialized bean-counter economics, nevermind social outcomes. But they aren't even properly aligned with that, they know that their job is to keep share prices up or they may be paid in short-term options.
Most of all, damn the whole system. A certain amount of greed in the right place is fine but we're far into the realm of negative returns.
Governments certainly didn't help much with idiotic regulations, ideological fads and negligent oversight. Unions have been similarly damaging in many respects. The alternative to wrecking by the financial sector shouldn't be 'total control of the economy by a posse of men in poorly fitting suits who got where they are by reciting Lenin and bureaucratic manoeuvres' or 'total control of the economy by union thugs who go on strike when there's an R in the month' but a disciplined govt-directed market system directing capital towards development, making use of capital controls and lending restrictions and regulations in a synchronized, coordinated way. A single army, not a chaotic PvP brawl between various interest groups competing to grab as much of the pie as they can.
More options
Context Copy link