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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32947 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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The concept of '15-minute cities' came up a few weeks ago, but since then it appears to have piggybacked off a local dispute in Oxford to become the locus of the latest so-called 'far-right conspiracy theory'. The proposed measure certainly codes as dystopian to me on this side of the pond, even as someone who is generally supportive of new urbanist ideas, but I can't speak to how it plays in Europe.

I've often felt that the culture war battle lines on these urban planning issues have not been as clearly drawn as those on gender, immigration, or abortion, mostly due to a lack of attention, but that time appears to be coming to an end. Though seeing as we already can't build anything, I suppose it isn't much of a loss.

The most is important because I think what annoys people like Smith and others is that the response to coronavirus (whether or not you agree with lockdowns, vaccines, travel restrictions, colossal economic programs) clearly shows that Western governments actually have huge state capacity that they just don’t use because it’s inconvenient or expensive unless they’re very scared about losing power or some other black swan event

Did you live through a different 2020 than me? Our western governments showed their absolutely tiny state capacity. They could make some money fall from the sky, shut down some businesses some of the time, and make edicts they couldn't enforce on 95% of the population.

They effectively shut down a lot of businesses, yes. But that isn't really a demonstration of state capacity. They at the same time couldn't prevent people from spreading the disease via houseparties, etc. Calling the shutdowns "huge state capacity" to me seems like calling smashing your left hand with a hammer "huge carpentry skills".

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