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 -
Silicon Valley Bank crashed just a day ago, and many folks in the VC/startup world are freaking out. I’ve seen predictions that 50-100 different startups will go bankrupt over the next month. This could cause a contagion effect and lead to worse effects, although I’m skeptical of a major economic collapse as some doomsday prophets have discussed.
Apparently the bank was mostly into mortgage backed securities, which lost a ton of value due to the Fed’s precedented* rate hikes. I don’t know enough about finance to confidently hop on my soapbox here - @BurdensomeCount may have a better idea of what’s going on.
As this collapse mainly affects very left coded super technical folks, I don’t expect many on the right to shed tears. That being said I do think this speaks to a larger issue of growth in the economy as a whole. Tyler Cowen has famously backed the stagnation hypothesis, or the idea that overall production has been slowing down.
Tech startups have recently been the major sector looked to for economic growth, especially with all the AI/LLM hype. This collapse not only will slow the industry but shows a marked incompetence from this growth sector which may cool investment there in the future.
How can we sustain economic growth without the recent massive gains from Silicon Valley technology?
I agree that we're hitting the full maturation stage of, at least, legacy IT, marketing-tech, and eCommerce that drove the last ~15 years of growth (big caveat: along with the longest/lowest interest rates ever). Energy and physical technology also seems to be entering a new phase of innovation (something that's very interesting to watch is that the Department of Defense has explicitly said "we're going to buy most of our Space capabilities from the commercial space instead of building them in-house.")
I'd also add that the macro indications are great for the US and shitty for ... everyone else? Maybe not our allies in SE Asia but ...
China's demographics were already - long term - untenable. COVID accelerated that timeline and rising global rates are going to seriously ruin their state-fueled growth. Forget GDP, productivity, real estate bubbles ... in 2022, the Chinese population declined. That's 11/10 uh-oh-spaghetti time. Looking to Europe, their collective economics policies of the past 40+ years have led to an impending collapse of the Eurozone, persistently astronomical un-and-underemployment for young workers who are now in their prime working years, and utterly absent technology and innovation bases. IMHO, I think the RUS/UKR war may be a medium or long term blessing in disguise for Western Europe as it will force them to rethinking their energy dependencies and spur a little extra productive government spending (in the form of escalating defense budgets).
Emerging markets keep doing their thing. A friend once shared a good quote (not originally his) with me - "Brazil is the country of the future ... and always will be." Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, maybe some spots in MENA (though they are too small) theoretically have some demographic advantages, but all of these places do not have the governmental / law enforcement / contractual pieces in place to do business. Say you're an American oilfield services company and you want to help a Brazilian concern set up a drilling field. They're 90 days late on payment. Then 120. Then 180. What are your realistic recovery options in a Brazilian court? You get the impression.
Bringing it all back home ... there is no other market on the planet where anyone would want to park their money right now than the US - upcoming recession or no. It's not even a conversation of "oh, which markets are going to re-emerge first" etc. There is no other well developed market that has the technological, human capital, industrial, and governmental, and demographic resources in place to turn $1.00 today into more than $1.00 tomorrow.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link