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 -
Time to check up on our Lusotropicalism enjoyers.
The Brazilian Presidential election ended yesterday, featuring a run-off between Lula da Silva and Flavio Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro, the son of jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro, had won the previous round. Prediction markets placed his odds of winning at roughly 80%.
But Lula ended up winning, and not without controversy.
Apparently, a Supreme Court justice, and a former personal attorney of Lula's, added two extra hours to the voting period in a last second decision. There have been claims that voting in Bolsonaro-friendly areas had already been finalized and could not been restarted. One person on X claimed "it's as if voting restarted, but only in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore". I am not sure how accurate this claim is.
Bolsonaro is not accepting the results of the election. There are calls for the election results to be annulled, especially if it turns out the extra voting period was decisive. The situation is perhaps mitigated by the fact that conservatives now control a large majority of the legislature and may be able to immediately impeach Lula and, more importantly, his judges.
Perhaps someone who understands the situation can weigh in. From my outsider's view it seems that, in Brazil, individual Supreme Court justices wield nearly unchecked power and can make last second Banana Republic type decisions like opening the polls for an extra two hours. Brazilian politics feel like American ones, just more so.
The Brazilian stock market is down by 25% overnight.
I understand the reluctance to reject stolen election theories in modern first-world democracies, although I don’t agree with it.
I don’t understand the reluctance to believe in fraud when we’re talking about third-world favela nations like Brazil.
I think a lot of talking heads just don’t want to open the Pandora’s Box of acknowledging that sometimes elections do get stolen. They’re scared of what that could imply.
I understand the reluctance to reject the theories. What's not acceptable, in my mind, is to sanction the people who question election integrity or to deliberately make it difficult to check the accuracy of elections. (For example, in California, by not checking citizenship status before issuing a ballot).
In other news, there have already been calls to imprison the younger Bolsonaro for the crime of losing an election.
More options
Context Copy link
I have a hunch that if Bolsonaro had won, they'd have no issues calling it stolen.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What can Flavio Bolsonaro actually do about it though? Like ‘not accepting the election’ won’t do nothing.
Maybe he can try encouraging a few thousand of his most ardent supporters to go, completely unarmed, to the capital and just mill around a bit. That seems to be the current meta.
More seriously, since his supporters have a supermajority in both houses of the Brazilian legislature he will pursue action through those means. But I have to admit I don't understand the situation all that well. I wonder if the south of Brazil would ever just leave.
The south of Brazil doesn’t want to leave. They both think they’re just ‘Brazil’.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Nobody in S America could ever convince me that Democracy is better than Fascism. You see huge swaths of Brazil vote on ethnic lines. Brazil at this point probably at a minimum needs to be broken into different countries. I don’t see why White Europeans should be governed by a corrupt commie because a bunch of negros voted for it.
In trading sometimes you are better lucky than good. I bought some Brazilian stuff after prediction markets were good for Bolsonaro but before the first round and I’m quite happy today that I dumped them on the big rip after the first round. Now everything I bought is 10% lower than my first buy and I’m wandering if Brazil is cheap enough to buy even with Lulu.
I bought $PAGS which I was also up bigly on, but am now down. I wasn't gambling on the election, I just like the stock.
It's very, very tempting to day trade this. We have to bounce, right? 25% is unreal.
Edit: F it. I put
$150k$230k into EWZ. Undervalued index anyway.A 25% decline is not unreal for a surprise election win by the socialist party in a third-world country. Currency devaluation, property expropriation, excessive taxation, and bans on foreign distributions are all realistic possibilities. The US equity market is not a good reference benchmark for equity markets in other countries.
Yeah, I think that the default assumption is that the market is reasonably efficient and is pricing in bona fide risks.
I think it does happen now and then that real inefficiencies develop; including inefficiencies that can be spotted and exploited by amateur investors and other laymen. But I think that's pretty unusual.
My instinct is that if you buy into the Brazilian markets today, it's like the proverbial sprint in front of a steam roller to grab a nickel off the pavement.
But then again, I'm one of those cautious long-term Boglehead type investors.
More options
Context Copy link
Agree that the US market is not a good reference, but out of curiosity, can you share any examples? I can't think of a single time when a country stock index collapsed 25% in a day off the top of my head. Which times did you remember in your investing career? I'm sure it's happened.
One thing to keep in mind is that the socialist President is already in charge.
Edit: I also just checked with ChatGPT. It's a little confusing because there are so many parties, but it does appear that that Bolsonaro aligned parties control about 70% of the lower chamber and 75% of the Senate. So it's quite possible Lula is impeached and removed. His corrupt judges can be removed more easily since it only takes the 2/3rds of the Senate, without lower house involvement.
So, at a minimum, Lula is extremely boxed in, his judges even more so.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Some reason INTR became my brazillian crack. In around 5 pre-first election out at like 6.7 and keeps going to 7.5.
Now it’s 4.5? Is the difference between Lula and Bolsonaro that Brazillian stocks are either all zeroes or infinity? If I am trading a company with its own fundamentals then falling 7.5 to 4.5 seems like a lot. The stock price moves imply a difference of like Mao and Reagan.
One thing on buying (or selling) after events is it’s almost always better to wait 3 days unless you need to do huge institutional size. I sold my Brazilian shit first day after the first round election because it was up 30% but if I waited 3 days would have gotten 50%. Usually today is not the day to buy.
Yeah, because it basically is. In recent decades, avowed socialists in Latin America who come to power “democratically” have a proven track record of ignoring property rights (esp. of foreigners), nationalizing businesses, and redistributing wealth to political insiders. The market is pricing in the (very reasonable, imo) likelihood that Lula will turn out to be another iteration of Chavez or Morales.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Personally (as a non-Brazillian): I believe Lula is corrupt, he's been pressuring online companies with shoddy evidence to censor his opposition. But I don't believe Bolsonaro would be any better, and (unlike Venezuela) I haven't yet seen solid evidence of election fraud (despite prediction markets being wrong, exit polls were accurate, and extending deadlines usually hinders vote suppression). Maybe a divided government is the best outcome, which is a shame, because it's more pragmatically the least worst outcome.
The claim I'm seeing is that the judge and Lula coordinated to extend the votes in areas they control but only AFTER the voting machines had been closed and locked in the Bolsonaro areas, thus allowing them to guarantee victory because they knew exactly how many votes they needed. I don't claim to know if this is true or not.
The financial markets think he would be. For perspective, a 25% drop in the stock market would be the single worst day in history in the U.S. markets. Although probably only half of this is the result of the outcome, with the other half being the chaotic way in which it happened.
A couple questions I have:
I wonder if there will be an independence movement from the wealthier southern parts of the country?
I wonder if Flavio will flee the country. Feels like he could be imprisoned if he stays. (50% odds).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Context: Reuters reports that Brazil's Federal Highway Police conducted widespread roadblocks specifically targeting public busses in the (left leaning ) north-east of the country. After being explicitly ordered not to stop busses on voting day. The highway police is apparently obviously pro-Bolsonaro.
Several sources (as of yet only in Portuguese) also report irregularities with public transportation (~50% of busses being ordered to stay in their depots on voting day in - left leaning - Salvador and São Paulo), with the secretary of transportation in Salvador now having an order of arrest on him for his role in this instruction.. Public transport officials claim the busses were stickered with pro-Lula messages, and they just wanted to prevent being accused of illegally running political ads through the city...
But it seems like the the extended voting time was specifically ordered to compensate for perceived voter suppression. The courts also ordered all busses to be released from their depots, stickered or not.
I’ll caveat the complexities of the Brazilian Federal police being pro-Bolo given that Lulu has been in office since 2023, but yeah, this is a clusterfuck. There’s also supposedly some messiness about which court the delay came from. I don’t know enough about Brazil’s legal or executive branch to say more deeply.
My understanding from the Elon Musk dustup last year is that a single Supreme Court justice can take unilateral action, acting as essentially an absolute monarch for the entire country. Their decisions can be reviewed later, but at the time of the decision it's absolute. And that appears to be what happened here.
There's also apparently the ability (in certain cases) for a Supreme Court justice to initiate criminal action and then try it.
I would bet there is large gulf between the powers granted a justice via a narrow reading of the law and what can be accomplished with the correct political motivations. Essentially, the same problems we have in the U.S. with rogue judges, but on steroids.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I could definitely see that. Brazil seems like the natural evolution of what's happening in America where both parties are more focused on managing who votes rather than trying to convince people to change their minds. Sadly, this is probably a dominant strategy in a diverse, socialist country given what we know about patronage systems.
Ridiculous from either end.
Brazil didn’t get here from a stereotypical American democracy. Its current government only dates back to the early 90s, and I’m not sure it’s had an uncontroversial election since 2006. Police putting a thumb on the scale is more like a throwback to its junta days.
Nor does American partisanship drag us in that direction. The current squabbles over voter protections have more to do with putting a particular sort of strongman in office, and the ones over nativism and immigration are what happens when a big chunk of the population feels economically insecure. No patronage required.
The current squabbles over voter suppression have to do with the role of ethnic machine politics. They date back to before Trump, after all.
More options
Context Copy link
Of course America is headed this direction. Non-European immigrants vote D by supermajority numbers which is why Democrats want to open the borders and give them amnesty. This does not require some outrageous leap. Biden let in something like 15 million illegals. It isn't some prediction for the future. It already happened. And it's already the stated position of most leading Democrats to give illegal immigrants amnesty and a path to citizenship. Please don't pretend this is some crazy conspiracy theory.
Whenever I reflect on that it always rings in my mind as a throwback to Caesar giving Gauls citizenship in Rome (one of the things he was actually unpopular for), and the ensuing impact this liberalization had on native Roman’s negative attitudes towards them. Over a long enough timespan, we see where it leads. Odoacer (though he was German, not Gallic) served and was integrated into the Roman army himself. That still wasn’t enough for him to see himself as Roman.
I actually think more relevant is the change in power, first with the Antonines, then decisively with the third century crisis and Diocletian where the Italians lost control of their empire. Rome itself ceased to control things well before the state collapsed.
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, the patronage model was important in ancient Rome just like it is becoming today in America. Although back then, the patron-client relationship was personal and today it is based on ethnic groups, unions, and political parties.
Controlling citizenship was a BIG deal back then too.
For example, way back in 91 BC, Drusus tried to get Rome's Italian allies admitted as citizens. The Senate hated this because it would mean that these new citizens would view Drusus, already one of the richest men in Rome, as their personal patron. He would have so many clients that he would be unquestionably the most powerful man in Rome. And so naturally he was assassinated.
Today's Democratic Party is also seeking new clients, while the Republican party tries to block it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Not all sectors of society in the US vote in equal proportion. This has been a thing forever. It’s why both parties struggle mightily with voter turnout. Fucking with public bussing and the transport system is kind of funny, but even that kind of thing has happened here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Better scenario for dangers of adopting public transport, and abandoning cars, can hardly be imagined. In fact, were one claim it as possible con, he would be considered to have succumb to conspiratiorial thinking.
Blocking roads as a form of political ratfucking works just as well in the world of mass private car use - with Chris Christie being the most famous recent culprit in the USA.
Messing with traffic light timings to cause gridlock in the suburb whose votes you want to suppress would be just as easy as stopping the busses, and harder to detect.
In any case, something is wrong if significant numbers of people who don't actually live on a farm are not within walking distance of their local polling station.
Optimizing for traffic congestion is a hilarious thought. Like digital price tags in the supermarket, changing thousands of times per day, right when the direct deposit hits, to fuck over shoppers, I can just imagine a hidden, city-wide algorithm that causes all the traffic lights to flicker or maximize highway and 4-way delays to reduce turnout in red districts.
The earliest example in popular culture (and arguably the first movie to feature a computer hacker) is the classic 1969 British movie The Italian Job, where a gang of British criminals shut down the traffic in Turin in order to hold up a bullion van, and then get the gold out of the gridlocked city in a Mini Cooper which is small enough to drive down narrow pedestrian streets and even through the sewers.
Most of the tropes of the computer geek are already in place, including the fat lecherous incel computer programmer done so crassly that it is hard to remember that the film wasn't parodying a pre-existing trope.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That was just pointless pettiness. You could do the same thing with better deniability just by playing games with permits or construction timing. Even worse, it backfired a millionfold. It's been too long to remember the specifics, but there were stats being thrown around like "Network news spent more time talking about BridgeGate in a single day than they did Obama's IRS targeting scandal ever."
Very much agreed. The point I was making is that, once the population density is high enough that heavy rush hour traffic is the default, private cars are not immune to ratfucking. Chris Christie got caught because he chose a particularly obvious and stupid form of ratfucking, probably because this was mafia politics where you need to make sure the victim and any onlookers need to know who kneecapped him if you want them to respect and fear you going forward.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Possibly a good reason to distrust the claim in the first place. Did this even happen or what it simply a pretext to execute the pre-arranged plan? How many busses were stopped? Where?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is just corruption. Using cars would have protected you from this specific problem, but they would have tried to find another way to profile and delay voters instead.
Would it have been successful?
Cars are the most freedom-promoting mode of transportation we have (though not the most possible).
Only as long as the roads are maintained and unblocked. A corrupt government could institute road maintenance on the highways out of selected cities, ensuring everyone is pushed onto smaller roads with tighter speed limits thus causing mass congestion and delays on the way to the polls.
More options
Context Copy link
Police roadblocks are capable of stopping cars, too.
More options
Context Copy link
“Sorry man, the main highway all the people in this Bolsonaro neighborhood use is down for emergency maintenance.”
Okay, Chris Christie.
More options
Context Copy link
I can’t read this without grinning. But seriously, should there be a national announcement on Election Day that runs the opposite?: “Attention! All barriers and roadblocks have been removed to get to your voting stations. Hope all goes well and you make it there alive! Godspeed, fellow countrymen.”
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
So there's no point in doing anything if you can't be perfect?
It seems straightforward and obvious that people who have private transportation are harder to control than people who don't.
My point is that "maybe the government will use this against me" is not a particularly good argument against public transport considering the many upsides. Especially considering that the corrupt measures taken were ultimately ineffectual.
You could just as easily turn it around: If everyone used public transport, there would have been no reason to delay it, as it would no longer be an effective way to profile people. So actually, you should enforce a ban on cars.
Also consider that private transportation only works as long as the roads are maintained and there is access to fuel. Similarly, private companies can be in charge of bus routes and trains. So I don't think your conclusion follows as naturally as you think.
From what it sounds like, the charge was that they selectively interfered with public transport in cities supporting one particular side, so unless the population is also perfectly geographically shuffled, everyone using public transport would not be sufficient protection.
That being said, I agree that if you already have the sort of corruption that allows selective interference with public transport, private vehicles are hardly safe. If anything, under Brazilian conditions, some tactical road closures that just so happen to result in the city being choked up in jams would be more deniable and even easier to get away with.
I do see an overall argument for small government so that it is less capable of terrorizing you if it becomes corrupt. My issue more broadly is that the idea of personal independence in a modern society is an illusion. Every thing you do is part of a gigantic interconnected network of various technologies operated and built by people who know neither you or each other.
The alternative to big government is not individual freedom. That is impossible because there is no way an individual citizen can be in control of everything he needs to survive. Instead the choice is between big government and big corporation. Private railways that exist to profit their owner, or government owned ones. Both have failure modes. Privately owned infrastructure is subject to profit maxing and anti-consumer practices. If the company is big enough, it basically becomes a dictatorship in its own right. Meanwhile, government owned infrastructure is vulnerable to corruption, populism, and the whims of changing administrations.
More options
Context Copy link
Brazil has mandatory voting, though, so manipulating turnout seems like an unoptimal strategy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
For better or for worse "maybe the government will use this against me" permeates just about all aspects of modern life. That being said, I do think that private cars, as compared to public transport, give a considerable boost to a person's practical freedom.
That they do. But that is only because the government puts a lot of money into maintaining a huge and interconnected system of roads that are open to private citizens 24/7. An expense which is socialized through taxes instead of being applied to the individual car owner. Private cars promote freedom because the system is designed to accommodate them, while other public infrastructure (railways and busses) are deprioritized and left to decay.
To a large extent, I agree with this. (To some degree there are tolls, gas taxes, etc. which do apply specifically to motorists).
But I think your explanation touches on an important issue. Suppose the government suddenly stopped maintaining the roads. In that case, the roads (especially local roads) would still be largely usable for a few days or weeks, perhaps even months in some cases. Moreover, the job of overseeing the roads is spread out over lots of different government authorities and agencies.
By contrast, public transit is far more concentrated in terms of oversight and far more dependent on daily government inputs.
The result is that in practice it's much easier for a strike, work stoppage, bureaucratic fiat, executive dictate, etc. to block peoples' use of public transit than it is with the use of roads.
Where I live (Northeastern US) lots and lots of resources are put into railways, buses, etc. But it doesn't change the fact that when you have a car, you are far less subject to the whims of public institutions (and private institutions).
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link