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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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I do think people have an ethical obligation not to be politically militant on subjects where they haven't done the legwork. The "time" required depends on the subject.

What makes you say the time should differ? Presumably, if I need to research something, I can find the relevant meta-reviews and literature overviews fairly quickly if its a non-history field.

Important political questions are a bundle of (a) values, and (b) a gobsmacking number of empirical claims. To become a militant advocate of minimum wage increase/abolition probably requires a modest investigation into whether it affects job creation, consumer prices, and skill aquisition, as well as interrogating your values on deploying state power against voluntary exchanges and transferring wealth between classes. To become a militant advocate of radical economic changes like communism or georgism, on the other hand, should require an almost unfathomable amount of research into the science of economics and investigation into the values underpinning our status quo.