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 -
History is not scientific in the sense that there are controlled experiments available! We should expect outliers, we should demand outliers! Luck of the draw and geography play a huge part! History makes fluid dynamics and quantum physics look like child's play, there are hundreds of millions of moving parts.
Point in proof! Germany had a statist and a free market economy at the same time, for nearly 50 years. This isn't puzzling, it was the result of an extremely bloody war.
On the specific topic, few nations had a less pleasant experience than China in the 19th and 20th centuries. They got force-fed drugs, they got colonialism, they got civil war, civil war and civil war (with the Cultural Revolution as another pseudo-civil war on top), coups, banditry, ruthless invasions, biowarfare, more wars, Great Leap Forward... Of course China is going to be poorer than it should be, due to all these historical factors.
The US had an all but stress-free experience in the same time period. One measly civil war. Crushed its incredibly weak neighbors and got to dominate an entire hemisphere for free. Joined in WW1 and WW2 late, took the lion's share of the spoils while others (like China) did all the bleeding and dying. The US was just left alone to develop peacefully for over a 100 years! They got the most oil in the entire world, huge amounts of coal, plenty of great farmland, good access to 2/3 of the important oceans. The US got the absolute best starting position of all time, bar none.
India had a middling experience (up until Partition where things went south) but was never as well-organized or united as China. There are so many languages and ethnic groups in India, compared to China. 950/1300 million Chinese spoke Mandarin as their first language, Hindi only got 528/1200 million as first speakers. India wasn't as resilient to colonization as China was, institutions play a huge role here. China was nearly always a stronger country, a stronger state, a more united state.
For instance, I read a paper that found well-organized Indian unions refused to work as hard as Japanese workers (this was under the Japanese Empire when union activity was suppressed), so Japanese productivity in textiles grew massively (they were measuring the number of machines supervised by each worker). India had anemic economic growth under socialism up until about the 1990s but now they're doing fairly well.
In a boat race between three ships, there are various factors that influence the outcome. The quality of the ship and crew is one thing but the number of storms and waves is another factor. If you see one ship that gets a tailwind plus calm seas and another that gets sixty hurricanes in a row, of course that will affect the result of the race!
I agree on all accounts, geography, war, and countless other factors play a huge role - but all of these are things the deep roots model argues should take a backseat to culture or should be driven by culture itself - I don’t think this holds up to a ton of scrutiny though.
For instance, civil war would be a manifestation of Chinese cultural tendencies towards conflict - but in reality China immigrant populations are not constantly embroiled in conflict, nor is modern China all that tumultuous.
Likewise in India, the aforementioned predilection towards ludditism and wildcat strikes should hamper economic development in any country where Indian immigrants travel to. In reality, Indian immigrant populations in the west are in disproportionately capitalist roles and by some measures contribute the most in tax revenue in the US.
There’s an argument to be made that this is because immigrants are specially selected and thus different than the countries they come from, but this totally eliminates any implications the deep roots model has for immigration policy. And we don’t even see consistency in labor relations/internal conflict/policy preferences within countries themselves.
P.S. I think the paper you’re thinking of is Pseudoerasmus’ “Labor Repression and the Indo-Japanese Divergence”. If that wasn’t it, I definitely recommend checking it out, it’s certainly something.
Yeah it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, feedback loops. Chinese culture took an anti-militarist turn after all the problems they had with soldiers roaming the countrside looting and plundering. There's a saying something like 'don't use good steel to make nails' which has the meaning of 'don't turn a good son into a soldier'.
Apologies if I sound like I was attacking you but I couldn't believe people would unironically create a mono-factorial explanation for national success that ignored history. It felt like someone had to be strawmanning, whether that's Caplan or someone else.
Good catch on the Pseudoerasmus article, that was what I was thinking of.
In fact the meaning is often made explicit in the commonly quoted phrase:
This phrase dates a thousand years to the Northern Song at the latest.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link