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 -
These are flaws in the implementation of democracy, not indicators that we should abandon democracy altogether. There's a huge difference between European or American governance systems and those of a real dictatorship like Russia.
Immigration issues typically have a huge amount of fraudulent "compromise" because corporations like cheap labor, so they bribe (through political "donations" and other kickbacks) politicians to "compromise" on the issue, effectively relegating countries to open borders in some cases. Support to Israel is also held up above and beyond popular approval due to AIPAC corrupting the US political system.
Democracy in principle is fine (referendums for example, which should be cheaper and more regular in the digital age). There's a role for the state of course. But democracy in practice is, as you say, grossly flawed.
I don't know if you've seen the famous 'We're Losing OUR DEMOCRACY' video. What is the point of Our Democracy anyway? What does it get us? Are we not spied upon intensely, as in China? Are we not dragged into costly wars by the government like Russia?
Is it a qualitative matter? Is Our Democracy keeping us a bit less corrupt than Russia? How do we even measure corruption, should we include lobbying and 'investments in underpriveliged communities'? Was Russia less corrupt during its brief experiment with Democracy? Are the wars we'd get dragged into less bloody than they'd otherwise be? In China, you can vote for your Party member. Here, we get to vote for different Parties, which mostly have the same policies.
If you want a more rigorous answer to this question, I recommend this book.
For a shorter answer, being democratic makes us massively less corrupt than Russia, even though, yes, corruption is still an issue in the US (and everywhere) but comparing the US to Russia is just worlds apart.
We're also far richer and have much better public services like education and healthcare. It's possible for some rich countries to be authoritarian, but it's the exception rather than the rule. Though there is some debate on which way the causality goes here, although I would personally say it's more a case of democracy --> stability --> rich.
Is that actually true? On an absolute scale the amount of corruption contained within the MIC and federal procurements systems alone would demolish Russian levels of corruption and if you include preferential legislation enacted to keep the big banks happy I think you could make a plausible case that they're actually more corrupt on a relative basis as well.
I don’t think that’s actually true. We spend a lot on overhead and standards but not so much on things “falling off the truck.”
But what do I know; I just work here.
The US spends more than ten times as much money on their military than Russia does, and everything I have heard about the US military procurement effort and pork-barrelling suggests to me that Russia would have to spend more than 100% of their entire budget on corruption in order to match up to US figures.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Corruption definitely happens in the US armed forces, but comparing what goes on to the Russians is at a whole different level.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Post hoc ergo propter hoc?
A better comparison would be democratic Russia vs. non-democratic Russia. Do you think Yeltsin's regime was less corrupt than Putin's (or Gorbachev's)?
And of course it's easy to find countries that mostly aren't democratic and are also less corrupt than the US. Liechtenstein in Europe is an example. So is Singapore really or Hong Kong when it was still under the control of the English.
Democratic Russia was indeed very corrupt, but the attempt at democracy only lasted for ~10 years. Democracy isn't a magic panacea that fixes everything instantly; rather, it's a way to change institutional incentives to slowly guide countries to better outcomes. The book I listed above goes into this more. It would have taken decades to root out the centuries of corruption that had been caked into East Slavic society through the Tsars and Bolsheviks. Even before the war Ukraine was still very corrupt, but its democratic path gave it a far better chance than Russia to actually fix its problems, which we're seeing now. Most other Warsaw Pact states like Poland saw massive reductions in corruption after they switched to democracy.
Assertion without evidence (I don't have time to read an entire book, sorry).
Russia was only getting more corrupt under its democracy and it's hardly the only example. Egypt had a brief fling with democracy that set it back decades. And all democracy seems to have done in South America is make it easier for the cartels to buy national governments.
As for Poland and the like, you seem to be forgetting that they were highly civilized functional countries in their fairly recent (generally non-democratic) past. A better explanation seems to be that those countries were doing well due to a myriad of reasons (good genes, cultural capital, etc...) until they got hit by the communism stick. After communism was gone, they reverted to their mean.
The comments on Ukraine are pure speculation. It's democracy certainly didn't seem to be helping given the multiple color revolutions and the constant conflict between it's two halves. Of course these would have been problems anyway but what's your evidence that Democracy made any of this better?
I'd say it's not particularly fair to give no evidence yourself, ignore the evidence I gave, and then claim "assertion without evidence". But fine, a book is indeed pretty long.
If you look at the corruptions perceptions index, apart from a few exceptions (that Why Nations Fail goes into), the least corrupt countries are overwhelmingly democratic, and the most corrupt countries are overwhelmingly authoritarian, or at the very least anocratic. This includes nonwhite countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Most Latin American countries have very flawed democracies that tend to slide in and out of despotism, but the more consolidated and well-functioning ones like Uruguay also have less corruption.
I don't know what you're saying with the Polish example. Communism was bad due to inefficient markets, but also because it engendered a secretive and authoritarian society, which is where corruption flourishes. The move to democracy slowly started fixing that.
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