site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   22069 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 9, 2023

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.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Last week I made an argument on here that while capitalism was excellent at generating wealth, I agreed with @DBR that it was horribly unfair in many ways, and that negative externalities abounded which made the rich less than a shining standard of moral virtue. Unfortunately I felt I wasn't able to give the argument the weight it deserved, and many people made strong points against it. I'd like to quote Brink Lindsey here, who has a more nuanced take on the matter:

Quite simply, there is no set of alternative social arrangements that even remotely rivals the market order’s crowdsourcing approach for generating innovation and mass prosperity. Yes, there are obvious problems with the profit-and-loss system: first, it counts preferences only to the extent that they are backed by dollars, and thus commercial behavior can end up paying excessive attention to the whims of the rich and undercounting what matters for everybody else; second, because of the existence of external costs and benefits, private profit-and-loss calculations can deviate sharply from assessments of overall social welfare, guiding market actors to underproduce goods with large external benefits (e.g., scientific research) and overproduce goods with large external costs (e.g., pollution). These defects are real and important, but governments have been able to compensate for them at least partially through redistribution and regulation. With the growth of the welfare and regulatory state as a complement to the private market order, the larger capitalist system emerged that would carry whole societies to mass affluence.

Essentially I'm arguing against the standard sort of lazy defense of capitalism I see on here. I am not a redistributivist, or a Marxist, but I'm also not a full throated defender of capitalism and markets. I certainly don't buy that without government and regulation, in a sort of anarcho-capitalist state, we would all be better off. Mainly because I don't think we're anywhere near having efficient markets that actually track negative externalities, or have close to perfect information.

It seems clear to me that while Marxism failed as a revolt against Capitalism, there do need to be major changes. However I'm quite unhappy with the proposed systems, as Socialism, the best contender, has quite easily fallen to social virtue signaling as opposed to actual economic change. I briefly flirted with Georgism, but the total disregard for the history of land and people's lives being tied into their property and houses going back generations ultimately turned me off of a land value tax as an optimal way to distribute wealth.

What are some more off the beaten path solutions that have been put forward to the negatives of Capitalism? Ideally we would use markets as a tool within a greater value structure, and keep some things sacred and safely away from money. But in reality, at least in a pluralistic society, that greater value structure seems to be a pipe dream. Capital will find its way into the cracks and mercilessly drive differences in the name of profit.

Does anyone know of inventive, big ideas as to how to plug some of the gaps our rampant focus on wealth has created in our society? To keep the benefits of capitalism while sanding off the rougher edges?

I don't want to be nitpicky, but lately I found that word "capitalism" really means a lot of different things to different people. Even the origin of the word is laden with preconception, as according to Marx the Capitalism was the overall system, the overarching ideology, the whole system of accumulating capital connected to bourgeoisie, class struggle, alienation and oppression of workers an all the rest. Socialism was not "just" some alternative, it was supposed to transcend and transform the society towards utopia. In that sense socialism is not an actual economic system, it is defined by negative of capitalism, it is a hypothesis. To use an analogy it would be as if I express my frustration that so far we only use very primitive modes of transportation (capitalism) that are very slow, and that there may be some way to achieve Faster Than Light travel (communism). And how it would be good to rethink modes of transportation so FTL drive can be achieved, maybe by starting with rethinking wheels or whatever.

To me it is hard to have any reasonable discussion around that as it is hard to define what are your objections to whatever economic system you think you criticize - be it China, Sweden, USA or South Africa or whatever else. Do you object environmental issues or maybe you object that there is some sort of alienation of labor, or maybe you object that we have some monopolies and the system should not have it or maybe you have a beef with corporate structure and corporate governance where small shareholders may be fucked, or what is the issue again and what do you think capitalism is?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats