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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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I think both you and @BurdensomeCount demonstrate the different perspectives one can approach this from. For one, it's about the relatively minor suffering diffused among all the rest of people of society, for the other, it's about the acute suffering of a much smaller and distinct subset of society. I feel like so much of the culture war is around who prioritizes which higher in what context. Personally, in this, I'm sympathetic to the point of the original quote, but unfortunately the point can't really be made convincingly to people who see it from the other angle.

Personally, in this, I'm sympathetic to the point of the original quote

Really? I wouldn't have expected this for someone who accepts:

For one, it's about the relatively minor suffering diffused among all the rest of people of society, for the other, it's about the acute suffering of a much smaller and distinct subset of society.

If you accept that framing you must accept that what is happening here is no different to the tragedy of the commons. By choosing to shit on the commons you are causing a minor suffering diffused to everyone in society while by choosing to behave properly and pay for the disposal of your waste you are taking a much bigger hit upon yourself and keeping the commons nice and feces free.

Pretty much everyone I know consider the tragedy of the commons to be an actual tragedy, they think that causing the minor suffering diffused upon the rest of society (in our example sleeping under bridges/shitting on the commons) in return for reducing the suffering upon yourself is a net bad and should be strongly discouraged, even if it leads to people having to pay more for their personal costs. Here that position translates to forbidding sleeping under bridges; it's directly isomorphic to the original tragedy of the commons and yet a large amount of people have the opposite views here than they do with the TotC.