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 -
Okay, I'll go.
The big news this weekend was that Trump had a rally and said that, should he not be elected, the U.S. auto industry would be overrun with cheap Chinese imports. He used the word "bloodbath".
The mainstream media, which we're assured rarely tells outright lies, decided to find the exact dividing line between an outright lie and "still technically the truth". You can be the judge of whether they succeeded. For just one of many examples, Joe Scarborough ran a segment where the words "Trump warns of a bloodbath for America if he loses" were emblazoned on the bottom of the screen.
Of course, if any of this surprises you in the slightest, you haven't been paying attention. It's slightly boring at this point and would be funny except so many boomers still watch that dross.
What I want to focus on is the actual substance of Trump's claim. I think that, this time, Trump is on to something. The Detroit auto industry is about to have a head-on collision with China and get absolutely wrecked.
Already, Detroit is not in good shape. The Big 3's share of U.S. auto sales has fallen from 90% in 1965 to just 44% by 2018. (I'm sure it's much lower now). It gets worse. The only reason that Detroit has done this well is a 25% tariff on foreign light trucks that was passed by LBJ in retaliation for European tariffs against U.S. chicken.
In terms of small cars, Japanese automakers have been beating Detroit for decades. For luxury vehicles, Germany has worldwide dominance. That leaves only light trucks and SUV's, where Detroit still performs well only due to tarriffs. We've sort of forgotten about Detroit since 2008. The perception is that things were bad for awhile, but then the automakers got bailed out and they're okay now, especially #girlboss CEO Mary Barra.
This isn't true. The stock prices of the Big 3 have limped along. GM, once the 2nd most valuable U.S. company, now has a market cap only 2% the size of NVIDIA. And, if the Big 3 haven't gone bankrupt again, it's only by jettisoning high-paid union labor. Michigan, once a well-off state, now ranks 39 out of 50 in household income, falling well behind former hick states like Texas and North Carolina.
Enter China.
China is already, by far, the world's largest producer of automobiles, producing about 3x as many as the U.S. Also, China can sell an EV for $10,000. While I'm sure there would need to be changes for the U.S. market, it would not be too expensive at scale. Get ready for hordes of these "shitty but good enough" cars to enter the market.
"No one will ever buy a Chinese car" you laugh, nearly dropping your monocle into your glass of cognac. I don't think this opinion can withstand serious scrutiny. Japanese cars once had a similar reputation. Nowadays, choosing to buy an American car over a Japanese one is seen as either extremely patriotic or moronic. Even if quality never improves, people still buy plenty of Kias and Hyundais. How many more would they buy if the price was reduced by 30-50%?
So let's say all of this is true. A wave of Chinese imports are coming which will cripple the U.S. auto industry. How will voting for Trump help? My gut feeling is that Trump can't save Detroit but that, unlike Biden, he'll at least try.
For most of the period of the 1980s-present, the world has been a huge beneficiary of free trade. The rich in the U.S. have grown much richer, obscenely so. But the biggest gains have been won by the working class in developing nations, especially China. Despite all that there have been losers. The biggest losers are the working class in rich nations, especially in areas that compete with China.
The traditional government solution to manufacturing being outsourced has been to offer job retraining and lots of government benefits to the affected class. But this just doesn't work. The places that have been affected by blue collar job loss are now hollowed-out shells of their former selves.
Trump will probably at least try to ban or tax Chinese cars. Is this the right thing to do? Maybe, maybe not. It will cost American consumers a lot of money, and it will depress wages in China. In aggregate, the tariffs will probably make the world a worse place. But they will help the group that has lost so much and which has been ignored and scorned for decades. The group Biden pretends to care about but which Trump actually does.
Edit: Just saw this retweeted by Crémieux:
America's most affluent metro areas in 1949: https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1769891112095740274/photo/1
You'll never guess who's #1.
I vaguely remember a period in the 80s and 90s when cars were a culture war. "Assholes drive imports" was a slogan for a certain sort, who were patriotic enough to buy American cars even when the foreign imports were clearly superior. It was mostly working classs rightwing types doing that.
If we get a big wave of cheap, good-enough, electric cars made in China... how do the culture war lines break down? The right is more pro-American, but these days the left is more foreign-interventionist and might care more about opposing China. The left likes electric cars, but the right has more broke people who just want to save money. And Elon Musk doesn't fit clearly on either side.
On the other hand, does this even matter? Once upon a time the auto industry was a huge deal, both to create jobs and for the military-industrial complex. Nowadays, like you said, the big car companies are tiny compared to... gaming graphics card manufacturer. And as I understand it, there's almost nothing in common between a car factory and a modern weapons manufacturer. So maybe it's OK to just let China take over the car industry, just like we let them take over every other kind of manufacturing.
Well, perhaps aside from armored vehicles and firearms. WWII suggests that industrial capacity is fungible in some specific contexts.
yeah. Naive calculation: Suppose Alice has a factory that produces tens of hi-tech bespoke post-Cold war optimized tanks during one year, say 50 units in year. Suppose Bob has several dozens of factories that can produce 500,000 of civilian vehicles each year. Bob needs only engineers to redesign the civilian car production line into something useful in military use -- perhaps, integrate anti-tank guided missile launcher and drone platform and minimal armor against small arms fire -- and then Bob can produce 10,000 modern anti-tank vehicles for each Alice's hi-tech bespoke tank. After the first couple of months, if both realize their current designs are not performing adequately in the field, assuming it takes equal time to come up with a redesign, after the resign and couple of months of production Bob has produced 80,000 upgraded vehicles against 8 Alice's upgraded bespoke units. But frankly, I presume if you have factories producing hundreds of thousands units for civilian consumption, your engineers are much better at setting up production lines, adapting and rolling out new redesigns than if your experience is producing hundreds of bespoke units to a contract.
I think the difference is that modern car factories can’t be retooled to build modern weapons the way WW2 factories could. So retooling the GM or Tesla factory to make modern missiles probably isn’t much easier than just taking over an Amazon warehouse and doing the same there.
To echo the other replies to this comment, a modern military will need drones, but will also still need 4x4 vehicles (whether Humvees, JLTVs, or even just modified pickup trucks), transport trucks (so you still need GMC and International Harvester and the like), and men with rifles (which will be some flavor of AR-15, traditionally-milled or possibly even 3D-printed).
More options
Context Copy link
But at WWII levels of mobilization, we’d probably be looking at revamped civilian vehicles in heavy military use. The GM line can easily produce technicals.
More options
Context Copy link
Not the bespoke weapons, no. But evidently a modern civilian drone factory can make drones that are effective for military use. I believe a protracted total war, the side with more "Gigafactories" and difficult-to-predict quality of innovativeness and engineering that comes from running the factory will be better equipped to churn out useful equipment. In a massive war, you need massive amount of weapons, and wih current production numbers, it looks possible the West would run out of the bespoke weapons.
If the decisionmakers Alice and Bob realize it, it will affect their calculations of outcomes of protracted total war, such calculations will affect their diplomatic strategies. If either side don't realize it, they will walk into it blindly into the next protracted total war, and it will affect the outcome.
But that’s kind of the thing, there can be no protracted direct total war between great powers because of nuclear weapons. There can only be proxy conflicts or MAD. The unique thing about Ukraine is that it’s a moderate to large sized country with a zealous and relatively high IQ population backed by Western countries fighting a former superpower (with a poorly trained but large military and high manufacturing capacity) in conventional warfare.
The US doesn’t need huge volumes of conventional weaponry outside of this niche scenario of supporting Ukraine. No enemy will ever military invade the American homeland, only nuke it if it comes to it. The main scenarios for a hot conflict with China over Taiwan would either spiral very quickly into nuclear exchange or resolve themselves rapidly otherwise (eg very successful Chinese blitzkrieg and amphibious landing in 48h before US can decide on strategic response). The main scenario for a hot conflict with Russia involves some kind of Russian invasion of the baltics, and even there NATO forces in Europe outnumber the Russians, have better equipment and could easily repel the post-Ukraine remnants of the more skilled professional soldiers left, likely pressing into Russia and again leading to a question of nuclear exchange.
The only reason Ukraine is even happening is because it doesn’t have nukes and it’s considered taboo post-1945 to use nuclear weapons offensively against a country that doesn’t have them, even for Russians, especially against your supposed co-ethnic brothers.
"Need" is a strong word. There are plenty of people willing argue that the US really didn't need to intervene in WW1 or WW2 or Korea or Vietnam or station Elvis and other assorted troops in Germany or doesn't need to defend NATO either. Generally, superpowerdom has been considered a prize worth the costs. Perhaps stakeholders in Washington decided it is longer worth it. But that is secondary to my argument.
I think it is mistake to infer that Ukraine is a niche scenario. It used to be a niche scenario (for couple of decades) partly because the US was the uncontested superpower. Starting a large-scale war that the US might notice was considered a bad idea. Ukraine is what a contested hegemony looks like. Putin made a calculated move presuming that the West overplayed their hand supporting the west-aligned Ukrainians and would not / can't supply Ukraine. And perhaps the Washington stakeholders decide, they won't. Same goes for Taiwan, and any other piece of territory previously under their hegemonic protection. It would imply the US will fight only unaligned small countries, not other great powers. The implication for any Middle Eastern or other small country is to quickly align themselves with any of other ascendant great powers so that they are not unaligned small country no longer. Probably the US would be fine. Isolation worked okay for China for a quite long time. But it is an admission of making an exit from the great power politics.
Second, it seems unwise to think only terms how Taiwanese or any other military situation would develop today or in 5 years' time while making decisions about having manufacturing base (development timescales counted in decades). Concerning Taiwan: Who knows what the future of naval combat looks like? Everyone thinks so when they enter a conflict. Afterwards, someone has always been surprised. (Nobody plans to start a long protracted shooting war. Usually everyone plans for a decisive victory.) No matter the specifics, or if the US sits out, it is not a good look for the US power projection capability if it so happens that during the first months of mid-to-large-sized regional war in Asia everyone, including China, both shoots up and shoots down more equipment than the US produces in one year. Perhaps again, the US will be fine after the first such war. But when there has been a couple of such wars, and China has learnt how to improvise and develop and learn?
Third, to make nuclear red lines believable you need to draw conventional lines much earlier. To draw a conventional lines, you need conventional forces and the support organization for them. If you have fewer conventional forces, then the lines you draw need to be proportional to forces you have. Suppose given points one and two, Washington decides to forgo both the superpower hegemony and large conventional forces to keep it. Do you still wish to keep Monroe doctrine? Perhaps, Mexico and Canada?
When Argentina tried to take Falklands, everyone knew the UK wouldn't waste nukes to keep the islands, and they didn't. Suppose they never responded conventionally, either ("Royal Navy was too costly, PM Hacker kept only the Trident"). Couple of decades later, someone is prone to have a bright idea to take yet another inconsequential far-off nominally British island territory ("let's conquer Bermuda for tax reasons, they won't nuke us for that like they didn't nuke Argentina"). The other islands would seek another overlord if they can help it. Perhaps the UK probably would still defend the Isle of Man or the Hebrides, because it is closer to home, but who will be sure? And if their general readiness to fight appears to be nil, and nobody thinks they would start shooting back, how much their threat of nuclear Armageddon is? Nuclear strike doctrines were developed during are when the Cold war belligerents had a large standing armies ready to shoot, and nuclear strike was yet another escalation beyond that. But if you won't fight conventionally? Psychological threat of nuclear annihilation looks more credible after you occasionally demonstrate willingness and capability to go to war in the first place.
More options
Context Copy link
Russia didn't even try to destroy an electric plant (as opposed to transformers) or kill Zelensky. Why nuke?
As far as I'm aware they certainly have tried to kill Zelensky on a number of occasions. But typically decapitation is a poor military strategy anyway, because it opens up the possibility of vengeance (including by the US) and because the people standing behind Zelensky seem to be more hardcore anti-Russian partisans than he is, so no change in policy would be likely. As for destroying power plants, their goal (unlike, say, the US' in WW2 or Iraq) is a permanent annexation of much of Ukraine so radicalizing the population against them is undesirable.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link