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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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Do you yourself believe that, or do you agree with most of the statements I made above?

Those are not exclusive! It's entirely possible to have the deck stacked against you along some axes, but not to such an extent that it cannot be overcome by agency.

That said, I don't believe a bunch of those:

1.Sure, a bunch of jobs have moved overseas, but the unemployment rate is pretty low. If you can't find a job, that shouldn't be blamed on companies (not the government, of course) moving jobs overseas.

2.Sure, immigrants may drive down wages in specific sectors, but they should increase prosperity overall.

Others I agree with more, but think you should still take agency:

3.Being addicted to fentanyl probably is related in some cases to doctors prescribing opiates without sufficient caution. Doesn't mean you shouldn't get up and try to go through rehab programs and take steps to get rid of the problem instead of throwing away your life.

I have no comment to make on the suicide point.

But I agree with @Primaprimaprima that I see more pro-agency messaging on the right, even if there is plenty of victimhood messaging too.

Being addicted to fentanyl probably is related in some cases to doctors prescribing opiates without sufficient caution.

It seems like "is related" is kind of sweeping some stuff under the rug in that sentence. My understanding is that there is good evidence that over prescription leads to more drugs available on the black market, but that it is in fact extremely rare for someone to develop an addiction stemming from their own prescription. The vast majority of addicts started on other people's prescriptions. (Let me know if you have a different understanding of this.)

If that's the case, it's not really relevant to the agency that the addicts had in becoming addicted to say that the drugs were prescribed too carelessly in the first place.

That was not my impression, but I have nothing at hand to back me up, and am not at all certain.