site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Once the world's richest nation now looks set to be overtaken by Poland within the decade, at least on a per capita basis.

I enjoyed your analysis, and this is a minor nitpick, but isn't this figure based on PPP (which will probably become less favorable to Poland as it becomes wealthier in absolute terms)?

You are correct, but I don't blame @sohois one bit for getting that wrong (great post btw)

Polish PM Donald Tusk said that GDP per capita was $35k in Poland and $45k in the UK. He estimated that at current trends the polish figure would overtake the British by 2029.

The British press, being full of credulous fools that wouldn't know journalism if it kicked them in the face, didn't bother to do even rudimentary fact checking, and simply reported the figures as Tusk had given. That factoid was absolutely everywhere. It seems obvious that Tusk was referring to PPP figures, though he never said so, and in fact probably doesn't even know what PPP means. In absolute figures the UK GDP per capita is about $45k but the Polish figure is $18k. No way Poland catches up this decade. Probably not in my lifetime.

I could see Poland getting close if they had ideal policies and conditions and pulled of something similar to the east Asian tigers. I doubt they would but I'd give it maybe a 1% chance. Especially since they, and their neighbors the Baltics, appear to have had some pretty good economic policies post-communism and are growing pretty fast.

I mean... They would have to grow by more than 15% per year, which is well above the growth rate of any Asian tiger, never mind at Polands current gdp. It's also more than twice the growth rate than Poland has ever had...

And so I followed the parade of fools by repeating the figure. It did always seem a bit extreme but not something I ever bothered to check