site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30114 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Even if she can somehow double the supply of housing, this will destroy housing as an investment.

I am slowly becoming convinced that this is eventually necessary, but will be incredibly painful for many. There still are places we can build -- home prices in Texas are mostly down from two years ago, and California is trying statewide zoning changes that might work somewhat.

But we seem stuck with the choice of following other Anglosphere countries in making housing cost a lifetime or more of wages, or burning a whole lot of folks who thought it would be a nest egg. IMO the best course is probably to spread the hurt over a generation or so rather than rip off the bandaid into a culture where housing isn't expected to appreciate (Japan, somewhat?), even though that will probably hit my net worth too.

It seems like the Anglosphere is trying to square that circle by (a) restricting supply in the high-income, liberal voting areas and (b) letting in a flood of immigrants to do cheap construction labor and build up new housing in low-income, conservative voting areas. We'll see how long that can last.

Of course housing should be destroyed as an investment. Living in a house is consumption. It causes wear and tear on the house. A twenty-year-old house is inherently less valuable than a brand new house. In a healthy economy, a house should depreciate in value like a car, albeit more slowly.

New builds these days kind of suck. They lack a certain classic style.

If my house burned down, I could then sell the charred frame for over $1 million.

I bought the house and the land it is on for much less than $1 million. My wear and tear on the structure and the aging waterheater and whatnot are round off errors in the property value.

So long as tech jobs remain hyperconcentrated in a few areas, housing prices will have to increase within commuting distance of those jobs. Unless we start making Chinese style housing blocks and Chinese style hard restrictions on urban car ownership.

My wear and tear on the structure and the aging waterheater and whatnot are round off errors in the property value.

Exactly. Amount of people I know who renovate and then try to claim that the 5% appreciation in their house's value in the time it took them is value added instead of just underlying market fluctuations is insane to me

This might not be the case in every city but in Toronto when the market was super hot plenty of homes would have increased in value if they burnt down to a pile of ash.

The people who make "heritage building" designations are quite overzealous since it doesn't cost the city anything. It just puts obligations on homeowners.

A pile of ash means that they don't have any justification to stop an owner from building a new home.

San Francisco famously maliciously designates random buildings historic in order to block development. You can't replace a dumpy laundromat with housing, it is "historic" you see. Multi-year legal battles trying to make some apartments. If the local government did nothing, then more housing would create itself all on its own. But instead they fight like cornered animals to prevent it.

https://missionlocal.org/2018/06/the-strange-and-terrible-saga-of-san-franciscos-historic-laundromat-represents-the-worst-of-planning-and-development-in-this-town/

Anyways, I bet that ""historic"" laundromat owner wishes that a freak tornado or lightning stike would have ruined that building so he could make an apartment complex out of it.

The sorts of people who own laundromats seem more likely than average to arrange for a "freak lightning strike" to cause a fire.

In a healthy economy, a house should depreciate in value like a car, albeit more slowly.

Houses tend to be maintained and upgraded better than cars. I never put a new roof on any car I owned, not even the convertibles.

Sure, and a car can last a million miles if diligently maintained.

I've lived in over 50 year old houses that are fine. Not as some ridiculous outlier like a million mile car, but in a neighborhood of perfectly suitable houses that just happen to be a few decades old.

Houses (the physical structures) depreciate very little over very long periods of time.

I know people who live in 100-year-old rowhouses, in a city of sufficient age to have substantial numbers of them. The neighborhood's inconvenient if you have a car, since it wasn't designed to accommodate parking, but the houses themselves are perfectly liveable.

It can, but the result will likely be you pay a lot more than replacing it a few times. And the result will still be a million mile car with high maintenance costs. So it makes less sense to keep maintaning an old car, and as a result they lose their value. It only very rarely makes financial sense to tear down a house and build anew, so old houses maintain their value.

Of course in areas where the land is far more valuable than the house, there's the additional factor of the land not suffering appreciable wear and tear.

I agree, but I dread to think of what kind of economic crisis would be required to make this realignment palatable. 2008 wasn't big enough to do that. American-Chinese war?

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