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 -
As western capitalism trends closer an closer to a command economy through mergers, acquisitions and consolidation you will have a harder and harder time arguing against communism.
About 5 companies make all beer. About 6 companies make all media. It's hard to really argue that single digit values of competition produce the level of innovation that a state run monopoly could never rather than simply producing collusion. It's hard to believe that internally the level of competence will not steadily trend towards that of the DMV.
Economies of scale at hyperscale will always produce single digit mega-firm competition. The advantages of this over government-and-single-firm planning are incalculable.
But that's not the point. The point is that new entrants at a smaller scale should be able to enter markets without government approval or interference of any kind. The law of compounding is real; the tiny two-guys-in-their-garage today turns into Apple in 30 short years. In the absence of that, we're all still using IBM mainframes to send dick picks.
To return to the brewery example from the post above (and my post below), we can see that dynamic at work there as well. While it's not true that the market has homogenized and the big consolidated firms aren't actually crowding out competition, it's also true that there would almost certainly be many, many more little breweries all over the place in the absence of government regulation. Would someone on my block turn their garage into a little storefront if they were allowed to just sell home-brewed bottles without requiring a whole raft of government licenses? Almost certainly yes. If someone wants to argue that the licensing and inspection regime is necessary to prevent bad things, that's fine, I can probably find points of agreement, but the tradeoff in tamping down startups has to be acknowledged.
If there's a problem that's stopping startups, it isn't "western capitalism" that's going so, unless this is just calling out that western capitalism tends to have substantial regulatory capture.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Why is it hard to argue? It's an empirical question and empirically these companies do work better than state run monopolies. You are also eliding all the foreign competition and small firms that could scale up if the big ones ever get bad enough.
More options
Context Copy link
G. K. Chesterton made a similar point a century ago.
Right. That’s why Thatcher allowed people in social housing to buy their house cheaply. It worked for about 40 years, but created a housing bubble that I think has now undermined the effect.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The question with consolidation is whether there are large barriers to entrance. If no, then consolidation allows some degree of economies of scale whilst preventing monopolistic pricing.
We see that play out in the beer space. Small barriers to entrance means there are numerous craft brewery options and such beers are actually more expensive vis-à-vis the mass produced beer. You would expect if there truly was monopolistic pricing and consolidation prices to rise drastically but we don’t see that.
More options
Context Copy link
This is a pretty funny example of homogenization to use during an era when small, independently owned breweries exploded. I don't even live in a large city and there are a half dozen little brewery taprooms within walking distance and many more within biking distance.
More options
Context Copy link
This sounds like CCP-style state capitalism (which, for all its faults, is at least tremendously efficient) rather than communism either as historically practised or as envisioned by Marx and Engels.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link