site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Concurring with you, I think military spending serves three roles: a) Buying stuff to win a war b) Fostering industries which produce such stuff long term c) Economic stimulus / gravy train

For (a), it does not matter where you buy, as long as they are not your likely enemy.

For (b), you want a reliable long term partner country.

For (c), there are likely key areas and companies where you want to spend money to win the next election. Basically, military spending is a money hose which you can redirect to wherever you see the biggest political advantage.

How important these various considerations are depends on the situation your country finds itself in: if Ukraine had money to spend, they would likely buy whatever gets them the most bang for their buck, while Canada is not expecting to fight an existential war where the raw number of jeeps matter any time soon.

Regarding (c), it should also be pointed out that big military projects are almost never developed in a healthy market situation. A healthy market would be that a NATO country company which wants to develop a new fighter jet will do so based on venture capital. If a decade later, it turns out that their jet is competitive, they then sell it to NATO countries, making a profit for their investors.

Instead, the typical process seems to be to first convince your government to pay for the development. If they are lucky and your project does not fail ten years in, it will be likely arrive delayed, over budget and possibly under specs. In a (c)-heavy world, this does not matter: your government will mostly buy from you even if an ally offers a superior product, because why would they subsidize the economy of an ally instead of their own?

It should surprise nobody that this socialist model of weapon development is not very efficient, especially as companies evolve to latch onto the government apparatus, extracting that sweet sweet revenue stream as their tentacles drill deeper into the administrations as decades pass by.

On the other hand, not everything can be reasonably developed in a competitive market. If Roosevelt had in 1941 simply announced the US intend to buy nukes and let venture capital fund competing Manhattan Projects, the result would likely not been that in 1945 the US could just pay 1% of its GDP for Little Boy and Fat Man.