site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

the point is we trained these guys up in Azure and AWS, and instead of sticking around and thanking us for training them, they leave as soon as they had a better opportunity.

I'm sorry, but you kind of sound like you're not very good at business. Allow me to digress heavily.

Businesses compete, in many many ways. One of the ways they have to compete is to acquire labor and talent. This is an extremely underappreciated fact about capitalism and entrepreneurship, especially by the typical leftists who hate corporations. Most people have never even thought about trying to start an actual business. They've never even thought about the possibility of hiring employees for their business. They've never even thought about what that process looks like. Once you even start thinking about it, you have to start thinking, "Well, uh, where/how am I going to get my employees?" Let's start by imagining that you think you might be hiring for a low-skill position. You're thinking of starting a brand new business; you can't just pay them the farm; you have no money; you might not have even started the business yet; you're still just even thinking about it. Well, you might think, maybe you can get by with some teenagers working in the summer; you might not even need labor all year long yet; this could be a really good 'in' at relatively low cost, and as your business grows, you could think about having the money to hire more full-time, possibly more skilled folks. What then? Well, how are you going to convince a teenager to work for you for the summer? You have to think about them, their interests, their desires, their alternatives. Maybe they could work for a nearby grocery store or fast food joint instead. How much are those places paying them? What are those working conditions like? You've got to beat that. Not necessarily just in terms of price, but you've got to figure out a way to offer them a situation that they'd prefer.

This is the beauty of the entire thing. Rather than the caricature of employers just thinking about how they can screw over workers, it is imperative for prospective employers to think, "How can I package together a job that is attractive to a prospective employee?" At the same time, you also need to figure out how to make the economics work - they obviously need to create enough value as an employee to overcome the cost. And here is where it gets extra beautiful.

Imagine the world from the perspective of a low-skill individual, like that hypothetical teenager. They'd like the produce value for the world and make money for themselves, but they have no bloody clue how. The unfortunately all too common failure mode is to just rebel against the entire system, become a commie, and imagine that it will prevent them from needing to produce value or to even think about it. It's sort of amazing that this failure mode is so common, because the solution is already right there - we've mobilized millions of people across the country who are automatically, on their own accord, spending significant amounts of effort and brain power specifically for the purpose of figuring out how to create an economically-viable pathway for those folks to add value... in a way that is better for them than any other option they have in front of them! How incredible is that?! Without even lifting a finger, they have hoards of folks trying to figure out what types of things they want, how they can contribute, and how best to then deliver to them what they want. Of course, those hoards are going to take some cut for the work. If the individual goes about doing that work themselves, say, starting their own business, figuring out the value proposition, etc., they don't have to pay that cut.

It's easiest to think about this at the low-skill end, especially because that's where it's most stark, but it continues up a significant portion of the ladder.

Back to your job. Your job is much harder than the employee's. You have to do all that work! You have to figure out what they value, how you can provide them the best possible value, in a way that contributes to further value and which is economically viable. That's a damn difficult job. If you don't do it well, you will lose the competition. Someone else will take your employees, make them even more productive, and give them even more of what they value. You may try to kick against the goads and complain that you're actually providing them extra value in terms of skills. It doesn't really matter. Figure it out. Lots of schemes have been used over time to handle this sort of situation. Otherwise, consider that perhaps your business isn't as viable as you thought... or maybe you're just bad at it and losing to the competition.