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 -
USA works in most respects, having a healthy well-rounded economy, resource independence and food/energy/everything security, affordability of goods and housing, and protection of rights (especially negative rights, which are poorly comprehended by European legal systems), retaining its unrivaled attractiveness for world-class talent and the virtuous cycle leading it to hegemony. Days when the EU could be seriously discussed as a peer partner/competitor are far behind us, now it's just a poor brain-drained province.
Taiwan works in most respects, having a humane culture (by East Asian standards, and very much unlike the Mainland), functional democracy and some capacity to innovate in governance, good affordable healthcare, and an economy that benefits from virtual monopoly on the most valuable industry near the top of the global supply dependency graph.
Israel works in nearly every respect, especially considering geopolitical, natural resource etc. challenges it faces; it's truly jarring how its dubious liberal creds are emphasized by lobbyists and sycophants, yet nobody among policymakers cares about its most unlikely successes, unthinkable in the EU (chiefly, the ability to harmonize the economy of a first-tier developed country with tradition and reproduction). Pretty much all bad things about their system are either inherent to the ethnostate model (which is non-negotiable) or not very concerning to locals (bad visual design, accelerating shift towards right-wing ideology).
Those are, I think, the most successful and well-run countries on the planet, insofar as we leave aside European anomalies like Liechtenstein and other memes.
Within the EU, there are also more and less well-run «real» states, e.g. Finnish policymaking is, from what I can tell, generally devoid of bizarre unforced errors or even causes for culture war outrage (@Stefferi is that your handiwork?), but they're not that impressive or globally significant.
Ah, I see. I classify the EU much like Thiel does, as in, that it's a place where the dominant spirit is "indeterminate, negative." I don't have high hopes for its future, even in the near term (10-20 years), but I would still argue that if you're looking for a sleepy little hamlet, the EU is full of them--you get your healthcare and basic security, and you're free to live out your life in the style of Mann's Hans Castorp.
More options
Context Copy link
ASML (which is Dutch) is upstream of TSMC on the dependency graph, and has a stronger monopoly. Right now nobody else is even trying to compete in EUV, and ASML have about an 80% market share in new wet DUV installations (the previous generation of photolithography tech).
ASML is valued like 50% less (it shouldn't be, though); in terms of revenue, TSMC is closer to Apple than to ASML. Also TSMC is only the frontrunner of an entire pleiad of electronic businesses (admittedly more replaceable) – from Asus to Foxconn to Mediatek to Synology, they control many world-class enterprises.
Europeans have a few more extremely successful and entrenched legacy companies of that sort (Zeiss etc.), and of course they're strong in other fields (e.g. pharmaceuticals), but AFAIK no European nation has such an impressively high-tech export structure, pound for pound.
Plus Europeans have other problems. The Dutch, for instance, have imported roughly a quarter of their current population, which the Taiwanese would not even consider.
Hi, imported Dutch here. There are quite a lot of foreigners here for sure (and many aren't very desirable), but these numbers that people throw around are very disingenuous. It typically includes anyone with any parentage from "abroad". Have a Belgian mom? German expat? Fully assimilated and very productive n-th generation Surinamese immigrant? Congratulations you are padding the foreigner statistics. Numbers look especially grim since most locals I know don't think twice about dating a culturally equivalent "foreigner".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Shh...
I think that one of the things here is that when people discuss Europe's problems, it is often some sort of a melange of individual country problems. Ie. the biggest issues with energy, including the disdain for nuclear, overreliance on non-European fossil fuels etc. do not affect all EU countries equally; not every country is Germany. EU, as an institution, just recently, classified nuclear as a green energy in its taxonomy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link