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 -
Trade policy has changed the composition of the domestic elites who make bad political decisions. It's caused (in part) the specialization of the American economy into one of abstract symbol manipulation. Although it turns out that's probably the highest value thing anyone can do, the winners of a symbolic economy create an unmoored society. And the issues you list are all downstream from that: real physical and safety issues have become secondary to the symbol.
I don't think Trump's tariffs are good or will do much to reverse this trend. They are, however, a strong symbolic strike against the ruling elite, which will have unfortunate side effects on the material wellbeing of Americans.
Trump's tariffs are a tax on Americans who consume imported physical goods, and American manufacturers who use imported intermediate inputs. The class who mostly consume expensive real estate and their own sense of moral superiority will be relative winners.
More options
Context Copy link
Could you elaborate more on the economy turning into one of abstract symbol manipulation?
You're talking about investment and the stock market, right - and the relation between unmoored, placeless capital and a lack of care for even the localized business environment?
That's a big part of it, yes. Finance is about abstracting away all the messy realities of the real world into a single self consistent symbol--money--so that humans can accurately act on knowledge of the real world without having to know any of its concrete details. Software is also a big part of it, as MadMonzer points out. And we are best in the world at both of them: there's no reason for us to make a lot of widgets when we can manipulate symbols to create information that's worth 100x as much. Trade policy has enabled us to make this tradeoff, and we do.
You can also frame higher education, law, and media as symbol manipulation industries, though I see their successes as more downstream of the symbolification of the US than a cause of it.
More options
Context Copy link
America's main source of competitive advantage is software*. Making software is literally symbol manipulation.
Arguably America's second-largest source of competitive advantage is logistics, which is real-world-aligned, but doesn't have the mythopoetic status of manufacturing in real-world-aligned culture, and in any case naturally encourages people towards cosmopolitanism and has done since the Age of Sail, if not earlier. (Walmart and Amazon are the leading examples of American excellence in logistics, as well as notoriously harmful to local communities.)
Compared to resource extraction, manufacturing, or even tourism (where the local sense of place is part of what you are selling), software and logistics are about unmoored, placeless economic activity. This is true both of the doing of the thing, and of the type of financial services that finance the doing of the thing - financialisation is not the problem here. When America was a physical-things country, you had community banks which were as embedded in their community as the general store, and which financed farms and factories and such-like, and you had money-centre banks like JP Morgan which financed railroads and shipping.
* America's trillion-dollar companies and their core competencies are:
None of these are going to promote rooted capitalism, and none of them would promote rooted socialism if State-owned either.
It wouldn't be wrong to say that the entire point of logistics is the abstraction away of place.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link