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 -
I don't think that's the case.
Good call! I hadn't made this connection, myself, though now I see that there are quite a few works making that comparison as well. I was curious about why we would have the transition from guilds->unions->boards, and it seems that the leading hypothesis for the two arrows are the Industrial Revolution and the transition to a service economy. That is, in the guild days, there was mostly a patchwork of small, independent producers, who banded together to rent-seek. As mass production took off, the economics were in favor of larger firms (now you could build cars and sell a bunch of them across the nation or internationally) where workers were mostly trained in one specific task on an assembly line, so guilds started to fall, while unions began to rise. Then, as we've transitioned toward services, they're again more of a patchwork of small, independent providers, who, unsurprisingly, band together to rent-seek.
Medicine is an especially egregious case, as we've seen significant consolidation in that sector. It's less about small independent providers, as the doctors here are apt to point out that larger conglomerates are taking over and many doctors are now employees of a hospital system rather than just running their own little business. So I'm not surprised that a brief search indicates that doctors' unions are significantly on the rise. Of course, they don't have the same sort of mass production scale, as they are still fundamentally a service product rather than a good, so I think it's less likely that the guild power of licensing is going to disappear to any meaningful degree, especially not in comparison to the historical decline in guild power in the good production arena. Instead, we're going to get the worst of both worlds - obscenely licensed and unionized. The academic papers I've found say that they have empirical evidence that these schemes do intersect and provide the most rent-seeking. It's like the anti-Reece's peanut butter cup - two awful tastes that taste awful together. I had sort of thought that the medical industry was reaching a breaking point and that changes would have to occur... but now, I'm sort of getting the feeling that it's going to get a whole lot worse before there's any hope that it'll get any better.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link