site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   25923 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

That's both not true in a meaningful sense, most of our meaningful trade partners have only limited tariffs on a small number of industries or businesses which is not anywhere near equal to large tariffs on everything and not true because the US economy is substantially stronger and better than most every other country in the world

So howcome I have never seen a "made in USA" label, and why is the local agribusiness periodically shiitting bricks at the prospect of dropping tariffs on food?

Because service exports don't have stickers on them. Or are you not using netflix, amazon, windows etc? And also you can just check what tariffs currently are, according to WTO the EU has an average tariff of 5%. (11.3% for agriculture, lower for rest)

So howcome I have never seen a "made in USA" label

You haven’t?

So howcome I have never seen a "made in USA" label

Iirc you don't live in the US, right?

Off the top of my head, I recently bought an American made water filter. Klein tools are also American made.

Iirc you don't live in the US, right?

Yeah, and I think this is a necessary condition for the argument to even be relevant.

If he's saying "allied countries put tariffs on only a handful of industries", but I haven't seen any American products, that would imply the industries that are targeted are precisely the ones that are competitive, making the "handful" argument moot.

Do you ever see “Product of USA” at the grocery store? Food is a decently-sized export.

The main exports are refined petroleum products and capital goods. You don’t see these at the general store with “Made In USA” labels on them, but your country’s infrastructure runs on American products.

howcome I have never seen a "made in USA" label

Seriously just go Walmart and look. It's not a majority of items, but there are plenty of things with the label.

You also have to remember that a true "made in usa" label is very strict. An appliance that's otherwise made in usa except with imported knobs or buttons is not even able to be sold as made in usa.

Seriously just go Walmart and look. It's not a majority of items, but there are plenty of things with the label

I'm European, never seen a Wallmart in my life, and this argument makes no sense since we are discussing tariffs.

Things with "Made in USA" labels tend to place it pretty prominently, often with a flag or red/white/blue. And they tend to be at least a bit more expensive than the alternatives: there seems to be a bit of an assumption of some economic nationalism going on where those products are seen as "premium".

Of course, economic nationalism is sometimes blamed for causing trade imbalances: "The Japanese market isn't interested in American electronics" is something I remember hearing back when the Japan Takes Over The World trope was running strong. Similar things are sometimes said about China today, too. And I'm not sure how "buy domestic" preference generally squares with the administration's concern about trade imbalance: are they willing to discourage it here, or is the standard being applied potentially unfairly?

Sometimes you can even buy essentially the same thing but made in the US, with a big 'made in the US label' and it costs more, as with New Balance trainers. There's a 'Made in the UK' version as well. Both the US/UK versions are actually better quality than the made in Vietnam ones, I would say – but also twice the cost (in the UK, £199 vs £99).

So howcome I have never seen a "made in USA" label

American manufacturing is actually really strong https://www.cato.org/blog/united-states-remains-manufacturing-powerhouse

Simply put, the United States remains a manufacturing powerhouse. In 2020 it was the world’s fourth‐largest steel producer and in 2021 was the second-largest automaker and largest aerospace exporter. Accounting for nearly 16 percent of global manufacturing output in 2021—second only to China, which has four times the population of the United States—the US had a greater share than Japan, Germany, and South Korea combined. By itself, the US manufacturing sector would constitute the world’s eighth‐largest economy.

There's not as many jobs in manufacturing because automation. There's absolutely no reason to cuck ourselves employing people to do things that machines have been able to do for decades, and it's freed up labor into other goods and services. And again this has made the US into the economic marvel that it is too.

and why is the local agribusiness periodically shiitting bricks at the prospect of dropping tariffs on food?

Free trade actually benefits a lot of agriculture too. Even the Trump admin knows this given they subsidized farmers during the first trade war and are planning more now https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/us/politics/farmers-bailouts-trump-tariffs.html

American manufacturing is actually really strong

I suppose it's possible we're using a lot of American components and capital goods (if you buy as local flight in Europe, it will almost certainly be on a Boeing, from my experince), but most consumer goods seem to be Chinese.

Free trade actually benefits a lot of agriculture too.

What I'm saying is that Europe has strong tariffs against American agricultural, and our farmers regularly freak out at the prospect of lowering them.

American manufacturing is actually really strong

A relevant point to the "why do I never see 'made in USA' labels" is that US manufacturing strengths are not low-end consumer goods like textiles or plasticrap. The US does a lot of high-value manufacturing, but those products are often sold to other businesses.

Yeah exactly. The US economy by freeing our labor up from much of the basic work other countries can do cheaper has allowed for so much room into high value manufacturing and services.

I often see a complaint about "bullshit jobs" where people don't feel like they're productive, and there certainly is some that exist because of regulations that aren't necessary (like the people who need to make five hundred pages of environmental reviews instead of just a concise 2-5 page paper) or because their employers are not perfectly optimized machines who never make mistakes but in general American wages are so absurdly high on average because our jobs are actually doing a lot of productive work in ways we might not be able to directly appreciate.

The average American office worker gets paid a shit ton of money to file paperwork or do accounting or whatever because the company believes it is worth the expense whether that be direct gains like manufacturing or indirect like optimizations, PR relations, advertising, HR, lobbyists, R&D, IT, etc etc.

And the companies keep succeeding so clearly they must be somewhat right.

I'm about as pro-capitalist as it gets but imo this is the wrong model for zero-sum (for example advertising) and negative sum (for example compliance) industries. Especially large, already successful companies can secure their position by burdening everyone with enough extra costs that only they can shoulder well enough due to scale.

I think Boeing have pretty conclusively demonstrated that compliance in safety-critical high-end manufacturing is not, in fact, uniformly negative sum.

Not really! Remember they did comply with the regulations, filed required paperwork, and received required approvals. What they failed to do is make actually safe aircraft regardless of compliance status.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats