site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Good for getting lots of people through bottlenecks though. "Everyone commuting to downtown across the same bridge" is a pretty common situation in American cities, and one transit can solve well.

Of course, using congestion pricing just means that all the lawyer software devs working downtown pay the fee just like they all pay to park in the same downtown highrise parking lot. While a guy trying to get across the bridge to his McJob on the city outskirts can't afford it and has to spend 4 hours taking three transfers on the shit bus with all the hobos.
When there's so much economic surplus in jobs downtown (and thus inelastic demand for bridge crossing), congestion pricing doesn't do shit except harvest money for more graft. Which is probably why it's so popular for city governments.

The smart solution would be to find the densest destination zones and target them directly. Get 80 lawyers on a corporate bus because they're all going to the same building, and don't charge Poorfag McMcJob to use the bridge.
Even the lawyers probably end up happier because they were only paying hundreds of dollars a day for downtown parking as a negative-sum status competition, which congestion pricing only exacerbates.

Plus now you have a really funny joke setup if the lawyer bus ever goes off the bridge.

Good for getting lots of people through bottlenecks though. "Everyone commuting to downtown across the same bridge" is a pretty common situation in American cities, and one transit can solve well.

Except not really. You have to collect the people on one end of the bottleneck and distribute on the other, and that introduces more delays and bottlenecks.

Of course, using congestion pricing just means that all the lawyer software devs working downtown pay the fee just like they all pay to park in the same downtown highrise parking lot.

Why would they drive, if transit works so well?