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 -
China's economy was on the rocks before COVID hit, then they destroyed their supply system, and now they're seriously looking at fuel, fertilizer, and food shortages in the coming year(s) due to Ukraine... major ones.
And all this right as their demographics were set to completely implode, and their housing market (the largest market of any asset in the world) had already started to collapse.
China was always attempting a long takeoff on a short runway given how poor they started and how bad the one child policy fucked them, there has been talk for decades "Will China get old before it gets rich?" (and ergo not be able to afford to care for its elderly, crashing its economy)
Seriously in 2012 at the peak of "China will replace us" hysteria, Niall Ferguson, the Harvard historian, was making documentaries about how China had so little runway and risked plummeting off the abyss if it didn't do everything exactly right, Peter Theil has also spoken extensively on this, ditto Peter Zeihan
And now we know both their engines just exploded before they could take off.
.
This is has been an understood thing amongst the Chinese elite for decades... Get your money out, get your kids to western schools and then residency permits... Who knows if it could all come falling down. There's a reason they were buying millions worth of real estate in western cities they let sit empty , they wanted their money the hell out of China.
And now you can't leave.
Beijing has choked off all new permits to leave the country, has restricted removing capital even further, has some of the harshest travel restrictions that have ever existed outside orthodox communist states...
And well you either had really good plans in place and boxes checked before things went belly up, or now you're screwed.
.
The CCP for the longest time acted as if its legitimacy depended on high growth rates, above 10% ideally, above 5% for sure, down to maybe 1 or 0 in an emergency... But THREE years negative!? And under those conditions, the worst years China has had since Tiananmen or probably Moa, that's when Xi Jinping just declared himself ruler for life...
There's a hell of a lot of turmoil everyone expects to Erupt in China right now... like the memes and clickbait are "China's going to collapse this month/week/hour/minute", but for decades very respected experts have been saying "You know china looks strong but it could get nasty real fast if even a fairly routine economic or geostrategic crisis hits it, they don't have a lot of wiggle room" and we've just seen the equivalent of 5 of 6 hard scenario crises hit them in rapid succession.
.
Think of how scared people got with US politics in 2020 how high the temperature rose, lockdown protests, the summer of Floyd, the election, Jan 6th... Think of how many times it was "Wow that could have death spiraled really quickly"...
And then think the US is a wealthy country, that didn't lockdown that hard, could afford to just pay people not to work, the government didn't respond to protests with the need to assert their authority in the most violent way, and even the politicians openly calling each other traitors all pretty much knew they'd all of them retire with their millions.
In China politicians were being executed for partisan corruption charges well before 2019... there's basically no safety net, people die in their homes from lockdown (lack of medicine, food)... Every second there and for the past 2 years has been at a higher defcon level than those first nights of Floyd, or Jan 6 or the first week of lockdown.
Hell we don't know if one the biggest geostrategic events in history has occured, which factions are in charge of Xi, if they've already had lesser coups against eachother that were hushed up...
And that probably the main reason China's doubling down of Zero Covid, sure there's the face saving, and punishing less loyal regions, etc...
But with that much inherent instability in the air it gives the central government an excuse to already have the security state forward deployed incredibly aggressively, already be expanding the camps, already be dragging undesirables out of their homes...
Because if Xi isn't moving against lots of people and moving fast... the obvious question is who's going to move against Xi.
More options
Context Copy link