site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It all depends on what the point of saying "America was built on slavery" is. My impression is that the goal of this movement is to establish that the USA's extraordinary economic prowess and status as the premier world power is due to (would not have existed without) its early reliance on slavery, rather than to its unique founding principles or constitution. If this is true, then the case for forfeiting its those founding principles to atone for the evils of slavery through e.g. reparations or affirmative action is strengthened.

the USA's position today could easily be caused by multiple factors acting together, neither one being "more important" than the other in the cause-and-effect sense.

This is simply a moral question of who to praise. Some people say it is the genius of the founding fathers direction, and others say it is the hard work and sweat of slaves.

But the existence of alternatives isn’t really important when assigning blame. If I steal a man’s money, I shouldn’t get to keep it. That’s true whether or not I could have expected more money by working a normal job.

Maybe counterfactuals matter when trying to put an actual number on it. The injury would something like be Potential - Actual GDP. This has its own set of problems.

The question isn't assigning blame, it's actually assigning credit for success. If America's success is primarily due to slavery, then a) maybe the slaves are owed not just for the wrongs due to them but also for the lion's share of America's prosperity and b) the achievements of the founders are proportionally reduced, so fidelity to their principles is less important.

When you're talking about whether slavery built America, it's the same America in both versions of the scenario. In other words, in your analogy you'd be stealing a man's money, but then giving the money to a church that's the same church that the man would have given it to anyway. The man is personally injured, but after you and him are dead the money is in the same place that it would otherwise be, except that you burned some of the money first (i.e. slavery is inefficient) so there's less of it.

In this scenario the church isn't to blame. And it isn't meaningfully profiting off of stolen money.

Does the burning matter in this scenario?

The question is whether the initial theft was unjust enough for a particular remedy. That doesn’t change if you burned the money, or even if you added your own to the donation.

If someone's going to give money to the church, and you stole it to give it to the church, that's not "unjust enough for a particular remedy" if by a remedy you mean the church has to give it back. (Particularly if you're going to make sure the analogy fits, in which case the church has a sort of magnetic pull that ensures that all money will get to it eventually.)

I agree.

My point is that the OP doesn't need to "burn the money" for that to be the case. It doesn't matter if slavery was less efficient than the free market solution we didn't have. Either the remedy fits an actual crime, or it doesn't.

rather than to its unique founding principles or constitution.

(or it's enviable geographic position, and the misfortune of the prior inhabitants to not have cohabitated with domesticated livestock in cities, leaving them vulnerable to a lot of diseases the Europeans brought with them.)

Geographic positions (and natural resources) have remarkably little link with economic development, which is why e.g. New Zealand is more prosperous than Brazil, or places like Albania and Moldova can be poor while being close to places like Switzerland and Luxembourg.

Au contraire; geography has everything to do with economic development, just not in the most simple, straight-forward ways. Brazil has surprisingly crappy topography for development, with the Amazon jungle being surprisingly infertile, and major mountain ranges limiting the ability to move goods from the interior (such as it is) to the coasts.

The U.S. has the Missouri/Misouri/Tennessee/Ohio River systems draining incredibly productive agricultural land and moving its goods cheaply, several amazing harbors on each coast, examples of just about every single type of topography in the world (and the variety and quantity of natural resources to match), natural moats to the east and west, deserts to the south, and forests and tundra to the north. While it's possible to screw up that position, it's really hard; kind of like how France's agricultural productivity made it by far the population hub of the European continent in the late middle ages, and thus it was a power player in European politics even when its politics were a horrifying mess.

While it's possible to screw up that position

That's my point, and that such a position is not necessary for rapid economic development. And it's not that hard, e.g. Russia has lagged despite the Volga, Don, extremely fertile soil in the south, and massive quantities of oil, natural gas, and other commodities.

There's no reliable link from geography to economic development, especially the sort of development that the US has achieved. Socio-cultural explanations are essential: the only comparable successes in the 19th century had similiar cultures of bourgeois values (where an enterprising commoner could rise to high status) and policies, even when geographically very different from the US e.g. the UK or Germany.

Russia has lagged despite the Volga, Don, extremely fertile soil in the south, and massive quantities of oil, natural gas, and other commodities.

Russia also has very few natural defensible borders, and has land connections to historically-expansionist powers (Western Europe to the west [French, Germans, Swedes, Poles, etc.], and steppe nomad confederacies to the east and south). This has had a major impact on their political development, and arguably still is exerting a negative influence on their geopolitical standing if you buy Peter Zeihan's thesis that the current war in Ukraine arose out of a Russian perception that they needed to control the Carpathian gaps against potential future aggression.

the only comparable successes in the 19th century had similiar cultures of bourgeois values (where an enterprising commoner could rise to high status) and policies, even when geographically very different from the US e.g. the UK or Germany.

Before WWI killed it, Russia was ascending precipitously throughout the 19th century without this kind of culture. Similarly, Japan pulled off a faster ascent than the U.S., U.K., or Germany, with a very different culture. Even Belle Epoque France, though not as successful as the British, was renowned for its culture worldwide and still sneered at the U.K.'s "nation of shopkeepers." Bengal under the Mughals was the richest place in the world by far in the 1700s, and only a weird quirk of elite politics brought its trade under British control (i.e., one governor's extremely bad decision to piss off his bankers, who promptly turned around and funded the British interlopers).

I agree that it is better to have positive cultural values, and that noxious cultures retard or even reverse development. However I don't think culture is sufficient to explain developmental successes, particularly at the national level. Geography and geopolitical context really, really matter a lot.

Before WWI killed it, Russia was ascending precipitously throughout the 19th century without this kind of culture. Similarly, Japan pulled off a faster ascent than the U.S., U.K., or Germany, with a very different culture. Even Belle Epoque France, though not as successful as the British, was renowned for its culture worldwide and still sneered at the U.K.'s "nation of shopkeepers." Bengal under the Mughals was the richest place in the world by far in the 1700s, and only a weird quirk of elite politics brought its trade under British control (i.e., one governor's extremely bad decision to piss off his bankers, who promptly turned around and funded the British interlopers).

But these were rising from a much lower base and (Bengal aside) experiencing catch-up growth. And even then, Russia, France, and Japan all took big steps towards bourgeois culture in their periods of ascent.

Russia also has very few natural defensible borders, and has land connections to historically-expansionist powers (Western Europe to the west [French, Germans, Swedes, Poles, etc.], and steppe nomad confederacies to the east and south). This has had a major impact on their political development, and arguably still is exerting a negative influence on their geopolitical standing if you buy Peter Zeihan's thesis that the current war in Ukraine arose out of a Russian perception that they needed to control the Carpathian gaps against potential future aggression.

So what's the geographic explanation in Germany's success, which is even less defensible than Russia, in that it lacks Russia's vast distances between its borders and its capital?

Yes, I am sure that is the point, and it is an extremely dubious one, but it still seems to me that the relative contribution compared to some hypothetical alternative is not particularly relevant.

Eg: Years ago, I made a bunch of money in the stock market, based on recommendation from a friend. That friend deserves my thanks, and perhaps even recompense (reparations, if you will), even if some other person might have given me even better advice. My friend provided me a service, at my behest, just as slaves did. Was their contribution enough, and their subsequent recompense sufficiently meager, such that reparations are in order? I don't know; I rather doubt it, and IMHO a much better argument for reparations is re post-Civil War treatment of African-Americans, or based on equities unrelated to the extent of slaves' economic contributions. However, it certainly does not make sense to me to enslave someone for 20 years, and then when they ask for a share of my profits, respond, "But, I now realize that my business would have been even more profitable, had I relied on free labor." That does not seem to me to be a very compelling argument.

Years ago, I made a bunch of money in the stock market, based on recommendation from a friend. That friend deserves my thanks, and perhaps even recompense (reparations, if you will), even if some other person might have given me even better advice.

Let's say your friend tells you to buy Apple stock and you make a 3% return. But the market as a whole went up 5% in the same period. If you had just given no thought to the matter and bought a total stock market index fund like VTSAX, you would have performed better. In that case, I don't think it's correct to say your friend deserves any thanks or credit for his recommendation. He didn't really help you in any meaningful way, since your default option was better than his suggestion.

Yes, but who says that using free market labor was the default option? Apparently, it wasn't, at least in the eyes of the landowners at the time. Moreover. they went out and compelled Africans to come to the US to work. As I said, " it certainly does not make sense to me to enslave someone for 20 years, and then when they ask for a share of my profits, respond, "But, I now realize that my business would have been even more profitable, had I relied on free labor." That does not seem to me to be a very compelling argument."

However, it certainly does not make sense to me to enslave someone for 20 years, and then when they ask for a share of my profits

That analogy doesn't fit the question. Blacks benefit from America being prosperous. (Or if they don't, it's because of factors other than slavery.) There's no share of your profits to ask for. There's a share of a pool, but the money would have ended up in the pool whether you enslaved anyone or not.

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