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 -
Unironically, I think returning to male only suffrage is a good idea even if it will never happen. Not because of the original reasons from the anti suffragettes, although all of those are perfectly valid, but because the average difference in neuroticism has too much influence in our politics.
I do also think property requirements are a good idea because they tend to demonstrate future orientation.
I don't know about that; I think it would have some pretty large knock-on effects and I am not sure how desirable these things would be in a modern, Western society. I would guess that you could just find a different proxy for neuroticism or something like that.
Maybe you could just use the Hock, but explicitly allow people to pay or have substitutes.
What knock-on-effects? You’d see a more politically conservative electorate, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think the idea of “Voting Gangs” by Moldbug largely accomplishes something similar without explicitly being gendered.
The idea is that your vote, like a share in a company, is 100% your property and completely transferable. So people would naturally transfer their voting power to interested parties they feel aligned with.
The simplest example is my wife simply allowing me to add her vote to mine in the interest of time since I follow politics more closely than her and she trusts my judgement and ability to represent her.
And if I have friends or family who trust my judgement or vice versa I could sign my vote off to them, or them to me, etc etc.
This would also allow households to vote together, one good thing from a pro-natalist perspective would be to give children the vote but in the stewardship of their legal guardian until they come of age. If a household had two adults and two children they would have four votes in total.
I suppose the effect over time is that it concentrates political power in those interested in wielding it in a transparent, traceable way. Many people want their interests protected but find politics incredibly dull or simply unfathomable. Some dude wants to sell me his vote for an ice cream? That’s fine, he clearly wasn’t interested in it, and I am.
This creates a natural, scalable democracy with basically infinite parties joined together.
It sounds like a radical pipe dream but I’m becoming less convinced it’s unrealistic over time, and I’m becoming more convinced it’s the natural evolution of a liberal democracy if it seeks to survive and overcome it’s obvious deficits.
Laws affect third parties. Having the guy sell you his vote instead of not voting or voting randomly dilutes the vote of third parties. The third parties may be interested.
Also, poor people would end up all selling their votes and the resulting government would be bad for poor people.
In less developed countries, this tends to happen anyway, so it misses the point.
More options
Context Copy link
I debated including that bit for this very reason, there’s a bog standard response that relies on a bunch of assumptions that don’t stand up to much scritiny.
Poor people already vote at much lower rates than members of other classes, and I don’t imagine a single vote would be worth very much at all.
When I was poor, and I my case was rather typical, the thing I lacked more than money was time and energy. Politics requires quite a bit of both. Lots of my poor brethren had the instinct that they didn’t have the time, inclination or knowledge base to make a very informed decision at the ballot box, and so would forgo the whole process. There’s certainly something to that instinct, people want to use their power responsibly.
But even very poor people generally have someone they can trust in their lives, someone who is either more informed or more inclined towards political action.
I honestly think the ability to vote by proxy would rather increase turnout among the poor, especially for local politics. From personal experience when I was poor and living somewhere where I was unfamiliar with the local political scene I would have gladly gave my vote to a trusted friend who is similar politically to me and has my interest at heart.
Now that I’m financially stable and more informed I vote more regularly. And members of my social circle are also more interested in asking about my politics.
And for those people who will likely never be interested in politics for one reason or another, they still have the ability to directly benefit from their voting privileges as a citizen.
What about employers who tell people to sell their vote to their employer or they are fired? Middle class employees won't stand for this, but people with few skills who are qualified for few jobs, .ay have a problem.
What do you about the fact that you being able to buy unused votes dilutes third parties' votes? Aside from forcing the third party to bid against you for the votes just so that he's no worse off than he is today.
Employers already have minimal ability, inclination and interest in dictating how their employees vote or use their private property, why would that suddenly change?
Not only that, it’s often illegal and/or incredibly taboo to do so.
Most people aren’t using using their voting privileges on a consistent basis already, thus artificially inflating the importance of the people who do vote. Once again, disproportionately the middle class and wealthy.
If anything, this would have the opposite effect of lessening disenfranchisement by making it easier to actually use your voting privileges by introducing a proxy mechanism.
It’s not some utopian vision though, some constant of people will never be interested or can’t be bothered to vote, or even transfer their voting power to someone else.
The "minimal ability" is the key phrase here. As long as the ballot is really secret, the employer can't verify that you've voted in a particular manner, so he can't buy your vote.
In a hypothetical where votes could be transferred, the employer could legally do the equivalent of buying your vote by paying you to transfer or threatening you with job loss if you don't transfer.
If someone just doesn't use his vote, it inflates the votes of everyone equally, so third parties are not put at a relative disadvantage. If he transfers the vote to you, on the other hand, it dilutes the vote of third parties.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The arguments of the anti suffragists are actually quite complex. One interesting thing is that it turned women’s activities into political instead of apolitical.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link