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 -
Question- do you tend to have large extended families on the farm, with maybe a hired laborer or two, or is it a one nuclear family plus a ranch hand operation?
It seems like this is set up for sons to live at home with their mail order brides well into adulthood, but it also seems like Australia has a culture not-particularly conducive to that.
One nuclear family, no employees, and the kids move to the city when they grow up.
What that means of course is that an incredibly empty part of the country is steadily becoming even emptier. For example this region of South Australia, more than double the size of Italy, with just 2573 people, and losing about 3% of their population each year.
Edit: Last year this property larger than Palestine sold for $34 million, or about $21 million in US dollars.
It looks like that big area of SA is about 8000 people if you add back the two enclaves which are small towns with independent municipalities. Still scary. The most remote place I have been is a tossup between the drive to the Grand Canyon North Rim and the drive through the Scottish Highlands from Fort William to Skye Bridge. In both cases you go about 30 miles between settlements, and the settlements have populations in the low three figures.
Are the jobs that the missing people used to do (presumably, mostly running sheep stations) being automated away so that the agricultural productivity of the Outback is holding up, or are they just not being done any more?
Mostly the former. Agriculture has steadily gotten more and more capital intensive and less and less labour intensive in all kinds of ways. It used to be you had to muster cattle on horseback, then people started doing it by helicopter, now people are starting to do it with drones.
There is also an effect from increasing environmental regulations and aboriginal native title stuff making either certain areas or certain management practices not viable, but the technology factor dominates. Production keeps going up overall.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link