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Amazing to describe a bunch of Asians and Indians making $300K+ at Amazon and Microsoft as “incapable of maintaining American civilization.”
Aside from Bezos, Nadella has probably done more than anyone for property values in Seattle in the last 10 years.
The homeless are definitely a problem but it’s more fixable than this mindset of racial division that both you and the DEI people preach.
You can't blame me for thinking I'd be earning three times my wage without having to compete with that "bunch of Asians and Indians." That my grandchildren will earn less because of it, too.
That my parents earned less, too.
American civilization is one of colonization of the frontier. Wealth and technology, but also conquest on the margin. And yes, descent from the 13 colonies who threw in together against the crown. And not from the same people who chose otherwise (leafs).
I can blame you for being economically illiterate such that you think those high tech salaries from valuable companies would exist without having imported a lot of people with relevant abilities.
You wouldn’t make more if all the immigrant tech talent vanished because they aren’t what’s preventing you from having the relevant skills to have those jobs.
Zero-sum thinking is just factually incorrect here.
Just as Mexican aliens in the US drive down the employment prospects of native-born Blacks, so too do Asian aliens in the US drive down employment prospects of native-born Whites.
It doesn't have to be zero-sum in order to be a net negative me me and my kind. Also, it's not factually incorrect either.
While it’s possible for an influx of new labor to drive down wages for a short time or in a particular field without much of a barrier to entry, you’re just wrong, theoretically and empirically.
Think about babies. They start off small and helpless. All they do is consume for close to two decades, which isn’t helped by child labor laws.
But eventually, they will join the workforce, driving down the cost of labor. Right?
Except, workers are also consumers. So they work to earn money and then spend that money, which creates a demand for other people to have jobs.
A country with a high population growth rate from fertility has a very similar labor economics situation with one having the same from immigration.
Wages go up, on average, from increased productivity. Not restraining labor supply, which is ultimately self-defeating in a modern economy.
People get pissy over immigrants and over outsourcing, but ultimately it’s mostly just hating the necessary dynamism and creative destruction that makes the American economy so much better than any peer.
Do you have anything to back this?
Does remittances factor in this hypothetical?
So line goes up Meme and to hell with the rust belt. Without taking into account that that was the reason that empowered China and made it the menace that it is today.
The “anything to back this” is the explanation I go on to give. You can also read Cato, who also mentions the points that immigrants tend to take jobs we citizens don’t want, and that the large-scale entry of women into the workforce is another point of comparison for significant labor force changes.
It’s not a hypothetical, in other words. We can observe countries with different levels of population growth from births and immigration over time, as well as women entering into the workforce. What matters most is productivity. Scarcity of labor only drives up wages to the point a firm can afford.
Remittances aren’t a major variable and also foreigners buy US products.
The Rust Belt needs to adapt to a changing economy. Trying to lock in a given situation, changing factors be dammed, is the very definition of stagnation. I don’t want to end up like Europe thank you very much.
Empowering China was not a problem in pure economic terms, it was a problem in geopolitical ones. In a better world, we would had given more business to say Mexico/Canada/Brazil until China had demonstrated actual willingness to play nice with the US-led international world order. In other words, the Rust Belt can still get fucked for not being a competitive place to run a factory. Whining about it and trying to use government intervention to prevent the outcomes of markets, instead of doing a good job of competing for new industries, is some leftist bullshit that makes me very annoyed at today’s GOP.
That actually brings up another point. If you don’t let labor come to the US sufficient to keep up with hiring demands, you drive up the incentive to outsource production to where there is available labor.
So support free trade and sensible immigration policy. (I’m in the Tyler Cowen/Garret Jones camp, not the Bryan Caplan one.)
the part not mentioned at that point is "with those wages", always find it disingenuous when economists et al treat the situation as if economic incentives doesn't exist for this specific situation and the only way to have your toilet unclogged or burgers in your McDonald is by bringing more immigration, which is how you keep wages stagnant.
What I think they are missing in this excerpt, that the common man perfectly understands, is that they don't need to be perfect substitutes, they just need to be good enough. With languages as similar as english and spanish are is not all that difficult to understand each other, after all spanglish is a thing.
this is the Damore Memo all over again, and even in the same career path Peterson mentions that women are less likely to ask for a raise.
Really sure what does it matter with respect to "While it’s possible for an influx of new labor to drive down wages for a short time or in a particular field without much of a barrier to entry"? the level of elasticity of wages isn't in contention here.
why aren't they a major variable?, and foreigners may buy US products too, but if part of their wage goes to Mexico they will buy less than natives.
And we aren't living only in a economic world, but one with geopolitical considerations too.
It was shortsighted and a perfect representation of everything wrong with the "Line goes up" Meme mentality that economists et al are so fond of. Now we have a hollowed up Rust belt, a Nuclear power hostile to every value you hold dear and Cartels in your backyard. All of this with far reaching consequences like the fentanyl and homeless crisis.
the hollowing out of the rust belt proves this isn't true. Outsourcing is a product of dramatically cheaper labor costs outweighing transportation costs and import taxes.
Wages are ultimately set by productivity and what people are willing to pay. If we reduced immigration and berry prices jump that’s not going to make people happy either.
There’s nothing good about the wages of say plumbers going up forever because of an undersupply of labor (vs. increases in productivity). That’s economic stagnation. You can’t just focus on wages; you also have to consider that consumers pay the higher prices to fund the higher wages. Absent increases in productivity, higher wages mean less consumption due to higher prices and/or shortages. In other words, it’s a poorer place overall.
Remittances aren’t a major variable because I strongly doubt they are large enough to be a significant factor (prove me wrong), criticizing people for how they choose to spend their money is generally bad, and also foreigners receiving the money probably buy some international goods, including from America. Yay globalization.
My point about China is that it’s not a valid criticism of economic policy based on free trade, it’s a valid criticism of geopolitical policy. Free trade in general is great, but not when it’s with the USSR and China, or involves giving up key capabilities from a national security perspective. Europe, for example, was very stupid to become so reliant on Russian gas.
The Rust Belt failed to be competitive as economic needs changed. That’s on them. Compare them to the economic growth in the south and southwest over the same time period.
I don’t think you grasped my point about how restricting the US labor supply strengthens the incentives for companies to go looking for labor overseas, because what you wrote is entirely in line with it.
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These people belong to civilizations that have existed for longer than the West has been the West.
But you are missing the point. They can maintain their own social structures and idioms, but can't maintain Western ones. Only Westerners can do that by definition.
I think Gobineau goes too far when he says that "civilization is incommunicable" as some individuals can clearly be assimilated, but collectively he is right. If you swapped out Western and Eastern elites in an instant, neither society would be able to function correctly anymore.
The racial division you bemoan is the cause of much disarray, but it is also the consequence of a multicultural society that has refused to impose a common culture in the name of Liberal ideals. And as we can see, economic success cannot alone mend this gap, only paper over it.
Eastern countries with homeless people are those that are very poor in comparison with the US. Rich Asian countries like Singapore do not have a homeless problem whatsoever. None of the countries have psychotic and aggressive homeless.
The homeless pathology of big American cities is totally unique and there's simply no way to explain it by blaming Asians. Especially since the voters and government is mostly white people - the "swapping" you talk about is a figment.
I'm taking this swap as an hypothetical to illustrate the social upheaval that is created by radically altering the makeup of a society over a short period of time. The UAE, Singapore, these are multicultural societies that are successful and orderly. They also require a great deal of authority and legitimacy to maintain.
This, in turn, require long lasting institutions that are either a monopoly of a specific ethnic group or the product of ruthless objective competition, which is essentially the same as it synthesizes a bureaucrat class that becomes its own ethnos (see China).
Without this chain, you get South Africa.
Now if you decide to understand pointing out this reality as "blaming Asians", I'm afraid that's on you.
The "radically altered makeup" of Seattle has precious little to do with this considering that it's whites who are most enamored with pro homeless politics.
Singapore's parliament is a mix of Indians, Chinese, and Malays. It's not a homogeneous elite and in a (de facto) one party state there's not much objective competition to get on the ballot.
Look I understand you've been taught that your political formula does this in school, but there's very little reason to believe this is true. In fact I'm more ready to consider Aristotle when he argues the opposite is true.
I think it requires a lot more intelligence and studying to become a civil servant in Singapore than in Seattle. And indeed that this is how it's elite self selects in lieu of ethnic preference.
Civil servant? We're talking about elected positions. Please post the objective requirements to get elected in Singapore.
No we're not, we're talking about the ruling elite, which is not the same thing.
You can't vote the elite of a society out of power. The people who run things, make actual policy decisions are rarely the same people that nominally have the power to do so. I don't like this as a formalist myself but it's just a fact of life.
I mean come on, do you really think Joe Biden runs the United States? That Vladimir Putin decides things on his own without large constraints from his stakeholder's interests?
If we're going to have a serious discussion about the sociocultural dynamics of how a society functions we first have to agree to basic Machiavellian premises. There's an infinite amount of fictional stories you can tell yourself about what's going on, if we don't ground ourselves in pragmatic, value free analysis of power, this conversation is pointless.
What does Joe Biden have to do with crazy hobos in Seattle?
The elected officials of Seattle do not object to the status quo and do not promise any changes. The voters of Seattle do not mind and continue to elect those officials. There's no need to invoke Machiavellian epicycles when the elected officials and electorate are in total agreement on the issue.
It's not the "deep city hall" that keeps the hobos on the street, it's the vox populi.
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In Seattle and Portland it is whites who vote most zealously for the radical left. Blacks and Asians are both more moderate.
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Seattle's district hasn't elected a Republican representative since the seventies, it is fully a one party polity. The only distinction is within flavors of democrats. In my experience, the most pro-homeless people are white, and Asians have much less sympathy for letting people colonize the streets.
You've elided the point. Even in uber-liberal Seattle, the share of Whites voting for Democrats is lesser than the share of Asians, of Blacks, of Hispanics, of...
I haven't elided the point.
Nobody who wants to win in Seattle runs as a Republican. Do you think it's the blacks' fault that Seattle hasn't elected a Republican in 44 years? Or the asians'? No, this is the will of the whites who live there.
I wasn't able to find a lot of good data, but here is one post: https://www.google.com/amp/s/southseattleemerald.com/2022/12/09/how-race-and-class-converged-in-the-2022-elections-in-seattle/%3famp
That is, parts of Seattle that are more likely to vote for Republicans are those that live in areas with less white people.
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