Economics is far more important than culture

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Originally Posted by branh0913

It appears that in the political sphere, populist candidates have been pushing the idea of culture. Leading to a cultural war being fought in the battlefield of Washington. On the right you have people longing for nostalgia and a period in time where it was like the 50s (basically just the TV version of the 50s). Here you could keep the same crappy job for 30 years, retire off a pension, and somehow make a living wage. Despite that technology has pretty much destroyed this sort of lifestyle 2 decades ago.

On the left you have social justice warriors. They are all about teaching inclusion, identity politics, and collectivism. They want to coerce the public at large to think and feel a certain way, and want to be able to control how you interact with people. While the focus use to be minority groups, now the focus is on sexuality, gender identity, and many other things. They generally agree with free speech, as long as it's limited in some way. And they want to enforce the culture of "acceptance" among all people.

But all of this is irrelevant, because culture doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is money. Don't believe me? Look at any culture that has continued to gain money, and you see a shift in old ideas into ideas that generally revolved around economic prosperity. The key is, culture is only for broke people. Culture only exist in a world where we don't have a free market. In a free market, the market replaces your culture. And anyone who doesn't believe in the culture of the free market is practicing an inferior culture.

Economics drives everything. There are no solutions that aren't economic. Everything in the life of a human being comes from economic prosperity. And I mean everything. Economics drives culture. Culture does not drive economics. That is why you're not solving anything when you fight a cultural war. Rather, you're figting a battle that doesn't matter. Money, prosperity, wealth is the great uniter of mankind. With money you don't need culture. I repeat.

Without money, you don't need culture.

With a dead planet, economics is irrelevant.

[skepticratic]

Originally Posted by branh0913

I am the furthest thing from a communist. Culture is by nature collectivist. And such can only be against the ideas of free markets. You can only have free markets when you have individualism. Culture is secondary to an individual economic prosperity.

Wait, are you saying culture is collectivist and is therefore bad and instead each individual should determine their own "culture?" Do you understand how asinine that is? I've popped into this thread a few times, though chose not to respond as I felt you weren't making a terribly interesting point, but this changes things. You're basically arguing some weird post-moderist viewpoint where everyone's values not only can be but should be subjective. And there is almost certainly no way you believe that.

Let's start with the obvious one: language. Language is a cultural thing. This is why Americans and Brits all speak English but speak it in different ways. That said, while there may be a handful of words that are used differently, words all still mean more or less the same thing. The difference between 'cookie' and 'biscuit' is small enough to not be problematic. And more importantly, each person within the culture registers what these words mean as it's collectively agreed upon. However, if culture is made to be purely individual, words can now mean what the individual decides they mean. We can start saying liberals and socialists are all the same. I can say that I'm not a man becasue that's a social construct and am actually a woman. Or go farther and say that I'm actually a tomato. And if culture is made arbitrary, we live in a world that slowly stops making any sense.

Commerce cannot happen without culture either. Supply and demand requires culture as what commodities are desired are then culturally determined. Classically speaking, it's based on rational need, but that doesn't' actually exist anymore. While plenty of purchases are made based on need, a significant majority at this point are not longer necessities in any sense of the word. Getting the 2017 Camry to replace your perfectly operational 2009 Camry is not a necessity but instead is a culturally manufactured need. If culture stops existing, then there an be no consensus on what commodities are to be bought. Now of course, this would not happen. Culture cannot actually be purely be individually determined as you think it should be. And if it were, as I pointed out, you're market capitalism that you cherish would cease to exist OR become neutered to the point of only supply need. And at that point, I'd argue socialism would be superior as it would be functionally the same, but more universally efficient.