5 ms·

The USA's biggest export is our culture...like it or not. Think of movies, music, etc. Some of it is intangible.

by Fr3ck 3y ago

wahnfrieden 3y ago
You can find positive effect with it only being an indirect and fragile benefit of the system
tablespoon 3y ago
>> You can wonder all you like, and call me a cynic, but the US runs on money not culture. The American identity is built on money and wealth and excess, not on anything you might describe as "culture". > The USA's biggest export is our culture...like it or not. Think of movies, music, etc. Some of it is intangible. Yeah, but that's not high culture. It's mass-market culture that makes a lot of money. I think what the GP is referring to as "culture" is high culture--the kind of stuff that is not popular and requires subsidies and special effort to sustain.
- netr0ute 3y ago
  What's the definition of high culture?
  - carapace 3y ago
    If we still read/watch it in a century?
    - ghaff 3y ago
      Not really. Both Shakespeare and Dickens were pretty mainstream culture at the time.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - orangepurple 3y ago
    High culture is exactly equal to "surrogate activities" defined in this document: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab...
  - nitwit005 3y ago
    It means the culture of the upper class. It's also one of those phrases where people insist that's not what it means. You can see this bizzare battle playing out on its wikipedia page: > In popular usage, the term high culture identifies the culture either of the upper class (an aristocracy) or of a status class (the intelligentsia); high culture also identifies a society’s common repository of broad-range knowledge and tradition (folk culture) that transcends the social-class system of the society.
- simiones 3y ago
  I don't think so at all: the IA has little to do with what is normally termed "high culture", and much more to do with "low culture" (lots and lots of internet trivia that would mostly be of interest to archeologists).
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I doubt the average person on the street has even heard of the Internet Archive much less thinks it's some essential cultural institution.
  - TimTheTinker 3y ago
    The IA is the only way to see a lot of what was written and widely read starting in the 1990s onwards. Libraries used to keep archives of old newspapers and publications on microfilm, and anyone who needed to research something could go and look through those archives. The IA holds a similar function today - but it's the only one with its breadth and age. If we lose the IA, we lose a lot of important historical information.
    - tablespoon 3y ago
      > Libraries used to keep archives of old newspapers and publications on microfilm, and anyone who needed to research something could go and look through those archives. The IA holds a similar function today - but it's the only one with its breadth and age. Newspapers very frequently maintain and provide public access to their own online archives now. That's also not a function the IA is even especially good at--its coverage is spotty, and unless you have an old URL, it's very hard to find stuff in the IA. The one unique thing the IA does is have is a broad and deep collection of internet ephemera.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - TimTheTinker 3y ago
        > The one unique thing the IA does is have is a broad and deep collection of internet ephemera. That's what I was referring to. Blogs especially are an important source of historical information from this period that will not exist in newspaper archives -- and many of those have appeared and disappeared in the last 20 years. IA is the only record we have of much of that.
- bruce511 3y ago
  High culture, like theatre, classical music, architecture - sure,thats one line of thought here. There are isolated examples that exist, supported by patronage, but that's not entirely what I meant. If we look to the mainstream,the movies,music etc are all commercial. There's a reason a studio would rather make another Marvel movie than something more meaningful. That's not to say that -only- Marvel movies are made, and they are very entertaining, but the -reason- they are made at all us economic. For software we celebrate money-raised, MRR, user numbers and engagement. We dont celebrate programs for their life-impact. We don't celebrate the software used yo design the James Webb telescope. Or the software in an MRI machine. We don't throw VC levels of funding at prosthetics, things that have value beyond just ygr monetary, even more so when the monetary value is near-nil, just like the IA. I say all this not to change it, at a fundamental level it can't be changed, bug rather to understand it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
orangepurple 3y ago
The export is propaganda to promote US government stability and induce demand of American goods and services. So in the end it's money anyway.
Ygg2 3y ago
I fundamentally disagree. Not US citizen, but what US seems to be exporting most are dollars. Most world trade is done with dollars. They give dollars and get resources and services.
paradoxyl 3y ago
That's not an export, that's propaganda. That's like saying fiat currency is just as valuable as lithium deposits. It's the hubris of the West.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  The fiat currency is just as valuable as the lithium deposits because the fiat currency is backed by the most powerful force of military might the world has ever seen. When you trade for a dollar you're trading for that. Better than them just taking the lithium, as was the old way.
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    No, it's worse. Empires that over-expand and seize too much sow the seeds of their own military destruction. Economic empires backed by ever-increasing military become overwhelming and then define any pushback as terrorism. What you end up with is a planetary-scale protection racket. Please do not construe this as an endorsement of other would-be hegemonies.
pasquinelli 3y ago
you don't export culture, you export stuff. it sounds like you're disgreeing with "america runs on money, not culture", but the fact you conflate culture with, like, movies sold internationally proves the point: american culture is in the form of market transactions. given that, how do you end up with "culturally too big to fail?" and i'd dispute that entertainment is our #1 export. not all exports are on the books; i'd bet arms is our real #1 export.
- chroma 3y ago
  You can look this information up pretty easily.[1] If you only count physical goods, the US's biggest exports are cars, aircraft, petroleum, food, drugs, industrial machinery, and semiconductors. Even if we count the value of all the military equipment sold to allies such as the Netherlands, France, Japan, Korea, the UK, etc, and we count all the Ukraine aid, the total value last year was $205.6 billion. That's less than petroleum exports ($258.3B) or food ($208.2B). 1. See page 22-23 of https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/trad1222.pdf https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/trad1222.pdf 2. FY2022 had $51.9B of sales to foreign militaries and $153.7B direct commercial sales, for a total of $205.6B: https://www.state.gov/fiscal-year-2022-u-s-arms-transfers-and-defense-trade/ https://www.state.gov/fiscal-year-2022-u-s-arms-transfers-an...
  - pasquinelli 3y ago
    >> not all exports are on the books > You can look this information up pretty easily. if you read what i wrote carefully you'll see you can't just look this information up pretty easily.
firatsarlar 3y ago
[flagged]
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  Please do not. Either write out your comment, invest the effort to condense it, or link to your blog post. I like chatGPT, but if I want an AI version I'll generate it myself.
  - firatsarlar 3y ago
    I got you. You downvoted me. Please stop asking me more. Summary -intention- make the message short, easy, not time consuming. Solid good intention. I spend 1 hour to make communication solid. I put my intention. I cant be the person you dictate. Please is not the way to soften do as I -we- want. I do not read rules, I obey them in conflict, I do not ask permission, I say sorry. If we need rules, there need to be consensus. Other, a carma pramit , ranks, kind a god mode thing. I'm new in this block. We do not know each other. Talk to me privately if you seriously bothers you. Do not Elonize -Alianite- me. Do not make me buy this place, and sell it to my ego, I may put my every entry on top of HN. If you want to offend, please kindly do that. The world "myself" bothering me -I'm not make these comments for yourself- , provoked me, changed my emotional state. If you want to share openly argue, I already made a submission - which will never see the sun -, go there, say something. Or say authentically what you feel - say bad things in private or openly, I do not my, because I'm reflecting my pure emotions right now. And yes. My intention is not to offend you but, I need to say a big NO to you. Sorry if you emotionally offend. I do not know you, and you are a candidate - in a real community- of new friend to me. And please think: You should thank me for my 1 hour effort to make my comment solid, understandable, for the sake of quality. Thanks my downvote. It made me some kind of joke "Do not Elonize me" And sorry for my emotional, instant, Chinglish - People mock my English like that-. I cant use tools we build because of haters, ignorants, paranoids, unwarenes - I can easily take all those words to me and look at that mirror - I passed this way on SO. Argue with people - yes I'm emotional sometimes-, I felt kicked there, not a place for me, .... Idea was simple - I cant rich my upper brain because of emotional state so even I would like to share that post - Put a badge to people's profile Not a Native speaker. Because as we can see currently my English is not enough for higher communication. I'm old. Not live in English speaking country - so not use it -. My grammar rusty. Mockers were right it is Chinglish :) - I'm not Chinese by the way-. Some advised Google Translate, which I was already trying and not getting the way I want to say. So, knowing or not knowing do not alienize me, please welcome me, no need to hug. Just smile. Think pure, I now you can summarize but , one of my downvoted - suspicious- comments about has had a quote like " I do not find time to make it short, please forgive me" I'm doing what they apology. It is your karma, it is your self sufficiency to generate summaries, Please continue to punish me if you like it. As I said, It make me productive - yes aggressive- Look at I wrote lots of human words - not AI , synthetic - And it is my naked poor English community could easily mock. Yes It is USA, I need to talk in your language. Yes It is yourself, you don't me to summarize my post for you. Thanks. Apologies. PLUR -< if you know what this mean

The USA's biggest export is our culture...like it or not. Think of movies, music, etc. Some of it is intangible.

by Fr3ck 3y ago

The USA's biggest export is our culture...like it or not. Think of movies, music, etc. Some of it is intangible.

wahnfrieden 3y ago

You can find positive effect with it only being an indirect and fragile benefit of the system

tablespoon 3y ago

>> You can wonder all you like, and call me a cynic, but the US runs on money not culture. The American identity is built on money and wealth and excess, not on anything you might describe as "culture". > The USA's biggest export is our culture...like it or not. Think of movies, music, etc. Some of it is intangible. Yeah, but that's not high culture. It's mass-market culture that makes a lot of money. I think what the GP is referring to as "culture" is high culture--the kind of stuff that is not popular and requires subsidies and special effort to sustain.

netr0ute 3y ago
What's the definition of high culture?
- carapace 3y ago
  If we still read/watch it in a century?
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Not really. Both Shakespeare and Dickens were pretty mainstream culture at the time.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- orangepurple 3y ago
  High culture is exactly equal to "surrogate activities" defined in this document: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab...
- nitwit005 3y ago
  It means the culture of the upper class. It's also one of those phrases where people insist that's not what it means. You can see this bizzare battle playing out on its wikipedia page: > In popular usage, the term high culture identifies the culture either of the upper class (an aristocracy) or of a status class (the intelligentsia); high culture also identifies a society’s common repository of broad-range knowledge and tradition (folk culture) that transcends the social-class system of the society.
simiones 3y ago
I don't think so at all: the IA has little to do with what is normally termed "high culture", and much more to do with "low culture" (lots and lots of internet trivia that would mostly be of interest to archeologists).
- ghaff 3y ago
  I doubt the average person on the street has even heard of the Internet Archive much less thinks it's some essential cultural institution.
- TimTheTinker 3y ago
  The IA is the only way to see a lot of what was written and widely read starting in the 1990s onwards. Libraries used to keep archives of old newspapers and publications on microfilm, and anyone who needed to research something could go and look through those archives. The IA holds a similar function today - but it's the only one with its breadth and age. If we lose the IA, we lose a lot of important historical information.
  - tablespoon 3y ago
    > Libraries used to keep archives of old newspapers and publications on microfilm, and anyone who needed to research something could go and look through those archives. The IA holds a similar function today - but it's the only one with its breadth and age. Newspapers very frequently maintain and provide public access to their own online archives now. That's also not a function the IA is even especially good at--its coverage is spotty, and unless you have an old URL, it's very hard to find stuff in the IA. The one unique thing the IA does is have is a broad and deep collection of internet ephemera.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - TimTheTinker 3y ago
      > The one unique thing the IA does is have is a broad and deep collection of internet ephemera. That's what I was referring to. Blogs especially are an important source of historical information from this period that will not exist in newspaper archives -- and many of those have appeared and disappeared in the last 20 years. IA is the only record we have of much of that.
bruce511 3y ago
High culture, like theatre, classical music, architecture - sure,thats one line of thought here. There are isolated examples that exist, supported by patronage, but that's not entirely what I meant. If we look to the mainstream,the movies,music etc are all commercial. There's a reason a studio would rather make another Marvel movie than something more meaningful. That's not to say that -only- Marvel movies are made, and they are very entertaining, but the -reason- they are made at all us economic. For software we celebrate money-raised, MRR, user numbers and engagement. We dont celebrate programs for their life-impact. We don't celebrate the software used yo design the James Webb telescope. Or the software in an MRI machine. We don't throw VC levels of funding at prosthetics, things that have value beyond just ygr monetary, even more so when the monetary value is near-nil, just like the IA. I say all this not to change it, at a fundamental level it can't be changed, bug rather to understand it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

orangepurple 3y ago

The export is propaganda to promote US government stability and induce demand of American goods and services. So in the end it's money anyway.

Ygg2 3y ago

I fundamentally disagree. Not US citizen, but what US seems to be exporting most are dollars. Most world trade is done with dollars. They give dollars and get resources and services.

paradoxyl 3y ago

That's not an export, that's propaganda. That's like saying fiat currency is just as valuable as lithium deposits. It's the hubris of the West.

nemo44x 3y ago
The fiat currency is just as valuable as the lithium deposits because the fiat currency is backed by the most powerful force of military might the world has ever seen. When you trade for a dollar you're trading for that. Better than them just taking the lithium, as was the old way.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  No, it's worse. Empires that over-expand and seize too much sow the seeds of their own military destruction. Economic empires backed by ever-increasing military become overwhelming and then define any pushback as terrorism. What you end up with is a planetary-scale protection racket. Please do not construe this as an endorsement of other would-be hegemonies.

pasquinelli 3y ago

you don't export culture, you export stuff. it sounds like you're disgreeing with "america runs on money, not culture", but the fact you conflate culture with, like, movies sold internationally proves the point: american culture is in the form of market transactions. given that, how do you end up with "culturally too big to fail?" and i'd dispute that entertainment is our #1 export. not all exports are on the books; i'd bet arms is our real #1 export.

chroma 3y ago
You can look this information up pretty easily.[1] If you only count physical goods, the US's biggest exports are cars, aircraft, petroleum, food, drugs, industrial machinery, and semiconductors. Even if we count the value of all the military equipment sold to allies such as the Netherlands, France, Japan, Korea, the UK, etc, and we count all the Ukraine aid, the total value last year was $205.6 billion. That's less than petroleum exports ($258.3B) or food ($208.2B). 1. See page 22-23 of https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/trad1222.pdf https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/trad1222.pdf 2. FY2022 had $51.9B of sales to foreign militaries and $153.7B direct commercial sales, for a total of $205.6B: https://www.state.gov/fiscal-year-2022-u-s-arms-transfers-and-defense-trade/ https://www.state.gov/fiscal-year-2022-u-s-arms-transfers-an...
- pasquinelli 3y ago
  >> not all exports are on the books > You can look this information up pretty easily. if you read what i wrote carefully you'll see you can't just look this information up pretty easily.

firatsarlar 3y ago

[flagged]

anigbrowl 3y ago
Please do not. Either write out your comment, invest the effort to condense it, or link to your blog post. I like chatGPT, but if I want an AI version I'll generate it myself.
- firatsarlar 3y ago
  I got you. You downvoted me. Please stop asking me more. Summary -intention- make the message short, easy, not time consuming. Solid good intention. I spend 1 hour to make communication solid. I put my intention. I cant be the person you dictate. Please is not the way to soften do as I -we- want. I do not read rules, I obey them in conflict, I do not ask permission, I say sorry. If we need rules, there need to be consensus. Other, a carma pramit , ranks, kind a god mode thing. I'm new in this block. We do not know each other. Talk to me privately if you seriously bothers you. Do not Elonize -Alianite- me. Do not make me buy this place, and sell it to my ego, I may put my every entry on top of HN. If you want to offend, please kindly do that. The world "myself" bothering me -I'm not make these comments for yourself- , provoked me, changed my emotional state. If you want to share openly argue, I already made a submission - which will never see the sun -, go there, say something. Or say authentically what you feel - say bad things in private or openly, I do not my, because I'm reflecting my pure emotions right now. And yes. My intention is not to offend you but, I need to say a big NO to you. Sorry if you emotionally offend. I do not know you, and you are a candidate - in a real community- of new friend to me. And please think: You should thank me for my 1 hour effort to make my comment solid, understandable, for the sake of quality. Thanks my downvote. It made me some kind of joke "Do not Elonize me" And sorry for my emotional, instant, Chinglish - People mock my English like that-. I cant use tools we build because of haters, ignorants, paranoids, unwarenes - I can easily take all those words to me and look at that mirror - I passed this way on SO. Argue with people - yes I'm emotional sometimes-, I felt kicked there, not a place for me, .... Idea was simple - I cant rich my upper brain because of emotional state so even I would like to share that post - Put a badge to people's profile Not a Native speaker. Because as we can see currently my English is not enough for higher communication. I'm old. Not live in English speaking country - so not use it -. My grammar rusty. Mockers were right it is Chinglish :) - I'm not Chinese by the way-. Some advised Google Translate, which I was already trying and not getting the way I want to say. So, knowing or not knowing do not alienize me, please welcome me, no need to hug. Just smile. Think pure, I now you can summarize but , one of my downvoted - suspicious- comments about has had a quote like " I do not find time to make it short, please forgive me" I'm doing what they apology. It is your karma, it is your self sufficiency to generate summaries, Please continue to punish me if you like it. As I said, It make me productive - yes aggressive- Look at I wrote lots of human words - not AI , synthetic - And it is my naked poor English community could easily mock. Yes It is USA, I need to talk in your language. Yes It is yourself, you don't me to summarize my post for you. Thanks. Apologies. PLUR -< if you know what this mean