5 ms·

+1, especially on wishing there were more really good social sciences blogs out there covering issues like this. One of the big problems of course is the fact

+1, especially on wishing there were more really good social sciences blogs out there covering issues like this. One of the big problems of course is the fact that while outsiders can see dynamics of and sometimes critique cultures, such critiques are necessarily incomplete (well all critiques are necessarily incomplete but outsider ones are especially likely to be). But on your final question, I think one of the big issues is that the corporate media insists on pushing everything into narratives the corporations can understand. For example, in the US I tend to associate with people from a wide variety of backgrounds politically (and talk politics, as taboo as that is) and one thing I have noticed is that while the media tends to see social conservatives as the "sex police" the social conservative movement is the largest movement in the US which questions the desirability of Capitalism on an economic level (and the critiques are really interesting), but that doesn't work for corporations, so.... So here you have a corporate media organization engaging in difficult cross-cultural criticism. While it is an interesting article, it says as much about Western corporations as it does about Japan.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
>the social conservative movement is the largest movement in the US which questions the desirability of Capitalism on an economic level (and the critiques are really interesting) Care to point them out?
- einhverfr 13y ago
  John Medaille has written extensively on the subject. His book "Towards a Truly Free Market" is worth reading. A lot of it boils down to the critiques of market capitalism by Hilaire Belloc and Gilbert Chesterton and how these have largely continued within the conservative Catholic movement, as well as parts of the Orthodox and conservative Protestant communities as well. I am a Heathen and I worship Odin, Thorr, and Freyr. Chesterton can be a bit arrogant when it comes to religion sometimes, but the reasons for his arrogance are often interesting to ponder even when one does not share the same religion.
  - muraiki 13y ago
    People who want to know a bit more about the particulars of this economic thought should check out Distributivism. While I don't know much about it, it seems like the idea of reconciling private property ownership with the spread of the means of production to all people goes well with open source / maker movement ideas. "According to distributists, property ownership is a fundamental right and the means of production should be spread as widely as possible rather than being centralized under the control of the state (state socialism) or of accomplished individuals (laissez-faire capitalism). Distributism therefore advocates a society marked by widespread property ownership and, according to co-operative economist Race Mathews, maintains that such a system is key to bringing about a just social order. Distributism has often been described in opposition to both socialism and capitalism, which distributists see as equally flawed and exploitative." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributivism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributivism
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      Also I wrote a blog piece(http://ledgersmbdev.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-distributist-view-on-software-freedom.html http://ledgersmbdev.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-distributist-view...) about Distributism and open source, which comes around to favoring BSD-style licenses on a work-ownership theory. The piece can be an introduction to Distributist theory for open source developers as well as an introduction to open source for Distributists.
  - Apocryphon 13y ago
    Distributism is an interesting movement, but it's incredibly minor and is very Catholic. It's social conservative but very different from the mainstream social conservatism in the U.S.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      Strangely I am a Neopagan and was introduced to it by a Russian Orthodox priest. It is moving outside the strict domains of Catholicism. Most of those on /r/distributism on Reddit are not Catholics either.
m_mueller 13y ago
1) I'm fine with incomplete arguments if there is at least some attempt at an analysis shown instead of just a meaningless collection of facts and anecdotes. In that case the engaged reader could benefit by gasp thinking about it for himself. 2) So the problem is that corporate media is politically streamlined? Yes, I absolutely think so. In Switzerland we have an interesting weekly magazine called 'Weltwoche', which allows rather extreme opinion pieces of all political sides to appear unedited. I enjoyed that a lot, until the selection of articles began to appear biased to the right. I think the idea is still great - give me unfiltered opinions and analysis, instead just filter by the 'intellectual depth' if you will. It'd be black coffee in magazine form.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  > So the problem is that corporate media is politically streamlined? Yes, I absolutely think so. Hilaire Belloc in 1918 wrote a wonderful critique of corporate newspapers where he pointed out that their real customers are advertisers, and that in many cases, the cross-ownership of media by other corporations, as well as cross-board memberships meant that the corporate press would necessarily adopt positions friendly to the largest corporations. His book "The Free Press" (although very right wing) is worth reading. It totally anticipates Chomsky's critiques as well. > I enjoyed that a lot, until the selection of articles began to appear biased to the right. I think the idea is still great - give me unfiltered opinions and analysis, instead just filter by the 'intellectual depth' if you will. It'd be black coffee in magazine form. It is a good reason to have a robust blogosphere and read blogs you might otherwise disagree with as well as those who you agree with.
  - m_mueller 13y ago
    > It is a good reason to have a robust blogosphere and read blogs you might otherwise disagree with as well as those who you agree with. I agree - I haven't really found good resources on general topic blogs however. Collections such as TrueReddit or DepthHub often start out well, but as time goes on, quality goes down. It seems like there is some kind of sedimentation force going on when people can up-/downvote.
bayesianhorse 13y ago
Maybe one should ask why narratives instead of detailed scientific analysis is voted up on hackernews? Do the "corporate media organizations" control hackernews now?
- coldtea 13y ago
  Or, you know, people prefer narratives, and there's nothing inherently bad to them, compared to "detailed scientific analysis" (of which, 90% is also shit anyways).
  - bayesianhorse 13y ago
    Irony in text is always risky... I thought it was obvious that my reference to "corporate media organizations" controlling everything was enough over the top to make the irony clear...
    - lclarkmichalek 13y ago
      Nope, since the NSA stuff having everything be a grand conspiracy is a perfectly valid world view on HN
paborden 13y ago
Are there ANY good social sciences blogs covering issues like this? Looking for recs ...
lsc 13y ago
>the social conservative movement is the largest movement in the US which questions the desirability of Capitalism on an economic level (and the critiques are really interesting) Huh. Reference? Perhaps it's because I just don't know enough conservative folks, but I've never heard of a mainstream socially conservative anti-capitalist dialogue. If what you say is true, either I have a pretty huge hole in my political knowledge (that or we're just using 'socially conservative' or 'capitalist' to mean different things.) Especially if it's the former, I'd like to close that hole.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

einhverfr 13y ago
John Medaille has written extensively on the subject. His book "Towards a Truly Free Market" is worth reading. A lot of it boils down to the critiques of market capitalism by Hilaire Belloc and Gilbert Chesterton and how these have largely continued within the conservative Catholic movement, as well as parts of the Orthodox and conservative Protestant communities as well. I am a Heathen and I worship Odin, Thorr, and Freyr. Chesterton can be a bit arrogant when it comes to religion sometimes, but the reasons for his arrogance are often interesting to ponder even when one does not share the same religion.
- muraiki 13y ago
  People who want to know a bit more about the particulars of this economic thought should check out Distributivism. While I don't know much about it, it seems like the idea of reconciling private property ownership with the spread of the means of production to all people goes well with open source / maker movement ideas. "According to distributists, property ownership is a fundamental right and the means of production should be spread as widely as possible rather than being centralized under the control of the state (state socialism) or of accomplished individuals (laissez-faire capitalism). Distributism therefore advocates a society marked by widespread property ownership and, according to co-operative economist Race Mathews, maintains that such a system is key to bringing about a just social order. Distributism has often been described in opposition to both socialism and capitalism, which distributists see as equally flawed and exploitative." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributivism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributivism
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    Also I wrote a blog piece(http://ledgersmbdev.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-distributist-view-on-software-freedom.html http://ledgersmbdev.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-distributist-view...) about Distributism and open source, which comes around to favoring BSD-style licenses on a work-ownership theory. The piece can be an introduction to Distributist theory for open source developers as well as an introduction to open source for Distributists.
- Apocryphon 13y ago
  Distributism is an interesting movement, but it's incredibly minor and is very Catholic. It's social conservative but very different from the mainstream social conservatism in the U.S.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    Strangely I am a Neopagan and was introduced to it by a Russian Orthodox priest. It is moving outside the strict domains of Catholicism. Most of those on /r/distributism on Reddit are not Catholics either.

m_mueller 13y ago

1) I'm fine with incomplete arguments if there is at least some attempt at an analysis shown instead of just a meaningless collection of facts and anecdotes. In that case the engaged reader could benefit by gasp thinking about it for himself. 2) So the problem is that corporate media is politically streamlined? Yes, I absolutely think so. In Switzerland we have an interesting weekly magazine called 'Weltwoche', which allows rather extreme opinion pieces of all political sides to appear unedited. I enjoyed that a lot, until the selection of articles began to appear biased to the right. I think the idea is still great - give me unfiltered opinions and analysis, instead just filter by the 'intellectual depth' if you will. It'd be black coffee in magazine form.

einhverfr 13y ago
> So the problem is that corporate media is politically streamlined? Yes, I absolutely think so. Hilaire Belloc in 1918 wrote a wonderful critique of corporate newspapers where he pointed out that their real customers are advertisers, and that in many cases, the cross-ownership of media by other corporations, as well as cross-board memberships meant that the corporate press would necessarily adopt positions friendly to the largest corporations. His book "The Free Press" (although very right wing) is worth reading. It totally anticipates Chomsky's critiques as well. > I enjoyed that a lot, until the selection of articles began to appear biased to the right. I think the idea is still great - give me unfiltered opinions and analysis, instead just filter by the 'intellectual depth' if you will. It'd be black coffee in magazine form. It is a good reason to have a robust blogosphere and read blogs you might otherwise disagree with as well as those who you agree with.
- m_mueller 13y ago
  > It is a good reason to have a robust blogosphere and read blogs you might otherwise disagree with as well as those who you agree with. I agree - I haven't really found good resources on general topic blogs however. Collections such as TrueReddit or DepthHub often start out well, but as time goes on, quality goes down. It seems like there is some kind of sedimentation force going on when people can up-/downvote.

bayesianhorse 13y ago

Maybe one should ask why narratives instead of detailed scientific analysis is voted up on hackernews? Do the "corporate media organizations" control hackernews now?

coldtea 13y ago
Or, you know, people prefer narratives, and there's nothing inherently bad to them, compared to "detailed scientific analysis" (of which, 90% is also shit anyways).
- bayesianhorse 13y ago
  Irony in text is always risky... I thought it was obvious that my reference to "corporate media organizations" controlling everything was enough over the top to make the irony clear...
  - lclarkmichalek 13y ago
    Nope, since the NSA stuff having everything be a grand conspiracy is a perfectly valid world view on HN

paborden 13y ago

Are there ANY good social sciences blogs covering issues like this? Looking for recs ...

lsc 13y ago

>the social conservative movement is the largest movement in the US which questions the desirability of Capitalism on an economic level (and the critiques are really interesting) Huh. Reference? Perhaps it's because I just don't know enough conservative folks, but I've never heard of a mainstream socially conservative anti-capitalist dialogue. If what you say is true, either I have a pretty huge hole in my political knowledge (that or we're just using 'socially conservative' or 'capitalist' to mean different things.) Especially if it's the former, I'd like to close that hole.