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Hi. I'm new to LW but really enjoy the culture which is fostered here. I've been reading AC10 and Marginal Revolution, etc for years so I feel like ive already been heavily influenced by the LW community. A week ago I posted "America's Invisible Graveyard: Understanding the Moral Implications of Western sanctions" which got a fare amount of pushback over how it was written as well as a lot of great comments.
In particular, people reacted poorly to my last sentence calling for us to feel shame over western sanctions. Our contemporary political climate prob is overly abscessed with shaming, and I fully understand why LW has guidelines which limit specific types of shaming. Still I think shaming has its place. I myself was shamed for posting an article which didn't meet the guidelines of LW. This is not to say those guidelines are wrong, but I would like to hear better reasons for why particular types of shaming are out of bounds while others are welcomed. This all made me think of an old TCowen post about shame "Who should be shamed, and who not? - Marginal REVOLUTION".
Anyways just wanted to say hello, and that I look forward to learning from you all.
-Ezra
Thanks for the feedback. I will do better to try and meet LW's standards for posting. I agree that I should have offered an alternative. I think targeted sanctions against Putin and his regime are fine, as are weapon shipments. It's hard to do a good cost benefit analysis on this but I think sending weapons has much lower costs and much greater ability to deter/limit russian aggression than does collapsing the Russian economy. Also, while I dont think killing 23 year old Russians should be a primary goal, I am more comfortable with this than sanctions which will harm millions of Russian and non Russian civilians.
I understand that perspective and will try and due better to work within LW's guidelines. Thanks for the feedback. I think the first sentence was justified given the humanitarian costs associated with the sanctions.