FaibleEstimeDeSoi
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User ID: 2072
How can you prevent segregation and why would you do it?
I was spurred to ask this question by this article and especially this paragraph where author builds logical sequence connecting segregation with various social ills:
"These segregated schools ruined children's educational and economic opportunities. They achieved much less academically. Because of this segregation, many more dropped out. Many fewer went to colleges. Those that did were disproportionately likely to enroll in less rigorous institutions, like for-profit community colleges. Because of this segregation, they earned lower incomes as adults. They were more likely to end up in jail. Their health was worse. In the end, these 100,000 are much more likely than their peers to emerge as the most economically disadvantaged members of society — whereupon the cycle will likely repeat with their own children."
Author doesn't spell out what is the main cause here but we can guess. It can't be money related issues, because they could be solved without integration with a different tax scheme. It can't be some institutional racism cause he does provide examples of black charter and views them as failures. No, in my understanding the single most useful benefit that black children lose out here is diversity in itself. Obviously there is a question of white and asian kids faring pretty fine without it and also the counterargument along the lines of DR slogan "you don't have right to a white people", but let's accept their premise as true. There are after all many instrumental benefits to your populace not being concentrated into the ethnic enclaves, assimilation is useful and if Romans could do it with the Gauls why Americans can't. What you can do to integrate schools once and for all?
The solution preferred by author - the repeat of the policies of forced integration doesn't work in the context of liberal democracy with freedom of movement and widespread desire to avoid "bad" schools i.e. schools with poor black people in them. 60s policies just kicked the can down the road and led to the white flight. Modern one that tries to do the same will end up similarly, maybe with much stark division in the end.
Successful desegregation should make resegregation not illegal but not desirable or simple. In the search of the solution, I think it's wise to try to emulate post-soviet conditions, because despite large immigration from much poorer countries generally Russian cities were resistant to segregation, the most ethnic districts in Moscow range from 20 to 50 percent of immigrants and not for the lack of them. What causes this? Multi floor apartments/soviet block housing allows for diverse quality and quantity of housing at the same place. Poor migrants often rent or buy small one bedroom flat to retrofit it into something more fitting for the Hong Kong, working class citizen or a student will live in similar one if alone or slightly bigger when married and/or with kids, middle class can afford to have good amount of square meters per person and each child will always have their own room, upper class will have can easily have double the space of a middle one and has option of uniting several flats into one. And all of them can live in the one building, use the same parking space and their children will go into the same school(private schools that cater to rich people exist but not everybody cares enough to opt for them).
Then we have widespread public transport that by existing devalues personal car infrastructure and makes getting into the city from some suburb much harder even in the smaller towns. And what maybe considered the most important part by people here is the law enforcement that while far from perfect for example both in Poland and in Russia(still much worse in the latter) does work at keeping streets safe, public transit clean and gangs non-existent(apart from the ones that get in with the government but that's a different story). I think democratic politicians can achieve this kind of integration and they have reason to do it, YIMBY i.e. urbanist faction becomes more powerful by the day in the local elections and I can see some of the people affiliated with it succeeding in the desegregation maybe without even make it a goal. But ideological solutions from people who do make it a goal can sink it all again.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
9mo ago
Why write so many questions when you clearly already have intended answers for them? Why make another post for the same discussion?
In the end this is meaningless, taste is subjective and I can't do nothing except to say "actually fifth prison cell is good if you give me more shelf space". Yes, majority of people do agree that classical buildings are better looking than modern pragmatic boxes, but they do not think in architectural styles, they mostly think in terms of what is "cool". And I don't see majority of people disagreeing with this gymnasium building being something cool and novel.
Once your kids get into semi-specialized sports or activities, you're going to drive. If one kid is into fencing and the other is into rock climbing, and next year it's hip hop dance and jiujitsu, there are only two solutions. Either you drive them everywhere, or you live at Tokyo density and the bus comes every five minutes.
It's special genre of comedy for me personally to see Americans on this site with severe lack of knowledge about how things can be different from their own "exceptional way of doing things." In my noname 200k Russian town I could go to all these activities by myself at age 6. Bus or in my case "marshrutka" can arrive every 5 minutes without even remotely Tokio level of density, more accurately seven times smaller than it.
I understand that it's your own favorite way of life and you're trying to defend it but the problem is that it's forced on everyone. And generally we can see worldwide tendency of people wanting to live in big cities where all the job opportunities and interesting things are. Urbanists hate car-centric policies because they are artificially stifling this trend not because they want to force people like you out of suburbs. Europe has suburbs, they are an option there.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2yr ago
"When my kids were small, they could walk to the local park a few blocks away. When they were bigger, they could bike to the grocery store to buy ice cream"
All of this is even more true about high density cities.
"have my kid walk through dense masses of whores, addicts, thieves, bums, and lunatics."
What you describe is not an endemic problem for high-density walkable neighborhoods. If some random noname russian cities can solve them, then it can be done in US as well.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
4mo ago
"they" that you talking about is an abstract nation-state entity called "Ukraine" and/or its rulers. We peaceniks don't mean them when we say that immediate ceasefire is in everyone's interest. We talk about actual everyday people who suffer, who are locked in this country and are forced to fight. I don't see how nationalists' tears about lines on the map or pride of a certain someone are worth hundreds deaths every day.
If Ukrainians actually want to fight to the end then open the borders, make army volunteer only, maybe pay enough to recruit people willingly(which is still terrible because this willingness both in Ukraine and Russia comes from the utter poverty that its rulers are responsible for). If the problem is with security after the war then you can either get it with joining Nato or at least adjacent web of alliances or you don't and continuing the war won't solve this.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Commonly, in discussions of abortion, a divide appears concerning what sex is about, how important it is, whether it's sacred or whatever, etc. I feel like a common perspective that is expressed by pro-choice folks is that it is wayyy less important/sacred than they think their opponents think it is. This opinion piece talks of competitive swimming, but I recall people saying that sex is like a tennis game. It's just a fun recreational activity that a couple of people show up to do together; they both consent to playing tennis; they just have some amount of fun; then nothing particularly interesting happens. In the era of ubiquitous birth control, they think that sex is totally just like this.
I don't know how many people agree with me on this but I do believe that Sexual Revolution didn't go far enough, sex is just a physical activity similar to tennis and the only reason it is not treated the same way is because prudes still have their way. More over puritan factions won in both the right and the left in spite of proclaimed commitment to the principle of sexual freedom in the latter one. Technology did solve issues that come with unrestricted love-making, we just need to wait for the culture to catch up(just in time for some other tech to disrupt it again). Some niche cultures are already there and make polyamory work quite well.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
The difference is people already expect to hear Trump say some dumb shit, Biden supposed to be and generally is more competent and his gaffes stand out much more.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
If you add up Israel and Palestine population Jews and Arabs are basically equal in number, so I don't think that this arrangement will lead to genocide. In the current circumstances the most humane thing for Israel would be to just annex Palestine, create some kind of reconstruction zones and to deradicalize Arab populace. Politically Jews can make an alliance with Arab Christians. This move also will stop far-right israelis from getting power so I guess we won't see it.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
I think this map from /pol/ is great for understanding who is winning. Right now even with the failed counteroffensive war is on a path to the Ukraine's pyrrhic victory, maybe without control of the coast, but with more land in the Donetsk region. If you were mugged in the alley by five guys and they stole your watch, but you KO'ed two of them and successfully run of with your remaining belongings it's still a victory.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
But majority of people are too stupid to make a balanced and informed choice to stop wearing seatbelts. Developed countries generally adopted humanism as the guiding philosophy and if you need to slightly restrict personal freedom to do fentanyl or drive without seatbelt to reduce deaths it is worth it.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
I think you are conflating current popular views and ideology at the foundation of the US. It is written, of course, that all men are created equal, but this obviously meant something different then, because in America from 18 century up to 20th century there was explicit legal inequality between sexes, races and even economic classes. That was not because of some mistake or for the lack of alternative, but because of conscious policies that aimed to achieve outcomes that were deemed more important than the ideal of liberty.
Russia intended to launch a war of national destruction. It didn't expect to have to fight to hard to do it, but the target lists for anyone thought to be pro-Western/anti-Russian were always part of the plan.
Ok, then where is there any evidence of some genocide that happened in Kherson that was controlled by Russian forces for almost a year and was generally pro-ukranian city with absolute majority of Ukranians? If you expect Russia to want kill any pro-Western person in Ukraine and see average as pro-western(so strike on soviet bloc is strike against the enemy) we should see tens of thousands of deaths in Kherson as it happened in history where one side of the war had national eradication as the goal.
Instead we see hundreds of cases and not of killings but detainment and torture - general brutality of the Russian state that it dishes out to it's citizens. In somewhat larger proportion because of vastly larger amount of potential violent dissidents but in the same category nonetheless. This piece for example tries to frame 320 victims in 9 months of occupation of a large as an evidence of genocide but it's quite poor if you can count. “The pattern that we are observing is consistent with a cynical and calculated plan to humiliate and terrorise millions of Ukrainian citizens in order to subjugate them to the diktat of the Kremlin.” says Wayne Jordash, managing partner and co-founder of Global Rights Compliance. On average Russia humiliated/terrorized 1.185 Kherson denizen a day, deciding to adopt this as baseline(as does the article) and correcting for the population, if on 24 February somehow Russians occupied all of Ukraine we would see 160.8 Ukrainians brutalized every day on average. If we accept that millions means at least two millions, to reach this number with rate Russia would need approximately 34 years. Not even mentioning the difference between war and peace time or that you expect to see the rate lowering with time because number of dangerous dissidents is quite limited, this is not looking like a genocide to me, more old and boring authoritarian state thing.
In this I agree with Macron - words do have meaning.
Yeah, it looks more like it in the sense of shape, but it's actually quite important that Russia doesn't control large parts of the annexed regions. I think it is not likely that they will succefuly take control of them before the war end.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Is your point is that if "strong HBD" is right you can't be racist or that Sailer isn't negatively biased against black people? Because I seriously doubt the latter. And I don't see the former either, you can still be discriminatory against people with intellectual disabilities.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2yr ago
They can — just instead of sparsely populated Azov steppe battles will happen in Poltava (pop. 280k), or Zaporizhzhia proper (pop. around 700k). They repelled Russians from Kyiv back when American assistance was meager.
Kremlins shifted their course to freezing the conflict at the approximately current borders after their failed push to Kiev that was meant to facilitate regime change. And without western assistance they would be successful as they were 9 years ago. And American assistance was not meager if you look at it in all years from 2014.
He is a kleptocrat, alright, but calling him non-ideological is just demonstrably false at this point. You could have had doubts back in 2012, not now. Karlin is just as delusional as ever, just instead of "Kiev will fall in 2 days" he swung in the opposite direction.
But policies of his government that consists from his cronies aren't ideological nor specifically Russian nationalist. We can look at many aspects: immigration, internal federal policy, cultural and just politics where nationalist parties and organizations were outright banned. Even if he is in some way sincerely ideological it doesn't matter, because it doesn't affect his mishmash rhetoric and policy.
I lived in Russia for quite some time, I know Russian, so I think I have some understanding of what Russian nationalists really think. Are you Russian?
Yes, I am Russian and live in Russia currently. While Russian nationalist that are pro-Putin exist they are unknown to the mostly apolitical wide public and treated with disdain by politically active youth.
And Nazi Germany didn't go full war time economy until 1942.
People can be ideologically-driven psychopaths, and ineffective at the same time. And I assure you — if Strelkov came to power, economic efficiency would just drop. Because he would fire Nabiulina, actually competent banker, and would put someone like Glazyev in her stead, who is even less competent than Erdogan when it comes to monetary policy. But hey, at least he hates hohols.
There is wide gulf between full war-time economy proposed by Strelkov and current Vietnam level spending. Girkin wants to "liberate" whole Ukraine, with smaller goals kremlins need less commitment but still higher than current one. I am talking about not inefficiency but policies that are going against Russian nationalist or imperialist belief supposedly held by Putin.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2yr ago
From 2015 to 2022 Donbass situation for Ukraine was more like Afghanistan war for America than anything. But you could say this yes. Still before 2014 Ukraine already was poorer than its neighbors.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
11mo ago
Completely agree with you, but also I don't see how Republicans could conserve their policy positions in popular vote system. There is huge demographic change going on that is realistically irreversible, but also generally US population is very progressive and there is little momentum going on in other direction compared to, for example Europe. I think the only way this changes in the near future is emergence of some great figure that can run on bipartisanship platform leaning left on economic issues and right on social ones either from an established party or even as third party break out like Ross Perrot, Trump could have been such figure but he wasn't.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
11mo ago
Would an average obese person agree to the deal that goes like this "you lose enough weight to return to healthy bmi but from now on my magic will force you to eat within your calorie maintenance limit". I think answer is an obvious "yes", as we see with Ozempic or stomach reduction surgery. They do want to change their eating habits for benifit of being healthy they just can't force themselves to do it.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2yr ago
This is entirely relevant, because nationalist corrupt oligarchs have priorities greater than solely self-enrichment. Hence the qualifier.
It can be relevant to political discussion, it is not to discussion about Ukranian economy.
You didn't talk about any specific sort or amount of aid.
The point in the post that you replying served only to answer sentiment that bright future for Ukraine is guarantied because of American and European aid. I don't need to delve in the specifics, I just need to cite the existance of aid before and that this didn't help economical development of Ukraine. Maybe its givers didn't have this as a goal, but this is one of the many explanations of ukrainian poverty that I decided to not list to limit size of the post.
Belarus is a country of about 10 million people, whose economy is a not particularly impressive but still established manufacturing economy in value-adding industry. Ukraine is a country of about 40 million, but far more of a farming and resource-extraction based economy
You can propose this as an explanation but is wrong and obviously wrong to any person that lived or lives in those countries, if you don`t could have at least looked at the Wikipedia's page for both nations' economies and than find that in both nations majority of gpd claims service sector(Belarus 51% Ukraine 60%) and agricultural sector being minor differs slightly between countries(Belarus 8% Ukraine 12%). If we decide to compare Ukraine and Belarus we can say that Ukraine has modern service based economy while Belarus still has large industry sector. But this can't be explanation to anything as can't be alternative reality Ukraine where it farming and resource-extraction based economy, they aren't categorically poor.
If you intend to make an effort post on the pros and cons of Ukraine
No, I'm not trying to show pros and cons, only the reasons why I'm not as optimistic about Ukraine's future as an average twitter user(Ukrainian, Russian or American). Pros are already assumed in the context of discussion and I replying to them by showing economic data and trends that show that these benefits didn't help Ukraine before.
While I am always pleased to see a motte and bailey alive in the wild, this is not the issue you were basing your argument on before, and is not actually an obstacle to joining the European Union
You misunderstood me, not poverty, not gpd per capita, not giant shadow economy are issues that are in my opinion are an obstacle to join EU but the cause of these issues, cause that I don't name because nor I nor experts in the field are sure about it.
Of course it is. It's also coming from someone unusually well read, and unusually interested in understanding how states interact
Thank you for expressing your point and I will not argue with it because while I disagree with it, I'm not well read on this to try to defend my position on EU.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2yr ago
Local elites can become ruling elites in their own state, thus gaining more power and possibilities to earn money.
So a new peace treaty for Ukraine war just dropped .
Trump’s proposed Ukraine peace plan would recognize Crimea as Russian, accept Russian control over parts of Donbas and southern Ukraine, and offer Ukraine vague European security guarantees, unfettered access to Dnieper partial territorial returns, and U.S.-backed reconstruction. It also includes U.S. control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and a U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal. Vance said that the deal is final and in the case of rejection US will stop being a part of peacemaking process.
I think it's basically a great deal for both sides(I admit my bias cause for me any peace would be better than war). Ukraine loses nothing that it de facto has right now and gains territory in Kharkov, it can finally heal and maybe with some smart leadership, international investment and membership in EU it can rise to the heights of neighboring Poland, I doubt that it will and I already written on the motte why, but some chance is way better than no chance.
For Russia and specifically for Putin this is a way to claim victory after his many failures including starting this retarded SMO. Maybe for Russian state it would be better to deal with this close of an enemy once and for all, but it will not happen under current leadership and Putin is no nationalist, so even with total victory we would see semi puppet state in Ukraine that would break of as soon as possible. We are talking about person who still haven't annexed Belarus for christ sake.
I think kremlins are ready to accept this and even slightly worse versions of this deal, cause they already shown signs of it throught whole war, starting in March of 2022 and dictators are more likely to seek limited peace anyway. On the other hand Europe is actually putting some effort into its militarization, I'v seen news about new German ammunition facilities, and could collectively decide to continue the war even if US fully withdraws after rejecting the deal(which is in my opinion unlikely). That could prolong the conflict by another couple of years, probably lead to the Ukrainian territory gains but I can't see how it's worth the devastation that it would cause.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Personally I believe that solution to low birth rates will be state funded industrial production of human capital via artificial wombs(if AI won't make it irrelevant by this time). Women often don't want to struggle through pregnancy, parents don't want to spend time on necessary work related to children and automation in the sphere of humanoid robotics is very far from achieving affordable replacements for servants.
Facilities created for raising these state children could be used by individual parents, so would be similar to your idea of 24/7 daycare. This can be a great time to reform our "modern" education system that was largely created in 19th century Prussia to something more applicable to current technological environment and honest of it's role as basically daycare for teenagers.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2yr ago
"It's not that war has made patriots out of corrupt oligarchs. There is a war because a surprising number of corrupt oligarchs were already nationalists even before 2014."
This irrelevant to my post about economical prospects, nationalist corrupt oligarchs are still corrupt oligarchs that prevent any meaningful raising of quality of life. "
"Between a confluence of crisis letting the government act, unique access and leverage by westerners pressing reforms, and domestic political support for the both, Ukraine has been undergoing major legal and structural shakeups no previous president of the last decades has matched."
This is a good point and you can say that maybe western oversight in relation to war will fix things generally. I personally don't believe because western influence while helping to win wars generally doesn`t fix corruption, but this can be special case because of the closeness of Ukraine to Europe, so there only way to test this is wait a couple of years.
"To the front, to salaries, to infrastructure and item purchases, and many other things needed in a war."
I know why would you think that I am talking about recent military help by US but I not. This text could have been written and posted before the war with almost no changes. I'm talking aid and loans that were given before and didn't help Ukraine reach at least Belarus level. Military aid mostly goes to the front because it is question of survival to the corrupt elites(and many civilians but they aren`t people who decide) and most of them are nationalists.
"Appealing to the 90s, when Ukraine's elite and public were very indifferent about European association (and the European Union did not exist), and not 2014"
Do you disagree with the factual statement talks of the euro integration started in the 90s? In my opinion this is objectively true and this is why I written it like I did. I don't say that ascendancy to EU is impossible in the next 20 years. I just showing of countries like Montenegro that widespread support isn`t enough to join quickly. If war related campaigns will succesfully pressure European countries into accepting Ukraine with all of its barrage of problems than it will be great but I don't think this is likely.
"The question is not 'why', but rather 'why are not you aware of the following?'"
You can list similar benefits for any country bordering the EU problem along this pros there are cons, some them not so obvious.
"To start, being poor is not the issue for Ukraine"
But why is it poorer than Belarus - this is the issue. And actually it very much the problem for people who live there and that's why they are trying to escape it, sometimes going through the occupied territories because borders of their own country are closed for half of population.
"The Europeans engage in their own corruption a plenty"
For some reason corruption perceptiveness and other indexes don`t show it. Corruption in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus is staggering, you can't talk about it lightly. You at least should agree that your view of EU is quite unusual.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2yr ago
Why I don't think that Ukraine has bright future ahead
Disclaimer: This is not an anti-ukranian or pro Russia post, I wish only the best for Ukrainian people and Russia has most of the same and many unique problems.
Ukraine in 1991 was one of the richest countries in Eastern Europe, being on par with Russia and above such countries as Poland and Belarus. The crisis of the 90s escaped Poland, but was shared by the rest, after which Ukraine lagged behind its neighbors in development. We can say that this is due to such factors as Poland's membership in the EU or the presence of oil in the Russian Federation, but a noticeable lag even behind Belarus shows that this is not the sufficient explanation.
Such estimates of GDP PPP per capita in this context are often criticized for ignoring the problem of the shadow economy or, in plain language, "envelope wages". Only this problem is not unique to Ukraine, but a common feature of the CIS countries, and in it, it is more pronounced than in Belarus or Russia, but not enough to explain such a large gap.
Also, quite often one can hear about the supposed difference in the distribution of economic development in the Russian Federation and Ukraine, allegedly in the second there is greater decentralization and a smaller difference between regions. But in terms of GRP per capita, excluding, for obvious reasons, oil and gas regions like Yamal, in both countries one can see approximately same and strong difference between the capital and the poorest regions. This is also true for Belarus. Similar trend can be seen in HDI ranking - Russia standing at 52nd place, Kazakhstan at 56th Belarus at 60th and Ukraine at 77th.
There are many possible reasons that could explain such an outstanding backwardness of Ukraine even by the standards of the CIS. From crazy theories about the genetic or cultural inferiority of its inhabitants to a more adequate analysis of the particular corruption and arrogance of the elites. I won't pretend to know the right one and I don't even need to find some exact answer to this riddle. It’s enough to ask the question: “Why and what will change or has already changed in 2022, which has not happened in the history of this country?”.
War that will make patriots out of corrupt oligarchs? It started in 2014. A new president who promises to fix everything and fix corruption? It's happened so many times it's not funny anymore. Additional grants/loans/Marshall Plan 2.0? Didn't billions of dollars and euros already have go one way into Ukraine? Where did they go? They will go there the next time if there current corrupt system remains. European integration? It has been talked about since the 90s and European leaders are now talking about "the long road ahead for Ukraine", the status of a candidate is not at all a guarantee of an early entry, ask Turkey, Serbia and Montenegro. Why would EU want the poorest European country after Moldova, with the highest corruption and similar to Georgia problems(that of course could be theoretically solved in the near future but this is beside the point)? EU had enough of one Hungary with Orban stealing economic aid with his cronies, it doesn't need a second one. These internal problems will have to be corrected on their own, before, and not after, entry.
But there might be not enough time to for solving them. Ukrainian demographics are awful, a very old population with average age much closer to western countries and not states with similar economic development, which, at the same time, also has the opportunity to relatively freely leave for better countries. For the same reason that Ukrainian patriots in Canada still not returned and will not return in their entirety to help their homeland, major part of today's refugees have already found or will find work and will remain in Europe, having made a reasonable, rational choice.
P.S. It is more my personal pet peeve and not part of the argument but I think that this and similar economic deals that still going on are very strong evidence of some corrupt dealings going on between oligarchs from both sides.
Dissident right loooves hbd but not when believing in it would stop you from feeling good about yourself. No, chain of cause and effect doesn't stop at the neck, 45% of your fellow citizens becoming obese in a century can't be explained by their bad moral character. You are mostly fit because of your genetics, like any other fit person.
And discussion about healthcare costs is, of course, meaningless. People already written below about this, if you want to save taxpayer's money tax healthy people, not smokers or obese ones.
P.S. Please, before writing any counter argument, especially in the form of personal anecdote ask yourself: "Why?". "But my friend was fat all his life and then lost weight on this diet" - Why your friend lost weight when others in his situation didn't? What was different about him?
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