Jiro
1yr ago
One might also question the morality of, say, a territory that was a net benefactor of federal aid for years then seceding without making up for it by paying for what it had gained through its previous association with the rest of the country.
This is easy to game by manipulating numbers.
There's a classic example where Democrats claim that the government spends a lot on red states when the truth is one or more of general infrastructure used by nonresidents such as interstate highways, military bases that protect the nation rather than the state, blue inner city areas in red states that eat up expenditures, and blues who move to red states to retire so the expenditure and revenue get counted for different states.
It also runs into the problem of "benefits" that are harmful, that can't be rejected, or both. "We paid police to enforce all those drug laws against you. Society benefits when drug use is reduced. You didn't pay us back for those benefits when you seceded!"
Jiro
1yr ago
Those articles are noticing disparate impact on poor whites, but they specifically are not claiming the same kind of discrimination that's claimed for minorities.
Jiro
1yr ago
Under an HBD lens, why should I regard poor whites as allies or brothers or anything other than vermin?
HBD is used as a defense: racial disparities are caused by HBD, not by discrimination.
I'm unaware of anyone claiming that poor whites' problems are caused by discrimination.
Jiro
1yr ago
This isn't to deny that he probably didn't like the controversy from the NYT exposé, but from a more detached perspective, it didn't really do him any harm and a lot of good.
The things he posted after the expose were a lot more milquetoast. I'd say it did a lot of harm.
Jiro
1yr ago
I would blame the progressives for having standards which enable it. If you say no gatekeeping, if you try your best to keep parents out of the process, if you go out of your way to laud how trans people are brave strugglers against the outside world, if you make sure that anyone speaks up against the trans gets fired from their job, you're going to get a lot of social contagion trans, regardless of whether you're backing them explicitly.
You're running on mistake theory. Nuclear power would already be useful against climate change even used at home, but the left doesn't support that because of anti-nuclear and anti-electricity ideology. How good the anti-nuclear arguments are is nearly irrelevant.
Conflict theory will tell you that saying "you're mistaken, nuclear power can be good" isn't going to work when fighting ideology.
Fixating on the least defensible sentence is also a defense against Gish gallops, where the author will of course tell you that whichever of the 25 arguments you refuted is the least defensible one.
Jiro
1yr ago
I think this objection is misplaced. Yes, killing someone with no brain activity is inflammatory to some people, but "I think I should kill a fat man to save five people from a trolley" is also inflammatory to some people. But since it follows from well-understood and common principles that are often discussed here, we allow posters to say it without having to throw in a justification every single time they do.
Jiro
1yr ago
The key is not that they're advocating efficiency, it's that they're excluding other things. If they exclude enjoyment, yet they don't eat flavorless paste, indicating that enjoyment actually matters to them, yes, they're a hypocrite.
Jiro
1yr ago
The media is for-profit corporations, not clear how capitalists could not control them under our current economic model,
The control they have is very narrow. Sure, the owner of the New York Times is not going to lobby to get the New York Times nationalized. You can call that control if you wish. But pretty much every bit of control that is not very directly related to keeping the Times in business is to promote the left (and this includes measures that increase government power but help the Times against competitors.)
Jiro
1yr ago
Capitalists don't have the media at their disposal, nor do they have the FBI, CIA, or IRS. And certainly not the educational system. I'd even question whether they have companies, since companies are perfectly happy to push for measures that help themselves but hurt capitalists in general.
(Incidentally, notice how rants against Jews tend to look exactly like rants against capitalists?)
Jiro
1yr ago
The current War of Northern Aggression "discourse" has brought to mind the top 100 first place greatest mistake in US state craft: not letting Burnen' Sherman just march back and forth for a couple years or finishing hardcore full reconstruction.
What's your opinion on Israel's actions in Gaza? Or Hiroshima, for that matter?
But the population naturally didn't want to tolerate short-term pain for long-term gain, so it didn't happen.
That's because t's easy to lie, mislead, or just be overly optimistic about long term gains. On the other hand, it's hard to be wrong about the short term pain.
You're mixing up two different kinds of "listen". Society listening to campuses or Twitter means "consider them to be saying worthwhile things". You listening means "consider them influential as a social force".
Jiro
1yr ago
Back when the common excuse was "it's just a couple of kids on college campuses", the wrong response would be "Personally, I recommend not listening to kids on college campuses".
Jiro
1yr ago
Your confusion arises from semantic differences. When someone like Coates or Kendi talks about "white supremacy", they don't (just) mean mask-off segregationists or white nationalists.
This is the kind of thing the motte and bailey phrase was designed for.
Jiro
1yr ago
This reasoning essentially amounts to "Hitler treated Jews like enemies. So we should never treat anyone like enemies."
Whether a comparison to disease is appropriate is true or false on the object level; a blanket condemnation makes no sense. You're also glossing over the difference between comparing an ethnic group to a disease, and comparing a military/terrorist oprganization to a disease.
Jiro
1yr ago
Apparently people gave this 13 upvotes without reading the source. This is taken out of context. The switch is used because of the prohibition against the rules against using electricity on the Sabbath. Your insinuation that Jewish law lets it be used in bombs to kill without anyone being responsible is a lie.
Jiro
1yr ago
Hamas themselves kidnapped the Israelis on purpose and broadcast the acts worldwide. It's Hamas's own war propaganda; it's just being shown to a less sympathetic audience.
Israel did not intentionally bury children under rubble.
Jiro
1yr ago
You complained about people thinking the market is zero-sum, but advantages from such things are zero-sum. If Amazon didn't have these advantages, someone else would, and only one company can have them at a time.
And it's possible that a competitor can't win against Amazon, yet if Amazon disappeared and the competitor took its place, you'd be better off.
Jiro
1yr ago
In part, because of anti-competitive practices, but also in part by being really good for the consumer, in ways that you need huge, costly, scale to match. Amazon is skimming value, but it's value that they've created, that their competitors can't keep up with.
You're confusing value added by Amazon by being efficient, and value from being big. Amazon has network effects and economy of scale that no competitior could match.
Jiro
1yr ago
And that's a perfectly reasonable position to take, but I think it can blind people to teh fact that the other side does not feel this way, and actually believes and feels the things they are saying about how much of a unique and horrible threat he is.
People are perfectly able to convince themselves of ideas by motivated reasoning when the idea is convenient for them to believe. "Lying" is probably the closest word we have to this. Or maybe "motivated reckless reasoning" or some such.
Jiro
1yr ago
People descended from Mexican immigrants disproportionately vote Democrat. So the effect of this policy would still be to create more Democrats.
Jiro
1yr ago
Employer needing to find talent isn’t going to hire black 1100 SAT so the employer then hires at next school down the list they wouldn’t have gone to before.
How would the employer do this? Employers don't typically ask for your SAT score, and trying to do may result in a disparate impact claim.
I think there's a trans analogy here. People are superficially asking you to not say bad things about their situation, but they actually want you to think their own perception of that situation is correct, not just mouth the words. And every so often they make a demand that doesn't really fit the former and implies the latter.
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