Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Just something I feel tiresome since it's World Cup season and inevitably every major Western democracy is getting some variant of 'Don't like foreigners, what about RANDOM AFRICAN who kicked a goal for NATIONAL TEAM' spammed across social and news channels.
Am I the only one who finds it somewhat absurd that the native underclasses of most Western countries are essentially getting kicked out of a rare but real pathway to winning the athleticism lottery and becoming a professional Soccer or whatever-else player? I feel similarly about trying to outsource this kind of job as I do about outsourcing the bullshit bureaucracy non-revenue admin jobs at a Fortune 500 company in which, sure they could technically be done better but they're more about distribution of societal spoils than actually value driven.
Hard disagree on the analogy to non-revenue admin jobs. In practice they are used to distribute societal spoils, but the "could technically be done better" is highly nontrivial. My understanding that the majority of corporate incompetence, mismanagement, inefficiencies lower in the chain, non-functional middle management jobs, dissatisfaction with working conditions especially by the more competent employees, etc, all derive in large part downstream from the incompetencies from these admin jobs. Essentially, the CEO is corruptly stealing from the investors by hiring incompetent admins that he likes rather than running a better business.
I do agree with your position on sports. I don't especially care for most sports, but I've heard some good arguments that they should be forced to be local. The sports teams should partition the country into regions, and you should only qualify to join a sports team if you live in that region and have lived there for a number of years that makes migrating for the purpose of changing sports teams completely infeasible (5-10 years might be sufficient). This is unmeritocratic, however sports have little reason to be a meritocracy, it's not as if someone running 20% faster actually does anything for society. They're there for the entertainment value, but having teams which are actually comprised of your local people is likely to inspire more pride and entertainment and give the fans more investment in their local sports team.
Yes but sticking some random foreigner since they're better at playing the job application game into the admin job slots doesn't seem to correlate with notionally improved performance. Then it creates a series of horrendous incentives where the entire filtering system is riddled. Your Gulf states have a better understanding of what to outsource and what to internalize than most Western ones
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link