domain:firsttoilthenthegrave.substack.com
Currently disparate impact has a carve-out for business critical reasons (which is why Google can’t be successfully sued for the fact that fewer than 15% of software engineers are black, for example). If that is maintained, then a college could argue that, say, only 5% of qualified candidates for an English literature professor job are Republicans and so they don’t actually do anything wrong if 95% of the English faculty are Democrats.
2rafa
23m ago
Yes, it’s a contradictory law because being ‘equal’ in terms of political vote is going to unequally favor, say, white men for many jobs that are mostly done by liberals, since for example almost all potential Republican college professors (if political party is part of disparate impact) will be white males, and so correcting that would have a disparate impact on women/poc.
jeroboam
5hr ago
Good summary of the competing narratives.
My take... What's with all the talking points about how it's somehow evil to buy a company and then sell it for parts? Why shouldn't an owner be able to buy a failing restaurant, sell the real estate, and then let the restaurant fail? Or more, accurately, if I buy something I should be able to do what I want with it.
Is Red Lobster such a valuable institution that owners must be forced to prop it up with infusions of capital? You know, for the good of society.
We need more zombie corporations going under, and less hand-wringing when they do. Failing companies failing is the engine of creative destruction, and therefore growth.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
24m ago
I'm beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.
Based and C.S. Lewis pilled:
“I think I can understand that feeling about a housewife’s work being like that of Sisyphus. But it is surely, in reality, the most important work in the world. What do ships, railways, mines, cars, government etc exist for except that people may be fed, warmed, and safe in their own homes? As Dr Johnson said, ‘To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavour’. We wage war in order to have peace, we work in order to have leisure, we produce food in order to eat it. So your job is the one for which all others exist.” - Narnia dude.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
4hr ago
Always amused and astonished how determined most western governments are to make any economic activity apart from finance and working for the government totally impossible.
The recent discussion about Red Lobster (link) focused on analyzing how the $20 all you can eat shrimp bankrupted the company because it was too good of a deal and analyzing the declining social trust to keep it afloat.
Everyone in the comments has fun linking this to their favorite hobbyhorses. Here's mine talking about a cool idea for a legal system I was thinking about.
Great story everyone. But one question, is this actually true?
Some Xsocial users are linking the company's demise to private equity:
Quote https://x.com/windcomecalling/status/1790889866844422528
while this is a very funny idea, the reality is much more depressing: they made like $2 billion in revenue that year. the loss from endless shrimp was basically a rounding error—the thing that actually bankrupted them was private equity
Hmm.
Quote https://x.com/edzitron/status/1790493687572754654
Their ceo is a lawyer-MBA and they were bought by a Thailand-based private equity group that makes most of its money selling canned seafood, and they've been downsizing the company consistently since Thai Union Group took control in 2020
They also launched an insane permanent all you can eat shrimp deal that killed revenue. Thai Union basically ran the company into the ground.
Seems like the private equity group is deliberately running the company into the ground, and using the unlimited deal as a cover story. Another case of corporate greed destroying a profitable company and generally being evil.
Great story. But one question, is this actually true?
This analysis is another interesting angle on it, quote https://x.com/cunha_tristan/status/1791807133886861317
Golden Gate bought Red Lobster for 2.1 billion, and then sold off a bunch of real estate for almost that much. Although at one point they actually bought back a little bit of it, which is weird.
But then after selling the real estate, they sold the restaurant business to new investors. They sold the initial 25% of it for over $500 million.
Which seems to show that the real estate and the restaurant businesses were more valuable split up than together. It seems like the restaurants owning their real estate was dragging down the value of the real estate, it was worth much more split off. Which would make sense if the restaurants were poorly run, that business was being subsidized by the real estate portfolio.
The land was more valuable than the company. Private equity bought the company to sell the land to someone who could make more money with it.
This is.... Georgism???
Great story. But one question, is this actually true?
I honestly don't know.
Here's a 2015 article showing Golden Gate Capital made the transaction the last tweet is talking about:
Golden Gate Capital, which bought Red Lobster from Darden Restaurants Inc. for $2.1 billion, and then sold that real estate to VEREIT for $1.5 billion, has now agreed to acquire $204 million of Red Lobster real estate back from the firm.
The narrative seems plausible and would be an interesting twist. But perhaps it's too good of a story.
Does anyone have more source/knowledge of this kind of corporate dealing? Is private equity delivering the Georgist promise?
I think people haven't fully grappled with the implications of Evolution. And maybe don't understand how capitalism works. I barely do either.
Here are some talking points I see:
Why shouldn't an owner be able to buy a failing restaurant, sell the real estate, and then let the restaurant fail?
There's the inconvenience of being reorganized. All the employees on the healthcare plan, who've moved across the country for this job for their family, who've put effort and sweat every day to make the company better (and other such sympathetic narratives), are suddenly shuffled into the labour market without their consent.
Particularly when the company is on net-profitable. A narrative that this perfectly fine business that's meeting people's needs is deemed "unvaluable" by corporate spreadsheets and then gutted to make room for some high-end fancy business. Rich people are willing to pay more than poor people, and now this veers into gentrification arguments.
if I buy something I should be able to do what I want with it
There's also aesthetic quality to this.
Buying a rare painting from a private collector and then burning it is legal and unimpeachable, and yet I still feel there is something lost, an aesthetic duty to the commons. Memories, sentimental memories lost to the wind. Perhaps less so with a property like Red Lobster.
practical_romantic
1hr ago
I spoke with him on my first days here on ssc in 2019 jan where I was depressed af as I was giving the most important exams of my life, college. Really nice guy, thanks for the upload op.
OliveTapenade
8hr ago
What surprised me most in the reaction was this amusing line:
Butker’s statement explicitly argues that there’s a correct way to be Catholic, even though in reality, most Catholics are supportive of abortion and LGBTQ rights.
Well... yes.
Yes, there's a correct way to be Catholic. It involves believing and acting in accordance with Catholic teaching, which is very clear on some of those subjects.
How is that controversial?
benjaminikuta
1hr ago
I mean, that seems like it actually does matter pretty significantly? Like if the rates are so low you don't meet someone until very late in life, I would consider that quite bad indeed.
No_one
15hr ago
https://reason.com/volokh/2024/05/15/congress-is-preparing-to-restore-quotas-in-college-admissions/
Apparently, there's a new privacy bill in congress, with a maximally bad attachment to it, and quite likely to pass. (what kind of monster would be against privacy? )
Almost all kinds of decision making (anything that involves computers seems like) are classed as an algorithm.
If your 'algorithm' causes disparate impact, it's bad and you must change it or you're open to lawsuits. Yearly review of the 'algorithm' is mandatory, first review in 2 years after bill is passed..
Covers: every bigger business (iirc 750 employees+), all social networks and...??all nonprofits using computers to process 'personal data' to submit yearly evaluations if they're not causing 'disparate impact'. Excepted: the entire finance industry, government contractors.
It also explicitly allows discrimination on the basis of a protected characteristics (race, sex etc) for the purpose of
27 (ii) diversifying an applicant, participant, or customer pool;
Here's a bigger excerpt:
Here's how it works. APRA's quota provision, section 13 of APRA, says that any entity that "knowingly develops" an algorithm for its business must evaluate that algorithm "to reduce the risk of" harm. And it defines algorithmic "harm" to include causing a "disparate impact" on the basis of "race, color, religion, national origin, sex, or disability" (plus, weirdly, "political party registration status"). APRA Sec. 13(c)(1)(B)(vi)(IV)&(V).
At bottom, it's as simple as that. If you use an algorithm for any important decision about people—to hire, promote, advertise, or otherwise allocate goods and services—you must ensure that you've reduced the risk of disparate impact.
The closer one looks, however, the worse it gets. At every turn, APRA expands the sweep of quotas. For example, APRA does not confine itself to hiring and promotion. It provides that, within two years of the bill's enactment, institutions must reduce any disparate impact the algorithm causes in access to housing, education, employment, healthcare, insurance, or credit.
No one escapes. The quota mandate covers practically every business and nonprofit in the country, other than financial institutions. APRA sec. 2(10). And its regulatory sweep is not limited, as you might think, to sophisticated and mysterious artificial intelligence algorithms. A "covered algorithm" is broadly defined as any computational process that helps humans make a decision about providing goods or services or information. APRA, Section 2 (8). It covers everything from a ground-breaking AI model to an aging Chromebook running a spreadsheet. In order to call this a privacy provision, APRA says that a covered algorithm must process personal data, but that means pretty much every form of personal data that isn't deidentified, with the exception of employee data. APRA, Section 2 (9).
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
18hr ago
I've been reading a lot about this conflict, and the history of Israel and Palestine. I've read books by Israeli historians and by Palestinian historians and by American historians and journalists. I've followed pro-Israeli channels and pro-Palestinian channels. I've also spoken to no small number of Arabs (since I am studying Arabic).
It's messy and complicated all around. What strikes me in every narrative is that most of them tell a more-or-less accurate version of known historical events, but always leaving out a few bits that make their side look less noble and less like the victim. The Israelis talk endlessly about how five Arab nations declared war on them the day after they declared independence, and they offered full citizenship rights to those Palestinians who stayed instead of fleeing (in the expectation that the Jews would soon be exterminated and they could return home). They don't talk about how there were explicit plans to remove even peaceful Palestinians and some of those expulsions were performed under presumed military necessity and with the full foreknowledge that they were uprooting locals from their land. They don't talk about some of the outright terrorist actions of their predecessors, and some of the atrocities that Israelis committed. (It was war, the Israeli army mostly conducted itself in a modern, disciplined fashion, but there were some civilian massacres, and other war crimes. The Israelis will retort that the Arabs did far more and far worse, which is probably true but doesn't make what they did not happen.)
The Palestinians talk endlessly about the Nakba and how 750,000 Palestinians were forced off their land. They don't talk about the fact that yes, many of them did explicitly leave so the Arab armies could exterminate the Jews, and thus they obtained the fate of a people who lost a war they started.
Dig into that event, and then you have to dig deeper - why did the Jews arrive in the first place, who was behind it, did they acquire land legally or did they forcefully occupy it? (They mostly acquired the land legally by purchase, prior to 1948, but Palestinians will then retort, accurately, that the Jews often bought the land from wealthy absentee Turkish (former Ottoman) landlords and then expelled the villagers who'd been living on that land for generations.) Was the Zionist movement an organic Jewish nationalist movement or was it a "Colonialist-Settler project" by Europeans whose motivation was essentially to get Jews out of Europe? (Answer: a little of all this and more.)
"It's complicated." People who want a clear right-and-wrong narrative hate that phrase, but it is. Move forward into all the many failed peace processes; Israelis claim Palestinians have been handed opportunities for peace over and over and rejected them. Palestinians claim all those peace offers were either made in bad faith or were very bad deals for the Palestinians. Who's right? A little of both. Palestinians have turned down deals that would have been objectively far better for them than what they have now, or have ever had. These agreements have also always been, at best, offers of divided rump territories with very little chance to ever develop into real countries. Many Palestinians feel that the offers themselves are fundamentally illegitimate because Palestine was stolen from them and only full restoration can make things right again. Regardless of whether you think this is a morally correct argument, it unfortunately carries the logical conclusion that there is literally no peace agreement they will accept that allows Israel to continue to exist. No matter how convincingly you argue that your people and your ancestors were screwed over and robbed and are entitled to reparations, if it ends with "... and therefore Israel must cease to exist," it's just a non-starter. But Palestinians (and many of their supporters), either out of stubbornness, or a belief that somehow either Hamas and Iran will actually succeed in destroying Israel, or else Israelis will somehow all be persuaded that they must dissolve the nation-state of Israel, persist.
You basically have three options: one state, two state, no state. The latter ("no state") is basically one side exterminates the other. Israelis are being accused of trying to do this now. I don't really think that's true, but certainly some elements of Israeli society and the government would not mind literally wiping out the Palestinians if they thought they could get away with it. Hamas is pretty explicit about wanting to eradicate Israel. Some of their more savvy apologists will say no, they just don't want Israel to exist "in its current form." Usually, if you pin them down, what they propose is something like the "one state" solution, where "From the river to the sea," the entire country becomes a multi-ethnic non-Jewish state with Jews and Arabs having full equal citizenship rights. Essentially, merge Israel and Palestine into one country. In theory, doesn't sound like a terrible idea (as long as you're not a Jew who is invested in a Jewish nation state), but it just sort of assumes that at that point, all the Palestinian Arabs (who outnumber the Jews considerably), who for generations have been openly calling for the literal extermination of all Israelis and claiming that every last Israeli is living on stolen land that must be given back, will say "Okay, we're cool now, you can live here with us. Let's all build a progressive multicultural society together." Let's just say I cannot blame the Israelis for considering that a non-starter.
That leaves the two state solution, which was fraught and unlikely before October 7 and pretty much impossible now, at least for a generation or two. The various schemes to apportion land to a new Palestinian nation have always struggled with Palestine being divided between Gaza and the West Bank - obviously not much of a country if you're divided between two regions with a historically hostile neighbor controlling all the land and travel between them. Also there's the problem of whether the Palestinian nation gets to have its own military, and build whatever they want in the way of weapons. Israelis have pretty good reasons to say hell no to that, at least until maybe we have a generation or two of peace convincing them that any new Palestinian army will not promptly start lobbing rockets and artillery shells at them. So the Palestinians argue (with some justification) that every offer they've been given has been for a fragment of a country that will still for all practical purposes be a protectorate under the military control of Israel, and the Israelis argue (with some justification) that the Palestinians have to prove they aren't going to keep trying to kill Israelis before they can have more.
Bringing us to today. Most people in the West are more sympathetic to the overall perspective of the Israelis, because we can see that yes, historically the Arabs really have been trying to kill them for decades now, and the Israelis have made at least some attempts to ease up on the Palestinians and let them try to build a society, and every such easing up has resulted in more suicide bombings or October 7. Leftists say, well, the Palestinians are an oppressed people, they are entitled to armed resistance. I always try to get them to say the unspoken part, to reveal their power level (just like I do with our friend @SecureSignals): okay, what is the end goal? Tell me what you really, really want to happen if you "win"? Most leftists won't come out and say "I want Israel to be destroyed." Some of them will give some sort of pie-in-the-sky one state answer, like above. But the reality is that the literal destruction of Israel is the only real "win condition" for them.
For those people like you (@4bpp) who I assume does not actually want the destruction of Israel, what do you see as a solution? Besides just "Stop the bombing now," which I can sympathize with, but let's say Israel stops the war in Gaza today and withdraws, and promptly allows unlimited international support in to rebuild. What happens next? What I think happens next is that Hamas grabs as much of that as they can and plans the next October 7, which will happen sooner rather than later. As much as I would like to see Gazan civilians not being bombed (and I do not care if "80% of them support Hamas," which is a frequent justification for why, essentially, we should not feel bad about them being slaughtered), I can understand why Israelis are not willing to accept a stopping point that just returns to the status quo and another October 7.
The more peaceful leftists will then say "They should cease fire now and then negotiate a real peace that gives Palestinians a real state so there is no need for Hamas etc etc etc." Okay, great idea. Everyone's been trying to do that for decades. See above.
So, simply saying "The Palestinians have a clear moral case," even if you're right, does not solve the current problem. Unless you are willing to bite the bullet and say "Yes, actually, I think Israel needs to cease to exist." Followed by either how you think peaceful coexistence between former Israelis and Palestinians will be accomplished, or your plan for forcibly resettling all the Israelis to another continent. Some would at this point show their power level and say "Yeah, actually, just let them slaughter all the Jews, they have it coming." But that would make the Palestinians' clear moral case a little less clear.
cae_jones
5hr ago
Yeah, what is it with Chiefs-related news lately? They're also the team for whom a Deadspin reporter went to a game and decided to defame a 9-year-old in team colors bodypaint, and got Deadspin sued as a result. All these things happening all at once, and centered around people and events conspicuously connected to this one team ... would be an interesting coincidence.
COVERED ALGORITHM.—The term “covered algorithm” means a computational process, including one derived from machine learning, statistics, or other data processing or artificial intelligence techniques, that makes a decision or facilitates human decision- making by using covered data, which includes determining the provision of products or services or ranking, ordering, promoting, recommending, amplifying, or similarly determining the delivery or display of information to an individual.
I wonder how that would apply to dating apps; would they now be required to design algorithms such that an Asian man, black woman, or trans woman all get equivalent number of matches to their privileged counterparts? Or is that not discrimination?
Pasha
Defend Kebab
2hr ago
If they botch GTA6 then I will completely lose any faith in western civilisation. It started with a relative passing me a CD of GTA3 when I was 4 and it always symbolised the total superiority of American cultural production for me.
zoink
16hr ago
Butker seems to be almost perfect. I assume the media is desperately searching, so he's likely been faithful to his wife and probably hasn't said "nigger" within recording distance. As Nybbler points out, he's got literally a gigachad look. It might be cooler if he were a tight end, but he's arguably one of the best kickers in the game with three Super Bowls. He's not perfectly articulate, but articulate enough, and his speech avoided some of the pitfalls conservatives love to jump into. It was very digestible if anyone wanted to watch the whole thing and more coherent than Margery Taylor Greene or Trump can be. It also helps that he kept things straight Catholic; going all in against Catholicism is attacking a lot of Latinos.
Conservatives should spend a lot of time figuring out the things he got right.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
1hr ago
What I’ve never understood is why exactly this sort of thing makes sense to the left. The man is a kicker on a football team. He doesn’t really get paid to be a spokesman for anything beyond the usual shilling for products. I don’t understand why a person isn’t allowed to hold contrary opinions especially when those opinions have absolutely nothing to do with his actual job and he doesn’t seem to be much of an activist at all.
6tjk
1hr ago
Was it this, by any chance?
https://www.themotte.org/post/592/wellness-wednesday-for-july-19-2023/121681?context=8#context
shakenvac
1hr ago
I am trying to understand your position, so please let me know if I have got this right:
• Israel is inherently bad/unjust, by the nature of it's creation.
• Because of this, there is nothing that Israel can do that would be good/just, excepting perhaps to dissolve itself.
•Similarly, there is nothing that Palestinians could possibly do to Israel that would be bad/unjust, and no Israeli response to any Palestinian action (excepting perhaps to just take a bloody nose) could be good/just
•You do not implore Israel to stop. I think this is not because you think Israel is justified in any moral sense, (i.e. blood feud) but because you acknowledge that asking Israel to behave justly under your model would be asking the impossible. You simply ask that uninvolved actors act according to the 'Israel is inherently bad' idea
Is this fair? If so, what separates Israel from all previous historical colonisations, or even conquests? Why don't the Turks have to give Istanbul back to the Greeks? Would Aborigines in Australia/Canada/America be justified in waging war against their colonisers? Would their colonisers be justified in defending themselves?
If not, what actions could Israel take, short of dissolving itself or losing its identity as a Jewish state, that would allow it to achieve the status of a state which is allowed to defend itself, in your eyes?
NullHypothesis
7hr ago
Butker's speech has got so many people up in a frenzy about the content that over 200,000 people have signed a "petition" on Change.org to get him removed from the Kansas City Chiefs.
What do these articles or the descriptions on change.org have in common? Creating a strawman of the content of his speech. The change.org petition description literally doesn't even give any examples of what he says, it just characterizes his speech as "sexist, homophobic, anti-trans, anti-abortion and racist."
Graduation speeches are for the people who are graduating, not for the entire world. He was giving a speech at a Catholic college to Catholic students, who presumably have Catholic values. The biggest criticism against his speech is in regard to his statement about women:
For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.
I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I'm on the stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation. I'm beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.
This statement is literally followed by a huge round of applause, so clearly, the audience listening to the speech, which includes women, was very responsive to his message to them specifically.
He never says women should only be a homemakers. In fact, he even acknowledges women can have successful careers. All he does is praise women who choose to be a homemaker and a mother. Butker is absolutely correct in his statements about women being lied to that pursuing a career is much more worthwhile than motherhood, based on the behavior and happiness of actual women.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
12hr ago
Yes, but the lower courts could just ignore that. Maybe in another 10 years the Supreme Court will finally take a case and issue a wishy-washy decision that the lower courts could then ignore again.
fishtwanger
2hr ago
Adding political party registration as a protected class
I'm unclear on how "political party registration status" will be interpreted. Does it mean that they "can't create" "have to pay attention to" a disparate impact on Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, etc.? Or does it merely mean that they "can't create" "have to pay attention to" a disparate impact on people who are registered and people who aren't registered?
"Original public meaning" is failing my poor spectrum-y brain.
Hyperion
5hr ago
This is.... Georgism???
No, it's just regular arbitrage. arbitrage would work the same Georgism or not. The whole point of Georgism, is that, if done perfectly, it only has distributional effects, it doesn't change the economic efficiency of the outcome. It is a pure transfer with no distortionary effects.
ChestertonsMeme
13hr ago
This could be really interesting.
- Adding political party registration as a protected class could end up changing the character of many institutions and organizations. For example, forcing universities to hire Republicans would have major long-term effects on the values of future college graduates.
- This law conflicts with the principles of freedom of association and equal protection. It'll force the issue up through the courts (no way it doesn't get an instant challenge up to the Supreme Court) and with this Court the result could be something wild like reversing Griggs v Duke entirely.
- Even if it stands, it will bring quotas to the fore as a political issue and make the public conversations more clearly about group spoils vs. overall efficiency. It adds such onerous requirements for businesses to make any useful predictions about people that there will be tons of examples of waste and inefficiency due to the law. In an accelerationist way this could be good for getting back to a more reasonable set of laws.
Private equity is just the corporate raiding/hostile takeover meme of the 1980s updated for the 21st century. Most medium and large private companies are very poorly run, the same way most major corporations were until the late 1980s. A combination of M&A and MBB consulting (mock them freely, but the sad thing is they were once necessary) dealt with most of the low hanging fruit in public markets, and takeover defense is now much better anyway, but in private companies things are still bad. PE is not typically a bad thing, and makes for more successful businesses that do more business and employ more people more often than not. Purely extractive moves still happen, but they’re disproportionately subjects of reporting and PE is now so well developed that (especially with higher rates) an extract what you can, sell-for-parts approach is less and less of a viable way to invest clients’ capital.
That said, selling corporate owned real-estate is a good thing for most businesses. There’s a reason why almost no major corporations other than super rich tech companies in the suburbs own their own corporate headquarters; when you own your premises, you’re a real estate company in addition to doing whatever else you do. Conglomerates are almost always undervalued by markets, it makes more sense for most companies to sign long leases, to focus on their core business as a pure play, and to leave real estate to asset managers and real estate developers who are valued on that basis and have expertise in that market.
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