ARTICLE for Boomzilla about SOCIAL JUSTICE!
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I made a dry statement of fact, and you immediately jumped to calling me a SJW ("politics of envy") because you disagreed.
No. It was mostly dry, but you used a particular word with which I took exception. You seem to have forgotten about that and never really justified it.
I also made no claim that a business shouldn't use all of the resources that is available to it, but that businesses extracts rents (unearned income) by doing so. A mere statement of fact arouses ire.
Have you forgotten what you said or are you simply misrepresenting what we both said?
Hint: public goods are provisioned according to rent seeking and lobbying (the willingness to pay criterion).
Maybe if you're talking about a specific example where something egregious happened, I'd agree with you. That doesn't justify your categorical statement. Here's an analogy:
Suppose a community of farmers. They all farm with about the same efficiency, have similar land, etc. They all benefit from the energy from the sun in growing their crops. One farmer decides he'll use solar heating to heat his water. At the end of the season, he has more money in his pocket because he paid less to heat his water.
In your telling, he's gotten inordinate benefits from energy of the sun.
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If it is based upon ideas and not on their proponents, it is good. It is quite clear however that many decisions are selectively made based upon who their proponents are, as opposed to the merit of the ideas themselves.
I agree, in principle. But it's never going to happen. The economics of politics won't allow for it. Politics always essentially views some people's opinion's as more valuable, because they (the people) have the power to create problems if they don't get their way. Compare this to a "hold up" in economics.
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Suppose a community of farmers. They all farm with about the same efficiency, have similar land, etc. They all benefit from the energy from the sun in growing their crops. One farmer decides he'll use solar heating to heat his water. At the end of the season, he has more money in his pocket because he paid less to heat his water.
In your telling, he's gotten inordinate benefits from energy of the sun.
That's entrepreneurial, or strategic, rent. Certainly, it is earned income. This is unlike the infrastructure case, which is purely Ricardian rent.
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That's entrepreneurial, or strategic, rent. Certainly, it is earned income. This is unlike the infrastructure case, which is purely Ricardian rent.
Is it excess? Is it inordinate?
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They're both excess over the equilibrium price of whatever your farmer farms.
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So...avoiding the question? I never asked about the price of what he's farming. Is it an inordinate benefit from the sun's energy?
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But the competitive price is the fair price according to neo-classical economics. It is the price that maximizes everybody's utility. The rents have created a market distortion, via mechanisms explained before (in particular, the lack of financing to bring the market back to equilibrium)
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I guess I should take your avoidance as concession?
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No, I have repeatedly answered your question. You just don't like the answer.
If you must hear the words, unearned income (Ricardian rent, and some other kinds of rent) is inordinate. Earned income (strategic or entrepreneurial rent) is "just" excess income. Still irrelevant. The Ricardian rent situation with infrastructure is purely unearned income.
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No, I have repeatedly answered your question.
Can you explain the connection between him saving money on hot showers and the equilibrium price, and why this is inordinate?
The only link I can find is that he could maybe reduce his price since he has lower hot water costs. That's reasonable, but how is it inordinate?
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Yeah I noticed that too....
But I held off on posting it.
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TL;DR: people are fucking pansies these days.
Except the article expounds on the fact that the pansies are gaining control of every aspect of our lives...
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Can you explain the connection between him saving money on hot showers and the equilibrium price, and why this is inordinate?
Who is "he"? The farmer? The farmer did something to increase efficiency. He earned his strategic rent.
A business owner who got a free water hookup, and doesn't have to pay for a well, got unearned income. It is inordinate by the very notion that it is unearned. Money from nothing.
Yes, the mechanism by which he gets money from nothing is that his costs go down, for no action that he performed. A magic wand was waved and he saved money. Neat, but unearned.
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I SEE MORE WHITE
YOU NEED... TO BELIEVE RACIST SHIT IS HAPPENING
Hmm.... math
"White people are a big problem for me"
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"Racism is real"???
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Yes, the mechanism by which he gets money from nothing is that his costs go down, for no action that he performed. A magic wand was waved and he saved money. Neat, but unearned.
OK, so by analogy, you were saying the business owner class isn't paying taxes? I'm honestly trying to figure out why the word "inordinate" applies.
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He earned his strategic rent.
I thought there was already a thread for that.
@boomzilla Can we jeff the posts there?
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OK, so by analogy, you were saying the business owner class isn't paying taxes? I'm honestly trying to figure out why the word "inordinate" applies.
The slogan might be "The owner pays the same taxes we do, but gets more out of them"
Now, to get to the nitty gritty of it, a business owner probably pays more in tax than a typical person. But 1) the income gains he got from infrastructure outweigh the tax payment (by a lot) and 2) we don't get the same benefits, since we are not owners. It is still a net influx of value. Reason 1) is the "technical" reason why it's unearned income.
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OK, so we're back to disagreeing on the valuation here, taxes vs benefits, and who gets what and how much and what it takes to make it inordinate. I guess we should drop it.
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Fair enough, but before we do, please consider that this is the point at which I brought up Nigeria before. In Nigeria, the costs of infrastructure are so high that businesses we take for granted are unviable. I think this properly demonstrates that infrastructure rents have sizable effects on business incomes. The marginal tax rate here is 35%, but the marginal gain (per widget) is undefinedly large.
The World Bank finds that the aggregate return on infrastructure is something like 50% on investment.
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But we all get more benefits from the infrastructure, too, which to me reduces the legitimacy of a label like "inordinate."
Anyways.
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Never mind that it interferes with the ability to effectively transact in services!
Also -- it's not just hoodies, either: anything that can be used to obscure or hide the face is being treated as wrong/criminally-indicating in this day and age.
Except the article expounds on the fact that the pansies are gaining control of every aspect of our lives...
No kidding sigh(Note: all numbers here are arbitrary)
Let's say you have a process that produces a product for $5/unit (equilibrium price), and requires hot water at a certain temperature and input volume. This hot water requires $100/mo in fuel to heat it. Let us also say that there are many producers of this product, all of which offer the same price.The individual entrepreneur from @Captain's example would be the person who spent $10000 in capital to install solar hot water heating, which reduces his fuel costs to $50/mo. Once he pays off the capital debt though, he can now reduce his unit price to, say, $4.95/unit. This gives him a small competitive advantage.
The infrastructure example to go with this, though, would be a city extending district steam to an area where one of these plants is located. Now their heating costs are $50/mo as well, and they can also offer the $4.95/unit price, but they did not have to invest any of their own capital into obtaining that competitive advantage. (The capital was invested by the city instead, assuming no change in tax rates was required to finance the district steam system extension, which very may well be the case.)
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Yes, as I hinted above, I'm sure I could come up with specific examples that fit. But then, this example ignores the benefits received by the employees and customers. Also, that stuff wasn't free. But this sort of thing is definitely not a public good, and while all of @Captain's examples weren't public goods, he talked about stuff like roads and police.
My point was that a word like "inordinate" requires some judgment to apply (paid vs gained, things others got from it, non-rivalrous / non-excludable issue). He said it didn't and I pushed / trolled.
Eventually, using our individual judgments, we agreed to disagree on whether the benefits of publicly provided infrastructure resulted in inordinate benefits to business owners.
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Heh...and the left continues to eat its own...Reading Taranto today:
Toward the end of his essay, Schlosser quotes a pair of tweets from “critic and artist” Zahira Kelly, which we run together but otherwise quote verbatim: “when ppl go off on evo psych, its always some shady colonizer white man theory that ignores nonwhite human history. but ‘science’. ok. most ‘scientific thought’ as u know it isnt that scientific but shaped by white patriarchal bias of ppl who claimed authority on it.”
Schlosser responds, in effect (and in contrast to his treatment of that conservative student), Come, let us reason together:
Kelly is intelligent. Her voice is important. She realizes, correctly, that evolutionary psychology is flawed, and that science has often been misused to legitimize racist and sexist beliefs. But why draw that out to the extreme of rejecting scientific inquiry as a whole? Can’t we see how it’s dangerous to reject centuries of established thought so blithely? Or how scary and extreme that makes us look to people who don’t already agree with us? And tactically, can’t we see how shortsighted it is to abandon a viable and respected manner of inquiry just because it’s associated with white males?
So...how did this person respond? You can probably imagine after seeing the text of her earlier tweets:
https://twitter.com/EsotericCD/status/606118308992172032/photo/1
Plus, shades of @blakeyrat at the end there.
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Not everyone gives a shit about your feelings here.
Somebody punched me in the head once, and I got over it. Therefore, people who get punched in the head several dozen times a day, every single day of their lives, should just grow a pair and get over it as well. After all, it worked for me, and my experience is clearly the correct experience.
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One aspect of the identity of an idea's source is potentially relevant. If an idea or opinion is put forth by someone with years of experience in the field on which they are offering an opinion, and another is put forth by a random dude(ette) on the Internet, the former's idea is more likely to have merit than the latter's, and IMHO this can be an appropriate filter to use in deciding where to use limited resources for further evaluation. However, the "identity" (in the buzzword sense) of either source is irrelevant to the merits of the ideas, and should be regarded as such; ideally, IMHO, it wouldn't even be known to those evaluating the ideas.
That's a fine and reasonable position to take when considering many classes of idea. It falls down, though, when the ideas are ideas about identity and/or about the lived experience of people who belong to other identity groups. In those cases, identity is part and parcel of the ideas being considered and directly relevant to their merits.
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Most arguments in this vein presuppose a social hierarchy that's a mirror image of the one decried by SJWs; that one's credibility is proportional to the amount of oppression one endures. Aside from being a shameless ad hominem, there's some beautiful irony at work there.
When the issue at hand is the amount of oppression that particular classes of person endure, it seems to me that direct reportage from members of those classes does carry greater weight than anybody else's. Why should it not?
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Your comedian's pacing and delivery needs work. The parodic slides, though: top notch.
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Insightful as ever, comrade.
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I was punched in the head once too. Yes, I was pissed. No, I didn't spend the next few years campaigning against headpunchers on blogs, trying to "raise awareness" of people getting punched in the head, or trying to make raising your hands illegal.
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Bully for you.
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When the issue at hand is the amount of oppression that particular classes of person endure, it seems to me that direct reportage from members of those classes does carry greater weight than anybody else's. Why should it not?
In a courtroom, should the accuser's word automatically trump the word of the accused?
I'm sure the oppressed have many interesting things to contribute to the discussion, and they should not be denied a soapbox to do so. What I take issue with is that "Shut up, you privileged shitlord CEO, you have no right to have an opinion about what people on the street experience!" is not really all that different from "Shut up, you poor unemployed person on the streets, you have no right to have an opinion about how to run the economy!"
It's very difficult to be sympathetic to "social justice" movements that, for example, tell "privileged" people to sit down, shut up, and let the adults do the talking.
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What I take issue with is that "Shut up, you privileged shitlord CEO, you have no right to have an opinion about what people on the street experience!" is not really all that different from "Shut up, you poor unemployed person on the streets, you have no right to have an opinion about how to run the economy!"
Well, not that different except for the gross power imbalance between the two parties, and therefore the likelihood that actually getting the other to shut up and listen will in fact happen.
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It's very difficult to be sympathetic to "social justice" movements that, for example, tell "privileged" people to sit down, shut up, and let the adults do the talking.
Sometimes the Left leaves me speechless. There was an article linked from that about the difficulties people of faith have within the predominantly atheist radical Left community. Ok, I'm far from being a radical Leftist, but I'm a person of faith living in a society that is continually becoming more atheistic; it might be interesting to read. However, I didn't make it that far.
The author is a white Pagan. He or she (the author's name is gender-ambiguous) prefaces the article by telling other white Pagans how they are permitted to practice their religion. White Pagans are not allowed to adopt any symbols or practices from any non-white Pagan traditions, because that would cultural appropriation. Presumably, this also means that if I should happen to decide that, say, Ahura Mazda is the one, true universal, transcendent, supreme god (extremely unlikely) and that, therefore, Zoroastrianism is the one, true religion, I couldn't adopt the symbols and practices because I'm not Persian; that would be cultural appropriation. Or maybe I shouldn't even be allowed to convert to Zoroastrianism in the first place, because that would be appropriating another culture's religion. Or something.
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The academic job market is brutal. Teachers who are not tenured or tenure-track faculty members have no right to due process before being dismissed, and there's a mile-long line of applicants eager to take their place. And as writer and academic Freddie DeBoer writes, they don't even have to be formally fired — they can just not get rehired.
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The real problem: a simplistic, unworkable, and ultimately stifling conception of social justiceLol
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Sometimes the Left leaves me speechless.
To be fair, all sides of politics are well supplied with fuckwits incapable of distinguishing rhetoric from reasoning.
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Reminds me of a tweet I did “I'm tolerant of every culture except the ones with traditional values”. Didn't get any likes.
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It's very difficult to be sympathetic to "social justice" movements that, for example, tell "privileged" people to sit down, shut up, and let the adults do the talking.
Having a good feel for when and when not to shut up and listen is indeed one of the distinguishing marks of adulthood. As is representing an opponent's position in good faith, which you certainly fail to do here.
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Sometimes the Left leaves me speechless. There was an article linked from that about the difficulties people of faith have within the predominantly atheist radical Left community. Ok, I'm far from being a radical Leftist, but I'm a person of faith living in a society that is continually becoming more atheistic; it might be interesting to read. However, I didn't make it that far.
I should have put up a TRIGGER WARNING on that link. Just about every time I am linked to that domain, I end up walking away grumpy.
Mazda is the one, true universal, transcendent, supreme god
One of my gearhead friends who loves rotary engines would probably agree.
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Well, not that different except for the gross power imbalance between the two parties, and therefore the likelihood that actually getting the other to shut up and listen will in fact happen.
I must confess that I do not have a solution to that problem. But I don't think that turning the tables is going to solve that problem peacefully. When the pendulum of power and oppression swings from one extreme to the other, you get the wonderful situation the Sunnis and Shias have in Iraq. What if, instead, they said, "Hey guys, settling old scores isn't going to get us anywhere. Why don't we call it even and stop?"
Having a good feel for when and when not to shut up and listen is indeed one of the distinguishing marks of adulthood. As is representing an opponent's position in good faith, which you certainly fail to do here.
I'm open to shutting up and listening. I'm not open to being dehumanized and stripped of my agency when it comes to discussions about building the future.
While I don't have a bottle of hard liquor handy to help cope with the effects of visiting that site, I'm going to go ahead and reread it, while attempting to respond to the points raised in a fair and open-minded fashion:
1. Understand that women are leading the way and affirm their capable leadership. Don’t assert yourself at the forefront.
Here we have a movement that has gender equality as one of its most important stated goals, and point #1 is to put men in the back seat, because somehow a man's voice will be perceived as "more legitimate." If equality is the goal, why even give currency to that idea by emphasizing it? Why not accept help from all corners? That's not a very inclusive movement!
2. When it comes to issues that directly pertain to women’s bodies and experiences, be quiet and listen.
Discourse is going to fuck up the numbering, of course. And here they trot out all the problems that women face that men can never understand without mentioning that men also have problems that women can never understand. Instead of taking such an adversarial approach, why not accept that both genders have it rough and work toward a mutual understanding?
I'm not going to comment on Sarkeesian because she's already been thoroughly discussed on these forums.
3. Men don’t get to determine if they are “allies” to the feminist movement. Women do.
Of course there are going to be guys who say they're feminists so that they can get some action. They're deplorable. Otherwise, this point centers on insisting women be the leaders and decision makers in a movement that's supposed to promote equality.
4. Take responsibility for addressing men’s issues with other men, rather than expecting women in feminism to do all of the work.
Ah, they finally got to addressing my point above! But if women are the leaders and decision makers, how are men supposed to take on that sort of responsibility?
5. Use your male privilege to encourage other men to work towards gender equality under women’s leadership.
I have a better idea: why not use our respective male and female privileges to work towards gender equality under joint leadership? I like how they mention the gender pay gap, which has been debunked rather thoroughly.
6. Don’t use the label of ‘feminist’ as a way to try to get women to like you — that’s disingenuous and counterproductive.
Whoa, suddenly the numbering works again! This is the first point with which I have no qualms. I personally prefer the label "as egalitarian as sexual dimorphism allows," which doesn't roll off the tongue, but that means it's much less likely to be corrupted in the future.
7. When given opportunities to execute professional tasks related to feminist issues, consider referring other women instead.
I'll refer the best person for the job, male or female. Why should I give preference to one over the other? That's not very egalitarian!
9. Ensure your feminism is intersectional.
Yeah, there are people from all sorts of different backgrounds and they should definitely not be forgotten in our quest for equality. I notice that the author neglected to mention that men comprise some of those people.
10. Acknowledge that sometimes, women need opportunities to discuss feminist issues without the presence of men. And that’s okay.
Is there a super-secret boys club, too? Why all the secrecy? Why not openness? This is about building an egalitarian future!
11. When women criticize your involvement in feminism, don’t talk over them or talk down to them. Actively listen and be accountable.
They are free to criticize, and the accused is free to defend him/herself.
It may not have been what the author intended, but with such an adversarial tone, that all sure as hell sounds like "sit down, shut up, and let the adults do the talking."
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>The academic job market is brutal. Teachers who are not tenured or tenure-track faculty members have no right to due process before being dismissed, and there's a mile-long line of applicants eager to take their place. And as writer and academic Freddie DeBoer writes, they don't even have to be formally fired — they can just not get rehired.
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The real problem: a simplistic, unworkable, and ultimately stifling conception of social justiceLol
Just realized I'd better explain this because some of you aren't too bright on here. What I'm getting at is that this person seems to believe that their job would be more secure if it weren't for this social justice problem, and needs to get some remedial economics in them, stat.
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attempting to respond to the points raised in a fair and open-minded fashion
C-. Could do better if he applied himself.
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C-. Could do better if he applied himself.
Awesome. Where I come from, that's good enough to get credit for the course*, which means I don't have to retake it!
That's extremely helpful for humanities courses that require one metric ton of reading, or math courses* where the exams are one hour, three questions, and you only know how to answer the first question.
**I once took an upper level statistics course where I got 20 points out of 60 on an exam, and one entire section of the course averaged 8/60.
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math courses** where the exams are one hour, three questions, and you only know how to answer the first question.
**I once took an upper level statistics course where I got 20 points out of 60 on an exam, and one entire section of the course averaged 8/60.In my Linear Algebra class, there was one test with two questions. I was only able to answer one of them. I got a score of 90/100.
Every test was worth 100 points, and every question worth 10. Basically, you started with 100 and lost 10 for each one you got wrong (ignoring partial-credit, which was possible). I could have handed in a blank piece of paper and gotten 80. No, I don't know why he graded like that. Maybe it was some kind of departmental politics thing; maybe he was just an idiot.
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Every test was worth 100 points, and every question worth 10. Basically, you started with 100 and lost 10 for each one you got wrong (ignoring partial-credit, which was possible). I could have handed in a blank piece of paper and gotten 80. No, I don't know why he graded like that. Maybe it was some kind of departmental politics thing; maybe he was just an idiot.
Now, does 80/100 equal a B as one might expect, or does that get curved to an F? Faculty at my alma mater would probably love to do the latter.
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In that case, at least, it would have been a B. I was seriously worried about failing the class, because that wasn't the only test on which I had done poorly. In the middle of the final exam, the instructor announced, "BTW, I've tallied your grades so far. Nobody's getting less than a B, and there aren't very many of those."
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Just realized I'd better explain this because some of you aren't too bright on here. What I'm getting at is that this person seems to believe that their job would be more secure if it weren't for this social justice problem, and needs to get some remedial economics in them, stat.
I'm not shedding tears over people complaining that they don't have a guaranteed sinecure for life. But I think his point here is that the sort of stuff that people are being accused of and fired for is ridiculous.
Here's something that's not in an academic setting but is extremely stupid:
Officials say they’ve recently received complaints that one of its slogans, “Ziggin Zaggin,” is offensive when read backwards, seeming to spell out a racial slur.
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A few days ago, a driver complained after seeing the slogan on a bus in her rearview mirror. She says it spells out a racial slur when read backwards.
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A few days ago, a driver complained after seeing the slogan on a bus in her rearview mirror. She says it spells out a racial slur when read backwards.
I'm hoping said officials will take time to reflect upon this incident.
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This thread has lead to at least one good thing, for me,
YMMV IANAL etc.. mileage based on...not valid outside of...http://i851.photobucket.com/albums/ab78/Roberteaux_1958/the-horror-horror-colonel-kurtz-demotivational-posters-1304638153.jpg
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You're dealing with the kind of person who complained a year or two ago about graduation cards with the words "black hole" on them possibly being racist.
"No, I have no idea what a 'black hole' is, but I don't see any cards with 'white hole' on them, so this card must be racist somehow!"
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I'm sure the oppressed have many interesting things to contribute to the discussion, and they should not be denied a soapbox to do so. What I take issue with is that "Shut up, you privileged shitlord CEO, you have no right to have an opinion about what people on the street experience!" is not really all that different from "Shut up, you poor unemployed person on the streets, you have no right to have an opinion about how to run the economy!"
Furthermore, assuming that a title makes a person a certain way can make an absolute and utter fool of yourself....
