RE: History Is Not a Safe Space
"color/race/nation/religion/gender of your birth should not have a statistical impact on how you will do in society or be treated in certain contexts is a valid and worthwhile belief that is worth pursuing and upholding"
Agreed, I am in full support of this. This is exactly what SJWs fail at, like Justin Trudeau and his "50% female cabinet, regardless of merit". (Note: I would support a 100% female cabinet, or any cabinet, based on merit) Almost everything SJWs agitate for would be undisputably wildly sexist or racist if you swapped "white" in for "any other minority" or "male" in for "female". There's an SJW woman in the WTO (I think it's the WTO) who wants to make it illegal for women in New Zealand to be stay-at-home moms, because she wants to "fix the gender wage gap". That's SJW activism for you.
"That's just silly, and no about of "but my wife got more alimony than I think is fair!" is going to negate that."
Your entire argument boils down to justifying current undeniably unethical actions with "but their ancestors were mean to them, WAAAH."
Would you like to take a crack at justifying an alimony payment of over 50% of a man's after tax income? Would you like to take a crack at justifying alimony AT ALL, or are you unable to see that it is sexist against both men and women, infantilizing women and removing their agency?
Would you like to comment on the fact that the gender wage gap is completely made up propaganda? They simply added up all men's salaries, then did the same with women's. There were more working men, so the men's total was 100 and the women's total was 77 (roughly, these are ratio numbers for illustration purposes, not actual figures). They concluded this meant women make less, without correcting for industry (men work far more dangerous jobs that obviously have higher pay), nor did they EVEN DIVIDE BY THE NUMBER OF DATA POINTS. This is bold-face lying, repeated by the president of the US in State of the Union addresses to agitate for more sexist legislation.
Do you think you can comment on these things without claiming past injustice owed by people who are mostly already dead, and whose injustice most of us never benefited from?
(Edited to correct significant typo paragraph.)
Something like "it's illegal to be a stay at home mom" is a stupid and bad idea. I disagree with it. There you go. And there are about a thousand others that I do agree with and think are good ideas. Is you point that in the vast churning ocean of laws and discussion and ideas about equity and how to pursue it that there are occasional bad ideas? Ok, point ceded, I agree.
You also strike me as one of those people who think equity means "everyone gets the same amount of help", as opposed to "everyone gets the help they need" which is what true goal is.
If you have a family with a pantry full of food and another family with scarely any food, and a harsh winter storm is about to hit, and you decide to give the care pack of food you have to the family with no food, that is an example of help done right. If you instead split the care pack up evenly and give half to both families, so that by the time the storm breaks the first family still has loads of food and the other family at this point hasn't eaten in days, that is an example of help done wrong.
So yes, laws that seek to address inequity will favor those who are lacking, not divide up the help evenly between those who are underprivileged and those who are not.
And I think you fail to see the basic compelling problem of the wage gap, but agian, I don't know why I am arguing with you, this can only end in wasted time and frustration.
Ah, you've made this a lot easier. You are a communist. I'm not slandering you, that's just what you are saying:
""everyone gets the same amount of help", as opposed to "everyone gets the help they need" which is what true equity is."
I'm afraid the fundamental philosophy you are currently aligned with is at odds with the entire Western tradition, on both sides of the aisle. SJWs are Marxists, however, so this isn't surprising.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." - Karl Marx
You seem like a reasonable and intelligent person, but the philosophy you are aligned with is toxic and has killed tens of millions. Please, please, please read up on Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, and the rest of their flunkies.
Charity does not require communism and forced redistribution, which is what the side you have aligned yourself with believes. Note I did not say YOUR side - you are free to choose as a hopefully rational adult.
Please choose wisely.
PS - Financial inequality is one of the positions closest to my heart. The West is awful in this regard. Do not misconstrue my argument for support of the status quo. We almost all agree on this here in the crypto space.
No, I am not a communist, or marxist, or socialist, or any other such derivation. I am what would probably be best labeled as a Welfare Capitalist. Supporting the notion the capitalism drives the best economic climate and that a portion of economy should be directed towards welfare and social safety net type programs.
The vague similarity between my statement that when rendering help it makes sense to render more to those that need it than those that dont and the marxist mantra of "from each according to their means to each according to their needs" does not indicate what you seem to think it did.
Well, then we should be basically on the same page, because I am a (financially poor) capitalist who agrees that the US, and by proxy much of the West, is being run by near-oligarchs who would be damn lucky to escape the guillotine in the French Revolution. I personally see this divide getting worse and coming to a head as the poor appear to be having more and more of their wealth siphoned up to the top, mostly government cronies, bankers, and the Federal Reserve.
I'm not for redistribution but these people ride the backs of the poor using inflation and dishonest money to perpetually confiscate and keep everyone effectively servants. I call it neo-feudalism and it's why I, and I think Dan Larimer, were ever here.
I'm for punishment, not redistribution, and there are a whole hosts of laws and constitutional rights with which to legally do so.
"If you have a family with a pantry full of food and another family with scarely any food, and a harsh winter storm is about to hit, and you decide to give the care pack of food you have to the family with no food, that is an example of help done right."
I would agree with this statement. Generally speaking, charities only offer help to those who need it. Much like welfare having a means test, etc.
I am in no way against charity. I donate myself. You may notice there is very little charity work in the SJW sphere however, and what little it is, is always assigned via discrimination - women's or minority groups only. Can't say I've ever seen the SJW crowd take up prostate cancer, or skin cancer, or anything else that might carry the "taint" of being somehow attached to either "whiteness" or "the patriarchy" (which, incidentally, I can never get a definition on or any evidence of...)
I suspect that you are assuming I disagree with you in many places I do not.
Would you agree that it would be immoral to steal the pantry full of food from the first family, on threat of inprisonment/death, to give to another family who was unprepared - perhaps because they went to Disney World instead of buying canned food? If you disagree, could you expand on why or what fundamental right justifies your position?
PS - If the average SJW thought and spoke as you did, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion because it wouldn't be much of a problem. I assure you the loudest and most powerful of the group are thoroughly objectionable individuals who would be incapable of having a civilized discussion as we are, and equality for others is clearly not foremost among their goals if you look closely at their actions. I appreciate your replies and this discussion in general.
Oi, I wasn't talking about charity. I was using a sample charity as an analogy to illustrate a useful guiding principle when trying to achieve social equity, that the assistance goes where it's needed not equally to all. People complain all the time about programs or laws aimed to help or enforce the rights of various minorities and paint that as being actually discriminatory against whites, when such acts are no more discriminatory against whites that giving the box of food to the family with no food is discriminatory to families with food.
OK, having a law that protects, say, Puerto Ricans (nationality chosen because I like the place!) from discrimination is by definition discrimination against every other race who does not have a similar protection. It is now harder to fire Puerto Ricans because of game theoretical disadvantages like increased likelihood of being sued. You will now fire anyone else over an equal Puerto Rican, and you will be game-theoretically correct to do so.
This law would legislate MORE racism, not less.
Merely one example of the phenomenon:
All laws should apply equally to all. Anything else is discrimination.
You cannot legislate away most -isms. Unfortunately, neither can legislate people into worthwhile human beings.
You are incorrect and illustrating and extremely common fallacy. Look, when people have different starting positions, and you are trying to make things "fair" you can eithe give different amounts of help or you can end up with an unfair result, you cannot do both.
Let's say we decide a kid needs 5 apples a week for basic classroom snacks. Tim only has 1, John has 3, and Mary has 5.
You can go with equality of assistance, and give them all 4 apples, so that now Tim has 5, but John now has 7, and Mary who already had as many as she needed, now has a huge excess at 9.
Or you can shoot for equality of result, and give Tim 4, John 2, and Mary none, and they will each have 5.
The second option is better, more sensible, more effective, more cost efficient, and just superior in every concievable way, except for the fact that Mary will feel it's not fair she didn't get and more apples, wont really care that she already had enough, will just feel cheated and complain about it and make eveyone sorry for even trying to help.
You are being Mary.
For the record, I never argued for this, I'm not sure why you are assuming I did.
"You can go with equality of assistance, and give them all 4 apples, so that now Tim has 5, but John now has 7, and Mary who already had as many as she needed, now has a huge excess at 9."
I agree that that is silly. If we can agree as a society, by vote or legislation, that paying for students lunches if they cannot afford it is worthwhile (and for the record, as a non-parent, I think it is) then we would not have any reason to give any to Mary. I would agree that if they each need 5, they should each get a share relative to how much the program can provide given its funded resources. Since these programs tend to be strapped for financial resources, giving any to Mary is wholly unfair because it probably means failing to meet minimum requirements for another child.
It's a lot easier to just state "I am for equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome." That appears consistent with your second example, and it has always been my position going back to when I was still a child.
Equality of outcome is both impossible, and textbook Communism. Equality of opportunity is perhaps also technically impossible, but I think it's more plausible and clearly causes far fewer negative externalities.
I think the levels of the analogy are getting messy. equal opportunity is, in my analogy, each student having the 5 apples. What they do with the energy and nutrition from the 5 apples is variable, but getting them all to the even playing field of 5 apples is the goal. And the law (the law in this case being the rules in place to get them all to equal opportunity) simply cannot treat them all equally as they are not equal, the needed input to get them all to the same opportunity is simply not equal. Haveing the Laws of "apple stimulus" treat them equally would be foolish.
So lets drop the analogy and go back to the real world, to get to an even playing field, to have an equal chance at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for everyone, regardless of the demographic they occupy, demands that the law address that demographic inequity. And just like with the apples and the students, giving the same amount of civil rights legal help to Latinos, Black Folk, Gays, Straits, White Folk, etc makes no more sense than giving all of the students the same number of apples regardless of how many they started with.