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RE: History Is Not a Safe Space

in #life8 years ago

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.

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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:
hate-crime-laws-islamophobia-labour-party-ed-miliband-south-park1.jpg

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.

"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."

This is the part where you lose me. If we all agree that we should have a law to raise everyone to a minimum 5 apples, then that law applies equally to someone who has 1 apples or 5 apples - they both are raised to a minimum of 5 apples. I'm good with that.

That's how welfare and means tests work and I don't see it as a problem. This is equal treatment under the law.

You can do the same with discrimination laws. "No one shall be discriminated against for their race or gender."

Or, you can go SJW and force things like "50% female cabinet regardless of merit" - forced equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity.

I mean, flip that around. What if Trump came in and said "I will force a minimum 50% male cabinet, regardless of merit." That would be obviously sexist and spawn a massive scandal.

However, it is applauded by SJWs when the PM of Canada does the exact same thing. These people are not for any kind of equality. They are only for whatever rule benefits them personally the most.

From Curb Your Enthusiasm:

"Larry complains to his doctor's receptionist about their policy of letting patients see the doctor in the order in which they sign in, regardless of their appointment time. On his next visit, he wrestles Marissa Winokur in order to sign in before her. However, it's a wasted effort as his complaint has led to an abandonment of the "seen as you are signed in" policy. He complains again and this time the receptionist opines that perhaps Larry doesn't want a fair policy, he just wants the "you first policy!" And Larry agrees."

That's what SJWs all want. The SJW first policy. The discriminate, but only in my favor, policy.

It's disgusting, and you defend it when you hurl a term like MRA as if it should automatically be an insult because SJWs think it should be.

Feminist, now that's a word that sounds like a lot of other nasty words I know. Racist. Sexist. Genderist. Collectivist. Rapist.

Source: http://www.hbo.com/curb-your-enthusiasm/episodes/1/05-interior-decorator/article/keywords.html

PS - The only group I ascribe myself to is realist. I don't care much for most -isms.