On 02/01/2011 1:35 PM, Warp wrote:

>    Well, I'd say the problem is one of basic principles of human rights.
>
>    One of them is "innocent until proven guilty". If the basic assumption
> is that "if an employer doesn't hire enough members of a minority group,
> it's probably discrimination" that's an assumption of guilt by default,
> which is the completely opposite to what it should be.
>

Employers have no human rights they are not human.
By that I mean, people (who have their own indisputable human rights) 
have a function as an employer.
Owing to the past history of employers is it not understandable that 
they are guilty until they can prove themselves innocent?

>    The accuser (in this case the government imposing the quotas) has the
> burden of proof, not the accused (in this case the employer). That's
> judicial procedure 101. It doesn't matter what statistics may say. You
> can't go making guilty-by-default assumptions.
>

Oh! Yes you can. (It is still the panto season ;-))


-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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Warp wrote:
>   One of them is "innocent until proven guilty". If the basic assumption
> is that "if an employer doesn't hire enough members of a minority group,
> it's probably discrimination" that's an assumption of guilt by default,
> which is the completely opposite to what it should be.

If you stagger into the road clutching a cleaver and covered in blood after 
neighbors report a lot of screaming, is it presumptuous to arrest you until 
the police find out whether there's a dismembered body inside?

>   The accuser (in this case the government imposing the quotas) has the
> burden of proof, not the accused (in this case the employer). That's
> judicial procedure 101. It doesn't matter what statistics may say. You
> can't go making guilty-by-default assumptions.

Nobody said the employer is guilty of discrimination. We said they get 
investigated.

 >   That's as ridiculous as claiming that forbidding women's
 >  suffrage applies equally to all people, and hence it's fair.

Anyone with enough money is allowed to own slaves, right? So it's not 
discrimination.

The fact that you recognize this is *exactly* the point we're trying to 
make. There are democracies where this isn't recognized, specifically 
because the majority of people don't recognize it. And if it's the people 
voting for what they want, the minority gets legally discriminated against, 
exactly because the majority doesn't enforce what you think of as natural 
human rights.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Warp wrote:
 >  A society consists of individuals, all of who must have the same
 > constitutional rights and responsibilities.

And in California, they do. One of those is that same-sex couples can't get 
married, regardless of whether they're heterosexual or homosexual. You may 
think this is wrong, but you've offered zero advice on how one would go 
about making this better in a constitutional democracy.

> I'm sure there are some countries which have a constitution which
> explicitly makes some exceptions towards some minorities,

Welcome to California.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>  >  A society consists of individuals, all of who must have the same
>  > constitutional rights and responsibilities.

> And in California, they do. One of those is that same-sex couples can't get 
> married, regardless of whether they're heterosexual or homosexual. You may 
> think this is wrong, but you've offered zero advice on how one would go 
> about making this better in a constitutional democracy.

  I like how you keep bringing up examples of discrimination as examples
of non-discrimination.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 1/2/2011 6:16 AM, andrel wrote:
> Note that I am not a proponent of positive discrimination. Yet, I
> understand why under some circumstances some people think society as a
> whole would profit on the long term if some measures were implemented.
> That is perhaps a bit abstract, but it means that I am willing to
> support measures that I think are wrong.
>
To toss in my two cents, I both am, and am not. It may be necessary to 
take corrective steps to fix a real problem, but not necessary to 
maintain those steps once the problem is no longer significant. The 
difficulty in the US is that there is *ample* evidence, some of it from 
the very people crying about such positive discrimination, that the 
original problem is a few generations away from being no longer 
relevant. This is due to some "local" individual interactions still 
being *very* racist, or hugely sectarian, just to name two such issues, 
to the extent that the only thing curtailing certain acts are those laws 
that make it punishable to act on such a bias. In those places, the 
"individual" interaction issues are systemic macro level problems, 
still. Ironically, easing the law someplace where there is less of one 
would simply have the effect of moving the people from where they are, 
to someplace they imagine they are more open, and legally allowed, to 
act on those systemic biases.

Worse, we see a similar, unintentional, one with, for example, schools. 
You have failing schools most commonly in places where certain people 
live, less money sent to those places, because politicians tend to be 
more concerned with getting elected than helping people that may not be 
voting at all, or worse, in this case, many of the people in those 
areas, lacking secular foundations on which to survive, like education, 
turn to churches, and those tend to... well, not exactly side with 
rationality, or encourage voting for people willing to fix problems, 
instead of just be "godly", what ever the F that means. And, on top of 
that, when church fails, you get crime instead. So, we end up with a 
multi-level imbalance. You can't fix the crime, or the reliance of 
fantasy, instead of jobs, or the job problem, or *anything* else, 
without fixing the education system, and you can't do that without 
biasing, someplace, the system in favor of helping those people more 
than someone else.

You could try, but.. attempts to fix the problems without addressing the 
core causes are generally dismal failures. And, of course, for every one 
person we have saying, "We need to fix these things.", we have another 
saying, "What is there to fix? If they didn't want to live like that, 
they would move someplace else." Hmm.., where exactly, and how, without 
the parents *choosing* to step away from all the stuff helping them 
fail, instead of just moving to some place where all the same crutches 
are present? And, for that matter, how, if they don't have the resources?

You need a bottom up solution, and most of them are top down that get 
tried. But, a bottom up solution requires "recognizing" who you are 
talking about, and giving them more help than you would someone from a 
good neighborhood, with a good school, parents with decent educations, 
sufficient money, etc.

Mind, top down solutions do have one benefit... Eventually the effect is 
to actually land more and more of the people who where *not* in the 
category being discussed in the same boat, until nearly everyone is 
equally poor, uneducated, and prospect-less. We see that starting to 
happen too now, in the US. And, obviously, you no longer need "racial" 
equality opportunity laws, if everyone is screwed equally by the system 
anyway, and the problem is purely one of *no one* having good schools, 
college, or any chance at a job paying more than poverty levels.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >   The accuser (in this case the government imposing the quotas) has the
> > burden of proof, not the accused (in this case the employer). That's
> > judicial procedure 101. It doesn't matter what statistics may say. You
> > can't go making guilty-by-default assumptions.

> Nobody said the employer is guilty of discrimination. We said they get 
> investigated.

  The context, at least from my part, was hiring quotas imposed by the
government.

  If someone is suspected of a crime, then it should be investigated.
A hiring quota is not investigation. It's assumption of guilt.

>  >   That's as ridiculous as claiming that forbidding women's
>  >  suffrage applies equally to all people, and hence it's fair.

> Anyone with enough money is allowed to own slaves, right? So it's not 
> discrimination.

  I like how you keep bringing up examples of discrimination as examples
of non-discrimination.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> Mind, top down solutions do have one benefit... Eventually the effect is 
> to actually land more and more of the people who where *not* in the 
> category being discussed in the same boat, until nearly everyone is 
> equally poor, uneducated, and prospect-less. We see that starting to 
> happen too now, in the US. And, obviously, you no longer need "racial" 
> equality opportunity laws, if everyone is screwed equally by the system 
> anyway, and the problem is purely one of *no one* having good schools, 
> college, or any chance at a job paying more than poverty levels.

  One could even make the argument that a society actually *benefits* on
the whole in the long term from inequality (in terms of education, job
opportunities and such), from some people being part of an "elite".

  Why? Because not everybody can be an astrophysicist, an electronics
engineer, a surgeon, or the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. We
need people who make and cause progress (the "elite"), and we need people
who make that progress possible (the "workers"), and we need people to
direct and lead other people (the "bosses").

  If everybody is forced to always stand on the same line as everybody
else, that will stagnate and inhibit progress. The brilliant people are
actually stopped from achieving innovation because they are forced to
stand back. No matter how "unfair" it might be, but some people just are
naturally more talented, intelligent and capable than others. This is just
a fact of life and we have to live with it. Rather than complain about how
unfair this is, the society as a whole benefits if these "elite" people are
given the opportunity to thrive, to innovate, to drive progress. Moreover,
they should actually been given incentive (eg. monetary) to do so.

  This is the reason why I think pure socialism is bad for a society:
In pure socialism nobody owns anything, and the government forces everybody
to the same line. This stagnates progress and removes incentive for
people to improve because there is no reward. While pure capitalism
might be bad for other reasons, it at least motivates and rewards
innovation (so the best solution might be somewhere in-between the two
extremes).

  Things like government-imposed hiring and enrollment quotas fail for
that same reason, because while trying to fight perceived discrimination,
as a side-effect some of the truly brilliant people might get shunned.
Granted, actual discrimination can shun brilliant people among the group
of people being discriminated against, but hiring quotas are not the
solution to that problem. They only cause more problems than they solve.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 2-1-2011 20:50, Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott<sel### [at] npgcablecom>  wrote:
>> Mind, top down solutions do have one benefit... Eventually the effect is
>> to actually land more and more of the people who where *not* in the
>> category being discussed in the same boat, until nearly everyone is
>> equally poor, uneducated, and prospect-less. We see that starting to
>> happen too now, in the US. And, obviously, you no longer need "racial"
>> equality opportunity laws, if everyone is screwed equally by the system
>> anyway, and the problem is purely one of *no one* having good schools,
>> college, or any chance at a job paying more than poverty levels.
>
>    One could even make the argument that a society actually *benefits* on
> the whole in the long term from inequality (in terms of education, job
> opportunities and such), from some people being part of an "elite".
>
>    Why? Because not everybody can be an astrophysicist, an electronics
> engineer, a surgeon, or the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. We
> need people who make and cause progress (the "elite"), and we need people
> who make that progress possible (the "workers"), and we need people to
> direct and lead other people (the "bosses").
>
>    If everybody is forced to always stand on the same line as everybody
> else, that will stagnate and inhibit progress. The brilliant people are
> actually stopped from achieving innovation because they are forced to
> stand back. No matter how "unfair" it might be, but some people just are
> naturally more talented, intelligent and capable than others. This is just
> a fact of life and we have to live with it. Rather than complain about how
> unfair this is, the society as a whole benefits if these "elite" people are
> given the opportunity to thrive, to innovate, to drive progress. Moreover,
> they should actually been given incentive (eg. monetary) to do so.

Wait a minute, are you really claiming that the white race is superior here?

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On 2-1-2011 20:29, Warp wrote:
> Darren New<dne### [at] sanrrcom>  wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>   >   A society consists of individuals, all of who must have the same
>>   >  constitutional rights and responsibilities.
>
>> And in California, they do. One of those is that same-sex couples can't get
>> married, regardless of whether they're heterosexual or homosexual. You may
>> think this is wrong, but you've offered zero advice on how one would go
>> about making this better in a constitutional democracy.
>
>    I like how you keep bringing up examples of discrimination as examples
> of non-discrimination.

I don't think I like it, but I understand why you consistently fail to 
answer his real points. In this case the point was the second line: 'You 
may think this is wrong, but you've offered zero advice on how one would 
go about making this better in a constitutional democracy.' Darren is 
fully aware of what he was saying in the line before that and I find it 
rather disturbing that you seem not to understand that he is.

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andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Wait a minute, are you really claiming that the white race is superior here?

  Are you seriously expecting me not to get offended by such a comment?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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