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Warp wrote:
> Does that somehow invalidate what I'm saying?
Yes. At least in the context of this conversation.
You're arguing that we don't need reverse-discrimination laws (aka
affirmative action) because of what you believe. Yet you also acknowledge
that what you believe isn't common. If what you believed was common, we
wouldn't need anti-discrimination laws in the first place, let alone
reverse-discrimination laws.
>> Is it age discrimination to outlaw adults having sex with prepubescents? If
>> not, why not?
>
> You might as well ask if it's discrimination to outlaw people from stealing
> and murdering.
From that, you seem to think it is *not* age discrimination?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcable com> wrote:
> True, the problem of course being that just because person X was a
> genius at Y, doesn't mean that X's children, with all the opportunities
> and money, will either a) apply themselves to being that good at
> anything, or b) won't be a total idiot, while person Z's kids, who have
> no money, no schooling, etc. might not have been far better. This isn't
> just a hypothetical either, it happens all the damn time, its just hard
> to see, if the resources for the guy that *should have* been elite
> consists of the stuff taken from the local trash can, while the village
> idiot can hire 50 people, slightly smarter than himself, to make a
> small, mediocre, improvement in something.
Maybe I'm biased in my views because I'm living in Finland rather than
the US, the UK or some other country where education is (AFAIK) much more
dependent on people's wealth.
This mostly not the case in Finland. Everybody gets the same education
regardless of how wealthy they are, there are no separate schools for the
rich (even the idea feels foreign here), and even getting to a university
is cheap because the government pays for it (unlike in the US, where you
have to either be filthy rich or get some huge sponsorship). Basically
the only limiting factor for getting into a university is if you are
capable. It's not a question of money or social status.
(In fact, university students are actually considered poor by default,
which might feel a bit ironic to some people in some countries where only
the rich and lucky get to universities. The image of the poor and bohemian
university student is actually kind of a stereotype. Not a negative one,
though, and usually quite factual. I'm sure Finland is not the only such
country.)
> You really need to examine just how badly "pure capitalism", and lack of
> government intervention *does* fail.
You write as if I had defended pure capitalism.
IMO capitalism is ok, but needs a strong government to control it.
--
- Warp
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Darren New <dne### [at] san rr com> wrote:
> You're arguing that we don't need reverse-discrimination laws (aka
> affirmative action) because of what you believe. Yet you also acknowledge
> that what you believe isn't common. If what you believed was common, we
> wouldn't need anti-discrimination laws in the first place, let alone
> reverse-discrimination laws.
What I'm saying is that fighting discrimination with more discrimination
is not the correct solution.
> >> Is it age discrimination to outlaw adults having sex with prepubescents? If
> >> not, why not?
> >
> > You might as well ask if it's discrimination to outlaw people from stealing
> > and murdering.
> From that, you seem to think it is *not* age discrimination?
What does causing physical or monetary harm to somebody have to do with
whether it's discrimination or not?
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> (In fact, university students are actually considered poor by default,
This is true of the USA also. "Starving student" is the usual expression.
--
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] san rr com> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > (In fact, university students are actually considered poor by default,
> This is true of the USA also. "Starving student" is the usual expression.
I thought that the tuition fees are so extravagant there that only the
rich can afford it?
Or is it more like the parents pay the fees, their son/daughter has to
live with whatever is left?
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> Or is it more like the parents pay the fees, their son/daughter has to
> live with whatever is left?
Or the student gets their tuition paid by the university along with a small
monthly bonus to pay for housing and such. Tuition is expensive, but many
wind up not paying it, instead living off government grants,
university-specific grants (scholarships), etc. I only paid one year of
grad school. My advisor paid the rest.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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On 1/3/2011 10:49 AM, Warp wrote:
> andrel<byt### [at] gmail com> wrote:
>> On 2-1-2011 23:12, Warp wrote:
>>> andrel<byt### [at] gmail com> 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?
>
>> Why on earth would I want to offend you? What would I gain by that?
>
> Not all offence is intentional.
>
> I don't understand where the racial thing suddenly came up. I wasn't even
> thinking about races when I wrote that. I was thinking about (idealistic)
> socialism vs. capitalism, and the idea that it's somehow unfair that there
> vast differences in social classes and wealth distribution.
>
>> Now suddenly you claim that
>> the elite (people born from well off parents) should be in charge.
>
> You should read what I was responding to. Also, I didn't say that.
> I said that more *talented* people should be awarded and allowed to
> succeed, rather than forcing them down to the same line as everybody
> else, no matter how "unfair" the idea of some people succeeding (eg.
> by getting richer) might seem.
>
This I would *almost* agree with. The problem is.. How did someone once
put it, I think it was, "In the village of idiots, the elite is thrown
out and ostracized for being *too* different, while in the village of
geniuses, its the idiot who gets treated poorly." The law, and society,
attempts, perhaps stupidly, to fix *both* problems at the same time, but
the only way to do that is making everyone stand in the same line. If
you let those that god rich stand in one line, and everyone else stand
in the other, what you end up with *instead* is not the elite, best and
brightest in the rich line. What you get is one town of Harvard grads,
who got rich by *being* elite, next to another town full of village
idiots, who get there by inheriting the money, but not the smarts that
made it, *or* by catering to the lowest common level of stupid.
Just look at all the idiots that buy rubber bands with holograms and/or
magnets in them, and deny that they work via pure placebo effects. Any
idiot can make the things, it doesn't take a lot of brains to sell one,
or to make up claims about what they do, or hire someone to make a logo
to stamp on it, and any idiot willing to believe in them will buy the
damn things, sometimes are $60+ a piece, of they are one of those
"elite" athletes, with more muscle than brains. The scam artists made
millions off these, and every time they become unsellable, they merely
make up new shit, clue some new bits on one, name it something else, and
sell millions more, often to the same fools. Any attempt to claim these
people are "elite" just because they run good cons, the law doesn't
cover them properly, so can't stop it, etc., is a complete joke. They
have money, and talk about shit convincingly, that is the sole sum of
their "skill". Otherwise, they are no different than the people that
once sold patent medicines, because you could make more money going town
to town selling stuff you threw together in a bottle than you could
working at the local foundry. The guy working at that foundry, on the
other hand, may **actually** turn out to be the one that figured out how
to get aluminum out of a rock, which is both more useful *and* requires
actual knowledge.
Not everyone that has, or makes, money is producing stuff that is "high
quality", or even useful in the long term. Most of them are not, and
most are in it *solely* to make money, not to understand anything, or
learn anything, or improve anything, etc. Some even disparage people
that do want any of those things (they tend to own the local "big"
store, in the next town over, where all the village idiots live...)
--
void main () {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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On 1/3/2011 12:20 PM, Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott<sel### [at] npgcable com> wrote:
>> True, the problem of course being that just because person X was a
>> genius at Y, doesn't mean that X's children, with all the opportunities
>> and money, will either a) apply themselves to being that good at
>> anything, or b) won't be a total idiot, while person Z's kids, who have
>> no money, no schooling, etc. might not have been far better. This isn't
>> just a hypothetical either, it happens all the damn time, its just hard
>> to see, if the resources for the guy that *should have* been elite
>> consists of the stuff taken from the local trash can, while the village
>> idiot can hire 50 people, slightly smarter than himself, to make a
>> small, mediocre, improvement in something.
>
> Maybe I'm biased in my views because I'm living in Finland rather than
> the US, the UK or some other country where education is (AFAIK) much more
> dependent on people's wealth.
>
Hmm. Yeah, I think this is precisely the issue. Where you are, the
"baseline" is very fair, so the range of outcomes are not terribly
different from one group to the next. You go to some place like the US
and what you end up with is a damn mess where third world countries have
better chances in some neighborhoods, and the only difference between a
third world dictator and a CEO becomes how many elected officials they
have to buy off to get what they want, where the dictator could simply
shoot anyone that didn't play ball. The rich get rich because they *are*
rich, not because they do shit, the poor stay poor, because you can't
get a job that pays you jack, if you don't know anything at all, and the
same rich bozos that got that way by inheriting it don't want to give a
dime to fix the problem of some person they don't know having a 6th
grade education, and no prospects for college, never mind high school,
*ever*. The "baseline" in the US, in some places, looks less like a
small, grassy, hill, than a shear cliff.
--
void main () {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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Warp <war### [at] tag povray org> writes:
> 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.
>
> 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.
When I worked for the government I was not allowed to be involved in
decision making for projects if a relative was bidding on the contract
being offered.
Then when I worked for the private sector, I still couldn't.
Government regulators (e.g. those that regulate medicine, or media, etc)
are often forbidden from taking money or gifts from the folks they are
regulating.
Don't you think that's unfair? Shouldn't I get in trouble only if they
prove that these things influenced my decisions?
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Warp <war### [at] tag povray org> writes:
> Darren New <dne### [at] san rr com> wrote:
>> You're arguing that we don't need reverse-discrimination laws (aka
>> affirmative action) because of what you believe. Yet you also acknowledge
>> that what you believe isn't common. If what you believed was common, we
>> wouldn't need anti-discrimination laws in the first place, let alone
>> reverse-discrimination laws.
>
> What I'm saying is that fighting discrimination with more discrimination
> is not the correct solution.
And what Darren is saying is that you haven't provided a correct
solution.
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