My experience in commenting on mostly climate blogs since about 2008 is that the Left is remarkably stupid, dishonest, and intolerant. Additionally, the Left has an almost total lack of self-awareness of how superficial its knowledge of important issues is.
The point of this blog post is to hit the Left directly in order to provoke strong responses by those who disagree and to, hopefully, receive the best shot of those who disagree with me.
What follows are multiple examples of easily disproved positions or simply stupid behavior by people advocating for the Left. Notwithstanding, these simple and easily provable examples of gross stupidity or dishonesty, the Left arrogantly asserts that it is the repository of comparatively high levels of morality and competence. (See the silly New York Times advertising slogans dealing with “truth”) Additionally, the people of the Left making the stupid statements or acting incompetently suffer very little for their faults.
Before getting to the specifics of the points I will be making, I will anticipate one argument that is surely coming. That would be: What about the dishonesty of Trump? I will concede that Trump has a large streak of what I would call juvenile, rather than cunning, dishonesty. The difference between the Democratic Left and the Republican Right though is that substantial portions of the Republican Right criticize Trump for his dishonesty. On, the Democratic Left, however, there was virtually no opposition to the extremely dishonest and corrupt Clinton once she secured the Democratic nomination.
- John Holdren- A couple of examples of totally ridiculous statements by Holdren. “Some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the century.” – John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, “What We Must Do, and the Cost of Failure,” in Holdren and Ehrlich, Global Ecology (1971), p. 279. “As University of California physicist John Holdren has said, it is possible that carbon-dioxide climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020.” (See Master Resource.) Additionally, he lost the natural resources bet to Julian Simon. (See TierneyLab Blog: NYT.) Instead of being put to pasture for his obvious shortcomings, Holdren instead was appointed as Obama’s the senior advisor on science and technology issues. An absolute joke to have such a stupendous failure as a “science” advisor.  .
- Rajendra Pauchauri- He was was the chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 2002 until his resignation in 2015. When an IPCC report in 2007 incorrectly stated: “that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035” he called the correct criticism of the report “voodoo science.” In fact the statement about the glaciers was unsupported by science. (See Christopher Booker.) Additionally, he made the ridiculous and hateful statement that “climate change skeptics “are people who deny the link between smoking and cancer; they are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder,” he said. “I hope that they apply it (asbestos) to their faces every day.” (See Fox News.) This is really stupid because asbestos is dangerous when inhaled and not as applied to the skin. Also, a number of studies have found that talcum powder can be dangerous because it can be contaminated with asbestos. (See huffingtonpost.com.) So, Pachauri is hatefully spouting off and showing his scientific ignorance at the same time. Yet, he was the person responsible for the IPCC’s campaign against global warming for 13 years. Anyone, who spent any time with him had to know he was a nutcase, yet he was given responsibility to run the IPCC for a long time. Of course, these statements are on top of the sexual harassment claim that his employer found him guilty of. (See India Today.)
- Michael Mann-He is so stupid that he can’t determine whether the won a Nobel prize. (One would think that he would be aware that Nobel prize winners get cash prizes.) Not only is he so stupid that he doesn’t know whether the won a Nobel; additionally, he made that false claim in his defamation lawsuit, where one would think that plaintiffs would be extra careful about being accurate. (See para. 2 of complaint at nationalreview.com.)Additionally, in his lawsuit against Mark Steyn, Mann claimed to have been cleared in the UK post-climate gate investigations, when in reality they only purported to be investigations of climate science in general. See my comment at Sept. 8, 2014 at 8:47 AM where I discuss the brief in detail and pinpoint the deception. (See Climate Audit.) This person with the slipshod approach to accuracy is the same one who throws around the term “denier” as if he had some scientific or practical credibility.
- Pew Study Falsely Claiming That Obama Increased Deportations. There is no way to characterize this study other than as fake research. (See Pew Research.) The ridiculously stupid and dishonest statement from PEW was that “The Obama administration deported a record 438,421 unauthorized immigrants in fiscal year 2013, continuing a streak of stepped up enforcement that has resulted in more than 2 million deportations since Obama took office, newly released Department of Homeland Security data show.”
Essentially, all that Obama did was count Border Patrol apprehensions as deportations (which had not been the practice in the past), and then used the border patrol apprehensions to lie about the number of deportations and falsely claim that immigration enforcement had increased under his administration, when exactly the opposite was true. See this link which explains the real numbers. (See numbersusa.com and latimes.) Pew should retract this study. - Peter Gleick. After having been caught impersonating someone to break into the computer records of the Heartland Institute, the Pacific Institute (of which Gleick was the co-founder) hired a lawyer (who called his firm Independent Employment Counsel) to supposedly investigate Gleick for misconduct. So called “Independent Employment Counsel” refused to release its supposed investigation and stated: “”An independent review conducted by outside counsel on behalf of the Institute has supported what Dr Gleick has stated publicly regarding his interaction with the Heartland Institute.” (See opb.org.) This is a total garbage statement because it doesn’t state that everything that Gleick said was true. The statement by Counsel could be true if only one statement by Gleick was true and 10 were false. Only in the Alice in Wonderland world of “climate science” would someone have the dishonest imagination to make up such a ridiculous “exoneration,” and only in such a goofy, dishonest world would anyone purport to believe it.What is half humorous about Gleick is that he was the chair of the AGU Committee on Scientific Ethics at the time he broke into Heartland’s files; (see Climate Audit). Also, the stupid Michael Mann weighed in on this matter and stated that:
“I’m very pleased to learn that Peter has been exonerated…”
(See dotearth.blogs.) On top of his phony exoneration, Gleick has also received awards in the year 2015. (See Wikipedia: Gleick.) following his phony exoneration. Seriously, the Left embraces this transparently fake person, and the Left purports to be concerned about fake news created by the Right.
- The Efforts of the Left to Silence Stories about Hillary Clinton’s Health. Chris Cilliza of the Washington Post made the stupid statement that “So, to believe that something is seriously wrong with Clinton, you have to a) assume her doctor lied and b) that her coughing, which often happens when someone catches a cold or spends a lot of time speaking publicly, is a symptom of her deeper, hidden illness.” (See WaPo.) As one who has practiced workers’ compensation law, I know that doctors are no more immune than anyone else from lying. In fact, numerous lies were told by FDRs doctors in the months before he died. Also, Dr. Jacob Appel, who did historical research on this matter stated: “”These letters are essentially meaningless,… “No campaign is likely to release a letter stating its candidate is significantly ill or impaired.” (See Vox.) Consistent with Mr. Cillizza’s uniformed, intolerant, statement was the early comment on Sept. 10, 2016 by Eli Rabett (Professor Josh Halpern recently of Howard University)who made the ignorant and mean-spirited statement that my column on Hillary Clinton’s health should not have been written by stating that: “Well it must be election time as lucia has hauled out one of her pet ratfucers”. (See the blackboard.) He continued on in a post about an hour later and stated: “but like Brandon said some people will latch onto any issue no matter how baseless or idiotic.” When, on the next day Clinton fainted, and virtually everyone agreed that Clinton’s health was a legitimate issue, Mr. Halpern was nowhere to be found. Although it is bad enough that he is so closed-minded and poorly informed, the bigger issue is that someone as intolerant and poorly informed as him has taught students at a university. Universities should be places that encourage skepticism and the acquisition of new knowledge. Mr. Halpern has proven to be a closed-minded person without knowledge of the subject in which he attempts to silence others. His behavior is inimical to the acquisition of knowledge. Having been proved wrong, he never had the decency to own up to his mistake.
- Michael Brown was an unarmed Black Man Who Was Killed by the Police. This is a literally true statement that is 99.9% misleading. Yes, Brown was unarmed, but he was 6’4″ tall and weighed 280 pounds. It is 99.9% clear that he assaulted a police officer and charged the officer even after he had been shot. The formal investigation is summarized in Wikipedia. “Witness 108, a 74-year-old black male, told detectives that the police officer was “in the right” and “did what he had to do,” and that statements made by people in the apartment complex about Brown surrendering were inaccurate. Witness 108 later told investigators that he “would have fucking shot that boy, too”, and mimicked the aggressive stance Brown made while charging Wilson. He explained that Wilson told Brown to “stop” or “get down” at least ten times, but instead Brown “charged” at Wilson. Witness 108 also told detectives that there were other witnesses on Canfield Drive who saw what he did. There are multiple statements by minority people corroborating that Brown was the aggressor. (See Wikipedia: Shooting_of_Michael_Brown.) Additionally, forensic evidence strongly supported the position that Brown was the aggressor. “Brown’s DNA was found on the gun. His DNA was also found on the left thigh of Wilson’s pants and on the inside driver’s door handle of Wilson’s police SUV,[36] the result of Brown’s spilled blood staining Wilson’s pants and the door handle.[80] Wilson’s DNA was found on Brown’s left palm but was not found under Brown’s fingernails or on his right hand.[36]â€Notwithstanding, the overwhelming evidence, the Left Wing Media is still trying to make the case that Brown was a victim. The NYTs despicably stated on March 11, 2017 that “Regardless of what happened at the store in the early-morning hours, the new security footage does not resolve long-simmering questions about Mr. Brown’s encounter with Officer Darren Wilson along a Ferguson street that day. Officer Wilson, who claimed that he feared for his life and had been assaulted by Mr. Brown, was cleared of criminal wrongdoing by a county grand jury and federal civil rights investigators. He resigned from the Police Department.” (See NYT).
The writer for the NYTs, in his own mind apparently, thinks that he cleverly organized the literal facts in a way that would still give some substance to the story that Brown was a victim. In fact, it is clear that Brown was not a victim and that the NYT’s writer has composed a dishonest and fake story by selectively choosing to disclose only part of the real story.
CONCLUSION
The Left, at the very least, is as fact averse as is the right. However, the Left is so insular and imbued with an unearned sense of moral self-righteousness that it lacks the self-awareness to realize that it is every bit as deceptive and dishonest as is the Right, if not more so. Much of the Left’s dishonesty is a feature intrinsic to the Left’s institutions rather than a mistake caused by negligence or lack of sophistication. This is typified by the PEW Immigration study that I have cited as well as the Left’s attempts to claim that there is some basis to argue that Michael Brown was a victim. If influential Leftist institutions were concerned about the facts of illegal entry into the US and the facts of the Brown case, they would call out the dishonesty of those peddling easily demonstrable false narratives in each case. Instead, the Left is silent, and from what I can tell, it intends to deceive its own less-sophisticated supporters as well as people on the Right.
Then to add insult to injury, the dummy, dishonest Left, is intolerant of those with facts who could challenge and correct the Left’s falsehoods and mistakes.
JD
Endnote: I am very busy, but I wanted to get this post out. I might get to responses slowly, but I will attempt get to them.
This should be fun.
Nice post JD Ohio.
I look forward to reading this thread.
There is nothing more irritating than a do gooder, also known as holier than thou. The left is full of them.
RickA,
Oh… who irritates you more probably depends on who you disagree with more. The extremes on both sides have their faults. Some of the faults are different; some are the same. But yes, I think the discussion should be interesting.
Holy smokes. LOL. This could be interesting. If anybody elects to engage.
Are we going to extend courtesy and safe conduct to the (aHm) stupid, intolerant, dishonest lefty folk who lack self awareness that perhaps are sometimes made to feel less than welcome here? I didn’t mean this to be rhetorical, but I was thinking out loud and have realized my answer is: Obviously not. The topic is more of a call to war than a parley.
I’m skeptical that people will come engage this topic on the Blackboard again. Who here would go engage a mirror of this topic slamming the Right at Ander’s? (Rhetorical? meant to be: I wouldn’t waste my time doing that).
But – I’m often wrong! Perhaps this is one of those business as usual cases [edit: where I’m wrong as usual.]. 🙂
Then there’s the freedom of speech issue where lefties either shout down people they disagree with, get them uninvited to speak or force them to withdraw.
We have the Charles Murray incident at Middlebury College where a faculty member was injured in the fracas.
http://www.addisonindependent.com/201703middlebury-college-professor-injured-protesters-she-escorted-controversial-speaker
Most recently, James Webb, USNA 1968, decorated combat veteran, former US Senator and former Secretary of the Navy withdrew from an assembly honoring distinguished USNA graduates because 38 years ago he wrote an article stating that women should not be admitted to the Naval Academy. That opinion was unfashionable at the time, but was widely held.
http://nypost.com/2017/03/29/silencing-an-american-hero-the-shame-of-the-naval-academy/
That barely scratches the surface. Once upon a time, we might have heard something from the ACLU about these incidents. They defended the right of an avowed Nazi organization to hold a march. No more.
The intellectual dishonesty of many ‘progressives’ is obvious; you need only have listened to the Gorsuch hearings to hear ‘progressive’ senators complain about how terrible a judge is who promises to uphold the law rather than insist on ‘fair’ decisions which are contrary to the law. The big difference I see compared to conservatives is that ‘progressives’ often don’t give a $hit about following the law or the Constitution, and those are in fact considered only impediments to ‘progress’. The left does not accept the legal legitimacy of any law or constitutional requirement which they disagree with, and so will subvert rather than try to change it (a more difficult process, and one likely to fail, of course). All the howling about the illegitimacy of the electoral college, starting November 10 is an indication of their thinking on the constitution. I have seen similar thinking among badly behaved 4 year olds. It all falls under the general heading of ‘totalitarian tendencies’.
Mark Bofill: “This could be interesting. If anybody elects to engage.”
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By criticizing the Left in a very strong manner, I have thrown down the gauntlet. If I am wrong, those who disagree with me can blast away at my arguments. If no one can disprove or take down my arguments, I at least have a record of the Left’s dishonesty and stupidity that has not been rebutted.
JD
I got it now. All the Righties are going to burn their favorite Leftie effigies on this thread. I didn’t quite dare say ‘straw men’ instead of effigy, but perhaps we’ll see some of that as well!
Well, who am I to criticize. Heh.
JD,
Gotcher. But I worry that you issue the challenge from behind the walls of your stronghold, so to speak. Were I a leftie, I wouldn’t fight you here at the Blackboard, I guess is what I’m saying. I could be wrong. Hope I am, in fact. 🙂
[Edit: I’d bet the Left would engage this vigorously if it ran as a guest post at Anders though! :p]
Mark Bofill ” I’d bet the Left would engage this vigorously if it ran as a guest post at Anders though! :p”
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That is part of my point. I believe I wouldn’t get a chance to explain my views at a Leftist blog or at many Leftist universities. Much in the way that Eli Rabett tried to shout me down on my earlier Clinton health post.
JD
JD Ohio,
I doubt you will get many takers. Being intellectually honest and offering a reasoned defense is NOT what the left cares about. They care about ‘progress’ (progress: ‘fairness’ of outcomes, enforced by public control of most private activities) and nothing much more.
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A more subtle and more corrosive movement is delegitimizing the existence of the nation-state. If you believe that there should be only a single world government (controlled 100% by leftist elites, of course), then concepts like borders and immigration laws are nothing but impediments to your long term goals. It is just reworded Marxism, but it is pervasive among the ‘elites’ on college campuses and in the MSM.
JD,
Fair enough. Tell you what; I’ll shut up for awhile. If you’re not getting a good fight by this evening, with your permission I might take up the gage against you. The trouble is I tend to want to go meta and ‘discuss the discussion’ rather than discuss the points at hand. I’ll can make a deliberate effort not to do that, if it comes to it, if you want.
We’ll see. 🙂
SteveF ” Being intellectually honest and offering a reasoned defense is NOT what the left cares about. They care about ‘progress’ (progress: ‘fairness’ of outcomes, enforced by public control of most private activities) and nothing much more.”
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Many non-“activist” supporters of the Left care about these issues. However, I question whether people like Clinton and other leaders care about this issues at all. A good portion of them simply hijack the issues in order to enrich themselves. In any event, unless you care about the facts, and are open to facts, your emotional support of any particular issue is simply self-indulgent posturing.
JD
SteveF: “A more subtle and more corrosive movement is delegitimizing the existence of the nation-state. If you believe that there should be only a single world government (controlled 100% by leftist elites, of course), then concepts like borders and immigration laws are nothing but impediments to your long term goals.”
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I agree with much of what you say here. My take is that the Left favors open borders mostly to import poor voters who will support the elite’s actions that disfavor the middle class. (Tech companies, for instance, can import cheaper workers. Other companies can import cheap manual laborers) If the US becomes a rat hole, they can just pick up and leave.
JD
“Left is remarkably stupid, dishonest”
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I don’t think they are. They just seem to be.
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“and intolerant.”
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Definitely true.
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“Additionally, the Left has an almost total lack of self-awareness of how superficial its knowledge of important issues is.”
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True again.
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“However, the Left is so insular and imbued with an unearned sense of moral self-righteousness that it lacks the self-awareness to realize that it is every bit as deceptive and dishonest as is the Right, if not more so.”
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I would say that they lack the self-awareness to realize that they might be wrong.
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The left seems to operate in a closed feedback loop. They are convinced they are correct, so there is no need to understand opposing arguments, so they misunderstand those arguments, so the opposing arguments seem wrong, so they are convinced they are correct.
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What distinguishes the left from the right is the way people on the left all sing from the same hymn book in near perfect harmony, as opposed to the cacophony on the right. They have taken orthodoxy (literally “right thinking”) to a level that could only be dreamed of by the medieval church. That ability to maintain orthodoxy enables and enforces the feedback loop.
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Orthodoxy is enforced by bullying: racist, homophobe, sexist, den!er, etc. Those tactics have been adopted by ruthless elements determined to get their way and have successfully transformed the left into the sad and dangerous thing it is today.
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The only hope is to get those who are with the left, but not of the left (I was once one of them) to realize what is going on (as I gradually did). I don’t think this screed by JD advances that.
mark
You have a point. That is a problem with the web generally. To some extent, it’s a broader problem even outside the web.
Mike M: “The only hope is to get those who are with the left, but not of the left (I was once one of those) to realize what is going on. I don’t think this screed by JD advances that.”
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This is a fair and legitimate criticism that I don’t agree with. Let me ask you this– Do you think there is any possible way to get the Leftist media to stop repeating the Michael Brown lie that he was a victim in any fashion. It is very clear that he charged the police officer, but the media still tries to infer that there is some question of whether or not he was a victim long past the time when it is clear he was not.
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Also, how would you suggest that the fake Pew study be dealt with. It should obviously be retracted, but it is still up and used to lie about Obama’s deportation record. In fact, about 10 days ago, I saw a Republican congressman refer to it.
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I know of no way to deal with issues like these at this point in time other than to hit them where it hurts. Persuasion and facts at this point in time simply seem to bounce off of the Left’s reality distortion zone.
JD
JD Ohio
I think the open/closed borders issue is more complicated than that.
Historically, there has been a problem that immigration issues are somewhat interlaced with racism or ethnicism. So part of people’s views is always that.
At the same time, immigration does have economic consequences and these differ for different groups– and even differ over time. Some are beneficial; some not, Letting people who are talented and hard working in can give a competitive advantage and lift all boats. But hordes arriving at a rate the economy cannot handle does depress wages. This tends to harm those at the lower end of wage scales more. It can benefit some employers who can use it to keep wages down.
Worse: We are currently in a situation where a fraction of the masses of people on the move from country to country includes people who actively want to change whatever country the move to. They wish to do so in a way that differs from people merely wanting to have their own enclaves (the way the Poles, Irish, Jews and so on in Chicago had their enclaves– and many did elsewhere. But these groups didn’t have a strong desire to change everyone else.) And a smaller fraction of the masses currently wanting to leave their own countries and go elsewhere want to overthrow governments where they arrive.
So: this is a feature that makes a potential immigration different in a way that is not mere racism. That said: the group against this immigration also includes at least some whose views are strongly colored by racism. That’s always been the case with immigration.
So: immigration is complicated. Unfortunately, lots of people want to assume that “the other” has only one motivation– and often that motivation is “bad” one. In reality, I think people generally hold several of the views at once– and individually try to balance.
Mike M,
“I don’t think this screed by JD advances that.”
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I agree. Baby steps are difficult in political debates, long jumps are impossible; JD will be dismissed as a right wing crank…. or worse, and the issues not ever seriously addressed.
Lucia: “this is a feature that makes a potential immigration different in a way that is not mere racism. That said: the group against this immigration also includes at least some whose views are strongly colored by racism. That’s always been the case with immigration.”
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I agree that substantial numbers of people are motivated by racism. However, just because people have improper motivations does not mean that the actual policy is wrong. (However, the people with improper motivations should be called out) For instance, many people opposed to busing were motivated by racism. However, busing was still a disastrous policy.
JD
Lucia,
The immigration conundrum is something of an own-goal, because a long series of administrations have consistently refused to enforce existing immigration laws. It is a felony (including prison time and large fines per instance) to knowingly employ an illegal alien; never enforced. It is a felony (including large fines and prison time) for anyone to provide assistance or sanctuary, to avoid deportation, to a person they know is an illegal alien; never enforced.
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Failure to enforce the existing laws is the fundamental problem, not that a lot of bad guys who are here illegally end up involved in crime. Nobody is serious about reducing illegal immigration except Trump, and even he isn’t that serious…. he will not enforce the existing laws either, but will ‘build a wall’.
JD Ohio
That is true. But care has to be taken to make sure the policy isn’t wrong. Or, possibly more importantly, to implement it in ways that address actual economic or security problems that exist. Because otherwise, if the racist motivation is allowed to drive the details of the policy, it’s not unlikely that the policy will not properly address the economic and security issues.
(I’m not going to pretend that coming up with a good policy is easy. It’s not.)
JD: ” Persuasion and facts at this point in time simply seem to bounce off of the Left’s reality distortion zone.”
For the committed leftists, that is true. But there are many people who have been long time liberals and don’t like many of the excesses of the activist left. But that is still their tribe, they still think that the left basically shares their goals, and still think the right is wrongheaded. They are the ones who can potentially be influenced.
Lucia: ” Because otherwise, if the racist motivation is allowed to drive the details of the policy, it’s not unlikely that the policy will not properly address the economic and security issues.”
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The first thing we have to acknowledge openly and clearly is that open borders is simply not a feasible policy. The Left refuses to do that. (Symptomatic of that are they many sanctuary cities springing up) I said before what I would argue is that many good people want to come here but that we simply can’t accept all who want to come. The right of the US as a nation to refuse to accept even good people has to be established. The Left on the other hand accepts the idea that anyone who can sneak in is entitled to stay.
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Also, the phony labeling of illegal entrants as undocumented immigrants (minimizing the illegality of their presence and the moral issue of putting their children at risk of deportation at vulnerable times) and other distortions of language by those advocating for open borders has to be vigorously opposed.
JD
Mike M: “But that is still their tribe, they still think that the left basically shares their goals, and still think the right is wrongheaded.They are the ones who can potentially be influenced.”
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Another fair point. Again however, I would ask how you would deal with Michael Brown and the Pew study, for example, where obvious lies are peddled again and again with no adverse consequences to those peddling the lies. Unless there is a penalty for obvious lying and some consequences within your own tribe, I don’t know how it can be stopped.
JD
Lucia: “Letting people who are talented and hard working in can give a competitive advantage and lift all boats. But hordes arriving at a rate the economy cannot handle does depress wages. This tends to harm those at the lower end of wage scales more. It can benefit some employers who can use it to keep wages down.”
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A very nice summary of a key issue. I’d add that immigration can also reduce the prices of some good and services. That benefits people whose jobs and safety are not threatened by immigrants. Highly educated, well paid people. Most of whom support the left.
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Lucia: “Worse: We are currently in a situation where a fraction of the masses of people on the move from country to country includes people who actively want to change whatever country the move to. They wish to do so in a way that differs from people merely wanting to have their own enclaves (the way the Poles, Irish, Jews and so on in Chicago had their enclaves– and many did elsewhere. But these groups didn’t have a strong desire to change everyone else.)”
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Another key issue. The earlier enclaves were typically for support, not separation, and as such were only minor barriers to eventual assimilation. Not so with some immigrants today.
JD: “Also, the phony labeling of illegal entrants as undocumented immigrants (minimizing the illegality of their presence and the moral issue of putting their children at risk of deportation at vulnerable times) and other distortions of language by those advocating for open borders has to be vigorously opposed.”
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But the left is no longer doing that. They are now labeling illegal entrants as “immigrants”. No distinction whatever between illegal and legal. Notice this the next time you see a news report on some city or demonstration supporting immigrants. As with so much leftist stupidity (that they are not stupid does not mean that they don’t do stupid things) that could boomerang. If the public increasingly equates immigration with illegal immigration, the result could be a collapse of support for any immigration.
JD
I agree distortions of language should be eliminated. Also people should recognize that the main responsibility for the harm that inconvenient deportation inflicts on children falls on the parents who chose to risk that event. Presumably they thought worth the risk– until, of course, it happens.
I also agree that we can’t have 100% open borders. It was possible in the 1700s– and even then, largely because European diseases (smallpox, measles, malaria …) had cleared away such a large fraction of the indigenous population that there was room for new people to migrate in. Otherwise, the indigenous population would likely have been against the migration and would have been in a position to prevent it.
Mike M
I don’t even care if a group assimilates. A group that wanted to be separate like the Amish or some ultra-orthodox Jews in New York is fine with me. These groups often have some self-imposed isolation and can’t be said to have “assimilated”. But they aren’t trying to make everyone else comply with their rules or views. So I have no problem with merely “not assimilating”.
What is unique is a group that to all appearances contains a non-negligible minority fraction who strongly want a to change the local rules and impose theirs on others and do so quickly. Examples of immigrants wanting to impose their social rules in bars and restaurants and so on around Paris exist. I’d have to hunt the web a bit. But this is a difference and it complicates immigration if a group very strongly wants to us to change for their comfort.
We haven’t seem much of groups trying to change the US, but there is some evidence from Europe that a sub-set Moslem immigrants want to change western culture. So it’s at least plausible the reason we aren’t seeing it is we have had a smaller number of immigrants relative to our population.
Obviously, it makes sense to recognize what is going on in Europe, discuss it and figure out where the balance for limiting immigration lies. My view is we should permit some immigration but certainly recognize that for multiple reasons that include cultural and economic factors, we cannot afford an overwhelming flood of immigrants.
JD,
“The Left on the other hand accepts the idea that anyone who can sneak in is entitled to stay.”
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Many of those folks believe nation-states with controlled borders are illegitimate institutions; they should never restrict residency. That is, the residents of a nation state do not have any moral or legal right to control access to their geographic region. Guatemalans have just as much right to live in Ohio as you do… and to vote for Democrats after they take up residency, of course. 😉
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That is the fundamental disagreement. Protecting those who are here illegally from deportation is just a result of the fundamental disagreement about the legitimacy of a nation-state with controlled borders.
JD, thanks. I see this more as a slow motion civil war where the forces that seek to exploit climate fear and the lucrative side of illegal immigration push both issues with rabid intensity of slave owners defending their peculiar institution. Large cities make a LOT of money off of illegals: fed money is largely distributed by census count. And are Congressional Rep seats. Not citizen count; head count. Also, high illegal populations keep city machine (democrats) in power. They in effect get power they are not actually entitled to.It is a corrosive process over time. I don’t know if the rest of us, fragmented and diffuse, can over come this rebellion.
SteveF,
I think many people will always feel sorry for children who experience an adverse event. But feeling sorry for someone isn’t a very good basis for protecting them from deportation. If it was, then one would be required to let in everyone outside we felt sorry for. That’s a heck of a lot of people.
I feel sorry for huge number of people born into poverty all over the world. Unfortunately, we can’t fix all of that by making open borders. Deportation is more visible than ‘not letting in’. But if the standard is “feel sorry for”, then if you don’t deport, you should let everyone in.
As much as I wish it was not a bad idea to let everyone who wants to get in, in it is a bad idea. There needs to be an orderly process for getting in.
That said: It would be nice if Trump didn’t go around enacting things is stooooopid ways.
Lucia: “But feeling sorry for someone isn’t a very good basis for protecting them from deportation.”
If it was, we would not be able to send people to prison if they have kids.
Julian Simon’s bet was with Paul Ehrlich. I think the book you describe has Holdren talking about global cooling not warming, with a suggested solution to melt the Arctic by putting black carbon in the air.
There was also for some time a speedup to clear immigration backlogs, with some sort of miniamnesty given for people who left quickly. This added to deportation numbers, and the process was stopped as soon as they got the numbers they wanted.
MikeN “Julian Simon’s bet was with Paul Ehrlich. ”
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The bet was with Ehrlich and two of his colleagues, one of whom was Holdren. See http://web.stanford.edu/group/CCB/Pubs/Ecofablesdocs/thebet.htm
JD
Lucia,
Trump is too ‘stooopid’ to have an honest conversation with the voters about immigration laws and the utter failure of past adminstrations to enforce those laws. I very much doubt most voters in the States are even aware of the very strong immigration laws which have been simply not enforced by at least 6 presidents (including Trump).
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But here is what sticks in my craw: I have spent several thousands of dollars each year for 20+ years trying to improve the lives of kids in very poor countries, including some of the Central American countries which are the source of many illegal aliens today. I grow tired of having ‘progressives’, many of whom wouldn’t know actual generosity if it jumped up and bit them in the behind, accuse conservatives who try to make a difference in the lives of poor kids, of being racists, bigots, troglodytes, and worse. Despite the disconnect from reality, I am pretty sure they will not stop the insults.
Sheesh: The Left has no shame. Peter Gleick has a regular column in the Huffington Post. Nothing this clown does disqualifies him from spouting off from the Left. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/peter-h-gleick Found this when looking for something else.
JD
JD,
And the part of this that suprises is?
SteveF:
“JD, And the part of this that surprises is?”
….
I guess you are right. When you think that the Left can’t go lower, it does and more cockroaches come out.
JD
Mirror meet looking glass.
Skipped a few reads on the way through the list. Just looking at the names of the commentators. Some regulars not here, perhaps a little bit taken aback by the robust ? opinions put forward.
I thought Mike M. (Comment #160598) with his overall observations purposely devoid of specific examples summed up my views in a way.
You could, devoid of the specific examples, just interchange the word left with right and say exactly the same things and be just as correct.
“I know of no way to deal with issues like these at this point in time other than to hit them where it hurts. Persuasion and facts at this point in time simply seem to bounce off of the Left’s reality distortion zone.”
It was a good primal scream from JD . Straight from the heart and letting out his feelings of being hurt by the hypocrisy of the world.
His examples are all more or less correct. But it will not easily foster discourse or dissent. See
“Mark bofill (Comment #160584) This could be interesting. If anybody elects to engage.”
Let us start with Immigration and compassion..
Would you invite strangers into your home and give them a cup of tea and a meal? This was the good experience one of my sons had traveling on his own in Iran two years ago. OK, slightly daunting but yes?
Would you let them stay for a week, Hell,no. Well unless there was some quid pro quo one needed. Kids taken to school, house cleaned, Computer Internet problems solved etc. I.e. the illegal immigrant in USA. Would you let them stay forever taking your kids jobs and your petrol and your healthcare. I guess if they stay that long then they are you. As Pogo said “We have met the enemy and he is us”
“I also agree that we can’t have 100% open borders”, really means “I also agree that we don’t want 100% open borders”. I understand this. This is my feeling in Australia. Partly it is a reaction against change, partly it is a reaction of protecting privilege and imagined/real ownership. Partly it is tribal.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this. It is not a loss of compassion. It is a reality of being a human being but looked at from another viewpoint it can be construed or misconstrued as being racist and lacking in compassion.[“I agree distortions of language should be eliminated”].
In this context I dispute “Letting people who are talented and hard working in can give a competitive advantage and lift all boats. ”
It only lifts some boats. In the same way as sending computer work off to India only lifts some boats.
What this conveniently forgets, in the name of compassion, Is the jobs that the indigents get, the number of locals who now and in the future do not achieve their full potential as doctors lawyers plumbers and electricians because the jobs and careers they would have followed have now been taken by these new intelligent workers.
The same argument as for low paid workers.The boat appears to rise but at the same time the foundations crumble. Silicon valley shines while people get high and shot in the parking lots. Wicked the musical comes to mind for both the left and the right, No good deed goes unpunished.
angech
On some things you could make the exact same observations: absolutely, yes. The issues differ.. but yes. Some of this is “how people are”.
The thing is: depending on era, we’ll have it become “not permitted” to say X. The in other eras it’s not permitted to say !X. We can debate which era we are in. But both sides need to hear that they can be the problem. Even if they don’t accept it, to some extent the do need to hear it. Will they? Because of this post? Possibly not– after all, people can filter what they are exposed to and they will “turn off”.
It is certainly true JD is focusing on the problems on the (actually far) left. Because he is more to the right. The far right also has problems. JD doesn’t mention those (though I do think it’s clear he knows they exist.)
angech
Well… actually, I should have completed the thought. We cant have 100% open borders and retain the major elements of our culture and keep the economy smooth. It’s true that open borders might have been possible in the past but it’s become so much easier to move. So floods of people can occur.
Angech: “You could, devoid of the specific examples, just interchange the word left with right and say exactly the same things and be just as correct.”
No, you can not. There are certainly problems with the right, but they are different problems.
Lucia: “It is certainly true JD is focusing on the problems on the (actually far) left,”
….
I respectfully disagree. I think I am focusing on the mainstream Left. Holdren was in Obama’s administration, Pachauri headed the IPCC. I comment on the NYTs & Washington Post (Cillizza), and I also comment on Pew Foundation. These are hardly radical Left any more than the mayors of sanctuary cities are radical Left.
JD
Fair enough. You’re right. They certainly are in the center of power enough not to be called “far” anything.
JD
Dr. Peter Gleick is renowned the world over as a leading expert, innovator, and communicator on water and climate issues
What triggered Dr. Peter Gleick to commit identity fraud on January 27th 2012.
Peter Gleick, a MacArthur Foundation fellow and co-founder and president of Oakland’s Pacific Institute, admitted Monday that he had posed as someone else and obtained confidential internal papers from the Heartland Institute.
In 2011, Gleick was the launch Chairman of the “new task force on scientific ethics and integrity” of the American Geophysical Union.
His ethics appear unimpeachable on this date April first 2017.
Re: angech
I think it depends in part on mutual circumstances, e.g., background and situation of the strangers vs. cost to me.
Isn’t this what a lot of immigrants, both legal and illegal, do?
I’d have to be shown that it is actually true that such people are “taking†my kids’ jobs and “my†petrol and “my†healthcare vs. them earning said things and thereby providing whatever return to society it is that such things provide.
We all have limitations to our compassion, but however limited it is in practice, compassion probably does include sharing resources and rights with people who need it, instead of protecting privilege and ownership.
Racism only comes into play when the determination is based on race, i.e., I share vs. protect privilege and ownership based on race.
Obviously it depends what perspective you’re looking from. Do you care more about your “right†to be a doctor, lawyer, or plumber because that’s your dream, or are you more concerned with your “right†to be treated by a better doctor, represented by a better lawyer, have your leaks fixed by a better plumber?
On a more abstract level, do people who hold productive occupations give a net benefit to society?
oliver
I think people who do get productive occupations do tend to be a net benefit to society. Our immigration laws have virtually assured that much of our legal immigration has been quite beneficial.
Because much of our illegal immigration is economic– and that benefit mostly accrues to those who hold jobs even that has been between neutral and beneficial.
There are pockets where it is negative– largely because at a certain point the rate can get high. There are also groups of people who carry more of the burden from competition and others who carry the benefit. So “net” positive means those who benefited benefited more than those who were harmed. But that’s still a problem for those who are harmed, and if those happen to be on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, that’s something that has to be thought about carefully.
There is a potential for overburden— and there is a danger of security. So it can’t be disregarded out of hand. But– unlike Trump– I think mostly our immigration has been net positive.
Reading papers from here, it looks like Europe may have had the impact of immigration flip to net-negative. Of course it’s difficult to tell from news articles.
Lucia,
Yes, and the parallel argument about international trade is very similar: on average, international trade is a net positive on both sides, but for individuals who lose jobs and companies bankrupted by cheaper foreign goods, trade is clearly a negative. So while the benefits are usually diffuse, the costs are often concentrated, leading to some very unhappy voters. Simply blocking foreign competition (as was done by most Latin American countries for many decades) reduces growth. Help for those who bear most of the negative impacts seems the best approach, but rarely advocated.
Mike M. (Comment #160634)
just interchange the word left with right and say exactly the same things and be just as correct.†“No, you can not. There are certainly problems with the right, but they are different problems.”
Once one goes far enough in one direction one sometimes turns into the very thing one opposes.
Witness the bombing of women and children in Mosul by American and Australian airforce units. Witness the bombing of civilians by ISIS. Different sides, same problems morally.
JD makes the point that the left has currently lost the moral high ground that all sides aspire to and has done so for quite a long while. The fact that it has done so in order to reach perceived moral high grounds, saving our grandchildren from the horrors of CO2 and Republicans like Trump only makes their gestures, like Peter Gliek, more hollow.
This to me is the real tragedy, People of all persuasions, right , left and center are not remarkably stupid, dishonest, and intolerant. They become that way in the grip of ideology when they are winning or losing on a large scale. At least when one is losing one’s views have little influence. When one is on a roll as the green movement/AGW movement has been for 2 decades the hubris and need to reinforce the winning message is such that small lies become big lies and then need to be big truths.
Lucia: “I think people who do get productive occupations do tend to be a net benefit to society. Our immigration laws have virtually assured that much of our legal immigration has been quite beneficial.”
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Research by George Borjas https://gborjas.org/ indicates that is not so. In the U.S. there is a net fiscal burden from immigrants. That seems to be largely a result of immigrants not integrating into the economy as well as they used to. That, in turn, appears to be partly from the low skills of most immigrants and partly from simply letting in too many immigrants.
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Legal immigration is not as bad as illegal immigration, but it is also not beneficial. It is not like legal immigration consists of people with skills. Legal immigration to the U.S. consists mostly of family reunification, followed by a lottery, followed (I think) by refugees. There is very little legal immigration otherwise. H-1B visas allow skilled foreigners to work here, but they are essentially indentured servants for their employers; the visa holders have no personal right to remain here. And since those visas are often used to outsource American jobs, there economic benefits are questionable.
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Legal immigration ought to be beneficial. But that would require a sensible, skills based immigration policy, as in Canada and Australia. Trump has promised that. I hope he delivers.
angech,
I disagree, there are real moral differences between ideologies. Comparing the loss of civilian lives in war, in this case mainly because one side is using those civilians as shields, with the wholesale murder of people because they don’t have the ‘right’ religious views or because they are gay, is disconnected from reality. Motivations matter. The objective in getting rid of ISIS is to stop the wholesale politically/religiously motivated murder, not to kill civilians. To suggest moral equivalence with ISIS is comparable to suggesting there was no moral distinction between the UK and Germany in WWII. Only the willfully blind can’t see this distinction.
Oliver, It’s very obvious that illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans with lower skills might otherwise do. Here’s a link to an article discussing the impact on blacks.
http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/02/22/tucker-carlson-tonight-civil-rights-activist-illegal-immigration-hurts-black-men-most
This is an issue that truly divides the 1% from the rest of America. Generally, the wealthy benefit from immigration and from illegal immigrants because they can obtain less expensive labor. We have had falling real wages for 30 years in the US. This is exactly what happened in the late 19th Century too. It was caused in both cases by a large influx of immigrants.
Re: Harmful Effects of Illegal Immigration
To me the most harmful effect of large-scale illegal immigration is that it makes it impossible to have a functioning, reasonably objective legal system. The only way that a reasonably functioning legal system can work is if the people under it have some significant semblance of shared values. It is impossible to write laws to cover every possible contingency. There must be a shared value system underlying a legal system or code, or there will be no law as we have traditionally applied it and designed it in the US. If we have very large numbers of people from different cultures and no predominant culture or shared belief system that is considered to be legitimate then it is impossible to have a legal system.
….
The sanctuary city movement is emblematic of this. Those in sanctuary cities see no morality in restricting entry into the US and will refuse to enforce legitimately enacted laws because these laws offend their moral code and political beliefs. Of course, economic questions are very important, but in my mind this is a larger issue.
JD
David Young (Comment #160659)
It’s obvious that the kinds of jobs have a lot of overlap, but it isn’t as clear that the immigrants themselves are directly taking jobs away from lower skilled Americans. Among other things, it really depends on where. An illegal immigrant sweeping floors in LA isn’t taking a job away from a factory worker in Detroit.
I don’t think the causation is so simple. The kinds of jobs that provided a decent wages ~30–60 years ago are being replaced by automation and/or being off-shored. The relatively well paying jobs that remain are requiring increasing levels of education. The concentration of wealth into management/administration/finance, particularly at the highest levels, has increased tremendously. Some of the forces that helped offset these factors ~30–60 years ago, such as organized labor, good public education (all the way up to the GI Bill), relatively healthy infrastructure, etc., have been in serious decline for some time now. It’s unclear exactly how immigration affects these things, or how reducing/blocking immigration would solve these problems.
oliver: “The kinds of jobs that provided a decent wages ~30–60 years ago are being replaced by automation and/or being off-shored. The relatively well paying jobs that remain are requiring increasing levels of education.”
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That is true. Those trends tend to create an oversupply of low skill labor. Letting in large numbers of low skill immigrants further increases that oversupply, making the situation worse. Low skill native workers are getting screwed from all directions. Yes, there are other issues, but there is nothing unclear about the effect of low skill immigrants given current economic conditions.
JD: “There must be a shared value system underlying a legal system or code”
That is a key point. The potential negative effects of immigration are not just economic. The left seems to think that Western culture is corrupt and that we have no right to seek to preserve it.
I find this thread discouraging and dispiriting. There are people of good faith on both sides of the political aisle. There are liars and deeply dishonest people on both sides of the aisle.
There are enough examples currently in the public view that it should be obvious that using domestic political stance as an indicator of honesty, tolerance or intelligence is not useful.
I see no point in this at all. Gleick is dishonest and a crook. So is Michael Mann. What does this teach us? Nothing.
Re: Tom Fuller
I agree with you. I also find this thread discouraging and dispiriting.
The one possible point I see is that there is a small chance of constructive follow-on discussion. After all, the stated goal is:
JD Ohio:
However, it seems very unlikely to invite the opposition’s “best shots,” where by best I mean sincere, well thought out viewpoints, when the very premise of the post is that those who disagree are “Dummy, Dishonest and Intolerant,” among lots of other similar things.
@ angech
Well played, sir. Well played.
Tom Fuller,
Sure, there are lots of people who act in good faith. There are others for whom advancing untruths, or distorting the truth, to ensure a desired politcal outcome is far more important than acting in good faith. Political and philosophical extremism seem to me the common factor. That extremism is evident in ends-justifies-means actions like Gleick’s, and Mann’s endless political attacks on people like Judith Curry. I have no problem with asking where most of this kind of dishonesty is coming from: right or left?
Tom Fuller: “I see no point in this at all. Gleick is dishonest and a crook. So is Michael Mann. What does this teach us? Nothing.”
….
Tom, I am glad you stopped by because I consider you to be a person who is honest with himself. On the other hand, I disagree with your premise — Mann and the others cited here teach us a lot.
….
How could any sane President appoint a colossal failure like Holdren to be his science advisor? How did anyone as deeply flawed as Pachauri become the leader of the IPCC? My answer is that the underlying forces supporting them are deeply flawed and irrational. It is not a case of people acting in good faith and making flawed decisions. It is a case of people with a dishonest agenda trying to cover up the facts and spread the agenda. There is absolutely no excuse for at least some significant portions of the Left to point out the Michael Brown lie (that there is any substantial evidence supporting the position that he was acting innocently) and the Pew lie (that Obama strengthened immigration enforcement and increased deportations). However, I don’t see any push back within the Left against significant easily disproved lies that are repeated again and again for political advantage. Lying and intolerance are a feature of the mainstream Left, which apparently doesn’t feel that it can logically defend its positions. Of course, there is much dishonesty on the Right, but at least within the right there is significant dissent.
….
When people raise issues outside of Leftist ideology, the Left immediately tries to silence them. In Great Britain large numbers of people signed a petition to keep Trump out of the country. Why can’t these people debate him. Additionally, the Left is so superficial and uninformed that it tries to label those who oppose it as mentally sick. For instance, the ridiculous term “Islamophobia.”
……
You can’t persuade a movement that embraces compulsive lying without any significant dissent and until that changes I see no other way to deal with the Left. If the Left had a shred of integrity, it would kick Gleick to the curb for his many acts of dishonesty and intolerance. Instead he is given awards after his Heartland break-in and is given a platform at the mainstream Leftist Huffington Post.
JD
Tim Fuller: “I find this thread discouraging and dispiriting. There are people of good faith on both sides of the political aisle. There are liars and deeply dishonest people on both sides of the aisle.”
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I think that the vast majority of people on the left are well meaning people acting in good faith. And there are many scoundrels on the right.
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The problem I have with the ideological left (much less so with left leaning people) is the near unity of thought. You rarely see people on the left criticizing the likes of Mann or Clinton or Reid on anything other than strategy. They rarely criticize political correctness, or the use of epithets like racist, sexist, homophobe. On the other hand, there are often bitter arguments and criticism among people on the right.
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The result is that the left is very much an echo chamber where thought police keep people in line by means of social exclusion often expressed via epithets. That enables ruthless people to push extreme agendas and force intelligent, well meaning people to go along. It also makes it very hard to have a reasoned discussion with people on the left.
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I don’t like the tone of JD’s post starting this thread and don’t think it is helpful.
Meanwhile there have been crops rotting in the fields because there weren’t enough workers to harvest them at a wage that farmers could afford to pay.
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-06-06/crops-rot-while-trump-led-immigration-backlash-idles-farm-lobby
http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/20539
Close the borders and a lot more farming will move to Mexico. What’s left will be harvested by robots.
There are similar worries in the UK over the effect of Brexit on temporary farm workers.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/brexit-could-leave-fields-of-rotting-crops-in-britain-if-migrant-workers-stay-away/2017/01/06/ef4efba8-d1d6-11e6-9651-54a0154cf5b3_story.html?utm_term=.8a89390256d2
Oliver,
There is so much ‘wrong’ with this thread (to use the term ‘wrong’ very very loosely), in my view, that it’s hard to see where to even begin. In particular I got stuck on even why to bother to try. I think you hit the nail on the head here.
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JD appears to think this post strikes some blow against the Left. I’m pretty skeptical of this claim. I don’t think anybody except a few basically amiable, agreeable, reasonable readers who tend towards the liberal side of the spectrum more than the conservative side even looked at this. I imagine they found this post to be dumb and discouraging – that’s about it. I don’t think there’s any impact.
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To be fair to JD, nothing we discuss here on the Blackboard is liable to have much impact.
.
This said, why should Lefties come to post on a thread that has a given starting point premise that they are dumb and dishonest? [Rhetorical maybe – I see no reason] Were I such a lefty, I’d say to myself ‘screw you and the horse you rode in on JD, I’m not wasting my precious time engaging the likes of you, when you appear to be some right wing nut who’s already made up his mind that talking reasonably and respectfully with me is pointless’. I thought it was ironic to complain about the lack of self awareness on the Left, given the lack of awareness exhibited in the top level post. Lack of awareness in the sense of – I don’t think JD gave much thought to how somebody with a Lefty point of view would react to this post.
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In my view, if you want to talk to people, it helps to do certain obvious things. Extend courtesy, avoid personal attacks, assume good faith, etc. Give people a reason to want to talk with you. Maybe the trouble was, it’s fairly clear JD didn’t actually want to talk to the Left, he wanted to defeat the Left somehow.
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[Edit: Delete this! I double shrugged!shrug]
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We’re free people, and that’s generally held to be a good thing. That a bunch of people decide the Left makes more sense of them than the Right doesn’t change that, despite what any of us may think to the contrary. All of us rightfully being free people, persuasion is the way to change such a people. To persuade people, they need to engage with and listen to you. Don’t start out abusing and alienate the target audience. This post is not a step in the right direction to fight the Left, it’s just a rant. You’ve beaten the Left when people like my 20 year old daughter actually want to hear what you have to say and are persuaded by your ideas.
Anyway. In closing.
shrug.
DeWitt, Employers always complain about lots of things especially their costs and how hard it is to get people to do the work. Whatever did we do in the 1950’s without illegals to do the work Amerian’s won’t do? It’s largely a series of tired old lies. Business interests perpetuate these myths to avoid having to spend money training workers or paying them enough to get them to do the work.
Tom Fuller and Oliver, One reason this post is useful is that it shines a spotlight on things that our biased media and even more biased academics refuse to even talk about. Some of us believe we are reaching a critical point where academia has made a lot of young people so disconnected from reality that they may be unemployable and swell the ranks of the dependent and bitter classes. Being taught to blame someone else for all your problems is dysfunctional.
Mark Bofill: “This said, why should Lefties come to post on a thread that has a given starting point premise that they are dumb and dishonest? [Rhetorical maybe – I see no reason] Were I such a lefty, I’d say to myself ‘screw you and the horse you rode in on JD,”
….
I think this is a fair and honest criticism of my post. However, you and I are coming from a totally different place pertaining to the ability to persuade people. With the dishonesty and continuing pattern of pathetically stupid behavior (for instance, Gleick’s Alice in Wonderland, disgracefully dishonest “exoneration”), I think the institutional Left of Clinton, Holdren, Mann & and Naomi Oreskes is way beyond persuasion. My goal was not to persuade but to prick in a small way the bubble of uninformed, self-righteous superiority that the Left projects.
….
If in the future, someone from the Left repeats typical self-righteous, Leftist drivel about the Left’s moral superiority, I at least have my little screed on record and can tell them if you are so morally superior why does the Left tolerate and encourage the lies and behavior that I have summarized in this post.
I will add that I believe it is useless to try to persuade compulsive liars who profit from their lies. If you wish, maybe you can suggest a way to stop the Michael Brown lie and the Pew study lie, both of which are repeated again and again even though they are easily disprovable. These are convenient lies, so the Left continues to repeat them even though they are easily disproved by anyone looking at the matters rationally. They need to be accurately identified as the lies that they are rather than simply good-faith factual mistakes.
….
Finally, I will add that many ordinary citizen Leftists/Democrats are undoubtedly honest and decent people. My post was not aimed at them. Rather, it was aimed at the institutional Left which embraced Clinton wholeheartedly.
JD
DeWitt Payne: Lack of farm workers
….
If we have to pay more for food or develop a better guest worker program, I am good with that if it will help preserve the US as a nation. With open borders, in the long-run, it is impossible to have a functioning country.
JD
JD,
I don’t understand why you think we need a way to stop people we disagree with from ‘telling lies’. It’s a free country. I am free to suggest that Michael Brown was an innocent little lamb who was mercilessly gunned down by racist cops even if I know that’s false. (At least, I think I am. You’re the lawyer, maybe you know better. 🙂 ) I’m free to suggest that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, even if I know that’s false. I can say any damn fool thing I want to within the wide boundaries set by the law, true or not. Don’t see why it’s suddenly an intolerable issue, that people spread lies. Of course they do, always have always will.
I imagine there are many Lefties who point to ‘lies’ told by ‘climate deniers’ in exactly the same way with the same justification. Oh well! They just have to learn to live with it. So do we.
Thanks JD.
Say JD, I have a response lost in moderation for some reason. Just a heads up.
David Young (Comment #160672):”Employers always complain about lots of things especially their costs and how hard it is to get people to do the work. Whatever did we do in the 1950’s without illegals to do the work Amerian’s won’t do? It’s largely a series of tired old lies. Business interests perpetuate these myths to avoid having to spend money training workers or paying them enough to get them to do the work.”
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For the most part I agree with you. But farm workers *might* be a special case. The work is not all that badly paid ($12/hr for work that requires almost no skill) and most low pay jobs are not all that pleasant. The problem seems to be that people won’t relocate to do farm work and much farm work requires moving around. A modest increase in pay probably won’t help much. A large enough increase might make American production uncompetitive with imports.
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I think that even in the 1950’s, much labor intensive farm work was done by illegals.
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It would be interesting to know how much of the cost of hand picked fruit and vegetables is labor.
Mike M
Moving around is expensive both in real money terms and in impact on the family. If kids are shlepped around, it makes kids education discontinuous, interrupts the formation of friendships for them (and the adults), if one parent stays in place while the other moves for farm labor, the move affects marital relations and so on. So transient farm work has lots of things going against it.
One might say similar things for people restationed in the military, but they don’t move around quite as quickly. Few families travel to 2 week military positions only to pick up and move to the next position.
Mark Bofill Reply in moderation. Don’t see it. It looks like you have the same or a very similar comment three times. I am obviously not an expert. If Lucia sees it and I don’t, she is welcome to post it. I hate to say this because you may have spent a fair amount of time writing it, but you may have to post it again.
JD
Mark Bofill: “I don’t understand why you think we need a way to stop people we disagree with from ‘telling lies’. It’s a free country.”
…..
My main response to this is that there is no persuading a compulsive liar and no need to be polite to a liar. Very secondarily, if a lie is bad enough, it may lead to an actionable defamation suit. Quite frankly, if I was a judge and the police officer who was cleared in Brown came before me with a defamation suit seeking damages for statements saying he had improperly killed Brown, I would allow it to proceed even under the most difficult, “malicious” standard.
JD
JD Ohio,
I saw the comment and unmoderated Mark’s comment. I should have said! 🙂
Thanks JD.
Thanks Lucia!
JD,
I agree with you about Brown. I think he would have scared the daylights out of anyone. One thing that did come out of this is that I seldom need to spell my name for people any more.
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At the same time, I think one must be polite to everyone. It seems to unnerve the worst of them. And I think it gives you a reasonable chance of guiding the discussion, one you will certainly not have if you insult them.
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I was able once to back a birther into a position that required Obama’s rise to the presidency to have been forecast, maybe in Revelations (in the hard part to understand) thus requiring all of these steps to be taken at the time of, and due to the inconvenient location of, his birth.
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I agree that you’ll get to hear a lot of stuff you’ll think is nuts if you do much of this sort of thing. It may improve your self-control and certainly your depth of understanding of what the crazies think.
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Someone wondered about labor costs is food. This is the USDA page:
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor/
J Ferguson: “At the same time, I think one must be polite to everyone. It seems to unnerve the worst of them. And I think it gives you a reasonable chance of guiding the discussion, one you will certainly not have if you insult them.”
….
I agree with this with respect to individuals you meet for the first time. Or, possibly non-institutional people. However, with respect to the Pew Charitable Trust (which actually has comments on the article pointing out the error while the error remains uncorrected) and the NYTs & Brown (which was an obvious intent to lie through what the reporter thinks is cunning deception), I don’t agree. PEW and the NYTs are both engaged in an obvious ideological lying campaign, and in my view (which can be reasonably disputed by others) are best discouraged by pungent, direct criticism that they can’t refute. Again, I am pretty much not trying to persuade the Left–I am just hoping my criticisms can back the Left off slightly from its uninformed moralistic posturing. (which I know would be to a very small degree based on a blog post.)
For instance, maybe Rabett will think twice about trying to shut down a conversation on a subject on which he is ill-informed. Undoubtedly, won’t change his intolerance in the bigger picture though. Also, in terms of being polite, you may want to consider what Rabett meant when he used the term “ratfluecer” in my Hillary Clinton health post. I didn’t even bother to look it up at the time, but I did for this and I think it is probably a highly derogatory reference to ratf**cker. (Personally, no big deal to me. However, when the Left complains of impolite attack, I think of stuff like that coming from an uninformed college professor.)
JD
MikeN, I think in the 1950 or the 1930’s, much of the farm labor was done by children or the owners of the farms, which were a lot smaller then. It is the advent of corporate agriculture that has created the need for a special labor force of part time illegals.
Once again, the logical outcome here is mechanization. Reliance on illegal labor cannot be a long term solution.
David Young,
I think migrant farm workers have existed for a long time. I know they already existed in the 60s. During the summers my mom taught in “migrant worker” education programs funded by the feds. The intention was for those kids — who got moved in and out of systems multiple times a years– to have additional schooling so as not to fall too far behind.
Most of the migrants in Grayslake, Mundelein etc. were Latino. I never thought about whether they were legal or illegal. A child wouldn’t. (We went to a number of social functions as children of the teacher. So I met many of the kids.)
“as much as 40 percent of costs in labor-intensive crops such as fruit, vegetables, and nursery products.”
Thanks, Lucia. I think that must be a percentage of wholesale prices, so maybe 15% of the retail price. So a big increase in pay would have a modest impact on retail prices, but might make it hard for domestic producers to compete with imports.
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There is still the question of whether American workers could be induced to do the work with reasonable pay. I am thinking that David Young might be right, but we might have to protect U.S. producers with tariffs. Pick your evil.
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lucia: “I think migrant farm workers have existed for a long time. I know they already existed in the 60s.”
It seems that Latino migrant workers existed in the 20’s, but got kicked out in the 30’s. Then invited back during WWII and have been a fixture since. But they might well have been increasing as a fraction of workers as farm employment has decreased.
MikeM
Yes.
That said: if I valued organics, I would tend to trust those grown in the US to be organics more than grown elsewhere. I might be mistaken about that– but I would tend. So, perhaps they could pay more and charge the premium.
I don’t value organics. So I don’t look into the issue very carefull. And I tend to go by price. I rarely look at where my produce was grown.
I spent the summer of 1966 working on Long Island with migrant farm workers. It was 7 days a week, 10 hours a day, and pay was strictly based how much you harvested, which was mostly peaches… 25 cents a half bushel. I was the only white person on the crew… a 15 year old white boy working with 25 or so black men and teens, from 16 to 60+ years old, under a black crew boss named Marvin, who was a permanent employee of the farm owner. In the morning, we would ride a big flat bed truck out to a field which was to be harvested, and work like hell for 10 hours. Marvin would drive the flat bed back and forth to a cold storage center, bringing in what we had harvested. After the last load was brought in near 5:00 PM, we’d climb on the truck and return to near the housing for the workers.
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On a good day, I could mke $15 or so, but the biggest and strongest on the crew could make nearly double that. The workers were mostly from Alabama and Mississippi, They worked in the deep south in the winter months (including Florida), and worked their way up the east coast in the spring. They lived for the summer in barracks-like housing (I lived close by with an aunt and uncle). I learned that there were all kinds of people in the crew; friendly, scary, generous, mean-spirited, quiet and talkative. I also learned that whore houses did in fact exist (many of the crew went each Saturday night after they got paid). On Saturday afternoons they would often say ‘It’s Saturday… the eagle flys tonight!” They would kid each other Sunday mornings about their exploits the night before.
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The biggest thing I learned that summer was that I didn’t want to ever be a migrant farm worker.
Mark Bofill: “I don’t understand why you think we need a way to stop people we disagree with from ‘telling lies’. It’s a free country. I am free to suggest that Michael Brown was an innocent little lamb who was mercilessly gunned down by racist cops even if I know that’s false.”
….
More on this. I don’t think you have thought this through thoroughly. Officer Wilson is completely innocent of any kind of police abuse. He was attacked by a dangerous criminal. Notwithstanding that he has been forced out of his job and forced to leave Ferguson. He is also in danger of being harmed by people who wrongly think he murdered Brown. It is incumbent upon the Left, and everyone, to correct the injustice that has been done to Officer Wilson. However, not only does the Left not correct the injustice, it seeks to perpetuate it by trying to keep a false story alive.
JD
David Young (Comment #160688)
“It is the advent of corporate agriculture that has created the need for a special labor force of part time illegals. Once again, the logical outcome here is mechanization.”
SteveF (Comment #160692)
“I spent the summer of 1966 working on Long Island with migrant farm workers.”
I may be speaking out of turn here but I doubt that very few people here have been poor or know what it is like to be poor or ignorant and uneducatable. It is the push to educate everyone, to give everyone the chance to succeed that is at the basis of our current woes. Who here would pick fruit for a living, clean streets or houses or serve in MacDonald’s? But they are jobs that need doing , that serve a purpose and in their own way are just as important as all ours. That is what a society is.
Every job and every type of education and non education is important in its own way.
SteveF,
How did you come to the chicken farm and the harvesting jobs? I ask because you were making more than I did Summer of 66, when I was picking beams (realistic term for designing) for Wisconsin Bell line shacks as a summer job. I think I was paid $65/week.
j ferguson,
The chicken farm work (fall until spring 1966/67) was only Saturdays and Sundays. I was covering for full time workers who had weekends off, though I suspect that may have been a just so the farmer would not have to pay time-and-a-half for work past 40 hours. I started at $0.50 per hour, but after a couple of months, and the farmer seeing that I worked much harder than his two teen-age sons (who were also pressed into weekend coverage), he increased my wages, first to $0.75 per hour, then to the princely rate of $1.00 per hour. The chicken farm happened to be half a mile from my house. I don’t remember why I thought the farm needed help, but I walked up on a Saturday morning and asked; I was learning how to pick up 8 eggs at a time an hour later.
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What I earned on Long Island was usually much less than $15 per day, and probably averged between $8 and $9 per day. I also had to give my aunt $10 per week to cover the extra cost for my food. I think I ended the summer with about $250 saved… about like $1,500 today. Many of my co-workers blew most of what they earned at the whorehouse.
.
The $15 per day rate was when we were told to ‘pick clean’ (take every peach from the tree), which was usually the third or fourth time the same trees had been picked. Usually we had to pick very selectively, judging how ripe a peach was buy visual appearance and (mostly) the firmness of the peach. A fully ripe peach is quite soft, so we had to cup each in a hand and apply slight pressure to judge the ripeness. I would often only be able to pick 1 in 3 that I touched, after having already selected only those with ripe color to “hand”. The penalty for picking “green” (not fully ripe) was no pay for your work, so everyone was very careful about ripeness.
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I got that job because my uncle was the local pastor, and the farmer was one of his parishioners. Without that connection, I would have been forced to caddy at the local golf course, which could pay up to $10 per day ($4 per round if you carried two bags, plus tip) when the course was busy, but where you most often would sit for hours with nothing to do.
JD,
Thank you for your response. Being a bit rushed this morning, I will accept without verification your claims about officer Wilson being forced out, forced to leave, and being in danger – I don’t doubt it, just haven’t verified. I agree that this is an injustice that ought to be corrected. I agree that there are people who continue to perpetuate the false story. Probably it’s reasonable to blame this on ‘the Left’, although I worry that on this point we stray into dangerous ground (indeed, this is another difficulty I have with your post in general; we should be careful when think we can speak for ‘the Left’, or identify who speaks for ‘the Left’. Might be quicksand down that path.)
.
There are things I accept and decide I have to live with when I can’t think of a better alternative, is the short answer I’ve got for you. Part of the price of freedom is that people will be evil and unjust to each other, in this way and in many other ways. To make use of a distinction that Lucia advanced earlier, I don’t think this is an exclusive feature ‘of the Left’; I think this is the way people are.
I don’t imagine I’m telling you anything you haven’t thought of, obviously.
.
I will give you this though – some on the Left seem to play by no particular rules. Everything is fair, everything is game. I speculate that this comes from the revolutionary / Marxist roots. Any means to disrupt and destroy the status quo is potentially fair game, and the ends always justify the means. I believe this premise has indeed become pervasive among some on the Left, and I think it’s toxic, yes.
.
Thanks JD. I’ll be off and on today. I appreciate the discussion.
angech,
Karl Marx would have been proud. Of course, there is no shame in honest labor, no matter how simple. But there are relatively few people capable of very intellectually challenging work. Or as one of my brothers (a life-long programmer) noted, “the difference in productivity between a talented programmer and a poor one is not a factor of 50%, it is closer to 500%”. The market drives wages, just as it does prices. Adding a large number of relatively low-skill immigrants will always drive down wages for low skilled people. Adding a large number of relatively high skill immigrants will always drive down wages for high skill workers.
Mark Bofill,
“Everything is fair, everything is game. I speculate that this comes from the revolutionary / Marxist roots.”
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Yup, that is the issue. Many on the left simply reject on philosophical grounds the legitimacy of the US Constitution and many of the laws that are on the books. They even reject the legitimacy of the nation-state as an independent political entity entitled to self-rule. So most any means to achieve their desired pollitical change is perfectly moral and perfectly ‘right’, including subversion of the Constitution and the rule of law.
Thanks SteveF.
BTW,
I think this is absolutely so. Motivation plays a big role too.
In case an example of intolerance of contrary opinion is lacking, here’s a recent Vox article on the correlation between position on climate change and 2016 Presidential voting. From a Rhodium Group study, “86% of the variation across counties in respondent’s belief that ‘global warming is mostly caused by human activity’ is explained by voting preference.” Or in the author’s words, “Republicans deny climate change because they are Republicans and that’s what Republicans do.”
Re: Michael Brown — Department of Justice
…..
The evidence having show officer Wilson’s complete innocence, the Department of Justice decided to minimize it by releasing his investigatory report with that of Ferguson’s police department. Here are the first four paragraphs from the joint report:
….
“The Justice Department announced the findings of its two civil rights investigations related to Ferguson, Missouri, today. The Justice Department found that the Ferguson Police Department (FPD) engaged in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the First, Fourth, and 14th Amendments of the Constitution. The Justice Department also announced that the evidence examined in its independent, federal investigation into the fatal shooting of Michael Brown does not support federal civil rights charges against Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson.
“As detailed in our report, this investigation found a community that was deeply polarized, and where deep distrust and hostility often characterized interactions between police and area residents,†said Attorney General Eric Holder. “Our investigation showed that Ferguson police officers routinely violate the Fourth Amendment in stopping people without reasonable suspicion, arresting them without probable cause, and using unreasonable force against them. Now that our investigation has reached its conclusion, it is time for Ferguson’s leaders to take immediate, wholesale and structural corrective action. The report we have issued and the steps we have taken are only the beginning of a necessarily resource-intensive and inclusive process to promote reconciliation, to reduce and eliminate bias, and to bridge gaps and build understanding.â€
“While the findings in Ferguson are very serious and the list of needed changes is long, the record of the Civil Rights Division’s work with police departments across the country shows that if the Ferguson Police Department truly commits to community policing, it can restore the trust it has lost,†said Acting Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta of the Civil Rights Division. “We look forward to working with City Officials and the many communities that make up Ferguson to develop and institute reforms that will focus the Ferguson Police Department on public safety and constitutional policing instead of revenue. Real community policing is possible and ensures that all people are equal before the law, and that law enforcement is seen as a part of, rather than distant from, the communities they serve.â€
Attorney General Holder first announced the comprehensive pattern or practice investigation into the Ferguson Police Department after visiting that community in August 2014, and hearing directly from residents about police practices and the lack of trust between FPD and those they are sworn to protect. The investigation focused on the FPD’s use of force, including deadly force; stops, searches and arrests; discriminatory policing; and treatment of detainees inside Ferguson’s city jail by Ferguson police officers.”
….
Announcing the reports on the same day and burying Wilson’s innocence in the report dealing with the police department was a transparent attempt to hide and minimize Wilson’s complete innocence. If Holder, who heads what is supposed to be a Department of Justice, was an ethical person he would not have tried to hide Wilson’s innocence and he would have taken the affirmative step of announcing it publicly. Holder’s unethical behavior enables the Michael Brown liars.
….
I realize that in most instances, whether someone is innocent or not is not specifically discussed because the precise legal question is whether charges should be brought. However, in this instance, with the huge public interest and the extremely clear evidence, Holder should have done so.
….
In case anyone was skeptical of Wikipedia (as one should be — However, wikipedia in this instance pretty much just copied the DOJ report), I am posting the direct link to the DOJ report. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-findings-two-civil-rights-investigations-ferguson-missouri
JD
HaroldW
Odd wording. I would suspect cause and effect is the other way around. I think they got their “x” and “y” transposed in an “y explains x” statement.
Voting preference is more likely “explained” by which candidate or party agreed with the voters beliefs. But this suggest ones “beliefs” (which likely existed prior to voting) are explained by how one voted in the election which occurs subsequent to those beliefs.
Mind you: it could be that the beliefs collecting in odd sorts of ways. Belief clusters that make little sense do occur. For example: There is on inherent reason why social conservatism should correlate positively with economic conservatism. It has not always done so. But for political reasons unrelated beliefs do sometimes correlate for periods of time.
Lucia,
Yes, the author has the likely causation backwards. It is an effort to paint opposing views as illegitimate (eg, not supported by ‘the science’). The same tactic is used by ‘progressives’ on a range of public policy questions. Admission that the opposition to fossil fuel restrictions is reasoned (rather than irrational) will never happen, because that would mean engaging the actual opposing arguments is required. The general refusal of ‘climate activists’ to engage in public debate is one of the results. Another is the bizarre focus on a supposed ‘information deficit’…. suggesting an apparent assumption that nobody opposed to fossil fuel restrictions could possibly have sufficient ‘scientific knowledge’. The reasoning is infantile, but remarkably common.
Lucia (#160707) –
Yes, exactly. I’m willing to give some slack to the original study, because in technical usage, “factor X explains y% of the variation in Z” typically means no more than “a linear regression of Z against X yields an r^2 of y%”.
Given a correlation between two beliefs, it is difficult or impossible to deduce an arrow of causation. Yet the author insists on an interpretation that one’s political orientation dictates “denial” [his word choice]. It’s just a shorthand — dog-whistle, if you will — that “Republicans’ opinions are ignorant because … Republicans”.
JD and Mark, I think a great deal of the blame for the recent climate that created Black Lives Matter and their seemingly constant stream of lies belongs to Barack Obama and Eric Holder. They used the power of the justice system to place police under a microscope and intimidate them into less aggressive policing tactics. The predictable result was an increase in crime in places like Baltimore. Ferguson was a particularly egregious case of injustice in part caused by the Department of “Justice.” I predict Trump will succeed in reversing this.
Shouldn’t the title be “The Dumb, Dishonest, …….”
Dummy is not an adjective.
David,
I have thought along those lines as well. Sometimes I wonder if aging activists aren’t trying to relive glory days long past with the civil rights / race thing. I get it – there is racism, of course. There is always some racism. There is always a certain amount of pesticide on the skin of the apples we give our kids to eat, too. At some point, it’s a small enough amount that we don’t treat it as much of a problem anymore. Until a politician like Barack Obama needs to rile up his base, maybe.
Mark,
we attend a bi-weekly discussion group addressed to foreign affairs (the political kind, unfortunately). Last year two very elderly ladies showed up, one of whom was pushing 100. They sat there quietly for most of the session, then the older one arose and launched into a pitch based on us being naive and not realizing that corporations and the international arms industries were responsible for almost everything that was wrong with the world. She went on and on. I thought she sounded like a communist rabble-rouser.
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It turned out I was right. She’d joined the party in the early 30 and seems to have completely missed the inapplicability of her message to anything that had happened in this country since 1937 +/-.
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After she left, I asked one of the regulars if she had any other ideas.
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“No. Same speech over and over.”
J,
:> Thanks.
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I don’t know if my suspicion about activists really has any basis or not. I am however reasonably confident that what racism exists in the U.S. today isn’t even a shadow of what it must have been sixty (60) years ago.
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No, I think the ‘next generation’ look to hijack the progress of the civil rights era and take it towards new progressive destinations by changing the underlying ideas and definitions. For example, sociological racial color blindness in the U.S. is controversial. Not controversial because some racists want to discriminate. On the contrary. Because progressive activists don’t want racial color blindness interfering with their larger social justice goals such as policies driving equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity, or affirmative action, which has never been anything more or less than pure and simple reverse discrimination enshrined in policy.
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Not subscribing philosophically to equality of outcome does not make one a racist, despite what anyone may pretend to the contrary. This isn’t what ‘racism’ ever meant. This is redefining loaded terms to demonize opposition, in essence.
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Anyway. shrug. I gotta go grocery shopping. I be back later.
The so-called “sanctuary city movement” can actually be thought of as a criminal conspiracy to violate American law. Every American legal resident or citizen harmed or killed by illegals should have standing to make claims against those engaged in the conspiracy.
Hunter, I like that idea. Perhaps Sessions will take a few steps down that road. Sanctuary cities are the most organized and explicit attempt at nullification since pre Civil War days. It was a bad idea then and its a bad idea now, but shows how little regard for the rule of law the left sometimes has.
mark, There is a larger issue here and that is profiting from demagogary. People like Sharpton, Jackson, the NAACP, and many many more on a local level make real money from constantly stirring up racial antagonism. Until there is general societal push back on these enterprises, including in the press, nothing is going to change. Just as the Klan survived as long as the cultural climate was not too hostile, Sharpton can only survive in a climate where he is invited to the White House and no-one dares to contradict him.
Jackson makes money by essentially shaking down corporations. He finds some employees who claim discrimination and champions their cause. He files legal action. The company settles and gives Jackson’s “charitable” action network a large sum of money in addition to compensating the “victims.”
David Young,
“Sanctuary cities are the most organized and explicit attempt at nullification since pre Civil War days.”
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Of course. But absolutely nobody, including Trump and Sessions, is will to point out the felonies those city officials are committing each time they give ‘sanctuary’ to a known illegal immigrant. It is a society-wide disconnect from reality…. much like the refusal to enforce criminal laws against hiring known illegal aliens. Until politicians are truly serious about enforcing the law, this problem will likely worsen.
David,
I guess. Here’s a NY Post story to that effect about Sharpton.
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People appear to have written books about Jessie Jackson being a racial con man.
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There’s a sucker born every minute. No surprise to find there’s an enterprising huckster or two getting rich exploiting that fact.
Owen: “Shouldn’t the title be “The Dumb, Dishonest, …….â€
Dummy is not an adjective.”
You make a valid point pertaining to standard usage. However, as a lawyer, I am handicapped by legal terminology. A fairly common term in business law is “dummy corporation.”
JD
In several ways the Left reminds me of the Borg. It tries to assimilate everything it encounters to bend it to its purposes. It employs the hive mind to eliminate dissent within the ranks. It commands an army of unthinking drones. Domination is its moral imperative, not a transcendent code or law. It adapts to challenges within a limited range of behaviors, but the response is mechanized and sterile, not dynamic or creative. Its drive is relentless and pitiless. It only consumes and produces no lasting or solid good. In fact, some things that actually do change for the good are hampered or co-opted to perpetuate the collective.
SteveF,
Sometimes all “sanctuary city” means is they don’t voluntarily give assistance to the feds. That’s actually legal. The feds can’t force local officials to enforce federal law.
Gary
Some of the right try that when they can. Really: wanting to turn everyone into a Borg is not uncommon in various societies of all political stripes.
mark bofill:
What you think of as “racism,†and makes you confident that it “isn’t even a shadow of what it must have been sixty (60) years ago.†Are you looking at voting numbers? Racial wealth gap? Degree of segregation in school districts? Lynchings per year?
This passage is a little confusing. You seem to be saying that you prefer equality of opportunity over equality of outcome, but your sentence also seems to equate equality of opportunity to affirmative action, which you call reverse discrimination. Taking the more logical reading, I will assume you are arguing that equality of outcome is affirmative action, which you are also arguing is a form of reverse discrimination.
Clearly affirmative action is a very imperfect solution at best. Do you acknowledge that there is not equality of opportunity? If so, then what measures are obviously better than affirmative action?
Also, do you view diversity and integration as benefits in themselves?
Okay, but the question is what does “racism†mean to you, and can you give any examples of situations in which one could, in your view, correctly use “racism†to describe a set of actions or attitudes?
Oliver! How lovely of you to ask. I’ve got a few errands to take care of but I ought to be back with you this evening, if not sooner.
Alright now, lets see what we have here.
Let’s go with Merriam-Webster
The Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Voting Rights act of 1965. The Civil Rights Act of 1968. Increased involvement of Blacks in government. Most recently and remarkably, the historic Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama. For these things to have come to pass, a belief that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race must have diminished greatly. Racism isn’t even a shadow of what it must have been sixty (60) years ago, absolutely.
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Equality of opportunity has come a long way since the 1950’s. Do I acknowledge that there is still pesticide to be found on the skin of apples? Sure. It’s not the problem it once was. It’s not a serious problem today.
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A world where children would be judged by the contents of their character rather than the color of their skin would be obviously better than a world of affirmative action, in my view.
.
No.
.
See definition above.
.
Yes.
.
The cross examination was entertaining. If you have some point you are trying to make, I would appreciate it if you would state it plainly.
Thanks!
Lucia,
Yes, they don’t have to help round up illegal aliens (though I think that would be a nice gesture on their part). But the main part of immigration law make it a felony to aid or shelter illegal immigrants, or to encourage illegal immigration (8 US Code 1324).
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It takes a very ‘generous’ reading of that law to conclude that the officials in sanctuary cities are not repeat felons.
mark bofill:
To reply to your ending note:
First of all, thanks very much for entertaining my “cross-examination.†I asked these questions because I am genuinely trying my best to understand your point of view.
This is indeed one definition given by Merriam-Webster, and it is the most “active†one. Also appearing are two other definitions, which are also relevant to understanding historical trends in racism:
Do you also accept the other definitions?
60 years ago puts us right after the first two acts and right before the third. The first two clearly changed much in the fight against discrimination. It is much less clear that the third, also known as the Fair Housing Act, was successful in its (stated) aims.
In my previous post, I suggested some metrics for gauging a reduction in racism: voting numbers, racial wealth gap, degree of segregation in school districts. Do you feel that racism has reduced significantly based on these metrics or others that you feel are better indicators?
It’s true that there is increased involvement of Blacks in government. I agree that this means progress has been made in the fight against racial discrimination, i.e., minority involvement in government is also a good metric. How well are we doing by this metric? Do the numbers suggest that racism has essentially disappeared?
You are making an argument by assertion: “It’s better than it was, therefore it’s no longer a serious problem.†I’d like to hear a chain of reasoning that shows why racism is no longer “serious.â€
I agree that the ideal end state would be better than any steps intended (rightly or wrongly) to get us closer. What do you propose would be better now, given “reality�
By all means, please give some examples so I can understand where you’re coming from.
My point is simple: I’d like to have an Intelligent, Honest, and Tolerant discussion on why racism is or is no longer a serious problem. Barring that, it would be instructive to hear why measures such as affirmative action and even “political correctness†are (necessarily?) cures worse than the disease.
Oliver,
It becomes tedious rapidly to have a conversation where the only contribution you offer to the discussion is homework assignments and fishing expeditions.
1. I accept that Merriam Webster accurately defines words, and that the other definitions are legitimate definitions.
2. I did not arrive at my initial idea that racism had vastly diminished based on the metrics (voting numbers, racial wealth gap, degree of segregation in school districts) you offer. You appear to now want my evaluation of those metrics. Sounds like a lot of work and you haven’t told me why. So, no thanks.
3. You ask me to present numbers on black involvement in government. More homework, but fine, since it was part of my original point. When I have some time, I’ll see what I can find.
4. You are correct, I offered my opinion that racism is no longer serious. I get it that you’re not impressed by my assertion. This is fine.
5. What would be better now is racially colorblind policy.
6. Examples? No thanks. More homework, more fishing.
.
Offer me something besides the third degree and an invitation to do a lot of research in the discussion if you want to continue discussing this with me.
Thanks.
FWIW, I generally don’t mind being asked to support my arguments when I’m saying something controversial. I honestly didn’t think that saying racism has vastly diminished since 1950 was particularly controversial. Live and learn I guess.
oliver,
How old are you? I’m 73, so I remember the 1950’s. There is absolutely no question in my mind that racist practices have vastly diminished since then. I can’t read people’s minds, so I don’t know if internal attitudes have changed as much.
Oliver,
Anyone who claims that racism has not dramatically diminished over the last 50 years is being willfully blind.
Overt racism by the definition Mark used has been all but extinguished. In 2012, blacks were more likely to vote than whites. The economic and marital status of one’s parents are far better predictors of economic status than race.
Racism will never entirely go away. After all, some people still believe the earth is flat.
One way to keep racism alive is to constantly harp on race as being important.
You cited as a definition of racism: “a : a doctrine or political program based on the assumption of racism and designed to execute its principles”.
That is far more prevalent on the left than on the right.
Racism is a dying ember. The left keeps trying to fan it back to life. As long as they do, King’s dream will never be fully realized.
Okay, here is the homework assignment I agreed to do.
http://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Data/Black-American-Representatives-and-Senators-by-Congress/
Summary of results:
Congress 81 (1949-1951) 2
Congress 82 (1951-1953) 2
Congress 83 (1953-1955) 2
Congress 84 (1955-1957) 3
Congress 85 (1957-1959) 4
Congress 86 (1959-1961) 4
Congress 87 (1961-1963) 4
Congress 88 (1963-1965) 5
Congress 89 (1965-1967) 6
Congress 90 (1967-1969) 7
Congress 91 (1969-1971) 11
Congress 92 (1971-1973) 14
Congress 93 (1973-1975) 17
Congress 94 (1975-1977) 18
Congress 95 (1977-1979) 18
Congress 96 (1979-1981) 18
Congress 97 (1981-1983) 19
Congress 98 (1983-1985) 22
Congress 99 (1985-1987) 21
Congress 100(1987-1989) 23
Congress 101(1989-1991) 25
Congress 102(1991-1993) 28
Congress 103(1993-1995) 41
Congress 104(1995-1997) 44
Congress 105(1997-1999) 42
Congress 106(1999-2001) 39
Congress 107(2001-2003) 39
Congress 108(2003-2005) 40
Congress 109(2005-2007) 43
Congress 110(2007-2009) 47
Congress 111(2009-2011) 42
Congress 112(2011-2013) 45
Congress 113(2013-2015) 47
Congress 114(2015-2017) 49
Congress 115(2017-2019) 51
.
That’s half an hour of my life I’ll never get back. Do me a kindness folks. If you actually dispute a point, fine. We can look at the data. If it’s just for the heck of it, don’t waste my time.
[Edit: In case it isn’t clear, this is count of Black American members of Congress since 1949.]
Joined the thread late and had to read all the way to the bottom. Took a couple of sittings.
From the top: “Michael Brown was an unarmed Black Man Who Was Killed by the Police. This is a literally true statement that is 99.9% misleading.”
Interesting way of putting things. Seeing JD’s ire on this I read the whole Wiki entry. The cop didn’t commit “execution-style murder” as one witness alleged. But he didn’t come out of this without blood on his hands – physically and metaphorically. There was clearly some fault on the part of the cop: the stop could have gone a hundred different ways, none of them resulting in Brown being shot 6 times. Once through the eye socket and once through the top of his head. Falling forwards or lunging at the cop?
I found myself wondering what would happen if this happened in the UK. Well, cops don’t have guns (we have firearms units that are dispatched when necessary). The most they have is tazers. The most parsimonious move would have been to wait “for backup”. Get the lads in. Get him on the ground. Cuff him and he’ll soon come to his senses. By accounts the backup arrived seconds after the last shot.
The reaction to this type of event is of course only triggered by it – it’s waiting to happen. The Croydon riots, in the UK in 2011 – triggered by a black man being shot by the cops. The rioters looted tvs and training shoes. I found that revealing.
I would be interested in links to “partial” coverage of the Brown killing. My memory of the BBC coverage is hazy but I remember it initially being rather inflammatory – then them showing the robbery footage a few days later. Don’t remember what they said about the grand jury etc. Will look it up.
Oh, and some of the witnesses lied baldly. Is there no statute against making a knowingly untrue statement? If they did it in court, ‘twould be perjury.
Jit “‘There was clearly some fault on the part of the cop: the stop could have gone a hundred different ways, none of them resulting in Brown being shot 6 times. Once through the eye socket and once through the top of his head. Falling forwards or lunging at the cop?”
There was zero fault on the part of the cop. The cop was trying to enforce the law, and Brown was trying to kill the cop with the cop’s own gun. The US is different than the UK in that many people have guns. The police have to carry guns. If Brown had simply stopped and compiled with the officer’s reasonable request, he would be alive today.
…
The most glaring failure of the Justice system in this instance was the failure to charge Johnson’s friend with perjury.
JD
Jit, my comment was being written while your perjury question was being posted. Perjury is often not prosecuted in United States, and there probably was also a concern with further inflaming the situation.
JD
Been away for about a month and spent much of it disconnected from the MSM. It’s always instructive to learn how pointless almost all the nattering about politics is, upon return it is still hushed whispering about Russians from very serious people ™ with zero new evidence at hand. I felt like I missed exactly nothing, ha ha. I guess its possible people can live productive happy lives without being a news junkie.
Oliver: “In my previous post, I suggested some metrics for gauging a reduction in racism”.
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The sort of metrics Oliver suggests are questionable as measures of racism. One could use such metrics to argue the plainly ridiculous result that racism is now much worse than in the 1950’s.
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This article: https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2013/04/10/black-unemployment-n1561096
claims (on the basis of census data) that prior to 1960 workforce participation rate was higher for blacks than for whites and unemployment was similar.
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This article: http://blackdemographics.com/households/marriage-in-black-america/
shows how marriage has declined among blacks relative to whites. Note that the main stat used, never married for people 35 and older, is a lagging stat since most people marry much earlier than 35. So the big increases starting about 1980 are the result of changes that started a decade or more earlier.
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So it seems that the civil rights era corresponds to undermining work and marriage among blacks, with consequences that are severely impacting blacks today.
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I am not suggesting that civil rights is responsible; that would be ridiculous. More likely, the damage was done by well meaning but benighted welfare policies.
JD’s essay selects some pretty easy and obvious targets. It’s a bit of a guilt by association exercise with the biggest clowns of the left being used to paint the entire tribe. If comedians were socially allowed to criticize the left this group could be parodied endlessly.
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I don’t think the right feels much responsibility to silence their crazy uncles (Coulter, Limbaugh, etc.) so I think calling on the other side to herd their own cats is going to fall on deaf ears.
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The environmental activists get a lot of leash from everyone because they are seen as heroes for a noble cause. Unfortunately the usual suspects have exploited this extra leash for selfish political gain, and it is truly disappointing to see bad behavior rewarded. There are no moral hazards in environmentalism (unless you mess with a Russian oil platform, ha ha). OTOH it is this very behavior that shows the corruption in the movement. For us older types it is illustrative to see the same 1970’s No Nukes people screaming for low carbon technology.
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It’s my opinion that making environmentalism a partisan issue in the US was a serious tactical mistake that will take a generation to iron out. Nobody wants toxic waste poured in the ditches or lead in their paint. Making it immoral to question episodes of environmental overreach and presenting a one sided argument in the media sends up red flags for most people. It would be a lot easier to support the environment if the activists dropped the religious overtones.
Jit,
Cops aren’t trained to shoot to disable, they are trained to shoot to kill if it comes to that. The Brown incident could have ended differently, just as 100’s of incidents do every year, but sometimes things spiral out of control and decisions must be made very quickly. Police get the benefit of the doubt. A much larger number of encounters end without incident because people simply think starting a fight against any armed opponent is a very bad idea. Brown may not have deserved a death penalty but his death is directly related to his own poor decisions. If you put a random cop in that position, many of them are going to shoot. Don’t put a cop (or a thief) in that position. This was a very poor incident to select as a showcase for police racist behavior.
jit: “the stop could have gone a hundred different ways”.
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Undoubtedly true. Many would have ended with Brown dead or badly hurt. Many would have ended with the cop dead or badly injured. Many would have ended with Brown escaping and some of those would have likely ended with Brown eventually harming or killing an innocent person. And some would have ended with Brown safely in custody and nobody hurt.
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But none of that really matters. The argument that it might have been different is always unfair.
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I do think it a shame that police officers in the U.S. are not routinely issued tasers, properly trained in their use, and subject to rules of engagement designed to prevent the misuse of tasers. But that is not the fault of the police officer.
Oliver,
“degree of segregation in school districts”
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This one is much more complicated. Where I live a court ordered desegregation law was lifted about a decade ago and the schools then became much more segregated. Investigations into this revealed that parents preferred neighborhood schools even when given an option to be bused to better schools.
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This is ultimately about racial self selection of where to live. Asians and Hispanics also cluster. Why? A lot of reasons I suppose, shared culture being a big one. People like to live around people like themselves. No doubt economics is a limiting factor of where one can live as well. The cycle of poverty can keep one trapped in a bad neighborhood.
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It’s a bit difficult to desegregate people who don’t want to be desegregated. For those that do, there should be avenues to accomplish that goal. But…people do not want to make their own neighborhoods more dangerous or invite in bad influences. A few years ago my neighborhood proposed a “multi-family dwelling” and to say there was vigorous opposition is an understatement. NIMBY. I’m sure everyone imagined meth dealers and drive by shootings. Racial perceptions, many with a factual basis, must be overcome. Where they are false they need corrected, where they are true they need worked on. Crime and education are big concerns, and attempting to build social constructs that make this reality beyond discussion is counterproductive.
Pushing for desegregation with busing means you are arguing that black kids learn more if they are sitting next to white kids.
MikeN,
They of course studied this endlessly with mixed results. As with most social science these days you can get the answer you want by selecting the study you like. There is no doubt that a disruptive classroom, poor teachers, or a class full of people who don’t value education can influence outcomes. My vague memory recalls that these influences can be proven, but they tend to be short term. Thus both sides prove their case. Once one is removed from a poor learning environment then natural learning ability kicks in and one can catch up fairly quickly to others of similar ability and lifetime accomplishments aren’t affected much. IQ is the most important factor in long term educational outcomes, but not the only factor.
Interesting to hear the defences of the cop. Can’t agree that he doesn’t bear any responsibility here. The backup arrived moments later. Too, I’m not the fastest over level ground but I’m pretty sure I could outrun someone I’d already shot three times. Unless it was a T100. (I’m suggesting the cop could have backed up). None of this is a left-right issue or black-white; the killing appears to have been a spark lighting a tinder-dry bonfire. (JD says the coverage of the event was biassed, but I’m not clear about that.)
Will have to think about another item on the list tomorrow. (It’s 7.30 pm here, and we’re off to see a musician visiting from Duluth – Haley Bonar – check her out.)
DeWitt,
“How old are you? I’m 73, so I remember the 1950’s.”
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I am ‘only’ 66, so I remember clearly only from the late 1950’s onward. But I agree, racial prejudice has fallen dramatically during my lifetime.
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FWIW, I would venture a wild guess that Oliver is early to mid 30’s, well educated, grew up in an upper middle class family, and lived in a ‘liberal’ environment.
jit,
Are you familiar with firearms? In particular, have you used a semi-automatic pistol in a threat situation?
Jit,
It’s terminology. He’s “responsible” in that he clearly committed the shooting. Did he act unreasonably, or was he at “fault” for a bad shooting? Your defense here lies in conjecture of an alternate reality that the shooting didn’t happen and Brown apprehended after a physical altercation. Possibly. Perhaps he doesn’t shoot, Brown charges him, takes his gun, shoots him dead along with the backup. An alternate reality in which the cops end up dead. Which one wins? Who knows?
Jit and Others: You can argue (in my view very weakly) over whether there were some alternatives which may have avoided the shooting. However, what you can’t argue over is that the fact that Brown charged the officer means that he was not an unarmed, innocent person as the NYTs is attempting to falsely imply in the article I cited in my post. No one with a shred of decency or honesty would discuss the Brown incident and not also add that Brown charged the officer.
….
In terms of Brown’s culpability and the officer’s responsibility it is also worth noting that the first shots fired by the officer were not fatal (and apparently not seriously injurious). Notwithstanding being hit, Brown continued to charge.
JD
In most of these police shootings, there is a preferred narrative, white cop kills black. Media makes it a major story, until the narrative collapses. Conservative Treehouse reports in better detail than the media, and was instrumental in destroying the TrayVon Martin narrative. They showed he likely was on drugs by analyzing the video of buying the Skittles.
Even the cop who appears to shoot a guy in the back in West Virginia that was caught on video ended up suffering narrative collapse, thought it didn’t make the news much to begin with.
The instances where there is no narrative collapse tend to be with female cops.
There have been so many that now when I hear a story, I just assume the narrative will collapse, just like I assume hate crimes in college are probable done by the victim.
Re: perjury. Comment of State Prosecutor:
Stumbled on this: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/darren-wilson-cleared-in-michael-brown-ferguson-killing-by-justice-department/
….
“In a December interview, McCullough said some witnesses who testified before the grand jury “clearly” lied under oath, but that they would not be charged with perjury.”
JD
Re: Garbage Media — Salon — Lying Story on Michael Brown
….
“The original narrative that emerged from many eyewitnesses in the immediate aftermath of Brown’s death, which was later contradicted by others, was that Brown, who was slated to attend college in a few weeks, put up his hands and then Wilson blew holes through him anyway. But Ferguson law enforcement officials quickly pushed back with the “Mike Brown was no angel†narrative, releasing a video that appears to show Mike Brown robbing a local convenient store before Wilson stops him. This shows Brown snatching what appears to be store property and exiting the store; however, the newly released video clearly shows an earlier exchange, not a robbery.
It would be hard to argue that the false narrative put forth by the Ferguson police department did not play a role in the city’s decision to not press charges against Darren Wilson. [Very easy to argue this if you know and acknowledge that Brown charged the police officer] This same Ferguson police department was investigated by the Department of Justice, which found that 88 percent of the cases when force was used involved an African-American person, as well as a collection of racist department emails that included the infamous claim that President Barack Obama wouldn’t be able to complete his first term, with a Ferguson cop writing, “what black man holds a steady job for four years.â€
….
None of this matters at all because Brown charged the police officer and reached in his vehicle and his DNA was on the police officer’s gun. A simple, blatant functional lie by a dishonest and unethical writer.
JD
A person isn’t unarmed if he takes the cop’s gun away. The whole idea that deadly force should never be used on an ‘unarmed’ person is bogus. Also, once you start shooting, you don’t stop until either the person you’re shooting drops or you empty your gun. You aim for the torso. Head shots are too chancy unless you’re a sniper. When clearing a building, you put two shots in any body you pass. They might be faking.
Forgot link in Salon post above. Here it is. http://www.salon.com/2017/03/18/who-polices-the-police/
JD
mark bofill:
It isn’t particularly controversial to say:
1. Racism has vastly diminished since 1950.
However, you took it 3 steps further, namely:
2. It follows that racism is no longer a serious problem.
3. Therefore, progressive activists who continue to raise the issue of racism must have an agenda other than reducing racism.
4. That agenda is, or includes, reverse discrimination.
Somewhere between 1 & 2 is where a lot of reasonable people are going to start asking questions.
You brought up improving black representation in government as a reason to believe that racism is no longer a serious issue. I simply asked how we are actually doing according to your own measure. I neither asked or expected you to post the numbers of black congressmen for every year since 1949…
Even so, what do you mean to show with this series of (upward-trending) numbers? It seems to support point #1 above, that racism has gotten much better. However, it says nothing about #2, that racism is no longer a serious problem. In fact, given that the number of African-Americans in the Senate just recently increased to 3, it might be more consistent with the data to conclude that #2 is not true, since African-American representation at the highest levels of government is still far short of being proportional. The same argument could also be extended to other non-white-male groups, e.g., Hispanics and Asians, but particularly to women, who are actually the majority in the U.S.
Mike M.:
Metrics are like facts. You can disagree that the right facts are being used, in which case you are completely welcome to suggest which facts are more relevant to the discussion and why.
I did not suggest workforce participation rate as a metric. Workforce participation might have been higher for blacks than for whites prior to 1860 in the South, but I’m not arguing that segregation in 1960 was much worse than slavery in 1860.
It might well be that the Civil Rights, in particular the Fair Housing Act (1968), is responsible, at least indirectly. Why do you call that “ridiculous�
Oliver,
Strangely enough, thank you for actually saying something concrete, even though it’s criticism. We can work with that.
I expressed that opinion eventually, yes. I think what is or is not a ‘serious’ problem is subjective to some extent, depending on how abhorrent one finds a particular injustice. It is my opinion, if this helps.
I do not mean to imply that these activists are being deliberately nefarious or dishonest, either. Some of my daughter’s associates come to mind. They believe they are talking about racism, when I think they are in fact talking about other progressive issues. This is because people have begun using what is (in my view) confusing double talk terms, like ‘colorblind racism‘. A color blind point of view is emphatically not a racist point of view as far as I am concerned.
I understand that some people use the term racist to mean this. I understand that one may be able to use one of the other definition categories under Merriam Webster to stretch the point, although it is not certain to me that this would be valid. Maybe. Regardless, I disagree that this is really what racism is about.
…[Regarding the homework on Black Americans in Congress]…
What do I mean to show? I was attempting to address your question here
Honestly, I don’t know how to answer ‘How well are we doing by this metric’. Your question appears to require a subjective evaluation. Instead of offering one, I thought it more sensible to supply the data and let people draw their own conclusions.
The original point I made, lest we lose sight of that on our ongoing fishing excursions, was that racism had greatly decreased since the 50’s. I claimed Black American participation in government supported that. I supplied the data to back up this claim. If you want to take as a fishing trophy that I answered your question ‘how well are we doing by this metric’ poorly. Knock yourself out Oliver. Doesn’t interest me and (as has been demonstrated) have little patience with it.
But again, my sincere thanks for actually saying something this time around, rather than simply asking more questions without taking any sort of position whatsoever. I think this is a big improvement.
4. That agenda is, or includes, reverse discrimination.
Oh – sorry! I left the dangling #4 reverse discrimination clause quote dangling!
LOL.
Darn it.
Alright. I think affirmative action is reverse discrimination. This is another thin[g] I didn’t think was much disputed or controversial. Perhaps I am mistaken though, I often am.
What does Affirmative Action mean. The most dreaded Wikipedia entry says this:
Favoring members of a disadvantaged group, sounds like reverse discrimination to me. Let me check the definition of reverse discrimination.
Curiously, Merriam Webster gives me this:
I think this is a piss poor definition. Reverse discrimination in and of itself has nothing whatsoever to do with any specific group. Whites or males? Horse hockey. It ought to be possible for any group to discriminate against another, and it ought to be possible for any group to reverse discriminate against another, at least in principle.
Google gives me what I consider to be a more reasonable definition:
Now – that sounds a heck of a lot like affirmative action to me. What are your thoughts.
DeWitt Payne:
I’ll defer to your memory of the ‘50s, since I wasn’t around then. However, I hope it’s clear by now that I am not arguing that racism hasn’t vastly diminished since then.
SteveF:
What makes you say any of that? (And what do you mean by the last one, anyway?)
Giving that dead horse another few quick swats, here is Wikipedia on reverse discrimination:
(emphasis added)
mark bofill:
My thought is that this is the second time you have expressed surprise at my allegedly disputing a not-very-controversial thing that I did not, in fact, dispute, and then gone on to provide lots of evidence to refute my non-dispute.
Oliver,
Well, good. See – these are the types of misunderstandings that are easy to avoid when you actually take a minute to express your position.
FWIW, I think our misunderstanding stems from this:
I understood from this that my taking it three (3) steps further made what I was said controversial. In other words, that it was controversial to say that affirmative action [which I identified as part of the progressive agenda referred to in #3] constituted reverse discrimination.
So – my apologies. I hope you can see how I made that mistake honestly.
mark bofill,
I think each further step is controversial, where M-W defines a “controversy” as “a discussion marked especially by the expression of opposing views.”
For example, some progressive activists who believe racism is still a serious problem would actually argue against affirmative action.
Thanks Oliver. I don’t think the controversy arises from a dispute regarding whether or not affirmative action is reverse discrimination however. I do agree that there is controversy about whether or not affirmative action is a good idea.
Perhaps we have no substantial dispute on this point.
I should have noted,
I didn’t think that was so. I hope that you are right and that I was wrong to think that wasn’t so. I think one of the fundamental traps involved with thinking/reasoning about groups that one is not a member of and that one has substantial disagreements (at least in some areas) with is that it’s very easy to fall prey to false assumptions about that group. I would be pleased to discover I have made this type of error in this specific case.
Thanks Oliver.
mark,
Thank you for pointing out where the confusion came from and taking the time to explain it. Maybe we have fewer disputes than we both thought to begin with.
Workforce participation was about the same for blacks and whites before they introduced the minimum wage.
SteveF: “Are you familiar with firearms? In particular, have you used a semi-automatic pistol in a threat situation?”
-no, although I fired “the gun that tamed the West” when I was 5 and have a certificate to say so. Guns are hard to come by in the UK – even among the criminal fraternity. There’s a mandatory sentence of ten years I believe for carrying one. That deters even gangsters. (A UK friend says banning guns only means that law-abiding citizens are unarmed while gangsters ignore the rules; I disagree.) So I dunno what it’s like to shoot at someone, so my commentary might be a tad naive.
DeWitt: “When clearing a building, you put two shots in any body you pass. They might be faking.” I just admitted to being naive about pullin’ triggers but I ain’t having that. We just had a case in the UK where a Royal Marine (maybe a different unit) “finished off” a wounded taliban. He was found guilty of murder, though this has now been reduced to manslaughter on grounds of mental illness. The person you just deuced might not be dead or faking. They might just be feeling very sorry for themselves.
Tom & JD: British cops face violent criminals all the time. They don’t as a rule have guns. They don’t as a rule end up dead (a dead cop in Britain is huge national news). Is this maybe a case of “I got this hammer here and the problem in front of me looks a lot like a nail.” ? Will read the Salon link.
#2 is not true, since African-American representation at the highest levels of government is still far short of being proportional.
Let me see, 1 Afro american President, racially 10% of population, so 1 in 40 years would seem appropriate, 1 in 80 years would be a standard deviation. Seems to me from a distance that great strides were made in anti racism in the states in the last 40 years.
As I have previously said, contrary to many here, the Obama experiment, and it was not an experiment, was the greatest thing to happen to USA in the last 100 years.
It showed that anything is possible in the USA, similar to Trump actually. The man actually did a lot of what he said he was going to. He survived two terms in a hostile environment, well not that hostile at the start and proved to be a great politician.
I despair at what happened under his control but a lot of those forces, if we honestly admit it were not Obama alone but in concert with a liberal [Hilary] agenda pushing to its maximum.
Of course, being a misogynist at times along with all my other faults, I would point out the fact that A/A got the vote before women as well as the presidency. I am not a BASP but if I were I would mention this despicable fact. Sorry Lucia.
Oliver,
“What makes you say any of that? (And what do you mean by the last one, anyway?)”
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I have found that people very often are strongly influenced by their background and experience, especially when it comes to politics, and the arguments you make are consistent with those of other people I have encountered with that kind of background. I am no different; that grew up relatively poor, and have always needed to earn money since ~9 years old, certainly influences how I think about politics, economics, and personal responsibility.
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WRT ‘the last one’, I mean an environment with lots of people who hold liberal political views
Jit,
Fair enought, most Brits probably do not have experience with guns. The American experience with revolution may have some influence on attitudes toward guns.
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I will only add that trying to take a pistol away from someone, and then attacking them, leads to a very high chance of being killed; it doesn’t have to be a police officer with the gun. Same applies to governments, at least here in the States.
SteveF:
SteveF,
I certainly won’t disagree that people are shaped by their background and experience, but I am curious which arguments you connect to which “background items,” or is it more about the overall worldview? And is the source of my worldviews relevant to the conversation?
Oliver,
More a ‘world view’.
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As to whether it is relevant to a discussion: understanding a person’s ‘world view’ helps you understand why they discount the value of some data and believe other data. I think it helps avoid wasted effort in discussion. When I discuss with my 27 YO daughter the security risks to foreigners in northern Africa (where she currently is) I do not even try to advance the same arguments as I would with my 62 year old brother.. who has some experience traveling and working in that part of the world. The ‘beauty’ of an argument is often in the mind of who hears it, quite independent of its factual content or accuracy.
Americans are a different kind of people. I wouldn’t assume British cops would do well in the USA.
Andrew
SteveF,
I agree that that it’s useful to consider worldviews when having a conversation. But you also need to have a conversation before you can begin to understand a person’s worldview. Otherwise, a lot of it is just guessing based on superficial details.
jit: “British cops face violent criminals all the time. They don’t as a rule have guns. They don’t as a rule end up dead”
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Well, let’s see. It looks like between 1 and 2 officers in the U.K. are killed per year per 100,000 officers. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/datablog/2015/oct/15/how-many-police-officers-harmed-line-of-duty
The context of that article implies that the numbers are murders, but it is not clear that accidental deaths are excluded.
In the U.S., it looks like about 5-6 officers murdered per 100,000 per year. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-killed-line-of-duty-increase-2016/ There are about 900,000 police officers in the U.S.
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From the source above and this one: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/01/01/fraternal-order-of-police-assaults-fbi-leoka-editorials-debates/21169425/
It looks like U.K. officers are about 3 times as likely to be assaulted as U.S. officers (twice as many assaults in the U.S., 6 times as many officers). But there might be a difference in what is defined as assault.
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Police offers in the U.K. do not face violent criminals as often as in the U.S.; the rate of violent crime in the U.S. appears to be about twice as high. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#Violent_crime
I was surprised that the difference wasn’t bigger. And, of course, U.S. criminals are much better armed.
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So it looks like U.K. officers get assaulted more even though they deal with fewer violent criminals. The fact that U.S. officers get assaulted less is probably at least in part due to having guns. U.S. officers are more likely likely to be killed, but hardly as much more as one might expect given what they face.
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My guess is that unarmed British bobbies trying to patrol the worst parts of U.S. cities would tend to end up dead.
Oliver,
One of the points I’m trying to put forward is the idea that what is thought of as ‘racism’ today in some circles (I thought, in some left leaning circles frankly, but I am prepared to re-examine that notion) isn’t really racism at all. I believe I’ve done a poor job so far. I notice that I’ve overlooked a small opportunity that might help me better illustrate my point and would like to revisit this briefly.
.
One of the metrics you proposed was racial wealth gap. I take this to mean, the gap in wealth between African Americans and white Americans. I thought it was interesting that my Google search on the term ‘racial wealth gap’ listed in the first few search results the Wikipedia entry for economic inequality:
I am not trying to embarrass you, or score a ‘gotcha’ point, or any silliness of that sort. I am hoping that by pointing this out the point I am trying to make will be made more clear. I believe quite strongly that you do not come here with some nefarious agenda to knowingly and willfully blur the lines between racism and other issues. Regardless, you put forward a metric for racism that is appropriate for measuring income inequality.
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Yet racism is not income inequality.
Marc Bofill,
I don’t think anyone doubts that there are large differences in wealth between identifiable groups. The issue is if those differences arise due to prejudice on the part of the majority or for other reasons. The argument frequently advanced is if the number of research chemists who are black is substantially lower than the fraction of black people (this is absolutely true), then that’s prima facia evidence of discrimination against black people. Therefore we must find a way to increase the number of black research chemists.
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Of course, I find this argument absurd on its face: we might as well be alarmed by the terrible underrepresentation of white people in the NBA, or the lack of women playing in the Masters golf tournament this week, or the lack of Asians among world class sprinters (who are virtually all of west African descent, no matter where they live). We can then move on to there being too many jewish medical doctors, not enought female department chairs in mathematics, and… well… the list is endless. Selection based on merit is fundamentally in conflict with ‘equality of outcomes’, and equality of outcome is iundamentally in conflict with liberty. All people are not the same. All identifiable groups are not the same. Ignoring this is willful rejection of reality.
SteveF,
I agree.
I wish I had said this. 🙂
I think it can be conceded if there were no guns there would be less shootings.
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Would Brown have been apprehended without a cop being injured or killed if he hadn’t been shot? Probably. But if Jit is the cop the question is if he/she is willing to roll the dice in this episode or use deadly force. If you assess a 10% chance of being seriously injured in a confrontation my guess is deadly force will be used almost every time by the cop. Brown was unfortunately a big guy so that does not help his case with threat assessment. Blacks commit violent crime at a much higher rate proportionally. Don’t know the specifics of the neighborhood where the shooting took place, but East St. Louis which is 20 miles away has one of the highest murder rates in the country. No doubt Brown is going to be shot at a way higher rate than little old white grandma on Rodeo Drive.
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He was likely profiled to start with, and then he affirmed this profile with his refusal to obey commands and his subsequent attack on the officer in his car. The cop was likely thinking THUG. The video release later ended the trial by the public. Brown was guilty of thugness and determined his own destiny.
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In many people’s minds profiling is the same as racism. Perhaps this is technically true, but making profiling a social taboo does not prevent the human brain from doing what it has always done by stereotyping as a biological shortcut.
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You change perceptions by establishing they aren’t accurate. Initially choosing Brown as a poster child for racial profiling gone wrong and then adhering to that framing regardless of the facts did much more damage to the cause then it helped. The subsequent assassination of several cops was even less helpful.
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Choose your martyrs more carefully.
Respect for police surged to its highest levels in 50 years.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/196610/americans-respect-police-surges.aspx
There is definitely a large racial “wealth” disparity. The racial “income” disparity also exists but this has been improving significantly over the past 50 years as I understand.
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Income and wealth are different measures. I don’t know the answer but wealth disparity could be due to generational poverty (parents not paying for college, supporting an impoverished family, etc.) and/or bad money management. I would assume wealth disparities to lag income disparities. Equal pay across races for similar talent I believe is pretty good now, and the lack of educational achievement in some races is a big drag, especially for the recent knowledge economy.
Tom Scharf,
“In many people’s minds profiling is the same as racism. Perhaps this is technically true, but making profiling a social taboo does not prevent the human brain from doing what it has always done by stereotyping as a biological shortcut.”
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Sure. It is inevitable. Stealing from a convenience store, followed by assaulting a police officer (and trying to take his gun) will usually make people draw certain inferences… especially the officer.
I don’t think anybody is much worried about this, so I’m sorry for taking up space with it. Briefly then, just to clean up, I originally said:
With some justice, I could be accused of [having] changed my tune here. Do I claim that the ‘hijack’ is deliberate or not? My answer is that I suspect there are some small number of people who knowingly promote the changes to the ideas and definitions I’m referring to and a much larger number of people who are innocently manipulated by these changes. Who are these nefarious people? I don’t know. I’ll work on that. 🙂
I didn’t know that Wilson was aware the Brown had taken anything from the convenience store. I
j ferguson,
Wilson testified to the grand jury that Brown was walking down the middle of the street instead of the sidewalk; he said he then saw a fistful of cigarillos in Brown’s hand, and connected that to the convenience store robbery. No way to tell if that is true or not, but had Brown not been walking down the middle of the street, it seems unlikely Wilson would have noticed hin.
j ferguson: “I didn’t know that Wilson was aware the Brown had taken anything from the convenience store.”
….
There was a lot of confusion about that in the beginning, but apparently that is what happened.
….
Here is additional testimony from Wikipedia showing how much Brown put the officer’s life in jeopardy. “Witness 103, a 58-year-old black male, testified that from his parked truck he saw “Brown punching Wilson at least three times in the facial area, through the open driver’s window of the SUV… Wilson and Brown [had] hold of each other’s shirts, but Brown was “getting in a couple of blows [on Wilson]”.
….
“Witness 104, a 26-year-old biracial female, witnessed the end of the altercation from a minivan:
[Witness 104] saw Brown run from the SUV, followed by Wilson, who “hopped” out of the SUV and ran after him while yelling “stop, stop, stop”. Wilson did not fire his gun as Brown ran from him. Brown then turned around and “for a second” began to raise his hands as though he may have considered surrendering, but then quickly “balled up in fists” in a running position and “charged” at Wilson. Witness 104 described it as a “tackle run”, explaining that Brown “wasn’t going to stop”. Wilson fired his gun only as Brown charged at him, backing up as Brown came toward him. Witness 104 explained that there were three separate volleys of shots. Each time, Brown ran toward Wilson, Wilson fired, Brown paused, Wilson stopped firing, and then Brown charged again. The pattern continued until Brown fell to the ground, “smashing” his face upon impact. Wilson did not fire while Brown momentarily had his hands up. Witness 104 explained that it took some time for Wilson to fire, adding that she “would have fired sooner”. Wilson did not go near Brown’s body after Brown fell to his death.”
….
I think it is important to note that Brown had two chances to save his life after having been shot, and instead of doing the prudent and right thing he continued charging the officer. Brown was responsible for his own death. The fact that the Left continues to encourage the false notion that Brown was a victim shows the Left’s disregard for facts, particularly inconvenient facts.
JD
“Wilson fired his gun only as Brown charged at him, backing up as Brown came toward him.”
Thanks, JD. Do much for Jit’s suggestion that Wilson could have avoided shooting just by backing up. And as for Jit’s claim that Wilson could have just run away, I would not want to live in a community where the cops run away from trouble.
Oliver,
You know, I’m starting to believe that it’s possible that no part of what I said is really controversial as a question of fact, although as you have noted the things I refer to are controversial in and of themselves. I read here:
It sounds like what I’m essentially proposing is not different from what these paragraphs [say]. Apparently some scholars think that there is a new, post civil rights form of racism, which would be consistent with what I’m saying regarding activists changing the ideas and definitions I think. They call it ‘color blind racism’, just as I’ve identified. The practices that occur under so called ‘color blind racism’ are apparently non-racial, which is what I say (I say they are in fact not racial. But. While there is disagreement about that, otherwise this text and I are consistent.) What this is really about is a state of inequality.
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In summary, I think that apparently this Michelle Alexander would agree that what I’ve said is trivially true – that the idea and definition of racism has changed, that the new thing is ‘color blind racism’ and that it’s in fact about inequality. Of course, she’d disagree with me on my view that this is not racism – I guess she’s one of the people working to broaden the definition of racism to include inequality. But I don’t believe she’d disagree with me on the basic idea that activists have broadened or are broadening the idea of racism from what it was in the Civil Rights era.
JD and SteveF,
The description of the events associated with Brown’s death retold above pretty much agree with my understanding, making Brown a very poor choice for an example of a helpless victim of racism.
I thought the origin of the fracas was Wilson telling (asking) Brown and his colleague not to walk in the middle of the street.
If you want to read the reductio ad absurdum of forced equal outcomes, try reading Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut, in case anyone was wondering, espoused socialism. However, one could say his viewpoint was eclectic.
As far as wealth gaps and other such measures, correlation does not prove causation.
Re: Officer Wilson’s alternatives to shooting Brown
….
In reference to the issues posed by Jit, I have no issue per se with the question of whether police officers should have guns (of course, there are a lot of reasons why that would be impractical in the US. However, a British perspective could be useful.) But, the problem I have is someone saying that Brown is an innocent victim and another example of police brutality and misuse of their power. Anyone making Jit’s argument who mentions Brown should also mention that he charged the police officer.
JD
DeWitt,
Isn’t that nutty? 🙂 Must’ve been a complicated man.
mark bofill (Comment #160861),
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I think you are completely right here.
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Color-blind racism refers to “contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics.â€
The types of practices that take place under color blind racism are “subtle, institutional, and apparently nonracial.â€
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That seems to come awfully close to claiming that the absence of racism is racist. Changing the definitions indeed. They have also come up with something even more subtle that they can call “racism”: Microagressions. The left keeps going further down the rabbit hole.
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What bugs me is that if the objective is fair treatment of minorities, this constant fanning of the flames of racism is counterproductive. I suspect that the people pushing these ideas know that, and have other objectives.
Thanks Mike M.
Regarding absence of racism being racist and racist microagressions – indeed. I read here that an innocent and even benign action that can be misconstrued by a minority as racist ‘puts the onus’ on the perceived offender. (I find it mildly interesting that being black ‘trumps’ being female in the example in the article I linked.)
This is nuts. Racism is in the eye of the offended, apparently, and yes – I had no idea how deep the rabbit hole really goes.
Yes. As David Young pointed out in 160723, some profit financially directly from fanning the flames. I think some lack any nefarious or dishonest or ..negative?.. element and are innocent / well meant. I think a lot of college kids may fall into this category. Or it might be that I’m subconsciously always on the lookout for a means to rationalize cutting my daughter some slack. :> Then, I think others know what they are doing and have alternative agendas but believe they are ultimately doing good.
mark bofill: ” I think some lack any nefarious or dishonest or ..negative?.. element and are innocent / well meant. I think a lot of college kids may fall into this category. … Then, I think others know what they are doing and have alternative agendas but believe they are ultimately doing good.”
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I am sure that the majority of the people who buy and then spout the nonsense are innocent and well meaning. But that is not the case for minority of people on the left who are pushing the nonsense. They do indeed know what they are doing. Most of them probably think they are doing good. That their agenda is nefarious (or at least would regarded as such by most) can be seen from the fact that it is hidden. Their questionable morals can be seen in the way they use tactics that are ultimately damaging to the cause they profess to support. One might plausibly call that minority “The Dummy, Dishonest and Intolerant Left”.
mark bofill:
mark,
I don’t think Michelle Alexander would agree at all. I think she is arguing that overt racism, which is now illegal when associated with actions having to do with a bunch of things like employment, housing, voting, etc., has been largely replaced by covert racism, in which the racial motivations still exist but people learn not to say it openly, instead choosing to give some other, “politically correct,” motivation that produces the same result.
In this example, the definition of racism hasn’t changed, since the underlying motivation still has a basis in race, i.e., the desire to produce a racially discriminatory result.
Thanks Oliver. Maybe I’ve misunderstood what I was reading, or maybe I need to investigate a little more thoroughly. I’ll go through it again.
Oliver: “where the motivation is still racial but some other justification that happens to coincide with racial discrimination is given”.
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I don’t doubt that is what Alexander is saying. It is consistent with the idea that white people are racist by dint of being white. Which, frankly, strikes me as being racist.
mark bofill:
mark,
I think it’s a bit of a red herring. 😉 Equality of opportunity seems to be consistent with liberty, but why is it a given that equality of outcome is fundamentally in conflict with liberty? Doesn’t the outcome at each stage in a person’s life (and even at stages prior to one’s life) affect his or her opportunity at the next stage?
Is it possible that more equality of outcome in our society could actually result in more liberty?
Mike M.:
Alexander is saying that racism hidden behind an outwardly racially neutral (or tolerant) presentation is still racism.
Why do you think that “is consistent with the idea that white people are racist by dint of being white�
It would be racist, if that’s what she were saying. But it isn’t.
Oliver,
Equality of outcome is fundamentally in conflict with liberty because it requires the intervention of the government to accomplish it. Further, the government does not have the power to ‘lift everyone up’. At the end of the day, the power it has is to bring everybody down to the same level. This (in my opinion) has been demonstrated repeatedly by communist regimes in the past century.
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There are extensions I personally make to these arguments that other here may or may not agree with. For example, I believe equality of outcome should not be enforced because equality of effort is a silly thing to assume. Consider- I devote such time and effort as I consider reasonable to earning money. I could devote more time and [effort. I could invest more money to increase my ability to make money.]. I could make sacrifices. I could work harder. I do not choose to, and I ought to be free to choose not to. I ought to be able to walk in the woods or read books or play video games rather than increase my capacity to earn more money if I want to.
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Equality of effort isn’t present. Priorities are different. Which reminds me – equality of outcome in what sense? (real question) Who are we to say who’s choices are correct and who’s are wrong? (rhetorical – my answer, we are no-one to dictate this) Should I elect to spend my evenings dancing with my wife in the backyard instead of developing new software products to make money, perhaps my outcome is ‘better’ from the standpoint of my fulfilling love interest relationship and the time spent with my spouse. Perhaps the outcome is ‘better’ for the guy who spends all his time working. Why on earth should the outcomes be the same, when the life choices and priorities were completely different? (rhetorical, my answer – the outcomes should not be the same)
If I wish to sacrifice everything else in the name of my dream to become extremely wealthy, I fail to see why I should be prevented from accomplishing it, merely because others do not wish to pay the price to accomplish it and because we have adopted the wacky notion that outcomes must be equal, I guess is the short form.
And with that I bid the Blackboard a good night. 🙂
oliver (Comment #160873)
“Selection based on merit is fundamentally in conflict with ‘equality of outcomes’, and equality of outcome is fundamentally in conflict with liberty.
I think it’s a bit of a red herring. 😉 Equality of opportunity seems to be consistent with liberty, but why is it a given that equality of outcome is fundamentally in conflict with liberty? Doesn’t the outcome at each stage in a person’s life (and even at stages prior to one’s life) affect his or her opportunity at the next stage?
Is it possible that more equality of outcome in our society could actually result in more liberty?”
The answer is easy. Do as DeWitt Payne (Comment #160863)
suggests.
“If you want to read the reductio ad absurdum of forced equal outcomes, try reading Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut”
This little gem has floated in the background of my mind for many years since I first read it and was unable to find it again. I cried when I read it the first time and it still makes me goose bumpy and teary when I read where the dancers are shot.
Equality of opportunity is never a given. Some are born with the brain of Einstein but others with very few attributes to help them through life. One may feel sorry, one may try to help, but reducing someone else’s quality of life to do so, making everyone else miserable with a carbon tax for example, is no world I want to be a part of.
Oliver: “Is it possible that more equality of outcome in our society could actually result in more liberty?”
No it is not possible. I do not mean unlikely, I mean literally impossible. The reason is that outcome is a result, not a cause. Mark has provided more detail.
But it might well be possible that more liberty might result in a greater equality of outcome. That is because in many cases, restrictions on liberty hold people down, keeping children in bad schools, restricting job opportunities via useless licensing requirements, and so on.
mark,
I don’t think I agree that government intervention equals loss of liberty. It is not clear that there would be much of a free market (insofar as one exists) without certain government interventions such as enforcement of contractual obligations, protections against monopolies increase freedom. Things such as safety regulations, protections against false advertising, etc. are more controversial, but I think most people will agree that some degree of those things are helpful. Clearly there is a great potential for overreach, and hence the tension between helpful and harmful government creates an ongoing struggle in our democracy.
Now, going back to equality of outcome: I do not presume to judge what you find valuable as an outcome, and quite honestly I am glad that you have both the opportunity to make and an appreciation of your own life choices. It’s completely impossible for me to even contemplate what exact equality of outcome would look like. (My guess is it would be very boring). That isn’t what I’m suggesting.
What I am wondering is whether more equality of outcome would increase liberty. There is tremendous room here, after all, for more equality without being anywhere near exact equality. You and I may prioritize time spent with our loved ones, and be judged lazy by some standards, but do some people really put in, e.g., 100,000 times more effort?
Even if we value other rewards, do you not agree that significant (meaning many orders of magnitude) differences in material outcomes skew our freedoms?
Oliver,
What would be the point of speech codes and other social constructs that “hide” racism then if the usual suspects think it is just hidden now? Wouldn’t it be better if overt racism was socially acceptable so we knew who the racists really were? This also prevents people who aren’t in tune with the latest microaggression theory from committing social faux pas which are “accidental covert racism”.
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The witch hunts for racism through subtle means with secret ever changing rules decided by mysterious racism judges in Ivory towers is mental. Mental. It is beyond me how the left in the US didn’t anticipate a backlash to this insanity. Please, please, keep it up. Double down. Mandatory privilege checking!
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The most ironic part of all this is that the left is currently rushing to read 1984 in droves. I assume they are going to use a redacted version that skips all the parts with the thought police.
Oliver: “Alexander is saying that racism hidden behind an outwardly racially neutral (or tolerant) presentation is still racism.”
That is what I took her to be saying.
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Oliver: “Why do you think that “is consistent with the idea that white people are racist by dint of being whiteâ€?”
Oh, come on. She is concluding that people not acting racist is only due to hiding their racism rather than not being racist. I can not believe that you can not see how that is *consistent* with the widely expressed idea that whites are inherently racist.
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Oliver: “It would be racist …”
I am glad we agree.
“… if that’s what she were saying. But it isn’t.”
I never said that she is saying that. I don’t know if she is or isn’t. I only observed that her statement is consistent with a common claim of the left.
Mike M.:
It is possible, but we are already seeing impacts of “more liberty” in the form of deregulation. Once upon a time, monopolies inflicted considerable damage on free markets. We are now seeing a return to huge concentrations of market control, to the detriment of consumers and small businesses alike.
Businesses were once free to fire workers who asked for reasonable work hours, sick leave, safety equipment, or anything else, really. Some of that still exists today, notably in the retail and hospitality industries. Does the freedom to be fired increase workers’ liberty?
Some licensing requirements are useless, but others are not. I’d like some assurance that my doctors and lawyers have some basic level of competency, and engineers who build bridges work by guidelines with some track record.
We are still paying for cleanup in some areas, notably in ex-industrial sites in the Northeast, where companies dumped toxic waste into the ground and water table. Is it better to send kids to schools right next to toxic waste dumps rather than regulate companies’s emissions and hold them financially accountable for later societal costs?
In recent decades, greater liberty to conduct business has led to significant offshoring of American jobs to people who make 1/25 the wages. Sure, equal outcomes are not guaranteed, but is it so impossible to imagine that steady employment might actually improve liberty?
“Alexander is saying that racism hidden behind an outwardly racially neutral (or tolerant) presentation is still racism.”
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A bit of a circular argument here. If racist behavior is racism, and racially neutral behavior is also racism then let’s just skip the bothersome part of proving motive and simply label everyone (… in … the … other … tribe …) as an irredeemable racist. That makes things so much easier, because we know those people are immoral regardless of their “outward” behavior.
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The social sciences have become an intellectually lazy monoculture. The lowest level of hell would be an infinite groundhog day at a social science convention where the latest race theories are debated.
Mike M. (Comment #160882)
She is arguing that racism is still widespread, but people are better at hiding their racism. What does this have to do with whites being more “inherently racist†than any other group?
It’s consistent only in the sense that saying a square has four sides and a circle is round are consistent. You were pretty clearly connecting her argument about “hidden racism†and the accusation that white people are inherently racist.
Oliver,
I am unsure why you are conflating the whole range of laws and regulations (contract law is a regulation?) with government forcing equality of outcome. These are very different things, so perhaps better discussed separately.
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Staying with equality of outcome: If you are going to give less qualified people opportunities (university admissions, medical school admissions, job offers, etc) then you necessarily reduce the opportunities available to more qualified people. If you believe this increases ‘liberty’, then you have a strange definition of liberty. I ovject to the University of California restricting the number of more qualified white kids, or Asian kids, or Jewish kids at their competative schools in order to increase ‘diversity’. It seems to me the main diversity they are creating is one of intellect.
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During my adult lifetime the ideal of a ‘colorblind’ society (as Martin Luther King called for) has been corrupted and twisted into an ideal where race becomes the basis for explicit discrimination against individuals. This seems to me quite beyond absurd; Orwellian is perhaps a more reasonable description.
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All of this searching for equality of outcome serms to me little more than ‘Marx-lite’… not as totally destructive, but at best fool’s errand that does real damage to the social fabric, while reducing overall wealth.
Tom Scharf,
“The lowest level of hell would be an infinite groundhog day at a social science convention where the latest race theories are debated.”
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The problem is that this version of hell is being gradually forced upon society by those lazy leftists.. think Pocahontas Warren if you want a good example of the Devil’s left arm.
Oliver,
Fun quote of the day: Man, as a social animal, can no more escape government than the individual can escape bondage to his bowels.
So – sure. I’m not an anarchist, I’m a capitalist. When government goes much further than it already does in the U.S., the net result is to bring everyone down, if this clarifies my position.
But I agree, lets get back to the heart of the matter:
Cumulatively, over time, and/or developing expertise in niches that possibly few others in the world have that produce tremendous value? Compared to the other extreme I’ve known (because some people I’ve known appear to genuine honestly and truely NOT like to work. At all.): I think so.
Also, I don’t think I need to expound much on this, but the possibility of these vast rewards is what motivates some people to try as hard as they can possibly bring themselves to try to succeed. Sometimes there people succeed and create tremendous value, not just for our American society, but for the entire world. I don’t think serving the envy standard to keep people chained down to the average is worth it in terms of the cost to society.
Certainly Oliver. The important point as far as I am concerned is that while we are free to make choices, those choices have consequences, and they should have consequences, good and ill. If I choose to stuff my face all day and sit on my ass, I will skew my freedom by becoming too heavy to participate in some activities like running or jogging. If I choose to work hard at developing expertise with a musical instrument, I will open the door to be free to play that instrument well. Etc and etc.
Even were it possible to equalize consequences without bringing everybody down to the level of the lowest common denominator, it would be evil, in my view. Justice demands that those who do ‘the right thing’ in whatever context get their rewards. [And, reality is the ultimate judge at the end of the day of what ‘the right thing’ was.]
Thanks.
Oliver,
Also, we’ve gone a little off track. ‘Effort’ isn’t even really the standard, but I think effort loosely correlates with ‘value created’. I’ll post more on this later, but the value one creates I think is the real standard that should determine one’s (financial) outcome.
oliver (Comment #160883),
You quote my comment #160879, then go off on a digression that has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
I happen to agree that government is not the only source of oppression and that government actions can either increase liberty or restrict liberty. I also think that some government actions (such as ensuring access to quality education) can both enhance liberty and produce greater equality of outcome. But imposing equality of outcome can only be restrictive of liberty.
From your comment #160883, it seems that you need to work on understanding the concept of cause and effect. And from your comment #160885, it seems that you could benefit from understanding Venn diagrams.
In thinking about how to proceed, I worry that there are rocks ahead that we should navigate away from right now. We have been using the term ‘liberty’ very freely (heh), but it might save pain down the road to clarify what we mean.
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There is freedom from my fellow man. The government should protect me from being robbed, enslaved, raped, tortured, imprisoned, and/or killed. It should help me secure my property. It should protect my ability to speak freely, to defend myself with firearms, to vote. It should protect me against unreasonable searches and seizures, self incrimination, double jeopardy, so on.
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Then there is the freedom that comes from possessing wealth, knowledge, and technology, and participating in a prosperous society. The freedom that comes from mastery over the world around us.
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These are not the same thing, even though we use the same term ‘liberty’.
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Can we agree about this Oliver, or am I making some error in your view?
What I want to know is when will we be able to stop taking affirmative action in, say, college admissions? (real question) Let’s assume that it was a temporary necessary evil because it’s still racial discrimination, which was, IIRC, banned by the 1964 Civil Rights act. IMO, it’s long past it’s sell-by date and now does far more harm than good.
DeWitt,
You and John Roberts both. 🙂 And me too, for that matter.
I read that in Grutter vs Bollinger (in 2003) that the SC opined that affirmative action would no longer be necessary in 25 years. I was unaware of all of this until you asked and I looked; therefore – thank you. I’m pleased to find out about it.
[Edit:
]
The impression I gained from the wiki entry on the Brown case was that Wilson recognised him from the description issued in the robbery alert. He told Brown and Johnson to get off the road as an opening gambit to see if they reacted guiltily. Seems they did – or at least angrily.
Regarding the Salon video, I’m none the wiser. CNN says there was an earlier transaction between Brown and a shop assistant, grass for cigarillos, which Brown left behind the counter, came back to retrieve and then “retrieved” in the better known video.
I don’t understand why the store would then call the cops and say it was robbery (maybe the original store assistant was off duty, not surprising if they were working at 1 am that morning).
Perhaps this explains why Brown & Johnson don’t leg it right away – strolling down the middle of the road is not what I would consider normal behaviour for robbers. If you considered yourself innocent you would probably react differently to being stopped.
I get it that uk cops wouldn’t do well in the streets of some american cities. That’s a shame; policing should be with the community’s consent, not a war. Regarding the level of assaults on uk cops, yes, it happens – I guess a gun would deter that, but I also know that there would be a lot more escalation and gunfire if the cops had guns (i.e. minor scuffles turning into lethal encounters). Our cops are well scrutinised. They can’t even get away with a judicious bit of nightstick use, which some might think would do the assaulting party a bit of good long term.
Jit,
I can’t help remembering the Monty Python sketch Burglar, where an encyclopedia salesman pretends to be a burglar to gain entry to an apartment.
Regarding item 5 on the list (Gleick), JD might have a point here. I remember at the time thinking that coverage in the blogs was extremely polarised. In fact I intended to score all the blogs that covered the affair for (what I perceived as) their degree of cant in this case. This was simply to be the basis for a list of blogs whose content I could pretty much ignore as untrustworthy from that time forwards: them-and-us is no good for anything. This actually relates in a way to law enforcement – if something bad happens you have to expose it, not bury it. My impression of the affair was that any honest brokers should have been merciless in their treatment of Gleick. That they weren’t was honestly perplexing.
I never got around to scoring the blogs – maybe I’ll look into it. Of course a lot of water has gone under the bridge, and words are easy to change on the interwebs.
Jit,
Everything that happened before Brown assaulted Wilson is irrelevant. Brown tried to grab Wilson’s gun. Ran away and then charged Wilson. Not complicated. Our cops have a great relationship with citizens in the majority of the US…even with them carrying guns. It’s only a few Democratically controlled cities where we seem to have a problem. The race baiting, victim mentality and culture of single parents has poisoned the atmosphere in those places. All this is created and promoted by government policies.
“Perhaps this explains why Brown & Johnson don’t leg it right away – strolling down the middle of the road is not what I would consider normal behaviour for robbers. If you considered yourself innocent you would probably react differently to being stopped.”
….
The alternative explanation for this is that Brown was arrogant and stupid, which is supported by the fact that he continued charging the police officer after having been shot. As chuckrr said above, what happened before the officer saw Brown in the middle of the street does not in any way potentially exculpate Brown. The officer had the right to stop Brown for walking in the middle of the street and Brown should have complied with the officer’s request.
….
I would add that walking in the middle of the street is not a trivial, meaningless offense. People driving may not expect a person in the middle of the street and an accident may occur. Additionally, this is a minor pet peeve of mine. In my old neighborhood, some 9-11-year-old children would routinely walk in the middle of the street on the way to school. The kids were not doing anything malicious. They were (from my perspective) undisciplined. Every time I would see them walking in the middle of the street, I would be thinking if one of the children was injured in a car accident, the driver would be undoubtedly sued when it would be quite possible that the fault was with the children. I was also thinking that these children had little chance of success in life if the parenting they received was so loose that the children felt that they owned the road and didn’t have to respect the rights of others who would be on the road. My speculation would be that Brown probably had a long standing habit of walking wherever he wanted, including in the middle of the road.
JD
Under the influence of drugs.
Andrew
Oliver,
In a way I’m wasting time and space by continuing on with this point. I said it’s really about the value one creates instead of the effort one puts forth, and I mean that, but still. This ain’t right.
This bugs me, because I toy with the idea of starting my own business. What’s stopped me is the formidable risk, commitment, sacrifice, and cost involved. I mean, I’ve got a day job. I’ve got financial obligations. Car payments, credit cards, hockey soccer and other activities for my kids, medical bills for one kid, college bills for another, aging parents to help support, the whole enchilada. The wife and I already feel like we’re stretched thin, and we definitely feel like we don’t have enough time together. So I’ve got substantial demands on my time and money. My work causes me a lot of stress, which I willingly accept for the money I get paid – but it makes my down time valuable to me. Starting any of the businesses I think I could leverage my expertise to gain an advantage in, I need to invest time and effort in R&D, and I need to set and maintain a certain pace; opportunities I perceive now are unlikely to wait years for me to finally be ready to embrace them. Technology moves on, people find other solutions, problems become obsolete. So – I sacrifice my valuable time and money and effort and stress, not even with any assurance of even being able to eventually make a living with it, much less get rich. I gamble, rolling the dice, wagering all of this time and effort and stress on a bet that is unlikely to ever pay off enough for me to so much as break even. I have to sell this to my wife of course; I need her support. Takes guts and self confidence and a big dose of faith. Down the road, I can see the probability that to have a real chance to succeed I will have to risk more than I’m comfortable with, frankly. Invest from my own retirement savings and risk that money, or take out mortgage loans (in point of fact, I rent, but. The wife and I have been reconsidering this recently). It’s not inconceivable that I might end up having to pay salaries out of my own pocket for a time. Again, this impacts people who depend on me if I’m wrong, it’s not just about me at this point.
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I mean, who in their right mind would ever try this, all of this work and these insane risks, if the outcome was guaranteed to be equal to the outcome one would experience by sitting on the couch watching TV? People who work hard and gamble this way really ought to at least have the chance, the bare possibility, that they might reap substantial rewards. It shouldn’t be taken away from them by policies intended to equalize outcomes.
Jit,
Just to take my own opposing side for minute, some of the shootings after Brown did demonstrate to me that there is a Blue Wall of silence in police departments and my guess is a lot of truly bad past shootings ended in no discipline at all. The thing most everyone agrees on (except for police unions) is body cameras are a good idea. To be clear, just because a cop used bad judgment in hindsight one day doesn’t mean they get thrown in jail, cops still get a lot a leash IMO. However shooting people in the back or while they are on the ground are fairly clear cases that likely need to be prosecuted. The shooting in Chicago with a bunch of cops watching was appalling. The failure to not release the video for over a year was nothing but a blatant cover-up.
http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2015/11/25/laquan-mcdonald-chicago-shooting-dashcam-video-orig-mg.cnn/video/playlists/police-use-of-force/
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Perhaps there is more to this story, but I wouldn’t be making any long term plans if I was this officer and I was on the jury.
mark,
Use OPM (other people’s money). All those fantastically wealthy people and companies like to invest in good ideas. You only get partial ownership of course, but you are not risking your retirement.
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I’ve done consulting for 20 years now and that is the ideal least stress / least risk / least costly / most profitable path for an individual in my case. Rent a brain.
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If you are looking at product development and you are the technical side, do not underestimate the importance of sales and marketing, and their costs. A better product is only one piece of success. Technical products can also be easily driven out of business by a competitor’s patent lawsuit and the associated legal costs (I’ll spare you a 10,000 word rant on my views of the USPTO). 90% of startups fail, and that number is going to be higher for newbies. All this wisdom is available elsewhere of course, but this has been my personal experience.
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Bottom line is make sure you have accumulated plenty of scar tissue using OPM before you risk your own.
Tom,
Thanks.
Yes. I forget exactly how it was put to me some years back when I asked a business owner friend of mine how VC had worked for him. He said something to the effect that it was easy enough, provided one was willing to accept partial ownership and that one was willing to enter into an arrangement with another party that gives the other party the power to ruin you utterly. I didn’t inquire about these details and just took my friend at his word on this part. 🙂 From what you say about accumulating scar tissue with OPM, maybe he had this wrong. His words certainly caused me to think twice about looking for investors!
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Absolutely. I see that I omitted that from my tale of woe there. It was an oversight.
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Ultimately of course the point of my post was to argue that people who put themselves through all of this trouble and take these risks (and a 90% failure rate makes it pretty darn dubious) really ought to be able to plug the possibility of some substantial reward into the equation. But you’re right, there are strategies for dealing with this. Even so – I don’t think this changes the fundamental point I was trying to make. If there’s not even the possibility of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, [I believe] only people with severe psychological problems are even going to attempt starting new business ventures on the side.
mark bofill (Comment #160901): “I said it’s really about the value one creates instead of the effort one puts forth, and I mean that, but still. This ain’t right.
[quoting Oliver] but do some people really put in, e.g., 100,000 times more effort? [end quote]
This bugs me, because I toy with the idea of starting my own business … I mean, who in their right mind would ever try this, all of this work and these insane risks, if the outcome was guaranteed to be equal to the outcome one would experience by sitting on the couch watching TV?”
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Mark makes an excellent case, but there is a different side to Oliver’s statement. People on the right tend to recognize that what one earns is a measure of one’s economic value and that economic value is just one small part of one’s worth as a person. People on the left seem to have trouble with that idea. Instead, they tend to conflate earnings with a much broader idea of worth. So to them it is outrageous that a ballplayer or an executive might get paid several hundred times as much as a teacher, since no one can possibly be worth that much. It that sense, people on the left are way more materialistic (in the non-philosophical sense) than people on the right.
Tom Scharf: “The shooting in Chicago with a bunch of cops watching was appalling. The failure to not release the video for over a year was nothing but a blatant cover-up.”
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There are substantial numbers of cases of police brutality and cover ups. However, each case needs to be looked at on its own merits. The only cover up that has occurred in Brown is the minimization of his obvious responsibility for his own fate by the Left and the legacy press. The other interesting thing of course, is that Chicago has a Democratic mayor.
JD
W.r.t. sales and marketing, you might want to read this:
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2017/02/28/attention-2/
That sort of thing can be a lot more difficult now than it used to be.
Small business innovation is a big competitive edge the US has over many other counties and economies. The government needs to encourage this innovation, but there are many entrenched forces working against this. Big players in an industry constructing artificial barriers to entry to a market (licensing requirements, etc.), or creating laws that allow the government to pick winners and losers as opposed to the market. Subsidies to certain markets, etc.
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Since small business is a very risky venture, there must be a reward, and a reasonable chance of success that is controllable by the business and not external entities.
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One example I just experienced recently is Uber. They have fantastically innovated the entrenched taxi industry. The response from the taxi industry has been to attempt to use the heavy hands of government to eliminate this competition in many cases. There are some legitimate grievances such as airport access and licensing fees, etc., but as far as I can tell taxis have failed to compete with Uber. Uber should win, and taxis should lose, and government should get out of the way.
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All regulation is not bad, having an FDA that makes companies prove the efficacy of their claims is a good idea for this market. It’s a balance but the I would personally rather not see the government regulate in anticipation of a problem, but rather be reactive to existing problems. The existence of a problem does not mean government needs to step in. Many times consumer education is all that is needed.
mark,
The short answer is VC’s may allow you to control the company with the first round of funding, but you then run out of cash before becoming profitable like almost every single company. The VC’s then take control of the company as a condition for more funding. Then the troublesome founders get kicked out for professional managers. Make no mistake VC’s play this game much better than their prey. They take large financial risks however.
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The other side of the equation is do you want to have never tried? It’s anything but boring, but don’t expect less stress in your life.
Thanks Tom. I do want to give it a shot someday. But not purely just for the hell of it. I’ve got ample channels bringing fresh regular he’ll into my life already. 🙂
Dumb phone. Hell not he’ll.
JD, the last Republican mayor in Chicago was Big Bill Thompson who left office in 1931. That Rahm is a Democrat is not at all surprising, or meaningful.
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He can probably mess up adequately on his own merits.
J Ferguson: I have a different take. The Democrats characterize themselves as the party of diversity and minority rights. The longer they are in power the better should be there record of policing in minority areas. At least in Chicago, the opposite seems to have occurred.
JD
JD,
I agree with both your points. Although the murder rate in Chicago is down from a peak in early 90s but apparently climbing again.
mark bofill:
Well, I have to admit I wonder why the question is so deeply bothersome to you. I am questioning whether people who make 100,000 times more than us are actually doing something that is worth 100,000 times more than what we do. You may disagree, which is fine, but why does it “bug†you? You could start a business and make 10 times more than you do now, or maybe 100,000 and maybe that might still be justifiable; I can’t give an exact number. However, what I do know is that vast disparities in economic power do make for disparities in personal liberty as well as political power in our society. So, at some point you have to admit that it is at least plausible that economic inequality becomes a greater hindrance to liberty than governmental control.
I’m not saying the outcomes should be perfectly equal. I’m asking whether more equal outcomes than what we have now could actually increase liberty.
From some of the replies in this thread (not just yours) I wonder if we even agree on what “liberty†means. Would anyone like to volunteer a definition?
Thanks Oliver.
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I don’t know why it bugs me. By ‘bug’ me, I mean it bothers me. I think it strikes me as a callous or insensitive disregard for what I think could be called without all that much hyperbole a really really difficult and strenuous undertaking. But this need not trouble you I guess. That it bothers me is my problem.
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I think it is perceptive of you to wonder if we are using a common definition of liberty. Well… if not perceptive, at least I think it suggests we are on the same page to some extent in our thinking. I wondered that too here in comment 160892. ‘Liberty’ is an umbrella term in my view which covers what I think are very different types of freedoms. I would welcome any thoughts you may have and care to share on that, if you’d like.
Thanks again.
Mike M.:
People on the both sides mostly understand that difference in earnings limits one’s economic and political power, which to some degree conflicts with the ideals of equal rights and liberty. People on the left and right may very well place different weights on the relative values of economic and political power vs. the right to take one’s chances and reap the rewards, but your claim about conflating earnings with broader worth sounds more like a right-winger’s caricature of the left than a serious idea.
To people on the left it’s probably outrageous that ballplayers get paid what they do (and still get somewhat screwed by the owners) while we express reluctance to pay teachers, whom we entrust to teach our children, a tiny fraction of that. It’s might be more outrageous to the left that execs who contributed to the economic crisis that recently cost us, the taxpayers, a few trillion dollars, still get record bonuses while we are reluctant to pay a tiny fraction of things like schools, education, and training for people actually affected by the crisis, etc. Don’t most conservatives also find those things outrageous?
Oliver,
It’s possible I am being naive, and feel free to point it out if so. But – that the guy down the way is a multi millionaire makes for a disparity in our personal liberties. Things are possible for that guy that are not possible for me. This said, this fact does not actually limit my freedoms and powers, such as they are. If the millionaire died, nothing really changes for me.
Regarding political power – well; this is a different category of beast, as I point out. There is freedom over nature and there is freedom from my fellow man, and if the millionaire can buy political pull, this is not a good thing. But I don’t think this is an argument against millionaires so much as it is an argument that we should guard against political corruption.
Thanks Oliver.
Tom Scharf:
Tom,
I believe you are misconstruing a few things here. First. Alexander’s claim is that racism can be present even when behaviors are apparently racially neutral. The claim is not that apparently racially neutral behaviors prove the presence of racism.
Also, acknowledging the existence of racism is very different from accepting that people are “irredeemable†racists.
Well, as they say, there’s no accounting for taste.
Last thing I’ve got in the response queue. Sorry. I’m not ignoring your response here:
I just don’t know how to answer you, probably because I’m not confident I really understand what you mean. Are you suggesting that we should.. do what? Make sure that the guy who works hard to start a business can make some money, just not too much? I honestly don’t know if this is what you mean or not. If it is what you mean… I’ll have to think about it I guess.
So I lied about that being the last thing. There’s also this thing before I call it a night:
I think this is what the market is telling us, when people get rich in a free market system – that yes indeed they are in fact doing something that is worth 100,000 times more than what we do. Because people are voluntarily doing business with them and paying them 100,000 times what we get paid. I think it must be worth it to the people who choose to pay the money, or else they wouldn’t pay it. Freely chosen, exchange of value for value, both parties get what they want out of the deal. What could be more fair or just than that.
Night all!
Mark Bofill,
I think it helps to discuss a concrete example: suppose someone figured out how to produce a drug which would extend healthy life by 2 decades with minimal side effects, and gained patent protection (20 years exclusive rights). My guess is that person would become rich, almost without limit, since plenty of people think 20 years of healthy life is very valuable, and would be willing to pay a very dear price for those extra years. I think it is fair to say that person would have contributed to humanity not 100,000 times the average person, but more like a billion times. The question is: should governments limit that person’s wealth by limiting the price of the product, confiscating most all of his/her income, or by confiscating the patent rights? All three approaches have already been used at different times and different places. I would suggest that one or all of those steps would immediately be called for by most on the left, because those on the left do not believe that individuals actually contribute at vastly different levels to human happiness, wealth, and wellbeing (Obama’s “You didn’t build that!” rant pretty well distills the left’s position).
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The point you raise about people freely choosing to do business with each other is key: if there is no coercion involved (government mandates, crony capitalism, protected ‘national champion’ companies, confiscation of property, etc), that free exercise of choice is a very large part of liberty. Reducing that free exercize reduces liberty.
oliver (Comment #160920): “From some of the replies in this thread (not just yours) I wonder if we even agree on what “liberty†means. Would anyone like to volunteer a definition?”
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Best definition I have ever heard: Liberty is the freedom to do that which we ought to do.
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Sounds a bit odd at first; you have think about it to appreciate the definition. Start by considering the converse: If we are not permitted to do what we ought, then we are definitely not free. Truly repressive acts are the ones that prevent us from us from doing what we should do: fully realizing our potential, giving our children a better life, helping our neighbor.
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People will, of course, complain about restrictions on freedom that only prevent us from doing what we want to do. Some of that is just because we need some such freedom. Also, such restrictions may imply the power to prevent us, in some ways, from doing what we ought. Finally an ulimited power to restrict what we want to do implies the power to exactly define what we ought to do and that implies the power to prevent people from doing what they ought to do.
oliver (Comment #160920): “I am questioning whether people who make 100,000 times more than us are actually doing something that is worth 100,000 times more than what we do.”
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That is obviously true by definition, provided that you restrict “worth” to merely economic worth and the person and the person is not cheating by committing fraud or some sort of other manipulation (even if legal).
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And you have misquoted yourself, Oliver. Earlier you said “but do some people really put in, e.g., 100,000 times more effort?”
And why do you feel it necessary to exaggerate income disparity?
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oliver: “vast disparities in economic power do make for disparities in personal liberty as well as political power in our society. So, at some point you have to admit that it is at least plausible that economic inequality becomes a greater hindrance to liberty than governmental control.”
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Nope. Disparity is not a problem. Poverty is a problem. But whether a rich person makes 100 times or 1000 times as much as a poor person has no effect on the poor person. There is a disparity in political power, but that is only a problem if the government has too much power. One of the main reasons I think the government has too much power is that such power favors the wealthy and well connected at the expense of the rest of us. Greater liberty might lead to less economic disparity, but not the other way around. You continue to confuse cause and effect.
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Oliver: “I’m not saying the outcomes should be perfectly equal.”
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A distinction without a difference. You ARE saying that the government should have the power to make economic outcomes as equal as the masses wish and you are implying that economic envy is a legitimate basis for that making that decision.
oliver (Comment #160922): “your claim about conflating earnings with broader worth sounds more like a right-winger’s caricature of the left than a serious idea.”
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Then why do you insist on conflating the two? You previously said
“I am questioning whether people who make 100,000 times more than us are actually doing something that is worth 100,000 times more than what we do.†That plainly conflates the two. And you claimed that statement is the same as saying “do some people really put in, e.g., 100,000 times more effort?†Again conflating the two.
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Oliver: “To people on the left it’s probably outrageous that ballplayers get paid what they do… while we express reluctance to pay teachers, whom we entrust to teach our children, a tiny fraction of that.”
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Yet again conflating earnings with worth. How is it a “caricature” to assume that you mean what you say?
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Oliver: “It’s might be more outrageous to the left that execs who contributed to the economic crisis that recently cost us, the taxpayers, a few trillion dollars, still get record bonuses”
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I don’t recall any record bonuses. The bonuses that caused so much outrage at the time were mostly legitimate retention bonuses, not performance bonuses. I am outraged that the taxpayers bailed out the people who caused the crisis and that no such people were ever called to account. Such outrage spawned the tea party. And I am outraged that nothing has been done to keep the whole thing from repeating.
Oliver: “I am questioning whether people who make 100,000 times more than us are actually doing something that is worth 100,000 times more than what we do.â€
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This is easy to answer. There are certainly geniuses whose output is economically worth 100,000 more than the average person. For instance, Isaac Newton, Einstein, Steve Jobs, Richard Feynman. I would say the worth of these people is much more than 100,000 times what average run of the mill people would do. If you consider the portion of humanity that most would consider to be a negative influence (murders, terrorists, fraudsters), the disparity is even greater.
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Do want to say that I am talking in terms of economic productivity. Not intrinsic worth, which for any human being is not knowable and can’t be judged in the highest sense.
JD
Mike M. (#160934): “Liberty is the freedom to do that which we ought to do.”
I think that’s an awful definition. First and foremost, it is not objectively defined. Who gets to decide what one “ought” to do? Ought we to drink carbonated sodas? At least one big-city mayor said no. Ought we to give one-tenth of our income to our religious affiliation? Many churches believe so.
Secondly, it’s far too limiting. Ought we to choose our romantic partners based on personality and compatibility rather than personal appearance and/or assets? Arguably so.
True liberty consists of being able to do whatever one wants. (Up to the point of infringing someone else’s rights, as expressed in the old saw “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”) This might be foolish, or irrational, or contrary to one’s long-term self-interest — a person should be able to follow his beliefs. And live with the consequences.
I will go further and say that this opinion — that it’s not an incursion of liberty to prevent a person from doing what he “oughtn’t” — is at the root of many government overreaches. From miscegenation, to consensual but atypical sexual relations, to requiring bakers to accept all customers, etc.
This is why I disagree with about half of the ACLU’s positions. The ACLU is happy to support “ought” rules, when it would be preferable (in my opinion, naturally) to keep the government out of such situations.
SteveF,
Thanks for your thoughts. In particular:
You know, I started writing a response without thinking through what you were saying completely, apparently, because I had to back up and start over. I think you’re on to something here Steve.
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The odd part (to me) is that even in Obama’s example, when he said ‘you didn’t build that’, what he was really saying was ‘you didn’t build that alone. There was a teacher, a mentor, blah blah, blah-blah-blah, something like that, so on.’ But even Obama’s argument doesn’t seem to dispute that individuals were involved. I mean, it wasn’t all teachers everywhere who helped, it was a teacher.
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I don’t know. Usually, I find that nobody much disputes anymore that redistribution taken far enough is economic poison for a society. The argument in favor of redistribution always seems to be – yeah, but in small enough doses that poison isn’t lethal. I always feel like once we’ve crossed over this line we’ve already missed some crucial point in the discussion, although I’m unable to put my finger on it or articulate what it is clearly.
Anyway. Thanks again Steve.
[Edit: Yeah. Obama said:
More complete text can be found here. It’s not 100% clear to me what he’s saying; typical politician. Is it or is it not because somebody is smart and hardworking that they succeed? I guess he’s saying that those are factors but they aren’t the only factors…]
HaroldW (Comment #160942): “True liberty consists of being able to do whatever one wants.”
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I strongly disagree. That is license, not liberty. Doing whatever you want may not directly hurt others, but it hurts others indirectly by damaging society. I think this is the essence of the difference between a libertarian and a conservative.
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I wrote: “Liberty is the freedom to do that which we ought to do.â€
I screwed up by failing to specify the sense in which I used the word “ought”. I used it to indicate duty and/or obligation. It is indeed not objectively defined. I decide what I ought to do. Of course, it does not work without a reasonably moral citizenry.
mark bofill: “But even Obama’s argument doesn’t seem to dispute that individuals were involved.”
But there is a common attitude on the left that “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do togetherâ€. I can not confirm that Obama ever said just that, but it seems to sum up his attitude. That attitude pretty much denies the importance of the individual.
I seem to be having a rough day. I screwed up when I said I screwed up. I seem to have been confused by HaroldW’s confusion.
Liberty is the freedom to do that which we ought to do.
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HaroldW (Comment #160942): “Ought we to drink carbonated sodas? At least one big-city mayor said no.”
The idea that I ought to drink carbonated sodas strikes me as exceedingly odd. But I ought to be allowed to decide that for myself. It is none of the mayor’s business.
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HaroldW: “Ought we to give one-tenth of our income to our religious affiliation? Many churches believe so.”
A much more instructive question. If I hold by the teachings of the church and am not allowed to follow those teachings, I am living under tyranny. If I think that religion is bad, and am not allowed to refrain from contributing, I am living under tyranny. In a free society, both the religious and the atheist can do as they think they ought.
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HaroldW: “Secondly, it’s far too limiting. Ought we to choose our romantic partners based on personality and compatibility rather than personal appearance and/or assets? Arguably so.”
I fail to see how my definition is in any way limiting in this regard.
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HaroldW: “it’s not an incursion of liberty to prevent a person from doing what he “oughtn’t†— is at the root of many government overreaches. From miscegenation, to consensual but atypical sexual relations, to requiring bakers to accept all customers, etc.
If those things are NOT an incursion of liberty, then why are they overreach?
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HaroldW: “This is why I disagree with about half of the ACLU’s positions. The ACLU is happy to support “ought†rules, when it would be preferable (in my opinion, naturally) to keep the government out of such situations.”
It seems like you don’t distinguish between what I think I ought to do and what you think I ought to do.
I am split on the 100,000x question. I agree with Oliver that CEO’s do not provide that amount of value (with very rare exceptions such as Jobs). I expect one could pay a very competent person “only” 10,000x or 1,000x and get effectively equal outcomes for the corporation. I stipulate this is debatable. CEO pay is also determined in smoke filled rooms where employees get no seat at the table.
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Athletes vs teachers is a different situation. If a team of teachers can fill up stadiums of people and get billion dollar television contracts then they would deserve that money. This is the market determining value directly.
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Society does values athletes more than teachers, BUT only the very upper crust of athletes. One level below the NFL and NBA and your pay is below teachers and college sports are basically poverty.
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I do split again with Oliver on whether 100,000x should result in the government putting their thumb on the scales. My problem here is that Oliver probably sees a benevolent judge who would properly determine maximum pay, I see a corrupt and biased politician or bureaucrat determining maximums based on which way the political winds are blowing. Smoke filled rooms with economic pressures may still be better. This comes back to a basic difference between left and right, do you trust the government or believe they are competent enough? I trust the market more, but do see it has flaws.
Tom Scharf (Comment #160960): “I am split on the 100,000x question. I agree with Oliver that CEO’s do not provide that amount of value (with very rare exceptions such as Jobs). I expect one could pay a very competent person “only†10,000x or 1,000x and get effectively equal outcomes for the corporation.”
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But no CEO makes 100,000 times what ordinary people make. No entrepreneur makes that on a consistent basis. No CEO consistently makes 10,000 times an ordinary salary, although some might approach that in a very good year. 1000 times certainly does happen, but only a handful get that much. http://www.equilar.com/reports/18-200-highest-paid-CEO-rankings-2015.html
These debates are never really bipolar, most libertarians aren’t fans of anarchy nor do they disagree with being forced to pay taxes to build roads and such. There is plenty of redistribution in the system already (regressive taxation, social security, etc.) and most aren’t really calling for an elimination of these so pure liberty could be accomplished. People are put in situations where they need government help, we do have an obligation to help people even when they make poor life decisions. The debate is where do we draw the lines? Homeless shelters with rice and beans or government subsidized housing and food stamps? The answer largely depends on national wealth. If a beach front house and a personal chef cost $1/year then…
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I view spending on these programs as spending my money. I get the impression many on the left see this as spending other people’s money. One is typically much more generous with OPM. I grow weary of arguments that are basically “should we do more?” arguments. The answer is yes, but who is going to pay for it? The right is basically the grumpy old man of politics telling his children they can’t have a brand new bike every year.
More people worth 100,000 more than the average worker. Robert Noyce, the inventors of the laser, Milton Friedman (for monetarist theory for dealing with inflation), Ronald Reagan (for indexing tax rates over the strong objections of the Democrats — could also add for his contribution to winning the cold war), Norman Borlaug, Tim Berners Lee, Linus Torvald, Jeff Bezos & Larry Page (Hate to say Page because Google is so arrogant, but economically he has created value)
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Scharf: “This comes back to a basic difference between left and right, do you trust the government or believe they are competent enough? I trust the market more, but do see it has flaws.” I agree with this.
JD
I just got my tax bill, it’s rice and beans for everyone IMO today, ha ha.
Tom,
Ugh. My wife and I will file soon, so I recommend that everybody waiting for the redistribution should hold off on the rice and beans. The government ought to be able to upgrade you to something better as soon as they get done cleaning out our bank account. Perhaps not caviar, but .. a mc’Chicken sandwich for certain eligible low income citizens maybe, paid for by yours truly.
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Alright I’m kidding. I don’t owe that much. … Still sort of sucks.
JD,
I agree there are certainly people who have large values. However the question would be if those people hadn’t invented those technical things, would someone else have anyway? Some things are the natural evolution of technology and are more the result of a large scale grinding long term technical investment involving 1000’s. It always irks me when astronauts are lauded for getting to the moon when they just went along for the ride and the rocket engineers aren’t even mentioned.
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There aren’t very many “bolt out of the blue” inventions anymore, which is a bit disappointing. The people mentioned deserve their accolades. Leadership has value.
Scharf: even if someone else would have invented a particular process or discovered something very important, there is still great value in speeding up the process by 5, 10 or 20 years — or potentially more. Also, those politicians who are able to change societies for the better have an extremely high value. One that comes to mind for me is Deng Xiaoping.
JD
Mike M:
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I hang on “Doing whatever you want … hurts others indirectly by damaging society. …”
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I can’t see this at all. Doing whatever you want may include doing things which would damage society but not absolutely. I can easily imagine someone working their way through life doing exactly what they want without ‘damaging’ society.
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Are we considering original sin here? Are we all sinners?
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nuts.
j ferguson: “Doing whatever you want may include doing things which would damage society”.
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That is what I said. Some things I want to do might be beneficial to society, some might be neutral, some might be harmful. The freedom to do whatever one wants includes the last. That is license, not liberty.
Mike M,
when you put it that way, I understand. and it’s a good point. And so seems your definition.
JD Ohio (Comment #160941)
JD,
Accepting for the moment that each of those people produced an output economically worth that much, for at least 3 out of those 4 it would have pretty impossible to judge the eventual economic value of their work during their working lifetimes. Even if a few peoples’ economic worth is hugely greater than the average person’s, your examples demonstrate that our society does not necessarily award hugely more compensation to those people.
That would seem to make the argument even clearer in favor of more equitable distribution of wealth. If people (or at least one’s fellow citizens) have significant intrinsic worth in addition to their economic worth, then isn’t it even more justified to assign a more equal share of society’s wealth relative to those peoples’ relative economic value?
Oliver: “That would seem to make the argument even clearer in favor of more equitable distribution of wealth. If people (or at least one’s fellow citizens) have significant intrinsic worth in addition to their economic worth, then isn’t it even more justified to assign a more equal share of society’s wealth relative to those peoples’ relative economic value?”
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My conclusion is exactly the opposite. Economic wealth is secondary to intrinsic worth. I wouldn’t view it as an addition to economic worth. I would tend to view (looking at the issue from your perspective) economic worth as a subsidiary addition to intrinsic worth. Your whole perspective starts from a different place than mine, but for the sake of discussion, I will use your general framework.
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Economic activity free of misguided control (See communism and China’s resurgence after it became a mostly capitalistic country) helps people and alleviates poverty. In this context, your use of “equitable” is, in my view, merely a label that is not connected to economic or political reality. Saying you are going to make life somehow economically fair is so impractical that it is similar to saying that you will support government action to stop people from lying. There is no way government decision makers, over the long haul, will do better than a market system that rewards performance. (With many imperfections) Some problems and goals are simply not solvable or attainable and economic “equity” is one of those.
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I would add that as a workers comp lawyer I made much less than many lawyers with lesser skills than me. (Very few lawyers have had 150 civil jury trials) It was my choice, and I could care less that many people made 2 to 10 times more than me. Money is a servant to my personal life and goals (which are controlling, so long as I have the minimum necessary for reasonable survival), not the other way around.
JD
JD Ohio:
JD,
If you are saying that not only do people have significant intrinsic worth in addition* to their economic worth, but the economic is actually subsidiary to the intrinsic, then I agree with you. I think that strengthens my case even further
*) “A + B†was not meant to imply either “A > B†or “B < A.â€
That’s like staying “people doing stuff†helps people and alleviates poverty. Some stuff that people do, including economic activity, also hurts people and impoverishes them. Freedom from “misguided control” doesn’t guarantee the helpful version in any economic or political reality I’m aware of..
Nope, I am saying that it is at least plausible that government action could reduce lying in meaningful and beneficial ways. For example, since you are a lawyer, you are surely aware that there exist restrictions on perjury, libel, false advertising, etc., and so forth.
You are presenting a false binary. Monopolies once dominated industry in the absence of government decisions to break them up. The monopolies created a market system that was expressly designed to reward themselves instead of rewarding performance. Lack of government actions is not synonymous with a market that rewards performance.
The average person probably lives a lot closer to the poverty line than you do and does not have the same choice between a job that makes a lot of money and a job that makes even more money but may be less rewarding in some sense.
Yet another reason to avoid air travel:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/business/united-flight-passenger-dragged.html
DeWitt, “Yet another reason to avoid air travel”
Maybe another reason to avoid United. This guy was a “volunteer” by the way.
Oh, boy this post. What’s been going on around here?
Weird that you are using this as an example of the “dishonest left” when you don’t even know if anyone is being dishonest or not. And what’s with this odd idea that the counsel is going to whitewash an investigation but then must release a statement that could be considered to be literally true? If they were going to conduct a phony investigation wouldn’t they just say “our investigation supported Gleick 100%”?
Wait, so now the exoneration is phony? It COULD be phony, but what evidence do you have that it was? Seems like your own biases are in play here.
Anyway, I’m glad that Trump lying about Obama’s birth certificate for several years was just juvenile dishonesty. That’s actually a relief.
Boris: “Weird that you are using this as an example of the “dishonest left” when you don’t even know if anyone is being dishonest or not.”
…..
I am a lawyer and run into all kinds of dishonest people and scams. The “exoneration” of Gleick is at the top of heap (with maybe several other unrelated garbage scams) that I have ever seen.
….
Gleick’s “exonerator” was a lawyer whose first duty is to his client. The lawyer has no obligation to the public. As a lawyer, he has the right, and in many circumstances, the obligation, to massage the facts in favor of his client. Reading the statement of the lawyer closely, that is precisely what he did. Second, what kind of “investigator” claims to have made an investigation, but won’t tell what it did or what was found? (I will answer — a phony, fake investigation) Third, if an actual investigation, had cleared Gleick, the facts of the investigation would have been released — they would have strengthened Gleick’s claims of innocence.
…..
So to answer your question as to “what evidence do you have that it was [phony]?”, the extremely strong circumstantial evidence (remember that DNA or forensic evidence is circumstantial), I would say my extensive experience with scams as a lawyer and the fact that the exonerator was a lawyer obligated to help either the Institute or Gleick. (depending on the contract of engagement –however, practically their interests were essentially the same). His “exoneration statement” was written in a way that only one of Gleick’s statements had to be true (not all or even a majority of them) for the “exoneration” to be literally true but, at the same time 99.9% misleading. If the “exoneration” had in fact been the product of a real investigation, it would have made plain how the multiple substantive statements of Gleick about his innocence were true. It didn’t do so and effectively tried to hide what was done. In such a situation, the only realistic conclusion was that a whitewash was performed by a lawyer whose only obligation was to his client.
….
Boris, additionally, I would ask you whether there is anything of substance in the exoneration, that gives you confidence that it was honest or competent.
JD
Anyone who consistently capitalizes “the Left” and “Leftist” has already categorized themself as someone who cares more about politics and propaganda than facts. This list of “Leftist” lunacies just compounds that judgement. All of the “Leftist” failings are about the person, not facts (Michael Mann claims he won the Nobel Prize! yar yar, so teh hockey stick is false!)
Yawn and more yawn and just shows how the “Right” has lost any claim to intelligence.
More broadly–of course “the left” is sometimes dishonest and sometimes stupid. So being able to point to a few examples doesn’t tell one much of anything. I guess this post would be a refutation to people who think anyone on the left is incapable of being dumb or dishonest. I doubt many people believe that.
So, who is more dishonest–the left or the right? And even if we could prove who is worse, what good would that do? Should I change my views on marriage equality if it’s proven than lefties lie more? That seems absurd.
My opinion is that people on the right are more dishonest/stupid, but probably my own biases and interests inform that opinion. In general it seems that Republicans are better informed about politics and score better on questions about political parties, etc. But 41% of Republicans don’t believe Obama was born in the US (only 27% believe that he was in fact born in the US). The right seems to be latching onto quite a few conspiracy theories–from birtherism to the “Clinton Body Count” to claims that Clinton had seizures during the campaign. (Yes, the left has it’s own set of conspiracies, but they don’t appear to be as common. I suspect they will get worse in the next few years, though.)
I don’t even understand the complaints on some of these. What did the NYT do wrong in its story on Brown? It stated there are long-simmering questions–and there are (whether you agree with the questions or not). It stated that Wilson was cleared of criminal wrongdoing–and he was. That’s somehow “dispicabl[e]”? I don’t get it.
Gator: “Anyone who consistently capitalizes “the Left†and “Leftist†has already categorized themself as someone who cares more about politics and propaganda than facts.”
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Your response is lacking any refutation of my factual claims. Holdren and Pachauri were recently at the apex of the anti-CO2 movement and were obviously extremely incompetent, and in the case of Pachauri, hateful. How did such incompetents rise to the top of the heap without the aid of the institutional Left? People need to start connecting the dots.
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Also, I never said that Mann’s Hockey Stick was false. There is good reason to do so, but since I have never closely read the paper published from Mann, I have refrained from commenting on it. Obviously, since Mann is so stupid, one would not expect a sophisticated product. On the other hand, it is possible that his conclusions could be accidentally right. I kept my conclusions focused on what I could personally justify by way of my own background and knowledge.
JD
Boris: “I don’t even understand the complaints on some of these. What did the NYT do wrong in its story on Brown?”
….
To advance the Leftist agenda, it left out the most important fact — that Brown charged the police officer. An honest article would contain that extremely important fact. However, the Times wished to leave the impression that there was some significant doubt as to whether the police officer had some culpability in the matter. It is clear he had none and by selectively leaving out the most important fact, the Times advanced its agenda by functionally lying.
JD
Sorry, but this doesn’t fly. You are merely stating that your suspicions must be fact. I don’t know anything about this exoneration and barely recall what the whole Gleick controversy was about, so you may very well be right.
Also problematic is impugning the lawyer. It’s unclear if he was involved in any way with writing the statement that you are criticizing.
Boris: “I don’t know anything about this exoneration and barely recall what the whole Gleick controversy was about, so you may very well be right.”
….
I have links. I would suggest that you look at it. Then you can come back and shoot holes in my conclusions. I would also add that if you look at it from the viewpoint of the “investigator”, he has to know that his “investigation” would be subject to searching criticism. If Gleick was truly innocent, why not explain what was done and deal with the inevitable criticism?
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I will add this question to you. Suppose Gleick had lied 9,999 times out of 10,000 statements on the matter. How would anyone in the public know whether the “exoneration”, in any possible way explicitly refuted, or even dealt with, the 9,999 lies.
…..
Where it appears that you and I disagree is what I would infer would be your belief that if someone isn’t caught absolutely red-handed on tape or in documents that no one is entitled to reach conclusions about the subjects behavior. Both the law (which accepts circumstantial evidence to the same extent as direct evidence) and practical, common sense do not support what I believe to be your position.
JD
Again, this is your opinion that this fact is the most important fact. It sure seems like pointing out that Wilson was cleared by local and federal authorities does essentially the same thing. I can see your point, but, again, it seems like you are turning your opinion on what should be in the story into a claim that the NYT is pushing some “Leftist agenda.” The evidence for that is extremely weak.
You’ve claimed the investigation was phony based on some thin evidence and without being able to examine it. There’s plenty of room to criticize behavior and you are free to come to a conclusion, but if this is supposed to be one of the best examples of dishonesty by the Left, then I’m underwhelmed.
Boris: Here is the problem with the NYTs’ article: “Regardless of what happened at the store in the early-morning hours, the new security footage does not resolve long-simmering questions about Mr. Brown’s encounter with Officer Darren Wilson along a Ferguson street that day.”
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It tries to leave the false impression that there is a significant chance Wilson could be at fault. The reference to “long-simmering questions” is an intentionally deceptive statement when one knows (to 99.9% certainty) that Brown charged the police officer and that, as well, his DNA was inside the cruiser. If there were significant forces supporting honesty within the institutional Left, the NYTs wouldn’t feel free to tell this functional lie.
JD
Calling that statement “intentionally deceptive” is ridiculous. It’s perfectly reasonable even if you think a different statement would be more appropriate.
Boris: “Calling that statement “intentionally deceptive†is ridiculous.”
…..
The import of your statement is that it makes no difference in terms of police practices and who was at fault (and all of the national issues that arose) as to whether Brown charged the officer or not. I don’t think so. In my view, there is nothing to have any substantial differences about, if Brown (as he did) charged the police officer. I am happy to reach an impasse with you on this point.
JD
Carrick,
It’s not just United. Some years ago, my wife and I were asked to leave a plane we had already boarded with no compensation. The equipment had changed and the seat numbers that were on our boarding pass were not available on that aircraft. As we boarded, the flight attendant told us that didn’t matter. It turned out it did, or at least that was the excuse the airline used. As long as airlines are allowed to do this, a forcible removal was bound to happen.
All ‘bumping’ should be voluntary. It should be a pure auction. There should be no limit on the compensation offered to passengers to convince the necessary number to delay their travel. I saw in the WSJ today that one airline asks passengers before they board to say how much compensation would be required to convince them to take a later flight.
DeWitt — UA: Here is what a Chinese lawyer posted on Wechat. Sounds reasonable to me, but I haven’t checked it.
….
“This myth that passengers don’t have rights needs to go away, ASAP. You are dead wrong when saying that United legally kicked him off the plane.
1. First of all, it’s airline spin to call this an overbooking. The statutory provision granting them the ability to deny boarding is about ” OVERSALES”, specifically defines as booking more reserved confirmed seats than there are available. This is not what happened. They did not overbook the flight; they had a fully booked flight, and not only did everyone already have a reserved confirmed seat, they were all sitting in them. The law allowing them to denying boarding in the event of an oversale does not apply.
2. Even if it did apply, the law is unambiguously clear that airlines have to give preference to everyone with reserved confirmed seats when choosing to involuntarily deny boarding. They have to always choose the solution that will affect the least amount of reserved confirmed seats. This rule is straightforward, and United makes very clear in their own contract of carriage that employees of their own or of other carriers may be denied boarding without compensation because they do not have reserved confirmed seats. On its face, it’s clear that what they did was illegal– they gave preference to their employees over people who had reserved confirmed seats, in violation of 14 CFR 250.2a.
3. Furthermore, even if you try and twist this into a legal application of 250.2a and say that United had the right to deny him boarding in the event of an overbooking; they did NOT have the right to kick him off the plane. Their contract of carriage highlights there is a complete difference in rights after you’ve boarded and sat on the plane, and Rule 21 goes over the specific scenarios where you could get kicked off. NONE of them apply here. He did absolutely nothing wrong and shouldn’t have been targeted. He’s going to leave with a hefty settlement after this fiasco.”
JD
The Brown case,an example of what happens when unarmed thug tries to murder an armed police officer, was deliberately used by Obama and his lackey racist oaks to create violence. Asking if the NYT could possibly be lying is a pretty cynical question to ask.
“The import of your statement is that it makes no difference in terms of police practices and who was at fault (and all of the national issues that arose) as to whether Brown charged the officer or not.”
This might make some sense if the NYT claimed that he did not charge Wilson. But they did not.
It also appears that the deboarding was not legally done:
http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/united-cites-wrong-rule-for-illegally-de-boarding-passenger/
More briefly, overbooked flights (which I think JD is correct this doesn’t even qualify as) is not one circumstance where United’s COC permits force removal from the aircraft.
As with my case, United decided to save money to forcing passengers to get through their flight system, instead of working with one of their partners. They also did not offer the legal amount required for the rebooking under these circumstances. This is consistent with their existing business practice, from my experience too.
we paid a premium for me to enjoy (well, hate a little less) an economy plus seat. I think the amount was about $100. And it was the Friendly Skies of United .
On boarding the plane i was unable to see any difference between the seat I was given and all the rest, so I asked.
“We had an equipment change and this one doesn’t have economy plus. I can’t do anything for you because 1st class is sold out. Talk to a gate agent when you get to West Palm.”
I bet you thought I’d get my money back, but no, they denied that there had been an equipment change and that this was just what their economy plus seats were like. I told them that I actually had walked the aisle and visually verified that all of the seats aft 1st class were the same pitch.
That didn’t work either.
I used to fly Continental a lot around 2002, weekly in fact. It was almost always wonderful. I wonder how the Continental folks that have been absorbed into the United world are standing it.
There’s something to the theory about an expert being someone operating away from home. Accordingly, I’ve spent a lot of time on planes starting in 1970. I used to find that some routes were not popular with the crews of a particular airline, one was American from Chicago to Houston which had a stop in Shreveport. The crews hated it and us for flying it. If there had been no-one willing to take this ride, maybe American would cancel that trip.
United from Sydney to San Francisco on 747 a couple of years ago. We had to pay for drinks, even beer. The food was terrible (I have a very forgiving palate for airline food (ok unless it tastes really bad), and the crew was more interested in arguing with each other than serving the victims, or as they say ‘servicing’ which i think is what is done to cars.
Carrick, JD Ohio,
The United clusterf*ck by coincidence happened during my current 13 day trip to South America. Air travel absolutely sucks, and United has become the most recent poster child for that sad reality.
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I find it almost unbelievable that the carrier could ever have a culture which would lead to a seated passenger being dragged from a plane for doing nothing more than occupying a purchased seat. Aside from the improper and likely illegal application of “overbooking” rules (to convenience United Airlines staff, and inconvenience paying passengers!), this episode demonstrates an absolutely tone deaf culture. Aside from the the very likely 6 figure settlement that will be paid to the passenger, horrible publicity will cost far, far more, not even considering the loss of market capitalization, and the likely congressional hearings.
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The stupidity demonstrated by the United Airlines staff beggars belief, and that this stupidity exists is as damning a commentary on the CEO as there can be. My guess is that his time at the helm is is rapidly coming to a close. And he is very much deserving.
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FWIW, my personal experience is that United staff are generally hostile, disagreeable, and difficult. I avoid United whenever I can.
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The last airline to have this kind of corporate culture was American… and we know what happened to them.
j ferguson,
My most recent return to the States from Australia on United featured snarling, hostile, elderly flight attendants (both male and female), terrible food, and seats so small they actually hurt. United represents an investment opportunity: buy puts when the next air travel downturn starts. They really are awful.
SteveF, Air New Zealand 1 is westbound from LA to Auckland. Even in steerage it’s wonderful. Crew is a delight, the booze flows more or less prudently, the food is good and the seat pitch isn’t bad. This is in 777’s.
I don’t know if you still go to Turkey, but our trip MIA to Istanbul via Turkish air was ok except for seat pitch which was about as short as I’ve ever seen. Crew was nice, food was good, other passengers benign. But with them, it would now be business class or another airline.
United used to have severe organized labor problems. I have no idea whether they still do but there must be something which makes many of their inflight folks so hostile.
SteveF, some more on American. I think i rehearsed my experience flying Honolulu to LA on an American DC-10 with terrible seat pitch, sitting in the middle of the back 5 seat groupings – 2 seats on either side, and reading then-CEO Crandall’s bit in their in-flight magazine about how passengers didn’t care about seat pitch – just price, and accordingly they were going to tighten things up.
I couldn’t believe that they’d put anything like this in their magazine.
I’ve had a couple of pretty nice American flights recently so maybe those days are behind us.
j ferguson,
Yes, the ‘New American’ is better, because it isn’t really American at all, but rather US Air in disguise. The worst (oldest, crankiest, most obnoxious) American crew have departed for retirement. Good thing they transferred my many flight segment credits (good for upgrades) when the sale took place. I rarely qualify for an upgrade these days (only ‘gold’ level) but I still get one once in a while. The New American crews are indeed much nicer people, no matter where you sit.
SteveF, I don’t know if this still works but when I was working in Dublin, I would arrive at airport at 8:00am when the Delta desk opened for a 1:45PM departure and be first on list for upgrade to First. I was then on their most opulent frequent sufferer level and about half the trips i got it. This would get me to Atlanta and then back to steerage for leg to MIA.
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This was 2001 and I could actually work at the airport. It was on one of these flights where the senior flight attendant was on her retirement trip. She’d started in recips and was really fun. She also got quite lunched which I suppose was naughty but maybe she wasn’t really on duty. I think this was the trip where I went into what I thought was the men’s room at Atlanta and wondered what they’d done with the urinals and then wondered what all the women were doing in there. Must have been all the champagne.
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And what do you mean by elderly crew? As old as you?
j ferguson,
I found Turkish Air OK, not great. Most of my flights have been short haul connections from Europe (I often combine travel to Turkey with other business in Europe). Last time I was in Turkey, some crazies blew up a street market, killing some Japanese tourists. Fortunately, I never go anywhere near tourist destinations in Turkey. If you get off the beaten path in Istanbul, the small neighborhoods can be pretty scary (women carefully “covering” in black, men looking askance at a foreigner in a taxi, etc.). Not my kind of destination.
j ferguson,
“And what do you mean by elderly crew? As old as you?”
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Actually, most of them a couple of years younger than me. But most of them a lot nastier than me (I hope!).
JD, I saw posted from someone who used to work for United, that you do have the same denial of boarding situation even after you have boarded. They also claimed that making way for employees is part of COC.
They could have gone higher with their offer, but it is not clear that it is enough, as they were offering it as a flight voucher and not cash. A passenger removed is entitled to cash as a multiple of ticket price.
United could have ignored federal law and offered thousands of dollars.
It also appears that Doctor Dao initially left the plane then returned and wouldn’t leave. I would think this makes the thing a bit murkier.
Carla is a friend of my daughter based in Sydney
From Carla:
Here is one of the MANY explanations out there as to what actually happened on that REPUBLIC AIRWAYS (a United Express carrier not United Airlines) flight… Like pretty much all of my airline friends I am exhausted by the misinformation out there and find myself in the odd position of having to defend my airline when it did nothing wrong!
For my non airline friends:Shared from a friend:
let me break this down for the non-airline folks on my friends list. First a crash course in our airline lingo and operational quirks. When operational integrity is threatened due to federal or contractual hour limits or weather etc…the airline…and I mean ANY airline tries to cover those positions whether they be pilots or flight attendants. They are deadheaded which means to ride as a passenger to get in place for a flight where they would be the working crew. They are classified as “must ride”. If the airline didn’t do this the flight would have to cancel, screwing 100 plus passengers.
Federal law states that any passenger must comply with crew member instructions.
Almost every airline out there over sells. This has been industry standard for decades. When you have the hub and spoke system, flights feed into a large hub from smaller destination enabling a large aircraft at the hub to fill up. Think Kalamazoo, MI to Chicago and then onwards to Hong Kong. Now multiply that by hundreds of flights and passengers. Say one flight cancelled or is delayed. Instead of letting that seat on the Chicago to Hong Kong flight go empty, they basically sell that seat twice. There is a no-show factor for almost every flight. Since airlines are businesses they obviously want to make money. Airlines run a razor thin margin at times on certain routes. This enables them to make more money. Does it make sense…not to most people. But again…its industry standard. Here is a post from a friends page on the specifics. But I hope my break down helps…..
1. No one at United got mad.
2. They were not standby, they were a must ride. (Meaning that they had to get to that destination to operate a flight while maintaining FAA regulations due to weather impacting operations)
3. Whenever you purchase a ticket, you are agreeing to abide by the passenger agreements and CFRs.
4. He wasn’t randomly chosen, the computer system used goes by who paid the cheapest ticket, whether or not luggage was checked, status, boarding priority, etc.
5. The flight wasn’t originally oversold until the inbound crew encountered a missed connect due to weather impacting operations and legality issues which is why these 4 inflight personnels had to get onto this particular flight to avoid a cancellation of the morning flight as this particular flight from Chicago only flies once at 3pm.
6. He was asked numerous times to leave the aircraft by United officials, he leaves, changes his mind then decides to run past the gate agents back to the aircraft. At this point, he is classified as non-compliant and a security issue which is why law enforcement was called. This is post 911. That’s a federal offense, you don’t run onto an aircraft after being removed. Period. Point. Blank. Once the law gets involved, it is no longer United. That’s Chicago O’hare Int’l Airport and Chicago PD. They told him numerous times to exit, nicely, and he didn’t comply so there you have it.
Once again, everyone is stuck in their own ways that they can’t see the bigger picture. I can guarantee that if the morning flight would have been cancelled due to no crew, everyone would still be enraged so it’s like a damn if you do damn if you don’t situation but I would rather remove this one pax, provide them with an $800 voucher (doubled of what he paid), a hotel, meal vouchers, and an upgraded seat on the next available flight (all which they offered) than having to accommodate 60 to 70 pax because we had to cancel a flight.
“All too many people govern themselves and others in the following manner: Once they determine that they have rights or authority in any given context, they are relieved from any greater moral responsibility. They can act imperiously. They can be outraged. They can be unreasonable. After all, the law or justice or morality is on their side.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446645/united-341-flight-reason-what-happened-golden-rule
97% of the internet agrees, right or wrong, this was outrageous.
United was the troubled weak airline that Continental, a wonderful but culturally insecure airline, convinced itself that it needed to be merged into. The Continental culture was fabulous. United dismantled it and moved the focus and vs from Houston to Chicago. From a friendly city to a cold harsh city. It hasn’t gotten better. Apparently the Dr. in the violent deplaning was exactly the wrong person to select to toss off. His troubled history and mental health issues means he would be inclined to not back down at all. And to extract pounds of flesh in retribution from an already despised airline. This guy just won the lottery. I wonder if United can improve the way Delta and American have in the past few years? My wife has been traveling a lot and took Turkish air in January from H town to Cape Town via Istanbul. She said they were wonderful. Ditto for Air NZ.
hunter, “culturally insecure”? that’s an interesting term. could you expand a little.
I always liked Gordon Bethune, who having an Air Transport rating used to like to fly the delivery flights of new Boeings from Seattle.
I couldn’t agree more on Turkish Air and Air NZ. Houston to Istanbul sounds like a long trip. I think MIA to Istanbul was 14 hours.
I think I mentioned many good trips on Braniff a while back. Airlines should be based in Texas where they sometimes understand the romance of the thing.
Sure. But most airline travelerers reaction to that is… .so? We all know airline tickets have contracts of adhesion on them. You can’t negotiate the fine print. That the rules favor the seller greatly doesn’t make the public favor airlines when they enforce some of these overly-favorable-to them ‘agreements’.
Once again, I think most the flying public is going to say “so”? That United has a “system” for deciding who to bump doesn’t make people think, well, all right then!
I think most people know he was asked to leave numerous times and refused. Then step of “classifying him as non-compliant”. I think most even understand that legally he was required to leave. None of this helps United much.
The fact is: in the age of social media, the airlines –which are businesses who sell tickets for travel– need to recognize that if they forcibly kick anyone off eventually they are going to have a social media disaster of the type they have just had. Of course the passenger who doesn’t deplane is “non-compliant” — he’s not doing what the staff asked. That’s, by definition “not complying”. Of course not complying with airline staff is a federal offense. Neither of those facts will make the incident any less of a PR disaster.
If airlines have any brains they will offer incentives that are attractive to passengers to get people to volunteer to give up their seats. Offering unattractive, hard to use vouchers. Meh. If they stick to “the law permits us to screw you in this way. Federal law requires you to comply with us and get screwed this way”. They are going to have a PR disaster on their hands. And they deserve every bit of negative PR they get.
The salient point, I thought, was that he left the plane then returned.
j ferguson:
I think “aggressive” counts the same as mad. Forcefully dragging a person down an aisle and blooding his face registers the same as mad.
And that meant it wasn’t overbooked. It means United screwed up by allowing people to board the aircraft before realizing they needed the seats. I also bet United could have paid a high ticket price and gotten either the doctor or their crew to the destination on time. As has been pointed out, United also didn’t even offer the amount they are legally required to pay people.
Ultimately, United was being cheap. And they’ve paid the price now.
And it turns out that United was still in the wrong to demand him to leave his seat, once he’d been granted access to that seat. They had no legal basis for demanding that he leave, once he was in his seat.
You’re assuming that the output from their system amounts to anything besides randomly chosen. (Pseudo random number generators are based on deterministic algorithms after all.)
Plus–they screwed up. He was a medical doctor who had four patients the next morning and they couldn’t provide him an alternative flight that would get him to his destination without the trip being in vain. Those considerations should have made them look at the next person on the list.
They allowed him to reembark and return to his seat. I think it’s exactly the same situation they were in for allowing him to board to start with.
I think the bigger picture is actually that (a) United was being cheap (so there were other ways to resolve this without a canceled flight, like move a different crew to Louisville) and (b) they harmed a passenger via an unlawful act. Battery is a big deal. It registers bigger than being inconvenienced.
Lucia:
I think that’s the bigger problem—it turns out United was not within their lawful rights to demand that he leave once he had taken his seat.
It doesn’t matter how many times they demand he leave, if the demand is unlawful. He’s be non-compliant only if he disobeyed a lawful order.
Allowed him?
j ferguson (Comment #161179): “Federal law states that any passenger must comply with crew member instructions.”
That is not true. If a flight attendant tells you to give him all the cash in your wallet, must you comply? Of course not. You are only required to comply with safety related instructions.
The contract does not just bind the passenger. It also binds the airline. United violated their contract with their passenger. Why they wanted to do that is irrelevant.
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j ferguson (Comment #161185): “The salient point, I thought, was that he left the plane then returned.”
That might be very relevant to a lawyer, but I don’t find it very relevant. If true, he got bullied into leaving his seat, then decided “Hell no, I am not going to take this”. Perfectly understandable.
According to today’s WSJ, the average compensation United paid to passengers denied boarding was well over $800. Any algorithmic approach to selecting passengers to be bumped is deeply flawed. United cheaped out and it cost them. I also saw that United is now planning to compensate all the passengers on that flight.
As far as complying with orders, even in the military, one can refuse to comply with an unlawful order. “I was just following orders” is not a defense against a criminal act. That was established beyond a reasonable doubt at the Nuremberg trials after WWII. It’s not at all clear that the flight crew had the legal authority to order a seated passenger to leave the aircraft without cause. Needing seats is not cause.
Mike M: ” “The salient point, I thought, was that he left the plane then returned.â€
That might be very relevant to a lawyer, but I don’t find it very relevant. ”
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I understand where you are coming from. On the other hand, those working for airlines and airports are human and will need clear, simple guidance in some cases. There need to be some bright lines that no one can cross that the employees can rely on in discharging their duties. If the passenger ran through the gate after returning, I don’t think this is acceptable under any circumstances. This raises serious safety issues concerning all of the terrorists who are looking for ways to harm passengers and blow up planes.
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If the UA employees were necessary to keep another flight on schedule, UA has been very stupid by not raising this at the beginning of the controversy. The fact that it was originally referred to as over booking leads me to think that it is possible that the UA flight employees may not have been necessary to keep another flight on schedule.
…..
In the very big picture, airlines have a very difficult job managing hundreds of strangers, some of whom will always have very difficult personalities, on each flight. I am afraid that this incident will encourage nutcases and very difficult people to resist reasonable requests by airline employees during boarding and during the flight. This not only harms the airlines, but also other passengers.
Personally, if I had been bumped, even if I considered it illegal or unjust, I wouldn’t have physically resisted an order to leave. It is futile because the airlines have the muscle to physically remove you. I would have simply made a record of what occurred, and if it was important enough to me, I would have fought it later.
JD
JD has the means to fight it later, most of us don’t. This passenger probably knew that too (not expecting the videos). It’s now or never, hence the unplanned one-man non-violent sit-in. Do those involuntarily removed from a flight have to sign a waiver to accept the token compensation they are offered?
jfeguson,
Yes. But the time line is inverted. A different article which was more detailed said he returned after being dragged off. See:
http://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com/2017/04/10/doctor-involuntarily-denied-boarding-dragged-off-united-flight-returns-bloodied/
If he had not left before being dragged off, the fact that he later returned can’t excuse anything about his being dragged off in the first place.
JD Ohio
This is not unlikely. It’s a reason why United should have had a better way of getting volunteers to deplane. I suspect an announcement that the first 4 people willing to accept $2000 cash if they deplaned and allowed themselves to be rescheduled would have worked. Especially if they were also allowed to wait in a nice lounge, and hotels were paid for in the event the next flight didn’t leave until the next day. I don’t know what the lower bounds on money might be. But if the offer is open to enough people, there are inevitably a few whose schedules are not so tight that they can’t decide to wait it out.
JD Ohio (Comment #161191): “those working for airlines and airports are human and will need clear, simple guidance in some cases. There need to be some bright lines that no one can cross that the employees can rely on in discharging their duties.”
I agree. If the sequence is the one j ferguson cited earlier, rather than the one linked to by lucia, then it might let the flight crew off the hook. But it does not let United off the hook, since their misguided policies and mismanagement created the situation. Whether the cops did wrong depends on what they were told by the flight crew.
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JD: “Personally, if I had been bumped, even if I considered it illegal or unjust, I wouldn’t have physically resisted an order to leave. It is futile because the airlines have the muscle to physically remove you. I would have simply made a record of what occurred, and if it was important enough to me, I would have fought it later.”
That is sensible. But most people would regard fighting an airline later as being impractical.
Here is what appears to be a fairly thorough examination of the issues. http://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com/2017/04/11/real-reason-man-dragged-off-united-flight-stop-happening/
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The blogger states that United did need the 4 employees to make sure that another flight could depart. He also put the blame on the police who were overly rough. My initial reaction is that I tend to agree with this. If the police had been forceful, but gentle and had immobilized him in a way that didn’t hurt him, there would have been much less adverse reaction. Additionally, he pointed out that if United had acceded to the passenger’s wishes not to be bumped, that many passengers on the other flight would be highly inconvenienced. He also stated that from a public relations standpoint, it would have been easier for United to simply cancel the other flight and that that is now more likely to occur after this incident.
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After reading this article, I am even more convinced that United’s initial response was incredibly stupid. It should have explained that it was trying to protect the interests of other passengers who were facing a flight cancellation.
JD
Here’s an example of what leaving it to later gets you with United:
http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-united-low-priority-passenger-20170412-story.html
Julian Simon designed the system of having airlines offer passengers to give up their seats. I always thought it was cash offered, and was offered in the past. United offered vouchers for tickets on United. If you are ever in such a situation, write down what you will accept and hand it to a flight attendant. You are likely to be accepted before they make a subsequent offer.
Several people think that I as a lawyer have some practical way to deal with unjust treatment by airlines. However, that is not typically the case.
Here is one example. About 3 years ago my children, after a 2 month stay in China were flying back to the US as unaccompanied minors. At the suggestion of an airline agent (either United or American) they were to be flown to Chicago and then to Ohio. My understanding originally was that my 7-year-old daughter could not be transferred from her original flight. [The thought being that transferring a 7-year-old was too risky and potentially difficult] Relying on the airline agent, I booked the flight from Chicago to Ohio. It turned out she was wrong. The airline’s rules would only allow my daughter to fly to Chicago. It forced me to rebook the exact same flight to Chicago, cancelled the trip to Ohio and charged me about $250. It probably cost me about $750 altogether when figuring in my trip to Chicago to pick up my children and a motel. I didn’t have the time to fight it, and lost my $750. As a lawyer, I see many unsolvable injustices and I looked at this as one of those instances and just moved on.
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The bigger picture is that over the last 20 years many airlines have had financial troubles, tickets are substantially cheaper because of overbooking and it is impossible for United to have tens of thousands of uniformly highly capable employees. Between United’s inability to find all highly capable employees and the belligerence of some of the passengers who fly as well as the incredible security issues, some injustices are inevitable. The only solution to the injustice being discussed here would be to raise prices about 20%, which would price a lot of people out of the ability to fly.
JD
Mike M.
I think this is on the management in either scenario. I think the local crew are in a tough spot. They probably aren’t given discretion to offer decent incentives to get volunteers off. Management does require them to get passengers off. No matter who is right about whether United has the right to deplane passengers, they were probably trained to believe United has that right. They put it in the hands of law enforcement– who evidently thought United had the right. This is not the local crews fault.
United management now knows they should have had more foresight about this sort of thing. Lots of companies do need to think about events that will happen over the course of several years and how they will play on social media. United evidently did not. That’s management.
Reliance on use of force, premature, excessive. Four letters. First letter N.
More bombing
http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/04/13/mother-all-bombs-us-forces-drop-massive-non-nuclear-bomb-afghanistan
At least one writer believes that United’s policies stem from cost-cutting procedures under the previous CEO: http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2017/04/11/united-denied-boarding-fiasco/
Another adventure with the business side of United. we are planning a trip to Oz. We have the points for round trip west palm to Sydney, business class. the international legs fly out of and into LAX and they start taking reservations about 11 months before date of travel. The prudent will get into their system at first opportunity. So we have firm reservations for the international legs. But they don’t open domestic business class until much later, nor economy plus. So in order to complete the reservation we book economy to LAX, business to Sydney and back to LAX, and economy home.
understand that if we had been able to book all legs for business at once, our points would have covered it, but alas.
They are still not booking domestic business class for points for those dates but will take econo-plus. Guess what? we get to pay a $200 surcharge for two of these seats.
the nice lady who was instrumental in doing this understood full well what had happened and how we should be flying business domestically for our original points, but that isn’t how it works at United. this was viewed as an upgrade to our original reservations and the fact that they couldn’t provide the domestic legs as part of the same deal isn’t their problem.
MIT professor disputes the White House report on Syrian sarin attack.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_Vs2rjE9TdwR2F3NFFVWDExMnc/view
United once started a new international route, and someone mistyped and United sold thousands of tickets for $150 before they caught it. They ended up using 9/11 as an excuse to stop the service, and gave people domestic travel vouchers as a refund(not $150 but a free ticket).
A little, friendly message to the customers
https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriage.aspx
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In the unlikely event that you are denied boarding,
25.A.4.a
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No clear procedure for asking for volunteers.
United: This is what happens after we raise a generation that never got spanked, ha ha.
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United probably could have manged to deal with this better, but I don’t have a lot of sympathy for anyone who physical refuses to leave when/if they are legally required to and then forces security to physically remove them. If this guy was on the bottom of the list and he had to go, well he needs to take the legal compensation and get the eff off the plane. As far as being dragged off the plane, well that is his tough sh*t in my view, he was being a total a-hole.
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I can see I’m in the minority here. The main question being whether he was legally required to leave, and he physically refused to do so. If that is the case, then the United CEO’s first response was correct. Social media shouldn’t get the heckler’s veto.
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FWIW I also believe United is by far the worst airline I have used. I have some horror stories here that I won’t share. I will agree that it is likely the situation could have been resolved without dragging people off a plane. From what I can see, this guy looks like an entitled person who thinks the rules don’t apply to him. No sympathy unless I am misunderstanding the situation.
For those of you flying Air New Zealand, you might find booking flights at airnewzealand.co.nz (Their domestic site) can save you money. I saved about $150 on a one way ticket over the US site. You may have to give up movies and food though.
The reason they got no volunteers for the ‘$800’ incentive is that it isn’t a real $800 incentive. It’s a travel voucher with use restrictions… which nobody really wants. Had they been offering $800 cash (or $1350 cash!), there would have been a stampeed to volunteer. The problem is caused by United transferring the business risk and costs of things like weather and equipment problems from United to paying customers via just not honoring tickets. It is simply not honoring a contract; yes, I know what the fine print says, but if you can’t rely of acctualy getting on a seat on a plane that you have paid for, then you are essentially screwed.
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United would be smart to completely change their incentives for volunteers so that no passanger is ever forced off a plane. But they clearly are NOT smart… just the opposite.
SteveF,
That is why I never volunteer. Those vouchers seem to have too many strings attached. They should just give out cash. I’d take $200 in cash before I would take an $800 voucher.
I love the travel voucher. Here you are in a mess and they offer you more of the same?
Tom Scharf (Comment #161207): “but I don’t have a lot of sympathy for anyone who physical refuses to leave when/if they are legally required to and then forces security to physically remove them.”
I agree, IF. But that is an awfully big if. From everything I have seen, United was legally required to let the guy stay in his seat.
j ferguson, Tom Scharf,
First prize is a week in Las Vegas, and second prize is two weeks in Las Vegas. 😉
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Except for someone who really can take advantage of a travel voucher (eg with regularly required travel between two cities served by the carrier), the voucher is essentially worthless. Which is why airlines offer them instead of the real thing: AKA money.
Tom Scharf
But social media will comment. This isn’t a value judgement- it’s just reality. This will have consequences for a businesses brand. That’s what management needs to be aware of. Nothing in the contract, law or anything else can change the fact that in this case, people in general think worse of United and it may well affect future bookings. That’s a problem for United.
I’m not saying I think the guy who was dragged off was right to refuse. I wouldn’t refuse to the point of getting myself dragged off. It’s also unwise to refuse and then get yourself dragged off. I have no idea what the law required of Dao or United. But nothing in the law helps United with respect to how consumers are likely to react.
Whether one has sympathy for the guy or not, social media has changed things. As a result, companies like United need to recognize they need to do a lot more to get voluntary compliance. I strongly suspect they could have made a general offer and gotten someone to leave even if it wasn’t that guy. They didn’t do that and they should have.
Lucia,
I thought they offered an $800 voucher to anyone who would deplane. Isn’t that a general offer?
They apparently went into involuntary mode after they didn’t get all the takers they needed. It appears they might have raised the ante to $1300. I wonder why they didn’t. Maybe they didn’t expect to have all the trouble. Who would have?
Sometimes the legal system lets you down. I don’t know what the de-boardee was thinking, but I’m glad he did what he did. I’m sorry about his pain and suffering. I’m cheering for the underdog here.
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When Gandhi was a young lawyer, he was de-boarded from trains and busses, no doubt legally, thanks to British Imperialism. You will recall that Gandhi later invented passive resistance and used it with devastating effect against the british. It worked because the bad publicity back in England did not sit well in the conscience of the good citizens of England.
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How do you fight an unjust system/corporation which has all the power? You broadcast the videos.
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One photo of a dead Syrian refugee had more power than a fistfull of politicians.
Tom Scharf
Maybe. But that’s a voucher. Which is worthless to many people. Even a $1300 voucher might not work. And even when a voucher not worthless, people aren’t sure it isn’t worthless. If they really want to get people off, they should offer money.
Lucia and others. I agree. Money would be much more effective.
Flying is an expensive way to go somewhere you can’t afford when you get there.
I’d love to know what percentage of vouchers ever are exercised.
j ferguson,
I don’t know. But as SteveF observed, unless you fly often, it’s generally useless.
I don’t fly around much. When I do, I usually go with Jim — but not always. If I were on a flight alone and offered a voucher, my reaction would pretty much be “when am I going to use it?” Also: “what are the restrictions?” The timing is such that I really wouldn’t have much time to consider the restrictions to see if they made the thing utterly worthless or just a little worthless.
Cash money? A delay could be worth that. Heck, when returning from a trip, my mom would take the cash in a heart beat. Voucher? Dunno.
> It worked because the bad publicity back in England did not sit well in the conscience of the good citizens of England.
That is the story that gets told, but I wonder if it was more that after World War 2, they just wanted out. I lean more towards ‘It worked because it was the English.’
>I wouldn’t refuse to the point of getting myself dragged off. It’s also unwise to refuse and then get yourself dragged off.
If he’s going to refuse, getting dragged off is a good way to do it. Getting violent and attacking would have been worse.
Oppressive establishment jokers on the Left,
Radical counter-culture clowns to the Right;
Who’d a thunk I’m
Stuck in the center the circus
Of pedanted pendulums,
With you?
=========
We fly several times a year. We have traded our seats for vouchers and cash on multiple occasions to the pint where we have flown for either little money or free. Our best was flying home from Dublin in 2015. It was the Sunday before Labor Day. The young Irish couple in front of us had just been married. Their honeymoon to a Carribean resort was messed up and they were not going to be able to leave on Air Canada until the next day. They would miss a connection. They needed to be in our flight or else. My wife, always the entrepreneur, interrupted to offer our seats. Air Canada’s counter manager wrote us a flight-or-cash voucher on the spot. For about $900 plus a free hotel, plus food. Since I was still going to be in the office by Tuesday it was perfect. And the extra day in Dublin was wonderful. The young couple were so happy they hugged us. We cashed in the voucher since we nearly never fly Air Canada. There are other good stories out there. United (Air Canada partner btw) really screwed the pooch on this one. I hope the company regains the customer focus Continental had.
We have always been able to utilize the non-fungible vouchers we have received. But we fly a lot and are fairly flexible(not flying for business). However Steve’s point about transferring risk is spot on. The risk of their booking/over booking practice should be on the airline, not the passengers. This guy, crazy and messed up as he may be, on effect has held a Boston tea party against United. It will be interesting to see how this works out.
hunter
The “or-cash” makes a huge difference. Also, the hotel plus food thrown in.
Yes. There are circumstances where people would be happy to grab the voucher. Others, not so much.
Spouse reminded me that we did get vouchers once; and from United. They were good for a year and were out and back on a domestic trip. Voila! Miami to Seattle.
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I think the cost, as it were, was leaving on next flight from ATL to MIA after a 4 hour wait.
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Nice move in Dublin, hunter.
I’m going to go out on a limb and assert that Twitter mobs aren’t always indulging in careful thought and don’t always entertain counter arguments in rational debate.
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Emotionally driven group bullying.
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Is it effective? Yes. Sadly it is almost * always * effective, even if the facts don’t justify the capitulation of the target. I don’t know if there is a word for “randomly formed group totalitarianism” but maybe there should be.
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There is no doubt some “stick it to the man” revolutionary aspect to getting action from Twitter mobs. It can act for good as well as misplaced simplistic thinking. However it is pretty easy to draw links from Twitter shout downs to the recent college shout downs of banned thought. It is my view that social media has morphed from a very healthy freeing of speech to a much less healthy oppression of speech. DISCLOSURE: I don’t have a Twitter or Facebook account, so I’m an expert.
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I’m not asking for any government action here as this would be far worse than the status quo, but I will cheer the first CEO who stands up to a Twitter mob and gives them the finger and waits a week for the ADD mob to select another fresh target. Capitulating to a misguided Twitter mob is like not breaking up with an abusive boyfriend (pardon my sexism).
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Just to counter my own argument, social media has also bypassed the media’s gate keeping ability which serves as a check on media bias. Consider my opinion mixed and confused.
Tom Scharf,
Of course twitter mob action is necessarily well thought out. I’d guess it usually isn’t. But wrt this
The twitter mob is also generally not organized. So there isn’t anyone “getting” the action in the sense of soliciting it and aiming for the action. I seriously doubt Dao’s intention was to inflame twitter and there’s no evidence he made any overtures toward people on twitter nore that it was his intention to get a passenger to take video and post it on on the web.
Some people will join you. But the fact is, the effect of this on United’s reputation is negative and will likely linger, remaining negative as it does. Because the opinion on twitter is not manufactured– it is just the reaction of lots of people– who are in the end potential customers. United is a business: no customers, no sales.
The question is who is capitulating to what? The CEO knows that whether on twitter or not consumers are now somewhat biased against united. Presumably, he anticipates this will affect ticket sales. So: I think he’s “capitulating” to the fact that certain types of behaviors on his companies part will reduce sales and profits.
In some ways, I think situation isn’t like United being the girlfriend giving into a boyfriend who beat her. It may be more more like “United– a guy– is dumped by his girlfriend (consumers). She dumped him for being (in her view) a jerk. Maybe, she got really angry and screamed and shouted, stamped her feet and acted childish while she dumped him.
Now, he can decide whether to promise to change to get her back. Or he can decide to continue being a jerk on the grounds that he shouldn’t ‘capitulate’ to her “screaming and yellint” and so on. Nor to capitulate to her preference that he not do the things that make him a jerk (in her mind).”
Of course he doesn’t need to capitulate, especially not if he doesn’t mind being dumped so much (and now thinks she’s a shrewish childish harpy). And perhaps, if it turns out other women don’t think what he did makes him a jerk and they are willing to go out with him, he’ll get another different, perhaps even better girlfriend. But, if in fact, the vast majority of women consider what he did to be jerky behavior, he’s going to have trouble attracting a new girlfriend– unless he changes.
Maybe his changing would be “capitulation”. Or maybe it’s recognizing that what he did was sort of jerky and is so even if this message was communicated to him in a childish way.
United is very much in the position of that boyfriend. If in fact most consumers sympathize with United, but somehow the “twittermob reacted differently, then they could tough it out and say they will stick with their policies. In a week they will be fine.
My guess is the CEO realizes the twittermob reflects the views of many consumers. So, sticking to his policies will lose him customers. That’s no way to make money.
Looking at DOT website, the $1350 is the max compensation you can receive if you do not volunteer, if your reaccommodation is late enough. 4x your ticket price max 1350 sounds like a rule that needs updating. The page doesn’t list any limits on what airlines can offer.
Taking a quick peek at fares, I suspect most passengers paid around $150, so the “4x” rule would come to about $600. The computer algorithm preferentially selects those who paid the least (see post#161179 above), perhaps only around $100 each, so they would be due only $400.
Tom,
Well, we call a network with no pre-existing structure where nodes just join dynamically an ad-hoc network.
Ad-hoc totalitarianism? … Ad-hoc … something like that.
Tom,
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But I don’t think it’s any sort of totalitarianism for people to disapprove of the way that guy got dragged off that flight. Watching that, I don’t want to fly that airline. I don’t think that’s any sort of totalitarianism, I think it’s just that looked like a stupid, uhm, unattractive way for them to deal with that situation. Unattractive from a customer relations standpoint. Doesn’t make me Mussolini (I think) that I don’t want to see that, or potentially be subjected to it, or have it anywhere near me when I fly. That’s simple customer preference; I’d like a pleasant experience traveling. Barring a pleasant experience, minimize the misery and horror please. I’d pay extra for that, within reason.
[Edit: Just read Lucia’s analogy. I agree with that.]
MikeN (Comment #161233): “Looking at DOT website, the $1350 is the max compensation you can receive if you do not volunteer, if your reaccommodation is late enough. 4x your ticket price max 1350 sounds like a rule that needs updating. The page doesn’t list any limits on what airlines can offer.”
But why would an airline offer more to a volunteer than they would have to pay someone involuntarily bumped? Thanks to United, we now have an answer to that question.
The rule does not need to be updated, it needs to be eliminated. Make the airline raise the offer until they get volunteers.
One thing the airlines know is people shop by price / flight time to the almost exclusion of everything else. I don’t like United and I just recently bought a ticket from them for next week. They have a DIRECT flight where I’m going and it was very near the lowest cost. All things equal I’ll fly someone else, but that almost never occurs. I’ll let you know if I am dragged off the plane kicking and screaming.
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I do avoid the super low rent airlines that want to charge $35 for a carry on and penalize you $100 if you don’t pre-purchase the darn thing. That is one bridge too far. I wish congress would step in and regulate the “how much does luggage cost this week” lottery the airlines are playing.
Tom Scharf: “I will cheer the first CEO who stands up to a Twitter mob”.
I am not sure that hasn’t happened. The times when the CEO backs down are more memorable and “newsworthy”. But it may be rare, since it would require a corporate executive with a backbone.
Come to think of it, didn’t the CEO of the Trump Organization do that a time or two?
If someone has to be physically removed from the plane it isn’t going to be pretty. United letting him take his seat in the first place was the inflection point of this episode. I’ve never seen someone bumped after getting on the plane. The perceived rules are once you are in your seat, the process is over. The airlines adopting different rules for already seated passengers is probably wise.
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I’m sure the airlines give vouchers because the actual flights are a fixed cost and vouchers cost them almost nothing extra to the bottom line. Airlines are ultra-competitive nowadays and every dollar counts. They would be charging us for air if they could.
Trump is king of Twitter bullying, ha ha. He is a one man Twitter mob.
Tom Scharf
Of course that’s why they give vouchers. But this exact feature makes a $400 voucher worth less than $400 cash. You can spend cash on anything you want. Vouchers hare big limitations. Consequently people will be less likely to volunteer to accept a voucher for their trouble and they are right to do so.
lucia (Comment #161231) : United as the jerk boyfriend.
Interesting. How about United as the angry father who isn’t going to take any more guff from the adolescent boy and whips out his belt. While the other children watch.
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It’s 2017, does it even matter what that boy did, or what he should have done? The kid deserved the beating and kids are spoiled versus kids have human rights. I thought we disapproved of beating the wife, kids, and dogs now.
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In any case, the United jerks did not learn the art of the deal, the process of negotiaion. By escalating it so fast, they skipped all of the steps that might have solved the crisis and might have left eveyone happy.
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And friendly.
http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2017/04/14/delta-will-pay-flyers-up-to-10000-to-give-up-seats-on-overbooked-flights.html
From Ledite’s foxnews link: ” If Delta paid $9,950 to every person it bumped involuntarily last year, that would total $12 million. Delta earned nearly $4.4 billion.” Pennies. — Although this probably doesn’t include the cost of people who willing took vouchers or cash.
JD
Except they are offering up to that amount. Announcing it beforehand created the possibility of the entire plane holding out collectively, but we know people will cheat.
I don’t get why Delta announced $9950. It would be more impressive to say $10000.
With their number, they could be inviting IRS prosecution, that they are structuring payments to avoid reporting requirements.
United just can’t manage to stay out of the news.
http://www.khou.com/news/local/bride-and-groom-booted-off-united-flight-in-houston/431644313
I’m not understanding this. I have to guess that it’s their company culture, from top to bottom — without saying that any other airline, telco, government agency is any better.
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Do airlines go out of their way to annoy their customers?
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To close this, remember the oldie but goodie, “United Breaks Guitars”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo
Ledite, the sad part is that United may have been in the right but their recent scandal had taken away the benefit if the doubt.
Follow-up to the Dao vs. United saga, with the officers’ reports.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/25/us/united-airlines-incident-officers-report/index.html
One thing I don’t understand is one officer saying that his report is filed under duress, “I am only giving this statement at this time because I know that I could lose my job if I refuse the direct order given to me.” Surely an enforcement officer would expect to have to file a report after an incident, and it would be best to write it immediately, when recollection is sharpest. Anyone have a better interpretation of what he might mean?
And in unrelated news, a giant rabbit (3′ !) has died on a United flight.
In another article, its breeder, Annette Edwards, is described as a former Playboy model. I wonder if that had any influence in her choice of a hare-raising career.
Maybe this rabbit would have been more fortunate had his berth been needed to deadhead United Crew Rabbits to Chicago, just a bunny-hop away, so to speak.
Poor bunny….
“Poor bunny….”
‘ Annette Edwards….
or the giant rabbit.
United has settled with Dr. Dao. No amount was mentioned.
“The ordeal has already brought about some changes in the industry. Southwest said Thursday it will no longer overbook flights in an effort to ensure ticket-holding customers will never be booted. Delta said earlier this month that it will offer volunteers up to $10,000 to give up their seats.”
angech,
Both.
HaroldW,
Had the airline offered a real incentive (AKA cash) I have no doubt the situation would never have arisen. Fully 7 of the ‘ten changes in company policy’ at United are silly or beside the point. They could have easily gotten away with just one critical change: cash incetives of whatever value is needed to recruit volunteers. After this fiasco, I’m pretty sure there won’t be many more instances of involuntary denial of a seat due to overbooking….. on any airline.
Immigration.
While not easy, here it’s good:
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2012/03/12/outsiders-part3-willmar-is-the-future-of-a-more-diverse-minnesota
Rural Minnesota has had school district consolidations and closings of small businesses. Families are smaller than before. This presense of immigrants is helpful. Some work in packing plants which is not some people’s ideal job. They help with what we do in Minnesota and have been doing so for decades. They get what I suppose they believe is a better life and Minnesota produces food. They are in places a vital cog in the process. I think greater restrictions on their living here is going to hurt the economy of our state. There were these things called the Swift Raids: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_raids
That was our government. For what? I’d frame the situation as capitalism. But for that we got deportations and fines. We grow a lot of turkeys here. Ship them to Mexico where they can be packed, or bring the Mexicans here? We know what makes more economic sense.
Ragnaar: Small Minnesota Town
This is not representative of the problem of large scale illegal immigration and large scale Muslim immigration. Muslims generally don’t assimilate as much as other groups. More pertinent to the question of large scale Muslim immigration might be the case of Germany where millions of Muslim Turks living in Germany were: 1. Permitted to vote in Turkish elections raising potentially the question of German residents being more loyal to Turkey than Germany and causing problems should there be a dispute with Turkey; 2. About 63% of Turkish German residents voted to give Erdogan essentially dictatorial powers. See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/opinion/why-german-turks-voted-for-the-autocrat-far-away.html?_r=0
Since your Minnesota article gives individual examples as part of the writing, I will give some from the NYTs article:
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“In Essen I met women who had been living in Germany for 30 years and still didn’t speak a word of German (sometimes because their husbands wouldn’t let them). The same was true for an imam who was sent there by the Turkish government. The actions and influence of the Turkish religious authority in Germany, known as Ditib, should have been monitored and restricted long ago.”
JD
Delingpole said Christopher C. Horner and Marlo Lewis Jr., senior fellows at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Under their vision, Mr. Trump could toss out Mr. Obama’s decision that the Paris accord was an executive agreement, declare it a treaty and send it to the Senate, where it would need a two-thirds vote for ratification.
Is this not what was thought the best option here.
Ragnaar,
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I think that most Americans strongly support immigration, subject to three conditions. First, it must be done legally; illegal immigration undermines the integrity of our borders and our laws. Second, the immigrants must be willing to integrate into our society and become Americans, not Somalis or Mexicans etc. who merely live within our borders (I use “integrate” not “assimilate” since the latter implies all loss of identity). Third, the immigrants must be able to contribute to our society without undermining those who are already here; that means that we must limit the number at any given skill level to what our economy can absorb.
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The article you link to paints a very rosy picture. Maybe it is true for that particular town or maybe the author is looking at things through rose colored glasses. There have certainly been significant problems with Somali refugees in Minneapolis and St. Cloud. From what I have read, Minnesota sends far more recruits to ISIS than any other state.
JD Ohio:
Yes there are examples of problems, that occur in Minnesota as well. My goal is understanding and working together. Also the economics of Minnesota’s food production that does includes immigrants and migrants. A growth industry in rural Minnesota is caring for the elderly. The demographics have shifted and there are people that could help with that. The national debate probably influences the situation in Minnesota and I think we were doing pretty well as things were. Trump won most of rural Minnesota except for on the Range which is loyally Democrat. But I don’t think it was because of immigration. Maybe it was the rural versus urban divide.
Mike M.:
Integrity of our borders is a tough one. An unimpaired condition :Â soundness
The border is really there and it works. Firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values :Â incorruptibility Is the border really there? Legal papers say it is, and we built a fence and there are guards. It’s there. Its integrity shows our moral code. We used to have a lousy fence, indicating our moral code was lacking. All kinds of personal values go into a border. When illegal immigrants work the fields of the Southwest, what does that say about our values? The border has less integrity. We’d rather have cheap food. A good value but at odds with other values.
To give another point of view, here’s Bill Holm:
http://www.mnvideovault.org/index.php?id=16651&select_index=0&popup=yes
It’s from TPT, public TV. About 25 minutes long.
Some points made as best I can: We inherited this rich land. Our ancestors came from another county. Is what we have because of luck or virtue? He indirectly predicts the success of China, wanting to move 5 million of them to rural Minnesota. Demonstrating his values.
About the Twin Cities and ISIS. I did scratch my head at how that played out. Used to be you couldn’t leave the Soviet Union if you wanted to. That made us better than them. These young men wanted to leave this country.
Ragnaar,
You are either for open borders or you are not. If you want to make that argument, go ahead. If you feel everyone has the right to enter the US based on a moral principle then that can be debated. However what really is beyond debate is * who gets to decide *, and that is the legal citizens of the US and their government, not the UN Moral Court.
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Many people see the country as their home and it is natural to screen those who are allowed to enter your home. Others see the country as a public good that the whole world should have equal access to. These views are fundamentally different and a person’s viewpoint is based on their value system. Those two views are irreconcilable.
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“Everyone” doesn’t want cheap food if it costs them their own job or significantly affects their local economy or is a security threat. Arguably what has happened is unfettered globalism has reached a tipping point where enough people see it as a net negative. The labeling of those who see it this way as (fill in the blank with the common defamatory phrases) has unnecessarily hardened positions.
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What I see is that this debate has exited the Overton window in elite liberal circles and even illegal immigration debate is beyond discussion in polite company. Almost everyone who is offended by anti-immigration views have careers that aren’t touched by immigration competition and they live in areas that have grown over the past many decades. Once they start letting illegal immigrants live in their guest houses I’ll start listening to them again.
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Highly skilled immigrants tend to be a net positive, low skilled immigrants can be a net negative. Personally any hard working tax paying immigrant is fine by me, but those that load down the social safety net or commit serious crimes are not welcome.
To avoid taking a stand on open borders, I am for capitalism. Immigration laws can say, you can trade with people who are legally in this country. Assume current immigration laws are a result of the majorities wishes. Now this right to trade is subject to majority rules. It is now less of a fundamental right. As far as labor goes, it seems similar to protectionist trade policies.
As far as deciding this question, it isn’t going to be the individual, but in many cases the majority that decides who enters.
I value immigrants in Minnesota when you add everything up. Some people to not value them, sometimes unintentionally as Federal laws may not be designed with Minnesota’s situation in mind. So Federal law my prevent us from exchanging value for value.
When we talk about our home, we have one big home, or about 100 million homes. One big home and we’re going to take a vote that decides the home’s rules, or everyone make your own decision. You never know what might go on in an individual home so it’s just one big home.
“An immigration policy focused on closing the border would shift up to 61 percent of U.S. fruit production to other countries due to domestic labor shortages, sending jobs to Mexico and other nearby competitors, according to a 2014 study commissioned by the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest U.S. farmer group.â€
There is money and not money. The above is not money and it’s not capitalism.
“According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, “Industries in which foreign workers are in high demand include food processing, agriculture, information technology and health care. Demand is especially acute in rural areas with low unemployment or that are off the beaten path for doctors and other sought-after professionals.†Dairy farming is an example of an industry for which immigrant labor is indispensable. Roger Scheibe, executive director of South Dakota Dairy Producers estimates that 60 percent of that state’s milk production results from cows milked by foreign labor.â€
Ragnaar wrote: “As far as labor goes, it seems similar to protectionist trade policies.”
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Of course it is and a socialist would see good reason for that to exist. The vast majority of the world’s population earns very little so there is nearly always someone, somewhere who can do the job for less.
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Take the Eastern Europeans who flooded Europe’s labor markets, for example. They had no families to support in the countries they moved to. The cost of living in their home countries was lower so they could work for less. They didn’t need to meet the standard of living in the country they moved to. They could band together, rent a house and pack it with as many people as could sleep on the floor, slashing housing costs. They were capable of doing typical “working class” jobs but they didn’t have the overheads of typical “working class” people. Business owners win because they can slash operating costs while maintaining prices. Indigenous workers suffer because the suppression of wages means they find making ends meet harder to impossible.
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Ironically, when working people complained about this situation, the supposed party of the working class brands them racists etc. Typical.
Ragnaar: “To avoid taking a stand on open borders, I am for capitalism. Immigration laws can say, you can trade with people who are legally in this country.”
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That is the issue. You can’t have a country or a legal system unless a good majority of the people have shared values. You can’t write laws to cover every contingency, so unless there are shared values it is impossible to have a functioning legal system.
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Also, with an open borders policy, there are plenty of people who would want to come. According to wiki, in 2012 there 1.2 Billion people living on 1.25 a day or less. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty#Measuring_poverty
JD
DaveJR:
Yes, I wish the situation you describe in Europe wasn’t reality. Our manufacturing has declined as others have done it for less cost. There was a toy maker who left my hometown and went to Mexico and later to Pacific Asia. Workers were paid less. The company still survives. It would have been delayed if the Mexicans had come here, but the factory went to them. Like water, the money finds a way. All that can be done is sacrifice some people for others. If we can’t import steel, steel users are impacted with higher input prices. We’ve saved a select group and the expense is spread over a wider group. Here, things are changing. My hometown again doesn’t have a great downtown. It has a strip mall and a number of vacant buildings as well as dumpy buildings along mainstreet. We’ve been trying to lure some businesses here for about a decade I suppose. We still have a grocery and hardware store. We lean towards a bedroom community with Minneapolis 30 minutes away with no traffic. It’s not the downtown of my youth. I have been fortunate. People still want to hire CPAs.
I wouldn’t go the racist card for people whose lives are changing. Some people have.
JD:
Seems we have a history of excluding people:
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/a-brief-history-of-immigration-testing-and-criteria/
Does your average Mexican migrant or immigrant share our values? I’d say on balance they do but I’ll limit that to Minnesota as I don’t want to overstate things beyond my knowledge. On some of the numerous Trump threads at Curry’s site I suggested he was wrong on immigration of Mexicans while wanting him to win for other reasons. Especially our Southwest has a lot in common with them with mixing occurring for probably centuries. I think it’s in our interest to have a successful Mexico. Our trade with Mexico is North of $200 billion per year. I see opportunities. Seems they buy about ¼ of all our exported corn, helping rural Minnesota. Let me tell you, a redneck in Minnesota finds that significant. We have Canada as a successful and reliable neighbor. If we could add Mexico at near the same level of success, we’d be even more lucky than we are now.
Ragnaar: “Does your average Mexican migrant or immigrant share our values?”
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When they first come here I doubt that they do — otherwise, Mexico’s history, government and economy wouldn’t be so different from that of the US. On the other hand, in the past, they have been much more amenable to assimilation than Muslims have been here and in Europe. The problem is that Mexico is adjacent to the US, and there is much less of a reason for Mexicans to learn English than used to be the case for people who came from farther away. Additionally, now it is much easier for foreigners to cling to their own culture because of the easier communication effectuated by the Internet. So, I look at Mexicans as people from a different culture, who, if they wish, can assimilate into an English/Western culture without that much difficulty. Unfortunately, they have less reason to assimilate now than they did in the past. On the other hand, Muslims to the extent that they want to substantially follow Muslim teachings, as a group, have a religion/ideology that generally prevents their assimilation.
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The big picture for me is that the US is a country of 320,000,000 in a world with about 7.5 billion people. The US has the right to preserve its English/Western culture in the same manner that Quebec has the right to preserve its own culture. Cultures matter and nations have the right to preserve their cultures and exclude non-citizens. I don’t think it is an accident that Britain and the US have historically had comparatively successful economies when measured against most other cultures. If a culture changes from within that is one thing, but if a country is overrun by refugees or illegal entrants that is unacceptable to me. Pretty much I know of no principal embraced by a substantial portion of the Left which would provide a basis for deporting anyone who has sn uck into the US. (Other than the commission of some crimes)
JD
JD:
“Mexico will hit its total population peak in 2047 at 140 million, after which time even the overall population is set to contract.
This sudden demographic transition has severe economic implications for the United States, which will find its economy seeking other sources for labor—a transformation already visible this year as Asian immigration outpaced Latino immigration for the first time.â€
“But too many Americans have taken for granted that immigration from and through Mexico will continue indefinitely. Indeed, if the Mexican economy expands more quickly than expected, U.S. manufacturers and service providers will soon be tearing holes in the Rio Grande fence themselves. The United States will be exposed to a severe shortage of skilled and unskilled labor that is already affecting the most industrialized European countries today (2012).â€
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/news/2012/06/28/11660/mexicos-hidden-success-story/
Some are familiar with the idea of thrivability (Curry). Trump’s ideas on immigration can be placed onto the defensive side of the graphic. Mine are more on the flourish side. This has parallels with GW debate. An ideal state, how to maintain it versus adapting and taking advantage of change. There’s an opportunity to restructure our relation with Mexico. Trump may at some point get around to doing that.
Ragnar: “The United States will be exposed to a severe shortage of skilled and unskilled labor that is already affecting the most industrialized European countries today (2012).â€
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I don’t buy this in light of the 1.2 billion people living on $1.25 per day or less. If the US needs unskilled labor, it can send boats to Vietnam, the Philippines, China, India or Africa, and it can get as many unskilled laborers as it wishes. If you considered the poverty line to be $5 per day, you can probably add another 2 billion people who would find the US to be economically advantageous.
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Also, other articles do not confirm the positive analysis found in your link. For instance:
“The number of Mexicans living in poverty increased by two million between 2012 and 2014, according to Reuters. These government figures highlight the challenges President Enrique Peña Nieto is facing in meeting pledges to help millions in need.
“With his six-year term half over, Enrique Peña Nieto is trying to rally public confidence in his government’s economic plan amid lackluster growth projections,†said International Business Times.
While his efforts have focused on making Mexico a competitive nation, “the government is flailing in its battle against staggering income inequality and poverty rates that have remained virtually unchanged over the past 20 years,†according to International Business Times.” See https://borgenproject.org/mexico-poverty-rate/
JD
At some pay level, even CEO’s will go pick oranges for a living, ha ha.
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I think most people understand there is a price to be paid for trade protectionism. The prices at WalMart are going to go up, but so is employment and low end pay rates in a simple analysis. I stipulate it is very complicated when second level effects kick in and economists can pretty much claim anything once a model is created. Trumpsters are saying “we don’t care if the GDP is less optimized if our cut of it goes up and we don’t want handouts, we want jobs”. They are holding a gun to the American economy’s head and saying “make my day”. Clinton and the media called their bluff, but it wasn’t a bluff. President effing Trump. Once they stop with the epileptic Trump derangement fits, we will see how they campaign in 2018.
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If Washington doesn’t get the message then the next president will be a dog or something. The message is so clear even a PhD from Stanford or Harvard can probably decode it, but it might be wise for them to consult their janitor.
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When the coastal states favor globalism over nationalism it gives a distinct impression that they don’t care about their own nation’s citizens, or only equally as much as the people in West Africa. It hasn’t been hard to pick up on this, and it’s a bit surprising the left has made this so obvious. Try giving the people in Ohio the same respect you give Syrian refugees for a start. Own goal. It is very dangerous because the left has plenty of poor people too who are going to notice this eventually.
Tom S. I used to deride Hillary for her references to ‘everyday americans’ who I assume must be the folks who aren’t elite. I then heard Warren use the term.
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Pence used it this morning on the Chuck Show.
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Can it be that I’m the only one who thinks this is a demeaning way to refer to citizens. I thought the whole idea of this place was that we were citizens and as equal as we could bring ourselves to be. Who isn’t an everyday american?
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My fear is still focused on Trump’s successor. The folks who sent him to DC will eventually realize he can’t do it either, and they’ll go nuts and maybe this time will try a dog.
JD Ohio,
You’re way off on your extreme poverty numbers. The World Bank has the number of people with incomes less then $1.90/day, not $1.25, at 767 million in 2013. That’s 10.7% of the global population, down from 35% in 1990. Half of them live in Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority are less than 18 years old. There is no realistic possibility that they could even get to North America, much less the US.
http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview
If the urban elites really cared, they would make an effort to disperse the economy out of the cities. DC federal operations really have little justification to all be centered in the NE. I have heard of a thing called the interweb or something that can facilitate disperse operations.
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I have no expectation that they will, as for the most part they are just battling it out to get up the next step of the social ladder themselves. Everyone is always looking up the ladder, never down. I only ask that they don’t crap on people lower on the ladder and request to be worshiped for it.
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Trying to kill of coal in WV and KY are good examples of this. When they made this a “moral” issue it provided them cover for the damage it was causing in poor communities.
Tom Scharf: “I think most people understand there is a price to be paid for trade protectionism.”
I don’t think that any serious person advocates protectionism in the old sense. What is on the table is balanced trade, with exports roughly equal to imports without product specific tariffs. I think that is a good idea in theory, but I have not seen a convincing idea as to how to implement it.
DeWitt Payne: “You’re way off on your extreme poverty numbers. The World Bank has the number of people with incomes less then $1.90/day, not $1.25, at 767 million in 2013. That’s 10.7% of the global population, down from 35% in 1990.”
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Your numbers do reflect the untold good news that extreme poverty is decreasing. (Julian Simon being proved correct again) However, the $1.90 a day is ridiculously low. This article says that the World Bank underestimates poverty.
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“So what did we find out about poverty now that we can measure it better? Sadly, the world is more impoverished than we previously thought. The HPI has put this figure at 1.2 billion people. But under the MPI’s measurements, it’s 1.6 billion people. More than half of the impoverished population in developing countries lives in South Asia, and another 29 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa. Seventy-one percent of MPI’s poor live in what is considered middle income countries—countries where development and modernization in the face of globalization is in full swing, but some are left behind.” See
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/weve-been-measuring-the-number-of-poor-people-in-the-world-wrong/373073/ I also pointed out in one post that if we used $5 per day, the numbers (whatever they are) would be much higher.
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Mexico provides another perspective. “While less than 2% of Mexico’s population lives below the international poverty line set by the World Bank, as of 2013, Mexico’s government estimates that 33% of Mexico’s population lives in moderate poverty and 9% lives in extreme poverty,[3] which leads to 42% of Mexico’s total population living below the national poverty line.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Mexico
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No matter how you measure it exactly, there are many, many people who, if given the chance, would be happy to come to the US because of their poor circumstances. So, there is no need to be concerned about a shortage of manual workers who wish to work at hard jobs that many Americans do not wish to perform which was the context of my original post concerning poverty.
JD
JD Ohio,
I tend to discount publications in left wing sources like The Atlantic that announce that things are “worse than we previously thought.” At least the World Bank has probably used the same techniques over the years. Besides, how do you measure the income of a subsistence farmer? Do you impute an income from the food grown that is consumed and not sold? Probably not.
https://twitter.com/SteveKingIA/status/861126549399101440
It appears lefties have finalized their strategy regarding leaks they don’t like: ban discussion of the leaks while blaming the leaks on the Russians. Above all never discuss the contents of the leaks.
I asked Lucia to keep this post open for comments because, on my part, I believe it is useful to make a record of the Left’s self-righteous intolerance and dishonesty. I have not gotten around to adding examples of the Left at work until I came across Randa Jarrar, professor at Fresno State, who, though born in the US, has parents of Palestinian and Egyptian ethnicity. I suspect that some of you have come across her story.
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In any event, she is a racist and hateful person. Some of her rants are these:
“I can’t wait for the old white guard of literary writers and ‘critics’ to die. Their time is f**king up, too,”
“Coming up: a bunch of f**king white women.”
“f**k outta here with your white feminism. I said don’t at me b**ch. I’m a professor…” See https://wrko.iheart.com/content/2018-04-18-professor-randa-jarrar-the-new-public-enemy-1/
Also, after a similar rant, she concluded with this:
“”Sorry, guys,” she says. “Your kids mast*rbate.” http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article209454829.html#storylink=cpy
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The Left purportedly supports her freedom of speech,[I would say the Left really supports her attacks on whites and that free speech is simply a pretext for that] notwithstanding that after making some of her hateful statements, she left the phone no. of a suicide prevention center as though it was her own. Of course, the center was promptly deluged with a blizzard of calls. For instance, “John Beynon, a fellow English professor at Fresno State, called Jarrar “a fierce, outspoken woman of color” who is unafraid to criticize what she perceives as America’s injustices and its international relations” and supports her. Also, “Death doesn’t excuse racism. Calling out racism isn’t an invitation for violence. The vitriol flung at her is the epitome of white fragility,” [said]Fresno writer Steven Sanchez. ”
Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article209347759.html#storylink=cpyhttp://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article209347759.html
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Additionally, I would direct people to Ken White of the Popehat legal blog who wrote up two posts on this matter in the past week. Unfortunately, rather than accurately describing Jarrar’s statements he called them “deeply silly and annoying” See second post: https://www.popehat.com/2018/04/25/a-first-amendment-issue-vs-absolutely-protected-by-the-first-amendment-a-common-free-speech-misunderstanding/ Of course, they are racist and hateful. For those who are interested, I commented and a good number of commenters at Popehat excused her behavior. Initial post here https://www.popehat.com/2018/04/18/lawsplainer-can-a-state-university-fire-a-professor-for-being-an-ass-on-twitter
JD
hunter (Comment #161708)
“It appears lefties have finalized their strategy regarding leaks they don’t like: ban discussion of the leaks while blaming the leaks on the Russians. Above all never discuss the contents of the leaks.”
Climategate?
I think the decision by Comey to write his book has multi issues to it.
First as a former FBI director he should never have done so. Poor form and a conflict with the sanctity of his position.
Secondly as a strategy worse than Trump’s own tweets.
He has basically opened himself up to charges of lying, leaking and perjury.
Is it for money or is it part of the overall get Trump movement?
I cannot believe there is that much money in the book from book sales [could be wrong].
Was he paid to do it by other sources?
If so there must be a giant flashing arrow saying look at this bank account. On the surface so doubtful or if true so stupid. He might be just that stupid [see second point].
Does he really believe in himself and truth, justice and the American way that much?
Without realizing that he is tearing down the very American way he so stridently says he believes in?
The book will lead to prosecution, at a minimum his.
JD Ohio: “until I came across Randa Jarrar, professor at Fresno State”
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I saw her nasty comment about Barbara Bush. I wasn’t aware that Barbara Bush bombed Iraq. Then I saw her other nasty comments and the taunt that she can’t be fired. What a piece of work, maybe I should blame her mother. I pity her students (she is in the English department and teaches fiction writing). She claims freedom of speech, but when others say things like she does it is called hate speech and it is banned and punished. I would like to know how she got hired, with a personality like that. Perhaps she can’t be fired for what she says, but if what she says is evidence of a pyscho personality, having free speech rights wouldn’t save her. Friends in high places would.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/04/the_exhusband_of_barbara_bushbasher_prof_randa_jarrar_speaks_out.html
Ledite: From a free speech standpoint, I have zero problems about her comments about Barbara Bush. There was a war and she can argue whatever she wants. Of course, it is in very bad taste to make those arguments just after she died.
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What I have real problem with are her racist statements and hate directed at white people. If Black was to be substituted for white in her rants, she would be gone in 15 minutes. I can theoretically see how she could teach and put aside her racist rants, but it is hard to imagine her doing that in practice. So, I would assume that her racism and hate comes out while teaching and in her campus activities and that would be a legitimate reason to fire or discipline her under the code of conduct and employment contract that she has with Fresno State.
In any event I would contrast her treatment with that of Amy Wax at Penn law school (disciplined for pretextual reasons) and John McAdams at Marquette (fired for pretextual reasons). In a practical sense something has to be done at American universities to insure that those not following Leftist orthodoxy are permitted to speak. Maybe applying the same standards to Jarrar that the Left applies to conservatives on campus would give the Left pause before it tries to censor conservative thinking and conservative professors.
JD