This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
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Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Huh, that’s strange. I managed to leave a comment in the last Dome *after* PZ’s ‘new thread’ message. I guess I managed to post the last comment as he was setting up the new ThunderDome
Apparently conversion into in a libertarian is a messy process. Tomas is like a newborn. Dazed by pretty lights, easily distracted. His handwaving and sliminess is nowhere near the caliber of full-grown libertarian. Doesn’t quite have the liberty gibber, or the glibness down. A mere maggot aspiring to become a snake. Good luck Tomas! I’m sure with enough time and corporate funding, you will become the monstrosity you aspire to be!
You are a wizard Tony.
Here are two long quotes about suicide by London Times columnist Matthew Parris:
“When I die, and if I have to arrange it myself, I will consult nobody, and do it unassisted if I can. I entertain not a flicker of moral or practical doubt on the subject, and never have. Speaking only for myself — in such matters one should never judge for others — if Nature does not do the job in a timely manner I shall consider it a duty to take matters into my own hands.
I can’t tell you how simple I find these arguments: so simple that I’ve hardly bothered to write about the issue. Suicide is the greatest of human freedoms, underwriting all the others, for it gives us the possibility of defying every thing and every one there is. The possibility of suicide is what makes life voluntary and each new day an act of will. No wonder the faith community gnash their teeth at suicide. God Himself, if He existed, would gnash His teeth at suicide: the supreme act of defiance, the final rasberry. The knowledge that I’m here by choice, that every breath I take I take by choice, injects into my soul a transcendent joy”
[……]
“Is suicide not the greatest of all tokens of the primacy of the human will? How shall a man ever demonstrate with more finality that he is the captain of his soul, the master of his ship, than by taking it by his own choice on to the rocks? Self-inflicted death is the ultimate defiance, the one freedom in your life and mine which nothing and nobody — not even God — can take away…. I have never contemplated suicide and hope I never shall. But to know that I can — to know that tomorrow I too could make that splendid, terrible two-fingered gesture to creation itself is more than life-enhancing: it is sublime”
*******************
Two questions:
1) Do you believe Parris is right when he says that suicide is… ‘the ultimate defiance’?
I think he has a valid point although I’m not sure if I’d want to say that suicide is the “supreme act of defiance”. I see what he means, but my gut reaction is that this way of speaking glorifies suicide. Suicide is such a sad, ugly thing I’m a little nervous about talking about it in that way. I like how he describes suicide as the “final raspberry” though.
But yes, perhaps if one sees life, for whatever reason, as having an unbearable ‘thing’, an entity, something you continually battle with, then you could be said to be defying it — ultimately, you are saying…. ‘I don’t have to live you’
Also, it would seem to me that suicide can perhaps be the most rational and logical of acts. The will to live comes from instinct and emotion, hardly something that should be given over to as a matter of course. They are there as evolutionary processes, a process not known for its compassion or rationality.
2) Do anyone object to any of this?
Goddamnit! I had just posted a scathing, insightful, and ultimately convincing argument against libertarianism. Now thanks to PZ, it’s lost forever. FOREVER!
Fuck you, old thread.
PZ Myers, #803 previous thread:
In case Tomas C doesn’t understand PZ’s reference closing the last thread, Ferengi Rules of Acquisition-—
varady72:
If I agreed with Parris (and I don’t), I wonder whom I would be defying…(rhetorical question).
Tony:
Perhaps you shouldn’t conclude that. Being an atheist doesn’t mean you have rational beliefs about religion or gods. There are plenty of irrational or non-rational ways of getting to the same conclusion as someone who goes through a rational process.
Also, I agree that the evidence suggests you are a wizard. You might want to have a doctor look at that.
\I find it hard to believe that “non-aggression” is more than a buzzphrase to make libertarianism seem like a reasonable and moral position.
I consider myself a pacifist, and my understanding of non-aggression is that you generally avoid hurting people, animals, plants… I feel like this needs an etc, but do artificial objects, rocks, liquids and gasses really need protection from being hurt? No punching the sun, guys, don’t do it! Hmm. Though I can conceive of a few occasions when the alternatives are worse than violence, even then I would argue that the least violent possible action be taken – disarm and restrain rather than wound, wound rather than kill, never kill unless completely unavoidable.
…I can’t help but think that non-aggression in libertarianism means nothing more than “don’t make me pay toward the upkeep of civilisation, because force is implied somewhere deep down, and that’s pretty mean of you guys!
consciousness razor, you probably shouldn’t rely on my opinion about this, lately I’ve taken to attributing wizarding powers to explain just about everything.
varady: There’s a lot to unpack.
1. The author is doing good at least insofar as trying to present suicide positively (ish)
2. The author might be doing a disservice by overstating/glorifying, but this is at least helpful in pushing the Overton Window away from seeing suicide as inherently irrational/selfish/icky/etc.
3.. I don’t agree that characterizing suicide as defiance is wise or accurate.
4.. I don’t agree that the possibility of suicide makes life grander somehow or that such a statement doesn’t serve to stigmatize suicide further, in a less direct way than usual.
It’s a mixed bag. I’m not convinced that Parris has thought out his position all too well, or at least is too myopic to bother understanding the mindsets of the people who actually commit suicide while showing off his majestical meanderings on the topic.
Travis @ 10
Ah, yes. A-Wizard-Did-It Syndrome.
I hear it’s caused by exposure to wizards.
I covered ‘Non aggression’ in my post back at #658, two threads back now. If Tomas had a shred of a conception of intellectual honesty and integrity, he would have addressed it then. But the very concept is alien to you, isn’t it, Tomas? You just throw around links and buzzwords that you don’t understand and pretend you’ve made a telling case. You really are a worthless repulsive little shit, aren’t you?
consciousness razor:
True, although I wasn’t thinking so much about how Tomas came to their beliefs with regard to religion (I don’t know if they have mentioned being an atheist or not). Perhaps I misread, but some of the comments Tomas made in the last ‘Dome (in response to godbots) seemed to have a rational basis.
Tony:
You do realize that you are attempting to say that Tomas is rational simply because he isn’t as irrational as young Earth creationists ? You are giving Tomas a little too much credit, is what I’m sayin’.
Before you try to experience this Siren song (Link: Period Table of Storytelling), I advise you to do the following:
1. Open a terminal. [CTRL + ALT + T]
2. Copy and paste the following code there:
3. Leave the house and keep yourself gainfully distracted for several hours.
4. Repeat daily for first week.
5. Try increasing the time of exposure in increments of 15 minutes each week thereafter.
6. Enjoy!
anteprepro:
Duly noted.
@ OP, Nerd
The Ferengi were – of course! – The French.
SallyStrange #771 last thread
re: Walton
That’s what I was thinking.
But he probably doesn’t need to come here and read 800 comments to try to fix a small SIWOTI problem.
My guess: it’s the libertarians.
(1) Libertarianism works only if there is magic.
(W) Libertarians exist.
(42) Wizards can perform magic.
(!!) Therefore, wizards exist.
Q.E.D.
I share with libertarianism an extreme skepticism towards the state, it just that I’m even more skeptical of corporate power, and when you combine the two presto chango you get the modern condition the worst of both worlds- Neo-Fascism.
@ chigau
We have had some very hard rain the last few days, hailstones even…
(PS: You might have to read the above on a PC, or laptop, rather than ipad.)
theophontes
I looked. ( the link worked on the iPad!)
Very cool!
What do the neighbours think?
Was that you?
Nice kitty.
@ chigau
No police reports to date. I presume everything is alright.
C’est moi.
Nice meerkitteh! That is Maxxy, adoptive sister of Ms Molly.
varady 4 & anteprepro 11
Well, yes, a lot to unpack. I agree that suicide is about freedom and could in some cases be about defiance. But most of all, it’s heterogeneous. Commiting suicide at 5, 12, 18, 30, 55 or 85 years old is not the same thing. Neither is it the same to do it because you lost your job or your lover left you, because you are in pain from disease or have a terminal illness, because you are old and have decided it’s time anyway or out of general despair or loss of face or honor or to avoid being captured and tortured. Those situations are not really comparable and the effect on friends and family –when there are friends and family– is very different.
Except when they instead pretend to offer something equivalent, then rob them blind, because, after all, the other part of the market won’t serve them. Nothing like a captive audience to gain the means to screw people over, hence the laws against monopolies, which are simply the “market” working to make sure it screws everyone over, not just the ones that have no other options, due to no one else being willing to provide the services.
BTW, we see this all the time, even today, with towns, districts, even counties, where the people that “own everything” work to make damn sure that no one else is allowed to offer an alternative service. Well, they try, and usually get by with it only for a while, until the Fed catches on, and puts a stop to it, or the State.
You have a very delusional idea about how much power people who the ones in charge don’t give a crap about have to actually change things. Money, for example, lets really rich people buy elections, but, the lack of it keeps people on food stamp programs, working shitty hours, and buying crap merchandise from Walmart, and everyone else that decides to compete with them, the only way they can, by selling the same crappy things, and underpaying their employees, because, whoops, turns out that when given the option to buy something you can barely afford, versus something that will cost you the last dime you have, people pick what they can barely afford. Strange how that works…
The market can’t change jack. Only people can, because they control the markets. The major problem is that there are only two ways to control it – via money, or via regulation. If you have enough of the first, you can, and people have, undermined, or controlled, the latter, to the detriment of everyone that lacks the former. Even basic bloody logic should tell anything that doesn’t have their head totally up their ass that this is possible, can, and does, happen. And, this is supposed to be fixed by someone with no power, no influence, no resources, no license to practice business, or any other means to “offer an alternative” providing one? What bloody insane version of history do you people read to not realize that the first thing some non-enlightened ass does, once they have most of the market, is burn down the rest of it, so no one else *can* compete with them? Its practically the way the entire world ran during the so called “rule of kings”, and the only thing that kept one person from gaining 100% control over whole continents was distance, the greed of underlings, who where more interested in assassinating the ruler, and taking it all themselves, and “offering an alternative”, and the lack of the means to kill, never mind control, someone thousands of miles away, or on the other side of a large body of water.
Your not just clueless, your totally nuts.
Yeah.. Again, that worked so well when women had no rights at all, no money, etc. Your “assumption” is that this could never happen again. Ok.. so how would the “market” really stop it, it can’t even keep so called “right to life” nutcases from, despite being a minority, with absolutely nothing other than a shit load of money to buy elections with, systematically shutting down services in whole states? Because, according to your logic, this is impossible in a “free market”. Or, do you imagine it would somehow differ *at all* without law makers involved?
You know what your silly logic sounds like, the lyrics from some song by Leslie Fish, in which all reasons for war are, when asked, taken away by an ancient god, leaving everyone with an absolute dictatorship, and when this turns out to be a bad idea, the proposed “solution” is massive bloodshed, which leads to some utopian anarchy, with, “No leaders at all.” Naive doesn’t even come bloody close to describing your view point. I am not sure even delusional is strong enough.
So there are still sneaky slymepit trolls in 2014 who have nothing better to do with their lifes than to wait for US nightfall to come here when the blog owner is asleep to drop their irrelevant offensive little turds? Wow. Abbie must be so proud. Atheism’s finest indeed.
As you can see, our not-so-friendly neighborhood troll is back, this time under the ‘nym of “justice”. He’s left a few doodoos on the floor in the “When will this situation improve” thread, too.
“justice”:
Are you trying to accomplish something with this inane sockpuppeting?
Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, when powerful people, especially a majority, have control over the government, it sucks. Guess who has control over the government right now, compared to back before all the “free market” BS gave corporations, deregulation, and money, money, money, more and more control over it? Who the hell do you think, back when the Jim Crow laws where in effect where the ones in control of the government too. And, how do you think that changed, some magic free market? You seem to take “market” only means shit you can buy and sell. There not just markets of services, or goods, there are markets of ideas. You would rob us of the ability to use the market of ideas to change the other markets, by literally handing 100% of the power over to the people that, currently, only have near absolute, and growing control over the money. Totally insane!
Which assumes the existence of black communities. It assumes them not to be property. It assumes that there is not a bias against seeing them as productive, or even, if seen as productive, being seen as productive “people”, not live stock. There are a whole bloody damn list of assumptions in your example which ***didn’t exist at all*** back when slavery was considered normal. Yet… you imagine that, if there is similar existing inequities today, of any kind, or in the future, that the market will automatically, somehow, magically “fix itself” so it recognizes the reality of what is going on with those people, never mind resources, technologies, etc. The whole housing meltdown was a result of them throwing a bunch of equations at the market, which told them, basically: x–>5 where x = 2 + 2, for as long as you keep the potato bouncing around, between different portfolios. This was **supposed to be** illegal, specifically, a type of financial gambling which was protected against, until some idiots “deregulated it”. So, what did the market do? It bloody played roulette. And, there are still bloody people out there, in different markets, even after new regs made this “specific” one illegal, playing the same stupid gamble, with the same basic shitty equations.
The market is an idiot, or rather, it can’t think, and like a tree branch, it grows, until some moron cuts it off the tree, or burns it up, in a forest fire, or starts an avalanche, taking the whole tree out, or it gets infected with stupid ideas, which rot it form the inside out, or… well, I hope you get the point, but I somehow doubt it.
Some of the Slyme have been battling Suey Park for the honor of Stephen Colbert. Atheist Loki even made use of the Chop Suey hashtag before defending himself with “criticism of women” is allowed. It was so clever.
Ugh.. Ok, still have “hundreds” of posts in the email account. Shouldn’t have bothered posting replies in here to the dipshit.. He just got worse about 4-5 posts later when you, again, insisted that because **modern** technology gives someone crippled to the point where he wouldn’t have even been fed, possibly as little as a century ago, never mind been able to “be part of the market”, can no be involved in it, there are no problems with his insane way of looking at the world. Are we sure that people that call themselves libertarian don’t contain an unnaturally large percentage of sociopaths? Because… I really start to wonder at the inability they have to grasp harm to other people, or the consequences of not trying to prevent it.
Hm willingness to take whatever you want for yourself while having little to no regard for the harm caused to anyone who isn’t you? Nope, doesn’t sound sociopathic at all.
*koff*
A word on this, without bothering with the rest of his gibberish.. Was watching something on the subject of punishment and how certain European nations handle it. Lets contrast:
1. Only fully encarcerate the most serious offenders.
2. Do not deny the rest society, limit their movement.
3. **Require** as part of their sentence that they work, real jobs, still in controlled conditions, but real ones, with actual wages.
4. Make sure that all of the limits are ones that are clearly, and undeniably, a consequence of their own actions, and not incidental, accidental, or worse, intentional, abuses, either by the state, or by their fellow prisoners.
5. By doing this actually a) rehabilitate them, by making it undesirable to return to crime and b) actually having money, and work experience, and thus a future, when they are once more free.
Our system:
1. Imprison people for stupid assed reasons, the longer the better.
2. Rarely, if ever, have any kind of training for jobs, or wages, etc. And, sabotage those as much as possible.
3. Completely cut them off from the outside world, and place them in conditions where incidental, and accidental, not to mention often intentional, abuse is unavoidable.
4. Make damn near certain that most of what happens to them, including their sentence duration is completely disproportionate to the crime.
5. Actually house, in many cases, the violent offenders with the non-violent ones, just to make things more fun, or something.
6. Toss them out with barely the clothes on their backs, no future, little or no money, a record that makes hiring them unlikely, possibly little or no support, and no job waiting.
7. Oh, and.. now we finally do more or less what the other list says, by handing them over to a “parole officer”, who is expected to keep track of them for a possibly indefinite time, before they are finally deemed “safe” to let try to put their lives completely back together.
So, yeah.. I kind of think the issue isn’t just “women” being shit on by the way out criminal system works (or, rather, fails to).
O.o Holy crap!!! I am sure I can find some great videos on Big Foot, and UFOs on there too. Or how about “psychic predictions”, or perpetual motion machines, or… like 700 messages in my in-box and the whole bloody discussion was some twit that knows the equivalent about economics, and history to what someone that once watched a bloody Asterix cartoon, but failed European history classes, knows about French history.
Scott Hatfield sighting in the Yes Really thread!
Libertarians aren’t selfish. You guys are just falling for a misconception of us in the mainstream media. Libertarians believe in caring for your fellow man and giving money to charity just like everyone else. What libertarians don’t believe in is coercion with threats of violence. If George doesn’t want to give money to Oliver , we shouldn’t coerce him to do so with threats of violence.
Libertarians are skeptics , just like you guys are skeptical of the claims of religion. We just apply our skepticism consistently and are skeptical of big gov’t.
@everyone who made the argument that we should leave
This is a stupid argument. How would you feel if I told you. Disagree morally with the war in Iraq? Then leave! Disagree morally with your country’s laws on abortion? Then leave! Disagree with your country’s laws on certain drugs? Then leave! That’s just something people say to dodge the point.
@Avo
I don’t know if you saw , but in the last thread there was an extensive discussion on teh factors besides employer discrimination (like career choices, field of work , hours worked, overtime worked , more dangerous jobs). Unless the figure you quoted controls for all that , its flawed.
(1)Women tend to make up the majority of single parents
(2) Less time spent raising children means more time to work longer hours , work overtime , commute to a more lucrative job ..etc. You can stay at work extra time without worrying about having to pick up the children. If you took time off the job to have a child or to care for your child that’s a factor as well
(3)Seems to just be an assertion. Doesn’t matter anyway
(4) See (2)
@Athywren/SallyStrange/Tony!
The principle of non-aggresion is basically forbids the initiation of aggression against persons or their property. It allows for self-defense against aggression
Basically why libertarians disagree with taxation , is that it coerces people to give up money under threats of violence from the state. (This was the point of the GOTH video.)
@Dalilama
As for company towns , if the town is making it economically difficult to stay (and not using aggression against the workers) , its not violating libertarianism. However workers will realise the whole economic package is a bad deal and seek employment elsewhere and the company town will close down for lack of workers.
If the workers are not physically being kept there against their will, at any time they can quit their job and find one elsewhere. If they don’t they’re probably getting paid what their labour is worth and they can’t find anything better. They stay and keep working because they want to stay.
@Travis
Are you saying John Stossel lies?
The video about Hong Kong I’m talking about was from one of Stossels “John Stossel in the classroom” videos I was shown.
@anteprepro
Not everyone who criticises Obama is saying right-wing dogma. He isn’t beyond reproach.I hought she did a good job of showing how bad Obama was from a pro-civil liberties perspective, and how creepy that Lena Dunham ad was.
@Kagehi
i agree America’s prison laws are screwed up. The link was just showing the ways in which men are disadvantaged in society .
@37 Tomas C
We’re “falling for” years of experience with libertarians actual behavior. You’re the one who learned everything he knows about libertarianism from Youtube vids, remember? Go away.
It has been absolutely proven, time and time again, that private volunteer charity does not meet the needs of everyone who needs it. When “caring for your fellow man” falls below “the government takes some of my money”, then no, you don’t care for your fellow man.
Who’s Scott hatfield?
You need to stop regurgitating youtube con artists and actually answer some of the questions put to you, Tomas. You never even heard of company towns, and you were going to look into it, remember? You need to stop lecturing and start reading.
I just looked into it, and I replied to Dalilama
The facts and their attitudes say otherwise.
Irrelevant, as it has been demonstrated to you that historically private charities don’t work in times of need. Which is why government stepped in, to make sure all its citizens have the minimum necessary
Bullshit, as long as the violence is them defending their property rights. That is what the historical data says. Read some history, so you quit bullshitting us.
Nope, they aren’t. They aren’t skeptical of their own religion. There is no historical data liberturdism works in the real world. In fact, historical data says it is an abject failure.
Actually it is pertinent argument. If you don’t like countries with a social safety net, then it is up to YOU to go to places where they don’t’ have any, and see if you really like the conditions there. You will be in for a rude awakening. It’s called putting your money where your mouth is. Meanwhile, shut the fuck up.
All well controlled studies show the same thing. Institutional discrimination, which won’t get better under your theology.
It doesn’t matter if it violate your religion. WHAT MATTERS IS THAT IT VIOLATES BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS AND DIGNITY.
And if you believe that, I have a bridge over the East River for sale.
Tomas C, do you have anything new to add? If all you can do is regurgitate your previous lies, you will be unable to advance your fuckwitted and stupid argument, and you may as well quit now.
Liberturdism is rejected as being unworkable.
Your reply was insufficient to convince anybody you aren’t a liar and bullshitter for your theology.
Your religion doesn’t work. Deal with it elsewhere.
And it never occurs to you to wonder why women are the majority of single parents. Why is it on women to pick up the kids or take time off work if the kid is sick? That’s discrimination, fuckwit.
Prove that there will always be available jobs elsewhere which pay a salary the workers can live on. For someone who cries great big crocodile tears at the mention that they should GTFO if they don’t want to contribute to the society they live in, you’re sure quick to suggest that people who aren’t you just pick up their lives and go elsewhere if they don’t like their current living conditions.
Tomas C. @ 37
For the record, I don’t think libertarians are selfish fuckheads because of the mainstream media. I think libertarians are selfish fuckheads because almost every one I’ve encountered has been a selfish fuckhead.
Also: You aren’t listening. Charities are not sufficient. There are charitable institutions I respect, which do good work, and deserve recognition. They are not an adequate replacement for the welfare state. How do we know this? Because the welfare state has not always existed, and so it became necessary to invent it. In the late 19th century, there was little to no form of government support in the UK, and so people died in the thousands. People starved (heard of the Potato Famine) while mountains of food rotted in warehouses. People died of typhoid and cholera and measles and other diseases despite treatment being available in hospitals. People were forced to sell themselves and their children into near slavery under working conditions you would consider torture (heard of chimney sweeps? They’re not all Dick van Dyke) in order to survive. The welfare state was created to oppose this grinding poverty.
Except when it comes to claims about the magical power of the Free Market, apparently. Then it’s naive idealism, denial and flat-out lying all the way.
There is a curious incongruity between these two quotes from the same post.
And here we see the major problem.
The workers in company towns aren’t free to pack up and leave. They’re in debt due to predatory lending practices and monopolistic control by the company of basic necessities like food, shelter and medicine. If they leave, they’re walking out on a “freely chosen” debt, which most libertarians consider an initiation of aggression against the company’s property, and hence can be imprisoned, or shot, or whatever the company feels like. This _actually happaned_.
Heck, under ultra-libertarianism the mere act of leaving might count as initiating an act of aggression against property if the company (which owns all the land surrounding the town) decides they don’t have permission to walk on it, and are thus tresspassers.
And even if not, where are they going to go? The company town in the next valley? The company town down by the river? In the absence of something resembling a government to protect workers’ rights and freedoms, that is all there will be. Compared to a democratic government where (at least in theory) everyone is equal before the law, leaders are answerable to the population and there are mechanism to enact political change, this this situation is functionally identical to _feudalism_, where serfs are (in some cases literally) owned by whichever land-owner grabbed control of the area first. It establishes an entrenched underclass with literally no power beyond “voting with their feet”, and possibly not even that.
And I’m not even going to get into the utterly ridiculous idea of using a statist idea like “property” while claiming that states should not exist. (Admittedly, not all libertarians fall into this trap. The anarcho-capitalists often do, while the minarchists do not.)
@Tomas C #614 previous ‘Dome
There is certainly some percentage of self-described feminists who advocate for policies which would, rather than resulting in equality, grant favouritism to women under specific circumstances. I have encountered individuals who do this. That small percentage probably does amount to many individuals. But as I said, albeit via the medium of mockery, in the last thread, feminists are not monolith. The fact some small percentage of feminists advocate for some shit policies says nothing about the feminist movement overall, and the mere existence of feminists like me should indicate to you that judging the entirety of feminism based on the opinions of a small percentage of self-described feminists is entirely inaccurate.
The vast majority of feminists, in my experience, are for equal rights. We are for advancing the rights of women because we recognise that women are the currently disadvantaged group and that therefore, the rights of women need to be adavanced in order for equality to exist. For the vast majority of us, this does not involve curtailing the rights or privileges of men, but advancing the rights and privileges of women to the same level.
@Seven of mine
I thought feminism is about giving women the freedom to choose? If a woman chooses to have a child and take time off from her job its her choice. If she decides not have a child and focus on her career and work overtime its her choice too. You might not agree with the woman who has a child and takes time off work , but its her choice on how to raise her children and not yours.
Tomas get your head out of your fucking ass. Why, for women, is it a choice between having a career OR having children? Why don’t we demand that ALL people in demanding careers be unmarried and childless so that their employers don’t have to worry about them needing time off to take the kid to the dentist? Why isn’t having children an obstacle to career advancement for men?
Remember when you apologized for pretending to know more than you actually know, Tomas? The fact that you’re doing it again makes me doubt the sincerity of your apology.
@Snoof
No. All it says is that you can’t see the difference between leaving the country and changing jobs.
You’re just assuming company towns will be prevalent , which is unlikely. Such towns are expensive to set up and if such conditions are bad , the workers would be unwilling to support it.
I think peopel should be held accountable to their contracts. You can got and buy an expensive car and then realise you can’t complete the payments on it ans say “oops, I guess you’re out of luck car dealer” to get out of the contract. If you can’t afford the terms of the contract you shouldn’t sign it.
@Seven of mine
If there are no jobs availible , the employer is the only guy paying a fair wage
Which means the workers can’t actually just go get another job, Glib McFacile.
Sure, because serfdom certainly wasn’t a thing that happened all Europe and Asia.
Unless it’s the implicit social contract you agree to by living in a nation, in which case it totes doesn’t count.
@Seven of mine
Its not. There are for example stay-at-home dads who decide to take leave from their jobs to help raise a child. What I am saying its their choice , and it should be their choice. If a man wants to take a less demanding career and spend more time with his son/daughter , great for him. Its his choice. That’s a decision for the couple (or the single parent) to make for themselves/himself/herself.
Certainly dads CAN choose to stay at home but, in general, they don’t AND NOBODY EXPECTS IT OF THEM. Seriously, you should call a proctologist. That can’t be healthy.
Just asserting something is implicit doesn’t make it exist.
I’m talking about contracts that actually exist and people can voluntarily choose to sign or refuse.
Tell me more about the choices workers have when they have a few kids at home to feed and are living paycheck to paycheck because of their lousy working conditions. Have you ever experienced being the only source of support for another person? Have you ever seen your bank account be zero to overdrawn and still had a week until payday? Have you ever experienced not knowing where your next meal was coming from? Do you have any idea how much “choice” in a job is a nonstarter for people?
That doesn’t even make sense. The availability of jobs doesn’t have an impact on what a fair wage is.
@carlie
What criteria would you judge a fair wage by? If not market value for labor?
If noone else is willing to give one as much money for one’s labour as the current salary , then you’re getting the best rate on the market for your labour.
That is irrelevant to the same pay for the same work with the same experience. You lose again, as you don’t know how to argue. Now, you are refuted, and that augment is dead, just like everything you have said to date.
What NEW do you have to add, with proper non-propergander evidence?
Easy fuckwit: Living wage.
Checkmated again. You have no argument.
Things which are apparently the same: “best available” and “fair.”
This episode of “I Have No Fucking Idea What I’m Talking About” has been brought to you by Tomas C.
Thomas C:
–THINK!–
Currently, Women are DENIED the right to choose to have a child; most are FORCED to have a child, as punishment; for daring to have s#x. (“Sex has risks, the risk is lifetime servitude nurturing the product of your risky behavior…” the liberterds will phrase the denial as). Feminists do not CHOOSE to have babies just to get on the “dole”, and rob MEN of all their hard earned moneys. And Then: Women are _not_ given a choice to choose a new job to pay for the expense of “nurturing” that baby. So on and so, if you can, follow that trail of thought on your own. Libert*s go on and on about “choice” and “freedom”; yet refuse to see when anybody but themselves are denied those things, and only see the slightest effects on themselves as “the worst things ever”.
Do #not# yell, “I’m a Feminist, too” as justification for liberterdism. Nor claim that Liberterdism is just like Feminism, but for Money, as well as people.
.
{over here…. my advice to you, privately, is to look at _more_ than the outermost surface of the problem. Every problem consists of many layers of ‘associated’ problems. Liberta*ism only tries to address the outermost layer of the whole problem. Problems are many layers, and to solve a problem requires solving all the layers. Neither can each layer be considered its own separate, individual problem, which could be solved individually by repeating the same solution for each. Multiple layers must be solved as a single problem. Maybe with multiple solutions acting en-masse with no clear correspondence between each layer of the problem to each aspect of the composite solution. Your L* philosophy tries to teach that complex problems can be broken down into many simple problems, each of which can be solved with the same simple solution. Were that reality worked that way, but sorry, it’s harder than that.}
@Nerd of Redhead
I agree with this. I said so in the last thread. We were just talking about other factors that might cause certain women to choose to work less hours or less overtime or choose more flexible and less lucrative jobs.
Actually what we were doing was waiting for you to explain why these are choices only women are expected to make.
Which it not relevant either, unless the responsibility for children is expected to be carried by both parents. It isn’t, due to institutional discrimination, which your theology won’t change. Irrelevant.
Your response to the problem of company towns was “go to another town,” Tomas. That wasn’t really much of a response. And, for the record, for someone who’s saying, “I refuse to pay the dues of membership”, “Leave the club” is a valid response. It’s not for someone who’s saying “I’m a member of this club and willing to pay dues but I think the rules should be more fair.” That’s why it’s valid to tell libertarians to move to Somalia or go live in the wilderness, and not valid to tell someone who thinks that the USA should not have gone to war with Iraq to leave the USA.
With regards to the problem of company towns: “go elsewhere” is what you do after they have already arisen.
Libertarianism has no mechanism to prevent them arising in the first place. However, since the institution of regulation on monopolies, company towns are scarce rather than common as they were before the Great Depression.
Do you not think that it’s more efficient to prevent exploitation and injustice from occurring in the first place, than to allow it to occur and then try to clean up afterwards?
If so, then libertarianism is, by your own testimony, an inadequate system.
@Seven of mine
Say I’m trying to sell or buy a house (or any goods in general) . Say I wanted to determine the fair value of a house. Shouldn’t I check the market value of similar good to see what a fair price would be like?
People are not “goods” you fucking sociopath.
Tomas C:
So this means that things like the fact Bangladeshi garment workers, a lot of whom were children under 14, get an average of 22 cents per hour is perfectly OK, as can be seen by the fact that the Free Market (which, from what you’ve written thus far, gets a gentle chorus of angels singing in the background every time it’s said) has not caused that the Bangladeshi garment industry, as a whole, to go under or have the average wage go up?
Oh, and, by the way, the situation regarding child workers in that industry has improved. You want to know why? A lot of the products of the Bangladeshi garment industry were for export, with the USA being a big market. The US government, in it’s Free Market destroying, big gov’mint, meddling ways, passed the Child Labor Deterrence Act, which would have lost the industry a lot of US contracts, so they reacted by stopping employing kids as workers.
You have another option, besides leaving the country. You can vote to make the government better. But you need a government for that (which will need to collect taxes), you need to not be ideologically opposed to democracy itself, and you need to accept that everyone gets to vote not just those who have money. That process is actually fair and it actually does something, unlike the magic of the market.
So who’s dodging what point again?
Here in Spain there are people working in uncontracted jobs, without the employers paying social security, for wages way below the “best rate on the market”. So, they can just fuck off and get another job.
What world does Tomas C. live in?
Don’t bother answering, I’m tired of Reading your shit.
@Seven of mine
I never said that only women should make those choices. If a couple comes to an arrangement and the one partner prefers to be a stay at home parent or decides to take the majority of parental duties (and work less hours or take a more flexible job to be availible for the children), its fine. What arrangement/compromise they come to is their choice. If a single parent decides work less hours or take a more flexible job to be availible for the children that’s his/her choice.
Tomas C.
Have you ever had a job on which you depended for a living?
Labor isn’t a house. And your theology drives wages down the lowest level, by not allowing for unions to make sure there is a living wage.
You lose again with your theology.
It doesn’t work in the real world according to history
So, until you study history from the working class perspective, shut the fuck up. You have nothing cogent to say.
@Tomas
#1: Y u ignore mi #49? :(
#2:
Comment #50:
Comment #56:
Firstly, it is not entirely their choice, because society places certain expectations on people due to their gender. There are far less stay at home dads than stay at home mums because society expects women to be the primary care giver and the man to be the primary breadwinner.
Secondly, these assumptions lead to women being unfairly penalised in the job market because employers assume that there is a higher risk of having to cover maternity leave or losing the employee to housewifery.
So no, in reality neither women nor men have an entirely free and equal choice in the matter. So it’s not good enough. Better than it’s ever been before, but nowhere near good enough.
@Seven of mine
I NEVER SAID PEOPLE WERE GOODS. Why do you misrepresent everything I say? No one is selling people.
We’re SELLING LABOUR. If you go to work or you sign a contract you agree to exchange a certain amount of labour for a certain amount of money. Labour in higher demand (like skilled labour or specialist work) tends to get more money and has a higher market value . Unskilled labour has a lower market value.
Nope, not their choice. Which actually refutes your idiotology. In fact, the more you talk, the more you self-refute your idiotology/theology. It doesn’t work, as not all choices are freely made.
Idiot child, if you are willing to allow market forces to set labor prices, to the exclusion of any other criteria, then yes, you are treating people as goods to be bought and sold.
See? Told you libertarianism wasn’t for you.
@Tomas
Society expects this of women regardless of whether you said it, shithead. Employers deny women jobs/promotions because they have children and they anticipate them missing a lot of work because of it. On the other hand, when men have children, employers think “hey he seems like a responsible, hardworking guy who totally deserves this job/promotion.”
You used the example of buying and selling GOODS to justify your claim that the best available wage is also a fair wage. LABOR is a thing performed by PEOPLE, you fucking ignorant child.
@Thumper
I agree there are social expectations of people and these come from everywhere. I think there are studies around that say the majority of women prefer a partner who brings home more money than they do and 26% of women refuse to support a stay at home-dad. I think they are changing though. this has nothing to do with employer discrimination though , and more to do with social expectations of both genders.
Unless they really, really, really want to. Then it’s okay. Because it’s totally wrong for somebody to force you to do things you really, really, really don’t want to do, like not own and sell slaves. That’s your property, after all. Because you said so!
Rising Japanese scientist faked heralded stem cell research, lab says
Or maybe not just because you said so. Because you have money, and you have hired goons, and those goons are being payed a “fair” wage for their services.
Employers are part of society, diddums.
Yes, social expectations of both genders have zero bearing on employer discrimination.
Any other bald-faced lies you want to tell while you’re at it? The moon is made of green cheese, perhaps?
You’re not very good at this.
@Seven of Mine
fair point. If an employer did do this it would be unjust discrimination.
Seven of Mine and I are apparently in some kind of mind meld.
‘Zup, Seven?
Tomas C
No you didn’t, you shithead. You completely ignored my fucking question that I explicated at paragraph length in the post I’ve linked you to twice now, and your bullshit doesn’t address any of it.
Company towns don’t pay a fair wage you imbecile! That’s the whole fucking point
Tomas C.
Have you ever had a job on which you depended for a living?
My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts.
Thomas C, below is a section from an article with multiple links pointing out one of the most blatant contradictions of libertarianism. The fact that some of the greatest amount of coercion occurs in the workplace, one of kind of freedom libertarians seem to constantly turn a blind eye to defend because it take an arbitrator (the state) to combat the coercion of private entities to block. See some of the common sets of coercions which occur, which is powerless to prevent with standard libertarian principles.
http://crookedtimber.org/2012/07/01/let-it-bleed-libertarianism-and-the-workplace/
1. Abridgments of freedom inside the workplace
On pain of being fired, workers in most parts of the United States can be commanded to pee or forbidden to pee. They can be watched on camera by their boss while they pee. They can be forbidden to wear what they want, say what they want (and at what decibel), and associate with whom they want. They can be punished for doing or not doing any of these things—punished legally or illegally (as many as 1 in 17 workers who try to join a union is illegally fired or suspended). But what’s remarkable is just how many of these punishments are legal, and even when they’re illegal, how toothless the law can be. Outside the usual protections (against race and gender discrimination, for example), employees can be fired for good reasons, bad reasons, or no reason at all. They can be fired for donating a kidney to their boss (fired by the same boss, that is), refusing to have their person and effects searched, calling the boss a “cheapskate” in a personal letter, and more. They have few rights on the job—certainly none of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendment liberties that constitute the bare minimum of a free society; thus, no free speech or assembly, no due process, no right to a fair hearing before a panel of their peers—and what rights they do have employers will fight tooth and nail to make sure aren’t made known to them or will simply require them to waive as a condition of employment. Outside the prison or the military—which actually provide, at least on paper, some guarantee of due process—it’s difficult to conceive of a less free institution for adults than the average workplace.
2. Abridgements of freedom outside the workplace
In addition to abridging freedoms on the job, employers abridge their employees’ freedoms off the job. Employers invade employees’ privacy, demanding that they hand over passwords to their Facebook accounts, and fire them for resisting such invasions. Employers secretly film their employees at home. Workers are fired for supporting the wrong political candidates (“work for John Kerry or work for me”), failing to donate to employer-approved candidates, challenging government officials, writing critiques of religion on their personal blogs (IBM instructs employees to “show proper consideration…for topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory—such as politics and religion”), carrying on extramarital affairs, participating in group sex at home, cross-dressing, and more. Workers are punished for smoking or drinking in the privacy of their own homes. (How many nanny states have tried that?) They can be fired for merely thinking about having an abortion, for reporting information that might have averted the Challenger disaster, for being raped by an estranged husband. Again, this is all legal in many states, and in the states where it is illegal, the laws are often weak.
3. Use of sanctions inside the workplace as a supplement to—or substitute for—political repression by the state
While employers often abridge workers’ liberty off the job, at certain moments, those abridgments assume a larger function for the state. Particularly in a liberal state constrained by constitutional protections such as the First Amendment, the instruments of coercion can be outsourced to—or shared with—the private sector. During the McCarthy period, for example, fewer than 200 men and women went to jail for their political beliefs, but as many as 40% of American workers—in both the public and private sectors—were investigated (and a smaller percentage punished) for their beliefs.
@Seven of Mine
Lets have hypothetical situation.
A couple has a child. Both work long hours. However the man prefers working to spending more time with a child. The woman prefers to spend more time with the child. So they come to an agreement. The woman agrees to take a more flexible job and work less hours so she can be available for the child and end up making less money. Is this women making less because of discrimination? or just a couple exercising their free rights to make career choices?
If as you put it , employers are denying jobs to capable women expecting that they would take time off for mother , that would be discrimination , I agree.
Welcome to reality cricket. Your theology has nothing in place to prevent that discrimination. In fact, everything is in place to practice larger scale discrimination as nobody is looking over their shoulders to make sure they behave without discrimination. Which is why you lose every such argument.
Government supplies a necessary function of keeping the playing field more level.
Tomas C, apologies for mistyping your name.
Ah, a hypothetical. Thanks for acknowledging tacitly you have lost the argument. Reality wins every time, and your theology doesn’t work in reality.
@Seven of mine
If selling labour=selling people , then eveyone who is not self-employed is a slave by your logic.
Could someone ask Tomas C. if he has ever had a job on which he depended for a living?
I hafta go make breakfast.
Tomas
Let’s not. Have you noticed something, shit-for-brains? You’re the only one using hypotheticals. All the rest of us are talking about things that actually happen to actual people in the real world. Remember what I said to you last thread? I said to answer the fucking questions, using examples of how the market actually fixes them. I also said you wouldn’t be able to, because the market doesn’t. And I was right, wasn’t I, Cupcake? You haven’t got a goddamn thing, you pathetic little pissant.
@chigau
No
@Tomas C #84
[Emphasis mine]
Apologies for the long wait in reply. Re. my bolding; do you not understand that the two are inextricably linked? That employers discriminate based on those societal expectations?
Re. your stats, why do you think that a significant proportion of women have those opinions?
What effect do you think these factors have on the job market? Do you think that a true meritocracy can exist without a level playing field? Do you think a level playing field is possible with the above factors in place?
What’s the libertarians mechanism which prevents slavery?
I want to know how this works:
Free Market -> no slavery
Tell me what you think the logic is behind that, Tomas. What magic occurs inside that arrow?
Tomas C at 96: What about situations where the man does want to spend time with the child but works because of cultural pressure to be the provider? What about situations where the woman does want to work more but because of cultural pressure she is expected to spend more time with her child, work less, avoid Serious Manly Jobs with terrible maternity leave policies, etc.?
What’s that? You don’t actually give a fuck about those things? What’s that? You simply assume that women mostly prefer to not work and spend time doing unpaid childcare? You simply assume that men mostly prefer to have nothing to do with children and love to work and work and work? You simply assume that, insofar as this happens, none of this has to with the influence of a patriarchal culture?
You. Are. Incredibly. Stupid.
They do it all the damn time. That’s why a lot of corporations have taken to anonymising resumes before they land on a recruiter’s desk. People make all kinds of faulty assumptions based on names and gender and so on.
Study shows gender bias in science is real. Here’s why it matters.
The above link talks about a study wherein a bunch of scientists were given applications from students for a lab manager position. Half the scientists had an application with a male name on it, the other half had a female name on it. The applications were otherwise identical. The scientists rated the female applicants lower in terms of competance, hireablility, and mentoring potential and also offered female applicants a significantly lower salary.
There are all kinds of studies that show this. You can write a narrative about a professional person and show it to a bunch of people, giving half of them a story with a male protagonist and the other half a female protagonist. The people who read them tend to label women as being argumentative where they’ll label the male character as assertive for the same behavior. Behavior that is confidence in a man, gets called arrogance in a woman and so on.
Over the course of the 70s, 80s and 90s, orchestras began doing blind, anonymous auditions so the decision makers wouldn’t know anything about the applicant’s race, gender, appearance, etc. Can you guess what happened?
This is pretty epic
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/snake-eats-crocodile-after-epic-fight-in-queensland-20140303-33xz8.html
There is a reason the term “wage slavery” exists.
Ah, I see the problem. I define “fair” as “worth the time and energy put into it”; secondarily as “if it takes up the majority of one’s waking hours, it should provide enough money for basic necessities”.
Or as Nerd linked to, a living wage.
What you, and other libertarians, fail to understand is that substandard working conditions are better than no working conditions at all, when that is the only other choice. You keep saying that if a company isn’t treating its employees well, those employees should just go elsewhere or otherwise coerce their employers to be better. But that coercion or mobility is impossible when those workers are facing constant bills and needing food and stuff. You’re talking about people without a cushion.
Let’s even grant you that not every town is a company town. Let’s pretend that the situation is one bad company town as an outlier in a world of beautiful, happy towns wherein everyone is treated well and everyone is paid fairly and everyone is happy. Now, imagine a worker in that bad company town. How did they get there? Maybe they were tricked by a job interview that promised more than it delivered. Maybe they were raised in that town and were never told things were better elsewhere. However it happened, now they’re there. They’re constantly accumulating debt even though they’re working overtime because the pay is so meager compared to the cost of living. Your suggestion is for them to move to the utopias beyond. Here’s the question: how are they going to move? Did you know that it costs money to move? That it takes time, and energy, and a shit-ton of money? That when you switch jobs, you go at the minimum two weeks, sometimes a month, with no salary at all until the delayed paychecks kick in? Where is that person going to get the means to move, even if they had a better job waiting somewhere else? Credit cards? Ha, they have zero credit rating and a lot of debt already racked up. Moving expenses or salary advance? Ha, no company would do that when they could hire an interchangeable worker who doesn’t need such things. In your world, Tomas, how do those people get to the good jobs???
Answer a fucking point Tomas. Don’t post any more links to anything whatsoever until you’ve ADDRESSED AT LEAST ONE OF THE REAL WORLD PROBLEMS PEOPLE KEEP MENTIONING!!!!!!!!
LOL
“Look! Over there!”
If you can’t rebut our arguments, just say so, you silly kid.
Musicians who weren’t white males magically appeared out of nowhere. Before that, there were none. That is why they never had unfair wages and were never unfairly discriminated against. Because the free market can’t be unfair. Because it’s free. And it’s a market. And so forth.
@Seven of Mine
Ooh, ooh! Me, me! Diversification! Was it? Was it diversification? Can haz star naow?
Tomas what exactly do you think your hypothetical proves? That some women really do value motherhood over their career? Good thing we have you around to explain these things to us. That fact does not speak to the REALITY that there is overwhelming pressure on women to make that choice, regardless of what they actually want.
*sigh* Borkquote.
*hands star to Thumper*
Wahoo! *does a happy dance* Thanks David!
@carlie
If the worker can’t afford the contract , he shouldn’t sign it. If the company did not deliver the promised wages of the contract he can take the case to an arbiter and have his contract rescinded or paid out. If he did sign the contract, and the company did deliver the promises terms of agreement he should be held to it.
In the free market this company would never work as workers would look for another competeing company with better contract terms and the company who offers the bad contracts will have to close down when it can’t get enough workers , or is outcompeted by the other company.
Ugh … trying to catch up on 3 days of Thunderdome when it’s invaded by Liberturds and a Gaggle of Creationuts isn’t an easy feat.
Still, couldn’t help but comment on this gem of PoG in Thunderdome 44 (#648)
OK … am I the only one who thinks this sounds like the number you’d call for a gay escort office?
Stop.
Right.
There.
He grew up in that town. He is starting off at zero. Do you have any idea what that means? Some money is always better than no money. What choice does he have when the options are a) work there or b) starve?
Tomas C.:
That’s kind of the point.
You haven’t addressed the issue of income inequality, other than extensive hand-waving. You have talked explicitly and at length about the rights of the employer, but have mentioned nothing about the rights of the employee, except that they are free to find work elsewhere.
Let’s talk a bit about the distinction between freedom and liberty for a moment.
Freedom is the set of rights granted by society, usually in the form of government. One of the jobs of government is the formalization and enforcement of those freedoms (usually in the form of the opposite, by defining proscribed and illegal actions, such as murder, theft, that sort of thing). But make no mistake: those freedoms are granted by society. In the best case, those freedoms and laws apply equally to everyone.
Now, liberty is something else. Liberty is the ability to exercise those freedoms (or, if you want the dictionary definition, “the power or scope to act as one pleases”). For instance, while I have the freedom to purchase a yacht, I do not have that liberty, as I can’t afford it. Warren Buffett, on the other hand, can afford many yachts.
Now let’s discuss how this applies to things like labour.
Many people have the freedom to look for a new job, but aren’t at liberty to do so. This might be because for even the worst job, there are three applicants for every job. This is for jobs that don’t even pay a poverty-level job, like working at McDonalds or Wal*Mart. These are the sorts of jobs that do exactly like mikeyb described @95: they tell you what to wear, how you may wear your hair or do makeup, and when you can take bathroom breaks. They give you random shifts, often with less than a day’s notice. Want to dye your hair blue? Uhm, no, you can’t do that. Want to take a little vacation? Considering you don’t accrue vacation hours, you probably don’t have the time.
These jobs don’t even pay enough for daycare, so a family with a child can only afford to have one person work — since the shifts are random, they both couldn’t hold down a job. Since it doesn’t pay even the poverty level for a single person, they are living hand-to-mouth, with no money to spend, and no time to look for another job. And even if they did look for another job, what would that job most likely be? The exact same kind of work in the exact same kind of conditions.
While they have the freedom to look for a better job, they don’t have the liberty to get a better job.
And that’s the major problem with Libertarianism. It conflates freedom with liberty. It assumes everyone has equal opportunity to gain and exercise economic power, when in fact that just isn’t true. In fact, I have pointed out several times the disparity between the powerful and wealthy, and those who have no opportunity to improve their economic power.
And yet you have ignored those posts. So again I ask: Does someone who makes $7.25* an hour have the same economic opportunities as someone who has $36 billion in the bank? If not, how many people would it take working at $7.25 to equal the economic power of someone worth $36 billion?
* Which is federal minimum wage. You know what an employer says when they offer you $7.25? “I’d offer you less, but the government won’t let me.”
Or the company could use slave labor and “outcompete” other companies which pay their workers. That’s how we know it’s a “better” company.
Besides, you have to at least feed the slaves, or else they’ll die, which means you’d need more slaves who’ll also die. So whatever that amounts to counts as a “fair wage.” Because fuck it all.
@119 Tomas
And who is going to ensure this arbiter is looking out for the interests of the worker and not the company, chickpea?
<blockquote If the company did not deliver the promised wages of the contract he can take the case to an arbiter and have his contract rescinded or paid out.Who the fuck is the arbiter? Someone paid by the company. Guess what the judgment will be? You are one sorry thinker, who can’t see beyond the slogans to the rotten corpse underneath.
@103
Ok Tomas, so you don’t understand basic economics, you haven’t studied enough history to know some of the horrors unchecked capitalism can cause, and now you admit you have never even been a part of the workforce so you don’t know the imbalances of power between worker and upper management.
Libertarianism has certain simplistic charms, but it doesn’t survive contact with reality.
Holy fucking hell.
I’m 98% convinced that Tomas C is a poe, ’cause he’s being too obviously and willfully stupid. But stupid is a vast and limitless resource, so it’s possible he might actually be serious (which spawns its own special brand of existential terror, but that’s a separate issue).
Given that possibility, allow me to respond to one of the deeply flawed fundamental warrants of libertarianism: that rights come from anything other than some sort of state (whether you call it a state or not).
…not that he’ll respond [note: I’m assuming gender, based on past experience with this type of “argument” and the basic demographics of self-described libertarians; my apologies if incorrect], or – if he truly is serious rather than a poe – understand.
Tomas C, “rights” do not exist outside of the context of some large group that can enforce them through the use of force, and any claim to the contrary is complete bullshit. The standard libertarian line that I’ve heard espoused is simply a way of redefining who gets to use force and when, which makes its claim to be something other than a form of government (albeit an ill-conceived and slipshod form of government) a rather transparent lie. After all, if I have the “right” to defend my “property,” what happens if someone I’m exercising that “right” on disagrees? Who defines the where each person’s “rights” end and another’s begin, and who enforces that definition, presumably through the “use of force”?
The only political philosophy that truly isn’t just a renamed and repackaged form of government is anarchy.
Things get tricky when you try to separate yourself from the mere concept of a state, though. As people have been pointing out to you (in vain, ever in vain), by living within a society (I’m assuming you live in the U.S., by the way, based on your linguistic choices so far) you are tacitly accepting the social contract of that society. If you wish to opt out of that contract, you are free to give up your citizenship and leave, but that is literally the only way that you can opt out of that contract; just because you don’t want to use (some) of the services the government provides doesn’t mean you aren’t benefiting from them unless you remove yourself completely from the social and economic system of that society. And if you’re benefiting from those services (and by living within a society, you are choosing to “sign” the social contract, full stop; the system of any first-world state is far too large and complex to function effectively if we allow individuals to opt out of the specific portions they don’t approve of – it’s an all or nothing contract, but as mentioned, you’re free to opt out by leaving) and you refuse to pay for them, how exactly is that not theft? But here’s where it gets even trickier for all of the “rugged individualists” who dream of “going Galt”: you owe society for who you are now. You may not have “asked” for the education you got (and in your case, it doesn’t seem like you got much at all, but hey in the true libertarian spirit: “caveat emptor”), but that doesn’t mean you didn’t get one, and that’s a service for which you owe someone (either society or, if you claim that your parents paid for it either directly or through their taxes, your parents). Thanks to government regulations regarding vaccinations, you grew up protected from many diseases that could have crippled you for life or flat-out killed you, and that’s a service for which you owe someone. You’ve been guaranteed clean water to drink for however long you’ve been alive at least in part due to government regulations on what can and can’t be dumped into rivers and reservoirs (unless you live in West Virginia), and that’s a service for which you owe someone. The list goes on and on and on because it’s a system; you grew up as part of a larger system, and you benefitted from it then just as you continue to benefit from it now. And someone had to pay (in money or time or something) to keep it all working, for the benefit of all, and that’s been true for far, far longer than you or I have been alive, so even the suggestion that you can opt out of the social contract by leaving the state completely still incurs a debt on your part, and although I doubt anyone would actually come to collect on it in the real world, since we’re dealing with pure philosophy here (a necessity when discussing libertarianism), it exists nonetheless.
But even that is too simplistic, because all the technology that we have, all the knowledge we possess, comes from untold generations of people passing on what they learned to the next generation; if you’re espousing a philosophy that makes everything a commodity, then you (and everyone else) owes someone for that legacy knowledge.
I know you didn’t ask to be born – it was “forced” on you – but you benefited from it just the same; it would be an asshole move to sue your parents for having you. Libertarianism is just the political version of such an asshole move writ large, and for pretty much the same reasons.
For some reason this scene from Emperor’s New Groove springs to mind.
Tomas C.
Thank you for answering.
Not trying to get too personal but does your household depend on someone (or two) working a job for income?
This has happened literally all the time throughout all of history. You cannot deny that such places have existed and done very well for themselves. Do you think their existence was due to being propped up by government intervention?!
Tomas
Requirements for Teh Free Market:
Workers have perfect knowledge of company offerings.
Workers have perfect knowledge of all companies in existence.
Workers have perfect knowledge of which companies will employ them.
Workers have perfect knowledge of relative costs of livings in different areas of the country.
Workers can teleport their family.
In Teh Free Market, somehow, companies aren’t capable of hiding information, resumes and job offers are a penny a dozen, and they are never, ever, able to take advantage of convenience factors because their potential employees are demigods with magical levels of Freedom.
And in a truly free market – completely devoid of government regulation – what will stop all of the companies from setting $2 a month as a “fair” wage? After all, it’s far easier for all of the companies to make higher profits if labor costs are decreased, right? So where’s the incentive for those companies not to fix the price of labor that low or even lower?
You do know that the minimum wage exists because that actually happened in U.S. history, right? Although the “$2” amount was pulled out of my ass, the dynamic is a historical fact. Government regulation of business didn’t just spring from the fevered fantasies of those ebil-money-hatin’-commie-librul-scum; they arose because businesses abused their economic power so badly that armed revolution was becoming an increasingly real possibility, and hell, even some of the rich were getting burned by “business as usual.”
carlie:
This is happening right now. Fast food joints, places like Wal*Mart, and retail in general offer low wages. Why? Because there are more than enough people in the work force who are are accustomed to the good things in life, like eating.
Libertarianism depends on the perfect economy, in which there is a job that pays a living wage for everyone who needs it. Unfortunately, in the real world, there are not enough jobs to go around. Companies will do things like move jobs overseas just to get cheaper workers, reducing the available work even further, thereby increasing the available labor pool, thereby driving down wages here.
The simple fact is, there are only so many jobs. The service sector (retail and food services) makes up 18% of the jobs, the largest sector in the US. The majority of those jobs are low-paying, some as low as $2.13 an hour (for tipped employees, like waitstaff at your local restaurants).
The numbers just don’t add up. There are only so many good jobs, and a lot of bad ones. But even with that, there are more people looking for work than there are jobs to be had. Not everyone can get a job that pays a living wage.
Basic math pretty much disproves the viability of Libertarianism.
Let me tell you a quick personal story to illustrate how ruthless corporations really operate vs. the myths so many people have about them. Since I now have some distance I can talk about it more freely without intense pain. I’m not writing this for sympathy, these experiences have happened to countless others, they just illustrate the way things really are vs. the delusions people like libertarians think they are. Anyway here’s my little horror story.
A little more that 10 years ago, I was working for a Fortune 500 company. Let’s just say they are one of the largest employers in my state. Let’s just say that part of my job was to facilitate connecting electrical equipment together to a new state of the art factory. As you might imagine there was an intense rush to get the factory up in running ASAP. What this entailed is that we were expected, not asked, to work 60-80 hours/week but get paid for 40. I also carried a pager and was expected to show up at the job site 24/7 to deal with problems during the factory start up, which was not an infrequent occurrence, and was a constant source of anxiety.
Anyway, as electrical equipment was installed there was a detailed process in which switching procedures were developed, checked by a co-worker and signed off by my boss. Because they were so particular, when the procedure was carried out, it was a group effort. Me, my co-worker, my boss and several other employees, step-wise carried out this procedure to install the equipment into the existing plant. At a late stage of the procedure, a switch failed when we closed it in, causing a fault which shorted out the equipment, and a large part of the factory. An inquiry was undertaken in which it was found that it was a manufacturer defect which was the root cause of the failure. However, since this had caused a significant amount of the factory to fail, this wasn’t sufficient, so naturally since I was in charge of the procedure, I was the fall guy. Even though during the procedure each step had to be signed off by my co-worker, and was witnessed by my boss, it didn’t matter. There was a pseudo-appeals process within the company in which I was allowed to detail my side of the story, but it didn’t make any difference. Finally, as you guessed I went to work, was greeted at the entrance with a guard, and I sat down not with my boss, but with another supervisor, because my boss didn’t have the guts to face me I guess, my badge was removed and I was permanently escorted from the premises. Even though I had over a month of vacation pay, I didn’t receive a fucking cent.
But wait it gets worse. After being let go, I filed for unemployment. I started to receive the pittance of unemployment ~$130 week/month don’t remember. Then suddenly in the mail I got a notice that my employer was contesting my right to this pittance unemployment benefit. I had a hearing in which my boss bold face lied about the whole situation, so this filthy rich fortune 500 company wouldn’t have to pay the unemployment insurance. I also couldn’t defend myself. Recall that all the evidence was owned by the company, so it was my word against theirs. So they succeeded in denying my unemployment insurance too. I appealed the decision, and got a letter back denying my appeal. I noticed that the guy who signed the appeal was a state official who was a former employer of the company. This company was a big state employer, they had and still have tremendous clout.
On a personal level as you might imagine, I lost my house and entire retirement savings, had to move back with my parents and family for over 9 months before getting another much less paying but much less stressful job. One of the difficulties in looking for employment is that it is impossible to explain the situation to another prospective employer, what the fuck are you supposed to say, how do I even begin, so I just had to give a squeamish non answer to how I left my previous job.
Again I don’t want pity. I know this is just one of thousands of examples, and I was one of the lucky ones able to eventually find another job. But it taught be a permanent lesson. Corporations don’t give a flying fuck about people, have zero loyalty. I know from personal experience, corporations value profit over people. So if I have occasional tirades about libertarianism, I admit some of it comes from personal experience.
Jesus fuck, mikeyb. That’s awful. I knew corporations were heartless, exploitative, and dishonest. I’ve experienced some of that first-hand myself. But never anything quite like that! Wow.
It seems that one of the fundamental disconnects people like Tomas have is that they honestly believe that if a company has shady business practices, that will be bad for the business. I don’t understand how they can think this, when every single example of it happening ever shows otherwise. Companies thrive so much with shady business practices that they are willing to risk fines and lawsuits in countries where such practices are illegal. What on earth makes these people think that companies would magically stop such practices if there was no legal threat at all?
The arbiter only exists because of government regulations.
The arbiter’s decisions can only be enforced because of government regulations.
If the company refuses to pay when the arbiter decides that they should, it is the implicit THREAT OF FORCE from the government that makes them pay.
Thank you, Tomas C, for once more conceding the argument.
mikeyb
That is awful.
Thank you for telling your story.
—
Tomas C.
If you respond to mikeyb be very, very careful what you say.
The alternative to signing that contract would be getting NO salary, and starving.
The worker would ONLY be free to not sign such a contract if there was a GOVERNMENT SAFETY NET that provided him with enough financial assistance to stay alive while he took the time to search for another job.
mikeyb:
How about sympathy? ’cause you’ve got it. I’m both stunned, and completely unsurprised. Stunprised, I guess.
QFMFT.
I shall leave this here:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-things-rich-people-need-to-stop-saying/
Not that Tomas C is necessarily rich, but the lack of understanding about how most people experience their working lives is similar.
@Tomas C
Warning: obtuseness levels critical. Mockery mode engaged.
What are the employers going to do, sit down and cry? Oh, I guess that would be a strike, and those are anathema to your idiotology. Whoops.
(by the way – we’re not ASSUMING, we’re INFERRING based on past evidence. Whereas glibertarianism has no real-world instances of actually working. Whoops².)
Poor people should know better than to sign lopsided contracts with people vastly more powerful than they are in order to feed. They should bargain with their labor, and presumably subsist on sunshine and good feelings while doing so. But they can’t bargain collectively, because that would be a (LE GASP) union, and that would be terrible.
I’m sure that there are better criteria to judge how fair something is than “how fair are the powerful willing to play when they have no reason to”. Just saying.
Jesus, mikeyb, that’s terrible :( what a dishonest, manipulative, callous bunch of complete and utter amoral arseholes.
What on Earth has happened to Tomas C? He never did answer my #104, and he hasn’t commented in a while. Has he run away?
Clearly Tomas is still fascinated by that croc eating a snake.
Er, snake eating a croc. You know what I meant.
Exactly! This touches on one of the eternal inconsistencies of libertarianism: unions are evil, because…they’re using free-market principles against businesses.
I know, I know: “union thugs use force to keep people from crossing union lines.”
Businesses and their owners would never dream of using force to stop workers from organizing into unions (*cough* Pinkertons *cough*)….
Oh those evil, evil unions. Don’t they know that money is only for rich people?
Starve now or starve later? FREEDOM!!!111
Hmm, I’m going to start a lawsuit with no money to pay an attorney, in order to have my contract rescinded, which means a loss for me as I’m left without money OR job, or paid out, upon which my company fires me and hires someone who will not complain. Meanwhile I starve because I’m left with no salary while pursuing the lawsuit. FREEDOM!!!11
@141 embertine
My best friend’s husband (and my former employer), Tommy, used to do #6 on that list all the time. They’re struggling financially but only in the sense that they’re house poor. They live in a quarter million dollar house and have lots of nice stuff. He runs a small insurance company and at one point had 2 agents working for him who were struggling in the sense of keeping food on the table and keeping the lights on. Both fairly regularly wanted to receive their commissions as they came in instead of on our usual payday. On these occasions, Tommy would sit them down and tell them all about how he was in the same boat as they were, and then do things like invite them into the garage to see the $6000 Roland e-drum kit he’d just bought.
Oh and let me remind everyone the big gov’t solution. Big gov’t decides that worker X doesn’t have the capacity to decide if contract Y is in his best self interest. So big gov’t passes a law preventing the company from offering contract Y and the company can’t give X a job. Now worker X is up a creek! As I responded , worker X could always sign a contract with a competitor ,everyone was like “but what if he can’t find another company” . So in big gov’t solution X also can’t find any other companies. Whereas at least X cold have gotten a job in the free market , now he can’t get any job. X is unemployed .
Seems like the big gov’t solution is even worse.
@Amphiox
There are such a thing as private arbiters where both parties consent to arbitration when negotiating a contract/settlement. The power comes from both parties consenting. Even if aggression was used to enforce the contract , it would not be the initiation of aggression by the principle of non-aggression.
@Avo
some of what you say is true , but I explain to me how big gov’t is a solution to these problems. As you’re acknowledging now big gov’t is here and all these problems still exist. Regulations from big gov’t actually caused companies to outsource jobs to places where less regulations make it cheaper to operate.So big gov’t actually caused some of the problems you are talking about.
Libertarians believe that if we make the country as a whole more prosperous , we can at least raise the standard of living for everyone .
Questions for big gov’t proponents
1) If worker X voluntarily read the contract from company Y and thinks it is his best offer , why should gov’t prevent the company from offering the contract? Why should the government restrict something voluntarily agreed upon by the 2 parties?
(This is separate from issues of fraud and misrepresentation)
2) Measures like minimum wage have been shown to hurt marginal workers and increase unemployment. Isn’t it worse to have no job at all than a low paying job?
In a free market , I wouldn’t be against unions , as long as membership and participation is fully voluntary.
Companies fire people who join unions. Next?
You’re incoherent here. In both scenarios the worker can’t find anywhere else to work but in the free market they actually COULD get a job because…magic? apparently?
Again, how do you ensure the arbiter acts in the best interest of the employee? Even with a private arbiter, the corporation still has much more weight to throw around to ensure an outcome favorable to them. How do you prevent that?
@Tomas C
… what are you talking about here? What type of contract has the government banned? Why did they ban it?
Also, please respond to my #104. Also my #49 while you’re at it, since you never did reply to that.
You mean, duly elected government officials responded to overwhelming public pressure and told companies that no, they can’t dump toxic waste in the drinking water, so the companies went somewhere where they could.
Tomas, you do not know jack shit about how the economy actually works. Yet you keep pretending that you do. You need to actually start illustrating that you understand the limitations of your own “knowledge” or else you are not worth talking to.
The ever-so-reasonable contracts where the government offers to pay the worker $2 an hour, of course!
Crap, the company, I meant.
Hmm, a private “impartial” arbiter. Employee doesn’t have any money, so I guess the employer pays the arbiter. Arbiter wants to get hired to do the next arbitration. Arbiter has huge incentive to find in the employer’s favor.
Tomas C.
Uhm, citation seriously required. Big companies outsourced work because they could get cheaper labor elsewhere. If by “government regulation,” you mean, “Requiring a wage that doesn’t even meet poverty,” then you’re essentially saying, “These companies weren’t willing to pay even a living wage, so they outsourced.”
Which kind of torpedoes your thesis that companies that don’t pay a living wage will go under due to inability to hire.
Yep. They do. And the government punishes (to a certain extent) the worst offenders, helping to mitigate the problem.
As someone else pointed out, if these companies are willing to do illegal things that go against their employee’s best interest, and yet still stay in business, how’s that not going to get worse when those things are perfectly legal? Your whole argument is based on the concept that businesses will treat workers well, or those workers will move on to a company that does, and the original company will suffer. What’s stopping workers from doing that right now?
Fallacy of the excluded middle, coupled with a strawman. Libertarians aren’t the only ones opposed to “big government.” I too am opposed to big government.
I just like my government to be one I have the same say as everyone else. I know from experience and from history that corporations will work to build their own regulatory structure, with the rich and powerful companies doing the regulating, and the average person getting fucked. In the world you propose, it’s businesses that will be the de facto government.
I know that people with power will behave badly, given the chance. At least with politicians, you can see how they behave badly, and stand an actual chance of removing them from power. Corporations are unelected power holders. What you propose is to remove all the shackles from their power.
Has this ever happened? If so, are the pertinent government regulations in favor of the worker, or the company?
I can list studies that demonstrate the exact opposite.
So why isn’t the optimal solution to increase regulations everywhere so all the companies and countries are on an even playing field?
Thanks everyone for enduring that long spilling of the beans. Anyway I know countless thousands of people could tell similar stories and endure even more horrific realities right now as I speak. I also know it lays my biases threadbare, which I must constantly re-examine and be aware of.
Just saying it doesn’t make it so. Watch: Cows shit golden pyramids that taste like chocolate.
It must be true, because I just said it!
Pro tip: Citing a propaganda outfit like the Daily Caller as your “proof” kind of indicates that you don’t actually have any evidence to support you claim.
The sad thing about this is that if you actually did a little research, Tomas C, you could find economists whose work would support your claim. Of course, then you’d have to address the fact that there are other economists whose work disproves your claim, but at least you’d be demonstrating that you know how to do more than just unthinkingly spew long-discredited talking points as if they were actual arguments.
I don’t see that happening anytime soon….
Tomas C.:
What you’re proposing is to put all the power of the government into the hands of employers. That’s not only bad for the vast majority of the population, but bad for the economy. Individual companies don’t care about anything but their own profit. They don’t care about the environment, the don’t care about their workers, the don’t care about anything except short-term profit. That’s it.
I note that you argue very strenuously for the rights of companies. You do realize there’s a power differential between employers and employees, right? Even as it stands today, employers have a lot of power over the workers. Should you remove the regulatory shackles from companies, why do you suppose they will act better? (Hint: they won’t. They’ll be worse. History pretty much proves this.)
What you’re arguing is good for people who own companies, to the detriment of those who don’t. You are proposing something that is innately unfair to the great majority of the population.
So why is it a good thing, and why should I support it?
@sallystrange #156
Hang on… So the government placing reasonable restrictions on the minimum wage to ensure that unscrupulous companies can’t pay someone a fucking pittance is, in Tomas C’s book, ?
Tomas, could you please explain on what planet, exactly, it is in worker X’s best self-interest to be paid $2 an hour?
Ooo! Ooo!
Easy, Thumper: a universe where the worker’s other options are way fucking less than $2 an hour.
You know: Libertarianopolis!
Tomas C. #149
Bullshit.
When you have more potential workers that you have jobs for them to do, the choice for want-to-be workers is between “whatever I can get” and “no job.”
Oh, and then you have self-righteous arseholes telling you you’re a lazy scrounging bum, because you haven’t magically produced from thin air, a job which pays you enough to survive.
I’ll ask you again. Have you ever thought of checking your theory against reality?
Has Tomas C defined big government yet?
If not, please do.
I would define big government as a government that infringes on human rights. Protecting human rights is a responsibility of any worthy government, including by intervening in markets in order to enforce pesky building codes, living wages, etc. Any government that can’t protect its citizens rights is too small.
PS mikeyb, you have my sympathy. That sucks. And yes, no loyalty to corporations, ever. Loyalty is a stupid concept – when it’s deserved, it’s no longer loyalty, just respect. Respect should always go both ways.
FALSE.
Multiple real studies have demonstrated that minimum wage does not increase unemployment, but actually decreases it.
Also false.
mikeyb:
Fuck. So sorry that happened to you. Thanks for sharing your story.
We are not “big gov’t” proponents.
We are big enough government proponents.
The basic liberal view of government and regulation:
The role of government is to establish and protect an equitable free society.
It should be big enough and no bigger. We disapprove of any government too small to properly accomplish this task, and we likewise oppose government too large.
Hi Thunderdome! I don’t think I’ve ever been here. Not sure I’m tough enough, we’ll see. But had to share this, especially after talking about Christina Hoff Sommers in another thread. She believes there’s no sexual assault problem on University campuses, just “Sexual McCarthyism.”
Nausea and serious *Trigger Warning:
Since you have chosen now to insert the term “big government” into the conversation, Tomas C, we can now note that throughout your entire commentary history here you have made no distinction between “big government” and “any government.”
So if you want to move the goalposts now, it is time to get to specifics. If “big” government is what you have a problem with, then that suggests there is a “not-big” government you don’t have a problem with.
So please DEFINE what this “not-big” government is and what it does. And please tell us how this “not-big” government will manage to do what it does without “immorally” using the threat of force to collect resources, ie taxes, from the people.
Why, then, are there so few rich countries left that don’t have a minimum wage?
The sheer ignorance is baffling.
how the hell can Thomas C be against living wages?
how the hell are people supposed to, you know, LIVE without living wages?
I’m getting kind of the same impression here that I do with people who really think their idea of a perpetual motion machine can work.
@Thumper
1)Yes
2)yes
3) IDK .I’m not a mind reader.People have ideas about masculinity and feminity. I guess some women feel like their man isn’t masculine enough if he stays home to take care of their kids or isn’t bringing home more money than they are.
4)I think (if women took the more of the parental responsibility in most cases) we’d probably expect mothers to gravitate towards certain kinds of jobs (jobs that are more flexible and less demanding, work less hours/ less overtime , less dangerous jobs). I’m not saying this has to be case , but I think in practice it probably is from my limited observation
5)I’m not sure a complete meritocracy can ever exist (in big gov’t or libertarianism). Probably can’t exist without a level playing field
6)The level playing field is about equality of opportunity and freedom of choice. If say women are freely choosing not enter certain fields , its still equal. If employers are discriminating and not allowing women to enter certain fields, its not.
But I mean , people were making blanket statements about certain other groups (Libertarians are selfish , MRA people are sexist) , so I agree strictly they aren’t true. But people make generalizations sometimes.
I think in the contract example we were originally talking about company towns. but-
1) its X’s only job offer and the company can’t afford to pay him any more
2)X thinks after starting at $2 he can prove his labour is valuable and get a raise/promotion later.
3) X thinks the job can give him skills/experience to get a better job later.
@Tomas C #149
That hasn’t been shown at all. That’s the problem with links, people follow them and actually read the information on the other end.
They found a correllation, they did not prove a causal relationship. The story has a clear ideological slant; they’ve seen the correllation and blithely declared causality.
There’s also this fucking gem:
So in states with a high minimum wage, high unemployment and low net job growth, the high unemployment and low growth is because of the minimum wage… but in states with low unemployment, high net job growth and high minimum wage, the high minimum wage is because of the low unemployment and high growth? Special pleading, much?
Tomas C, I asked John A this, and I’ll ask you the same – why are you here? Are you trying to convince yourself? Wanting to keep spamming bad videos? It should be more than apparent that no one here is going to ‘convert’ to sociopathism, so perhaps you’d consider shutting the fuck up, as your desire for constant attention is more than obvious over several Thunderdomes. Perhaps you could get the attention you crave from your fellow sociopaths, instead.
I’m feeling cynical and busy today, so I’ll just throw out the proverb:
“The closer you get to humans, the worse the science gets.”
Tomas C.:
So the company can’t afford anyone. This indicates either the company is not viable, the company is a startup (in which case, the owners should probably consider non-monetary compensation, such as giving the prospective worker a share in the company), or the owners’ profit-taking leaves the company with no money to operate.
Only one of those cases is in everyone’s best interest — the company giving the worker a share in the company they’re going to be giving their labor to.
A company that pays only $2 an hour is not likely to give much more later. So the worker should just give their work away in the hope of getting a better wage later? That’s just stupid.
If it’s something that requires certain skillsets that will make the worker more valuable, the work is worth more than the company is paying.
In all of these scenarios (except for the startup scenario, in which the company should probably consider giving up part of the company in return for work), you are arguing that companies have the right to totally fuck over employees. You are saying the work that makes a company profitable isn’t itself worth anything at all. You are saying basic labor, the very resource that drives profit, should benefit the company, but not the employee.
Good to know where you stand.
Unlikely; sociopaths tend to be too selfish to focus on others.
…beyond blithely asserting “I don’t think they’ll starve,” of course.
Tomas C.:
Frankly, you’re just reinforcing that perception.
Sorry, it’s a whopper.
@Tomas C #175
1+2- Why did you claim that if you understand these things to be inextricably linked?
3- I didn’t ask whether you knew, I asked what you thought. Hint: socialisation.
4- In practice, that is the case. Our point is that it shouldn’t be the case, and that it doesn’t have to be if we do something about it. The reason people tend not to like Libertarianism here is because that ideology blithely assumes that things are OK just as they are.
5- Definitely can’t exist without a level playing field. You can’t claim that people are rising and falling entirely on their own merits unless they all start in the same place. I’m not sure we can ever completely erase prejudice and stereotypes, but we can minimise them and therefore come as close to a true meritocracy as possible. I think most people would agree that that is desireable; would you? Hopefully I’m being overly cautious and a true meritocracy can be achieved.
6- But my point is that people are not making those choices freely. How can you claim that a choice is free when a person has had their decision influenced by inbuilt prejudices instilled without their consent by methods beyond their control? And, as someone has already corrected you above, and the liberty to make those choices. It is this last part that you seem to be ignoring. Is a woman truly at liberty to take advantage of her freedom to choose when she is coerced into making one decision above another by external pressure?
is not a defence. Also, MRA’s are anti-equality, it’s an intrinsic part of the movement. Anti-equality is merely a roundabout way of being sexist. And while Libertarians may not all be selfish, the ideology certainly is. If one considers oneself to be unselfish, then one really must wonder why one would subscribe to such a selfish ideology.
1- How many people is this place hiring that it can’t afford to pay more than $2 an hour? There is no company that requires that amount of staff while making that little profit. The maths just doesn’t add up.
2 +3- “X should accept this shitty job now in the hope that things get better later”.
Several things:
What does X do in the mean time until things get better? Is $2 an hour enough to live on? Can they rent a flat? Buy clothes? Food? Bathroom stuff so they look presentable at work and for interviews? Petrol to get to work and interviews? Is it all possible to have even the bare minimum standard of living, let alone any chance of further improving your employment status and therefore your standard of living, on $2 an hour?
Why can’t we merely make things better for X now by requiring the company pay X enough to live on? If X wishes further improvement so as to afford more luxuries etc. rather than the bare minimum that the minimum wage allows them, then they can do so in the tenuous security that a minimum wage offers.
It’s interesting how you assume that X has no skills or experience now, and must learn them at work, especially since we are just coming out of a worldwide recession where many skilled and experienced people found themselves working menial, low paid jobs because the job market was so shit. Another sign of that attitude so endemic within Libertarianism: if you’re poor/have a shit job, it’s your fault. I’d like you, please, to consider that attitude for a moment and ask yourself whether it matches up to reality.
Gee, looking at real evidence not from liberturdian/right wing sources like this, gives the following paragraph:
Gee, put a little more money into the economy through a minimum wage increase, and spending by the folks getting the raise goes up. Good for the economy. Whereas liberturdian dogma would cause a decrease in or stagnant spending….
1. Selfishness is actually PART of the libertarian ideology which libertarians actually embrace. So saying “libertarians are selfish” is like saying “Christians believe Jesus Christ is the son of God.”
2. Every libertarian I have ever met and talked to about libertarian ideology on every forum I have ever visited on the topic espouses and supports policies that are manifestly selfish, promote selfishness, and celebrate selfishness. So I have empirical first hand evidence that “libertarians are selfish” in the same way that I have empirical first hand evidence that “humans have bones”.
libertarian selfishness
@ Tomas C #149
In what everyone who has paid attention to what works in the real world will argue for, worker X will be ok because there will be a social safety net to fall back on. The only one who suffers will be the company, in that they won’t be able to take advantage of such desperate people.
The way you are describing the situation, where this is the best job X can find and there is no government involvement, they will have to take it and try to get by on it. So now they are stuck trying to live on something below a living wage, which means they are up a creek with no paddle.
Seriously, hasn’t finding that so many people who know more about economics than you do, and who can point out real world examples that you’ve never heard of, tell you these ideas are unworkable given you the least inclination to re-thinking them?
If a full-time job does not provide a living wage as compensation, then the economy is not sustainable. Eventually the workers, unable to make a living wage, will stop living, and the companies will have no workforce left.
A system that cannot guarantee a living wage, at minimum, to all workers for full-time work, is a failed system that does not merit continued existence.
A society that cannot find and deploy an economic system that can guarantee a living wage, at minimum, to all workers for full-time work, is a failed society that does not merit continued existence.
And history has also shown that when such conditions arise, the starving masses are seldom content to simply lie down and quietly die.
Often they strive to take the rich oppressive bastards down with them.
Tomas C:
While this is true, have you looked at which regulations they are avoiding by shipping jobs overseas? Without workplace safety regulations, corporations save money–at the expense of human lives. Many of the companies that outsource jobs overseas do so to save labor costs.
Libertarians like you show more concern for corporations making money than the right of workers to have living wages and safe working conditions. This is one of the many reasons that Libertarians are assholes.
Re. Chas’ link #185:
Stopped reading here. That tells me all I need to know.
*Latter bolding mine.
@monad #186
The social safety net being the paddle. I like it!
When it comes to that, all their wealth and influence will get them one of two fates. Either they will have the privilege of
1) being the first to die slaughtered by the angry mob, and get to miss out on all the subsequent suffering and chaos as the society falls to ruin around everyone, or
2) being the last to die, their hoarded resources saving them from the mob and everything else, until they are left alone as the society that supported their wealth crumbles around them, until it is finally gone and they, bereft of that support, finally starve to death themselves.
Give a starving man a fish, feed him for a day.
Teach a starving man to fish, and he will die of starvation before he learns to catch anything.
(It is difficult to learn new skills while starving)
If you really want to help that starving man, you have to do BOTH. Give him the fish AND teach him to fish, until he masters fishing on his own. Then the surplus that he fishes goes back to “you” (society).
I think in the contract example we were originally talking about company towns. but-
Which Libertarianism doesn’t provide. Therefore, it fails to foster true competition or a more prosperious society. QEFD.
Ah, but according to Tomas C, taking advantage of desperate people is actually BAD for the company, so stopping them from doing so will actually HELP the company.
Altruistically protecting the company in the long term from its own self-destructive short term instincts!
Which only shows that, when left without oversight, businesses will tend to prefer offering shittier wages. QEFD.
PainDonor – Loneliness of the shot down bomber
Wall of text warning… apologies, feeling bitey.
@Tomas C, page 1… basically everything
I’m not American. I don’t recall ever seeing British media address libertarianism. No, I’m falling for a misconception of you from spending the last decade listening to the things that you say and watching the things you do. Also, “you’re just brainwashed by the media” is a really tired argument. It was tired when I was a teenager, and I haven’t been one of those for a little while now. Even if it actually turns out to be true, the solution is to point out the flaws in a person’s perception, not to simply accuse them of being brainwashed.
So… you’re saying… they can always leave?
I seem to remember reading a comment about that recently…
Ah, that’s what it was.
How do they leave? On toll roads? With what do they pay the tolls? If the town is making it economically difficult to stay, how does it become economically feasible to leave if there is no municipal road system, no public transport system? Do they simply walk across the country? They’re going to cross another’s lands, are they not? This is trespass. This is aggression. Now they are violating libertarianism. In Libertopia, they are now the villains, because they had no choice but to “initiate aggression,” while trying to find work elsewhere. This is not a rational view on the situation.
They stay and keep working because they are being financially kept there.
Forgive me if I am skeptical that these are your own words, by the way. They don’t quite match your style of argumentation from last night. Especially your response to Avo.
Forbids the initiation of physical aggression. Your support of company towns demonstrates an acceptance of economic aggression.
I just watched the GOTH video, btw. Very disappointing. Emotional arguments are not those of skeptics – if a person claiming to be presenting a logical case for something uses emotional arguments, they are not presenting a logical case. Just somehting to consider.
That said, I’ll have to check with Hovind Jr, if he bimbles around again, whether the IRS sent a SWAT team to capture Hovind Sr, as is suggested by that video.
That’s fine, but they also believe in leaving the problems that charity salves unaddressed. Charity is like antibodies – there’s a lot of it when things are going badly. Donating to charities is fine, just like helping your antibodies along when you’re sick is fine, but it’s still just sticking a band-aid over a gaping wound. It may cover the wound, might keep it from getting infected and taking your whole leg with it, but that wound needs surgery, and the free market has no incentive to provide that surgery, since they can profit from you no matter how many limbs you have. Often, less limbs makes it easier.
(The limbs thing is a metaphor btw – I’m not claiming that businesses have actually been shown to raise prices based on whether a person has had some form of amputation. Though, that said, taxi companies do tend to charge far higher fares for disabled passengers, citing the size of the taxi required to do the job, which is really odd, because I was once picked up outside a night club by a taxi that I’d booked (for a single passenger – me) which was actually a minivan – the type that’s needed for disabled passengers – yet I paid no more than I usually would. Maybe the hydraulic ramp is costly to operate?)
Skeptics recognise that being a skeptic isn’t enough to make your opinion right by default. Skepticism exists, not because other people think ridiculous things, but because we are all susceptible to the same cognitive missteps, the same core assumptions, the same glitches of perception.
Skepticism is not how you show that you are right, it is how you bypass your own flaws to become right.
It’s funny, scrolling through the comments, it looks like everyone else is saying exactly the same things that I’m saying. Must be group-think, I guess! Either that, or we’re indepedently arriving at the same criticisms of a flawed ideology. Might be worth considering both options, yeah?
Oh, a thought occurs to me, seeing Thumper’s reply to this –
“Many” atheists believe that aliens exist and have personally abducted them. Is it therefore reasonable to consider it a criticism of atheism when somebody points out that, even assuming that alien life exists that is intelligent enough to travel the stars, the chances of their coming across us are minute, and the actual evidence for such is absent? Or is that only a criticism of belief in alien visitations?
So, if you don’t want to sign the contract for the car, you shouldn’t be allowed to drive the car. But if you don’t want to sign the contract for the infrastructure that supports you, you should be allowed to use the infrastructure that supports you anyway? Sure, there’s a difference in scale, but it’s all contracts, right? You’re refusing the contract that’s required, so you should not expect to receive the benefits of that contract. That means get out of the car you won’t sign for. That means leave the house you won’t pay for. That means vacate the restraunt you can’t afford to eat at. That means ship out of the country you refuse to contribute toward. Surely this is simple logic? That is it bigger and more difficult is irrelevant. The house is bigger than the car, and it takes more effort to leave the house, but you’re not allowed to stay in the house without paying.
I don’t think you understand what fair means… if there are no jobs available, then the employer has no incentive (you claimed that this incentive comes from the various employers competing with each other for the limited workforce, yet in this case it is work that is limited, not workforce) to provide a living wage (that’s what socialists, like myself, mean when we say fair wage – what do you mean?). With no incentive to provide a living wage, and no government to mandate a minimum wage, why would the employer be so generous? Are you simly saying they ought to?
Ah. So fair wage does mean starvation wages. Gotcha.
Caring for your fellow man, hard at work here.
See, this is exactly what people are saying when they claim that the wage gap is a myth. “Well, women choose to work fewer hours! Women choose to work less overtime. Women choose less lucrative jobs!”
The question is the same pay for the same work. Same to same. Like for like. Apples to apples. The gap is still there in those situations. That is not explained by the choices of unlike, nonsame oranges. Fucking hell. It is not a complicated topic to understand, you know.
If a college educated woman works 40 hours a week in a professional role with an average of 20 hours overtime across a month, and a collge educated man works 40 hours a week in a professional role with an average of 20 hours overtime across a month, do they each take home the same pay?
Do not simply say that, yes, they do! Research it.
Same pay. Same work. Like for fucking like. Being a parent shouldn’t matter if you’re working the same hours in the same job at the same level.
Of course, the matter of why it is generally accepted by society that parenting is the mother’s job, and “bread-winning” the father’s is also a problem which impacts upon this nonsensical idea of “free choice” that libertarians uncritically accept, as if human minds floated in a vacuum, casually grasping at passing bits of data and, with entirely rational processes, reached decisions unmolested by society, biology or physics. We can’t do a great deal about the influences that biology and physics have over our decision making processes, save be aware of them, but we can address the influences of society, but we cannot do that by denying that they even exist.
It’s one or the other. Either you “check the market value” of your time and get paid pitiful (or “fair” by Libertopia standards) wages or you do not starve. No matter how magical the free maret is, only one of these can happen.
As I told you in the last thread, the whole “wage gap is entirely due to employer discrimination” thing has come from you and nobody else in this thread. (No, the fact that you got it from a libertarian source that was criticising a
liberal talking pointstrawman isn’t particularly relevant to its provenance in this conversation, sorry.) And, considering the link you sent us to when starting this discussion claimed that the wage gap doesn’t even exist citing evidentially useless links, alongside links that showed that it does, in fact, exist, I’m not sure why you keep clinging to that as if it’s a defence?Besides, what do you think supports employer discrimination? Maybe it rhymes with “brocial shexpectations pof droth blenders”?
Well, in your defence, you clearly didn’t read that link with any care, nor did its author read any of the links on the page with any care, so maybe your point was only that the wage gap isn’t entirely due to employer discrimination… but if that was the case, you probably could’ve just said that you thought that was the case so we could all say, “no shit, Sherlock,” and be done with it.
I don’t think you can claim to be a skeptic with this level of intellectual rigor, though.
Let’s have another!
A couple has a child. Both work long hours. However, the woman prefers working to spnding mroe time with a child. The man prefers to spend more time with the child. So they come to an agreement.
The man agrees to take a more flexible job and work fewer hours so he can be available for the child and end up making less money – though more money that his wife would if she had chosen this route.
The woman agrees to take a highly stressful, time intensive professional career, and ends up making more money – though less money than her husband would if he had chosen this route.
Is this man making less money because of discrimination? Or just a couple exercising their free rights to make career choices?
Does the way we frame questions help manipulate the answers we’ll get, or do they simply reveal our opinions and, occasionally, our refusal to read what has been said over and over and over again?
If. Are you saying you think they don’t? Well, I grant that it would difficult to prove that it doesn’t happen, it would even be difficult to prove that it was extremely rare… but if you investigated, and found tht it happened almost everywhere, almost all of the time, I think that might demonstrate something, don’t you? What do you think that might be?
Arbiter? Whence commeth this arbiter, praytell? By what witchery has this arbiter power over the maleficent master? Verily, it cannot be by the infernal power of *GASP* gov’t */GASP* for the *GASP* gov’t */GASP* has been banished beyond the earthly veil of night! Or something like that.
You’re not demonstrating the depth of thought required for the label of skeptic. That doesn’t mean you can’t use it – lots of people call themselves skeptics without showing any sign of skepticism – but it does mean we don’t have to take you seriously when you do.
You don’t think anything would change, do you? Everything the government runs and maintains would stay around, just without the taxes… why would it work like that? Think it through.
tl;dr: Dear, sweet Monkey Jesus!
@Seven of Mine, 94
My mind is going….. my mind is… going…….. I’m…. afraid…..
…damn, wrong mind quote!
@consciousness razor, 105
Why, libertarians are forbidden to initiate aggression! Slavery is a terribly aggressive thing! Indentured servitude, however, is fine – you’ve gotta pay your debts somehow, haven’t you?!
I’m tempted to refresh and keep reading and adding to this comment, but it’s already a wall and… hell… I don’t think I want to read anymore.
Damn it. That’ll teach me to use the same notepad document to keep track of songs I want to look up and draft a response at the same time. Fun fact – I only use notepad so I can proofread more easily, and I didn’t even do that. D’oh!
Tomas C:
Can’t or won’t? Please cite real world examples. No more hypotheticals. We’re talking about people’s lives here.
Guess what class of people are considered to be terrorists in Saudi Arabia.
Right now, wannabe christianist theocrats must bow towards Mecca with envy.
The social expectations CAUSE employer discrimination, dipshit. Employers are not immune to prejudice.
Houses are not people. They don’t have the same value as people. Houses don’t work and don’t need to feed themselves. Houses don’t have rights.
There is a reason, theoreticalgrrrl, why Christa Hoff Sommers is held in great regards in the ‘pit.
monad, Thumper:
I liken the social safety net to a life jacket…
vaiyt:
Wait, what? I though employers were all exactly like the perfect Platonic ideal of an employer. Just like the market is really just like the perfect Platonic ideal of a market.
At least, that’s what I’m lead to believe from Tomas.
@Goodbye Enemy Janine
Yeah I know. I think this fits in with the Libertarian/anti-Libertarian argument: How many women drop out of higher education or male-dominated fields due to a hostile environment and not due to the biological urge to nest and knit things.
If the job offer doesn’t provide a living wage, then X is up the creek without a paddle whether he gets the job or not. Either way he won’t be able to make a living wage and he will starve, among other things.
If the company can’t afford to pay him any more, the company is also up the creek without a paddle. It will be stuck with an unsustainable and rapidly shrinking labor pool, as its workers, not being given a living wage, starve to death, one by one.
Thus letting the company offer below-living wage offers merely draws out the inevitable sequence of decline and dissolution, increasing the net total of human suffering spread out over time.
Your useless hypothetical envisions a situation of abject futility, where nothing is viable, and everyone is doomed. If has zero applicability to any real world situation whatsoever. If it did happen, it would be kinder to simply give everyone involved a gun and one bullet.
All libertarian ideology is predicated on spherical employers, spherical employees, and spherical markets, suspended in vacuum.
@theoreticalgrrrl
What’s sexual McCarthyism??
I tried googling it and stuff on Clinton came up (that makes sense though).
@mikeyb, 134
I have a similar story, though not quite as serious with the repercussions for me. Before I enrolled at university, coming up on five years ago, I worked in the kitchen at a local restaurant – I’m qualified for a wide range of administrative and IT roles, but apparently “overqualified,” and this was the middle of the recession in the UK, so that’s the only job I could get.
It was winter and, one morning on the way to work, I slipped on a patch of ice… then I woke up in a horizontal position with a headache. I’d injured my back and received a (surprisingly mild) concussion, and had to call in sick and explain the whole situation.
My job was fairly hectic and fast paced – I steamed the veggies for carvery dinners. I kept up with the work, but I was definitely slower than I had been, as my back was stiff and painful. As a result of being slightly slower, but still able to keep on top of my work, I was shifted to pot washing… which involves hours of hunching over, and lifting an enormous, full bin up above my shoulders (so about 5’7″) to empty it into dumpsters that were on wheels without locks, so they refused to stay still, and which had lids that would fall down if not held. I had to do this alone. Oddly enough, performing this task with a back injury (which I had repeatedly made them fully aware of) resulted in exacerbation of that injury, which resulted in me taking quite a few sick days because of the whole “immobilizing agony” thing.
I was fired for taking excessive time off.
I, too, claimed benefits after this, which was challenged, as I had apparently left their employment in search of more gainful opportunities of my own accord. Hooray.
*reads 209*
*blinks*
Tomas C, if you are not currently in Middle School, you should promptly go back to one, ask for a refund, and then re-enroll.
I assumed it was something like the Clinton thing where other politicians get in his face for having illicit sex. I wanted to see how Sommers was using it.
I second anteprepro’s advice re: 209
good grief
@209 Tomas
Let me Google that for you.
#209
@TomasC
It’s when women make a big fuss about being sexually assaulted by fellow Americans in the military and fellow students on campus, when everyone knows they are lyahs. I think…
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2014/03/fixing-feminism-one-tweet-at-a-time/
Seconding anteprepro @211.
****
Tomas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
Go read up on Joseph McCarthy.
Then apply what you’ve learned to this:
The only three countries without some sort of minimum wage law are Guinea, Somalia, and North Korea.
All Libertarian paradises, to be sure.
theoreticalgrrl: you accidentally gave poor Tomas too much credit. He wasn’t wondering what event was being re-acted to. He wanted to know what the term meant. Because Tomas both:
1. Didn’t know what McCarthyism is.
2. Didn’t think the look up “McCarthyism” instead of just looking up “sexual McCarthyism” only.
3. Read about the book about Clinton called “Sexual McCarthyism” and still didn’t think to dig deeper, even when that was the third result in a google search for “Sexual McCarthyism” when the second result was the wikipedia article for McCarthyism.
Just remember when you see something Tomas says in the future: What is the stupidest possible explanation for this statement? Once you find it, you have likely found Tomas’s actual point.
Hey, maybe Tomas, like that other troll, just doesn’t believe in wikipedia, and prefers being completely ignorant and having NO citation over actually reading wikipedia?
If it wasn’t in the Daily Caller or on YouTube, it doesn’t count with Tomas C.
Amphiox
That would be entertaining, but I feel that such a rationale is above Tomas’s reasoning level. I suspect his real reasoning is “uhhhhhh but free market”.
@Tomas C, 149
Of course you wouldn’t. In a free market, the employer is free to have them murdered.
No I am not exaggerating. History. Read about it.
Private arbiters make enough money to survive… how?
What is the employer’s incentive to consent?
Aggression isn’t aggression unless it’s government aggression? Gotcha. Totes logic.
@Avo, 159
Nonsense! If you’re not a libertarian, you’re a big gov’t proponent! After all, how could somebody think that a government that should be as big as it needs to be to serve the public, and as small as it needs to be to do so efficiently?! No, you’re either big gov’t or you’re no gov’t, and it’s vitally important that you never spell the entire word, for that summons them!!
Some questions that Tomas has yet to deign to answer:
What part of Libertarianism precludes slave labor? Non-aggression? Do you believe that principles somehow stand above profit in Libertopia?
Who are these magical Arbiters? Where do they come from? How can they be impartial? Should we just use magic and summon one of These arbiters? Summoning monsters from Magic the Gathering makes as much sense as the dreams of Libertopia.
What do you mean when you say “Big Government”?
Have you any conception of socializing forces? Do you have any understanding of social forces and how they influence people?
And what prevents one party from withdrawing consent halfway through if they don’t like the arbiter’s decision?
If one party seeks arbitration but the second party REFUSES to consent to arbitrary, who enforces the arbitration?
None of these things are possible without a government willing to enforce fair rules with the implicit threat of force.
@Tomas C, 175
See, you’ve got to look at an ideology entails. The “men’s rights” movement is an explicitly anti-feminist group that performs no protective service for men, while attacking women. People who support rights for men do occasionally join up with them, but they almost always back the hell away once they see that all they’re about is hating women and spreading misinformation. It would be false to say that all MRAs are right wing authoritarians, just as it would be false to say that they are all communists, but anyone who identifies as an MRA for long enough to gain an understanding of the movement, and then maintains that identity is either sexist, or doesn’t understand what words mean.
MRAs like to say that a feminist who doesn’t despise men and support female superiority is like a kindly school teacher who calls herself a nazi, but the fact is that the ideology behind feminism entails support for gender equality, not dominance. Some people who identify as feminists do support dominance, but they are adding new ideas onto feminism – they are not like fundamentalists, merely hunkering down around the basic beliefs, but are making new things up.
Most feminists I know will not be satisfied when (if) we have gender equality, it’s true. A lot of MRAs do like to make a lot of that, but that doesn’t mean fighting to make men disadvantaged, rather, it means targeting things like class, racial, sexuality, trans, etc. inequalities. To take success in levelling one field, and move on to another. To continue to fight for equality until there is no more need to fight.
I’m not surprised that the answer is “no”. I was reluctant to ask myself, because I didn’t want to play into unemployment shaming (which would certainly be hypocritical of me at this moment) or ageism, but it was nonetheless clear to me that he had never really had to participate in this libertizing* economy in any meaningful way. Likewise had never had to care for a child or disabled or elderly adult.
* Is that a word? It is now.
I’m 98% not. This kind of thinking is very very common. It’s got whole web sites and think tanks devoted to it.
I believe it was our dear Sally who said a long time ago that Republicans and their Libertarian enablers want a government that is just big enough to control and oppress individuals and small organizations. They don’t want one that has the kind of size and leverage to actually act as a check and/or balance on the modern corporate feudal state. That’s the point of reducing government size.
Externalities? What are those?
I think it’s interesting that libertarians and republicans are critisized for not being supportive of big government (or any government for that matter), and yet the ultimate end goal of socialism/ communism is that the government eventually is dissolved as well, as least in theory. The difference is in the way that end is achieved. For libertarians, it’s through individuals voluntarily joining together to decide how best to distribute resources, which has it’s pros and cons. Meanwhile, socialism/ communism uses big government to distribute resources with representatives acting as a proxy for individuals. Supposedly, sosome period of time after the government completes the transition to a fully collectivist economy, the government eventually becomes unnecessary, and the free association of individuals becomes sufficient on its own.
Since you lump socialism with communism, anything you claim on the subject is bullshit.
Socialists don’t expect the need for government to end. Government is necessary to protect the people from predatory capitalists like liberturds and right/wing tea party thugs like yourself, and make them pay their fair share of the social safety net, etc.
Quit lying to yourself. Then, and only then, can you quit lying to us.
I’m more inclined to think Tomas C is a high school student, fairly bright but not well read. Tomas C has had a few history classes which talked about causes of various wars and the like but didn’t touch basic economics, political science or sociology. Assuming Tomas C is an American, xe knows Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation but has no idea that it didn’t actually free any slaves. Similarly he may have heard of Harriet Beecher Stowe but is unaware of Fredrick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison or Dred Scott.
The Gilded Age or Victorian Britain are unknown mysteries to Tomas C. Xe knows Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol but has never heard of Oliver Twist or Nicholas Nickleby. Such affairs as the Homestead Steel Strike or the Pullman Strike are complete unknowns to Tomas C.
I haven’t got time to respond to the thread in any depth, but:
Tomas, I used to be a libertarian – in fact I spent years arguing for libertarianism right here. I now identify as a(n anarcho-)socialist and leftist.
What changed? I still think it’s true to say that states inflict horrifying oppression and violence on a grand scale – war, the prison-industrial complex, militarised borders and immigration enforcement, and so on. But I realised that market capitalism is not an alternative. In fact, capitalism as it exists in the real world (not as it exists in Rothbardian fantasies) is deeply intertwined with both state and private violence – capitalism as we know it today has been shaped by centuries of colonialism, forced labour, exploitation, union-busting and land theft. Private property rights aren’t “natural rights”, they’ve been created and sustained by a history of violence. And this history of violent exploitation has shaped a system where much of the world’s resources are concentrated in the hands of a wealthy few, while billions – disproportionately people in non-Western countries – live in extreme poverty and are systematically economically exploited.
In this regard, libertarianism, as radical as it tries to be, is ultimately regressive. Because it sees the existing capitalist political-economic system as the natural order of things, and preaches a doctrine of “non-aggression” without recognising that the existing system has been created by violence on a massive scale (and the ways in which that violence has disproportionately oppressed racial minorities, people in non-Western countries, and women). And without recognising the huge inequalities of wealth and power inherent in the current system: a libertarian analysis of “voluntary” transactions in a “free” market is artificial when one party holds all the wealth and all the bargaining power.
It was in my libertarian days that I first became interested in immigrants’ rights and open borders. (I now work as a trainee immigration lawyer.) The immigration system is deeply terrible – why should people be detained, treated like criminals, and deported simply for leaving the country of their birth to seek a better life? Why should the accident of one’s birth determine where one is allowed to live and work? And why should we passively accept the way in which immigration laws reinforce racist and colonialist hierarchies, force many undocumented people to live in fear and in destitution and expose them to exploitation, and lead to abuse and violence in the detention and enforcement system? Some libertarians support open borders and would agree with all of this; but libertarians don’t recognise the way in which global capitalism, and the vast inequalities in wealth and living standards it has created, is a driving force behind this system of oppression. An immigrants’ rights movement has to be a workers’ rights movement, too, and a movement for economic justice.
I think that it’s important to tie your political principles to history and empirical reality. The non-coercive market economy that libertarians envision, where people enter into truly voluntary transactions for mutual benefit, isn’t how real-world capitalism works or ever has. It’s artificial.
caesar:
Mmmmkay. I’m sure a citation for this is forthcoming.
What color is the sky in your world?
Employers don’t need coercion. They just let the prospective worker’s empty stomach do the coercion. Outsourcing!
Given their heavily idealized and simplified economics, I imagine one day libertarians will propose the poor just go out and hunt slimes for 2 gold a pop.
Walton:
Thank you.
****
Tomas C (and caesar):
Please take the time to read Walton’s words. Take the time to educate yourself on libertarianism, and how that philosophy would play out if enacted. You don’t need to be well versed in economics (as several people here are) to oppose libertarianism. I suck at economics and yet I oppose libertarian philosophy. Why? I’ve taken some time to read up on libertarian beliefs. I’ve explored the ways in which those beliefs would affect people. If put in effect, libertarian beliefs would only benefit the wealthy, and would cause great suffering to everyone else.
Why do I oppose libertarianism?
Libertarian beliefs *increase* suffering.
I don’t want more suffering in the world. I want to reduce suffering in the world. Not add to it.
I just stepped out to run a few errands. As I don’t have a vehicle, I took a cab. The driver took a route through a residential area and there were children riding their bikes in the street. As I glanced over at the speed limit (15 mph), I suddenly had a thought–in libertopia, are there any speed limits? Do speed limits fall under “restrictions on liberty”? All I could think of was the danger children would face while bike riding in the streets of libertopia. That’s a horrifying thought.
Hmm. And what makes **both** unworkable is that there is no way in hell that you can “equally distribute” resources. Someone always owns the mine, or the factory, or the farmland, or… At best, you might have something like a local collective, which does one specific thing, which other people need, and where everyone has some general vote about what happens **in** that collective, including who gets payed what. Ironically, libertarians seem to be perfectly fine with with mini-governments/fiefdoms, where they all compete between each other in a race to put 99% of the workers on the bottom, and the “king” and his round table, oops, sorry, ‘CEO and board of directors’, in castles, with all of the money (or at least as much of it as possible, while not also owning every other resource in the country as well).
This is why I have always said that these sorts of philosophies can work on “small scales”, if allowed to, within the limits of the understanding that their is another world out there, which it has to interact with, which have resources that the commune need to “collectively” trade for. The only “equal distribution” is of what ever is in the collective’s own property, beyond that, there isn’t a dang thing that such a group can do about what anyone else does with resources, including the ones they have to trade for. And, as a result, outside forces can wreck them, if they choose, by simply charging them more than they can afford, for a resource they can get no where else, or denying it entirely.
A government can try, even if not always successfully, or permanently, or without some people trying to undermine the effort, to make such things “fairer”. Communism tries to do it all at once, and fails, because, as a government can never achieve it, because there is no way to redistribute rivers, or mines, or farm land, etc. “equally” and permanently, instead of only temporarily, and then by shipping the results. A completely free market will concentrate all resources in the hands of a few, which, as all evidence from all of history, shows, will hoard resources, and then charge absurd amounts to others for some of a resource, thus allowing them to hoard as much of everyone else’s resources as well, while buying them at as little a price as they can get by with. Someone with no resources, and whose labor is “unneeded” is jack out of luck, and those with the resources are, naturally, always trying to find ways to reduce this money sink, and reduce labor, as much as possible, so they can hoard more of the resources. Which is why libertarianism is worthless, since it not only doesn’t prevent this, it actually denies that it can happen, and suggest that the solution is to prevent the creation of over-arching solutions, which are designed to curtail the behavior.
In the end, the only thing the “market” has going for it is that, eventually, no matter how hard it tries to suppress this tendency, technology hands the laborers the means to generate some of those “resources” themselves. You can call this the “Star Trek” economy – When people can buy solar panels and wind, then sell the excess back to the power companies (something all the big business people out there are trying to undermine as much as possible, since it hurts their stock in power companies if everyone stops buying it from those companies), then there goes one “resource” that is fundamentally inequitably distributed. 3D printing… Whoops, now you don’t need Walmart for some things any more. Sure, you still have to buy the parts, and the plastic from some one, but its not too far into the future that even the hardware on the thing can be “printed”. Even now there is discussion on how to trademark and patent designs out of the hands of labor, so that, even if they have the means to make their own coffee cup, they will have to pay through the teeth for the “blueprint” that tells the printer how to make the thing. Reach a point, so says Star Trek, where anyone can acquire a power supply to run dang near anything they personally need, and a printer that can make nearly anything they could possibly want, and most of the inequity goes away. Well, except when you need to find some place to get more dilithium crystals, or anti-matter, or what ever the hell is powering your devices (even if it takes 100 years to use up the power). Then.. you still find there are some limits, and the decision becomes, “What sort of system do you use to make sure people can get this? A market, where a small number will hoard everything they can, or a system designed to at least attempt to make sure everyone gets a replacement, when they need one?”
But, in the end, the only “equal distribution” that can exist is one either enforced, or which happens by making the “resource” most people make something that can’t be hoarded, i.e., personal power generation, or manufacturing. And, even then, the con artists, plutocrats, etc., will still be looking to hoard what ever resource people “still” can’t get, without trading for them, whether it be the product of their personal “3d printer”, or their labor in the plant making the plastics it prints with. And, hoard money, and resources, they will, without society, collectively, agreeing that at least “trying” to curtail this, by paying people to keep an eye on such things, and help those that fall through the cracks in the system. Two things libertarians are completely apposed to… :p
Walton, tragically your comment will be lost on Tomas. But that was an excellent comment that the rest of us appreciate, at the very least!
Tony: In Libertobia, they could “legally” sell you a car that is held together with duck tape, wheels attached with twigs, and an engine that counts as an IED. They might have speed limits, because that is a limitation on the actions of the Plebs. But don’t worry, Libertopia will always find a way to make sure that the corporations can be negligent enough to harm children in the name of liberty. Always.
Pray tell, what interest does the employer have in accepting an arbitration? A worker can’t hold their work hostage forever – and there’s always someone more desperate who the employer can shove a contract into.
Again, Tomas, under unregulated markets in the real world, it’s not employers who compete to offer better conditions to employees – it’s the employees who find themselves having to compete with each other by offering to work for less.
@Tony, 235
Look, those kids freely chose to be in the path of my car, so I don’t know why you’re siding with them. They’re the ones who initiated aggression with my bumper! I was just peacefully driving around!!
I can easily imagine that the speed limits in liberturdistan depends on how many guards with assault rifles are in your car/convoy.
Friedrich Engels believed the state would “wither away” after a communist society had been established. Engels attributed the concept to Marx and other Marxists, particularly Lenin, expanded on the idea. They assumed a communist society would eventually require no coercion to force individuals to behave in a way that benefits the society. Such a society would occur after a temporary period of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
This scenario depended on Marx’s view of coercive power as a tool of those who own the means of production, i.e. the bourgeoisie and the capitalist state. In a communist society the social classes would disappear and the means of production would have no single owner; hence, such a stateless society will no longer require law, and stateless communism will develop. The concept of the withering of the state differentiates traditional Marxism from democratic socialism, which accepted the retention of the institution of the state, and antistatist anarchism, which demanded the immediate abolition of the state with no perceived need for any “temporary”, postrevolutionary governments.
In the USSR Lenin supported the “withering of the state” in his State and Revolution. Stalin mentioned it occasionally, but did not believe the world was yet in the advanced stage of development where the state could wither away. Stalin claimed there was a short-term need for a strong authoritarian state primarily for defense against external enemies.
Has anyone touched on pollution and irresponsible use of fossil fuels? I can’t imagine those problems being fixed in a libertarian world before they become major problems.
Libertarianism is helpless before any tragedy of the commons type of problem.
And most of our most difficult problems, like GHG pollution, are that type of problem.
Tomas, go look up “tragedy of the commons.”
Tony!
That’s one of my favorite analogies, actually. Want to know what a market without external regulation would look like? Just remove all the traffic signs and stop lights from any major city.
It’d be fun, I know. But not productive.
Walton
It’s really good to see you.
Thanks for your comment.
(also hugs)
You know, I have heard the word ‘libertarian’ on many occasions. I’ve never actually bothered to investigate what ‘libertarianism’ actually is, beyond the general idea that it’s some kind of political philosophy that values liberty and political freedom to an extreme degree. Going by Tomas C, what that actually translates to is a pathological fear and hate of government, in any form, along with an almost religious belief in the Divine Power of the Free Market, which has the ability to pull off some very miraculous things, like actually cause corporations to go bust because they’re maximising their profits by paying low-level workers as little as possible, and this, somehow, magically, causes them to get no low-level workers applying for a job, even though there’s plenty of people, of all skill levels, out of work, and therefore trying to get some kind of job (and, in a libertarian’s dream world, they’d be even more eager to get a job, due to the absence of a welfare system, leaving them desperate to get a job so they can afford to eat, never mind such luxuries as being able to afford to rent a room somewhere so they can sleep indoors).
Avo, also nigelTheBold! [→#245]
That lack of productivity remains to be seen, but I think to fully replicate the completely deregulated, invisible hand of the Free Market™ in your roads-without-traffic-rules analogy, you’d also need to disband monopolies such as the police, ambulance, and fire brigades, as free competition will always result in the best allocation of resources in the market, and if Libertopia’s drivers end up crashing a lot I’m suuuuure there’ll be no shortage of tow truck companies fighting for their business. </sarcasm>
Walton, thank you for the comment – and all best wishes to you! (guessing you may have some involvement with the attempts to protect Yashika Bageerathi? The petition was heartening, but Brokenshire seems determined not to listen)
Sorry, all, for the long post below …
Tomas C, if you’re still around and reading. I’m discouraged by the fact that you’ve had a lot of responses here but so far don’t seem to have actually considered any of them. But you’re clearly able to see the flaws in ordinary religious thinking, so maybe some day you’ll be able to at least consider the possibility that there are similar flaws in the way you so passionately want to see the “free market” as an incorruptible panacea. The idea of a simple solution to every problem is always seductive; the trouble is that it just doesn’t correspond to reality which is complicated and messy.
Tomas, I’m guessing, like others here, that you are young – maybe teens or early twenties at the latest (dog I hope so; you should have some awareness of the world around you by then ffs) or maybe even younger – bright but inexperienced and impressionable. You’re male, and your family is well off. Maybe you go to private school. Maybe your wider family is full of people with “good connections”. You’re very privileged, even though it may not feel that way to you.
There was talk upthread of meritocracy. I’d just ask you to look around you and bear in mind – there is no level playing-field. Most kids your age in the world do not have access to education, to a secure roof over their head, to abundant, good-quality food on the table every day, to unlimited clean water, to a house full of books/computers with internet access/construction kits/resources of every kind. Looking at the world as a whole, most kids your age are desperately scraping a living already. Even if that’s not so common in the country where you live, it’s probably truer than you realise even there. Not everyone gets born and brought up in a nice neighbourhood like yours; not everyone gets to go to a school that gets the good exam results, on average, that yours does.
You probably wouldn’t like to watch kids your age and younger go hungry, or go sick with no prospect of medical care, or go ignorant because there is no one to teach them and no school to go to, or go without leisure time because they have to do unskilled work for a pittance. You just don’t think about any of those things because you’ve never seen them except maybe in a very distant, alien way on TV; you’ve never stopped to think about the reality that those kids and those families can’t just up and walk away because there is no away within walking distance, they are not allowed to cross borders and they have nothing to eat on the way to anywhere.
Tomas, if you give any thought at all to what’s been said here, please remember one thing. The libertarian economy has been tried in the past in real life – in Victorian England, in the USA even more recently among many other examples – and in real life the deck is always stacked. And this results, in real life, in people going hungry, getting sick without hope of medicine, and dying. I’d like to think you wouldn’t like that if you saw it.
The deck is stacked in favour of those with money, education and connections; and the deck is stacked in favour of the employer over the employee. Collective bargaining – unions – came into existence in an attempt to level the playing field, if only a little. Your libertarian utopia, which the rest of us immediately recognise as a living hell for everyone except a tiny handful at the top, cannot work as you fondly imagine it would as long as the deck is stacked in the way that it actually is in reality.
Just remember: charity – in real life – is never enough. And not everyone has family who can or will look after them. Who do you really think is going to support the disabled, the sick, the old when they have no-one, or their own families are already hungry? Historically, everywhere your system has actually been tried, the levels of hunger, ill-health and suffering in the population as a whole are through the roof. Even right now, in the wealthiest countries in the world, average life expectancy is significantly shorter for the poor. Think about what it would mean to you, if by accident of birth you had grown up in a home with none of the resources you’ve had, had gone to a school with poor resources, had no money for further education and were desperate just to pay the rent.
If we hate libertarianism, it it’s because we are aware of the evil it actively fosters. If you still want a libertarian system, just remember that this is the system of the weakest go to the wall.
But by the same token lack of taxes and regulations can help outsourcing along as well. Lack of tariffs or maximum amounts of goods allowed for importation for example make it easier to outsource, because exporting to the country your market is in isn’t cost prohibitive and you can ship as much as you like. So you’re ignoring how lack of trade regulations cause the same issue.
@athywren #223
I thought you had to say it three times while spinning anti-clockwise in front of a mirror?
“Government, government, government!” and *poof!*, a FEMA SWAT team comes crashing through the window.
@Tomas
Are you ever going to address my #182? That took me a long time to write. You’ve had 69 posts worth of thread!
@Walton #231
You rock. That is all.
@Avo #245
Love that analogy! I shall be using it in future :)
I thought briefly about bringing pollution into it, but he wasn’t responding to any of the other real concerns so it seemed unnecessary. But it’s a good point.
It is cheaper, therefore more profitable, for company A to put a big tube out their back wall straight into the river behind their back door, and divert all of their waste material into the river. None of the employees care, and none of the people buying their product care, because the company is located at the downriver edge of town and it doesn’t affect them. It only affects people in town B, five miles downstream.
What’s to stop the company from doing this, if anything? Or is this ok?
In Libertopia, the folks downstream can sue the company. But no libertarian has ever proposed a libertarian mechanism that would prevent the company from polluting the river in the first place. All they have is their hypothetical super-rational company CEO who magically decides that paying court costs would be more expensive than paying to safely dispose of their waste (usually the opposite is true in the real world).
Well, yes, but… Who decides who wins? That company? A trading partner of theirs? An unaffiliated company that nonetheless sees the advantages of ‘I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine’? The people of town A? Town B?
And who decides what is and isn’t a reasonable penalty?
The Free Market, holy be thy name, decides.
Obvs.
@Walton
Thanks good post
@theoreticalgrrl
Thanks! I knew what McCarthyism was , but I wanted to see how it was applied in this context.
@Thumper
Just imagine , for example we asked a group of women their dream jobs. And for reasons not including discrimination , maybe more preferred to be a nurse or teacher than to be a construction worker or police officer. They can choose that cause its fine. There are of course certain trade offs or whatever career you choose.
This wage gap has been cited in support of anti-discrimination laws and enforcement of such laws. Is the wage gap was directly due to employer discrimination (as liberals like Obama have said) [and as such requires anti-discrimination laws to correct this] or due to career choices and other facts.
The question I am asking is whether women get paid less than men for the same hours of work and same experience/quality of work. From the studies I’ve seen that data is unclear. People point out that when you control for certain factors that are likely to affect men and women’s career choices , women end up earning slightly more and effects due to employer discrimination are not evident.
1+2-Thy’re linked in some ways but not in others.
If a company turned down a woman for a job because they feel women should stay in the kitchen , that;’s direct employer discrimination. that’s against the law and the company would be liable.
If a woman decided to be a stay-at-home mom because her family though it was best to be at home, and she felt pressure to do so, that’s not illegal. We can talk to people and try to change their minds , but that’s not wrong.
3 -OK
4- I agree. But it depends what you mean by “doing something about it”. If you mean having lectures , books. ..etc to convince people of your viewpoint , I agree. Free speech and all that. If you mean passing laws telling people how to run their families, I’d disagree and say it was a personal choice.
Quibble: Libertarians don’t assume this. They really say that giving people the liberty to choose is a better framework for preserving individual rights than the other approaches. Von Mises said communism was a perfect system to maintain equality in theory , but in practice it resulted in the erosion of individual rights and corruption.
5+6) But in practice people always have pressures. I have pressures from my parents , my classmates , my friends. In practice making a choice means having to deal with social pressures.
If you feel these social pressures are a negative influence you can have lectures , books ..etc trying to convince people of that. But I don’t support you if you mean saying laws stopping peple from doing or saying something.
From what I’ve seen MRA’s just want equality for men in certain areas (like parental custody , workplace safety , the childhood achievement gap) , just as feminists want equality for women in certain areas.
I think in certain areas interests cross.
For example GOTH linked this piece.
Basically Obama prepared a stimulus package to help the sectors hit hard in the depression.
But feminists wanted funds diverted from these sectors to more female dominated fields.
Ah, yes, of course. How stupid of me, to think that The Free Market (hbtn) wouldn’t have a way of sorting it out through Magical Determination Of Truth And Justice…
I’m wondering, who pays for Truth and Justice?
We just raised over 50k for Karen Stollznow.
It is already a well-known tactic of powerful players to sue their opponents into ruin.
How will the people of the town downriver who just lost whatever they had get the money to sue? Who pays the judge?
If that were all they were working towards and took issue with, we probably wouldn’t be very bothered about them, and might even be actively working with them. Try reading Manboobz or the A Voice For Me tag on Avicenna’s blog (A Million Gods), and have a look at the views they espouse.
Also, why is it that when boys are statistically acheiving more than girls, everything’s fine and dandy (sometimes with a ‘we’re making progress towards equality!’), yet when girls are doing better, suddenly the system is skewed?
Do you think that a sexist culture might affect a woman’s choices, yes or no?
Do you think that a sexist culture might choose to offer less rewards for the careers that women more often choose, yes or no?
Do you seriously, objectively, believe that a nurse and teacher should be rewarded less than construction workers or police officers, and why?
You are such a fucking idiot, I don’t even know where to begin.
Let me try this:
1. Parental custody favors women because women are expected by society to take care of children.
2. Workplace safety isn’t a Men Only issue, but it only disproportionately affects men because society expects women to avoid dangerous jobs .
3. These are examples of sexism and patriarchy negatively affecting men but it is largely incidental to its main purpose of restricting women .
It’s well established that you haven’t seen jack shit. You need to see more before making a final determination. What you’ve seen is incomplete.
@Thumper, 251
If you say it properly (“Gummint, gummint, gummint!”) then it’s Bob Dole who appears!
That’s scary, right? I… might not actually know who Bob Dole is…
@Sarahface, 255
And by what mystical force is the company held to the result and required to pay any reparations that are determined? Are Town B supposed to boycott the company that wasn’t already serving them anyway? Perhaps it is enough that they ought to pay the reparations? I suppose you could argue that they initiated aggression against the people of that town (though I’m pretty sure they would deny the accusation since they’re not demanding payment with the threat of armed SWAT teams) but even if they accept it, why would they care? What holds them to the Libertopian ideal without at least a vestigial government to enshrine it into law?
I’d quite like it if Tomas made an effort to critically examine his sources, or come clean about the falsehood of his claim to skepticism. I mean, I understand sharing sources you haven’t fully examined, I’ve done it before and I’ll probably do it again when I’m being intellectually lazy, but it’s rare that I see my sources torn to shreds and only respond with, “you don’t have to go through the whole list of links,” before asking for positive evidence – which was already provided in my own source as if it were proof against it – of what I’m arguing against.
….I might still be annoyed about that.
Speaking of which, I’d also like it if I got a fucking apology for the time I wasted doing the basic checks that he failed to do himself.
I do like that his claim of skepticism came after the demonstration of the opposite, though. Very funny. Very meta.
It has already been pointed out, with regards to parental custody, that in cases when men decide to sue for custody, they get it, about half the time.
Haven’t you been reading, Tomas? Or are you just talking AT us?
What we showed you is that the people who arrived at this “women make more when you control for certain factors” conclusion, were not comparing equivalent sub-populations. They are not comparing apples to oranges. They’re picking a group of women in which high earners are over-represented and low earners under-represented and comparing that to a group of men which is going to have a more equitable distribution of income level. Nick and I explained to you that, because women are expected by society to choose between kids and career while men aren’t, unmarried, childless women and unmarried, childless men are not equivalent subpopulations. The numbers you keep referring to are bogus.
You’re still refusing to grasp that this pressure women feel is because society is unfairly putting the expectation of caring for the kids almost entirely on her shoulders. I showed you how employers consider women less hireable than equally qualified men. It was pointed out to you that, when a woman knows that her husband will be able to earn more money if he is the one who continues working, the choice to let him be the one who works is not a free choice. She’s making that choice because society is forcing that upon her. Not because she just wants to be home with the kids.
Again, this doesn’t mean there aren’t women who just prefer motherhood to having a career but that doesn’t change the wider culture that expects them to make that choice regardless of what they want. Employers are part of that culture, remember. You can’t say “but that’s not discrimination; it’s just societal expectations.”
And you’ve demonstrated very well that what you’ve seen on any topic doesn’t amount to very much at all. Please remember that you’re talking to people here at Pharyngula who have been having these conversations for years. We’re not basing our arguments on a couple Youtube videos we thought were cool. We’re not looking at a page full of links purported by the author to show X and assuming that they do show X even after we’ve been shown that most of them actually show the opposite of X.
RE: my #265
They are comparing apples to oranges.
They are not comparing apples to apples.
Take your pick. >.>
(Or internal enemies. Or… anyone other than himself.)
SallyStrange:
Holy shit, I missed that point. And here I thought that was their one plausible “reverse sexism” claim. I knew that was giving the MRA brigade way too much credit…
@Tomas C, 257
Then you’ve made no effort to look closer. MRAs use parental custody issues, citing the 88% number, and ignoring the fact that when actually men fight for custody it’s practically 50/50, in order to shout down mention of workplace harassment. They use workplace safety issues to drown out discussion of rape. They cite the childhood achievement gap (which is demonstrated by girls’ performances in schools improving faster than boys’ and ignore the fact that both boys and girls are improving, that the difference in improvement isn’t particularly large and can be explained by statistical noise, and that both boys and girls both perform similarly in absolute terms) in order to silence discussion of the wage gap. When there is nobody to silence, what do they talk about? What do they talk about amongst themselves? They complain about the fact that rape is a crime, decry the idea of “consent” and generally rant nonsensically about the evils of women not doing what they’re told.
Do you also believe that the American Family Association is all about issues of parenting and childcare?
If the “men’s rights” movement was a movement for men’s rights, I would be entirely in support of them – I am what society considers a man, myself, and I enjoy not having my rights violated, but the fact is that the men whose rights are violated are nothing more than tools to them.
Wow. An opinion piece with no sources or citations. Damning evidence if ever I saw some. Well, you’ve got yourself a convert in me!
(That’s a joke, btw. You haven’t got a convert in me. That is not evidence.)
@SallyStrange, 264
I’m suspecting it’s the Curse of the Christian Commenter – he’s in the discussion, but he’s not of the discussion.
Tomas, if you are going to read anything, read opposablethumb at 249. Ideally, if you can actually get through the whole thing without quitting a quarter way through to go watch cat videos and Penn Gilette punching hippies in the throat, you might actually finally get an inkling that you don’t know as much as you think you know.
It seems your views of anything are just as uninformed and superficial as your views on economy.
They’re wrong.
What liberty do you have when your choices are to starve now or starve later? Telling people they’re free while letting others have the unrestrained power to curtail their freedom is just a sham.
@SallyStrange
GOTH linked a few cases where father’s rights groups were trying to get automatic joint custody laws (in cases where both parents were fit and wanted to take care of the child) enacted and those laws were opposed by feminists. And laws that allowed biological fathers to fight for custody of children born out of wedlock that were opposed by feminists.
Here and here
Are those legitamate father rights issues?
@Seven of mine
You’ve spectacularly missed the point.
from me
Do you have clear data with “equivalent subpopulations” controlling for the relevant factors showing there’s a wage gap due to employer discrimination? Thanks
Ass to the cultural expectations things. From me
I agree there are cultural issues involved. How are you saying we should change this culture?
I’m dropping the libertarian stuff btw.
@Athywren
I’m sure there are unpleasant MRA who are misogynist and trivialise the abuse of women
but to quote someone
@275 Tomas
No. I really haven’t.
The data is the wage gap, fuckwit, combined with those cultural issues that you agree exist but, for reasons best known to yourself, continue to insist have nothing to do with it. The data is the study I cited which shows employers judging female applicants less qualified than male applicants based on identical resumes, which I have now pointed out for the third time. Etc.
A good place to start would be ignorant, ill-informed children like yourself shutting the fuck up and educating themselves before they open their ignorant, ill-informed mouths.
From this discussion or from your worldview?
Tomas C.#275
Not until you answer a few questions.
Tomas C.:
You think Obama is a liberal?
Holy Bouncing Fuck, do you have a lot to learn.
@Sarahface
Umm kind of both
There are a lot of issues I need to rethink.
Why do you continue linking to a discredited source? You’re on the internet. There are other resources out there. Use your brain.
MRAs do occasionally discuss legitimate issues that affect men–much to the dismay of the non-misogynist feminist men who are already working on those issues. MRAs remain a cadre of woman-hating fanatics.
Hah. Can’t rebut the counter-arguments you’ve been presented with, and not honest enough to say so. Lazy. Coward.
Anyway, libertarians and MRAs closely linked. If you had actually done a TINY bit of reading (instead of gawping at youtube videos) you’d have realized that there is a large overlap in the groups. Both libertarians and MRAs are dupes of the power structure, fighting against those with less power to maintain their slightly more powerful position in a fucked-up, unjust system.
Since you don’t name or link to the someone, they don’t exist, and the rest of your post can be dismissed.
@SallyStrange
I don’t have answers to everything , allright. Its a lot easier to object to something than to offer the solution. I need to rethink some stuff. I admitted it. You can be happy now.
Tomas C. #284
You are bad at sarcasm.
And the fact that there exist both MRAs and feminists who are either nice or not nice does not erase the fact that feminists are by and large correct in their analyses of societal problems relating to gender and MRAs are… not. Nor the fact that MRAs’ main form of activism seems to consist of online and sometimes in person harassment of feminist activists.
Tomas C.:
That is excellent. Rethinking an issue in the face of new information and new ideas is a rational response.
Good luck with the re-thinking. If you have specific questions, and want an actual discussion about it, bring it up here. If we need, we can even send up the Walton signal. He doesn’t have a lot of free time these days, it seems, him fighting for the rights of the oppressed and all (which is a never-ending job), but he’d have some insight into pretty much any question you could bring up.
He went through the exact same grilling you’ve just gone through.
Spotted the following:
In answer to Anteprepro 211
I give you 257:
.
Anteprepro could well be right!
Holy fuck Tomas, you keep finding new reserves of stupid.
1. One feminist group =/= All feminists.
2. All of those bills in your first link? Virtually all about procedures for a father to claim they are not the father . It’s even fucking called the “Revocation of Paternity Act”, you dumbfuck.
3. The REASON that they opposed this act is more important than the mere fact that they did. Do you have any evidence at all that they were opposing bills in order to restrict Men’s Rights? Anything at all?
@Avo
I thought libertarianism was the best solution to our civil liberties and economic problems. I’m not sure now.
@274 Tomas
Neither of those links shows anything other than the bills and that Michigan NOW opposed them. Do you have anything to say about what those bills would do specifically (including practical consequences, mind you; not just the raw text of the bill) and the grounds on which Michigan NOW opposed them, or did you just assume that, because it was a feminist group opposing bills pertaining to things fathers can do, that it supported your claim that feminists oppose men’s rights? Consider also that, with issues of custody, there is the welfare of a child or children to consider. It’s not just about mom’s rights vs. dad’s rights.
@Tomas C, 274
You really need to read sources before you share them.
Like, really.
Either that, or recognise that GOTH is probably not somebody to take at all seriously.
Senate Bill 557
If you rape a woman, resulting in the conception of a child, you cannot then sue for custody of that child.
Men’s Rights!!
If you mistakenly or fraudulently claimed to be the father, or forced the mother to acknowledge you as the father against her will, you cannot sue for custody. The mother has to prove that you’re not the father.
If the mother is married, the father has a right to know if the child isn’t his.
You won’t get child support costs from before filing for revocation of parenthood back. There might be an argument here! Wow. But if they’re relying on child support payments, what’s the likelihood of their being able to pay up to several year’s worth of support payments back anyway?
The court can refuse to perform this procedure if it looks like it would be harmful to the child. The court needs to defend this refusal. Again, there might be an argument here, but this reads more like it’s in cases where the mother is trying to revoke parenthood when there is a healthy and active relationship between the child and supposed father. I may be reading more into it than is there, though.
The Glenn Sacks link is more difficult to address since, even where it links to Michigan NOW, it doesn’t link to the action alert, and so doesn’t give us any insight into the reasons for their opposition.
So, going purely from memory, the problem with the automatic assumption of shared parenting in separations is that you are then required, while sharing custody, to show that the other parent was unfit or abusive. This puts both the child and the parent in contact with an unfit or abusive parent until the issue is settled… which is bad.
As I said, that’s purely from memory, so I might be confusing issues. But, hey! If you shared decently sourced links, these things would be much easier.
Gee, did you ever consider there is a reason why that theology isn’t used in first world countries with lots of liberties? It took me 10-15 minutes of thinking to determine that it was a fatally flawed ideology, and it simply wasn’t able to handle the concept of doing something for the common good and level playing field. You’ve been at it for days because you swallowed some nice sounding slogans without thinking it through. Skepticism is questioning everything, especially if is sounds really good.
Tomas, I sincerely hope that you will ACTUALLY step away from this and think about the libertarianism issue. Don’t just go diving into libertarian sources and trust what they say. The reason why libertarian thinking fails involves a lot of topics. You don’t need to know a lot of those topics, but you need to have at least a decent understanding of the basics on a wide variety of subjects in order to truly understand WHY it fails. Step away, and try to figure out what exactly the objections to libertarianism have been so far. Then look further into the topics. Even perusing wikipedia is helpful, but it won’t be sufficient. You will need to weigh a variety of issues, see how the parts all fit together, in order to understand how a libertarian society would fall apart. I hope you look into the Free Market ideal more and realize that it is not a route to a perfect society, that the Free Market is fundamentally amoral and we cannot rely upon it alone to create a fair society. If you actually realize that you have more learn, that is all we could have possibly hoped to have teach you on the subject. So go out and learn. Understanding the merits and flaws of political positions is not easy. It is hard to find reliable sources, and you need to have an impressive breadth of knowledge to understand The Big Picture. So please ACTUALLY understand that you need to learn, and go out and do it. It’s natural to make mistakes and not know things, but it is also so common that people get caught up in their own ego that they deny their mistakes or come up with ways to justify themselves, refusing to learn or improve themselves. Please, for your own sake, be better than that.
@Antepropo
You seem to have missed my prvious post
1- equally one MRA group =/= all MRAs
2) I described the law in my post you dumbfuck see the part I described
” laws that allowed biological fathers to fight for custody of children born out of wedlock that were opposed”
here’s the relevant part
3) The fucking point is that whatever these feminists did did have an effect on father’s rights ( whatever justification they used. Should men not be concerned about this? Should affected fathers not try to oppose this?
Tomas C.,
We’ve beaten up on you pretty well. However, You do deserve credit for considering new information. Kudos.
@Athywren
You missed the part where I said
” And laws that allowed biological fathers to fight for custody of children born out of wedlock that were opposed by feminists.” The link was to an example of such a law.
See the part I quoted to antepropo. This bill was opposed by feminists so i’m glad you like it.
I guess they want the good old times back when men got the children and all the woman’s property automatically.
@Tomas C, 276
The “Men’s Rights” Movement is not a movement. It is a single organisation which claims to speak for all people deal with men’s issues. Just like how the American Family Association isn’t an association of american families, but an organisation with a name that makes implications not supported by their actions, the MRM is an organisation with a name that makes implications not supported by their actions.
Self-identifying MRAs include people who are compassionate and reasonable and recognise the fact that the MRM is not a movement for men’s rights and disassociate themselves from the revolting organisation.
I will argue that there can be canonical definitions, though, they just have to be limited to the unifying factors. Feminists want equality and focus primarily on women. Masculists want equality and focus primarily on men. MRAs are misogynistic fucks who cloak themselves in reasonable sounding terms and protestations of innocence.
Can you show me a dog giving birth to a duck? Evolution doesn’t what? We don’t want excuses, it’s a yes or no question – can you show me a dog giving birth to a duck? No? Well I guess evolution isn’t true then!
You’ve been told multiple times that the idea of the wage gap being entirely due to employer discrimination is coming from you, you, you, you and you, and nobody else in this thread. Employer discrimination is a part of it, but it is not the entirety of it. Please stop arguing against a strawman.
Tomas, I’d be honestly delighted if you decided to take a look at historical examples of libertarian societies (Gilded Age USA, Victorian England, present-day Somalia – so that’s two wealthy industrialised examples and one impoverished non-industrialised one – plus I know that people here who are a lot more knowledgeable than I am can correct me and give better examples) and consider what life is like for the poor, uneducated majority and what their prospects are. Don’t just look at the tiny handful of families at the top. Don’t look at these societies through rosy-tinted spectacles just because the rich had really cool-looking clothes and vehicles and fiction set in those periods looks great on TV. Check the average life-expectancy for rich and poor in those societies.
You’re deeply deeply wrong about a lot of what you’ve said in the last few days, but you’re not stupid – you’re quite clear-sighted when it comes to religion, for example. You can apply that same clear-sightedness to other things. Follow the evidence – look at some real-life examples, and think it over.
Also, what Avo/nigelTheBold said just up there @ 287!
Tomas….
None of that has to do with custody. Virtually everything in those bills is about father’s revoking their claims of paternity. The part you quoted is stating that even if they do this, if biological tests proved that he is the biological father, than the child still is entitled to the father’s estate in the event that he dies without a will, despite not being the legal father otherwise.
You are an imbecile. You were an idiot about libertarianism. You are now an idiot about women’s issues. I don’t know why I was possessed to write 294. Possibly pity. Whatever. You are hopeless.
@Tomas 295
At some point, when very MRA group you encounter behaves the same way, you conclude that one MRA group does, indeed equal all MRAs.
Do you actually think that sentence says fuck all about the practical implications of the bill? Hint: it doesn’t.
Why does their reason for opposing it not matter? Do you think, maybe, possibly that Michigan NOW might have spotted a way these bills could be abused, or some other practical consequence of them that could have the effect of harming the children involved under certain circumstances? Do you think that maybe people who study this shit for a living might know just a teency bit more about it than you do, you entitled little shit?
@Tomas C, 297
You shared a link to a law in order to show that feminists opposed it? That sure is some fine reasoning!
Show us the feminists opposing it. Show us what about it they opposed. It is not enough to make assertions at us, have you not learnt that yet?
@Athywren
I cited an example of Obama citing the wage gap and saying it was due to plain and simple discrimination.
I’ve heard other liberal politicians make similar statements. I was saying I was skeptical of them.
I dunno, I’m pretty skeptical of the idea of parental rights in general. Parents have responsibilities and obligations. Any rights they have with regards to their children exist only insofar as they further a parent’s ability to fulfill their responsibilities to their children.
Tomas C, you aren’t “skeptical” of anything. You are not competent or informed enough to be skeptical. It is clear that you just accept or deny things willy-nilly. You are right up there with the creationists in degree of cherry-picking. You are completely and utterly clueless, and believe with all your heart in a reality that your brain would laugh at if you bothered to dust it off and put it to use for once.
OY, fuckwit! Get your fingers out of your ears. The fact that you’re quoting someone else does not mean YOU didn’t introduce the idea to the conversation. None of us is saying “Obama said XYZ.” I mean, we already know that you don’t actually have any ideas of your own, but when YOU bring other people’s ideas here, it’s still YOU bringing the ideas here. Jesus fuck.
It cannot be stressed enough:
Tomas is doubling down on his example of feminists supposedly opposing a bill that gives fathers the right to custody for children born out of wedlock.
The bill ACTUALLY gives fathers of children born out of wedlock a window in which they can renounce their claims of paternity! THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT TOMAS CLAIMS.
Tomas, you should be fucking ashamed of yourself.
Just for clarification for anyone reading along –
there is a bit of a freight train trying to stop on a dime aspect of these comment threads – they move quickly, so a lot of the time when someone says something, it’s a dozen or so comments later that people see what that person posted. The comments about libertarianism after Tomas declared he was stopping to think about it were most likely written before seeing that statement. Tomas, I’m glad you’re going back to look things over and think about them more. A lot of the vitriol you encountered was due to many of your comments seeming to not be thought through and researched,not because you weren’t adhering to some kind of hivemind groupthink (which has been accused in the past).
This would be relevant is people were actually claiming dogs give birth to ducks , like liberal politicans are.
We’ll just agree dogs don’t give birth to ducks and evolution can’t be cited in support of dogs giving birth to ducks and move on.
Tomas C.
That’s a shittastic link for evidence that feminist are against equal rights for men. But still, let’s look at it, shall we? Your link summarizes it as:
Because yeah, let’s make parents who can’t fucking agree shuffle their kid(s) around. That’s going to work out splendidly.
Fucking dumbass, try reading this. I’m originally from Michigan and believe me, that bill is horrifying.
OF COURSE, IT MATTERS. Children are not property, to split evenly or otherwise between two adults. They are people; little, growing people and their interests fucking matter. Safety matters. Their justification has nothing against father’s rights. But they are against making it law that joint custody is mandatory, unless you can beyond a doubt prove it (you have no idea how hard that is when it comes to domestic violence) and making it so the child’s interests aren’t put first. That bill is all about deeming children as property, less than human, and splitting them presumptively instead of taking it on a case-by-case basis, which is how Michigan handled it before this bill proposal.
So.
Tomas C. has stopped digging his libertarian hole and is now tunnelling directly to the bottom of a MRA hole.
Very interesting.
If Tomas next introduces some racist dogwhistle, and then at some point says he’ll have to think a bit more about feminism while proceeding to spew racist bullshit… I’ll do a little I was right dance*, because I think he’s pulling your collective leg.
Although, it resulted in some very interesting and informative comments. So there’s a plus.
*because I’m an asshole
@Nerd of Redhead, 283
To be a little bit fair to him, I recognise the quote. I disagree with it, but I do recognise it… I’m pretty sure the part about there not being a canonical definition of MRM was meant to be outside of the quote block.
@Tomas C,
Rethinking is good. Not just for you, for anyone, everyone. It’s hard work and you don’t always get the “right” answer straight away, if ever, but at least you can find it if you keep looking at things from different angles.
Sure, but what is the core ideal of the MRM? Are they a masculist organisation, or are they an explicity anti-feminist organisation who just want to “fuck their shit up”? It is not fair to hold every small faction of a group to the actions of others, but it is fair to hold them to their core ideals.
If you came across a socialist group that called for the wealthy elite to be given mansions built out of the bones of the workers, you wouldn’t say that they were different from all the other socialist groups – you’d say that they weren’t socialists. Why? Because one of the core ideals of socialism is increasing quality of life for the working class, and not their being used as building materials.
If, on the other hand, you came across a group of socialists that called for the workers to be given mansions built out of the bones of the wealthy elite? Yeah, they might well be socialists, and it probably doesn’t make sense to claim that they’re not, but they’re definitely not a good representation of socialism.
It’s much easier to talk about whatever they did if we’re provided with evidence that they did anything. It’s also easier to defend or oppose what they did, if they did anything, if we know the reasons. Jus’ sayin’.
Actually, I did see a few possible issues with it, I just don’t have enough context with American law to know if they’re real or imagined.
Btw, I notice that you missed my response to the automatic custody thing. Do you not think that separating in order to get away from an abusive partner, then being forced to share custody, thus having to spend time around them and allow them a significant amount of power over you, should they be the type to threaten your children to harm you and having to fight, yet again, to keep yourself and your child safe is somewhat less than optimal?
@Athywren #263
Nah, Bob Dole appear if you say “Bob Dole” three times.
“Bob Dole likes to talk about Bob Dole. Bob Dole. Bob Dole. BobZzzzzzzzz… *falls asleep*”.
Tomas C.
Men’s rights are covered in the U.S., by the Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc. There is no need for a men’s rights movement. You are what is considered the default human, so all talk of human rights include you, always.
Do you think the Civil Rights Movement and the White Aryan Resistance are comparable? Are there some jerks in both movements, or was one created to lift a disenfranchised group into equal status under the law and the other created as a backlash against that?
@Tomas C
Which you have been misrepresentating as pure and simple discrimination coming solely from employers. It is not. It has never been. Nobody with a clue has ever claimed that this is the case.
Once again, the people who have raised the issue of the wage gap being only due to employer discrimination in this thread are you, you, you, you, you, you, and you. Nobody else. So stop it.
It’s relevant because you are the source of this claim in this discussion, the person expecting us to defend it, and as far as I can tell, you’re also the source of it even when you have quotes. A thing being “plain and simple discrimination” does not mean that it’s “plain and simple discrimination perpetrated solely by employers.”
You know what, as a kid of divorced parents I never understood why “joint custody” is seen as some golden mean which is by default preferable and right and good.
It really is not. If you weren’t able to make time for your kids when you had a spouse to share the responsibilities of the household, how the fuck will you suddenly do that after the divorce? And notice that I’m not referring to gender here – whichever partner was the primary caregiver should clearly stay the primary caregiver after divorce, because why the fuck is it necessary NOW suddenly for the courts to step in and force some way for you to spend time with your kid when you couldn’t give a fuck before it all went to hell?
Misrepresentating. It’s where you use potatoes to distort facts.
Bah.
@Athyren
I see your point. But MRAs/feminism seem ill-defined.(
If there’s a guy who’s concerned about issues that affect men and wants to get joint custody for fathers , better workplace safety practises and more job creation in the manufacturing and construction sectors. What if he wants more family law reform for fathers who cannot afford child support payments. BUt he believes in equal rights for everyone and does not hate women. Isn’t he an MRA? Shouldn’t he be allowed to discuss family law or workplace safety without being denigrated?
@JAL, 311
Your link broke, it just points back here.
321
Athywren
Oh, damn. It did. My bad. Here it is.
@Tomas
There are groups that deal honestly with men’s issues and do good work on those fronts. What we’re saying to you is that the term “Men’s Rights Activist” has been co-opted, by and large, by people who consider men’s rights activism to consist of abusing and harassing anyone who identifies as feminist and the defense thereof.
Oh my Christ, Tomas. MRA is a self-defined label. The people who apply that label to themselves are usually worried about the things that you list while simultaneously opposing feminism . The people who label as MRAs are not just for Men’s Rights: they are against feminism, deny sexism exists, and believe that feminism is an attempt to gain More Rights than Men. Men’s Rights is the equivalent to the disingenuous asshats who call affirmative action “reverse racism”, and claim that racism is dead and gone and everyone is Equal now. You can’t just ignore the people that call themselves MRAs in order to pretend that MRAism is just some nebulous, innocuous thing.
@Seven of mine
OK I see your point
Gee, the latter sounds like a male chauvinist pig to me, solely worrying about an industry with a large male population, instead of raising employment generally. If you don’t see that, you don’t understand how to look at anything skeptically.
Dumbfuck, manage to re-read those bills yet? Manage to figure out that you are wrong and blindly trust disingenuous asshats who are just as willfully illiterate as you are?
Oh shit fucking bollocks. I clicked the link in Tomas’ fucking comment and lost my whle reply!
@antepropo
I re-read it and what I said was right
Exactly what I said , about the father being considered a natural father for children born out of wedlock .
@Tomas
Apologies, but I have to go. I will reply to your #257 tomorrow.
Also @Tomas
While I have the link open sullying my computer, in regards to your apparently limited experience with the MRA movement, I introduce you to A Voice for Men. My deepest apologies. Be sure to read the comments.
@Tomas
It has already been pointed out to you that, when fathers ask for custody, they get it about half the time. The numbers you see cited, like full custody awarded to women in 80-something percent of cases includes cases where only one parent applied for custody. Do you understand why that is an inappropriate number to use to claim that custody proceeding are biased against fathers? You can’t show bias by pointing to situations where there is no choice for a judge to make because only mom even asked for custody.
Again, this is only a men’s issue to the extent that there’s a cultural preconception that women don’t belong in these fields.
It varies by state but the amount of child support you have to pay, if any, is calculated based on your income and expenses so “can’t afford child support” sounds to me like something of a red herring. Circumstances do change, and I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong about this, but I’m going to guess that most states have a process whereby you can have the court re-evaluate your situation if the need arises. If you can show a situation where a state is clearly not evaluating child support requirements fairly then, by all means, bring it up.
Tomas, read the rest of the fucking bills, you fucking idiot. Also the key phrase in your quote is “for purpose of intestate succession”. YOU ARE ON THE INTERNET. You look up the fucking terms, you fucking intellectually dishonest dipshit! It’s not about custody rights! The entirety of the rest of those four bills is about natural fathers giving up their rights to legal fatherhood! The exact opposite of what you are claiming! And you keep denying that because you are the fucking poster child for Dunning-Kruger!
@Tomas
The point about that bill is that the purpose of it is to just grant joint custody by default with no regard for whether either of the parents is unfit. If one is unfit or abusive, etc. they are granted custody while the other parent is left with the very difficult task of showing they’re unfit. That is not a good situation for the children involved. That is why Michigan NOW opposed it. Those decisions should be made on a case by case basis, not legislated in advance.
anteprepro #333
tsk
Now Tomas C. will hafta look up Dunning-Kruger.
chigau 335: I sincerely doubt that will happen. If it does, count on Tomas to fuck that up too.
re: my 334, I meant the bills in general that Tomas linked, not specifically what he quoted. anteprepro is right, the part you quoted, Tomas, isn’t about custody at all.
I didn’t know what intestate succession meant either, Tomas. But I actually care about facts, ya see. I actually want to know what is going in the world around me, ya see. I actually check to make sure I know what I’m talking about before I open my gob and start lecturing people who might know the topic better than I do, ya see.
You are nothing but arrogant ignorance, Tomas.
Tomas:
This would be another thing you need to rethink. Your understanding of Men’s Rights Advocates is incomplete.
@Tomas C
If a couple are concerned about the problems involved in raising a child in the US, aren’t they in line with the American Family Association?
The problem is that the language of rights and rights violations are popular among people who want to silence people who are talking about actual rights issues. How often do you hear Christians complaining that their religious rights are violated because their kids can’t read the bible* or pray** in school? Or shouting about the “war on Christmas***”? Or have you ever heard about the genocide being perpetrated against white people**** in the west?
MRAs call themselves Men’s Rights Activists because, hey, what kind of monster would oppose men’s rights? OMG! They really do support female domination over males! THOSE MONSTERS! They make themselves immune to criticism, at least in the eyes of people who aren’t too aware of them.
Should people be allowed to discuss family law or workplace safety? Sure. Absolutely. Should they be taken seriously if they raise those as objections to feminism? No, not really. Especially not workplace safety, as that’s a worker’s rights issue. Does it make you an MRA to discuss them? No, although they like to act as if it should. The clues are in what they’ll criticise you for. Don’t care about male rape victims? Not a problem. Want to openly mock male rape victims? Not a problem, unless we’re talking about how unfair it is that they’re being ignored. Want to support female rape victims? You fucking misandrist piece of mangina pussy scum! Men are raped too!
* They actually can, they might not be able to read during class when they’re supposed to be researching the Chattanooga Campaign, but they can read the bible in school.
** Again, they can, they just can’t be forced to pray by the schools.
*** Apparently committed by people viciously and wilfully not being Christian in December.
**** Rational people call it “interracial marriage” but apparently genocide sounds better. As genocides go, this might be the only one that involves increasing the human population, and not wantonly slaughtering… anyone.
***** Does this forum allow superscript? This is getting ridiculous. test test
Actually, it’s a men’s issue in another way, too: research into worker safety on oil rigs (a heavily male-dominated field) showed that in order for men to stop getting hurt, they would have to abandon their hyper-masculine, macho attitudes. These macho attitudes disdained common safety procedures as less than masculine and derided men who got hurt or expressed concern about getting hurt as weaklings, pussies… like women, you know.
You NEVER hear MRAs talking about how such exaggerated, toxic masculinity leads to bad health outcomes for men. You do hear feminists talking about it.
Seven of Mine 337: Yes, for clarity, Tomas presented two links about Michigan bills.
The first link was an analysis of four related bills in 2012, which Tomas claims related to custody but are actually focused on The Revocation of Paternity. This is what he has quoted recently and I have been focused on.
The second link he presented in support of MRA talking points was to an article regarding joint custody bills from 8 years ago.
In classic Tomas fashion, he manages to be wrong in as many ways as possible.
Even using the term “toxic masculinity” in the presence of a self-identified MRA can produce…amusing results.
@anteprepro
Yep, I was just clarifying my own post since I talked about custody in response to him quoting that section about intestate succession (a term which I, also, was not previously aware of and now, thanks be to Almighty Google, am. )
@Thumper, 331
Pretty sure you have to rename yourself to Pandora now…
And yes, as others have been mentioning, the “Men’s Rights” is a newspeak label just like “pro-life”, “traditional marriage”, etc. It is patriarchal entitlement based upon the premise that feminism is about female supremacism and often relying upon pretending that we already on equal ground so that any gains for women brought about by feminism, instead of being accurately seen as women getting closer to equality, is characterized as women seizing MORE rights than men have, and restricting men. That is the narrative, and the “Men’s Rights” label is just an attempt to stifle criticism by pretending that anyone who opposes their smarmy tactics and inane premises are actually out to oppress teh poor menz. It is a transparent attempt to keep privilege cemented, just like white people crying about affirmative action, and Christians crying about religious persecution. It is obvious to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention.
344 Seven of Mine
Ah, I missed that detail.
With Google, we are all omniscient. Praise Google.
Athywren:
No. You can make ¹, ² and ³ with these:
¹
²
³
But that’s pretty much it, as far as superscript characters go.
329
Tomas C.
See that bolding I put there? Read it and weep. From an actual source
And that Senate Bill 557 that’s included in the proposal? Again, here it is:
Oh and look, that bill still has limits on it:
And there’s stil the fact you haven’t proved feminists were against this bill either. I’ve looked. Here’s searching for just the bill information, since you suck at linking.
Let’s try searching for feminists against specifically. Oh, look. Bullshit like this which totally ignores the WHY women are against assumed joint custody instead of case-by-case.
In Summary: Those thinks don’t say what you thin they do, women’s organizations were clearly against ONE fucking part for a very reasonable, understandable cause and you’re full of shit.
Any questions?
@anteprepro, 333
Ohhhhh, that makes far more sense than interstate succession. I can literate, I can so literate.
@Seven of Mine, 343
HOW DARE YOU SAY MASCULINITY IS TOXIC!??!!??!??!?!?! *head a’splode*
Speaking as someone who is still suffering from the effects of ridiculously exaggerated gender roles… blergh. Last time I sought medical attention (actually pretty recently) for anything, I had a ridiculously deep slash though a fairly important bodypart and had gone into shock from bloodloss… and yet I still refer to it as a dish-washing incident where I cutting a finger on a teacup. Stupid manbrain.
I know that’s the thin end of the wedge, but still. Ugh.
Also with regard to custody, there certainly is a conversation to be had about why so many fathers apparently don’t even ask for custody, but MRAs never want to have it.
To my knowledge, it’s largely because the parents decide amicably on their own that the mother should have custody because she has been the primary caregiver in the past. But this hearkens back to what we were saying before about cultural expectations of women vs. men in terms of caring for the children. There’s no reason it should be the case that women are so much more often the primary caregiver.
@consciousness razor
Ooh, thankee! If I need to use more than three superscripts in the future, I’ll just use ternary using the 1 as 0, 2 as 1, 3 as 2. :3
Athywren:
I learned what “intestate succession” despite Googling “interstate succession”, which I did because I thought the bill simply had a spelling error! Speaking of not knowing you don’t know! What the fuck kind of prefix is “int” anyway! “Intra” or “inter”: pick a side, we’re at war!
anteprepro:
The prefix is “in-“, silly goose.
#pedant
@anteprepro
The funny thing is that I knew what intestate succession is, it just didn’t occur to me that I’d done a braintypo while reading it. I just thought there must be some weird American issue with inheritance law across state lines or something.
Does not compute. ∑ ♠/(∅√∞) → ???
“Intestate” is in+testate, as in your “last will and testament.” So it’s like non- or not-testate. No will.
It might also mean lacking testicles. Which is clearly a case of misandry, what with those evil feminists everywhere castrating and defenestrating all the men. So maybe Tomas was right all along.
Toxic masculinity. Ugh. I’ve seen enough of that contaminating our politics. To me, it seems to be the major part of this idea that it “shows strength” for a politician to suggest we panic in an aggressive manner, violate still more American citizens’ rights in the name of disproportionate fears, and write off thousands of foreign civilians as acceptable collateral damage.
Ah, I thought it was “int” + “estate”, not “in”+ “testate”. Now it makes sense.
Tomas C
Honest questions: given the walloping you just got on the topic of libertarianism, and the fact that MRAs get a similar reaction from a group which is demonstrably a lot more knowledgeable than you are about social and economic issues generally and the ones that you bring up specifically, why on earth do you continue to try to push bullshit that you don’t actually understand from the very same sources that we just finished demolishing on another topic? What makes you think that they’re better informed about this than they are about economics generally? What makes you thing that you’re better informed about this than you were about economics? What makes you think that you’re going to get less of a trashing on this topic than the last one? Please think about it before you answer.
Cites for Sally Strange’s #341:
Stanford knowledgebase
Abstract here: ScienceDirect
Thanks, Pteryxx!
JAL, you rock. Especially @349, you totally rock.
no problemo! That’s one of my pet cites.
Someone needs to do a fan-art of a bitty dinosaur in a super-hero costume. She can be Citation-saurus Rex.
All of the Horde on this thread, in fact. You’ve been outstanding.
Guess this is why I can’t believe in the “magic” of libertopia, because the first that this brought to mind was companies that invest in a) chop shopping the wreck, b) selling the left over parts, at high price, but just below new, to other drivers, and c) a rash of groups cutting up the victims of the accident, before any help can arrive (since, no cops to stop this) for what, without government, would logically be perfectly legal “organ donations”. Oh, wait, I forgot though **magic**, so an even more warped and twisted version of unreality than Grand Theft Auto makers ever thought of is totally impossible… :eyeroll:
Kagehi 366
That actually sounds a lot like most 80s cyberpunk games :)
Seven of Mine: *it, thank you. Also feathered dinos come with our own costumes already!
*runs off in a swirl of shredded encyclopedias*
Athywren (#352)
Or you could fake a 0 with º which makes º.
There’s also:
† → †
‡ → ‡
(List of other entities.)
Sigh.. Look up “Overton Window”, then look at what “liberal” means world wide, as well as historically in the US. I am not sure there is a word for it, but there was also a major reversal that happened between parties too.
Put in the simplest terms though, if you go back to the founding of the country you had:
Democrats, who tended to be the “economists” and “progressive”, but the latter only in the sense that they saw economic and technological progress, as a good thing, they didn’t much give a frak about what this did to civil liberties, for the most part, and actually tended to be the ones defending slavery.
Republicans, who tended to be strong traditionalists, suspicious of rapid change, but also much more humanist, in the sense of believing in personal liberties.
This resulted in the Republicans of the time being apposed to slavery, while the Democrats, of the time, where not.
After the civil war a sort of revelation took place in Democratic politics – personal liberty + technological progress = better, faster, and more, improvements in people’s lives. Republicans, on the other hand, saw “tradition” dying on the vine, and slipping away, to be replaced with a lot of confusing ideas, many of which fundamentally went against the one, biggest, greatest, tradition of all, “religion”. Everyone that was against more liberties in the Democrats jumped ship, cried “traditions!”, and eventually landed in the Republicans, turning them into a group apposed to “all” change that might further erode their hard held, immalleable, ideals.
From this there arises an interesting set of conflicts:
1. Laws need to exist, to protect the liberties of others, who might otherwise remove them.
2. Yes, but.. other laws need to exist to prevent those liberties from undermining tradition (Why is never clear, other than it means, for example, less church goers.).
1. We need laws to stop people from polluting, starving their workers, making intentionally dishonest business deals, etc.
2. Yes, but.. we need to protect against the negative effects these have, which might impeded certain **kinds** of progress, i.e. economic progress.
1. We need to have open government, and a clear idea about what is going on, to control it, and the same goes for deciding on wars, or the like.
2. Yes, but some things need to be secret, including the truth of what is happening, in some cases, and thus what the public knows, for the safety of the country.
The “Overton Window” can be thought of as being the current “state” of this, with respect to these ideas, and others. As the views shift, or are shifted, the “window” gets dragged one way, or the other, distorting what you see through it, and thus what decisions get made as a result.
The window has, in recent decades, been dragged away from the 1s up there, and more towards the 2s. As a result, you get someone like Obama – he sort of wants to protect people, with things like healthcare, but is willing to compromise nearly the entire principle behind it, by failing to stand up for what would add a form of competition that can’t be so easily “bought out”, and instead handed the whole thing over to the very private system that has been robbing everyone blind in the first place. I.e., rather than added a balance to the market, to keep it honest, he just expanded the market. I don’t completely blame him for that, since he did intend to do more, but barely passed what he did get, but still..
He also failed to undo a lot of laws that are designed to “control” people’s freedoms, rather than expand them, like the NSA spy stuff, and the like, and a lot of other things that run fundamentally contrary to progressive ideals (including supporting many things that allow big businesses to patent/copyright/etc. things, so that actual competition isn’t possible in those markets). These are all things that where “put in place” by conservatives, and defended by them, and are traditionally their ideas.
Meanwhile, the conservatives have gone damn near dictatorial in many cases, pushing legislation that would deny things outright, in an attempt to preserve, or recreate, some imaginary world that never existed, except in their own deluded imaginations. If the following line was the line between “liberal” and “conservative”, then the O on is is Obama, # is the center of the line, and the [] part is where the “Overton Window” is currently sitting (the L and C being, of course, liberal, and conservative):
LC
This is, of course, simplistic. I better one would chart “every” idea that people have on various subjects, and show where both the window, and Obama is sitting, but one thing is bloody certain, the public is probably, in general, slight left of the #, and people on this blog are quite a bit further left than that, but Obama… isn’t even on the left side, at all. He is just less conservatives than most of the conservatives right now. Back in Reagan’s time.. they would have probably both been at the exact same place on the line, and Reagan was the one that started the trend towards killing laws that protect against bad behavior by banks, and corporations in the first place. And, again, this is vastly simplified. However, made even simpler – Obama is progressive only in the sense that someone with his foot on the breaks, while parked uphill, is “moving forward”, instead of rolling backwards. All we are doing is rolling the boulder up a different part of the hill, in hopes that Hades made the slope there a bit less steep. Which is far better than the alternative, but absolutely not either “liberal” or “progressive”.
You know, with today’s Supreme Court decision, it occurs they didn’t go far enough in the pursuit of plutocracy. They need to make it legal to strait out buy elections. Perhaps they could have made the votes you cast directly proportional to the amount of money you contribute to a candidate. Since the rich run practically everything anyway, why not just go all the way and make it official.
kagehi,
your Overton diagram dropped out. Was it meant to look something like this?
L [ # O C ]Using <code></code> tags allows you to impose spacing relatively easily. ;)
—
CALLING ALL AMICI
FFRF v. IRS IRC 107
The Government submitted its brief today (April 2, 2014) which starts the clock running for the
filing by amici to join the suit to support the Government in its effort to preserve
IRC 107 and all its faults; constitutional and administrative.
The FFRF will probably not get its reply brief filed until June (an extension of time
being likely). After that FFRF amici may then join the effort in support of the FFRF
position.
I have been requested to advertise that the FFRF is in the process of organizing
individuals and organizations that might be interested in filing amici briefs in support
of the FFRF position.
The FFRF has special interest in tax and/or legal advocacy groups that might have an
interest in filing amici in support of the FFRF position. If you know of any such
groups that might have an interest, please have them call the FFRF to discuss the
matter at:
608-256-8900.
—————————————-
Wonderful. Look who’s back #373. I wonder if he will continue being a smughole…
Someone noticed!
I feel quite honored!
*sigh*
I’m going to bed.
@Athyren
With regard the wage gap I guess I’ll explain.
Its a common claim in America , by liberal politicians and feminists that women earn 77% of what men do for the same work. They usually imply or state directly that this is due to employer discrimination and use it to support anti-discrimination laws that affect employers.
That’s the version of the claim I was familiar with. To see examples of liberal politicians making this claim see
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2012/may/02/kathleen-falk/gubernatorial-hopeful-kathleen-falk-says-women-wis/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jun/21/barack-obama/barack-obama-ad-says-women-are-paid-77-cents-dolla/
http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2013/jul/15/terry-mcauliffe/mcauliffe-says-women-earn-77-percent-mens-pay-same/
http://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2012/jun/24/david-cicilline/us-rep-david-cicilline-says-women-earn-only-77-per/
This is what I think GOTH was debunking.
If I made this statement would you agree?
There is an earnings gaps between men and women, but it is unclear what percentage (if any) of this gap is due to discrimination and what percentage is due to other factors.
If you do agree we can probably drop the topic.
Tomas C.:
So. By the use of the term “liberal,” I assume you have something against those politicians who self-identify as “liberal.” Might you explain what that is?
Also, it might help if you explained what you meant yourself by the use of the word “liberal.” Is it bad? Does it designate something against your own political thinking?
I only bring this up because you referred to President Obama as “liberal,” when he is in fact centrist, at best. So I’d like to know what you think “liberal” really means.
I agree with nothing a liar and bullshitter who doesn’t understand how evidence really works says. So, why are you still proving you are nothing but a liar and bullshitter. Except, of course, to show you don’t lie and bullshit, you need to shut the fuck up….
It seems everything is unclear to you, Tomas.
Let’s take it one step at a time:
1) Do you believe any of the gap is due to discrimination?
-It certainly is.
2) Do you think that, no matter what other factors may be involved, people ought to get equal pay for equal work?
-They certainly should.
One more question:
3) Even assuming that somehow discrimination is minor compared to these mysterious “other factors,” what the fuck do you expect people to say?
Liberal Politician: “Discrimination’s no problem, everybody! It’s not as big of a deal as you all probably think — because we’re all very aware of how and when we discriminate and probably overestimate it to ourselves
(according to the totally bogus, backwards and upside-down data that we’ve collected). So never mind that; we’ll focus on X,Y,Z, not mention discrimination anymore, and those other factors are how we’ll get equal pay for equal work.”What fucking planet are you on? What fucking reason could they conceivably have to say shit even remotely like that? To hide the problem? To make bigots feel better about themselves?
Tomas:
Adding to Avo’s questions above: do you think employers should be required to follow anti-discrimination laws?
How about all those studies that people linked to from actual scientific sources that go out of their way to control for those “other factors” and find consistently that women are paid less than men and that the pay gap exists?
When talking to Tomas C.
remember
he has never had a job
his father pays for everything in his life
his mother is a “stay at home mother”
the servants do all of the work
Hmmm…. scientific studies or some random asshat on youtube?
Which one looks more like the free market to you?
consciousness razor:
As a skeptic, they both have equal weight.
But I’mma go with the youtube video. Because it makes me feel like I’m right.
I watch youtube for old QI episodes and kitty videos.
Where does that leave me?
I find Ben Radford’s wording to be quite curious here:
He doesn’t refute Dr. Stollznow’s accusation of sexual harassment/assault.
@Avo
I usually just mean Democrats. Nothing against them.
@Consciousness Razor
I expect politicians not to make false or misleading claims in their discussions. I guess that expectation is too high.
There was a lengthy discussion in the other thread about factors that contribute to the pay gap.
@omnicron
Nobody except me actually cited those studies.
here in case you missed it
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2012/11/05/the_female_wage_gap_is_a_major_economic_myth_99969.html
It controls for factors such as marital status and if they had children. People objected to this though.
chigau:
Out of curiosity, are those comments safe to read?
Tomas C.
Go play.
The grown-ups are talking.
Tony!
youtube comments are NEVER safe to read.
ever
ever
never
ever
Fucking politifact. Sometimes….
The first link Tomas just sharted out has the following conclusion:
Their verdict on what Falk said was “False”. Because the 81 cents per dollar wasn’t “for the same job” and even though it is confirmed that women DO get paid less for doing the same job, that doesn’t matter because that was a different study than the one Falk was referring to.
Compare to Ted Cruz . Ted Cruz blathers about gun prosecution decreasing 30% under Obama. Politifact notes 1. this is only true because Cruz cherry picked the data to start from the year of the highest prosecution rate in the Bush administration and 2. it doesn’t matter because the president can’t really do much about that shit.
And ol’ Cruz-y gets only “Mostly False” for that bullshit. Falk is Completely False because she was considered wrong a technicality even if what she said reflects reality. While Cruz is only technically right, but makes a completely dishonest and wrong-headed argument that is completely detached from reality. And politifact prefers the latter to the former.
You might be able to trust politifact for the facts, but not for their assessments of them. Sometimes, they really fucking suck at that part.
Tomas @388:
How did you verify the information presented at your link?
chigau:
I thought *surely* this would be one of the times the comments section isn’t horrible. Le sigh.
What about the comments following cute animal videos?
I know, I know…
Tomas
Go fuck yourself. You aren’t smart enough to quibble about this shit. It is false or misleading in the same that saying “the Earth is a sphere” is false or misleading. It is true enough, accurate enough, and making it perfectly true would wind up just confusing the Low Information crowd. Like yourself, for instance.
You guessed wrong in this case.
What the fuck makes you think they’re false or misleading? Nothing. You’ve got literally nothing at all.
You don’t need to tell me that it was demonstrated, at length, how much of a clueless shitmonger you are. You still haven’t caught up to that fact. So will it now get even lengthier, or will you change the subject again? Or my favorite option: you decide to fuck off for a very long time.
@377 Tomas
We already fucking know that’s what your precious GOTH thought he was debunking.
Yes Tomas, there is a wage gap but it’s just due to mysterious “other factors” which have nothing whatsoever to do with discrimination. Because discrimination is always and only an individual making a conscious choice not to hire a qualified woman specifically because there’s a male applicant available. And I totally didn’t present you with evidence that employers do indeed consider women less hireable even given identical resumes to male applicants for the same fucking job. And there’s totally been nothing said cultural attitudes that unreasonably push qualified women out of higher paying fields. There’s been nothing said about women being unreasonably pushed into being the one who takes all the responsibility for missing work to take care of children and thus into jobs with lower pay and fewer hours. Nobody has said anything about fields becoming lower paying when there is a shift from being male dominated to female dominated and becoming higher paying when there is a shift from being female dominated to male dominated. And nobody has explained several fucking times how your numbers that supposedly debunk the wage gap were fucking rigged to produce the result. Nope. Nobody has said anything about any of these things. Nothing at all. And you know what? Even if we did, Tomas “I just never gave a moment’s thought to this shit before a few days ago” C. doesn’t see the connection so obviously we’re all wrong.
I guess expecting Tomas C to make even a cursory attempt at understanding the “evidence” he’s linking was too fucking much to ask.
Pompous little fuck.
Here’s a tip Tomas: Copy/pasta-ing from websites which use the word “liberal” as a pejorative isn’t going to get you very far here.
Since Tomas is bringing up that fucking article again that other people have already addressed, let’s take a different tact:
Meet the Author, everybody!
Blatant gibbertarian is blatant.
And the last few articles on his blag before he started contributing to other websites:
-Insisting that nothing bad will happen if Congress didn’t raise the debt ceiling and stopped borrowing, because government is totally analogous to a household in every respect.
-Blaming Adam Lanza on lack of religion, lack of discipline in school, and on a Nanny State.
-Argues that taking from the ridiculous wealthy in order to even the playing field, even the tiniest bit, is basically slavery.
-And finally, a whining diatribe about how this is RACIST.
Tomas sure knows how to pick some winners.
Tomas might as well be a spambot that only posts links or cut-and-pasted segments from Teh Great Libertarian and MRA Conglomerated Blogroll. Except that might be more useful and informative than poor Tomas.
Aw, what Tomas is ignoring me and running far, far away from reality.
Typical.
*yawn*
Tomas C.
What are your thoughts on UFOs?
chigau:
Ooooh, can I play?
Tomas C:
What are your thoughts on Ancient Aliens?
Tomas, what are your thoughts on the working of fucking magnets?
Tony!
This can only go to the bad.
—
Tomas C.
What about Jesus Toast?
Nessie?
Bigfoot?
Tide!
It goes in! It goes out! YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN THAT!
*snerk*
I do believe the pathetic sockpuppetting troll is baaaack.
Sooo… I know I’m a bad person when the house/garden starts obstructing me from doing things that are wrong? I don’t know. How does property, which is generally speaking inanimate and uncommunicative, hand down ideas of morality? Is it houses that magically acquire paint on their walls saying ‘murder is wrong’ or ‘don’t violate consent’? Flowers that grow in one’s garden in the shape of the words ‘respect everyone else and the environment’? Pets that start talking and telling you not to lie?
How does property give us a decent moral system? [spoiler: I’m pretty sure it can’t.]
Private property defines morality in that everything I lay eyes on is mine and suggesting that I share any of it is immoral. QED.
Sorry people, another big one.
@Tomas C #257
Firstly, apologies for my screw up last night. Here’s the reply:
1- Huzzah! More Hypotheticals! Don’t you have any real world examples?
2- What might those reasons be?
3- Why do you think a majority of women would preferr that?
4- Of course it’s fine. Whoever said it wasn’t?
5- Yes. Female-dominated fields are paid less than male-dominated fields. Women doing the same job as men are paid less. What is that if not discrimination? Do you have an alternative hypothesis which explains both of those facts?
6- Yes, they do. There’s a study linked to in the last paragraph of that story; a study which set out explicitly to prove that the wage gap wasn’t as big as people claimed managed, after correcting for education and experience, to prove that the gender wage gap was “only” 5% for women and men in comparable positions with comparable education and experience.
7- What factors, and how are they controlled? That information is highly relevant to any evaluation of the studies.
1+2- In what ways are they linked, and in what ways are they not? Be specific. You can’t just make a claim like that without demonstrating what you mean. And yes, I’m aware of the legal definition of discrimination, thanks. What exactly are you trying to prove? And again, no one said women being stay at home mothers is wrong.
3- Still not gonna tell me what you think then? Why not?
4+5+6- I am rapidly losing patience with this strange tendency of yours to disingenuously assume that we are talking about introducing new laws and “making things illegal”. No one has even suggested such a course of action, you are merely mentioning it as a weird way to avoid actually answering the question. Stop it.
– Yes, communism doesn’t work in the real world. The sky is also blue.
– The pressures enacted on you by the fact daddy wanted you to be a doctor are not at all what we’re talking about. Is that situation at all comparable to the disdain and general piss-taking that a male nurse gets just for being a man in a “women’s job”? Is it comparable to the shunning, disrespect and sexual harassment experienced by female computer programmers? No. They are not the sort of pressures we are talking about, and I think you know damn well that they are not. Stop being disingenuous.
Then you have not seen enough. I believe I already provided you a link to AVfM, did you read it? Did you read the comments?
Re. your link: Christina Hoff Sommers is a vehemently anti-feminist writer who is offended by contemporary feminism’s rejection of binary gender assumptions, instead insisting on a sort of “separate but equal” policy which the vast majority of feminists reject. Literally anything she writes on the matter must be taken with shovels full of salt. There’s also the fact you drawn an erroneous conclusion from that article: feminist groups asked why only male-dominated fields were receiving funding, and demanded some other female-dominated fields were added to the list. As you are hopefully aware, construction is not the only sector to suffer in the recession. This is not asking that funds be diverted from those industries at all.
However, I can agree with her that protesting a stimulus package which concentrates on important industries which were the most hard hit merely on the basis that they are male dominated is silly. I would have more sympathy for the objections, except that the women-dominated fields which were proposed as additions appear to have been mostly fields which have recently gained jobs without any need for a stimulus package. Yes, the protesters were wrong; I disagree with them vehemently. But now we have a new problem: I don’t really understand your point. What is that link supposed to prove?
Sarahface @410
It isn’t property that dictates morality, it’s the people who own the property who decide what’s moral. The more property one owns, the more moral one is. Bill Gates is the most moral person on Earth. A lowlife living a hand-to-mouth existence is automatically immoral because of no property. To paraphrase the gunnutz: “It’s not property which makes morals, it’s people with property who make morals.”
@Tomas C
Could I just say how funny I find it that the claim, from a woman, that women earn 81% the amount that men do for the same work is considered entirely false, yet the three claims from men that they earn 77% are only mostly false. Interesting, that.
Ok, so, full disclosure, I’m not in the right frame of mind to spend hours reading through links, sources and citations today. I could do it, but it’ll take far long because my attention span is pretty short at the moment. But even if I was at full source-checking power levels, honestly, I’m not particularly inclined to check your sources any more. So far, they’ve either been baseless, irrelevant, or contrary to what you’ve claimed.
This is bad skepticism, but I honestly don’t care today. If you were going to provide a useful source, surely you would’ve done so before now? I’m just going to dismiss “politifact” as nonsense. Why the fuck would any legitimate source have a “truth-o-meter” unless the point is just to look at that and thoughtlessly take their word for it?
Well at least you’re not explicitly sticking to “employer discrimination” there.
I might agree with most of those words, with a little edit, but that’s not the claim that you’ve been making over the last few days, and it’s certainly not the claim you’ve been supporting while sharing links that, while being devoid of supporting content, claim to debunk the “myth” that a wage gap even exists. I also suspect that you still think that a discriminative cause is based entirely in the employer’s actions, and that “other factors” encompasses everything outside of the employer/employee relationship, which would make “other factors” the wrong term, since there is discrimination outside of the employer as well, and even factors outside of the employer that are not blatantly discrimination may still have a discriminative basis.
So, no, since I do not trust that you mean what your words say, nor that you understand why I’m wary of imprecise statements, I can’t reasonably say that I agree with you.
@anteprepro, 400
Ok, I need to pay more attention to Jamie Foxx. That was awesome.
For the record, he doesn’t kill all of the white people in the film. Just 90% of them.
I wonder if Mr Kalahar also thinks the film’s portrayal of KKK members was racist?
@Seven of mine
You do understand the difference between saying the wage data is unclear as to how significant the effect of discrimination is and saying that there is no discrimination. its a distinction I’ve been making for some time now that just seems to go over your head every time I make it.
Nobody said that , not me or anyone else.
However this kind of discrimination is the one usually targeted by laws from politicans like the ones I cited above.
I don’t think you actually linked to it , but I’ve seen the study elsewhere and I agree.
And i totally did not I understood there were certain cultural attitudes. Maybe there are cultural attitudes as to why men would rather become a contruction worker than a nurse. We don’t know how many men choose not to be a nurse because they are following cultural mores and how many just didn’t like nursing work. We don’t know how many women prefer to be the primary caregiver or take more parental responsibility and how many were following cultural mores.
If what Sally said is true, in the majority of divorces the mother wants primary custody and the father doesn’t. What if in the majority of marriages the mother wants to spend more time with the children and work less hours and the father doesn’t? That’s what they say in surveys on work habits when asked about their ideal situations .
Someone said it but no-one provided any evidence. Where is the evidence for this shift in the relative value of labour in certain fields and the evidence it is due to discrimination and not due to other economic factors.
No you just asserted that unmarried , childless women were more career oriented than unmarried men. Of course unmarried, childless women are more likely to be career oriented than typical women , but you never provided any evidence they were more career oriented than typical men or work more hours than typical men or are more committed to career advancement than typical unmarried men. Noone explained to you why your reasoning was entirely faulty.
(I looked for studies.II didn’t find any on work hours or career importance for unmarried childless women. I found a few indicating women as a whole worked less on average than men and I think one indicated childless women worked more than women on average but still less then men with children and men without children)
No one at all explained that men on average work longer hours , work more overtime , work more dangerous jobs , commute more and have more qualifications on average than women.
Why would someone find that a group of people who on average work longer hours , work more overtime , work more dangerous jobs , commute more and have more qualification on average than another group to get paid more on average? I don’t know
I never explained that there were factors besides discrimination that could contribute to differences in wages.
and you know what’s worse. You seem to continually set up straw men.
What I said
“There is an earnings gaps between men and women, but it is unclear what percentage (if any) of this gap is due to discrimination and what percentage is due to other factors.”
Nothing you said shows what percentage it is .
USING YOUR LOGIC I can say there is widespread societal discrimination that is killing men. You see there are a lot of men who would rather be nurses , secretaries or schoolteachers , but societal attitudes say that dangerous jobs like soldiers , police officers , firefighters and construction workers are more manly jobs. These men who choose to enter these dangerous jobs . These men die in wars and at their workplace.
Sure people’s career choices are influenced by societal attitudes , but is this really discrimination? How many men would have chosen to be a nurse if attitudes were different? I don’t know. How many would still have chose to be a soldier if attitudes were different? I don’t know what the effects are and I say I don’t know because I’m intellectually honest.
Similarly I don’t know how many women would have chosen to be the primary caregivers if the attitudes were different and you haven’t produced any data saying how much it would be
How much of the earnings difference is due to discrimination, I don’t know and the data is unclear. If you control for certain factors the gap actually closes.
@consciousness razor
Saying that women get paid 77% less for the same work (as some of those guys were claiming) is blatantly false , because the data wasn’t comparing for the same work. Implying this gap is due solely to discrimination is either false or misleading , because the data indicates there are many other factors.
@Athywren #345
Only if he bothers to read them. So far, there seems to be no evidence that he has.
@Athyren
Politifact is pretty good. Political fact checking websites are pretty common in America. They just evaluate the claims politicans make about policy and such to hold them accountable. The point of having a truth-o-meter is that some claims about policy can be strictly true but highly misleading (like Ted Cruz’s point that antepropo cited) and some oughtright false.
I don’t think anyone was saying that an earnings gap doesn’t exist at all. I think they just feel it can be explained by other factors.
Yep, cupcake, it goes over your head, not ours.
No IF cupcake, you are one stupid person if you don’t check simple facts like that out. We do, which is why we laugh at you cupcake. Your stupidity and ignorance knows no bounds.
Oh, thanks for showing us your misogyny in black and white. More women graduate college these days than men. In the minority communities, the rate of women getting degrees and being the principal wage earner due to those degrees is increasing. Cupcake, you are spouting ignorance.
Nuff for now.
Tomas C, what do you really think you will accomplish with further blatherings? Based on your history, nothing but distortions of reality.
It is a false and misleading claim for Tomas C to be implying that he actually understands enough about the issues he is rambling about to be able to even recognize what a false or misleading claim is, in order to be able to have an expectation with respect to it.
Bwahahahahahahaha….!
If Tomas C actually had some credibility left to shoot, this howler would have shot the very last of it….
@Thumper
I think I’ll address some of your main points
Nice study!
I’m looking at it now. The study says that once it is adjusted for total compensation package (women tend to prefer better compensation packages while men prefer better wages) the gap is about 3.6%. This is a very small number. It might be accounted for by other factors like difference in work habits or differences in accounting for monetary value of compensation packages so I don’t think it would be wholly justified to conclude it due solely to discrimination. If politicians cited the 3.6% earnings gap it would be less of a problem.
And of course , if you and your friends want to write books or hold lectures encouraging women to split the parental responsibilities in their families differently or enter certain fields . That’s great! I agree.
If your not enacting any legal measures that’s great..
True. I wasn’t thinking about things like sexual harrasment. But that’s illegal. I’m all for eliminating sexual harrasment.
I don’t know Sommers’ ideology.( I saw this piece where Sommers completely destroyed this clueless feminist who thought Romulus and Remus were real historical figures and completely misrepresented the studies she cited ).
I think it was really that sometimes things feminists advocate hurt men and opposing feminists or some of the things they advocate isn’t necessarily sexist as people here are implying.
@Thumper, 412
In case Huffpo is dismissed as tainted by the liberal agenda, there’s also this one from Bloomberg View, which was one of the links cited in GOTH’s thorough and accurate debunking of the wage gap, which cites this study, showing a 5-7% gap, when comparing otherwise equal employees. Which is one reason why I don’t have a great deal of patience with Mr C at this point in time. If he would bother to read through that hellscape of a tumblr post that he dropped on us as if it would prove that there was no such thing as a wage gap, he would see that there is one even if we focus entirely of discrimination by employers and ignore all the other vectors of discrimination.
@Amphiox
man they’re just giving out pulitzer prizes for nothing these days huh?
Who the fuck cares what a stupid and morally bankrupt liberturd thinks…since they lack the ability to think, just sloganeer.
@Tomas C,
415
417
Thunderdome 45, Page 2, Comment 651
Which is it? It is unclear how much of an effect discrimination has, or does it not exist?
Do you not understand why simply changing the words you’re using, specifically if your new words leave a lot of room for interpretation, particularly if you never make a point of admitting that the previous statement was, in fact, wrong does not give people any reason to believe that you’ve changed your opinion?
@Athywren
Its just a difference in terminology really.
I was interpreting it to mean. “there is a loss of earnings women face due to discrimination”. That’s at least what I think GOTH was going for. Its clear you weren’t using it that way and I ewitched to your terminology.
@Tomas C #421
Probably sensible, the comments were reaching a silly length.
1- We’re talking about wage disparity, not total compensation. You’re moving the goal posts. But since you have moved them, could you explain what you mean by “total compensation package”? As in, give examples of what they recieve in place of actual wages which you feel justifies the reduction in wages?
2- Citations, please.
3- What? Please explain what you mean by this, I don’t follow.
4- We’re talking about differences in wages and compensation at positions of a comparable level with candidates of comparable education and experience. What else could be causing these discrepencies?
5- Are you saying that this whole time, your objection was that politicians have been using incorrect statistics? For a start, they haven’t; the 33% gap is between average salaries over the whole of the US, and they never once pretended any different. But my main issue is that if that was your problem, you never once made that clear.
This statement implies that you’re not all for eliminating those factors mentioned which are not illegal. You’re not in favour of changing the fact that male nurses are stigmatised and mocked for their profession? You’re not in favour of eliminating sexism in male-dominated professions? Why on Earth not?
Well now you do.
Some things advocated by some feminists do (or would) hurt men as a group. My issue is you seem to think that this reflects on feminism as a whole, and on every individual who calls themself a feminist. I’m not into ideological purity; to suggest that disagreeing with fellow feminists on some issues makes you not a feminist is as ludicrous as suggesting that disagreeing with Richard Dawkins on “Dear Muslima” makes you not an atheist. So no, disagreeing with some of the things advocated by some feminists isn’t sexist. Opposing feminism as a whole is by definition sexist, since the point of the movement is to achieve equality for women. Opposing equality for women by definition makes you a misogynist.
@Athywren
In the first post I was describing my own views and the latter 2 I was describing the views of GOTH/the people he linked to.
I haven’t really changed my opinion.
@Tomas C
Bullshit. That’s what the words in the middle of the screen are for. Little icons like the truth-o-meter are for telling people who don’t bother to read those words what to think – otherwise they’d be able to figure it out by reading them, wouldn’t they?
Who cares about YOUR opinion. You are trying to change ours, and that requires a modicum of solid academic evidence searched for say at:
http://scholar.google.com
That is where the evidence that back our learned views comes from, not propergander web sites.
@TomasC #428
… So you don’t believe it exists?
You seem to have some sort of aversion to giving a straight answer.
@Thumper
1- I was citing the study you referenced.
“We’re talking about wage disparity, not total compensation. You’re moving the goal posts. “
If that case we can say the difference in wages in largely due to how men and women prefer to negotiate their contracts and not discrimination. Is that the conclusion you want to reach? I don’t think that was what you were arguing.
2- There are documented differences in the working habits and preferences of women and men
eg
http://qz.com/149428/mens-overtime-hours-are-keeping-the-gender-pay-gap-alive/
Men are more likely to take overtime to help get more pay and move up the corparate ladder quickly
Women tend to prefer commute less too.
A man would be more likely to commute to a higher paying job rather than take a lower one to reduce commute time
3-Aren’t there differences in how you evaluate the monetary value of eg 1 week vs 2 weeks vacation?
4- Statistical noise , differences in working habits or temparements (see 2)
5- That was more how I saw the wage gap being presented, so naturally its what I was refuting
They do pretend. if you read the quotes in the links they say things like “for the same work” or “for the same job”
I personally feel that people shouldn’t get stigmatized for their career choices. If you want to try to convince people of your view that’s fine. Free specch and all.
Again , you’re really just defining feminism as ‘equality for women’. If you define it like that almost everyone agrees with it. If I define MRA as ‘equality for men’ then you’d have to agree with it too. In practice what people identify feminism with is the common claims made by prominent media feminists , just as you identify MRAs with the stuff they may say on their website. What people oppose is the common claims made by prominent media feminists , when they say they oppose feminists.
Sorry cupcake, YOUR definition has nothing to do with reality, as has been demonstrated to you several times. If you use that definition in an argument, you provide prima facie evidence you are nothing but a liar and bullshitter. Why don’t you just let it go? Or, like all liberturds, can’t accept you are wrong?
@Thumper
There are a couple questions wrapped up here.
1. Does discrimination exist at all?
2. Does it have a significant effect?
3. Does it employer discrimination have a significant effect that is measured by the 77% wage gap?
In order
1.. of course it exists
2. I don’t know. Data seems unclear. Probably does.
3. I don’t know. I’m inclined not to think so , because when you normalize for certain factors the wage gap seems to be largely accounted for. The data is definitely not clear on what effect employer discrimination has.
This is about the 12th time you’ve mentioned a feminist or feminists without naming them.
So who is this clueless feminist? Name them, or stand accused of lying. It would be cool if you could demonstrate that you’ve actually ever read ONE single genuinely feminist resource, but given your track record so far, that seems unlikely. You never seem to seek out information except from those sources guaranteed to support your biases.
With regards to pay gaps:
The numbers you’re referring to–77%, 81%, 95% gaps between overall pay between men and women–they are OVERALL.
If you compare, say, white men to black women, suddenly you’re looking at a pay gap more on the order of 55% to 65%. And if you look at the wealth gap–meaning comparing assets like houses, cars, stocks, bonds, and other investments, suddenly it’s mind-boggling.
I doubt any of your libertarian sources even make note of this. Looking at how the combination of race and gender affects lifetime income pretty much destroys the libertarian hypothesis that ending legal discrimination is sufficient to create equal conditions.
You say you haven’t changed your mind, Tomas. Why? You’re the one whose sources have been repeatedly either debunked or shown to not say what you claimed they said. If you haven’t changed your mind then I guess we can deduce that you don’t give a fuck about what’s true or not; you prefer your prejudices to reality.
That’s what it is, you disingenuous dipshit.
Feminism is necessary, and is defined as equality for women, because women have been treated as second-class citizens for most of our history. If MRAs were truly seeking equality, they’d be talking about what privileges and unfair disadvantages they receive due to being male that they’re looking forward to giving up.
@Tomas
No, I didn’t.
Funnily enough, this is what I actually said, nearly word for word. Which means that career oriented women are over-represented in the sample Nemko (or whatever his name is) used.
, but you never provided any evidence they were more career oriented than typical men or work more hours than typical men or are more committed to career advancement than typical unmarried men.
Possibly because I didn’t claim any of those things. What I said was that unmarried, childless men are not more career oriented than typical men.
The group consisting of unmarried, childless men is more representative of the average man than the group consisting of unmarried, childless women is of the average woman. So when you compare them, you’re comparing a group which is more or less representative of the average with a group which IS NOT representative of the average, i.e. you’re full of shit.
You mean you explained why you thought it was faulty.
So could I, you ignorant fuck. And I WOULD say that because it’s fucking true. Its just not an argument against feminism.
If it’s making them “choose” to do things with their life that aren’t what they want, then YES. Is it something you could sue someone for? Probably not. That doesn’t make it not discriminatory.
Obviously you can’t measure that with any accuracy because it requires self reporting. However when people who get surveyed cite these attitudes as reasons why they do or don’t choose certain fields, there’s no reason to not believe them.
Go fuck yourself. Sideways. Your entire stay on this blog has consisted of you speaking with authority about shit you have no understanding of and taking DAYS to concede that there might be the teenciest possibility that you don’t know as much as you think you do.
Blah.
These lines:
in my 437 should be in blockquotes.
Mah bad.
But people like catchy graphics and summaries. Also they can nail stupid neo-cons like this.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/feb/25/richard-durbin/dick-durbin-says-us-debt-track-fall-3-trillion-nex/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jan/24/louie-gohmert/texas-rep-louie-gohmert-says-40-years-ago-hardly-a/
Its awesome
You’re so totally NOT intellectually honest, Tomas. I find it amusing that you claim to be. It shows that you value that on some level. Too bad your actions don’t match your claimed value.s
@Seven of mine
I think we agree more than what you think we do.
I guess the point is , if there’s someone (regardless of gender) who’s more career-oriented and works more and is more devoted to their work , isn’t it fair they get paid more by their employers and get more promotions ? That’s a perfectly fair explanation for a gap.
@SallyStrange
Its a tangent but the exchange with Sommers is here
http://chronicle.com/article/Domestic-Violence-a/47940/
Sommers was really just taking someone to task for using poor scholarship and refusing to correct her errors. I’m not holding this against feminists though . I’m sure there are feminists who use poor scholarship as well as libertarians who use poor scholarship.
The wage gap was unrelated to the libertarian thing anyway. Thanks for the links though.
@Tomas
Only in the mind of a misogynist.
blockquotes y u gotta b liek dat?
Um no. None of those qualities you listed speaks to how well someone does their job. It also doesn’t speak to the fact, which you continue to ignore, that career-oriented women generally have to completely forego marriage and family while career-oriented men don’t. Being career-oriented doesn’t mean you never want kids. It just means career is higher on the to do list.
@Tomas C
No it isn’t. Even with your absolute best (well, not yours) figure-fiddling, the gap has been narrowed to 3.6%. That’s still statistically significant, and that’s after biased people have been selecting figures with the express aim of demonstrating that it’s not as big as claimed. So it’s clearly not accounted for by other factors, is it?
Do you not think it highly suspicious that, given the figures we have, all the people who are happen to be male?
Tomas STILL doesn’t understand how culture factors into what women are willing to state as their “ideals”? For fuck’s sake.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day…
Tomas C:
No, the wage gap continues to exist partly because of libertarian tendencies within the populace of the United States and some of the politicians of the US. And, in libertarian theory, the wage gap would magically disappear all by itself through the magic masturbatory hand of the free market. So yes, the wage gap and libertarianism are related.
1. Demonstrate that you understand the difference between a wage gap and a wealth gap.
2. The fact that YOU think that the persistent gap in wealth AND wages between various groups who have been subject to varying degrees of discrimination and disenfranchisement historically is unrelated to the weakness of libertarian politics does not mean that they are not related. It just means you’re not thinking things through.
3. Is this your way of claiming that it is NOT a libertarian position that the ending of legal blocks to equality is sufficient, and addressing cultural/societal sources of inequality is wasteful/unnecessary? Because is definitely IS a libertarian position–that’s the reason libertarians love Hoff Sommers so much–and it also seems to be YOUR position vis-a-vis the wage gap. Whoops. There’s Tomas, showing his ass again!
The fact that you’re not embarrassed by your performance here speaks poorly of your perception skills.
Clearly, people of color HATE careers and working. Right, Tomas?
@Tomas C #432
How? If you’re talking about straight wages then I can’t see how you can argue that at all. You could possibly argue that if you specifically include compensation packages, but then you have to explain why women tend to want that and men prefer a straight wage.
Why?
Why?
Why?
I may be coming across as a little childish here, but you keep quoting these statistics without, apparently, ever stopping to wonder why that might be the case.
How on earth does this answer my question?
Good! Now, what should we do to stop such stigmatising from happening?
Nope. Feminism is the belief that women as a group are generally disadvantaged in our current society, and this ought not to be the case. Feminist activism is attempts to bring this to the attention of society in general, and to do something to change it.
So you never did follow that link to AVfM, then.
No I wouldn’t, because that definition is contingent upon the idea that men as a group are generally disadvantaged or oppressed by our current system, which clearly isn’t the case.
I identify MRAs with the stuff I have seen them do and heard them say, which appear to form unifying theories for the movement. I don’t pick one thing I’ve heard one MRA say and assume that it’s indicative of the group as a whole.
Off the top of your head, name one prominent media feminist and a viewpoint they have ppublicly espoused which you find objectionable. Then demonstrate that it is a wideheld view amongst self-professed feminists.
On politifact: It IS generally pretty good, relatively unbiased, and finds the relevant facts on any given issue damn well. It is BAD at finding important shit to fact check and it is sometimes BAD at weighing the actual facts and determining just exactly how wrong the statement they fact checked was. And I suspect that they attempt to over-compensate due to claims of Librul Bias.
That’s about $50,000 over 40 years.
Pft. Who wants to be president anyway, right?
Sorry, my reply is a line from this:
@SallyStrange
Exactly. It’s a smaller number, but it’s hardly statistically insignificant. Let’s say you have two people, one a man, one a woman, in the same position, with comparable education, and comparable experience. The man get’s paid $110,000 dollars a year. 3.6% of that is $3, 960 dollars a year. The woman is being paid almost $4000 dollars less a year for doing the same work. And that’s with the incredibly generous numbers presented by Tomas.
Even with those incredibly generous numbers, the woman is still being paid significantly less than the man at higher positions.
@Thumper
IDK. There are a lot of things about human psychology and preferences we don’t understand. Ask Stephen Pinker.
Didn’t you ask if there were differences in how we evaluate compensation.
IDK
That’s why I said ‘almost’.
Why if you think men are generally disadvantaged in certain institutions like eg the penal system and want to bring this to light?
Maybe you should stop and think about the things you don’t know. The fact that you don’t know doesn’t mean that nobody does, Tomas. Shocking, I know.
Tomas is very selective about when his actual ignorance on a subject leads to him actually clamming the fuck up.
Tomas, if you wise enough to be quiet like this on every subject you were ignorant about, we wouldn’t be having these arguments.
Oh, BTW, that $50,000 figure over 40 years was based on a $40,000 annual salary, which is about the median income in the US.
Tomas C
I ask you again, what is it that you hope to achieve here? You came in to argue for libertarianism and got a thrashing, to the point where you say that you’re reconsidering it. Why are you now defending, equally hard, something you know just as little about, using the very same ‘sources’ that we’ve been demolishing for the past several days? What is your endgame here?
Gee, why is the penal system always mentioned by MRA fuckwits? Typical non-sequiturs. Maybe if the “macho male” isn’t seen as one doing stupid things that hurt themselves and other people, they wouldn’t be in the penal system in the first place.
So, at that median income level, even that tiny wage gap that Tomas can’t explain away could be the difference between, say, having a decent retirement fund or being able to buy a house–which goes back to the wealth gap I was talking about, which Tomas is assiduously ignoring. Natch.
@Tomas C #459
So your answer to literally every single one of my questions is “I don’t know”, and yet you still feel qualified to discuss this issue? Try actually thinking about those questions for a minute. See if you can’t come up with some answers.
[bolding mine]
General, what the fuck does it mean?
Tomas C @459 you are shockingly ignorant. That’s really all I can say.
See here’s the thing: When you just wave off the meaning and value behind statistics as “IDK” you betray the utter shallowness of your knowledge and intellectual rigeur. You got schooled on Libertarianism and claim to be “rethinking” it, and why? Because your knowledge of Libertarianism and the world was utterly shallow and devoid of intellectual rigeur. Now you’re breathing stupid Misogynist talking points and demonstrate yet more things in which you have only a shallow understanding and lack intellectual rigeur.
As for specific points…
List them. Explain them. Justify why “differences in how we evaluate compensation” make okay the fact women are paid less than men.
Hey fun fact, you know who really are the allies of men who receive unfair sentences or are harmed by toxic masculinity for being “unmanly”? Feminists. Not the MRA brigade, Manboobz (google it) has shown over and over that people who self-identify as MRAs are less interested in helping men than in trying to hurt women. The feminist ideal is of equality between the sexes, something that would equalize things like the penal system.
Tomas, you cannot discuss men’s interaction with the criminal justice system without addressing race issues in America, and I’m positive you’re completely unprepared for that conversation. I’d bet money that you don’t even understand the difference between “prejudice” and “racism.”
You either don’t know, which does nothing for you; or else you do know, and you’re using it to explain this. You can’t have it both ways.
Even if he thought there were relevant psychological differences, he would not claim it’s therefore okay if people are treated unfairly. Whatever his faults, he’s not a complete asshole like you. Much of The Blank Slate was spent arguing against exactly the kind of bullshit you’re trying to pull right here. If I had a copy on hand, I’d give you page numbers. So he’s effectively been asked already, despite the fact that you’re fucking clueless (and/or dishonest) about this subject as well. So you still have nothing.
@Kagehi, 370ish
There were no Republicans at the first or second founding of the US. There were Whigs. The whigs opposed the democrats but weren’t institutionally capable of surviving the peri-Civil War era. The Republicans were created as a home for the abolitionists in the 1850s. They were present for the re-founding of the US post-Civil War (which some call the 2nd founding, but is in reality the 3rd).
Your analysis isn’t too far off, but don’t make the mistake of assuming that the Whigs and the Republicans are the same party.
@Tomas C, 415:
You do understand the difference between saying the only rational explanation we have left for the wage gap is discrimination and saying the only rational explanation we have left for the wage gap is employers twisting handlebar mustaches and chortling, “Again! I get to deny a qualified woman a promotion in favor of an unqualified man again! Bwahahahahhahaha!”
Discrimination != Overt discrimination by employers
This is a distinction we have all been making for some time now that just seems to go over your head every time we make it.
Stop being a douche gabber and making up words and concepts to insert into others’ writings.
Stop insisting that people who want discrimination to end want to jail people who don’t make the same choices as the people who want discrimination to end.
Stop insisting that discrimination = employers overtly choosing to hire/fire/promote/pay based on legal sex or perceived gender.
When I say a ladder, I don’t mean a ladder on a fire truck. I mean a ladder – it’s inclusive of ladders on fire trucks, but not limited to ladders on fire trucks.
You’re being a douche gabber in this thread. Stop it. The fact that you can douche gab all you want in Thunderdome without actually being banned is no reason to go ahead and do it.
@omnicrom
Thank you! It’s nice to know someone got it, even if Tomas didn’t.
Actually, that’s inaccurate. I think Tomas got my point, he just couldn’t be bothered to explain properly, or has such a shallow and ineffective knowledge of the point he’s trying to make that he couldn’t explain properly.
@Sally Strange, 468:
I’d bet money on Tomas C not understanding the difference if the payout was only 1 per 100 bet.
Increasing my cash on hand by 1% = $6.
Taking the piss out of Tomas C’s arrogant ignorance? Priceless.
@Thumper, 471:
Or?
@468 SallyStrange
Oh my giddy aunt, don’t put that idea into his head. I’ve had insufferable conversations on that point with people who were far less ignorant than Tomas.
@Tomas C
Once you adjust for other factors, the remaining number can be explained away by other factors… yup, perfect sense.
Difference in work habits was already accounted for in reaching the 13% number, and value of compensation packages was accounted for in reaching the 3.6% number so they cannot then be invoked to explain the 3.6% away.
3.6 is a very small number. 3.6% is not, although it can be made to look small if you only look at the small scale. It can also be made to look massive. Do you know what 3.6% of the world’s population is? It’s about 252 million people, about three quarters of the current population of America. 3.6% adds up over time. It isn’t insignificant.
If we assume that the wage gap between equivalent employees is 13%, and that adjusting for all other factors reduces it to 3.6%, then the amount of the wage gap that is determined by the employer is about 28% of the total gap between equivalent employees. That is of course, assuming that none of the decisions for women’s pay to be replaced by the benefits of child care and parental leave are made by them employer without consulting with the employee – it’s entirely possible that employers simply assume that women will need parental leave by default, but it would be necessary to see the full study to determine if that’s known – so it’s probably more accurate to say that at least around 28% of the total gap between equivalent employees is determined by the employer. I dunno. I sense a degree of clarity there.
So what? That people like catchy graphics doesn’t change the fact that using catchy graphics and one or two word summaries to distract people from the actual facts doesn’t make them credible.
You really need to stop saying things like that. All that it shows is that you’re not listening.
Seeing that studies which aim to disprove the wage gap cannot bring it lower than 3.6% or 5-7% doesn’t give you pause in asserting that who works more explains the gap fairly? I thought you said you were intellectually honest.
@Thumper, 453
There’s also the point that the idea of opposing equalities demonstrates a lack of understanding regarding the term equal. When I’m weighing pasta and balance the pasta against the weights, I do not then have to make sure that the weights are also balanced against the pasta – they just are. It’s practically tautological that, if one group is equal, then the opposite group is also equal, at least as far as when we’re talking about binary equality.
And we’ve also seen activists who have an interest in the rights of men who do not fall into that movement, nor buy into those theories, and explicitly reject the MRA label because of the fact that, as was pointed out to him yesterday, MRAs are a very specific group of people with a very misleading name akin to the American Family Association, or the English Defence League. (Why, yes, I’m sure there are plenty of people who think that England should be defended against external threats who aren’t xenophobic racists. They’re also quite explicitly not members of the EDL.)
@CripDyke #473
And/Or?
@Athywren #474
Agree completely, but I thought that would have been a bit deep for Tomas.
Indeed. Allie Fogg springs to mind. I don’t agree with every stance he takes, but I think it’s fair to say that he fights for men’s rights without being an MRA, and I know he explicitly disavows the label.
Hell, I have an interest in the rights of men, in so far as there are very specific circumstances in which men are at some sort of disadvantage (Tomas mentioned the prison system earlier) which I’d like to see rectified. I don’t see that as at all inimical to feminism, nor feminism as inimical to that goal, and there’s no way in hell I’d ever identify with the MRM.
*#475, sorry.
Argh..! No, the overton window line looked nothing like that, but.. yeah, I keep forgetting which post systems have what limitations (much like card readers at stores, no two are alike, and some screw up so badly you forget what you are doing every time). The ones here are… almost totally sane, which is, of course, why I keep forgetting to use what actually bloody works, all of the rest of them being a pain in the ass. lol
Still, close enough.
Yeah, see, that is part of the problem. I can count the number of “Democrats” that are actually qualified, by their actual policies and decisions, to call themselves, never mind any one else doing so, “liberal” without even having to take off my shoes and start using toes to count them, if you get my meaning…
Sure but, to be fair, it’s entirely possible to count to 1023 on your fingers… 59,048 in fact, though ternary is difficult at the best of times, never mind when you’re dealing with knuckles.
@thumper
But the thing is many people accept quality for women but reject feminism. For example writers like Clenora Hudson-Weems , and this woman on youtube reject feminism and common feminist teachings.
You shoudl consider different views of feminism.
If feminism merely entail equality for women and equal pay for equal work , then I’m a hardcore feminist. `
@SallyStrange
You’d lose that bet
@Athywen
Does their Pulitzer prize and their meticulous journalism make them plausible?
Sorry if we don’t take your word for that unevidenced assertion.
Non-sequitur. Anybody can go off the deep end on any subject. Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner Linus Pauling believed high doses of vitamin C helped stave off colds. Not proven by real research. So writing one good article doesn’t mean this one isn’t trash.
@SallyStrange
He was asking completely unrelated questions that I didn’t care to investigate. There studies on why some poeple don’t like commutes and how often people in groups work overtime , but it isn’t really relevant.
@Dalilama
I’m not using the same sources. You guys didn’t demolish anything. You brought up a bunch of objections , some of which I think were kind of strong .I’m not really defending anything. I’m just criticising the assertion that the wage gap tells us meaningful information about employer discrimination.
482
Tomas C.
1.) WTF is it with you and youtube?
2.) Girlwriteswhat. Seriously? You’re linking to Girwritieswhat?
3.) Oh, believe me we’ve discussed her and other chill girls. Google that fucking shit, idiot.
483
Tomas C
Prove it. No, wait, don’t. You haven’t even admitted you were wrong about those bills yet. Hmmmmmmmm?
Just going to think I’m going to let you skate away from that, think again.
Oh, and can you cut the sexist shit and actually name a feminist for once? You kept referencing specific feminist but instead treat them as other. No, instead of linking just keep posting links to their detractors. Don’t want to show you’re work? Have you actually visited, read or listened to an actual feminist or do you just stay in your little ignorant privileged bubble? Giving assholes page hits because you’re trolling?
At this point, I’m just waiting for the ban since you keep repeating the same shit and refuse to listen and learn.
Tomas C:
Well? I’m waiting. Prove her (and me, bc I’m fairly certain, based on your comments, that you have no idea what the difference is) wrong.
Define-in your words-‘prejudice’ and ‘racism’.
(woo-hoo! It’s time to shift the discussion to another topic you will demonstrate monumental levels of ignorance about!)
In my experience, there are really only two types of people who claim to accept equality and explicitly reject feminism.
There are people who actually accept equality, but who believe the anti-feminist propaganda spread by MRAs and the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
Then there are people who don’t accept equality, but who understand that modern western society tends not to support people who overtly oppose equality and human rights. These are the people who totally accept equality!! But they think it’s awfully bigoted of gay people to want to force poor little Christian priests to perform their weddings at gunpoint. They’re the people who totally accept equality!! But want atheists to be recognised for the hateful terrorists who threaten global security and morality that they are. They totally accept equality!! But don’t you think feminism is going too far when it’s trying to subjugate men? They’re transparent people using transparent tactics, but apparently people still fail to see through them.
There are other people who support equality and aren’t feminists, of course, but that’s not the same as explicitly rejecting it. They tend to be people who think that feminism was a good thing, but that it has succeeded in accomplishing its goals and is no longer relevant. Wouldn’t that be nice?
@JAL
I’ve never heard of girlwriteswhat. But according to her tvtropes page feminists seem to hate her
She’s already won that bet.
You’ve ALREADY demonstrated with your postings here that you do not comprehend the difference between those terms at a level required to properly use them in conversation and debate.
It matters not if you can or cannot regurgitate the different dictionary definitions of those terms.
@Jal, 487
That’s what I thought too, but no, it’s someone called dawnofcha0s… name rings a bell, but nothing’s coming to mind about her.
You linked to her youtube video. Is this the level of scrutiny you apply to all your citations?
You seriously think tvtropes is a valid and viable resource for anything other than fiction?
Clearly, I just won it; if you were doing anything but bullshitting here, you’d have explained by now exactly what you think that difference is.
Girlwriteswhat justifies and excuses domestic violence. You really want to cite her as someone whose perspective is worth considering? No fucking thank you.
Also, there’s nothing “mere” about ensuring gender equality and pay equity. Getting there is going to require, at the least, a Constitutional amendment and comprehensive changes in education and basic cultural values.
Some reason there’s no title or header for the video. I don’t know what the fuck happened to youtube since I last went. Well, doesn’t matter since I don’t use it anyways.
After expanding the about portion for that video I found this:
So, just one of her chill girl followers. That’s a downgrade from just linking to her. Another asshole that thinks DV is totes okay is not going to fucking fly here.
And seriously, THAT’S how you’re going to respond to me Thomas? That’s it? Way to fucking dodge you dishonest fuckstain.
You linked to her youtube video. Is this the level of scrutiny you apply to all your citations?
Yeah, he didn’t cite girlwriteswhat, he cited dawnofcha0s.
…they do look a little similar, but I’m pretty sure they’re different people.
@Sallystrange
I did not cite girlwriteswhat . It was a completely different former feminist youtuber.
They look nothing alike !!!!!
According to tvtropes I think you may be misrepresenting her views on domestic violence. It seems she believes domestic violence is wrong but just wants the domestic violence laws reformed.
prejudice is a combination of unfounded beliefs and irrational fear
racism is a combination of prejudice and institutional power.
Ah, well. Ew.
Still a different person, though. Even if the ideas coming through are only technically coming from a different source.
497
Tomas C.
Well excuse me if I don’t memorize and categorize women by their looks. Here’s a hint: we don’t spend our time on fucking youtube. And I’ve already fucking clarified the issue. Just going to keep ignoring me asshole?
Yeah, you’re just SO honest and full of integrity.
Are you fucking kidding me?!?! Idiot. Motherfucking idiot. There’s no hope for you. Even googling for you and you clicking a link is too much for you to handle.
Try these posts: Here there’s even a video!! and this one is just light reading. Very short, should be enough for a middle schooler to handle.
You going to hand wave away HER statement of “Women should be terrorized by their men; it’s the only thing that makes them behave better than chimps.” HMMMMMMMM?