I'm immediately reminded of Transplanted Lawyer's Tennessee Taxonomy; the "deserving versus undeserving poor" seems like an example of applying Labor Class values to Entitlement Class people.
This seems like the equivalent of those arcades where, instead of putting quarters into the games, you get a "points card" and you slide the points card through a slot.
The idea being that, if one "play" costs 147 points, and you get 202 points for each dollar you spend, you're less likely to realize that you just spent seventy-five cents to play "Pac-Man".
"Someone deliberately wasting their company’s money to do deals with friends instead of whatever would be the best for their company is called a ‘Breach of Fiduciary Duty’ against the company they are employed for, and is a type of fraud."
I know my friend. I know he'll do a good job (or, at least, an acceptable job) on this thing. How is it a Breach Of Fiduciary Duty for me to give work to someone I know will do it properly? Indeed, wouldn't stockholders prefer a low-risk option to some fly-by-night guy who's never done anything before claims he can do it in half the time for half the cost?
"I guess Iraq and Afghanistan are not enough. We need to go to war now with Libya as well. We never learn, do we?"
I'm thinking more like Kosovo, here.
Which, as O'Rourke put it, "the lesson the world learned from Kosovo was that if a government commits genocide on its own people, the US will show up six months later and bomb the country next to where it happened."
...didn't Wickard v. Filburn establish the appropriate legal response to an artisan who fabricates products for his own use which he might have bought in a store?
Define "overpay". "overpay based on the best possible price that anyone could possibly have negotiated the seller down to" isn't exactly a blistering indictment of Saturn's predatory sales policies.
I do think it's funny how the argument is "power has grown too concentrated, the only possible response is for whatever power's left to be further concentrated!"
"When lumber operations began, people would put out the fires as soon as they began."
Near where I live, in Santa Cruz, environmentalists have declared brush-clearing to have "severe environmental impact", and have sued on multiple occasions to stop it happening. Because, y'know, it's the environemnt, and people are doing things to it, and that's bad and stuff. The result, as you describe, is huge fires that burn people's houses down and wipe out thousand-year-old redwood groves.
The local corporations and property owners would be quite happy to engage in brush-clearing, which would protect the value of their property.
****
This analogy dovetails neatly with yours. Financial regulatory activity could be seen as brush-clearing activity. And, during the run-up to the Great Financial Crisis, it was decided that clearing away those brushes had a serious environmental impact, because some of those "brushes" were loans made so that poor people could buy houses. However, there was *also* the assumption that the forest's owners would do an okay job clearing the brushes themselves, and the government didn't need to go poking its nose into things.
"When I write an article...it goes on to the guy who gets paid for it who makes it real. You can’t cut him out of the loop, because he knows the industry, and knows what the places he’s sending it on to want. "
What if the place I'm sending it to is the readers themselves? What if the people doing my advertising are also my customers? What if there is no middleman?
"So, is there any way a person from the in-group could respond to this question, other than saying what the critics want to hear..."
To go by what we see in the racism discussions, no, there isn't any answer that the out-group's designated representatives would consider acceptable other than "I'm a despicable bigot".
The racial argument is entirely relevant to this discussion, because when you change "academia" to "workplace", and "conservative ideology" to "black", you get exactly the same arguments. For both sides. "cultural attitudes" and "irreconcilable philosophical differences" and "it doesn't really exist" and "just work harder you lazy scuts", versus "unconscious privilege" and "in-group versus out-group" and "gatekeepers".
Indeed, when you say...
"But this presupposes that a) the case against non-conservative bias has been made (it hasn’t), b) that the data in question cannot be accounted for by factors restricted to the out-group itself (which you haven’t refuted), and c) circularly uses the unexplained raw data as proof that ‘there is a problem’, even tho ‘the problem’ hasn’t been explicated. Apparently, this is a serious issue simply because conservatives say it is, and as a result, non-conservatives in the academy must address it. All this without so much as a coherent argument yet made."
...this sounds exactly like the arguments people make in every 'White Privilege' discussion. Bias doesn't exist, you haven't proven that bias exists, it's only an issue because you're acting like there is one, and even if there *is* a problem then it's your own fault.
"Unfortunately, everybody wants to be an author. I’m not sure everyone wants to be an editor."
I'm not sure that we'll have the choice anymore, simply due to the march of technology.
We don't have draftsmen at our engineering firm. We don't have special document-handling workers, either. Improved tools make drafting and configuration control simple enough that the engineers now do them by themselves. Does this mean that they spend less than 100% of their time doing engineering? Sure, but the overall savings mean that everyone comes out ahead.
"Career editor at a big publishing firm" and "author who does nothing but jam handwritten pages into a telex" are jobs that will end up in the same place as things like "switchboard operator"; a job which was very important at a very specific point in time, and now that point in time is over. I hate saying "outdated business model" because it gives me the idea of some snotty teenager explaining why he shouldn't have to pay for Linkin Park's latest single, but...well, there it is.
"The conclusion I come to is that conservatives aren’t determining their policy beliefs as logical consequences of a (static) set of first principles, nor are they shaping their policy views by looking at the evidence, nor are they constrained in their beliefs by a minimal standard of rational consistency. They make up their beliefs as they go, without any rational constraints whatsoever. And they stick to em."
This isn't a joke, right? This is supposed to be serious, right? The irony is too thick for me to believe that you aren't taking the piss here.
Do authors need the services that publishing houses currently provide? Sure!
Are publishing houses the only way to get those services? No.
*****
Incidentally, at first it was "nobody will ever do e-books".
Then it was "nobody will ever seriously do e-books".
Then it was "nobody will ever make money from e-books".
Then it was "nobody will ever make lots of money from e-books".
Now it's "people are making lots of money from e-books but it won't last."
What's next?
Or, to put it another way, if there are more conservative academics, then it will be less common for liberal academics to assume that a conservative person's disagreeable positions are the result of ill-education or unintelligence.
"The questions seems quite straightforward. How do we correct it? With the very form of action they most despise, the form their thinkers most viciously oppose. "
So you assume that the only possible way to correct a discrepancy is through quotas? That's a surprisingly simplistic solution coming from an intellectual.
That is, of course, assuming that you're seriously discussing the issue and not just trolling, and I'm kind of starting to wonder about that.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Playing God with the Poor”
I'm immediately reminded of Transplanted Lawyer's Tennessee Taxonomy; the "deserving versus undeserving poor" seems like an example of applying Labor Class values to Entitlement Class people.
On “Happy April Fools Day”
San Jose *did* ban Happy Meal sales. It's not particularly gullible to believe that other places might do the same thing.
On “A few Questions on Local Currencies”
This seems like the equivalent of those arcades where, instead of putting quarters into the games, you get a "points card" and you slide the points card through a slot.
The idea being that, if one "play" costs 147 points, and you get 202 points for each dollar you spend, you're less likely to realize that you just spent seventy-five cents to play "Pac-Man".
On “Got the I Don’t Know Where I’m Going, But I’m Going Somewhere in a Hurry Blues”
Incidentally, Hocking recently signed a deal with a publishing house.
So, I guess, there we are.
On “Why don’t we treat free trade like global warming?”
Plenty of economists "saw the coming of the GFC", etcetera. They were ignored.
On “Dungeons & Dragons”
Oh crap, here comes a G/N/S flamewar...
On “Free Market as Forest”
"Someone deliberately wasting their company’s money to do deals with friends instead of whatever would be the best for their company is called a ‘Breach of Fiduciary Duty’ against the company they are employed for, and is a type of fraud."
I know my friend. I know he'll do a good job (or, at least, an acceptable job) on this thing. How is it a Breach Of Fiduciary Duty for me to give work to someone I know will do it properly? Indeed, wouldn't stockholders prefer a low-risk option to some fly-by-night guy who's never done anything before claims he can do it in half the time for half the cost?
On “The US prepares for war with Libya”
"I guess Iraq and Afghanistan are not enough. We need to go to war now with Libya as well. We never learn, do we?"
I'm thinking more like Kosovo, here.
Which, as O'Rourke put it, "the lesson the world learned from Kosovo was that if a government commits genocide on its own people, the US will show up six months later and bomb the country next to where it happened."
On “Objects and Animals”
You're right that it's necessary to consider food animals as non-beings for us to countenance killing and eating them.
Fortunately, humans have always been good at "othering".
On “Free Market as Forest”
...didn't Wickard v. Filburn establish the appropriate legal response to an artisan who fabricates products for his own use which he might have bought in a store?
"
Define "overpay". "overpay based on the best possible price that anyone could possibly have negotiated the seller down to" isn't exactly a blistering indictment of Saturn's predatory sales policies.
"
I do think it's funny how the argument is "power has grown too concentrated, the only possible response is for whatever power's left to be further concentrated!"
"
"When lumber operations began, people would put out the fires as soon as they began."
Near where I live, in Santa Cruz, environmentalists have declared brush-clearing to have "severe environmental impact", and have sued on multiple occasions to stop it happening. Because, y'know, it's the environemnt, and people are doing things to it, and that's bad and stuff. The result, as you describe, is huge fires that burn people's houses down and wipe out thousand-year-old redwood groves.
The local corporations and property owners would be quite happy to engage in brush-clearing, which would protect the value of their property.
****
This analogy dovetails neatly with yours. Financial regulatory activity could be seen as brush-clearing activity. And, during the run-up to the Great Financial Crisis, it was decided that clearing away those brushes had a serious environmental impact, because some of those "brushes" were loans made so that poor people could buy houses. However, there was *also* the assumption that the forest's owners would do an okay job clearing the brushes themselves, and the government didn't need to go poking its nose into things.
On “Got the I Don’t Know Where I’m Going, But I’m Going Somewhere in a Hurry Blues”
"When I write an article...it goes on to the guy who gets paid for it who makes it real. You can’t cut him out of the loop, because he knows the industry, and knows what the places he’s sending it on to want. "
What if the place I'm sending it to is the readers themselves? What if the people doing my advertising are also my customers? What if there is no middleman?
On “Fleshing out the University (Pt .4)”
"So, is there any way a person from the in-group could respond to this question, other than saying what the critics want to hear..."
To go by what we see in the racism discussions, no, there isn't any answer that the out-group's designated representatives would consider acceptable other than "I'm a despicable bigot".
On “State Dept Spokesman: Bradley Manning’s Treatment “Ridiculous and Counterproductive and Stupid.””
"...what is being done to him is about the opposite of humane treatment."
A prisoner declares his intention to commit suicide. Is it humane to leave him his pants, socks, underwear, shirt, and belt?
On “Fleshing out the University (Pt .4)”
The racial argument is entirely relevant to this discussion, because when you change "academia" to "workplace", and "conservative ideology" to "black", you get exactly the same arguments. For both sides. "cultural attitudes" and "irreconcilable philosophical differences" and "it doesn't really exist" and "just work harder you lazy scuts", versus "unconscious privilege" and "in-group versus out-group" and "gatekeepers".
Indeed, when you say...
"But this presupposes that a) the case against non-conservative bias has been made (it hasn’t), b) that the data in question cannot be accounted for by factors restricted to the out-group itself (which you haven’t refuted), and c) circularly uses the unexplained raw data as proof that ‘there is a problem’, even tho ‘the problem’ hasn’t been explicated. Apparently, this is a serious issue simply because conservatives say it is, and as a result, non-conservatives in the academy must address it. All this without so much as a coherent argument yet made."
...this sounds exactly like the arguments people make in every 'White Privilege' discussion. Bias doesn't exist, you haven't proven that bias exists, it's only an issue because you're acting like there is one, and even if there *is* a problem then it's your own fault.
On “State Dept Spokesman: Bradley Manning’s Treatment “Ridiculous and Counterproductive and Stupid.””
A State wonk taking an opportunity to shit on the DoD? Well, I never.
On “Got the I Don’t Know Where I’m Going, But I’m Going Somewhere in a Hurry Blues”
"Unfortunately, everybody wants to be an author. I’m not sure everyone wants to be an editor."
I'm not sure that we'll have the choice anymore, simply due to the march of technology.
We don't have draftsmen at our engineering firm. We don't have special document-handling workers, either. Improved tools make drafting and configuration control simple enough that the engineers now do them by themselves. Does this mean that they spend less than 100% of their time doing engineering? Sure, but the overall savings mean that everyone comes out ahead.
"Career editor at a big publishing firm" and "author who does nothing but jam handwritten pages into a telex" are jobs that will end up in the same place as things like "switchboard operator"; a job which was very important at a very specific point in time, and now that point in time is over. I hate saying "outdated business model" because it gives me the idea of some snotty teenager explaining why he shouldn't have to pay for Linkin Park's latest single, but...well, there it is.
On “Fleshing out the University (Pt .4)”
"The conclusion I come to is that conservatives aren’t determining their policy beliefs as logical consequences of a (static) set of first principles, nor are they shaping their policy views by looking at the evidence, nor are they constrained in their beliefs by a minimal standard of rational consistency. They make up their beliefs as they go, without any rational constraints whatsoever. And they stick to em."
This isn't a joke, right? This is supposed to be serious, right? The irony is too thick for me to believe that you aren't taking the piss here.
"
It must be so nice to live in a world where all of your opponents are retards.
On “Got the I Don’t Know Where I’m Going, But I’m Going Somewhere in a Hurry Blues”
Do authors need the services that publishing houses currently provide? Sure!
Are publishing houses the only way to get those services? No.
*****
Incidentally, at first it was "nobody will ever do e-books".
Then it was "nobody will ever seriously do e-books".
Then it was "nobody will ever make money from e-books".
Then it was "nobody will ever make lots of money from e-books".
Now it's "people are making lots of money from e-books but it won't last."
What's next?
On “Fleshing out the University (Pt .4)”
Or, to put it another way, if there are more conservative academics, then it will be less common for liberal academics to assume that a conservative person's disagreeable positions are the result of ill-education or unintelligence.
"
"It seems your argument at this point simply reduces accepting polling data that indicates very few conservatives in certain disciplines.
Now, that may be true, but why is it a problem?"
It's a problem for the exact same reason that "there are very few female executives in certain industries" is a problem.
"
"The questions seems quite straightforward. How do we correct it? With the very form of action they most despise, the form their thinkers most viciously oppose. "
So you assume that the only possible way to correct a discrepancy is through quotas? That's a surprisingly simplistic solution coming from an intellectual.
That is, of course, assuming that you're seriously discussing the issue and not just trolling, and I'm kind of starting to wonder about that.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.