I think the people that are complaining the most about inequality at airlines are people who have to travel a lot by air for work or other reasons but have to take economy for one reason or another. Not everybody works for an employer that could afford to put them in first or business class. Its this class of frequent flyer that also complains about security theater at airports.
Most people travel by air, at most, for one trip a year. If you have to fly by air only for one trip a year than your really going to be most concerned by cost and safety rather than comfort. This is especially true if your paying for a family vacation and want to keep it affordable. These people favor cheap seats over comfort and do not mind security theater because they don't have to travel that much.
Are the first and business class seats really subsidizing the economy seats? I've seen this asserted several times but I have never seen it demonstrated with numbers. I'm not saying its not true but I'd like to see some evidence for this proposition beyond a mere assertion. I
I also think that airlines can do certain things that would make the flying experience seem more fair and egalitarian withotu actually having to do anything about the amenities offered in different classes. Chaning the bording procedure would ease a lot of the bad feelings. Currently, people with special needs and small kids plus different classes of privileged passengers get to board first. If the airline companies decided to board from the back of the plane to front of the plane, making first and business class passengers wait their turn, a lot of people would feel less bitter about the difference in the level of amenities. The same thing concerns checking backage or going through security. Everybody should be treated the same before they board the flight unless they have a legitimate special need. After they board the plane than you can treat them differently.
I have to travel by air for work fairly frequently. When I fly, I fly economy. I don't think the situation is as bad as its often made to seem. In-flight entertainment is a lot better now than it ever was in the past because of individual viewing screens. This allows for a much broader range of choices since airlines don't have to worry about offending anybody in the audience anymore.
The real issue is that flights are basically always full now and the food options suck unless you pay money for the most part. The former is much more important. In the past, it was possible to fly in the economy section and still not feel like you were in the cattle car because their were often empty seats. This doesn't happen that much any more. Every flight seems full. Thats why people complain.
Maybe not have connected but I can easily see Chinese-Americans be given the benefit of the doubt in the same way that White Americans are because of a mixture of positive stereotyping and racial profiling.
I think in most parts of the country Asians, especially East Asians, would be treated leniently. Its African-Americans, Hispanics, Middle Easterners, and people who look "Muslim" are goign to be given the hard time.
Does just having a live in boyfriend or girlfriend cause people to not treat their partner shabilly? After all, with a live in boyfriend or girlfriend the party thats feels that they are taken for granted can leave with relative ease, provided that they have a place to stay. If you have a long-term boyfriend or girlfriend that you don't live with, its even easier to end the relationship technically. Relationships are always harder to end in practice even if there are no material concerns. People still treat their partners shabilly. This really won't help.
Does just having a live in boyfriend or girlfriend cause people to not treat their partner shabilly? After all, with a live in boyfriend or girlfriend the party thats feels that they are taken for granted can leave with relative ease, provided that they have a place to stay. If you have a long-term boyfriend or girlfriend that you don't live with, its even easier to end the relationship technically. Relationships are always harder to end in practice even if there are no material concerns. People still treat their partners shabilly. This really won't help.
BlaiseP, I'm all for discretion when it comes to policing and prosecution. The goal should be as few people as possible going through the criminal justice system at any stage from the initial confrontation with the police to a full criminal trial. Jail as few people as possible. What I'm not for is discretion being about race. If discretion is about race, that is Whites and East Asians get it but nobody else does than I'm really not for it all. Discretion for everybody.
I can't see why this would be a remotely good idea regardless of what you think of the high divorce rate. As you pointed out, ending a rental lease is messy enough and I can't see how a temporary marriage would be any better. Divorce is more often than not a messy enough even if all parties are acting with full muturity and rationality. The current system works well enough.
Another problem are kids. The temporary marriage lease would work best with childless couples because there would be no issues about child support and visitation at the end of the temporary marriage. Kids create issues regarding child support and visitation. Even if a couple decides to make their marriage permanent, do we want to risk the possibiltiy of a marriage ending in the middle of a pregnancy and have a couple go through the process of getting extended or made permanent during a pregancy? Just leave well enough alone.
Not really. Most Jews, beyond Jesus' disciples, Paul, and a few others rejected Jesus' claim as the Messiah. Mainly because he got nailed to the cross by the Romans, which most Jews saw as basically a sign of failure. The Messiah was supposed to restore Jewish sovereignty to Israle and maybe bring about world peace. He wasn't supposed to get executed. Most of the early Christian were gentiles that were sympathetic to Judaism but didn't want to buy into the ritual laws. Paul gave them a way to be monotheists without having to be Jews.
Mike Drew, I don't think that Goldwater style loss would be perceived as an ideological rebuke by the conservatives. Even back then, when you had larger number of moderates and liberals in the Republican Party, the conservatives still maintained that they were posessors of the truth and fought on till the achieved victory within and without the GOP. Conservatives have few if any competing ideologies within the GOP that will drag the GOP in a more liberal/moderate direction compared to the 1964 Presidential election. I see them interpresting a Goldwater-style loss not as a rebuke of a particular ideology but as a sign of conspiracy against them.
There might not be a duty to be healthy or to be kind but as said above, a lot of the people that make hedonistic life-style choice tend to have adverse affects on people besides themselves. This means that somebody has to clean-up the problems and mess that they cause least somebody else suffers from their mistakes. We might not be able to get people to clean up their own messes but we can get them indirectly to pay for it.
Kazzy, adding to what James said, nobody is really an island. People's crappy life-style choices often end up affecting others to. Its like the fable of the grasshoper and the ants where the ants end up taking care of the grasshoper rather than letting him die. Its really immoral and more than a little sub-optimal to let people die from their own lifestyle choices because its probably going to be more people than them that is going to suffer consequences. So a person parties hard and dies young but leaves around children that need to be taken care of.
Since somebody has to step in and clean up the mess you made than it makes sense to at least get the mess-maker to pay for it in some way.
The entire forbidden fruit thing is bunk. Drugs are a forbidden fruit in the United States and certainly a lot of people are attracted to them for that reason but many people just want to do drugs and other people go through their lives without any desire for experimentation. Legalization isn't going to cause people who are doing drugs to stop doing it. It doesn't work that way with drink. I imagine the same thing is going to occur with sex. Nobody is going to grow more puritanical in a more openly sexual society. The wild people are still going to be wild.
The danger with having a society that is do hedonistic is that there is a bit more to life than hedonism and the pleasure crawl. Not even getting into things like rape or pedophilia, a lot of people get into some rather serious trouble because of sex or other pleasure. They kind of over indulge and need others to bail them out. Some level of discipline and restraint is necessary on any pleasure in order for society to work.
Murali, that makes sense. The teenagers in America that are least likely to have sex are the ones that have a lot of social expectations on them. Not social expectations in terms of dating, romance, and sex but in what they want to do with their life. They do a cost-benefit analysis and decide not to have sex encase any of the unintended consequences happen. Elite schools like MIT or the Ivies have a higher percentage of self-reporting virgins than non-elite schools. In the United States, ambitition seems to be the best way to promote abstinence.
That being said, I don't think that your social expectations can ever be re-introduced into Europe and European-derived cultures like the United States or Australia. The love match has been idealized for so long and the arranged marriage so out of practice that its going to be nearly impossible to get rid of things like dating and anything else. The assumption is that you should find your own mate even in some of the most socially conservative circles.
Kazzy, sexting is an interesting legal phenomenom and a puzzling more one. My belief is that it should not be illegal because teenagers shouldn't be sent to jail or put on a sex-offender list for doing stupid teenage things. Do not make a potential bad situation worse. Kids experiment with sex once the reach adolescence unless they come from a very strict culture with parents in draconian culture. At the same time, the actual practice of sexting is probably kind of stupid because its one of the things that can kick you in the ass. Your pictures might get much more widely distributed than you intended. Your teenage antics might have consequences latter in life when your workmates find things about your past that you would rather hide. Thats why I think that jailing kids or putting them on sex-offender lists is a stupid idea. It makes something potentially bad much worse than it has to be.
Does anybody know if there was a similar scandal when the poloroid camera appeared on the market?
Rod, the billboards are also strangely or maybe not strangely near billboards for churches or about Jesus. They seem to alternate between Jesus, food, and porn.
Murali, what do you mean by fewer restraints on their libido? I think its more of a thing that they have fewer things to do for entertainment/leisure and more space to do the naughty in it. If you want to to get intimate with your partner in a big, dense city than you have certain logistical problems if you don't live alone because you need a bit of privacy. Roomates are one thing, parents and other relatives are another.
I'm actually in agreement with you. In a past thread I argued passionately that certain actuals should not be done in public because they disturb the public peace and the enjoyment of the commons. Public wildness isn't necessarily a good idea. However, I doubt that many parents would complain to much about ads full of sex in public. NYC is filled with sex shops and ads for things like grindr. They don't depict the act but they come as close as possible. People really don't complain about it.
More conservative parts of the country are actually worse. When I drove across country, one of the sights that struck me as really weird were all the billboards for porn shops in some very conservative areas of the country.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Due Process and the Disabled”
Agreed.
On “The Benefits of Air Steerage”
I think the people that are complaining the most about inequality at airlines are people who have to travel a lot by air for work or other reasons but have to take economy for one reason or another. Not everybody works for an employer that could afford to put them in first or business class. Its this class of frequent flyer that also complains about security theater at airports.
Most people travel by air, at most, for one trip a year. If you have to fly by air only for one trip a year than your really going to be most concerned by cost and safety rather than comfort. This is especially true if your paying for a family vacation and want to keep it affordable. These people favor cheap seats over comfort and do not mind security theater because they don't have to travel that much.
"
Are the first and business class seats really subsidizing the economy seats? I've seen this asserted several times but I have never seen it demonstrated with numbers. I'm not saying its not true but I'd like to see some evidence for this proposition beyond a mere assertion. I
I also think that airlines can do certain things that would make the flying experience seem more fair and egalitarian withotu actually having to do anything about the amenities offered in different classes. Chaning the bording procedure would ease a lot of the bad feelings. Currently, people with special needs and small kids plus different classes of privileged passengers get to board first. If the airline companies decided to board from the back of the plane to front of the plane, making first and business class passengers wait their turn, a lot of people would feel less bitter about the difference in the level of amenities. The same thing concerns checking backage or going through security. Everybody should be treated the same before they board the flight unless they have a legitimate special need. After they board the plane than you can treat them differently.
"
I have to travel by air for work fairly frequently. When I fly, I fly economy. I don't think the situation is as bad as its often made to seem. In-flight entertainment is a lot better now than it ever was in the past because of individual viewing screens. This allows for a much broader range of choices since airlines don't have to worry about offending anybody in the audience anymore.
The real issue is that flights are basically always full now and the food options suck unless you pay money for the most part. The former is much more important. In the past, it was possible to fly in the economy section and still not feel like you were in the cattle car because their were often empty seats. This doesn't happen that much any more. Every flight seems full. Thats why people complain.
On “Finding Common Ground on a Country Road”
Maybe not have connected but I can easily see Chinese-Americans be given the benefit of the doubt in the same way that White Americans are because of a mixture of positive stereotyping and racial profiling.
"
James, I agree. Its cramped and you end up spilling a lot of the beer on yourself.
"
I think in most parts of the country Asians, especially East Asians, would be treated leniently. Its African-Americans, Hispanics, Middle Easterners, and people who look "Muslim" are goign to be given the hard time.
On “The Wedlease: For Those of You Who See Your Relationship as a Rental Property”
Does just having a live in boyfriend or girlfriend cause people to not treat their partner shabilly? After all, with a live in boyfriend or girlfriend the party thats feels that they are taken for granted can leave with relative ease, provided that they have a place to stay. If you have a long-term boyfriend or girlfriend that you don't live with, its even easier to end the relationship technically. Relationships are always harder to end in practice even if there are no material concerns. People still treat their partners shabilly. This really won't help.
"
Does just having a live in boyfriend or girlfriend cause people to not treat their partner shabilly? After all, with a live in boyfriend or girlfriend the party thats feels that they are taken for granted can leave with relative ease, provided that they have a place to stay. If you have a long-term boyfriend or girlfriend that you don't live with, its even easier to end the relationship technically. Relationships are always harder to end in practice even if there are no material concerns. People still treat their partners shabilly. This really won't help.
On “Finding Common Ground on a Country Road”
BlaiseP, I'm all for discretion when it comes to policing and prosecution. The goal should be as few people as possible going through the criminal justice system at any stage from the initial confrontation with the police to a full criminal trial. Jail as few people as possible. What I'm not for is discretion being about race. If discretion is about race, that is Whites and East Asians get it but nobody else does than I'm really not for it all. Discretion for everybody.
On “The Wedlease: For Those of You Who See Your Relationship as a Rental Property”
I can't see why this would be a remotely good idea regardless of what you think of the high divorce rate. As you pointed out, ending a rental lease is messy enough and I can't see how a temporary marriage would be any better. Divorce is more often than not a messy enough even if all parties are acting with full muturity and rationality. The current system works well enough.
Another problem are kids. The temporary marriage lease would work best with childless couples because there would be no issues about child support and visitation at the end of the temporary marriage. Kids create issues regarding child support and visitation. Even if a couple decides to make their marriage permanent, do we want to risk the possibiltiy of a marriage ending in the middle of a pregnancy and have a couple go through the process of getting extended or made permanent during a pregancy? Just leave well enough alone.
On “Finding Common Ground on a Country Road”
I agree. I can't imagine African-Americans or Hispanic Americans getting an easy time anywhere. You either go lightly or harsh on everybody.
On “Reading Jesus in Context”
Either him or Theodor Herzl.
"
Not really. Most Jews, beyond Jesus' disciples, Paul, and a few others rejected Jesus' claim as the Messiah. Mainly because he got nailed to the cross by the Romans, which most Jews saw as basically a sign of failure. The Messiah was supposed to restore Jewish sovereignty to Israle and maybe bring about world peace. He wasn't supposed to get executed. Most of the early Christian were gentiles that were sympathetic to Judaism but didn't want to buy into the ritual laws. Paul gave them a way to be monotheists without having to be Jews.
On “2016: The GOP Rapture Cometh”
Mike Drew, I don't think that Goldwater style loss would be perceived as an ideological rebuke by the conservatives. Even back then, when you had larger number of moderates and liberals in the Republican Party, the conservatives still maintained that they were posessors of the truth and fought on till the achieved victory within and without the GOP. Conservatives have few if any competing ideologies within the GOP that will drag the GOP in a more liberal/moderate direction compared to the 1964 Presidential election. I see them interpresting a Goldwater-style loss not as a rebuke of a particular ideology but as a sign of conspiracy against them.
On “You Have a Duty to be Healthy?”
There might not be a duty to be healthy or to be kind but as said above, a lot of the people that make hedonistic life-style choice tend to have adverse affects on people besides themselves. This means that somebody has to clean-up the problems and mess that they cause least somebody else suffers from their mistakes. We might not be able to get people to clean up their own messes but we can get them indirectly to pay for it.
"
Kazzy, adding to what James said, nobody is really an island. People's crappy life-style choices often end up affecting others to. Its like the fable of the grasshoper and the ants where the ants end up taking care of the grasshoper rather than letting him die. Its really immoral and more than a little sub-optimal to let people die from their own lifestyle choices because its probably going to be more people than them that is going to suffer consequences. So a person parties hard and dies young but leaves around children that need to be taken care of.
Since somebody has to step in and clean up the mess you made than it makes sense to at least get the mess-maker to pay for it in some way.
On “The Republican Takeover of North Carolina”
Why do you hate democracy?
On “Cultural Kelvin”
Kazzy, in New York state women are allowed to be topless because men can go topless.
"
The entire forbidden fruit thing is bunk. Drugs are a forbidden fruit in the United States and certainly a lot of people are attracted to them for that reason but many people just want to do drugs and other people go through their lives without any desire for experimentation. Legalization isn't going to cause people who are doing drugs to stop doing it. It doesn't work that way with drink. I imagine the same thing is going to occur with sex. Nobody is going to grow more puritanical in a more openly sexual society. The wild people are still going to be wild.
The danger with having a society that is do hedonistic is that there is a bit more to life than hedonism and the pleasure crawl. Not even getting into things like rape or pedophilia, a lot of people get into some rather serious trouble because of sex or other pleasure. They kind of over indulge and need others to bail them out. Some level of discipline and restraint is necessary on any pleasure in order for society to work.
"
Murali, that makes sense. The teenagers in America that are least likely to have sex are the ones that have a lot of social expectations on them. Not social expectations in terms of dating, romance, and sex but in what they want to do with their life. They do a cost-benefit analysis and decide not to have sex encase any of the unintended consequences happen. Elite schools like MIT or the Ivies have a higher percentage of self-reporting virgins than non-elite schools. In the United States, ambitition seems to be the best way to promote abstinence.
That being said, I don't think that your social expectations can ever be re-introduced into Europe and European-derived cultures like the United States or Australia. The love match has been idealized for so long and the arranged marriage so out of practice that its going to be nearly impossible to get rid of things like dating and anything else. The assumption is that you should find your own mate even in some of the most socially conservative circles.
"
Kazzy, sexting is an interesting legal phenomenom and a puzzling more one. My belief is that it should not be illegal because teenagers shouldn't be sent to jail or put on a sex-offender list for doing stupid teenage things. Do not make a potential bad situation worse. Kids experiment with sex once the reach adolescence unless they come from a very strict culture with parents in draconian culture. At the same time, the actual practice of sexting is probably kind of stupid because its one of the things that can kick you in the ass. Your pictures might get much more widely distributed than you intended. Your teenage antics might have consequences latter in life when your workmates find things about your past that you would rather hide. Thats why I think that jailing kids or putting them on sex-offender lists is a stupid idea. It makes something potentially bad much worse than it has to be.
Does anybody know if there was a similar scandal when the poloroid camera appeared on the market?
"
Rod, the billboards are also strangely or maybe not strangely near billboards for churches or about Jesus. They seem to alternate between Jesus, food, and porn.
"
Murali, what do you mean by fewer restraints on their libido? I think its more of a thing that they have fewer things to do for entertainment/leisure and more space to do the naughty in it. If you want to to get intimate with your partner in a big, dense city than you have certain logistical problems if you don't live alone because you need a bit of privacy. Roomates are one thing, parents and other relatives are another.
"
I'm actually in agreement with you. In a past thread I argued passionately that certain actuals should not be done in public because they disturb the public peace and the enjoyment of the commons. Public wildness isn't necessarily a good idea. However, I doubt that many parents would complain to much about ads full of sex in public. NYC is filled with sex shops and ads for things like grindr. They don't depict the act but they come as close as possible. People really don't complain about it.
More conservative parts of the country are actually worse. When I drove across country, one of the sights that struck me as really weird were all the billboards for porn shops in some very conservative areas of the country.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.