Sorry, I’ll extrapolate more precisely.

Casinos spend unfathomable resources on learning exactly how to wedge their ads deep into your mind and get you hooked on their satisfying little dopamine loops, but it’s your personal failure if you, an ordinary person who is statistically speaking living paycheck to paycheck raising a kid with no savings, succumb to them. And your responsibility to fix it.

Correct?

Sure was nice of the state to require your 2001 online casino to list in writing the odds of winning and enforce payment. But sure, they did you a favor and the state is bad, people are solo acts and you should be free to prey on the less powerful

Good to see the true feelings of this community reflected in such quick fashion. ‘That one quote’ is a pretty lengthy diatribe, and it’s far from his only time. But the sick comeback makes white moderates feel better about themselves

MLK Jr., famous for talking about how much he loves white moderates right

To your last point, yes, affirmative action is the term the U.S. has decided on for programs such as that one. There may be newer phrases in use, I don’t know for certain.

I would agree on the ‘lazy’ argument. It certainly feels like we could do better. But that always seems to be true!

I have on a personal level had to learn to avoid letting perfection get in the way of improvement. Whether that is broadly applicable to policy is debatable—I would welcome much more radical change, but I also feel as though radical action in one direction spurs more radical opposition. For instance, Biden tried to forgive $430 billion in student debt in the U.S. and it was in the news, argued over, eventually stopped due to some absurd court cases—yet he and his administration have successfully gotten about $132 billion forgiven in other avenues, step by step, with much less fanfare and thus (in my mind) much less opposition as well.

In regards to the German Green Party, and to for the moment ignore the question of additional genders, I thought that there were currently two co-leaders, one man one woman? If that is not the case, and even if it is, I assume the argument would be along the lines of ‘women have been underrepresented for so long that it is reasonable to give them a stretch of overrepresentation in order to bring a semblance of balance around.’ Or ‘other parties are mostly led by men so we will be led by women for some semblance of balance.’ Neither concept seems crazy to me.

And on the question of alternative gender presentations I think the issue is one of how to enact the greatest good for the largest number of people. The rights and representation of trans, non-binary, etc. peoples matter very much to me, knowing several such people personally! But collectively they do at the moment make up a small portion of the population. I think they should be encouraged to do whatever it is they want with their lives. If that is to pursue office with the Green Party, so be it. Such a thing seems like it may take a change in language to ‘allow’. But it does not mean the rules are bad conceptually or that they need to be thrown out—more inclusive language seems like a small change that does not require a change in the direction of progress.

That’s the ‘affirmative’ side of affirmative action—taking an action like encouraging trans people to run for office. Temporarily banning men from holding office wouldn’t really fall under the umbrella in spirit I suppose, but isn’t the outcome the same, and thus whether or not you take offense at the concept a personal choice, or at least worthy of a philosophical debate?

Visiting again the concept of laziness: just appointing women to leadership positions does not make everything fair. For instance, the disabled may suffer more social exclusion under female leadership, because women tend to see disabled children in terms of the additional child raising work they represent (of course, mostly men’s fault for pigeonholing women as homemakers). But this is a reason to improve the course we are on. It is okay to critique, to point out the ways that things are not going the right way. For instance, feel free to complain about how the focus on social justice overshadows the larger issues of economic injustice that hold everybody down! Feel free to point out groups that are being forgotten. Individuals who benefit from affirmative action and then turn around and preach self sufficiency. Personally, I think men’s mental health will need to be a bigger focus! It’s clearly an issue, and since they’re still mostly in charge it’ll probably benefit us all if they get some help. Whatever your critique, it should be in the spirit of fostering a world where your genitals or skin color or the neighborhood you’re born in does not determine your life’s course.

But it should not critique the concept. We should not reverse course and say “we were wrong, put men back in charge of everything and don’t let brown people live here.” And that is what I think being against affirmative action means. It means “no thanks, I am okay with the deal as it stands.” The deal as it stands, where in the United States you can accurately predict someone’s income just by knowing what ZIP code they were born in; where despite Hillary Clinton’s career women are underrepresented lucrative fields like the sciences because they’re still expected to put their future on hold to raise a couple’s children; where despite Barack Obama’s success black men are more than four times as likely to have felony convictions than white, taking the community’s right to vote away. That means, whether the person saying it is part of the in-group or a well-off member of a minority group, that they have enough, and aren’t interested in helping others get enough. I’d be embarrassed to say something like that.

Sorry I rambled on so much, I am “stealing time” at my job and lost my train of thought a few times as I left and revisited this comment. :)

Well unfortunately, the overlap is close enough to a circle that it makes plenty of sense, especially since the issue is not purely economic, but social, as you accidentally point out by using the phrase socioeconomic. Obama has wealth that is unfathomable to the everyday person, as does Clinton—both deal with a society that belittles them because of who they are in a way that white men don’t face, rich or poor.

Surely you’ve noticed that Obama is the only black president so far, despite black people making up 10 to 20% of the population over the last few centuries.

You are also aware that Clinton would have been the first female U.S. President. She won the popular vote by a significant margin, which is a great sign for public opinion on women, but the reality is still that women, who are more than half the country, are not more than half in charge of it.

The fact these two got as far as they did is in no small part thanks to the concept of affirmative action, where we try to right past wrongs and level the playing field. Encourage women to go into nontraditional fields, encourage black students to apply for Ivy League schools and ensure there are spots for them—these things only “hurt” white men because resources are so artificially limited already, disproportionately held by the tiny percentage of [rich white men] who control the US’s giant conglomerates and obedient politicians, and regular old white men aren’t used to feeling the squeeze.

Did Obama pull the ladder up behind him somewhat by applying the same neoliberal bullshit that has destroyed the concept of compassionate social safety nets in favor of a more competitive marketplace? Can you be mad at him? Yeah. That’s beside the point. White people have been allowed to fuck over other white people for ages.

Without citing specific examples, it sounds like you just don’t like affirmative action programs, which is an opinion I’d be embarrassed to say out loud. When one group of people has all the money and all the connections, it’s not fair to say “just treat everyone equally!” because it maintains the unequal status quo—poorer minority groups continue getting into schools at lower rates since they live in poorer neighborhoods with poorer schools and poorer access to the funds needed for higher education, women continue getting passed up for management positions, leading to more male dominated companies hiring more men for more management positions, et cetera

Actually professor I don’t much care to continue. I asked if all the cards are on the table (because I know they’re not) and you responding with “yes…?” so this isn’t going to go anywhere. Especially since I don’t have a favorite -ism to provide you with so you can tell me how it would never work!

The ideas I’ve presented force cooperation in opposition to capitalist market forces. They coexist in the way my white blood cells coexist with the flu.

By the way, the Panama Papers aren’t available to the public, and they’re culturally relevant because they were secret for so long, and represent an opportunity that isn’t on the table for the rest of us. Better examples are key when upholding the status quo 👌

Yes? It’s that obvious? What percentage of the population knows how the animals they consume are raised and slaughtered, or that it’s illegal to show them? What percentage knows that in many other nations, the burger flipping jobs the U.S. loves to debate do pay better, and yet the food is cheaper? What percentage is aware that many European nations simply do not allow large corporations like Google and Facebook to “own” your data, and that they do not have some sort of inherent right to it? All of these things are legal—passing laws to hide information you don’t like, having no obligation to pay livable wages or provide healthcare, lining your pockets with money nobody else knew you could just… take. Seems like a system in which these actions weren’t both legal and highly rewarded could, you know, put more of the cards on the table.

Hey, that makes sense. Now, in this capitalist system that exists in real life—the one that you think is working out better than any alternatives you can think of—are everyone’s cards laid out?