I meet a lot of people whose idea of "getting better" is wealth being more evenly diffused across humanity. If that really is our aim the easiest way to achieve it would be to halt, or even reverse, quality of life improvements for the top x percent of people.
If "getting better" means raising the maximum possible quality of life inequality seems unavoidable, since people need an incentive to pursue and propagate technological advances.
> I meet a lot of people whose idea of "getting better" is wealth being more evenly diffused across humanity. If that really is our aim the easiest way to achieve it would be to halt, or even reverse, quality of life improvements for the top x percent of people.
What if doing that really would make more people happier on average?
It won't. It has been tried many times, and failed with spectacularly deadly results (upwards of 100,000,000 dead in the 20th century from such governance).
Every time I read something like this I think about all my rich friends in Silicon Valley who engage in armchair socialism. Gives me a good chuckle. ^.^
As another responder pointed out, there's nothing inconsistent about it. Just because someone believes all of the rich should pay more doesn't mean they're willing to be the only ones doing so while their more callous peers coast by.
You know what's inconsistent? Claiming to care about an issue, but opposing any means of addressing it. If you're going to preclude the government addressing poverty, you can't also go around undermining everyone else who tries. For example, in other comments on this story I see people complaining about volunteers' lack of professionalism, and about spending money on marketing. Clue time: money for marketing is a necessity for any long-term enterprise. If the government got out of charity altogether, each charity would have to try even harder to draw attention to their cause among all the others. The marketing industry would love it, but from the standpoint of helping the poor it's a form of inefficiency. Those who rail against government inefficiency should admit and consider the inefficiency in their own chosen model, lest they seem dishonest.
What is funny about this? It seems entirely consistent.
Socialists think the government should provide social services.
Rich people not donating money for social services seems completely philosophically compatible with being socialists.
The vast, vast majority of my rich friends believe we should raise taxes on all rich people, not donate to non-profits who then have to spend the money on marketing.
Every leftist revolutionary thinks that they'll be the one to finally achieve "real communism" and create an egalitarian paradise. It always seems to end up in pogroms though. I think it's because, at its base, Marxism is an appeal to jealousy -- "you have three mules and I only have one, you're an opppressor who must be punished!"[1] :{
Your summarization of Marxism as an appeal to jealousy is a reductionist joke. Marxist doctrine wouldn't even recognize the legitimacy of ownership in the way you are describing, so the notion of striving for equal individual ownership of goods as a spark to action is nonsense.
Your link to The Gulag Archipelago as an expository on Marxist doctrine also reveals a complete ignorance of what Marxism even is, on a very basic level. The Gulag system was a pure product of Stalinism, which was an implementation of communism that directly rejected Marxist doctrine. Explicitly and directly. Communism is not stalinism is not bolshevisim is not marxism.
The turn to marxist criticism in humanities academia really has nothing to do with anyone wanting to lead a revolution or thinking they will overthrow capitalism or whatever. It is a reaction to lived experience that expresses itself in a particular mode of analysis.
"In the world around me, the economy is imploding and everyone is anxious and on edge and complaining about inequality. I think I'll interpret this novel through the lens of Marxist cultural criticism as a reflection of how I experience the world right now" is all that is going on.
> Your summarization of Marxism as an appeal to jealousy is a reductionist joke.
It's common sense. At best, people will support a system where wealth is distributed without regard to individual productivity if they think that they will get more out of it than they put in.
I'm no Marxist scholar but looking at Marxism's core ideals, particularly the idea of a "dictatorship of the proletariat," I can see that attempts to implement them will always result in atrocity.
Even Marx admitted that his new society would be born in blood and terror.
"The purposeless massacres perpetrated since the June and October events, the tedious offering of sacrifices since February and March, the very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror."
>the notion of striving for equal individual ownership of goods as a spark to action is nonsense.
Well he didn't say that. But you would do well to remember that during the Russian Revolution and subsequent years, those who were somewhat prosperous among the peasantry were purged, punished, sent to Siberia because of their prosperity. Their prosperity meant they were capitalist oppressors, you see.
I took a look at their sub. I couldn't find any hate speech (though I ignored heavily downvoted comments). I'm also suspicious of "coded hate speech" since that concept grants license to attach racist connotations to just about any sentence.
Is there a post on r/The_Donald that stands out to you as being hate speech?
To save others the trouble, the title of the post is "Amy Schumer And Lena Dunham Are Finally Leaving The Country" and the image is of two orca whales being prepared for transport. The very non-coded message is that these two women are "as fat as whales" and furthermore that they deserve to be derided based on physical appearance because of their expressed political opinions.
I'm no lawyer, but I think that's treading awfully close to "hate speech".
I'm no lawyer either, but I think you are likely to have a very hard time finding someone who is, yet imagines "hate speech" to be a concept with any existence in the law of the United States.
Of all the principles we've ever espoused in this country, we have perhaps been most consistent in our national conviction that the answer to wrong speech is right speech - not less speech but more speech.
That is, until recently. We've lately seen the rise of a strain of thought in which not only is it acceptable to answer mere words - however cruel - with the full and mighty force of law, but to suggest such a course might reasonably inspire trepidation is itself worthy at best of contempt, and the many examples in history of why such trepidation might be justified are ignored in unseemly haste to crush those who speak in a fashion deemed insufficiently satisfactory.
In such a strain of thought, the problem with McCarthyism is not McCarthyism in its own right, but rather that the direction in which it was pointed was wrong - the weapon should not be put down and never picked up again, but merely wielded against a different target than last time.
Is that really the lesson to draw from such an unsavory example? Is there really any practical benefit in such a lesson for the causes such a strain of thought claims so loudly to espouse? The left has fought to silence its opponents for decades, more or less by whatever means fell to hand. The result thus produced, this very month, is remarkable, but not for its loveliness. It will not grow more lovely with time. Does it really seem likely that the tactics which have brought us to such a strait are blameless, and that only more energy is required?
Is it illegal to call people fat in this country now? Serious question. At first I was inclined to ridicule your position, but I have to wonder how far the 'hate crime' legislation has progressed.
> I'm no lawyer, but I think that's treading awfully close to "hate speech".
How about caricature of public figures? Note that they do not have to be tasteful or respectful. Just look at bankers depicted as pigs.
I am neither american nor a lawyer, but as I understand it hate speech has a fairly narrow definition over there. It requires imminent danger of inciting violence. Merely expressing racist or other kinds of -ist viewpoints is not hate speech.
Profession is not a "protected group" (those are traditionally race, gender, age, religion, disability, and depending on the jurisdiction, sexual orientation).
Its a fine line between protecting the oppressed and being oppressive. When you misapply "hate speech" by using it to describe satire, or humor in bad taste, you run the risk of losing the "hate speech" tool to devaluation, blow-back and more satire. Some things deserve a response and others really are best ignored.
Agree completely. Where I have a problem with r/The_Donald is more than any one post, there are patterns that have emerged over time. Hence others calling out "coded hate speech", a concept which I am even more uncomfortable with than "borderline" hate speech.
That said, the very colloquialism they use to refer to the opposition ("cuck") is merely a shortened form of a term ("cuckold") with a very long history of being a base insult with rather heavy connotations of misogyny.
(i.e. Being "cuckolded", a man whose female partner has exhibited infidelity, is taken as a sign of weakness whereas being a woman whose male partner sleeps around is just de rigueur to the point there's not even a special term for it.)
You are reaching for some quite indirect logic here. As someone regularly frequenting 4chan I can assure you that the sole target of the cuck insult is the male's pride.
Of course it being a sexul insult it is practically unavoidable that values and the female partner are indirectly involved in how the insult works.
Well, technically homosexual couples can also cuck each other, and I have seen the term occasionally used in discussion about homosexual manga. So it really is not about the female.
Hell, even the fairly juvenile "ur mom" is more negative towards females than "cuck".
When women are attacked you will notice. Slut and whale are still the go-to insults.
So please do not shoehorn gender issues into everything. Sure, some assumptions are encoded into it. But it's a goddamn insult, not some friendly disagreement in a debate club. Please adjust your context sensitivity.
It's typically the commenters. /r/The_Donald has rules which are supposed to stop hate speech (and typically they delete posts which are). However, with remarkable consistency, if you find someone spouting bigotry and hatred in another subreddit, they are almost always regular /r/The_Donald posters.
Where I live a lot of kids have been arrested and imprisoned for that salute.
It so strange as an American expat living under a military dictatorship where any improper speech is harshly dealt with to see American slowly but steadily moving in the same direction. What's weird is it's starting with restrictions on speech in the private sector and education. I'm wondering how long before laws and the courts get behind the restrictions.
Not long friend. Our campuses reflect a growing antipathy toward free speech.[1] Whatever starts there usually ends up in the courts.
I've become convinced that the American left is now totally post liberal, in the sense that they consider classical liberalism -- à la John Stuart Mill -- highly offensive.
Being a distinguished engineer at Google is definitely elite. Only a tiny fraction of its 30k employees hold that title and it probably draws a salary in the 1-2% range.
It's enough to help tens of thousands of families and revitalize their communities (they'll be spending most of their earnings somewhere). In Appalachia that could make a huge impact on quality of life.
For what it's worth, I grew up in an Appalachian coal town. Coal development will have minimal impact on quality of life. The future for them is bleak, regardless of a Trump or Clinton presidency.
1) Coal was already in decline in the 90s. This isn't a government problem. This is a supply & demand problem. The demand for coal has declined.
2) Automation has drastically reduced the number of miners needed to actually operate a single mine. The # of jobs needed simply will not materialize.
3) Coal is losing the competition to alternative energy sources. (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-06/wind-and-s... )
4) China has been operating at excess production capacity already (http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-coal-plant-binge-deepens-... )
This is a problem of a group of people failing to come to terms with the harsh realities of a capitalistic system. While their local and national leaders (I'm looking at you, McConnell) continually tell them that coal can be 'brought back'. It can't. Many of the same leaders know the truth, but to lie to the people is politically advantageous for them.
Four years from now Appalachian coal towns will be in worse shape, and even more pissed off. They need leaders that actually respect them to tell them the truth.
I'm from Kentucky as well. An earmark by Mitch McConnell secured funding for my first job out of university (WKU). He did good work for us in Bowling Green at least.
That said, I don't have any illusion that the future isn't bleak in coal country. My extended family has become substantially poorer over the last two decades -- from middle class to poverty. Still, we're working with what we've got. Every job created changes a life. At the very least it can be a bridge toward more opportunity -- that McConnell funded job was for me.
Honestly, I have no doubt that McConnell is a good and reasonable person. I do feel lots of frustration with him and the area, that can make me a tad irrational. I do recognize the difficult situation he is in. To tell the truth to the people could very well cost him his seat. Perhaps his hope is to keep appeasing until he can bring some other industry to the area. Unfortunately, given the harsh reality of poor infrastructure and poor education....I don't think he can do even that. As far as Eastern Ky is concerned, I would advise everyone to leave.
Our culture is unique. Mass relocation will probably destroy it. My own dream is to invest some of my earnings back home to prevent that from happening.
Our people will probably never become well off, but I still hold out hope that we might be able to get by without deracinating.
For how long can coal be the future and at what cost? The price drop of coal may result in other job losses as investment in sustainable systems drops. Additionally, the waste generated in the form of fly ash contains radioactive and carcinogenic materials. Disposal is worse than for nuclear system due to the large volume of material generated and inadequate regulations.
I was trying to address that with my second paragraph.
The question I think is more important is not whether jobs will be good for Appalachia though (obviously they will do some direct good), it is whether the good that comes out of those jobs is at all in proportion with the harm from expanding our use of coal. It likely is not, the harm will be much greater.
If "getting better" means raising the maximum possible quality of life inequality seems unavoidable, since people need an incentive to pursue and propagate technological advances.