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Geneticists And Economists Clash Over "Genoeconomics" Paper
scibri writes "One side is accused of supporting ethnic cleansing; the other of being intellectually naive. Geneticists and economists are struggling to collaborate on research that explores how our genes influence and interact with economic behavior. Top economists are publishing a paper that claims a country's genetic diversity can predict the success of its economy. To critics, the economists' paper seems to suggest that a country's poverty could be the result of its citizens' genetic make-up, and the paper is attracting charges of genetic determinism, and even racism. But the economists say that they have been misunderstood, and are merely using genetics as a proxy for other factors that can drive an economy, such as history and culture."
Maybe it's the other way around, I would say it's more likely that economic success causes immigration, and therefore diversity.
you see the following:
The paper argues that there are strong links between estimates of genetic diversity for 145 countries and per-capita incomes, even after accounting for myriad factors such as economic-based migration.
Well, I guess scientists had better go back and un-invent and un-discover any empirically verifiable or useful thing they may have invented or discovered that has the potential for misuse.
Religion in most of the world has a huge impact on economic success, as does the availability and quality of education. In addition the current financial state of a region makes a huge difference, when I don't worry about finding food I can read and study more. When clean water and sanitation are taken care of I can focus more on research and development of new ideas and technologies. A person forced to read a holy book instead of a science book probably won't be much help developing the next IPhone,
I thought we already determined that humans were as stupid as Monkeys when it came to economics and assessment of economic risk.
http://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_santos.html
The stupidz. Itz in ur geenz.
It's ok for genes to predicate athletic ability, but not other abilities or behaviours?
Obviously our genes influence other behaviours. The small minded might not like that, but that's the way it is. Those who cry "racism" do a diservice to humanity in general - the bell curve applies to all populations, and the distribution of genes within a population is widely distributed. Studying how those genes interact is a good thing!
..don't panic
Check out the genetic profiles of those living:
1. In govt run "projects" housing
2. In govt funded Welfare
3. In govt funded food stamp programs
4. In govt funded Medicaid
Adjust for % of each race in the the nation...and see what you come out with?
Regardless of your findings...which if done soundly with regard to the science of numbers...you'd get roasted over a public open fire and branded a racist.
While there is a huge cultural component to this...perhaps the culture also is somewhat genetics based?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Because chances are...you would be a racist, justifying your racist opinions with sloppy pseudo-science.
Just like the Bell Curve people, who purported to have objective science, but were really just basing their premises on a very subjective analysis. And the more they insisted they were basing things on their hard science, the more it was obvious they weren't.
There's a slight chance a person wouldn't actually be racist, but would be simply misguided, but I've rarely seen that to be the case.
The numbers make that very clear. The relationship is staring us in the face, but it seems hidden in place sight, because it reveals too much about ourselves as we try to shed blame onto something/someone else. You have to steal from people to impoverish their society.
The study of economics without integrating human psychology is not science. It is more like astrology, and about as accurate.
The desire to dominate one's environment is genetic, however. Nature demands it. It is possible that some cultures confront it differently than others, but the variations are minor, and everything else is a revolves around it. We have the ability for everybody to live like kings right now, this moment, but most kings aren't happy without subservience.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A country can be very diverse and successful. Consider Canada and Singapore.
A country can be racially pure and successful. Consider Denmark and Switzerland (yes I realize they have four languages but they haven't had any immigration for a long time).
Success is cyclic. Today's world beating country is tomorrow's basket case. The Soviet Union was very diverse. It was one of the world's two super powers. Then it was a basket case. Now a more racially pure Russia climbing out of its hole. Similarly Japan. It is very racially pure. It was one of the strongest economies in the world. Now it appears to be on its way down.
For every example one way, there is an example the other way. The study is bunk.
...perhaps the culture also is somewhat genetics based?
I'll bet you a dollar that it's not
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It doesn't take a genius to foresee the sort of controversy this study might raise in the hands of the media. I'm sure the researchers themselves were very careful and conservative with their conclusions, but using race or genetic data as a proxy for something as easily obtainable as immigration history is just inviting trouble.
People don't like to have the concept of their free will undermined. That's why claims like this, true or false, are attacked by many not based on their evidence, but on the consequences of the conclusion. This kind of appeal to consequence is not valid. "X is false, because if it were true, then we wouldn't have free will." The traditional notion of free will is incoherent, and could not be true regardless of whatever studies come out. Unless you believe in immaterial souls (which introduces a whole new set of incoherences) there must be something at the bottom. If it's not genetic determinism (which I doubt), it will be either physical determinism or physical (e.g. quantum) randomness at the bottom deciding every aspect of how the universe propagates, including our decisions. Does this mean we can't have free will? Well if you are talking about the kind of free will that is defined as being uncaused or ungoverned by any lower process, then no we can't have that kind of free will. The question is: Why do we even want that kind of free will? What does it buy us? Everything you feel, experience, and decide is still real, it just doesn't work the way it seems. We can still hold people responsible for their decisions. In fact, it would be crazy not to. I think the biggest reason for pushback against any attacks on the traditional idea of free will is that it undermines the idea that you could have an eternal soul. People are, I dare say, genetically determined, to avoid death. As a thinking species, one of our tools for dealing with death is denial. We don't *really* die. We have eternal life in the next life. See, no need to cry little Suzie, Grandma is in a better place now. We will all see her again one day. It's so tempting to embrace that point of view, especially if you have experienced a life with great hardship and tragedy. But there is literally no good reason to actually believe this if you care, about truth more than comfort, or simply can't tolerate cognitive dissonance.
I have to disagree.
I've lived in Utah, Wyoming, and Connecticut before moving to Texas and I gotta say there is a shit ton of racists in Connecticut.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Pot, meet Kettle.
Country seems such an arbitrary scale, especially since they vary in size so much. On larger scales this is nonsense, as Africa is the continent with highest human genetic diversity.
Korma: Good
Sorry, but this is yet another modern version of Eugenics being pushed in to your face. Just like "using DNA to determine future criminals" and "Detecting psychopaths by Tweets".
The people working on these papers expressing opinions like this are dangerous and should be locked up. Yes, it's that simple and yes, the propaganda they are spreading is extremely dangerous. If you don't understand the danger, go read a fucking history book and see what happens when people are convinced that genocide or racial superiority are good things.
Education and Society dictate a persons capabilities. If a person has a good education and ample opportunity, they tend to work for the betterment of the society they received their education in and have the opportunities in. If a person lacks education, how can they better society? If a person has education and no opportunity, what choice do they have other than harming society to survive? (And to usurp any stupid arguments you may have regarding farmers not needing education or some such, you are wrong. Farmers need to know how to be farmers, and need to know how to be content to be the best farmer possible. That requires as much education regarding society as a rocket scientist requires, but of course lacking the sciences required by the rocket scientists.)
This is basic sociology and psychology, with countless historical examples showing both sides of the argument. Hell, Socrates discussed the same thing in "The Allegory of the Artisan" (go read Plato's "The Republic" you lazy bastards!) well over 2 thousand years ago. It's not new, yet we still fall prey to the rhetoric of evil greedy people.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
how is that racist? Seriously though, need a clearer mechanism and fewer confounding factors to establish causation. In other news, Facebook use has been correlated with an increase in national foreign debt.
Now, look at the genetic social and family profiles of those who had to start out with less than nothing after being imported as property (but only the young and healthy, not the elders) and treated as sub-human even after being ruled no longer property.
In the U.S. there is a myth that anyone can succeed and that background has no part mostly because there are a fair few very wealthy wastes of oxygen that want to pretend that their great fortune in life is somehow connected to some greatness within them. That and economic oppression is easier if you can convince the oppressed that their own shortcomings are at fault.
Culture, by definition, is not genetically transmitted. Behavior is influenced by both culture and genetics and teasing out which cause has what effect is a very, very tricky business. Merely observing a correlation between race and food stamp use is likely to get you labelled a racist because only a racist (or an ignoramus) would find it at all interesting. Carefully conducted research on the subject has demonstrated much better correlation with family income than with race for a host of societal ills that are typically ascribed to race in the USA.
The argument of the paper is *NOT* that there is a genetic driver to culture. The argument is that genetics is a useful *proxy* for culture, and one on which there is much clearer data. Most culture is strongly influenced by your family, who also happen to be your genetic influences. If you can track genetics you can also track culture.
For example - immigrants from Sweden to the US are going to have similar genetics to people who remained in Sweden. But they are also going to bring their culture with them as well, which is going to continue to influence their lifestyles significantly.
It is very hard to get data on how many people in the US have similar cultural influences to Sweden, but it is much less hard to find the people who have a genetic link to it, and therefore have an increased probability of having similar cultural influence.
You don't have to make any claim at all about genetic influences over cultural ones for this to be a useful line of study.
Why are we arguing about the content of a paper that hasn't yet been released? Why not wait for the paper to come out, read it, then argue about conclusions based on their supporting documentation?
Um... that race wasn't even allowed to vote in every state until recently. Most of their grandparents couldn't even work the worst jobs in society because of discrimination. The fact that their grand children aren't running the country yet should be a given... oh wait.
I have seen as much or MORE racism in the north than I see here in the south. The KKK may run around in the south (but most southerners wish they would go away), but the Neo-Nazis are in the north.
No, you miss the point. I'll illustrate.
Verifiable fact: there are more black people in jail than whites in the US.
Said such a thing one, time, instantly branded racist. But you will note that the statement makes no claims about who commits more crimes, about whether more black people actually get charged or found guilty vs non-blacks where were not charged or found innocent, whether the number is a raw total, or a ratio of population at large.... ...it just states the current state of jail population. no conclusions, no innuendo. just a simple number. (well, quantity comparison anyway)
And if you say it, the first thing people say is "racist".
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The authors of the paper come right out and say that they are not arguing for a genetic *cause* to the correlations they measure.
Rather that since genetics and culture are both transmitted along family lines, that genetic diversity within a country is a useful proxy for cultural diversity, and that certain degrees of cultural diversity correlate with improved economic performance.
This has nothing to do with eugenics, and everything to do with a more quantifiable way to study the effect of culture clashes on a country's economy.
It is widely known, but not among economists. :-)
Ezekiel 23:20
Between a pseudo-science and an immature discipline!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum#section_6
And if you control for how their parents lived, there's an even tighter correlation.
As others have pointed out, you're just using sloppy statistics to justify thinly-veiled racism.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
NOT Flamebait!
While there may be a study of economics out there, the field's leading representatives have become wholly wrapped up in politics. Those representatives are so thoroughly beholden to the political powers that be that they will say nearly ANYTHING to support the existing policies even where the supporting theory is obviously non-viable.
Imagine Carl Sagan talking about the beauty of a million epicycles all different with no rhyme or reason and what a fine sort of matter the crystal spheres must be made of to remain undetectable for all this time except in the way they govern the movements of the heavens around the Earth and you'll have some idea of where the public face of economics is at as a science.
When the real economists start standing up and calling bullshit on the political malpractice of economics, people will come to respect it as a science.
No, you're not necessarily a racist, you just don't know statistics.
Verifiable fact: there are more poor people in jail than non-poor in the US. There is a much larger correlation between economic status and crime than there is between race and crime.
So, the fact that you "illustrated" this, shows one of a few possibilities. 1) you were unaware of this tighter correlation. 2) you are aware of this correlation, but don't believe it. (why?) 3) you are aware of this correlation, but don't understand it, and choose to promote the sloppy "more black people in jail" statistic as if it had any meaning by itself.
So you can continue lying with statistics -- very similarly to how people do with the male/female "wage gap" -- or you can adjust your rhetoric to include and account for all relevant data. My guess is you and cayenne8 will both continue lying with a smug superiority complex about how "you're not racist, you're just stating facts".
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Only one of those 3 propositions is correct :
* infinite growth is possible is a finite world
* economics is a science
* Duke Nukem Forever has been released
Yes. The world's longest-lived and wealthiest societies in all of history prove your thesis. NOT!
Egypt commanded through 3 principal epochs - over 3000 years of culturally continuous and reasonably enlightened civilization, outstripping the dreams of wealth in over that period.
They were able to accomplish this without your revolting melanin-deficiency.
This is but one example. Somehow, northern barbarians - who until a few short centuries ago, slept in the straw, still matted with their own dinner-filth - think they are the center of the universe. The maths and science they inherited from central and south asia have been used to rip the planet to shreds. Then they blame the victim as proof of their moral superiority.
Pathetic.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
East Africa was literate a millennium before Europe.
North Africa and West Asia invented literacy.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
So the Scandinavian countries and the UK should be home to the superpowers and the US should be lagging far behind, with Australia being a poverty-ridden hellhole, right? Native Americans aren't a bunch of pasty white folks...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
it could also be quite convincingly argued that an economic lens is not really the most appropriate one through which to view history...
The ancient Egyptians had mind-boggling knowledge of astronomy, geometry - they knew pi, zero, the golden section - as well as a highly developed cursive script, and construction techniques that we still can't get anywhere near today.
I'm guess what I'm saying is that economic measures are already biased; the global economic structures currently in force are products of western civilisation which prides economy and wealth over other things which different cultures hold dear.
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
Don't tell me there's not a genetic component to any of this, because there is. Women are less greedy, less warlike, less anti-social, more responsible, more cooperative, more egalitarian and fairer by a large measure ON AVERAGE than men. It's not a plot on the part of women to make men look bad.
If we're going to survive, we need to start taking responsibility for what we create. What is created now is something fit for an environment long past- one where destructive weapons and destructive practices only had so much power. Now that power is infinite and the world is populated by people who never evolved to survive their ability to wield that power.
Yeah, this is the most serious challenge facing humanity and in some sense the final challenge. If we don't destroy ourselves first, it's one we have to solve and where we have to go.
Uh, if I did your study in the US and released my numbers, the newspaper headline would be "Study Finds Blacks Poorer than Whites". I don't think I'd get raked over any coals for that.
You start getting into hot water when you talk about causes. Your study would just demonstrate an easily visible fact, and doesn't prove or really even suggest anything about anything relating to causation. If you want to say that the cause of this is somehow genetic, you're going to have to do a hell of a lot of work to convince people, and yes, you're probably going to be branded a racist. Part of this is political correctness, sure, but a lot more of it is the fact that most previous efforts towards establishing an evolutionary explanation for poverty were little more than pseudo-scientific hackwork. The history of the field is very, very unpleasant, and that naturally makes most of us think unpleasant thoughts about current practitioners.
The other major issue is that you want me to look at the "genetic profiles" of people in various government programs and also "adjust for % of each race in the the nation". But the problem is that a race isn't a genetic profile. To use the obvious US example, we call African-Americans a "race", while studies have shown that Africa has more genetic diversity than any other continent. So you'd expect that the genetic makeup of a group of people descended from Africans would be more heterogeneous than that of a group of people without any (or many) African ancestors. (This of course ignores that most Africans dragged to the Americas came from a relatively small section of the continent, but it also ignores the fact that most African-Americans have a little bit of everything in their ancestry. It should roughly even it out.) The point is that it'd be really hard to explain the socioeconomic fate of an extremely genetically diverse "race" on the base of genetics, unless you could find a few very specific sets of genes causing economic backwardness or something. I mean, maybe they exist, maybe they're out there. Good luck. But it's really, really doubtful.
I guess you're alluding to the black slaves in the US.
Really man...been over 100 years, I think we should quit allowing people to blame that and use it as a crutch or excuse for social and cultural problems, don't you?
And yes...one CAN still succeed in the US. It is harder for some that others, depending on where life places you at on the starting gate. I've seen plenty of folks fail that started with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths...and I've seen successes from those that started with less than nothing.
The US is about equal opportunity for all...not equal outcomes....it is harder for some than others, but still...it is up to you.
Everyone is given 24 hours in a day...it is up to you to do with them as you please..waste them, or work them...have kids too early, or have some sense and keep it in your trousers a few years.....study and value and work to become educated, or hang out, drinking smoking weed or selling crack.
Everyone under the sun has the same days, depends on what you do with them.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
First off, fuck you.
Secondly, "those people" were brought here as slaves and worse had their culture, religion and family ties methodically and deliberately destroyed. Those would be the same culture, religion and family values which Republicans and conservatives claim as the essence of civilization and which, if they're impinged upon in the least by the state (not to mention "slave owners"), will immediately cause our culture to explode from within.
Then they endured over 100 years of outright written-into-law discrimination of the rankest worst sort.
They still endure everything from outright "do not hire" racism to the tepid racism you offered here today.
Is there another set of unfortunates in this nation who met the same fate? Sure. The Native Americans. How are they doing? See how that works?
Finally is there anything I just told you you didn't already know? Could you, if you had been motivated to, inferred the above on your own without me or anyone else making it explicit?
Yes, you could have. And the fact that you didn't is what racism is.
Finally finally, your side's best attempt at assigning a genetic cause to economic and social disparity was The Bell Curve which was mercilessly ripped to shreds by researchers on purely scientific and statistical grounds a few decades ago.
I know for a fact that in certain white old man circles The Bell Curve is taken as proof of the scientific basis for racism. Thankfully all these 60 plus year old guys are doing the world a favor and dying of heart attacks and high blood pressure on a spirit-lifting regular basis.
Perhaps you will join them- racist.
And uses economic means for post-colonial extraction and suppression of material from resource-rich populations, without requisite compensation.
It calls this "development".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I've yet to run into any KKK activity in any of the southern states I have lived in.
They may be around, but it isn't like they present themselves in public really.....if they every had a public rally anywhere down here in the sheets (or even without really, but with signs, etc), I'm sure it would make the news.....and you just don't see it.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
After blinking my eyes at your post, I realized that you made a good example, but one which runs counter to your point. You see, just as their detractors worry about the consequences after this paper, I focused on the factors leading up to your example.
Why are men more greedy, more warlike, more competitive and hierarchical? Certainly, genes could be part of it, but the current discussion points to nurture being a strong component. So let's rephrase that: what compels men to acquire resources and climb over his fellow men? The answer is women. A man would be happy living in a hut, if he had a loving wife. Acquiring said wife, however, has required everything you denounced.
I will not deny the statistics you claim, but leaving the discussion at just that would be disingenuous.
I'm not sure what developing a written language has to do with not being able to trade in the same markets or largely being relegated to tribal survival, being a laborer, or servant for someone else. The oppression isn't limited to coming from Europeans either. Class systems and corruption in even democratic governments can cause oppression when it's result is subjugating the majority of the populace.
You may be unaware, but black people in the U./S. being regarded as somehow too dirty or inferior to use the same water fountain, lunch counter, or school as white kids is still within living memory.
Equal opportunity? You're saying Joe Blow stands just as much opportunity to get a multi-million dollar friends and family investment in his new widget company as Daddy Warbucks kid? I think not.
The U.S. provides more opportunity than a country with an active caste system, but the claim that the opportunity is anything like equal is pure fantasy.
They aren't all that common these days, and their activity isn't all that overt, but they are here. Just like you don't see a lot of goose stepping in PA but the Neo-Nazis are there.
Did you read TFA? I'm thinking you are asking me to relieve yourself from guilt.
In an open letter, the group said that it is worried about the political implications of the economists’ work: “the suggestion that an ideal level of genetic variation could foster economic growth and could even be engineered has the potential to be misused with frightening consequences to justify indefensible practices such as ethnic cleansing or genocide,” it said.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
"The US is about equal opportunity for all...not equal outcomes"
Libertarian Core Principle.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
In other words, the plural of anecdote is not data. The myth of the self-made-man is very strongly prevalent in the USA because the country has largely been built from scratch on a rather short timescale that produced genuine examples of people who seized chanceful opportunities. And I'm not implying they had no talent. But it was never JUST talent. And I go as far as to say it's NEVER just talent.
Spectacular economical successes tend to overshadow the fact that most intellectual breakthroughs are incremental. They had the insight and talent to climb on the shoulders of the right giants at the moment (to retool Bernard of Chartres' famous aphorism), but what could have they done without those giants?
Similarly, people who like to point out that even now some people from poor families manage to succeed, as a proof that everyone has the same chance in life, are basically opposing anecdotes to statistics, which means they fail by all definitions of rationality.
There's nothing like $HOME
Argh, you make this point more concisely and clearly than I made it in the previous thread. Kudos.
There's nothing like $HOME
"The US is about equal opportunity for all...not equal outcomes"
Libertarian Core Principle.
myth. libertarians believe in the inheritance of wealth which utterly blows any possibility of equal opportunity out of the water.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
Exactly.
The real issue is that some (too many) economists like to present their discipline as a hard science. It's not. It's a social science. The one that makes the most use of mathematical models, but a social science nonetheless, along with ethnology, sociology, psychology etc. Most actual, serious economists are fully aware of that.
There's nothing like $HOME
T lst Grks nvntd vwls...
but they forgot the vowels!
As for East Africa, that is Ethiopia, their writing system is not older than Linear A, for sure.
Oh, come on, Slashdot! I'm not allowed to use an ordered list in my comments?
You are, but their POS stylesheet hides the numbers. If, for example, I "Disable Styles" in Safari 6's Develop menu, your list magically becomes numbered - the page looks completely like ass, but at least the fucking ordered lists are numbered, not just ordered. At least as I read, for example, the HTML 4 section on lists, "visual user agents" should "number ordered list items". I guess a stylesheet are supposed to be able to override any aspect of presentation in the spec, but it's still really bogus to have a stylesheet that turns off numbering for ordered list items.
(And Slashdot should allow titles to be a bit longer, assuming this isn't some unfortunate interaction between Slashdot and Safari - the box in which to type the title has some extra space at the end even with my longest-I-could-type title which, alas, required me to abbreviate "rendered" as "rendered".)
Note: I do not condone slavery or appartheid as a form of politics, but it is just a theory for the results
Maybe what the researchers have found (given the history of humanity) is that in a country with several ethnics groups you can have a ruling elite that concentrates capital and act as a whole to keep their privileges, and an oppressed, cheap workforce without rights to be used as a source of "profits"
That said, anyway it probably is just a structural development; Great Britain and Germany in XIX century, and Great Britain and Japan in XX century could not have been any more homogeneous yet they did way better than said, the heterogeneous Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires.
Why can't
Now look at the life of the descendants of those who remained behind. That does not mean that any of them are genetically predisposed to their situation. It just means that things are more complicated than the conclusions that you appear to be reaching. Economic oppression is even easier if you can convince the oppressed that the deck is stacked against them and their is nothing they can do to change things.
I'm sorry but economic oppression is much harder when you teach people that all they have to do to get ahead is work hard. It is much easier to oppress people when you teach them that no matter what they do, they are going to be poor and downtrodden. On the other hand, if you teach people that if they work hard enough, save their money and make wise decisions, their children can live a better life than they do, they might actually try to succeed. Some of them might end up on the Supreme Court, or as CEO of successful corporations. That does not mean that some people do not have a tougher road than others. It just means that those who succeed are drawn from the pool of those who believe that they can succeed.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Um... that race wasn't even allowed to vote in every state until recently. Most of their grandparents couldn't even work the worst jobs in society because of discrimination. The fact that their grand children aren't running the country yet should be a given... oh wait.
yeah because if there is a black president it means that black people are running the country.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
Duuh, as much as I disagree with libertarians on many, many things, I think you're mischaracterizing them, or maybe the label itself is too broad. I've talked to quite a few self-defined libertarians who were all for severely limiting, or even outright banning, inheritance (for the record, while I'm all for limiting, outright banning goes a bit too far in my worldview).
There's nothing like $HOME
Thankfully all these 60 plus year old guys are doing the world a favor and dying of heart attacks and high blood pressure on a spirit-lifting regular basis.
Alas, the most influential ones have access to top-notch medical attention, so it could take some time.
There's nothing like $HOME
It's been about 147 years since the thirteenth amendment. That puts the era of slavery outside living memory, true. However, if we consider a lifespan of about 80 years, that means that there can certainly still be people alive today who are only one generation removed from slavery. So, the era of pre-thirteenth amendment slavery may be history, but it's a long way from being dead history.
Add to that the fact that the thirteenth amendment hardly fixed everything. For starters, it didn't actually ban slavery. The amendment quite clearly left the door open for slavery as a punishment for crime. This does stop hereditary slavery, but otherwise leaves pretty much every other element of slavery open to continue (except for the nebulous protection of the eighth amendment's "cruel and unusual punishment" clause) for anyone convicted of a crime. Convicting poor, black, illiterate (nearly always, since it was a crime to teach slaves to read in most slave states) former slaves of crimes was pretty easy in the former slave states. For example, most former slaves were pretty much instantly guilty of vagrancy. Chain gangs and forced prison labor persisted well until... well, now actually.
Then there's the civil rights situation. Despite the passage of the 13th amendment (ratified by Mississippi in 1995), Jim Crow laws persisted until 1965 and anti-miscegenation laws weren't declared unconstitutional until 1967 and weren't all repealed until Alabama finally did so in 2001. So, there are plenty of people alive today who experienced active legal discrimination in their lifetimes.
Given all that, it's ridiculous to claim that the past racial discrimination of the US is just a "crutch or excuse" for social problems. The kind of effects that sort of thing produces can persist across numerous generations.
As for people starting with nothing then rising to great success, that certainly is possible, but those are statistical outliers. If you're going to consider people en masse then those born to disadvantaged circumstances are going to stay disadvantaged and pass it on to their children and their children's children.
The ONLY logical conclusion for your premise is that we should rip all the hard earned equity accumulated by people upon their death and give it to the state. What makes you think that is any better than how it currently is? What makes you think wealth is the only thing you inherit that gives you advantages?
Unfair Advantage does not equate to opportunity. Tall people have an unfair advantage when playing basketball, however, all people have equal opportunity, hence all the under 6' players that succeed in basketball, and people like me (6'5") can't shoot for shit.
People are born with all sorts of advantages and disadvantages, it is wholly unfair for arbitrary rules designed to "level the playing field", which equate (IMHO) to the cure being worse than the disease.
Take for instance the biggest industry that plays upon the advantages of inheritance (not necessarily monetary), Hollywood. It is a bastion of Liberal / Socialism group think. How many of those actors and actresses who "inherited" their fame from family members would give up their "inheritance", to level out the playing field? Look at how many multi-generational families there are in Hollywood, and realize that they are the truest hypocrites of them all.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Racism is wrong right up to the point where data indicates it is accurate. We shouldn't redefine reality for the sake of avoiding racism. Although this doesn't sound like racism so much as geneticism.
I realize it is far more pc to say to everything is about personal drive and nurture but nature may just be a factor as well.
"Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." Just don't discount malice.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
True eugenics would also begin to cross borders and races, breeding whatever best du jour inheritable traits were available in the current pool. Ask yourself this: Has the breeding of "pures" in the pursuit of an AKC papered pooch resulted in better or worse canine genetic lines? Genetic diversity is all earthly species' best shot at persevering through the environmental obstacle course we call real life.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
US, incredibly diverse genetically -- economically powerful.
Japan, incredibly homogeneous genetically -- economically powerful.
North and South Korea, incredibly homogeneous genetically -- one powerful, one dying on the vine.
So much for that theory.
Hmmmm. Maybe economic and other freedoms have something to do with it.
Oh, by the way, humans are dual reproducing data sets -- the DNA and the memes in the head. I'm so god damned sick of biologists thinking the reproducing data streams are all DNA. IDIOTS!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Honey, if this is about that paternity thing, Uncle Daddy has already told you that's an Attorney General witch hunt.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Of the airs, and you folks are above waaay to good to shill for 15.9994 after this post, I prefer an air of self-importance. I have observed a correlation bordering on causation regarding the strength of personal conviction versus an ability to sell it to others.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It is a common error to attribute Achaeans - and the Dorians, too, really - to "Europe". One may do so, based on the southeastern-most hump of that continent, surely.
But the intellectual world in which they were grown, and the tradition they embellished and elevated was not indigenous to the Balkans. It was rather a part of the Indo-Aryan world, which acquired a unique synthesis of Egyptian, Levantine and Mesopotamian influences.
"Greece" as it was understood as the Hellenic world? As much a part of Asia Minor as of Europe.
Sparta and Athens become important after Ionia - which was the real incubator of Doric civilization and passed the legacy to Attica. Given the proximity to Phoenica, this is the natural route for an alphabet to move from the Levant to the Greeks.
Later, despite the ahistoric and anachronistic term Graeco-Roman - the Romans did almost nothing to transmit and develop Greek science and culture. This was left to the Persian and Arab world - who became the first society to cultivate both Platonic and Aristotelian schools - and were the causal for their living preservation and transmission to Europe in later centuries.
Yet this crucial - and golden age - of "western"or "European" tradition is discredited. Again, by the descendants of illiterate tribesmen and petty war lords, who appropriate a history, and call it their special, providential inheritance.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
They were able to accomplish this without your revolting melanin-deficiency.
Looking at the Fayum mummy portraits and other ancient Egyptian artwork, especially depicting women (men are depicted as tanned from field work), I'd say you're wrong.
Copts (native Egyptians who still speak something approximating the ancient tongue) have somewhat lighter skin than the present Egyptian Arab majority, similar skin colour to Turks and Greeks. I'm not saying it was because they had light brown skin rather than mid brown skin that they were able to pyramids, but they were not dark.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
ohh.. I see... the conservative says it wasn't the 300 plus years of slavery and wanton, sustained, sicko destruction of all things conservatives hold up as the foundation of society and civilization - family religion and culture- that hurt them. It was the 30 years of social welfare programs of the sort found in Europe and Scandinavia that conservatives don't like .. that's what really hurt them!
It's just amazing to watch a racist reason out loud. It's why you can't reason with them and why we had to go to war to free the slaves in the first place.
In 1955 90% of black families had a father in the house. That was after most of the bad things you list but before some idiot decided that not having a man in the house was a good requirement for families to get aid. Facts cannot be racist.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If you convince the downtrodden that they have no hope to get ahead in a country where gun ownership is a right, you get an armed revolt. If you teach them that they can get ahead if they keep themselves too busy to think about revolt, you get a bunch of worn out poor people who aren't quite ready to give up yet.
Scratch the surface of those rags to CEO stories and you'll usually find out the rags were designer originals. With a population over 300 million, you will find a few statistical outliers that actually made the rags to riches transition, but it's not actually a statistically likely outcome.
Upward mobility is generally much more modest. Rags to slightly better rags. Until you get over the threshold to actually being rich, downward mobility is also a factor.
Invaded by the English Empire then subject to puppet rulers.
As for people starting with nothing then rising to great success, that certainly is possible, but those are statistical outliers. If you're going to consider people en masse then those born to disadvantaged circumstances are going to stay disadvantaged and pass it on to their children and their children's children.
I fully agree.
And for the "equal opportunity": The social mobility (which is a direct measure for the aboundance of 'from poverty to wealth' stories) in the U.S. is not higher than in the oh so socialist european countries. And in Europe, the most common from poverty to wealth story is 'has won the lottery'. So how's the "equal opportunity" going, if playing the lottery gives you better chances than hard and steady work?
No, the wealth on both sides of the Atlantic creates an aristocracy, and with it an ideology to preserve the aristocracy by blaming the non-wealthy for not being wealthy and at the same time reducing the chance to overcome poverty on your own to less than random chance (e.g. lottery).
The concept of race exists because different groups of people look different. And if we look different, then why can't we behave differently?
I'm fully prepared to accept that much of our behaviour is genetic. Obviously it won't mean that different races have different worth. But it might explain why we do things differently (especially if were to be analysed on a individual level). And that might in turn give us insight in how better to help our fellows. It might also help people be more accepting of each other, in much the same way that people are usually more patient with someone who has been diagnosed with some trait/dysfunction/disease/sensitivity/strength/etc.
The trick is to be accepting of ourselves and each other, regardless of faults or strengths. To keep out bigotry, don't look at groups of humans as discrete entities, but rather as fuzzy groups of individuals where each individual has their own personal worth. (The groups are fuzzy due to crossbreeding in genetics, culture, technology, etc.)
If you convince the downtrodden that they have no hope to get ahead in a country where gun ownership is a right, you get an armed revolt.
No, you don't, you get crime. Just look at most of the cities in this country.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The fact that more black people are imprisoned than whites is no more racist than the fact that more males are imprisoned than females is sexist.
Of course it isnt. Sexism/racism/etc works in one direction only. Stating more females are imprisoned than males is sexist (even if true).
Funny...I never mentioned anything associated with any particular race in my OP....it was a generalization.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Clearly, an increasing number have declined to drink the cool aid, but not enough for a revolt.
Except that when you talk to those in cities with high crime rates who are members of the class that the criminals are drawn from, you discover that the majority of them believe that they have no hope of advancement through hard work.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The ONLY logical conclusion for your premise is that we should rip all the hard earned equity accumulated by people upon their death and give it to the state. What makes you think that is any better than how it currently is? What makes you think wealth is the only thing you inherit that gives you advantages?
I made a claim about the definition of Libertarianism. How you get from that to all these other things is a special form of logic that eludes me.
Unfair Advantage does not equate to opportunity.
I never claimed that either.
Tall people have an unfair advantage when playing basketball, however, all people have equal opportunity, hence all the under 6' players that succeed in basketball, and people like me (6'5") can't shoot for shit.
People are born with all sorts of advantages and disadvantages, it is wholly unfair for arbitrary rules designed to "level the playing field", which equate (IMHO) to the cure being worse than the disease.
we are not talking about fairness. And we are not talking about advantages people are born with. We are talking about advantages that society GIVES THEM.
Property is a RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PEOPLE. It is ARTIFICIAL. You only inherit because everybody concedes that you inherit. If everybody claims that the state inherits, then the state inherits. If everyone claims that the king inherits, then that is what happens. It has to do with social relationships.
Abolishing private inheritence may do little to equal the playing field in terms of innate advantages but that is still more equal than allowing it.
Take for instance the biggest industry that plays upon the advantages of inheritance (not necessarily monetary), Hollywood. It is a bastion of Liberal / Socialism group think.
It's not, but I don't care about Hollywood. We are talking Libertarian core values.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
And? Some fear getting caught, some have stronger moral convictions against crime. Let enough people loos every last shred of hope and start talking together and boom!
If our government was really smart, it would realize that THAT is a national security issue and that the cheapest solution was to take steps to actually improve everyone's prospects before the tipping point is reached.
There was plenty sign of discontent in the years leading up to the French Revolution. The aristocracy assumed they would just grumble a bit and put up with it forever. They were dead wrong.
And these sons did it all by their lonesome? No help from the downtrodden at all?
"facts cannot be racist..:
Yeah but if we listen to you, facts can be ignored. You seem to be saying that blacks were' doing well in the 50s. In fact, you're saying they were better off then than they are today. That's a fucking joke, right up there with your subhuman Congressman who recently opined that blacks were better off under slavery. Do you guys ever have a NEW idea.. oh that's right.. you're conservatives, you don't by definition.
Conservative tactic- extract one tiny fact from a larger historical context and hold it up as definitively causational despite the SEA of OBVIOUS causation all around you.
The only thing conservatives excel at is denying reality making up stories that make themselves feel good about themselves.
Conservatism is a disease that needs to be cured.