Banks have used fraud-detection methods exactly like this for over a decade. The ones I dealt with used over a hundred factors including 'did you ask for a receipt', geographic location, and 'is this for amounts you regularly withdraw', etc.
With the adoption of EMV (chip cards), a lot of this has effort is no longer as necessary and been transferred to Card-Not-Present transactions where fraud migrated when chip killed card-present fraud.
And of course the reason you can't get your score is that it's not YOUR score, it the score of this particular transaction. Most of the parameters used to come up with a score change with every transaction.
I'll agree that inequality of outcome is not evidence of discrimination, per se. However, given the way that the human brain over-generalizes patterns, I can pretty much guarantee that in any situation where there might naturally be inequality of outcome, there is almost certainly discrimination taking place as our brains try to eliminate the "anamolous" minority that our brain is desperately trying to "prove" don't belong.
We structure society to eliminate the minority; our brains constantly tell us that this person doesn't belong and that its a mistake they're here. Heck, the brain of the person themselves is constantly telling them they don't belong. All because brain structures designed to meet the needs of hominids a few million years ago don't to well with nuance, constantly whispering "one of these things just doesn't belong".
Our brains are simply not wired to handle reality. The idea that bell curves with different means overlap is difficult to understand for the majority of humans, and even harder to hold on to in daily life.
So, given the discrimination a minority is going to face due to the way our brains handle information, pushing another meme to disrupt the incorrect heuristic seems over-all welfare increasing. My guess is in a situation where a natural outcome is 80/20, human beings will structure their society and behaviour to make it 95/5 (if not 100/0), and pushing back with a meme of equality of outcome meme might make it 90/10.
Also, go work for a company that starts work 1 hour sooner in the summertime.
No problem, let's switch a coordination problem between one federal entity for literally millions of individual business and institutional entities.
Honestly, the problem is quite simple. A majority of North Americans seem to prefer to have extra daylight during the evening, but not at the expense of making the mornings particular dark. This is a the simplest way of achieving that.
Or is this yet another case of "human beings are failing to conform to our elegant model. Therefore it's human beings who are in error."
Not certain whose claiming it, but I will say that almost every explainer I've watched (not a classic fan, but I watch occasionally), is an old white man, as am I.
Not too surprising, since "authorities" such as would make it to air today are likely those who started 40 years ago, when things were much less diverse.
It's only recently that we've started to care that authorities at least sort of match the audience demographically. This causes some discomfort as doing so requires fracturing the traditional requirements of decades of experience.
It's why traditionally, young people who wanted to become authorities immediately had to enter fields that basically didn't exist decades ago, so that there was no old guard.
The conflict is strongest in fields where the idea of long experience and demographically matching your audience are incompatible. Classic movies would certainly qualify.
Indeed, the big problem with a workforce who know they're entirely disposable (and are paid like that) is that they can probably pick up an equally bad job elsewhere. They essentially risk nothing when indulging in some low level corruption (since companies almost never prosecute for fear of exposing the problem) and it's quite clear there's no loyalty running either direction, so there's little emotional cost to "betraying" their employer.
But the same holds for society in general. You want to ensure that people at have at least some stake, both financially and emotionally in being "part of the team".
> Yes, the $100 yearly fee plus recurring hardware costs are the reason why I stopped developing shareware for Apple.
And that's reasonable response. There's no doubt listing fees would exclude a few "worthy" developers. But the question is how many? And how many compared to the number of junk developers?
After all, it's *critical* to understand that published game has a cost to consumers (makes it harder for them to find things) and cost to other developers (makes it harder for potential customers for their games to find them).
At some point, it's simply a matter of making developers pay the cost that they used to be able to foist off on the rest of the eco-system.
Steam is a town square of sorts. And if enough people are throwing their garbage in the town square because it costs them nothing to do so, then people will stop going to the town square to discover new developers. Instead, they'll rely on big names, and on indie developers that can spend the tens of thousands necessary to get media attention.
EA and the rest of the big names are happy to see Steam become a dumping ground. No-one will ever have trouble finding *their* games.
It's the serious indie developers that need to be rescued. And I'm pretty certain that most of the serious ones (who have probably spent hundreds of thousands on their project) would be willing to pay a lot to have a Steam store where customers might actually be able to discover their games simply through the store itself.
Let's be honest, junk games (and not "bad" games that failed to hit the mark - truly "junk" games) have a cost to everyone involved.
They are at tax on you as Steam consumers as they force them to spend their valuable time sifting through them to get to something that has some hope of actually being pleasing.
They are a tax on other indie developers as they push people away from actually actually engaging in personal discovery. Instead developers now have to spend tens or hundreds of thousands marketing their games through conventions, media buys, etc. Steam should be one of the few ways that you can simply "build a better mousetrap" and have the world "beat a path to your door". Instead, tons of junk games by people who are essentially buying no investment lottery tickets have poisoned the well for developers.
Of course, how to do we tell if a game is junk? Do we have an outside team do curation? Well, serious curation takes a ton of money, so let's take a simple route - does the developer herself believe in the game? And how does the developer prove it? After all, we have no idea if this is the developer's life's work, on something they spent 2 hours on.
Well, the obvious way is to force the developer to make a serious commitment. $5K is less than two weeks salary for any competent programmer.
I'll claim that there are very few developers who have committed the resources to make a serious game (which is likely to be tens of thousands of dollars of their time), who cannot find the resources to commit $5K.
I'll also claim that the *vast* majority of people who are spending a few hours to churn out a game and put it on steam are not willing to back their joke with real dollars. They don't care the damage that they cause the Steam eco-system. If they're not personally paying the price of throwing garbage into the town square, why should they?. It's the tragedy of the commons.
Of course, the reality is a little bit more blurry. There are real developers who truly don't have $5K to spend, and there is no doubt some deluded soul that thinks they've developed Half-Life 4 in a day and a half and are willing to back that delusion with real money.
But I honestly feel that the easy ability to publish junk that's indistinguishable from Indie games worth examining is killing the Indie landscape altogether. The listing fee is an idea to try and *save* Indie development. The question is not "should we force developers to come up with $5K to be taken seriously?". It's "should we force them to come up with $5K or do we force them to spend 10 times that much on marketing just to be taken seriously".
98% of the total garbage disappears (as well as a few percent of the good). Of course "not terribly good games" will still appear, but it gets rid of the absolute garbage.
Or if people are appalled at paying to appear on Steam, allow spending $10K for a Steam "check-mark of marketing", and allow users to filter to show only check-marked games.
Given the rate at which businesses are able to capitalize on even the slightest human weakness to maximize short-term gains for them, it will be interesting to see what percentage of mankind survives to reproduce? 1%? 0.1%?
- Have even a hint of gambling addicition? Our latest game will keep you glued to your phone until you starve! - Partial to salt and sugar? One bite of our new product, and you'll never eat anything else again! - Want interaction, but real people keep having ideas of their own? Our robotic companions will *never* disagree with you. No need to interact with a troublesome human ever again!
Business exists to give customers what they want. But what if what we want will kill us, and the only reason humanity has survived so far was that, until now, businesses were bad at their job?
Come on, this is econ 101. If the benefit is accorded to all members, regardless of contribution, and contribution is voluntary, then you have a coordination problem as the rational action on an individual basis is to not contribute, leaving the considerable benefits of universal contribution on the table.
This is such a common scenario that no society beyond hunter-gatherer without forced contributions has survived.
If it pleases you better, just think of it as "Country, Inc." with terms of service that involve you being born:-). As long as we don't prevent you from leaving, you still have your perfect freedom - we're not denying you any choice at all!
Nobody will contribute, people will not work, will steal, will drink themselves to death.
Are you telling me that you had a UBI, you'd quit your present job, steal, and drink yourself to death?
I'll guess no.
Okay, then your family? Your friends?
Again, I'll guess no.
Usually when claims like this are made, it's because there's this huge mysterious, shadowy mass of humanity who we've never really met (but read about in blog posts or seen in movies) who apparently are lazy, shiftless, and awful (and probably have a different skin colour). The people we actually *have* met are, on the whole, reasonably hard-working, reasonably decent people.
I'll go with making pronouncements based on observed data. My measurement of all the people in my life (and that encompasses a number of different walks of life, many different colours, many different cultures) indicates that the *vast* majority are, when given the opportunity, contributors. Again, mostly to benefit themselves, but because of forced contributions, benefiting their fellow citizens as well. Some unfortunates aren't in a position to contribute due to health or other issues. Most wish they were.
I've no doubt you can cherry pick for awful people - they do exist in small numbers. But the idea of basing my society solely around the awful people? That sounds like a recipe for... well... awfulness.
Mask, what mask? Look, pretty much every human being alive lives in a society with "forced contributions", so I really hope there is no surprise there. (The canonical example being mutual defense - the biggest contribution possible (your life).
In fact, given the failure of any society without forced contributions to have survived long enough to be in the historical record, I think you could make a case for that to be a defining characteristic of humanity.
You are absolutely and totally fucking evil, and worse, belive (sic) yourself to be altruistic.
On the contrary, I specifically mentioned the benefits *I* get. I don't believe I'm altruistic at all. If I was altruistic, I'd be pushing much harder for all of our wealth to be shared by the people who *really* desperately need it (or at least fighting for completely open borders).
As for absolutely evil, yes, guilty as charged:-). But then again so is Jesus to Hitler, so I've got a fair bit of company right across the spectrum.
Of course if no one contributes, the system will fall apart.
But why would no-one contribute? After all, the contributions benefit the contributor as well as every one else. And having every one else benefit is an additional benefit to me.
Now if contributions were optional, as is the Libertarian utopia, you might have a tragedy of the commons problem. Bu that's not the case.
You shouldn't be rewarded for being part of the system.
Why not?
I'll happily declare that my fellow Canadians deserve many rewards simply for being Canadian - free education, health-care, various welfare systems if they are in need, free roads and other infrastructure, free defense at the expense of the lives of my fellow citizen, and a myriad of other services. None of those are dependent on their contribution to the system.
And yes, as a Canadian who's doing reasonably well, I pay a fairly substantial tax for the privilege of sustaining those services that benefit me and every other Canadian.
And this is not selflessness. The benefits that I gain from having these services available to my fellow Canadians far exceeds my contribution.to the tax pool. (If I was selfless, I'd be trying to extend those benefits to the world. I'm not as the benefits aren't great enough.)
Anyway, I'll just say that a society that doesn't place a strong inherent positive value on its members is one that's falling apart.
Indeed, there are reasons why the US system is so much more expensive than its Canadian counterparts. The US has a Lexus style system (for those lucky enough to have good insurance) and Lexus prices. The Canadian system, is more Corolla style with Corolla price.
But like two cars, the interesting thing is that the health outcomes for identical conditions are nearly identical.
What you purchase for an expensive health-care system is a much more pleasant system (no lines, lots of tests that occasionally catch something, but mostly make the patient feel better, etc.) and marginally better outcomes.
The downside is, of course, that costs are so high that there's really no way of providing fairly comprehensive medical service to the entire population.
As a Canadian, naturally, I prefer a system that allows all Canadians to be covered (with difficulties, of course, there are lines, and in some areas, primary care doctors are harder to find - natural outcomes of a much more economical system) over a more pleasant system with similar outcomes, where a substantial portion of my fellow citizens access to health-care is a major source of stress and concern (to put it mildly).
Psychologically, I think our health-care system helps bind us together - it is a concrete and ever-present example that as a people, we have expressed a sentiment that the lives of all Canadians are equally important, from the richest to the poorest. It's an ideal, and we certainly don't meet that ideal, but we spend considerable resources attempting to do so, and I think that makes a great deal of difference to who we are as a people.
I'll take the fact that my taxes are buying Corollas for four rather than a Lexus just for myself. It's not a trade-off I'd necessarily make individually, but it's one that I'm happy to have the government make on my behalf.
> Except in places like where I live where it is illegal to give discounts for using cash, or charging more to use credit
The government makes it illegal to pass on the price differential between the cost to the merchant of paying in cash and paying by credit card?
Must be nice. I'm an Apple user, could they make make it illegal to charge different amounts for different phones, too?
Or is Visa the only buyer of legislation in town.
(I'm hoping that this is actually a misinterpretation of *Visa* not allowing merchants to offer a discount/surcharge. But if it's the government in the business of subsidizing the credit card companies profit line at the expense of cash users, I'm very disappointed.)
It means men were always more "oppressed" than women.
Except that I suspect that more men were happy about the roles they were assigned than women happy about the roles they were assigned.
Also interesting in that since Western societies always had more rules and structures than African societies
Come now. If we're talking about blacks in Western society, there's been a huge number of roles that they've been barred from playing.
I was once a forced conscript. For a minimum of 10 months (I ended up doing 2 years), I had to train to insure the security of my country. According to your definition, this is oppression
Damn right that's oppression - it's called forced labour and almost every civilized society that isn't facing an existential risk has abandoned it.
It was just part of my social contract.
If you feel it was so, then make it mandatory for all. Why should some be exempt,. but not others? Otherwise, do the sensible thing. Raise taxes so that you can pay a good enough wage that men AND women actually volunteer to become soldiers. Maximal freedom *and* social contract preserved. Small wonder that's what every ethical society has done.
In all of this, you've put forward the idea of a social contract, and I agree. But there's no reason why we should select who fulfills the roles that are necessary by gender, eye-color, or the first letter of their last name. That's simply cultural laziness - "we've always done it this way and change makes me uncomfortable (or even worse, reduces my advantages)".
By the way, equality of opportunity does not preclude someone (and quite possibly, even the majority) choosing to adopt traditional roles. But putting huge social and cultural hurdles to escaping them? Reducing people's freedom to choose their role? That's simply evil.
Men are now nothing but second-class citizen.
Snort. I'm about the same age as you (slightly older) and also a Canadian. I'm struggling to come up with a *single* time it's been a disadvantage to be a man. And it's sure has hell been an advantage many a time (like always being taken seriously when I make technical suggestions at work - it's better now, but I remember the time when I had to basically repeat what my female colleagues said in order to get my boss to take it seriously. Thankfully the worst offenders of that era seemed to have retired (or work in Silicon Valley, apparently:-)).
Ah, I've remembered one disadvantage I had from being male - when my son were very young, the Greek grandmothers of our neighbourhood were always giving me advice, because as a father, I couldn't possibly understand how children worked.
I'll take unsolicited advice over professional sidelining.
If people are denied a role they desired and merited because of cultural or legal constraints, then yes, I'd call that oppression.
People may choose to accept it, as the cost of fighting might not be worth the reward, or they may personally find it not oppressive ("I *like* my assigned role"). But being forced into a role *is* oppression.
Economists have something called "revealed preference", which involves looking at what people actually do when given the freedom to choose. And big surprise, the vast majority of women who have that freedom choose to enter the workforce and compete meaningfully there when given the option.
From your original post:
> tried to force people to adopt a behavior that would bring them happiness.
That canard has been used to justify oppression throughout the centuries. "You're happier being slaves!" "You're happier serving me."
I say give them equality and let each individual choose the role that they feel they want to play, rather than trying to play God and decide for them. Feminism has been God's gift to freedom. And again, look at the feminism as embraced by your coworkers (they may not even call it that - our feminist society is pretty much taken for granted it scarcely needs a name), not whatever outrages one happen to read today on the Internet.
> often meant working in hazardous conditions on a daily basis.
Well, I suspect "occasionally" might be more accurate, but it's neither here nor there.
Culturally confining any group to their appointed roles regardless of their personal preferences is oppression, and while feminism has allowed a number of men and women to find roles where the woman is the main breadwinner, I think it's pretty obvious that there were a lot more women who had wanted and been (and to some extent still are) denied access to men's traditional roles than the other way around.
There's a reason that the movement to equality was driven by women and labelled feminism.
Feminism is worse than organized religion. At least most organized religion understood human nature and tried to force people to adopt a behavior that would bring them happiness.
Oh, please. What's next - blacks are "naturally" slaves (as was claimed by many Confederates)? You sound like a small Southern farm-owner after emancipation, bemoaning how life has gone downhill for you.
Feminism may not have benefited you personally - after all, what's not to like about having an attentive partner who handles all the emotional and physical scut-work of raising a family, while your responsibilities are limited to bringing home an income. We men had it very good for many years. But a system based on oppression is unethical, and believing "but they want to be oppressed!" is pathetic.
And if you really can't stand equality (an acceptable option), then you have the option of "going your own way". But don't pretend you should have the *right* to such cultural and social dominance or even more sad, that such inequality is in the best interest of the oppressed.
(And let's not straw-man feminism. Take the beliefs of 10 of your closest female work-mates - that's the feminism worth debating, as opposed to some random person on the Internet.)
You are quoting an Anonymous Coward (#56486539), but responding to my post, hence my confusion.
The moment they start using scientific findings to try and put themselves in charge, they become a danger greater than climate change.
I understand this rhetorical device, but it suggests scientists have vastly greater influence than they actually do.
In fact, my claim is the opposite. I claim that the power of scientists is so *weak*, that even the suggestion of bias in the minds of many citizens is enough to negate their findings completely.
Fairly sad, but strongly evidenced by the fact that overwhelming scientific consensus had failed to sway the majority of citizenry.
Slashdot Mirror
Banks have used fraud-detection methods exactly like this for over a decade. The ones I dealt with used over a hundred factors including 'did you ask for a receipt', geographic location, and 'is this for amounts you regularly withdraw', etc.
With the adoption of EMV (chip cards), a lot of this has effort is no longer as necessary and been transferred to Card-Not-Present transactions where fraud migrated when chip killed card-present fraud.
And of course the reason you can't get your score is that it's not YOUR score, it the score of this particular transaction. Most of the parameters used to come up with a score change with every transaction.
I'll agree that inequality of outcome is not evidence of discrimination, per se. However, given the way that the human brain over-generalizes patterns, I can pretty much guarantee that in any situation where there might naturally be inequality of outcome, there is almost certainly discrimination taking place as our brains try to eliminate the "anamolous" minority that our brain is desperately trying to "prove" don't belong.
We structure society to eliminate the minority; our brains constantly tell us that this person doesn't belong and that its a mistake they're here. Heck, the brain of the person themselves is constantly telling them they don't belong. All because brain structures designed to meet the needs of hominids a few million years ago don't to well with nuance, constantly whispering "one of these things just doesn't belong".
Our brains are simply not wired to handle reality. The idea that bell curves with different means overlap is difficult to understand for the majority of humans, and even harder to hold on to in daily life.
So, given the discrimination a minority is going to face due to the way our brains handle information, pushing another meme to disrupt the incorrect heuristic seems over-all welfare increasing. My guess is in a situation where a natural outcome is 80/20, human beings will structure their society and behaviour to make it 95/5 (if not 100/0), and pushing back with a meme of equality of outcome meme might make it 90/10.
Also, go work for a company that starts work 1 hour sooner in the summertime.
No problem, let's switch a coordination problem between one federal entity for literally millions of individual business and institutional entities.
Honestly, the problem is quite simple. A majority of North Americans seem to prefer to have extra daylight during the evening, but not at the expense of making the mornings particular dark. This is a the simplest way of achieving that.
Or is this yet another case of "human beings are failing to conform to our elegant model. Therefore it's human beings who are in error."
> WHO CLAIMS THIS?
Not certain whose claiming it, but I will say that almost every explainer I've watched (not a classic fan, but I watch occasionally), is an old white man, as am I.
Not too surprising, since "authorities" such as would make it to air today are likely those who started 40 years ago, when things were much less diverse.
It's only recently that we've started to care that authorities at least sort of match the audience demographically. This causes some discomfort as doing so requires fracturing the traditional requirements of decades of experience.
It's why traditionally, young people who wanted to become authorities immediately had to enter fields that basically didn't exist decades ago, so that there was no old guard.
The conflict is strongest in fields where the idea of long experience and demographically matching your audience are incompatible. Classic movies would certainly qualify.
Indeed, the big problem with a workforce who know they're entirely disposable (and are paid like that) is that they can probably pick up an equally bad job elsewhere. They essentially risk nothing when indulging in some low level corruption (since companies almost never prosecute for fear of exposing the problem) and it's quite clear there's no loyalty running either direction, so there's little emotional cost to "betraying" their employer.
But the same holds for society in general. You want to ensure that people at have at least some stake, both financially and emotionally in being "part of the team".
> Yes, the $100 yearly fee plus recurring hardware costs are the reason why I stopped developing shareware for Apple.
And that's reasonable response. There's no doubt listing fees would exclude a few "worthy" developers. But the question is how many? And how many compared to the number of junk developers?
After all, it's *critical* to understand that published game has a cost to consumers (makes it harder for them to find things) and cost to other developers (makes it harder for potential customers for their games to find them).
At some point, it's simply a matter of making developers pay the cost that they used to be able to foist off on the rest of the eco-system.
Steam is a town square of sorts. And if enough people are throwing their garbage in the town square because it costs them nothing to do so, then people will stop going to the town square to discover new developers. Instead, they'll rely on big names, and on indie developers that can spend the tens of thousands necessary to get media attention.
EA and the rest of the big names are happy to see Steam become a dumping ground. No-one will ever have trouble finding *their* games.
It's the serious indie developers that need to be rescued. And I'm pretty certain that most of the serious ones (who have probably spent hundreds of thousands on their project) would be willing to pay a lot to have a Steam store where customers might actually be able to discover their games simply through the store itself.
Let's be honest, junk games (and not "bad" games that failed to hit the mark - truly "junk" games) have a cost to everyone involved.
Of course, how to do we tell if a game is junk? Do we have an outside team do curation? Well, serious curation takes a ton of money, so let's take a simple route - does the developer herself believe in the game? And how does the developer prove it? After all, we have no idea if this is the developer's life's work, on something they spent 2 hours on.
Well, the obvious way is to force the developer to make a serious commitment. $5K is less than two weeks salary for any competent programmer.
I'll claim that there are very few developers who have committed the resources to make a serious game (which is likely to be tens of thousands of dollars of their time), who cannot find the resources to commit $5K.
I'll also claim that the *vast* majority of people who are spending a few hours to churn out a game and put it on steam are not willing to back their joke with real dollars. They don't care the damage that they cause the Steam eco-system. If they're not personally paying the price of throwing garbage into the town square, why should they?. It's the tragedy of the commons.
Of course, the reality is a little bit more blurry. There are real developers who truly don't have $5K to spend, and there is no doubt some deluded soul that thinks they've developed Half-Life 4 in a day and a half and are willing to back that delusion with real money.
But I honestly feel that the easy ability to publish junk that's indistinguishable from Indie games worth examining is killing the Indie landscape altogether. The listing fee is an idea to try and *save* Indie development. The question is not "should we force developers to come up with $5K to be taken seriously?". It's "should we force them to come up with $5K or do we force them to spend 10 times that much on marketing just to be taken seriously".
98% of the total garbage disappears (as well as a few percent of the good). Of course "not terribly good games" will still appear, but it gets rid of the absolute garbage.
Or if people are appalled at paying to appear on Steam, allow spending $10K for a Steam "check-mark of marketing", and allow users to filter to show only check-marked games.
Given the rate at which businesses are able to capitalize on even the slightest human weakness to maximize short-term gains for them, it will be interesting to see what percentage of mankind survives to reproduce? 1%? 0.1%?
- Have even a hint of gambling addicition? Our latest game will keep you glued to your phone until you starve!
- Partial to salt and sugar? One bite of our new product, and you'll never eat anything else again!
- Want interaction, but real people keep having ideas of their own? Our robotic companions will *never* disagree with you. No need to interact with a troublesome human ever again!
Business exists to give customers what they want. But what if what we want will kill us, and the only reason humanity has survived so far was that, until now, businesses were bad at their job?
Come on, this is econ 101. If the benefit is accorded to all members, regardless of contribution, and contribution is voluntary, then you have a coordination problem as the rational action on an individual basis is to not contribute, leaving the considerable benefits of universal contribution on the table.
This is such a common scenario that no society beyond hunter-gatherer without forced contributions has survived.
If it pleases you better, just think of it as "Country, Inc." with terms of service that involve you being born :-). As long as we don't prevent you from leaving, you still have your perfect freedom - we're not denying you any choice at all!
Nobody will contribute, people will not work, will steal, will drink themselves to death.
Are you telling me that you had a UBI, you'd quit your present job, steal, and drink yourself to death?
I'll guess no.
Okay, then your family? Your friends?
Again, I'll guess no.
Usually when claims like this are made, it's because there's this huge mysterious, shadowy mass of humanity who we've never really met (but read about in blog posts or seen in movies) who apparently are lazy, shiftless, and awful (and probably have a different skin colour). The people we actually *have* met are, on the whole, reasonably hard-working, reasonably decent people.
I'll go with making pronouncements based on observed data. My measurement of all the people in my life (and that encompasses a number of different walks of life, many different colours, many different cultures) indicates that the *vast* majority are, when given the opportunity, contributors. Again, mostly to benefit themselves, but because of forced contributions, benefiting their fellow citizens as well. Some unfortunates aren't in a position to contribute due to health or other issues. Most wish they were.
I've no doubt you can cherry pick for awful people - they do exist in small numbers. But the idea of basing my society solely around the awful people? That sounds like a recipe for... well... awfulness.
And the mask comes off. "Forced contributions."
Mask, what mask? Look, pretty much every human being alive lives in a society with "forced contributions", so I really hope there is no surprise there. (The canonical example being mutual defense - the biggest contribution possible (your life).
In fact, given the failure of any society without forced contributions to have survived long enough to be in the historical record, I think you could make a case for that to be a defining characteristic of humanity.
You are absolutely and totally fucking evil, and worse, belive (sic) yourself to be altruistic.
On the contrary, I specifically mentioned the benefits *I* get. I don't believe I'm altruistic at all. If I was altruistic, I'd be pushing much harder for all of our wealth to be shared by the people who *really* desperately need it (or at least fighting for completely open borders).
As for absolutely evil, yes, guilty as charged :-). But then again so is Jesus to Hitler, so I've got a fair bit of company right across the spectrum.
Of course if no one contributes, the system will fall apart.
But why would no-one contribute? After all, the contributions benefit the contributor as well as every one else. And having every one else benefit is an additional benefit to me.
Now if contributions were optional, as is the Libertarian utopia, you might have a tragedy of the commons problem. Bu that's not the case.
Ahem,
(Isaiah 11:10-12, New King James Version)
The world is obviously a square, not a disk.
You shouldn't be rewarded for being part of the system.
Why not?
I'll happily declare that my fellow Canadians deserve many rewards simply for being Canadian - free education, health-care, various welfare systems if they are in need, free roads and other infrastructure, free defense at the expense of the lives of my fellow citizen, and a myriad of other services. None of those are dependent on their contribution to the system.
And yes, as a Canadian who's doing reasonably well, I pay a fairly substantial tax for the privilege of sustaining those services that benefit me and every other Canadian.
And this is not selflessness. The benefits that I gain from having these services available to my fellow Canadians far exceeds my contribution.to the tax pool. (If I was selfless, I'd be trying to extend those benefits to the world. I'm not as the benefits aren't great enough.)
Anyway, I'll just say that a society that doesn't place a strong inherent positive value on its members is one that's falling apart.
Indeed, there are reasons why the US system is so much more expensive than its Canadian counterparts. The US has a Lexus style system (for those lucky enough to have good insurance) and Lexus prices. The Canadian system, is more Corolla style with Corolla price.
But like two cars, the interesting thing is that the health outcomes for identical conditions are nearly identical.
What you purchase for an expensive health-care system is a much more pleasant system (no lines, lots of tests that occasionally catch something, but mostly make the patient feel better, etc.) and marginally better outcomes.
The downside is, of course, that costs are so high that there's really no way of providing fairly comprehensive medical service to the entire population.
As a Canadian, naturally, I prefer a system that allows all Canadians to be covered (with difficulties, of course, there are lines, and in some areas, primary care doctors are harder to find - natural outcomes of a much more economical system) over a more pleasant system with similar outcomes, where a substantial portion of my fellow citizens access to health-care is a major source of stress and concern (to put it mildly).
Psychologically, I think our health-care system helps bind us together - it is a concrete and ever-present example that as a people, we have expressed a sentiment that the lives of all Canadians are equally important, from the richest to the poorest. It's an ideal, and we certainly don't meet that ideal, but we spend considerable resources attempting to do so, and I think that makes a great deal of difference to who we are as a people.
I'll take the fact that my taxes are buying Corollas for four rather than a Lexus just for myself. It's not a trade-off I'd necessarily make individually, but it's one that I'm happy to have the government make on my behalf.
> Except in places like where I live where it is illegal to give discounts for using cash, or charging more to use credit
The government makes it illegal to pass on the price differential between the cost to the merchant of paying in cash and paying by credit card?
Must be nice. I'm an Apple user, could they make make it illegal to charge different amounts for different phones, too?
Or is Visa the only buyer of legislation in town.
(I'm hoping that this is actually a misinterpretation of *Visa* not allowing merchants to offer a discount/surcharge. But if it's the government in the business of subsidizing the credit card companies profit line at the expense of cash users, I'm very disappointed.)
It means men were always more "oppressed" than women.
Except that I suspect that more men were happy about the roles they were assigned than women happy about the roles they were assigned.
Also interesting in that since Western societies always had more rules and structures than African societies
Come now. If we're talking about blacks in Western society, there's been a huge number of roles that they've been barred from playing.
I was once a forced conscript. For a minimum of 10 months (I ended up doing 2 years), I had to train to insure the security of my country. According to your definition, this is oppression
Damn right that's oppression - it's called forced labour and almost every civilized society that isn't facing an existential risk has abandoned it.
It was just part of my social contract.
If you feel it was so, then make it mandatory for all. Why should some be exempt,. but not others? Otherwise, do the sensible thing. Raise taxes so that you can pay a good enough wage that men AND women actually volunteer to become soldiers. Maximal freedom *and* social contract preserved. Small wonder that's what every ethical society has done.
In all of this, you've put forward the idea of a social contract, and I agree. But there's no reason why we should select who fulfills the roles that are necessary by gender, eye-color, or the first letter of their last name. That's simply cultural laziness - "we've always done it this way and change makes me uncomfortable (or even worse, reduces my advantages)".
By the way, equality of opportunity does not preclude someone (and quite possibly, even the majority) choosing to adopt traditional roles. But putting huge social and cultural hurdles to escaping them? Reducing people's freedom to choose their role? That's simply evil.
Men are now nothing but second-class citizen.
Snort. I'm about the same age as you (slightly older) and also a Canadian. I'm struggling to come up with a *single* time it's been a disadvantage to be a man. And it's sure has hell been an advantage many a time (like always being taken seriously when I make technical suggestions at work - it's better now, but I remember the time when I had to basically repeat what my female colleagues said in order to get my boss to take it seriously. Thankfully the worst offenders of that era seemed to have retired (or work in Silicon Valley, apparently :-)).
Ah, I've remembered one disadvantage I had from being male - when my son were very young, the Greek grandmothers of our neighbourhood were always giving me advice, because as a father, I couldn't possibly understand how children worked.
I'll take unsolicited advice over professional sidelining.
If people are denied a role they desired and merited because of cultural or legal constraints, then yes, I'd call that oppression.
People may choose to accept it, as the cost of fighting might not be worth the reward, or they may personally find it not oppressive ("I *like* my assigned role"). But being forced into a role *is* oppression.
Economists have something called "revealed preference", which involves looking at what people actually do when given the freedom to choose. And big surprise, the vast majority of women who have that freedom choose to enter the workforce and compete meaningfully there when given the option.
From your original post:
> tried to force people to adopt a behavior that would bring them happiness.
That canard has been used to justify oppression throughout the centuries. "You're happier being slaves!" "You're happier serving me."
I say give them equality and let each individual choose the role that they feel they want to play, rather than trying to play God and decide for them. Feminism has been God's gift to freedom. And again, look at the feminism as embraced by your coworkers (they may not even call it that - our feminist society is pretty much taken for granted it scarcely needs a name), not whatever outrages one happen to read today on the Internet.
> often meant working in hazardous conditions on a daily basis.
Well, I suspect "occasionally" might be more accurate, but it's neither here nor there.
Culturally confining any group to their appointed roles regardless of their personal preferences is oppression, and while feminism has allowed a number of men and women to find roles where the woman is the main breadwinner, I think it's pretty obvious that there were a lot more women who had wanted and been (and to some extent still are) denied access to men's traditional roles than the other way around.
There's a reason that the movement to equality was driven by women and labelled feminism.
Feminism is worse than organized religion. At least most organized religion understood human nature and tried to force people to adopt a behavior that would bring them happiness.
Oh, please. What's next - blacks are "naturally" slaves (as was claimed by many Confederates)? You sound like a small Southern farm-owner after emancipation, bemoaning how life has gone downhill for you.
Feminism may not have benefited you personally - after all, what's not to like about having an attentive partner who handles all the emotional and physical scut-work of raising a family, while your responsibilities are limited to bringing home an income. We men had it very good for many years. But a system based on oppression is unethical, and believing "but they want to be oppressed!" is pathetic.
And if you really can't stand equality (an acceptable option), then you have the option of "going your own way". But don't pretend you should have the *right* to such cultural and social dominance or even more sad, that such inequality is in the best interest of the oppressed.
(And let's not straw-man feminism. Take the beliefs of 10 of your closest female work-mates - that's the feminism worth debating, as opposed to some random person on the Internet.)
The dishonesty of pretending it's actually for installation is irksome, but if it's up-front and people are willing to pay...
Disclosure: I'm gouged by my cable company, and I have nobody to blame but myself.
Good point, although the Canadians may be an even bigger failure in terms of action, even if they give more lip service.
You are quoting an Anonymous Coward (#56486539), but responding to my post, hence my confusion.
The moment they start using scientific findings to try and put themselves in charge, they become a danger greater than climate change.
I understand this rhetorical device, but it suggests scientists have vastly greater influence than they actually do.
In fact, my claim is the opposite. I claim that the power of scientists is so *weak*, that even the suggestion of bias in the minds of many citizens is enough to negate their findings completely.
Fairly sad, but strongly evidenced by the fact that overwhelming scientific consensus had failed to sway the majority of citizenry.