The reason we have a right to due process IN THE US is that the US is a strong state. There are few places in the country where you can operate criminally with impunity. And I don't mean impunity granted through political corruption, etc, but places where the US government cannot send its forces, even if it really really really wants to. Places that are out of reach of law enforcement.
But when you're outside the country, and especially in an uncivilized place, whether the mountains of Afghanistan or Syria or some jungle in South America, you are outside our reach. It would take a huge effort, putting many lives at risk, to extend due process to the entire world. For what? So some asshat terrorist can get his day in court? No thanks.
There are practical limits to everything in the constitution. It is not a suicide pact.
I'll note that in the past, within the US, we have also ignored due process because it wasn't practical. I'm thinking of the wild west for instance. There wasn't a strong state there, so the local marshal would be judge, jury, and executioner. Or the townsfolk would just lynch somebody for breaking the law. Today that would be a crime in and of itself, back then it was the way it was.
There is a huge difference between occasionally killing people in secret and declaring that the government has the right to kill citizens without a trial.
The government has always had the right to kill citizens without a trial. Let me refer you to a little thing called the Civil War, where lots of citizens were killed without a trial.
Occasionally killing people in secret is worse, I think, because if the person should legitimately be killed, what's wrong with telling the public about it? If it has to be done secretly, then it's probably not the right thing to do.
Once execution without trials is in the open, what limits the numbers?
You are close, but the Bill of Rights states that lethal force may need to be used to protect the public from eminent danger. Not "just because a cop feels like it" (which we seem to have an awful lot of lately).
I don't even like Obama, but even I wouldn't say he had al-Awlaki killed "just because he feels like it." That's ridiculous. Al-Awlaki is a terrorist. He used to be a US citizen too but he gave up that right when he instigated attacks against the country.
We are "told" that he was bad, but in all honesty without a trial how do we know?
That logic makes no sense... if you're so skeptical that you still don't know, then how is a trial going to help?
I mean think about it. If you think the government is making this stuff up, then you are admitting there's an international conspiracy involving pretty much every major media organization and most governments. And you think that a trial will magically cut through all of that?
Considering we KNOW there are innocent people in jail right now, people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and maybe had an eyewitness confuse them for the real guy... you think you're going to uncover the "truth" even though the government, military, intelligence agencies, and media are ALL AGAINST HIM?
My point isn't that trials are meaningless, but that you are asking for too much and I don't believe you are an honest skeptic. If he had a trial and were found guilty, I would bet my bottom dollar that you'd call it a kangaroo court and protest the verdict.
I don't think those bolded statements agree with you. There's no requirement that an attempt to capture be made over and over again.. like "Oh he got away, there he is running.. but I better not shoot, I should try to capture him again!"
It seems to me the bolded statements are saying that if it's practical to apprehend someone, then you must apprehend them. If you cannot apprehend them, because they have escaped and are out of reach, then you can shoot them if you think they're committing or have committed a serious crime. Al-Awlaki is beyond the reach of the handcuffs, just as if he was outrunning a police officer. But instead of having a simple handgun, the "officer" has a long-range drone with missiles.
Even now I'm having a hard time seeing the straw man. What did I misunderstand? You are saying your tiny violin comment was in response to the "men have it so hard" stuff... and that comment said men have it so hard because of programs like this that explicitly discriminate against them. So you are invalidating someone's feelings about this program ("this program is bad because it discriminates!", to which you respond "I'll mock you because I think your feelings are dumb") on the grounds that men rape ("now there's a legitimate thing to feel bad about, not this piddly crap that you're whining about").
In what way am I straw-manning this? Are you saying that this program is bad and unfair and should be stopped, but simultaneously, men shouldn't feel bad/care/whine about it?
Well, considering the Supreme Court rules by majority and is majority white, how did decisions like abolishing "separate but equal" in education ever pass? How is it that minorities can petition the courts for rights and be heard, but it's "inherently" impossible for that to work in school?
Sorry, it's one of the stupidest Supreme Court decisions on record. It makes no sense. White people aren't evil racists and men aren't evil sexists, so the presumption that it's impossible for separate but equal to succeed is just illogical. And when you have studies showing that sometimes girls and boys learn better in segregated (by gender) classrooms, we're potentially sacrificing progress in the name of political correctness.
I've noticed that women from other cultures, specifically Indians, Pakistanis, and Chinese, are more likely than American women to get into computer science. This is despite those cultures having their own issues with women's rights.
I've noticed it both in college, where there were very few women in CS but of those women every single one was non-American, and professionally, where the vast majority of female programmers are non-American.
So why is this? I don't believe that Americans are somehow more sexist or misogynistic than Pakistanis, for example. My personal opinion is that the sexism/gender roles/stereotyping is a red herring. The reason women from those cultures participate in CS is twofold:
1. CS is more appreciated in those cultures. Look at the comments on this article calling high school boys who are into CS losers, neckbeards, virgins, etc. That's not how it is in the developing world. CS is awesome, it's a gateway to wealth, a ticket to travel the world if you want. 2. Women in cultures that face more serious misogyny than American women are better at dealing with it in America. I mean I know women from Pakistan who were not allowed to drive, had to wear a hijab or other head covering when leaving the house (and dress very modestly at all times), felt unsafe using public transit, etc. Then they come here and it's like, oh a guy made a joke, or oh look booth babes. Big deal. Guys will be guys. Laugh about it.
My plan for getting more women into CS (and I agree that's a worthy goal), if I were king, would first and foremost be to change the anti-intellectual culture prevalent in America. When smart guys are popular for being smart and smart girls are popular for being smart you'd see a lot more people go into CS, math, engineering, etc. And I'd tone down the crazy political correctness that teaches women to focus more on problems than moving forward.
I would think in this country you need more than $100k in raw wealth, plus Social Security, to retire comfortably with the American vision of retirement.
You're right that "if you own your house" doesn't fly in this situation, because this situation is rather messed up in the scheme of things. Old people who can't (or don't want to) work anymore should not be able to live independently on permanent vacation until they die. That's dumb. Sure, it was great 50 years ago when each retiree had 10+ workers contributing, but it's not sustainable now or in the future.
The assumption behind providing equal opportunity is that it will lead to equal outcomes, at least statistically speaking.
That's not an assumption I'm familiar with. It's common sense that equal opportunities won't lead to equal outcomes based on physical characteristics like sex... just look at the NBA. There is equal opportunity there, but there has only been 1 woman who played basketball professionally in the NBA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Meyers)
Well that's dumb, or it shows you have a misunderstanding of what feminism is.
I don't consider myself an "activist" but I certainly support men's rights in some areas, like paternity rights in divorce, because I've seen a friend affected by biased courts.
But I also support the original ideals of feminism, like Susan B Anthony's calls for equality. I support women being economically empowered. I support all that stuff, because it's right and fair. I don't support crap like special programs for women where none exist for men, because that's wrong and unfair.
I'll stop playing my tiny violin when literally 99% of rapists are no longer men.
If you're using rape stats to justify discriminatory programs against men, then do you also support discriminatory programs against blacks, since blacks are disproportionately more likely to commit rape?
I think in practical terms that's right, but the actual decision said "We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
They could have simply directed states to ensure equality in the separate facilities, or directed the creation of a national oversight committee, or whatever. Separate facilities are not *inherently* unequal of course. It's one of the most idiotic Supreme Court decisions in my opinion.
And even though they say they're inherently unequal, the lawsuit probably wouldn't have come up if facilities had been better for blacks.
Ah, the good old days, when civil rights activists fought for equality. Much better than today where the fight is typically for special rights and inequality.
It's never too early to start complaining. The criticism of "separate but equal" in education was that the "equal" part is a myth. Now we are experimenting with "separate and explicitly unequal" in education. Awesome.
And I think you're wrong about what a successful outcome of this experiment suggests. If you provide a different environment for women to study CS, and then they like it, they may just like the new environment, not the CS part. A credit is a credit. If you have to fulfill some science/math requirement (based on a recent article that said CS qualified as a science credit for high school graduation in Georgia from what I recall), you'll take the awesome course with extra funding that gets you field trips and free pizza whether you like the subject or not.
If you let SS excess contributions just sit there for 30 years, inflation would eat away at the value. Do you really not understand that the "IOUs" are... government bonds? An investment? Considered the safest in the world by investors?
I know very few places where $1300/mo is enough to live on when you're over 65 and/or disabled.
If you own your own house that's not too bad. If you don't, it's pretty much impossible.
I guess such people also qualify for welfare and subsidized housing? Who knows.
So can you tell me, why is it we can get a man on the moon but we can't take care of a few million old people and a few million disabled?
A few million?? You already listed 58 million in your first paragraph. And that's actually low... according to http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs... it was 63.7 million people last month.
It turns out taking care of over 60 million people is actually more difficult and more expensive than sending a couple guys to the moon. I don't find that hard to believe.
Are we really that pathetic as a country that we can't just solve this problem?
Yes, we are that pathetic. If you look at other countries, you see that old people are more likely to live with their kids. It's a cultural thing. Here, old people want to be independent all the way until they end up in a nursing home or die. Good for them, but independence is expensive as hell. As you noted, old people in this country are paying rent! That's crazy.
But that's the root of the problem.. to efficiently take care of old people without involving their kids, you have to pack them into low cost, bulk housing. Control their diets, medication, etc. No cars obviously. You can live cheaply like that...
Or you make them pay their own way, and if they can't, they have to live with their kids and share costs.
Or you do it like we do here, and they can do whatever they want, we have a social taboo against living with your adult kids, and then we give them as much tax money as we can afford to subsidize their lifestyle.
but it makes sense to better account for the true cost of using gasoline
It doesn't make sense to do that unless you apply the same rules to every other good and service.
The US Navy is protecting oil. Okay. Well the US Navy is deterring aggressive countries from attacking our coastal cities and beaches. So what percentage of the US Navy's budget should be passed onto jetski rental companies at beaches? They would go completely out of business if our coastal waters were allowed to turn treacherous like, say, Somalia's.
I mean it gets rather silly doesn't it?
The revenue structure of the federal government is such that you don't pay directly for what you receive. It all goes into a pot, and then gets apportioned out based on national needs, not each payer's needs.
Why do you think you can single out gasoline as something that is externalizing its costs, and not literally everything else produced or consumed in the country?
I generally get my ideas by thinking and reading about a subject and discussing it with friends?
My point was that your citation didn't support your argument. The question was rhetorical.
IQ tests test a set of skills which are heavily culturally influenced. A San bushman could score 50 on an IQ test and you could score 150, but in the Namib desert you would be depending on his skills and intuitions.
Sure, but long-term, over the generations, it's going to be somebody with an IQ of 150 who builds a desalination plant and makes his own oasis. The guy with an IQ of 50 will still be "surviving."
The children of geniuses are not always geniuses, even with all the advantages of having genius parents. Ergo other factors must be, if not dominant, at least weighing in heavily.
Of course, having genius parents might lend more to the "nurture" than the "nature" side, depending on the genetic complexity of genius. It's not a simple gene like eye color right? Even if intelligence were 100% genetic, genius parents might have dumb kids and vice versa, depending on how many possible combinations of all the alleles there are and what proportion of them lead to genius.
That's nice of you to do, but I don't think there should be tax advantages for doing nice things.
And while there are good non-profits, there are also bad non-profits that do nothing for society. Why should someone benefit from going around giving religious education? I think that's really stupid. Hopefully religious work will lose tax exempt status soon as more people turn against it.
And why should this special treatment be limited to non-profits? Presumably you're not a non-profit, you're an individual/small business or whatever. When you do your discount work for these guys, you don't get to deduct that from your income for tax purposes because volunteer labor counts for shit with the IRS. But you're a nice guy right? Doing nice things? Even if you exclusively work for non-profits at that discount rate, you still pay taxes because you're not a non-profit.
Yeah, so it's not that special that non-profits do good stuff. Lots of people do that. Forget individuals... for-profit companies like Pfizer, Exxon, or Google have done more good than most non-profits. If Microsoft's profits led to Bill Gates's wealth which led to the philanthropy done by the Gates Foundation, then Microsoft has done more good than most non-profits. Why should non-profits get special treatment?
It's not a question of being miserly or not. We're talking about the principle of the matter.
The progressivism stops at the HR office door, perhaps with the exception of some pro-gay-rights moves.
Okay I don't know what you mean by "stops at the HR office door." So is HR progressive or not?
Of course they have no problem hiring brown foreigners for dirt-cheap labor
Ah, yes, cheap labor. So why aren't these companies stuffed to the brim with women who are apparently willing to work for 70 cents on the dollar? Uh oh, two progressive myths are colliding, what are you going to do??
but if you want to get into their offices you'd better be a white or asian male who went to an elite school.
Ohh, now it's white OR Asian. How did that happen? You know Asians used to be treated very badly. Remember the Japanese roundup in WWII? Or the Chinese railroad workers who were treated like slaves?
I guess you can't argue with numbers, so you're forced to accept that Asians aren't being discriminated against (though you think Indians are for some reason, even though they are also statistically overrepresented).
Some of them mention that the intent is not racism, but to copy a phrase on the topic used in the fashion industry, intent is irrelevant if the effect is still racism.
And now we see why the fashion industry isn't known for its incisive wit.
Intent is irrelevant?? Sorry buddy, racism, being either a belief or judgment depending which popular definition you're using, is defined by intent, so that's not possible.
You're probably thinking of disparate impact. Don't worry though, you're not missing much, because disparate impact is bullshit to anybody with a brain.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like either:
1. He deserved it
2. Wrong place, wrong time
Either one is okay in the pursuit of terrorists who have declared war against us.
Irrelevant. They knew he was there, and they killed him.
In fact it is relevant. Collateral damage is okay and expected in actions like this.
The reason we have a right to due process IN THE US is that the US is a strong state. There are few places in the country where you can operate criminally with impunity. And I don't mean impunity granted through political corruption, etc, but places where the US government cannot send its forces, even if it really really really wants to. Places that are out of reach of law enforcement.
But when you're outside the country, and especially in an uncivilized place, whether the mountains of Afghanistan or Syria or some jungle in South America, you are outside our reach. It would take a huge effort, putting many lives at risk, to extend due process to the entire world. For what? So some asshat terrorist can get his day in court? No thanks.
There are practical limits to everything in the constitution. It is not a suicide pact.
I'll note that in the past, within the US, we have also ignored due process because it wasn't practical. I'm thinking of the wild west for instance. There wasn't a strong state there, so the local marshal would be judge, jury, and executioner. Or the townsfolk would just lynch somebody for breaking the law. Today that would be a crime in and of itself, back then it was the way it was.
There is a huge difference between occasionally killing people in secret and declaring that the government has the right to kill citizens without a trial.
The government has always had the right to kill citizens without a trial. Let me refer you to a little thing called the Civil War, where lots of citizens were killed without a trial.
Occasionally killing people in secret is worse, I think, because if the person should legitimately be killed, what's wrong with telling the public about it? If it has to be done secretly, then it's probably not the right thing to do.
Once execution without trials is in the open, what limits the numbers?
Natural selection?
Oh yeah? Well then I support putting you in a cage for the rest of your life. Neener neener boo boo.
You are close, but the Bill of Rights states that lethal force may need to be used to protect the public from eminent danger. Not "just because a cop feels like it" (which we seem to have an awful lot of lately).
I don't even like Obama, but even I wouldn't say he had al-Awlaki killed "just because he feels like it." That's ridiculous. Al-Awlaki is a terrorist. He used to be a US citizen too but he gave up that right when he instigated attacks against the country.
We are "told" that he was bad, but in all honesty without a trial how do we know?
That logic makes no sense... if you're so skeptical that you still don't know, then how is a trial going to help?
I mean think about it. If you think the government is making this stuff up, then you are admitting there's an international conspiracy involving pretty much every major media organization and most governments. And you think that a trial will magically cut through all of that?
Considering we KNOW there are innocent people in jail right now, people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and maybe had an eyewitness confuse them for the real guy... you think you're going to uncover the "truth" even though the government, military, intelligence agencies, and media are ALL AGAINST HIM?
My point isn't that trials are meaningless, but that you are asking for too much and I don't believe you are an honest skeptic. If he had a trial and were found guilty, I would bet my bottom dollar that you'd call it a kangaroo court and protest the verdict.
I don't think those bolded statements agree with you. There's no requirement that an attempt to capture be made over and over again.. like "Oh he got away, there he is running.. but I better not shoot, I should try to capture him again!"
It seems to me the bolded statements are saying that if it's practical to apprehend someone, then you must apprehend them. If you cannot apprehend them, because they have escaped and are out of reach, then you can shoot them if you think they're committing or have committed a serious crime. Al-Awlaki is beyond the reach of the handcuffs, just as if he was outrunning a police officer. But instead of having a simple handgun, the "officer" has a long-range drone with missiles.
Even now I'm having a hard time seeing the straw man. What did I misunderstand? You are saying your tiny violin comment was in response to the "men have it so hard" stuff... and that comment said men have it so hard because of programs like this that explicitly discriminate against them. So you are invalidating someone's feelings about this program ("this program is bad because it discriminates!", to which you respond "I'll mock you because I think your feelings are dumb") on the grounds that men rape ("now there's a legitimate thing to feel bad about, not this piddly crap that you're whining about").
In what way am I straw-manning this? Are you saying that this program is bad and unfair and should be stopped, but simultaneously, men shouldn't feel bad/care/whine about it?
Well, considering the Supreme Court rules by majority and is majority white, how did decisions like abolishing "separate but equal" in education ever pass? How is it that minorities can petition the courts for rights and be heard, but it's "inherently" impossible for that to work in school?
Sorry, it's one of the stupidest Supreme Court decisions on record. It makes no sense. White people aren't evil racists and men aren't evil sexists, so the presumption that it's impossible for separate but equal to succeed is just illogical. And when you have studies showing that sometimes girls and boys learn better in segregated (by gender) classrooms, we're potentially sacrificing progress in the name of political correctness.
I've noticed that women from other cultures, specifically Indians, Pakistanis, and Chinese, are more likely than American women to get into computer science. This is despite those cultures having their own issues with women's rights.
I've noticed it both in college, where there were very few women in CS but of those women every single one was non-American, and professionally, where the vast majority of female programmers are non-American.
So why is this? I don't believe that Americans are somehow more sexist or misogynistic than Pakistanis, for example. My personal opinion is that the sexism/gender roles/stereotyping is a red herring. The reason women from those cultures participate in CS is twofold:
1. CS is more appreciated in those cultures. Look at the comments on this article calling high school boys who are into CS losers, neckbeards, virgins, etc. That's not how it is in the developing world. CS is awesome, it's a gateway to wealth, a ticket to travel the world if you want.
2. Women in cultures that face more serious misogyny than American women are better at dealing with it in America. I mean I know women from Pakistan who were not allowed to drive, had to wear a hijab or other head covering when leaving the house (and dress very modestly at all times), felt unsafe using public transit, etc. Then they come here and it's like, oh a guy made a joke, or oh look booth babes. Big deal. Guys will be guys. Laugh about it.
My plan for getting more women into CS (and I agree that's a worthy goal), if I were king, would first and foremost be to change the anti-intellectual culture prevalent in America. When smart guys are popular for being smart and smart girls are popular for being smart you'd see a lot more people go into CS, math, engineering, etc. And I'd tone down the crazy political correctness that teaches women to focus more on problems than moving forward.
I would think in this country you need more than $100k in raw wealth, plus Social Security, to retire comfortably with the American vision of retirement.
You're right that "if you own your house" doesn't fly in this situation, because this situation is rather messed up in the scheme of things. Old people who can't (or don't want to) work anymore should not be able to live independently on permanent vacation until they die. That's dumb. Sure, it was great 50 years ago when each retiree had 10+ workers contributing, but it's not sustainable now or in the future.
The assumption behind providing equal opportunity is that it will lead to equal outcomes, at least statistically speaking.
That's not an assumption I'm familiar with. It's common sense that equal opportunities won't lead to equal outcomes based on physical characteristics like sex... just look at the NBA. There is equal opportunity there, but there has only been 1 woman who played basketball professionally in the NBA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Meyers)
Not at all an equal outcome.
Well that's dumb, or it shows you have a misunderstanding of what feminism is.
I don't consider myself an "activist" but I certainly support men's rights in some areas, like paternity rights in divorce, because I've seen a friend affected by biased courts.
But I also support the original ideals of feminism, like Susan B Anthony's calls for equality. I support women being economically empowered. I support all that stuff, because it's right and fair. I don't support crap like special programs for women where none exist for men, because that's wrong and unfair.
I'll stop playing my tiny violin when literally 99% of rapists are no longer men.
If you're using rape stats to justify discriminatory programs against men, then do you also support discriminatory programs against blacks, since blacks are disproportionately more likely to commit rape?
I think in practical terms that's right, but the actual decision said "We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
They could have simply directed states to ensure equality in the separate facilities, or directed the creation of a national oversight committee, or whatever. Separate facilities are not *inherently* unequal of course. It's one of the most idiotic Supreme Court decisions in my opinion.
And even though they say they're inherently unequal, the lawsuit probably wouldn't have come up if facilities had been better for blacks.
Fancy, you substituted "Christianist" privilege for male privilege. I guess you're on the cutting edge.
Ah, the good old days, when civil rights activists fought for equality. Much better than today where the fight is typically for special rights and inequality.
It's never too early to start complaining. The criticism of "separate but equal" in education was that the "equal" part is a myth. Now we are experimenting with "separate and explicitly unequal" in education. Awesome.
And I think you're wrong about what a successful outcome of this experiment suggests. If you provide a different environment for women to study CS, and then they like it, they may just like the new environment, not the CS part. A credit is a credit. If you have to fulfill some science/math requirement (based on a recent article that said CS qualified as a science credit for high school graduation in Georgia from what I recall), you'll take the awesome course with extra funding that gets you field trips and free pizza whether you like the subject or not.
If you let SS excess contributions just sit there for 30 years, inflation would eat away at the value. Do you really not understand that the "IOUs" are... government bonds? An investment? Considered the safest in the world by investors?
I know very few places where $1300/mo is enough to live on when you're over 65 and/or disabled.
If you own your own house that's not too bad. If you don't, it's pretty much impossible.
I guess such people also qualify for welfare and subsidized housing? Who knows.
So can you tell me, why is it we can get a man on the moon but we can't take care of a few million old people and a few million disabled?
A few million?? You already listed 58 million in your first paragraph. And that's actually low... according to http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs... it was 63.7 million people last month.
It turns out taking care of over 60 million people is actually more difficult and more expensive than sending a couple guys to the moon. I don't find that hard to believe.
Are we really that pathetic as a country that we can't just solve this problem?
Yes, we are that pathetic. If you look at other countries, you see that old people are more likely to live with their kids. It's a cultural thing. Here, old people want to be independent all the way until they end up in a nursing home or die. Good for them, but independence is expensive as hell. As you noted, old people in this country are paying rent! That's crazy.
But that's the root of the problem.. to efficiently take care of old people without involving their kids, you have to pack them into low cost, bulk housing. Control their diets, medication, etc. No cars obviously. You can live cheaply like that...
Or you make them pay their own way, and if they can't, they have to live with their kids and share costs.
Or you do it like we do here, and they can do whatever they want, we have a social taboo against living with your adult kids, and then we give them as much tax money as we can afford to subsidize their lifestyle.
but it makes sense to better account for the true cost of using gasoline
It doesn't make sense to do that unless you apply the same rules to every other good and service.
The US Navy is protecting oil. Okay. Well the US Navy is deterring aggressive countries from attacking our coastal cities and beaches. So what percentage of the US Navy's budget should be passed onto jetski rental companies at beaches? They would go completely out of business if our coastal waters were allowed to turn treacherous like, say, Somalia's.
I mean it gets rather silly doesn't it?
The revenue structure of the federal government is such that you don't pay directly for what you receive. It all goes into a pot, and then gets apportioned out based on national needs, not each payer's needs.
Why do you think you can single out gasoline as something that is externalizing its costs, and not literally everything else produced or consumed in the country?
I generally get my ideas by thinking and reading about a subject and discussing it with friends?
My point was that your citation didn't support your argument. The question was rhetorical.
IQ tests test a set of skills which are heavily culturally influenced. A San bushman could score 50 on an IQ test and you could score 150, but in the Namib desert you would be depending on his skills and intuitions.
Sure, but long-term, over the generations, it's going to be somebody with an IQ of 150 who builds a desalination plant and makes his own oasis. The guy with an IQ of 50 will still be "surviving."
The children of geniuses are not always geniuses, even with all the advantages of having genius parents. Ergo other factors must be, if not dominant, at least weighing in heavily.
Of course, having genius parents might lend more to the "nurture" than the "nature" side, depending on the genetic complexity of genius. It's not a simple gene like eye color right? Even if intelligence were 100% genetic, genius parents might have dumb kids and vice versa, depending on how many possible combinations of all the alleles there are and what proportion of them lead to genius.
Constitutional issues often come down to simple principles.
Equal protection is simple, but hugely important.
That's nice of you to do, but I don't think there should be tax advantages for doing nice things.
And while there are good non-profits, there are also bad non-profits that do nothing for society. Why should someone benefit from going around giving religious education? I think that's really stupid. Hopefully religious work will lose tax exempt status soon as more people turn against it.
And why should this special treatment be limited to non-profits? Presumably you're not a non-profit, you're an individual/small business or whatever. When you do your discount work for these guys, you don't get to deduct that from your income for tax purposes because volunteer labor counts for shit with the IRS. But you're a nice guy right? Doing nice things? Even if you exclusively work for non-profits at that discount rate, you still pay taxes because you're not a non-profit.
Yeah, so it's not that special that non-profits do good stuff. Lots of people do that. Forget individuals... for-profit companies like Pfizer, Exxon, or Google have done more good than most non-profits. If Microsoft's profits led to Bill Gates's wealth which led to the philanthropy done by the Gates Foundation, then Microsoft has done more good than most non-profits. Why should non-profits get special treatment?
It's not a question of being miserly or not. We're talking about the principle of the matter.
The progressivism stops at the HR office door, perhaps with the exception of some pro-gay-rights moves.
Okay I don't know what you mean by "stops at the HR office door." So is HR progressive or not?
Of course they have no problem hiring brown foreigners for dirt-cheap labor
Ah, yes, cheap labor. So why aren't these companies stuffed to the brim with women who are apparently willing to work for 70 cents on the dollar? Uh oh, two progressive myths are colliding, what are you going to do??
but if you want to get into their offices you'd better be a white or asian male who went to an elite school.
Ohh, now it's white OR Asian. How did that happen? You know Asians used to be treated very badly. Remember the Japanese roundup in WWII? Or the Chinese railroad workers who were treated like slaves?
I guess you can't argue with numbers, so you're forced to accept that Asians aren't being discriminated against (though you think Indians are for some reason, even though they are also statistically overrepresented).
Some of them mention that the intent is not racism, but to copy a phrase on the topic used in the fashion industry, intent is irrelevant if the effect is still racism.
And now we see why the fashion industry isn't known for its incisive wit.
Intent is irrelevant?? Sorry buddy, racism, being either a belief or judgment depending which popular definition you're using, is defined by intent, so that's not possible.
You're probably thinking of disparate impact. Don't worry though, you're not missing much, because disparate impact is bullshit to anybody with a brain.