Political one liners

Discriminating based on irrelevant characteristics like skin color is automatically bad. Setting my daughter's admittance requirements higher just because where her ancestors came from is bad. Not only bad but unconstitutional.

Offering opportunities for the economically disadvantaged regardless of race is a better way to discriminate. Unfortunately movements like black live matter are all about race rather than other more relevant characteristics. Viewing race as the defining characteristic seems just silly to me and delays true racial equality.

Daryl wrote:No such thing as reverse discrimination. Discrimination is not automatically bad, for example you would hope that your teenage daughter discriminated between boyfriends to exclude the unemployed tattooed dope heads from consideration.

My true anecdotal examples were ones that I selected from many to illustrate how people from minorities can find it harder to get through life than someone like me (white, male, tall, private school accent, parents encouraged education and career ambition, etc). Now if a bright and ambitious person from a minority group wants to get ahead they often can, but it is much harder particularly at the start.
As an aboriginal elder said to me once, he didn't want specific aboriginal action programs (as that was racist), but the same programs to be available to any disadvantaged people that would benefit. He then laughed and said "Bet you though that most would be Murries (their acceptable term for their group) anyway".

As I said before society does need to do something to break multigenerational cycles of poverty and alienation for its own good. How many potential physicists are lost to despair and join gangs instead of contributing to society?

Peter, I'm not sure I'd call that reverse descrimination.

It's just plain descrimination.

Positive, or reverse, is preferential trearment based on race.

With the entrenched racism in white culture it seems a necessary evil that I wish we could do without.

Case in point, the only time I was unemployed as a youngster every job in the area was for Aboriginals only.

That's positive racism there, and damn annoying for me at the time.

Of, it's spelt Boong. It's the sound an Abo makes when they bounce off of the cars bull bar at 60 miles an hour. ;p

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Many years ago, I had to deal with a small but annoying financial issue in a bank. The manageress in charge of assigning staff went on for so long about how the bank promoted local ethnic minorities, women and those with disabilities that I finally snapped and insisted on having a white male member of staff deal with the problem because at least that way I could be reasonably sure that they had got their job through ability rather gender/skin color/missing limbs.

For some reason, she wasn't able to counter my logic, as much as she wanted to.
Similarly, I prefer having ethnic minority/female staff help me in places that practice normal discrimination for almost exactly the same reason.

So yeah, positive discrimination is even more toxic than normal discrimination.

In the US many tribes have tribal industries, and these often give preference to tribal members. I have no problem with this given their nation within a nation status.

I have big problems with the national government usingdiscrimination against any race, for any precieved reason in a free and equal society. Any thing other than equal protection under the law is guarnteed to prolong racism.

Helping the economical disadvantaged with grants and work programs is another matter.

Poker

This attitude pisses me off most. I agree that racism is deeply entrenched. Although I believe positively discriminating racist attitudes are far more pervasive that the run of the mill variety.

Be sensitive to culture, economic condition, clarity in communication and overall character. Absolutely! But assuming a minority is incapable of dealing with illegal racial discrimination perpetuates racial inequality in a way that incentivizes the practitioner to continue. "Sure," he says, "blacks, Hispanics, abos, American Indians and any non-white NEEDS my help because the benighted soul is incapable of doing it on his own." This racist sod believes in the supremacy of whites and the inherent inferiority of non-whites.

That is the core principle guiding positive racial discrimination and is as Michael says as damaging as the negative variety. How does making that bigoted belief acceptable in any way improve racial equality? It only makes a bigot feel better about his bigotry.

Annachie wrote:Peter, I'm not sure I'd call that reverse descrimination.

It's just plain descrimination.

Positive, or reverse, is preferential trearment based on race.

With the entrenched racism in white culture it seems a necessary evil that I wish we could do without.

Case in point, the only time I was unemployed as a youngster every job in the area was for Aboriginals only.

That's positive racism there, and damn annoying for me at the time.

Of, it's spelt Boong. It's the sound an Abo makes when they bounce off of the cars bull bar at 60 miles an hour. ;p

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When you take money and opportunities from people who have earned them and give them to those that have not, the result is injustice. No matter how pure you believe your intentions to be, you can not achieve justice with injustice. You can not combat racism with racism. You can not impose equality by force - some pigs always end up more equal than others, and it is rarely determined by merit.

Even if the whole concept were not invalid, it would require the government to apply exactly the right amount of discrimination to create a balance, and to reduce it as the balance point changes. Politicians and bureaucrats always believe that if some is good, more is better, and they delude themselves about what is good in the first place.

When the government openly practices racism, how do you expect to convince anybody that it's wrong?
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If you are wrong, finding a bunch of people who agree with you does not make you right; it just means you have company.

Imaginos1892 wrote:When you take money and opportunities from people who have earned them and give them to those that have not, the result is injustice. No matter how pure you believe your intentions to be, you can not achieve justice with injustice. You can not combat racism with racism. You can not impose equality by force - some pigs always end up more equal than others, and it is rarely determined by merit.

Even if the whole concept were not invalid, it would require the government to apply exactly the right amount of discrimination to create a balance, and to reduce it as the balance point changes. Politicians and bureaucrats always believe that if some is good, more is better, and they delude themselves about what is good in the first place.

When the government openly practices racism, how do you expect to convince anybody that it's wrong?
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If you are wrong, finding a bunch of people who agree with you does not make you right; it just means you have company.

Capitalism is not perfect, but it won’t bankrupt the country, it doesn’t reward failure and it can’t control you like socialism.

I would modify with "Real capitalism" which crony capitalism certainly is not

When you give the government unlimited power to create “equality,” you also give it the power to tilt the playing field towards corrupt businesses that have every incentive to try to take advantage of it.

Socialism is in fact a wonderful vision -- a world of the imagination far better than any place anywhere in the real world, at any time over the thousands of years of recorded history.

Being a nice vision does not mean it is real.


Sometimes success means using wisdom. IIRC one person, back when discrimination was open and blatant, researched out someone in the majority group who was only adequate in electronic repair (which he was excellent at) and made a deal where he stayed back in the repair shop, and they divided the increased profits.

Also, IIRC, one of the tactics of the USA civil rights movement in our south was to assume they had rights, and not get out of the way if refusal to serve them occurred. They also refused to buy where they could not get merit based work. These things were not always done fairly, but did make pressure when they were done well, and they were doing it themselves. Eric Frank Russell had it right in the fiction story where F=IW: Freedom is when you can do "I won't." As with any other powerful force, this must be used wisely, or reality will bite, hard.

IIRC, I read of a secretary who had high skills, and never had a problem with keeping a good job. The boss would always challenge anyone who disliked her race to find someone else with as much skill.

Note that Ben Carson's mother refused to let him or his brother live as victims: He was an excellent surgeon and was recently running for USA president, his brother became an aerospace engineer (I don't know how skilled )while those who followed the idea of forcing equality didn't get it.

We always vote with our dollars in a really free economy. Any business person who refuses quality workers chooses to have a poorer quality business.

In a world where many people are trying to live on less than U$10/person/day, most of the "poor" in the developed countries have their own electronic toys.

It is very hard to develop any country if the rewards go to those who are part of the "correct" group instead of those who are productive. The examples of Argentina after the Perons, or Zimbabwe after Mugabe, or many others show that it is far too easy to get reverse development.

Capitalism can and does control people and the political process. Examples include lobby groups in most democracies, who exert influence by political donations and by streaming projects to supporters electorates.
We had a blatant case here a few years back when our federal government introduced a super profits Mining Tax that would have raised our take up to about half what Norway is getting per ton. The companies combined to spend $100s of M in advertising showing starving ex mining families because the companies all had to leave. Blatantly dishonest but the sheeples believed it, opinion polls shifted and the government changed. The aim was to use the revenue to reduce the income tax burden on the sheeples, but the government couldn't start to match the advertising budget to tell them that often enough to sink in.
As for socialism controlling people we have previously discussed at length that socialism is an economic system that all developed countries use in our mixed economies, not a political system. Just because most dictatorships use the term doesn't mean anything but advertising.

Working to enable equal opportunity (not outcomes) for all is not racism. We do it for the disabled, for NESB, ethnic groups and all who face unfair hurdles.

Daryl wrote:
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Working to enable equal opportunity (not outcomes) for all is not racism. We do it for the disabled, for NESB, ethnic groups and all who face unfair hurdles.

The only form of democracy that suits a free society is economic democracy in the laissez-faire form, where each person votes with his money for what he wants in the marketplace.

Frankly, the state cannot solve all problems, and it oversteps its bounds when it tries to do so.

In other words, while anarchy is a mess, mob election of rulers doesn't work either. Or do I repeat myself?

Someone commented that the USA founders were more concerned with liberty than with democracy. Liberty is only possible when people choose to be fair. Whenever any form of unfairness enters the picture, there is also either force or fraud. Enough of these kills Laissez-fare economics as a workable possibility.

Economics is a close cousin of politics, which is dangerous because politics is a close cousin of emotional decisions detached from reality.

If these groups were confident about their arguments, they would welcome more debate to test their theories.

Honest science, law, and economics should be based on the assumption that ideas should be tested against reality. In too many cases, they are only tested against the assumptions that the tester has in their worldview. When we detach from reality, we are open to damage from reality.

These days, however, the Bill of Rights doesn't seem to be enough to protect anyone.

An America that allows the constitutional excesses of the Obama administration, the fiscal excesses of the Bush administration and the everything excesses of the Clinton administration deserves the personal excesses of a guy who once hawked bottled water with his own picture on the label.

How I wish I could argue against this one

Taking responsibility for mistakes is a sure sign of character; blaming others is not.

One guess who this is talking about. Or maybe two. Um, just how many, just among the politicians, should have this character test applied to them

If you want to experience life wandering through life demanding to be wrapped in protective bubbles at someone else’s expense, spend some quality time in one of the fine American cities, like Detroit or Baltimore, which liberals have reduced to virtual rubble piles.

No, Thank you. Reality will bite sooner or later, so a life of ease at other's expense is pure fantasy. Many find it an attractive fantasy, I'd be bored to death.

Litmus tests may be in bad odor with our self-proclaimed sophisticates, but here one is very much in order: The law is the law is the law, and it isn't anything else.

Judicial, presidential, and bureaucratic activists to the contrary. Laws should be concise, well researched, and enforced. If congresspeople took the time to carefully test proposed laws against the reality of historical results, we would have better laws and less of them.