Re: Fantastic
 

Really? Coastal whites don't know minorities?

Look, I'll buy that whites in deep flyover land are segregated. But if you're in the coastal corridors, it's impossible not to have friends, co-workers, and business associates of various non-white backgrounds.

What's ridiculous about the identity politics at work here is it's fucking up efforts to find some common ground. I'm part of the 25% of whites WaPo discounts in that story. My suburban neighborhood is half minorities.

I enjoy (hell, I revel in doing it) explaining to white conservative friends that BLM has rock solid claims, and it's an obligation of all white people to do something to assist with justice reform (or at least not vote for some asshole who supports more "tough on cri-- er, minorities" legislation).

But when people use terms like "all whites," I cease listening. A person who generalizes is a person who is not thinking. (That asinine article about why we cannot assess Trump's policies discretely is a good example of that stupidity.) I know this complicates things, because everybody wants to simplify the arguments - particularly the most strident advocates of identity politics - but you cannot generalize by race, religion, or sex and sound credible. You're not. You're applying short cuts. It's not scientific, and it's ultimately counterproductive.

I can't imagine myself saying something like, "Blacks are...," or "Asians are...," or "Jews are..." It reminds me of conservatives discussing gay marriage a few years back. They'd say things like, "Well the gays tend to be..." You knew whatever followed wasn't worth hearing. It wasn't thought out, and it employed no empirical rigor.

I don't think identity politics can be entirely discredited. It has value. But identity politics that broadly generalizes? Yeah, that can be ignored. And nationally, it will be.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

No, it’s like if the Chick-Fil-A opened in the Google building and then Wendy’s and Taco Bell lost business. A city, I think, may have a legitimate interest in not having a large hermetically sealed self-contained fiefdom taking up a block of real estate to the detriment of local businesses and the surrounding neighborhood.

I also get pissed at those bastards at Acme Industries who always have a fleet of idling black cars lined up at their entrance on Park waiting for the execs to get their company-provided rides back to Cos Cob. The drivers all smoke and I have to walk by them to get to my golden chariot.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Is it really that hard to zone to exclude company cafeterias? I mean, they're able to zone so that abortion clinics can't be within 100 miles of a baptist church.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I absolutely agree that the city has legitimate interest in the health of its businesses. But it's not an externality when businesses make business decisions that affect other businesses detrimentally.

Google is no more hermetically sealed than the financial institutions and law firms that fill New York. It just offers its employees better food than you find in their cafeterias.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I'm not sure that is the case. I can think of a couple of law firms and two private banks in Boston that offer food in their in-house cafeteria that is on par with Google. I can also think of several shops whose cafeteria do not meet that mark.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Would Makan Delrahim agree? Stay tuned.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

People loved the cafeteria of the New York office of my old firm so much we eventually got one in DC too.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I hate this idea, but since we're exploring awful social engineering concepts, why not tax employees on the free food? It is a form of income, I believe -- several thousands of dollars of income per year, in fact. Use the proceeds from the tax to provide tax breaks to local restaurants.

I'd file this story under "Reason 38353928 We Need to Start Seriously Discussing UBI." Or, "Reasons a World War Which Resets Everything Might Be US Labor's Best and Last Hope."

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I avoided mine. The food was decent, but it required eating with colleagues. That's kind of creepy. To use a Star Trek reference, "Borg-like."

Lunch is time to take a break from co-workers. Get out for a moment and recall, You Have a Life. Or time to work through, so you can finish what you're doing earlier and get out of the office sooner.

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now
 

I love Jaron Lanier... He's like a gentle, contemplative, and slightly smarter Nassim Taleb.

https://www.ft.com/content/a3ea16f6-...5-50daf11b720d

https://www.amazon.com/Arguments-Del.../dp/125019668X

Re: Fantastic
 

Chastised by Coltrane, I did some more reading on this, and even found the exchange with Gary Cunningham that I think you are referencing on the web site you linked to. I noticed that Cunningham said the following:

"It is shameful when well-meaning people use the issue of racial inequalities to justify and advance policies that are tangentially related and offering no real solutions to get at the underlying issues that have created and exacerbated these large economic racialized inequalities. Please stop!"

And yet, here you are, asserting that anyone who opposes this plan is "standing up for racism." There are so many compelling points you can make about the status quo being based on systematic racist housing policies (including, possibly most egregiously, racial restrictive covenants that quite literally created a "white privilege" and concrete economic gains via property values for people solely on account of those people being white), or about the fact that at least some of the opposition to the 2040 Plan is based on white fears of integration, or at a minimum, whites being unwilling to give up the economic privileges they obtained through overtly racist housing policies in the past. If you want to continue to castigate everyone who opposes a plan that may do little or nothing to address racial inequalities as being aligned with the forces of racism, that's your choice. But it just makes me inclined to disregard everything you say about the Plan as nonsense propounded by "well-meaning people" engaging in "shameful" tactics to silence or deflect potentially legitimate criticisms of the Plan.

I am now done being earnest. Forever.

Re: Fantastic
 

If I may quote a wise person:

If you're standing up for the status quo, you're standing up for racism.

Keep in mind that we were, in fact, not making compelling points favor of the comp plan, which is irrelevant to everyone on this board except you and me, but rather talking about the ways that white people fail to see the racism in front of them, of which I offered some of the comp plan reactions as an example.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I believe it is taxable - I think there was a recent case. Ask Adder to research it.

Re: Fantastic
 

Oh fuck, I guess I am still earnest for a bit. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the Plan is deeply flawed. Let's even assume that, due to the fact the nobody seems to know what effect the implementation of the Plan will have on addressing racial disparities, it is at least possible that the plan could worsen those disparities, at least in some neighborhoods. (For example, I have heard arguments that some of the real victims of the plan will be the Mexican-Americans who own small houses in the single-family home blocks of my neighborhood, whose blocks could be disrupted by the Plan so that young white professionals who are not ready to own a home yet can have increased access to high end apartments close to downtown). If that is true, and yet you are saying that anyone who opposes the plan is standing up for the status quo and thus is standing up for racism, you come off as disingenuous and intellectually dishonest. Are some people opposing the plan because they are standing up for the status quo? Sure. But you seem to dismiss the possibility that some people (maybe even rich, white people) who oppose the plan are not actually standing up for the status quo, but are instead saying that this particular change to the status quo does not accomplish what people say it will and could have very negative unintended consequences. For you to dismiss the people making those arguments as "standing up for racism" -- which is really you just calling them racists -- is indeed shameful. I realize you are too entrenched in your beliefs on this issue to hear what I am saying, as evidenced by the fact that your argument shifts dramatically with each post you make. But you are far from the only person in the city who is dismissing anyone who opposes the plan as simply being racist. That is only going to undermine support for the plan, and turn an already highly emotionally-charged debate into an escalating series of screaming and name calling, making it even more difficult than it already is to evaluate the plan on its merits.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

DOJ says it's going to treat no-poach agreements more harshly going forward, fwiw.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Good. What kind of evidence do they need? I need me some treble damages. Do I need a tape?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Happy to be wrong about that.

I suspect what is different about tech firms relative to other employers is that they seem to have concluded that it makes sense to offer employees free lunch (and sometimes breakfast and dinner) both because it makes them want to work there and happy when they do, and also because they get more done when they aren't leaving the building to get food. Some big tech firms have cafeterias where they make the food, but I suspect it's much more common to cater it out. Other businesses in the area are still getting the spend, and they may get more of it to the extent that employees don't bring food to work because they know they're going to get it there, but the spend doesn't necessarily go to restaurants in a close proximity. If so, a proposal like Peskin's will be bad for San Francisco, even if some restaurants benefit -- in the same way that Trump's steel tariffs cause a lot of pain to American manufacturers and consumers and create smaller (in the aggregate) but bigger (in the individual case) benefits for some American producers.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

We get free food. Already eaten but what they hey, half-eaten pastrami sandwich is better than bring your own salad.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Sounds reasonable, if it's a benefit (and a form of compensation).

Re: Fantastic
 

To pursue Adder's line of thought, maybe those Mexican-Americans are (unintentional) Uncle Toms. They are standing up for racism with their cabins.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Those cases had some great evidence because it never even crossed the minds of the people who were making those agreements that there might be something illegal about it. Now the sensitivities are much higher. But what about suing franchises of restaurant chains for non-competes that prevent workers from going to other restaurants in the same chain? If the language is pushed by the franchising entity, it sounds like a hub-and-spoke conspiracy, and if it's per se illegal than that sounds like treble damages.

Re: Fantastic
 

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Republican denial is bigger than a river in Egypt, but this is not going to age well. No surprise, I guess, but still surprisingly damning.

eta: Relatedly, I haven't found Andrew Sullivan interesting for a while, but this description of Trump and the Cohen tape is insightful.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I think he's gone so far as to say to expect criminal prosecutions (the policy guidance the published last year said they would in theory, but think he's referencing specific cases).

Re: Fantastic
 

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Hey TM, speaking of fragile white people, see this:

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Given that African Americans vote 90% dem (and I assume Latinos do at some large majority) would the better poll be to ask only white people? I am not arguing with the premise just the value of the numbers. Would truly like to see the numbers limited to whites and broken down by affiliation.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Hi

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

https://www.elle.com/culture/career-...called-racist/

And to add to T's post, here's an interview with the author, instead of the reviewer's thoughts, so a bit better answer to the "progressive" question- spoiler- I think you'll agree I was mostly correct.

Saying "penske" three times in a row in the mirror
 

Quadrafecta!!!

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Coleman Hughes and Sam Harris covering identity politics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqtZTMQiupg

(Or just get the podcast thru the Apple store.)

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Spreading Sam Harris' bigotry?

Come on. You know he's an ignorant racist kook.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

You have not succeeded in explaining anything. None of what you're saying relates to this conversation even a little bit.

If you remove pimped out, subsidized cafeterias from employers like Google, which is what I'm talking about, Google and Google-like employers will find another way to compete for employees that doesn't amount to creating its own little, self-contained universe in which there is zero connection or benefit to the community.

No one cares.

No. It's not like that at all. That's a ridiculous analogy.

It seems like you don't have the ability to understand what I have a problem with.

No shit. Of course they want the jobs there. That has absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about.

Google offering free, gourmet food to its staff is a perq. It creates a self-contained environment in which a behemoth discourages its employees from spending any money in the community in which it is located or even interacting with anyone but themselves. All of your examples of the benefits they bring to surrounding communities aren't on point, because that's not what we're talking about.

If you want to maintain some type of balance in the areas in which these behemoths set up, the idea seems like a very small concession to try to keep the community from becoming abandoned parking lots for Teslas. Rant and rave away about stifling "innovation" and the always relevant Netlix-Blockbuster comparison [insert extreme eye-roll] all you want. None of that shit applies here.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

This reminds me why I avoid Vox. I try to read it, but ultimately, its bias becomes too overt.

If you'd like to hear Ezra Klein, Vox's Editor in Chief, talk himself in circles and ultimately argue for censorship in academia, consider this: https://samharris.org/podcasts/123-identity-honesty/

Dismantling the quote offered:

Sure they do. Look at all those delightful folks in Charlottesville. Consider any Trump rally.

That's the tennis match of identity politics. One side serves an exclusive identity complaint, another side returns it, and the match is on.

Of course, those boundaries, interests, and responsibilities can never be defined because, to generalize on this level (100 million or so people?) is impossible. But nevermind unpacking that... This is Vox. Sounds like another media outlet that presently escapes me...

This actually has some heft to it. It's true that being a minority can be freighted. But again, we've trended into broad generalizations. "Non-dominant" groups are myriad. You can't throw all minorities into one bucket and say they're all similarly saddled with baggage. Nor can you you assert over the nation's history that all whites have been similarly dominant. "Irish need not apply," "Italians are criminally oriented mafia sorts," "Chinese are only good for laying railroad tracks," "Jews should be shunned." The forms of bigotry are endless. Hell, Kennedy was scrutinized as a possible Papist as recently as 1960.

"White" needs to be broken apart into many sub-groups before the assertion all whites are clean slates can be offered as bluntly as this article suggests.

But don't let me ruin Vox's fun. It's enjoying a lot of success mixing ever-so-subtle virtue signalling with arguments just logical and scientific enough to pass muster with fellow travelers. Klein and his writers deftly avoid sophistry, but often barely. Klein himself does it so well I found myself wishing he'd the better argument in that exchange with Harris. But then I recalled, Klein was arguing for creating the reality he wanted. Harris was citing actual data.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

No. Ben Affleck knows he's an ignorant racist kook. And Ben Affleck is about as schooled, open-minded, and rigorous in his approach to these issues as the street vendors you'll pass at lunch. His views are Hollywood Doctrinaire, and he soiled himself in that exchange on Maher.

Harris is utterly reasonable. And since I smell a whiff of the tribal in your reaction, he's the most virulently anti-Trump intellectual I've heard. The man is about as right wing as Robert Reich.

Re: Fantastic
 

Are you questioning me or the numbers in the study?

This conversation has become so fucking stupid that I can't believe I'm having it.

Yes. White people have black friends in lots of places. What they don't have are the types of relationships with minorities [and listen really fucking closely] in which they support them for opportunities in any types of numbers that whites do. Hell, white people who have more diverse friends are probably even less likely to be in a position to benefit those friends.

No one is interested in your anecdotal evidence. The numbers are what they are. That's the point.

No. What's ridiculous is that I can state something so obvious to anyone with half a brain and have people like you turn it into "identity politics."

I find it astounding that you can type that number and still not recognize its significance in the context of the immediate conversation.

Please stop telling us about how you enjoy telling your conservative friends this and your liberal friends that. We all know it's pure bullshit.

You are a ridiculous person. I'm done with the rest of the post. And everyone on this board has seen an excellent example of exactly what I and the article are talking about. This conversation has been flipped back by you so that we are talking about your reaction, your feelings, you you you. "Not all whites!" So fucking ridiculous.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

This is complete bullshit.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

No. That may have been true in 1920, but not by 1970, and certainly not today.*

I think what changed is sort of, who is "white." My uncle immigrated here as an I-tie in 1928. Italians were not equal at all. If you called my uncle a WOP when he was young, it was your ass. In my life about 3 times I was called a slur, or heard a really anti-Italian thought from someone. It threw me each time, like "what did I hear?" It ultimately was funny since it was so pathetic to me- threatless.

I will never forget my mom grew up in a US where her brother needed to fight when he heard a slur. But I also will always appreciate that I never even had to consider it. That is a part of the "privilege."

The question I think interesting is whether Latinos/Middle Eastern peoples become "white" over the next 50 years.

*the possible exception is the Jews, at least with the recent uptick in Nazis.

Re: Fantastic
 

How could that not be the case, given blacks are a minority. If 15% of people are black, statistically, how would whites (or any other group) support them for positions in greater numbers than the other 85%?

Your second sentence suggests that whites with more diverse social networks tend not to have as much power as whites who do not. While the cynic in me finds that somewhat compelling, I'm going to have to spit your "don't throw anecdotes at me" line back at you here.

I'm not using identity politics as a pejorative. I think the term captures that form of politics honestly, and as I noted elsewhere, identity politics has a place, and validity.

No.

I didn't dignify Ty's argument in this regard, based on a logical fallacy (see, you're proving my point by disagreeing with me!), and I won't yours.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Yep. Saw that this weekend. We all know what the baseline is here. I've used the following examples:

Picture the girl next door.
Picture the all-American boy.
Picture the ideal lawyer/associate.
Picture the most beautiful woman/handsome man you can think of.
Tell me what your "type" is.

And those are the positive examples. No need to go through the negatives.

There I go with the identity politics again. Damn. I just can't let it go!

TM