Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

There were those who were skeptical of Wynton Marsalis playing classical music because it was a white European music. Others felt that Jackie McLean and Chet Baker were the wrong race to play jazz. But I suspect you would be unable to listen to any of their music and be able to tell the race of the musician.

"able" and "unable" used together confuse your post. on FB things are looser, but here we do expect a bit more attention to clear expression.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

"able" and "unable" used together confuse your post. on FB things are looser, but here we do expect a bit more attention to clear expression.

I suspect your authenticity fetishism is an obstacle to your ability to experience joy. Is that clear? I thought you were only back here to enrich your life by conversing with Thurgreed. Are you back in a more expanded sense? I'm only here to try to fill your void, or at least provide some distraction from the pain your absence has caused. If you're back, I'll respectfully step aside.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

I suspect your authenticity fetishism is an obstacle to your ability to experience joy. Is that clear? I thought you were only back here to enrich your life by conversing with Thurgreed. Are you back in a more expanded sense? I'm only here to try to fill your void, or at least provide some distraction from the pain your absence has caused. If you're back, I'll respectfully step aside.

you said "race" so it was within my exception. plus, as you seem to be settling in I wanted to explain the landscape to ease the entry for someone I deem a dear friend, albeit one i won't be chatting with anymore once we go to our new sides of the wall

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

Absolutely agree. And given the fact that it is irrational to think that if you pull your kid out of private school or your zoned district, others will follow suit, no one can truly criticize those personal decisions. But it would be nice if people acknowledged to themselves exactly what is going on and understand that the B-side of that record is the destruction of a group of people who don't share in that opportunity, even if your contribution to that problem is de minimis as an individual.

TM

Tragedy of the commons. I think Coltrane started us off with that. Everybody knows what they're doing, and the adverse aggregate effect you cite. We're individually compelled to draw the circle tight, particularly in difficult economic times.

It'd be great to do otherwise, but we're animals. There's no way enough of us would buck instinctual greed and survival urges to create policies that benefit everybody more fairly. The best we get is what we've got - a fistfight for resources among the advantaged, a minimal welfare state for the rest. Perhaps that's all we can hope to achieve. History seems to indicate it.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

If you're not using the individual's creditworthiness to perform your credit analysis, and instead increase the interest rate based on the neighborhood's characteristics, then what are you doing?

Reverse redlining. I get it. I'm not avoiding that acknowledgment.

If you're saying that houses in certain neighborhoods tend to lose their value more than in other neighborhoods, then all you're telling me is that your model for determining how much the underlying property is worth is incorrect.

If I'm telling you that one area sees more f/cs, I'm telling you that area sees more chance of lower priced comps fucking up valuations. This increases two forms of risk: 1. Poor f/c recovery; and, 2. Higher likelihood of buyer being underwater or holding poor equity, which equals higher default rate.

No lender wants residential r/e. Good neighborhood or bad.

If you're telling me that the average mortgagor in one neighborhood with the same credit score as the average mortgagor in another neighborhood has a higher default rate because of cultural reasons, I'm going to say that you need to prove that to me because it sounds like you're throwing bullshit at me to cover up a practice that is based on stereotypes.

I'm not, and I never would. I don't think an algorithm can tease "cultural reasons" out of the data. Nor does it have to do so. All it has to do is look at geography. Like a r/e agent pricing a home based on comps, it sets rates in part based on likelihood of performance, or non-performance, of similar surrounding assets.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Tragedy of the commons. I think Coltrane started us off with this acknowledgment. Everybody knows what they're doing, and the adverse aggregate effect you cite. We're individually compelled to draw the circle tight, particularly in difficult economic times.

It'd be great to do otherwise, but we're animals. There's no way enough of us would buck instinctual greed and survival urges to create policies that benefit everybody more fairly. The best we get is what we've got - a fistfight for resources among the advantaged, a minimal welfare state for the rest. Perhaps that's all we can hope to achieve. History seems to indicate it.

all your base belong to us.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

Creamy dick?

Chunky.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

I'm with you. Although, I will say this: Poor people (and most of my experience with poor people revolves around poor people of color) give shit up to other poor people all the time. The attitudes I see in poor neighborhoods do not exist in wealthy ones. Wealthy neighborhoods are designed to not only keep people out, but to isolate families with fences and huge lots and private clubs, within. I know plenty of poor people and they look out for each other. I know plenty of well-off people and sure, they give to charities, but if the family down the street is struggling it's just a shame.

I'm sure you've seen those videos where a guy, dressed normally, goes out and asks people if he can have some of their food because he's hungry and gets rejected by people with money again and again, but asks a homeless man if he can have some of his pizza because he is really hungry and is immediately given a share. Or the video of the homeless man who is handed a winning lottery ticket (for like a few hundred bucks) who wants to share it with the guy who set it up as an experiment. Whether it's something like that or the study that showed that it's the older, poor, black women who are x-times more likely to give up their seat to a pregnant woman on public transportation, there's just a different attitude that comes from having nothing and not believing you deserve a ton of shit.

I think it's easy to say that we focus on our families because it's the acceptable way of saying, I don't give a fuck about other people. But, like you said, we really should recognize that that's what we're saying. If your attitude is, "I want to give my child every advantage in life," okay. But no one should pretend that there isn't a flip side to that coin.

TM

This is a good and interesting post.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

So if you went into a Thai restaurant and the chef was a white hippie it wouldn't raise any red flag for you?

I regularly walk into Italian restaurants where the chefs are Latino or Asian. What's the difference?

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

I regularly walk into Italian restaurants where the chefs are Latino or Asian. What's the difference?

I don't think there's a restaurant in Houston whose kitchen staff isn't at least 75 percent Hispanic.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

This is a good and interesting post.

I'd missed that one, but yes, it is interesting, and I generally agree, to paraphrase TM, that the environment poorer folks live in the US encourages cooperation and altruism much more than the environment rich folks live in, which often feeds their individualism and selfishness.

But, of course, I've known some poor folks who were shits and some rich folks I'd nominate for sainthood. Rich people just have different obstacles to overcome.

Or, as I tell my kids, I have failed to give them one very important thing in this life: poverty. And they will have to overcome that problem with their upbringing.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

There's no way enough of us would buck instinctual greed and survival urges to create policies that benefit everybody more fairly.

There are other forces at work - people valuing different mixes of amenities that are leading them out of the suburbs and a life centered around driving everywhere - that could eventually leads to changes in urban schools too.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I get that. But what if you're not using ethnic criteria? What if you're using default rates among properties nearby? Zillow already runs a search that can give you all nearby foreclosures. Imagine what commercially used algorithms can provide.

I'm not missing your point. I agree that if you base lending on ethnicity, that's racism. But what if you're just fucking over people in high default areas?

My simple point is, lending against property is not all about credit score and down payment. It's about ability to get rid of the bricks and mortar if there's a f/c. I think this can hurt a lot of minority borrowers.

You may well think I'm a racist.

In hiring, I strongly disfavor someone who has been handed too much and hire people who have had obstacles to overcome. Give me a young lawyer who grew up poor and black in the Bronx over someone who grew up in a wealthy homogenous suburb any day. Also, I like people with language skills, especially Chinese language, and so definitely favor first generation immigrants, often people of color.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Reverse redlining. I get it. I'm not avoiding that acknowledgment.



If I'm telling you that one area sees more f/cs, I'm telling you that area sees more chance of lower priced comps fucking up valuations. This increases two forms of risk: 1. Poor f/c recovery; and, 2. Higher likelihood of buyer being underwater or holding poor equity, which equals higher default rate.

No lender wants residential r/e. Good neighborhood or bad.



I'm not, and I never would. I don't think an algorithm can tease "cultural reasons" out of the data. Nor does it have to do so. All it has to do is look at geography. Like a r/e agent pricing a home based on comps, it sets rates in part based on likelihood of performance, or non-performance, of similar surrounding assets.

Dude, you're trying to write a whole bunch of technical bullshit to cover up the fact that you do not want to acknowledge redlining is about racial stereotyping.

I dismissed your argument when I used an example where there are two properties of the same value. Determining the value of the property necessarily takes into account the neighborhood and lower priced comps. Charging a higher interest rate on top of that makes no sense. That's why we are talking about redlining. It's based on the stereotypical assumption that minorities default at higher rates (and listen closely now) ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL. If you want to discuss that, fine. If you want to discuss unrelated bank lending risk analysis, you'll have to find someone else to have that conversation with.

TM

[taxwonk]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Tragedy of the commons. I think Coltrane started us off with that. Everybody knows what they're doing, and the adverse aggregate effect you cite. We're individually compelled to draw the circle tight, particularly in difficult economic times.

It'd be great to do otherwise, but we're animals. There's no way enough of us would buck instinctual greed and survival urges to create policies that benefit everybody more fairly. The best we get is what we've got - a fistfight for resources among the advantaged, a minimal welfare state for the rest. Perhaps that's all we can hope to achieve. History seems to indicate it.

That "minimal welfare state" is under attack. We better shore it up, or we'll find out just how much the status quo can be busted up.