Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Relatedly, every law is violent.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Amen.

China is working hard to get new trade deals around the Pacific rim after the failure of TPP. Blood in the water.

Re: Fantastic
 

I'm not going to go through and respond to all of this point-by-point. But there are two main points I would like to address.

1. Being a part of diversity issues from very early on when it was just lip service and experimenting and crafting different programming and training and approaches to try to deal with it, you get very close to the topic. Although white resistance was always front and center, you start to lose perspective as to why you first try this approach, then another, then another, again and again and again. We are now at a point where implicit bias and confirmation bias are front and center and are fairly effective because white people seem to understand (when given the proper examples) that the point of the drill is not how it makes them feel about themselves. That's the one thread that was always present--how to effectively send a message of inclusivity that would be heard. And to be heard, you had to find a way to navigate and manage the feelings of white people who do not want to confront what is inside them.

So, the reason why I thought it was so well handled in that piece is that it sheds these structures built to be successful based on how white people will react and just outright states the real problem. Although it's always been there, I know it, and I have explained it here many times in many different ways, I thought it was done much better in that piece than anywhere else I've seen it because it's not about protecting those feelings. It's saying, "Those feelings are the fucking problem."

2. We are going to disagree with your reading of the pathogen analogy. You think it lets white people off the hook. I don't. If you're born white, every single benefit you receive that grants you an advantage infects you and you fight any efforts to remove those advantages. There are innumerable opportunities to exercise your agency to either make a choice to push back on those advantages. No one does. And when someone like Adder even mentions trying, people shit all over them for being overly liberal saps. But it's always white people doing the shitting. That goes for feminism, LGBT issues. Whatever. And we're not talking about the most obvious examples--overt racism. We're talking about the built-in, systemic advantages that all whites enjoy (which takes us back to whether progressives are in fact as great a danger as outright racists. Where are the black people? Look at the neighborhoods and schools and opportunity for blacks where progressives live. Sure, an overtly racist policy in Alabama is horrible. But go to the projects which are always designed to be completely avoided by progressives.)

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

If companies weren't gifted bajillions of dollars worth of tax incentives you might have me. But if you're talking about the benefits you're going to provide to a local economy and then create a capsule to which employees travel to avoid anyone who actually lives and works in the area while driving up the cost of living to unsustainable levels, it would seem this is a small fix that harms neither the company nor the workers.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Oh my god. You're the one accusing everyone of trying to enact policies that benefit Dems. That was a response to you after other people (including me), said that our current system is no longer appropriately representative. I feel like I'm talking to a monkey in the first ever inter-species discussion.

TM

Re: Fantastic
 

We are talking about our takes on the reviewer's take on some book, but here goes.

As to micro-aggression or whatever you want to call the thought, we need to deal with the concept- I spent 7 years carting several young black men around the midwest to bball tournaments- seeing through their eyes I can tell you they were frequently seeing shit that was offending- not hateful maybe, and from well meaning individuals maybe, but stupid. The guys didn't complain to me, they just commented on stuff, but open to me hearing. The things they were struck by I didn't even notice at first, but made aware of them I couldn't tell them they were over reacting, or shouldn't be struck by the thing said or done. One might tell them to deal with it and not be bugged (I wouldn't), but you can not say the frequent offenses don't happen.

And we talked about the "racists" in the high school, the kids wearing stars and bar, and skin heads. They were aware of who the real haters were, but somehow there seemed something almost worse when it was a white person who postured as an ally doing the nonsense, without realizing. I mean these guys will have to walk into an interview with a white person some day, and will need to feel confident they'll be getting a chance, and the more they have to question what every white person really feels, the harder that will be.

(if I posted this before apologies) my Next Door webpage had a thread- the local High school football team is 50/50 white and black- my tiny suburb is part of that school, but 95% white. 3 black players were going door to door selling coupons for the season. An old woman started the thread- "there are 3 black kids knocking on my door. anybody know if they mean bad, I pretended not to be home?" or some such nonsense-

my suburb is 70% liberals- they took up the thread, "They're from the football team. I was happy to meet them, bought tickets, Joe is a d tackle and frank is a safety and ......." 2 dozens similar replies. The replies read to me as "I was brave and opened my door..., here let me brag." That is those well-intended replies seemed harmful- any high school kid who read it would know the entire fucking suburb was afraid. You were bragging about opening your door to a high school kid and talking to him as if he were a person, really?

My response,
"can someone please delete this whole thread before any kids, white or black read it?"

I knew the dozen braggers, all good people, no one intended to do anything but positive thoughts. if I told them how the posts, especially the volume of the same thought, could be taken as implying something harmful, I'd be told I was nuts. but these people all took a deep breath before they opened the door to black people they didn't know, they won't admit it, even to themselves, but I think their words show it.

I realize this little thing is nothing compared to a job or whatever, but I think it shows how several people (who think themselves progressive) truly have some inner issues to admit to.

I don't have any answers, but what I took away from the article is that NO white people should be thinking "I got it together, we just got to get them other white people thinking right."

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

So I am no fan of the game where different governments bid against each other with tax incentives to attract businesses. But if you accept that that's the game, then maybe this is just a negotiating move in that game. San Francisco previously rejiggered its corporate taxes to shift the burden to tech firms, essentially (I oversimplify). Twitter, notoriously, told SF that it was going to leave the city because of the tax burden. SF then gave Twitter (and others) a tax break to move to mid-Market. If Peskin's proposal passes, you can think of that as an indirect tax on tech firms, and future city leaders can decide to give it back as tax breaks again. Part of the background is that SF thought for a while that it was missing out on the tech jobs created by Apple and Google and others down on the Peninsula and in the Valley, but more recently companies want to be in the city because that's where twenty-somethings want to live, rather than the suburbs. From that perspective, the tax burden ebbs and flows with the city's perceived competitive advantage.

But to your point, the tax break that Twitter got was a six-year break from a city tax that was higher than other city's taxes. It's not like it was a subsidy, from that perspective.

And in the bigger perspective, businesses that depend on foot traffic are going away, relatively, because it's so easy and attractive now to buy things on-line, whether it's having goods shipped by Amazon or food delivered by Uber Eats. That's where the economy is going. Restauranteurs need to adapt, not outlaw newer options. It's a challenge for cities to revitalize neighborhoods in this new world, but they need a better playbook than Peskin's.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Don't know if you watched the new Planet of the Apes series, but I saw that first convo-SPOILER>>>>>>>>>>>

my monkey side wins.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

My argument is pragmatic. You can convert even ardent conservatives on police brutality and justice system abuses. You lose even moderates when you conflate things like Eric Garner or Ferguson with microaggressions.

Nobody sharpshoots with a shotgun.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Agreed. And yet the cure for every ill is, “Let’s pass a law or regulation!”

How many non-violent offenders would not be incarcerated or saddled with records that render them unhireable but for the 30,000 or so moronic and unnecessary laws and regs officious legislators and advocates have put on the books?

A big part of our justice system’s problem is lawyers, and our outdated adversarial process. We drive people into the legal system by endlessly expanding its reach. It replaces people’s own sense of decency and replaces their understanding of right and wrong with code and case law.

God, we suck. We’re worse than the worst of Wall and K Street. We’re just so fucked up by our nihilist training we don’t recognize how damaging to society we are.

Re: Fantastic
 

Not your main point, but while I'm sure that NextDoor was started with the best of intentions, as a practical matter its business model seems to be to monetize exactly this sort of bias. Half the board activity, from what I can tell, is neighbors worrying about the criminal threat posed by various darker-hued people in the neighborhood.

Re: Fantastic
 

Hey! Just like Twitter and Facebook! Whodathunkit?

Re: Fantastic
 

OK. Thanks for explaining that.

I agree completely with everything you say here.

One suggestion from Joelle Emerson in that book I haven't gotten back from my boss is that a way to combat unconscious bias in hiring is to move to structured interviewing, because the focus on specific things in an interview leaves less room for assumptions and confirmation bias, etc. I love that suggestion and am trying to figure out how to make it happen where I work.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

And now for a different view:

That's an FT reporter, via Tyler Cowen.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Ah, the Chinese authoritative but unnamed sources. I trust you follow The Relevant Organs on twitter?

I think almost everyone has figured out that flattering Trump is a cheap and easy way to curry favor and get what you want. Yes, indeed, look at what happened with North Korea.

In the Obama administration, we worked on moving China into the existing world order; it was a reluctant move, and building alliances through things like TPP fenced them in. Yes, Trump will tear down all the fences. And then look around.... And the US will not have the leverage it used to, and China will benefit. Most importantly, their own well-educated people may stop spending as much time as they are now figuring out how to manage a soft landing in the US.