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ProperGanderPusher posted:My friend is apparently itching for a fight. He posted this op-ed on my wall calling BART workers a bunch of spoiled brats for turning down what appears to be a reasonable offer on the part of management. Is there some information that the article leaves out? I already have responses to the other asinine statements made by the author (roads take subsidies too, banning organized labor is a terrible idea for obvious reasons, poo poo costs money get over it, etc). The article doesn't give us all the information. What exactly did the union oppose in that offer? The article doesn't say, so what I suspect is going on is that the article is putting forward the areas where management went more-or-less to what the union was asking for, while leaving out the stuff where they were screwing the union. It also doesn't offer any comparison of the benefits it mentions to the benefits BART employees had in their previous contract. 12% raise over 4 years is nice enough, keeping up with inflation, roughly, but if the union is losing benefits in other places then the new contract will be making them poorer. Why compare their benefits to the benefits that other employees get at other jobs that don't pay the same salaries? The union surely wants their workers to be in a better position after this contract than they were before, so if management's best offer is "we'll let your pay keep up with inflation but cut your benefits" then why should the workers agree to get poorer? It's that simple. The argument that other people's wages aren't keeping up with inflation so therefore nobody's should is toxic. "We fell overboard, so lets pull everyone else off the boat too!" Ask your friend if he wants to donate 1% of his salary to your retirement and when he refuses, ask "why not? It's a reasonable offer - you'd still be better off than poorer people. Most of us get worse contracts than that." The argument that we pay their salary through fares, so therefore them being paid decently hurts us... it is beyond stupid. We pay the baker's salary by buying his bread, we pay the Apple Store employee's salary by buying iPods and etc., we pay this douchebag's salary by clicking his articles and viewing his ads. If I'm worse off than the baker, should I pay him less for his bread? Should I call him greedy and spoiled when he asks me to pay full price? Why are BART riders "the public" while this guy's readers are "customers"? Where is the distinction? And who DOESN'T get their salary paid by their customers?
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# ? Oct 18, 2013 17:42 |
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# ? Apr 25, 2024 11:24 |
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Jimbozig posted:The article doesn't give us all the information. What exactly did the union oppose in that offer? The article doesn't say, so what I suspect is going on is that the article is putting forward the areas where management went more-or-less to what the union was asking for, while leaving out the stuff where they were screwing the union. Thanks, this all gels well with some articles I've come upon talking about the inflation rate possibly reaching as high as three percent over the next few years (my friend maintains it won't top 1.5 percent, but most of the evidence still seems to be on my side). My next goal will be to convince him that BART workers do more than sweep floors and check tickets, and that driving a train is harder than it looks. The trick was to check out the IWW website. They have a nice breakdown of what the strikers are demanding and why their demands are reasonable.
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# ? Oct 18, 2013 21:37 |
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I don't see anything on the IWW site, but here's an article that explains what the strikers are looking for: http://nextcity.org/theworks/entry/bart-strike-about-work-rules-more-so-than-wages-and-benefits This is the important bit: quote:Both sides were inching closer on the main economic issues that had separated them for more than six months but were still about 4 percent apart on total wage increases. And unions said they were fed up after management tried to impose new work rules to limit overtime and other costs. […] It's mostly about work rules, not pay.
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# ? Oct 19, 2013 02:29 |
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I was wondering about the possibility of getting some anti-MRA bits of info in the OP. Anyone have a good collection of resources that would be useful?
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# ? Oct 19, 2013 20:36 |
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Captain Frigate posted:I was wondering about the possibility of getting some anti-MRA bits of info in the OP. Anyone have a good collection of resources that would be useful?
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# ? Oct 20, 2013 09:31 |
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Since the implementation of Obamacare has begun and the accusations of Obama being a "communist" have begun anew, many lefists I know (including many on D&D) have responded by saying that Obama is scarcely to the left of Reagan in terms of economic/financial policy. Could anyone provide me with some examples of or sources about why that's the case? I'm pretty much a layman when it comes to the President's domestic policy but hearing from conservative friends that he's the second coming of the Bolsheviks has become pretty drat tiresome.
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# ? Oct 20, 2013 15:31 |
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the2ndgenesis posted:Since the implementation of Obamacare has begun and the accusations of Obama being a "communist" have begun anew, many lefists I know (including many on D&D) have responded by saying that Obama is scarcely to the left of Reagan in terms of economic/financial policy. "Communist" in the way they are using doesn't mean anything but "bad, (optionally) involving the government somehow". They don't care about Reagan the man, they care about Reagan the symbol. It's like how people forget Jesus was a collectivist who literally believed the world was ending within his audience's lifetimes. "This guy is/isn't a true conservative" is as much a cultural statement these days as "This guy is/isn't a true Christian", regardless of how the person actually acts versus the figurehead of the movement.
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# ? Oct 20, 2013 15:45 |
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the2ndgenesis posted:Since the implementation of Obamacare has begun and the accusations of Obama being a "communist" have begun anew, many lefists I know (including many on D&D) have responded by saying that Obama is scarcely to the left of Reagan in terms of economic/financial policy. After all, PP/ACA is based on the plan advanced by the Heritage Foundation and Congressional Republicans in the 90's as the alternative to "Hillarycare." It's the plan implemented by former Republican presidential candidate Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts, to apparently great effect and popularity. I doubt any of those involved would have gone for something "communist." I'd also like to see them explain how private individuals buying private insurance from private (or publicly-traded) companies in a competitive marketplace that states have the option of setting up themselves is at all, in any way, describable as "communism." Bonus fact: the founding fathers seemed keen on making people buy insurance - http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2011/01/17/congress-passes-socialized-medicine-and-mandates-health-insurance-in-1798/ EDIT: Forgot the reason I opened this thread. I wanted to post this short article that helps put the debt and deficit in perspective. Not that it will convince anyone else, but I think most people here agree that the debt isn't inherently bad, and it turns out we're not even the worst of the lot (and I don't mean Greece). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24541140#story_continues_1 DarkHorse fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Oct 20, 2013 |
# ? Oct 20, 2013 19:33 |
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computer parts posted:"Communist" in the way they are using doesn't mean anything but "bad, (optionally) involving the government somehow". I don't think that's totally fair. 'Communist' usually for the right usually does have a fairly recognisable set of characteristics, though not always to do with the government. If the government regulates private industry or somehow impedes individuals total autonomy on the market, that's Communist. If taxes are raised, that's Communist. Communism and Capitalism, for them, are not fundamentally different but a continuum where Communism is 0% consumer freedom and 100% taxes on one end, and Capitalism 100% consumer freedom and 0% taxes on the other. This is why they think e.g. Norway is 'more Communist,' than America. There's also stuff that isn't necessarily government related that also gets called Communist. As far as I can tell, the usual right-wing idea here more-or-less totally coincides with the Neo-Nazi idea of 'cultural Marxism,' that devious Communists and useful idiots -- inspired by the Frankfurt school -- are trying to undermine patriotism and the organic social heirachy and whatnot with destructive ideas like 'critical readings of history' and 'multiculturalism.' The government sometimes gets in on this when the right e.g. attack 'politically correct' history education, or affirmative action policies, and so on. Really, all you can say about this stuff is that the right-wing's understanding of Communism is laughably stupid and false.
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# ? Oct 20, 2013 22:44 |
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That's all good stuff and thanks to you guys for replying- obviously American conservatives' colloquial use of "communism" bears little resemblance to communism as a political end. I'm afraid I might have misplaced the emphasis of my question, though: I'd like to have in mind some specific examples of Obama pushing neoliberal policy/coddling corporations and Wall Street (i.e. as Reagan did in the '80s) as counterpoints to those who accuse him of being a leftist. I'm afraid I know very little about his domestic policies so any readings or sources on the subject would be great.
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# ? Oct 20, 2013 22:55 |
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Whoops, I totally misread your post. Have some things: I don't know if it fits what you're trying to get across, but Obama's spending has been the least since Eisenhower. He's hardly the profligate leftist spender. He's also deporting immigrants at a rate far above anything Bush ever did. While his administration has been more accommodating of non-violent long-term residents, it's still has an aggressive deportation apparatus. This is impressive, considering that there's been much less immigration because of the bad economy - in fact, agents have been digging deeper into those non-violent residents to make up the "quota" of arrests they need. There have been fewer convictions for the global financial crisis than for the Enron scandal in 2001. As for Wall Street and Obama's connections to it, it's a tricky issue I'll let factcheck summarize: http://www.factcheck.org/2012/02/obama-white-house-full-of-wall-street-executives/
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# ? Oct 20, 2013 23:20 |
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twodot posted:The issue here is that "MRA" isn't any sort of coherent philosophy, so there isn't a generic argument that will always make sense or be effective. There certainly exists a variety of issues specific to men that can make sense to advocate for. There's also (many more) issues that are stupid/don't exist/aren't worth addressing. This is definitely not a one size fits all conversation, to have a meaningful conversation, you are going to have to engage the specific issue they are advocating. "Climate change denial" isn't some kind of monolithic philosophy either but there are a bunch of resources in the OP about how to approach a number of different, common arguments that come up. Something similar would be feasible for common MRA talking points, I would think.
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# ? Oct 20, 2013 23:30 |
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Captain Frigate posted:"Climate change denial" isn't some kind of monolithic philosophy either but there are a bunch of resources in the OP about how to approach a number of different, common arguments that come up. Something similar would be feasible for common MRA talking points, I would think. I guess we would first have to compile the common MRA talking points. I think this is a worthwhile thing to have a concise list of rebuttals for, and I've trudged around the lovely side of the internet searching for funny things to post on PYF long enough to read more than a few MRA rants. Here's a few that come up a lot:
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# ? Oct 21, 2013 00:31 |
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Saying that MRA junk is just the realm of nerdy nerd nerds (who are nerds) is really stupid. Sure, people posting on Reddit about it probably fall into that category, but if you talk to a large variety of young men this stuff is pretty common. Fraternities and business schools are particularly terrible about this stuff; Even if they don't call themselves MRAs or know what that means, they spew the same bile. As for actually refuting stuff, there's a great article by Youngjoo Cha called Overwork and the Persistence of Gender Segregation in Occupations (unfortunately hidden behind a pay wall) that talks about how many jobs which people consider "careers" simply aren't viable for lots of women right now due to overwork and ridiculous hours. Here's a bit I wrote about it a few weeks back quote:Cha’s research resulted in a very clear, very strong negative association between long work hours and women’s representation in work. This is shown by a sharp decrease in women working jobs that required 51 or more hours a work a week. Additionally, fields which demanded 43 or more hours had workforces with fewer than 10% women (as an aside, these jobs lead to overwork in more than 22% of documented instances). Conversely, professions whose workforces were 70% or greater women often had weekly hours of 35 or less. It's not a clean "the wage gap is a myth and here's the numbers" response, but since this is about debate I figure a bit of nuance and explaining why it might seem that women are simply "staying at home with the kids" - Because the jobs we associate with financial success are garbage and have you work obscene hours that many mothers simply can't justify.
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# ? Oct 21, 2013 01:03 |
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Countblanc posted:Saying that MRA junk is just the realm of nerdy nerd nerds (who are nerds) is really stupid. Sure, people posting on Reddit about it probably fall into that category, but if you talk to a large variety of young men this stuff is pretty common. Fraternities and business schools are particularly terrible about this stuff; Even if they don't call themselves MRAs or know what that means, they spew the same bile. The thing about "official" MRA's is that they concentrate it, since they're trying to have a "movement" based around it. They're the easiest to spot and generally have the worst opinions (since they base it all around rejection or some weird interaction with women that didn't go perfectly), so I started there. But yes, you're definitely right, these ideas have been festering in many other places than just weirdos on Reddit and it would be better to address all of them. EDIT: Okay I did imply in my last post that the ideas I listed were only the realm of nerds because I was concentrating on internet MRA's and yeah that's wrong and ignores bigger problems, sorry Shame Boy fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Oct 21, 2013 |
# ? Oct 21, 2013 01:11 |
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I swear I remember reading recently about an incident in 1970s Sweden (but maybe I have the time and place wrong) where the social democratic leader tried to push through a scheme getting workers to effectively buy control in the companies they worked for. Swedish industry reacted strongly, going so far as to dismantle collective bargaining which had historically given the trade unions great power. Any idea if I'm thinking of something real, or if this is all confabulated somehow? Can't seem to find any references to whatever I'm talking about. e: It was the Rehn-Meidner model, in the 60s. Vivian Darkbloom fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Oct 21, 2013 |
# ? Oct 21, 2013 05:58 |
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It was the Meidner plan, the Rehn-Meidner model is basically what the whole Scandinavian political economy from the post-war years up through the eighties was based on. The Meidner plan represented the definite end of the Swedish Social Democrats as a socialist party, and can be considered one of the major historical cases against those espousing parliamentary socialism as a viable way forwards. In this instance, the Swedish LO (basically a really massive, powerful trade union movement) was in favour of transitioning peacefully and gradually to a socialist economy, but met opposition in the party, eventually leading to the plan floundering and, finally, in the current neoliberal tendency that we're seeing in Scandinavia today.
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# ? Oct 21, 2013 10:48 |
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:I guess we would first have to compile the common MRA talking points. I think this is a worthwhile thing to have a concise list of rebuttals for, and I've trudged around the lovely side of the internet searching for funny things to post on PYF long enough to read more than a few MRA rants. Here's a few that come up a lot: I think the biggest fallacy MRAs engage in is the assumption that all women, much less all people who call themselves "feminist" have identical thought processes. Doing the same with MRAs is probably not going to be terribly productive. I've seen many arguments devolve into some form of: "Feminists don't want gender equality because X." "No, that's not the feminist position." "No, you're not a feminist." There are plenty of nerdy teenagers on Reddit who are looking to justify misogyny by calling themselves MRAs, but there are also plenty of people who would just like more equality in child custody or to point out that the gains in higher education by black women masks the fact that black men have been largely passed over by the reforms since the civil rights movement (source Fig. 2) when you slice the data by race or sex but not both. I think there are also many people who would be considered MRAs have the same goals as many feminists: dismantling societally imposed constraints based on sex. While the revolting ideas you list are undoubtably held by some subset of people, a list of "these are the disgusting things all MRAs believe," is not likely to be terribly helpful in winning arguments, much less convincing people of anything. KernelSlanders fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Oct 21, 2013 |
# ? Oct 21, 2013 15:46 |
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Dudes win most of the custody cases that they bother to actually fight out, though, so that's rot.
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# ? Oct 21, 2013 16:29 |
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I'd be curious to see a source to that effect, but I'm not sure it matters and I'm not really looking for an argument on that topic. My point was just that there's a lot of ground between "I support every position of the NOW" and "huh huh women are dumb."
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# ? Oct 21, 2013 16:32 |
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KernelSlanders posted:While the revolting ideas you list are undoubtably held by some subset of people, a list of "these are the disgusting things all MRAs believe," is not likely to be terribly helpful in winning arguments, much less convincing people of anything. The original point was to compile a list of rebuttals to common bad ideas, not to make a list of "universal truths" all MRA's believe. I started by listing common bad ideas I've seen so responses can be made to them so we can make our reference list of rebuttals. If people are merely arguing "hey this particular thing is unfair" and can back it up with statistics or other information then there's not really any reason to argue with them in the first place. If they're espousing disgusting ideas with nothing to back them up but their own worldview it would be helpful to have a list of cited rebuttals to shut them down with. I admit I sort of handled this half-assedly since I was focusing on the Reddit-type nerd MRA's but really I think the idea of a concise list to reference when needed is a good one.
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# ? Oct 21, 2013 18:00 |
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KernelSlanders posted:I'd be curious to see a source to that effect, but I'm not sure it matters and I'm not really looking for an argument on that topic. My point was just that there's a lot of ground between "I support every position of the NOW" and "huh huh women are dumb." I'm trying to find the data I found when I started looking into this due to my own recent divorce, but in Pennsylvania the statistics were roughly equal for custody being award toward the husband vs wife, in cases where the husband decides to contest custody. The overall numbers are skewed heavily towards women, however, because roughly 2/3 of custody cases are decided outside of court and are usually in favor of the mother because the father decides not to fight it for whatever reason. Edit: Oh, and single mothers are automatically awarded custody as well, further skewing the data in their favor; on paper at least.
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# ? Oct 21, 2013 18:12 |
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Fair enough. To that end, something like a source to V. Illych L.'s claim would be helpful. I'm sure there are others, but as you say sources don't often matter when arguing with the unreasonable people. I wouldn't even know where to start with someone who honestly believes date rape isn't a thing.
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# ? Oct 21, 2013 18:14 |
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:I admit I sort of handled this half-assedly since I was focusing on the Reddit-type nerd MRA's but really I think the idea of a concise list to reference when needed is a good one. If there were a central idea in MRA I might agree, but you've plainly demonstrated that even a small subset of MRAs have a variety of unrelated bad beliefs. To use an earlier example, climate change deniers have a specific core belief either: 1) Climate change isn't happening 2) Climate change is happening, but there's nothing to do about it Anyone who doesn't believe one of these two bad ideas isn't a climate change denier. I'm comfortable with having to ask a climate change denier one question to find out which bad belief they possess. To find out which bad belief an MRA possesses you need to ask a potentially infinitely long list of questions, because it may be the case that they don't possess any bad ideas.
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# ? Oct 21, 2013 18:19 |
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^^The basic idea of a men's right activist is that we do not live in a patriarchy, but in a society that systemically favours women in most areas of life. This is a fairly easy basic position to refute, which is why they don't generally frame it in those terms and throw up lots of weird other opinions or reasoning to cover for it.KernelSlanders posted:Fair enough. To that end, something like a source to V. Illych L.'s claim would be helpful. I'm sure there are others, but as you say sources don't often matter when arguing with the unreasonable people. I wouldn't even know where to start with someone who honestly believes date rape isn't a thing. http://www.divorcepeers.com/stats18.htm Which I'll admit doesn't quite support what I was saying, but the skewing is much less grotesque than a lot of MRAs claim it to be, with a slim majority of fought-over cases turning to not-maternal custody (joint custody has 40%, paternal 11%, maternal 44% and 'other' has the rest) - I assume these stats are for the USA. In a divorce, the kids usually go with the mother because the mother wants them more (see the preferences - 82% of the mothers want to have sole possession of the child after divorce). Site might be a bit hacky, though, I can't be arsed to dig up actual primary sources of statistics about this. V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Oct 21, 2013 |
# ? Oct 21, 2013 18:38 |
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V. Illych L. posted:^^The basic idea of a men's right activist is that we do not live in a patriarchy, but in a society that systemically favours women in most areas of life. This is a fairly easy basic position to refute, which is why they don't generally frame it in those terms and throw up lots of weird other opinions or reasoning to cover for it. quote:Which I'll admit doesn't quite support what I was saying, but the skewing is much less grotesque than a lot of MRAs claim it to be, with a slim majority of fought-over cases turning to not-maternal custody (joint custody has 40%, paternal 11%, maternal 44% and 'other' has the rest) - I assume these stats are for the USA. In a divorce, the kids usually go with the mother because the mother wants them more (see the preferences - 82% of the mothers want to have sole possession of the child after divorce). Site might be a bit hacky, though, I can't be arsed to dig up actual primary sources of statistics about this.
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# ? Oct 21, 2013 18:54 |
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I've seen MRAs dismiss the concept of patriarchy as a conspiracy theory ('some secret group of men control everything') or some kind of Platonic form ('some eternal Idea which innately attracts people'). They also regularly claim society systematically favours women, or at least doesn't favour men, so feminism is either enforcing an anti-men status quo or trying to promote female supremacy over a system of more-or-less equality. In my experience, most are of the 'society systematically disfavours men' ilk. I don't know where V. Illych L. got the idea that MRAs don't openly profess these beliefs. If you wanted to address them it'd probably be best just to address feminist ideas in general, as frankly MRAs are a small and largely-irrelevant group that only seem worthy of concern because SA are loving obsessed with them.
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# ? Oct 21, 2013 22:32 |
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Sure, but this being the "pool our knowledge" thread, I was hoping that we could compile some useful resources together for the OP!
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# ? Oct 21, 2013 22:57 |
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Captain Frigate posted:Sure, but this being the "pool our knowledge" thread, I was hoping that we could compile some useful resources together for the OP!
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# ? Oct 21, 2013 23:37 |
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Someone on my Facebook keeps posting idiotic "You will literally die of radiation if you swim in the beach in California because of Fukushima" poo poo, does anyone have links to good papers that explain the actual extent of the radiation leaked?
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# ? Oct 22, 2013 16:11 |
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I thought this infograph did a pretty good job explaining how overblown the concerns over exposure are: E; holy tables.
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# ? Oct 22, 2013 17:40 |
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NatasDog posted:I thought this infograph did a pretty good job explaining how overblown the concerns over exposure are: In addition to that infographic, here's an FAQ written by the Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institution answering a lot of common misconceptions about Fukushima and exactly what's happening with the radiation that I found the last time this came up in the thread: http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=83397&tid=3622&cid=94989 It's written by a guy who's actually been to the radiated parts of the ocean to study them first-hand and has lots of experience studying radioactivity in oceans (both from this and other sources), and he seems to keep it up to date as things change. Shame Boy fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Oct 23, 2013 |
# ? Oct 23, 2013 01:20 |
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One thing that I've been struggling with for a while, is how to make the case for food assistance/housing assistance to the poor to someone like Ebenezer Scrooge. Making them care about the poor's suffering is impossible, but if the case could be made that providing assistance benefits the not-poor somehow, then we could improve our safety net. I'm aware convincing Objectivists of this is impossible, but what arguments could work with people who don't hate the poor as a religious imperative?
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# ? Oct 24, 2013 20:37 |
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They are less likely to kill you in their search for food.
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# ? Oct 24, 2013 20:40 |
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TwoQuestions posted:One thing that I've been struggling with for a while, is how to make the case for food assistance/housing assistance to the poor to someone like Ebenezer Scrooge. Making them care about the poor's suffering is impossible, but if the case could be made that providing assistance benefits the not-poor somehow, then we could improve our safety net. I'm not convinced they can be convinced -- the short-term monetary interests of the rich trump all other considerations, from world hunger to climate change to future profitability. People like Ebeneezer Scrooge will always be in the way and will eventually need to be steamrolled over on the way to progress. But if you wanted to make a "self-interest" argument to such people it's that the poor can't buy whatever the Scrooges of the world are making and selling if they can't afford food and rent. Right now the recession is demand-driven, because the middle class (in reality there are only two classes, but when talking to normal people you can say "middle class") doesn't have enough disposable income to buy consumer goods.
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# ? Oct 24, 2013 21:01 |
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namesake posted:They are less likely to kill you in their search for food. So we're essentially bribing people with food? That may work, as food is much less expensive than prison. Any reason why it shouldn't be more than three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll on Sundays? Why should people be forced to give up their money so poor people can eat above starvation from a Libertarian perspective? OwlBot 2000 posted:I'm not convinced they can be convinced -- the short-term monetary interests of the rich trump all other considerations, from world hunger to climate change to future profitability. People like Ebeneezer Scrooge will always be in the way and will eventually need to be steamrolled over on the way to progress. Any sources on this?
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# ? Oct 24, 2013 21:04 |
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TwoQuestions posted:So we're essentially bribing people with food? That may work, as food is much less expensive than prison. Any reason why it shouldn't be more than three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll on Sundays? Why should people be forced to give up their money so poor people can eat above starvation from a Libertarian perspective? Because they're still likely to kill you if you do that.
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# ? Oct 24, 2013 21:08 |
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TwoQuestions posted:Any reason why it shouldn't be more than three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll on Sundays? Why should people be forced to give up their money so poor people can eat above starvation from a Libertarian perspective? There's no reason from a "libertarian perspective" aside from, again, the fact that workers are also consumers and won't be able to buy anything if they're too underpaid, causing complete economic collapse and, if history is any indication, an unpleasant fate for many rich people.
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# ? Oct 24, 2013 21:08 |
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TwoQuestions posted:So we're essentially bribing people with food? That may work, as food is much less expensive than prison. Any reason why it shouldn't be more than three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll on Sundays? Why should people be forced to give up their money so poor people can eat above starvation from a Libertarian perspective? The simplest system to ensure they have access to this food is also going to be the cheapest and our economic system is already aligned to deal with people handing over money for things, rather than administrators running kitchens with the required supply lines/staff/etc or bureacracy issuing special cards, just calculate cost of living (or poverty level or whatever) in the region and give that money to them. There's no specific argument that will get a completely self-interested person to respect the lives and quality of living of others but the arguments made in The Spirit Level about how more unequal societies generate worse outcomes for all might help you. namesake fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Oct 24, 2013 |
# ? Oct 24, 2013 21:14 |
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# ? Apr 25, 2024 11:24 |
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TwoQuestions posted:Why should people be forced to... If I don't care about other people or the future, there's no reason not to smash open our nation and eat the meaty parts like lobster. It happens all the time in the third world. And if you opt for a slowburn instead of a great looting, then the country will continue in a relatively first world fashion for decades while you enjoy lower taxes at the cost of imperceptibly slow degradations in standard of living. quote:Any sources on this? Accretionist fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Oct 24, 2013 |
# ? Oct 24, 2013 21:20 |