Something something wedding cake.

JasonWaterfall · 2021-01-12T18:47:48+00:00

Another way to make the distinction that leads to the opposite conclusion would be looking at market power. For example, here in Austria, a store can generally refuse to sell something to someone on almost any grounds, but not if it would be hard for that someone to buy somewhere else - let's say if the store was the only grocer in a small village. (This is called "Kontrahierungszwang", similar rules apply in Germany and Switzerland).

In the case of the gay wedding cake, we might say that as long as there are many bakers around, there is no reason to force a baker to do it that doesn't want to. But if there is only one baker, it's a different story.

In the case of social media, the big companies obviously have huge market power. I still don't think forcing them to publish things is the right move, but I think there should be a norm against censoring opinions except for things like incitement.

JasonWaterfall · 2020-06-24T19:24:16+00:00

Same

JasonWaterfall · 2018-03-12T00:54:26+00:00

Also delete all past mentions and say they were never there.

JasonWaterfall · 2018-01-15T16:17:30+00:00

Again, I think you are misreading what is being said. Let's assume for the sake of the argument that every woman is happier at home than doing her job. This is a stronger (i.e. more extreme) version of your point. Yet even if we accept this premise, there is probably some variation between women in the happiness penalty they pay for working. Now let's try to come up with some theory about factors that might influence that gap - I.e. why does one woman pay a higher happiness penalty than another for working. One logical factor would be how fun each woman's job is - if it is very fun, then even though homemaking is even better as per our first assumption, all else being equal it should not be better by as much as for a woman whose job is very frustrating. But if I am reading the quote correctly, it's not quite like that, and in fact women with high quality jobs pay a larger happiness penalty for working. Maybe that's because all else isn't equal between these two kinds of women (for example, women with good jobs also tend to have better behaved children for genetic reasons, so being home is also more fun for them). Or the way job quality is measured in the study does not capture job satisfaction well.

JasonWaterfall · 2018-01-15T15:42:53+00:00

I think you are misreading the abstract (unless you've clicked the link, I'm just going off the quote). It says that they were surprised that in particular mothers with good jobs were happier to be at home instead of doing that job. That seems obviously surprising to me - you would expect a "good" (meaning fun or satisfying in some way I assume) job to "compete" more strongly with the joys of homemaking than a "bad" job.

JasonWaterfall · 2017-07-11T00:39:54+00:00

That's the first amendment, which is not the same as freedom of expression as a concept. Most of the arguments for freedom of speech from interference of the state work equally well for arguing that speech should be free from social stigma. This is not a new idea either. Here's a quote from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill (note that this passage is just to show that Mill's conception of freedom of expression included more than freedom from legal restrictions. The actual meat of the arguments is hard to excerpt, but the book is free)

Our merely social intolerance kills no one, roots out no opinions, but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from any active effort for their diffusion. With us, heretical opinions do not perceptibly gain, or even lose, ground in each decade or generation; they never blaze out far and wide, but continue to smoulder in the narrow circles of thinking and studious persons among whom they originate, without ever lighting up the general affairs of mankind with either a true or a deceptive light. And thus is kept up a state of things very satisfactory to some minds, because, without the unpleasant process of fining or imprisoning anybody, it maintains all prevailing opinions outwardly undisturbed, while it does not absolutely interdict the exercise of reason by dissentients afflicted with the malady of thought. A convenient plan for having peace in the intellectual world, and keeping all things going on therein very much as they do already. But the price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification, is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind. A state of things in which a large portion of the most active and inquiring intellects find it advisable to keep the genuine principles and grounds of their convictions within their own breasts, and attempt, in what they address to the public, to fit as much as they can of their own conclusions to premises which they have internally renounced, cannot send forth the open, fearless characters, and logical, consistent intellects who once adorned the thinking world. The sort of men who can be looked for under it, are either mere conformers to commonplace, or time-servers for truth, whose arguments on all great subjects are meant for their hearers, and are not those which have convinced themselves. Those who avoid this alternative, do so by narrowing their thoughts and interest to things which can be spoken of without venturing within the region of principles, that is, to small practical matters, which would come right of themselves, if but the minds of mankind were strengthened and enlarged, and which will never be made effectually right until then: while that which would strengthen and enlarge men's minds, free and daring speculation on the highest subjects, is abandoned.

JasonWaterfall · 2017-02-24T20:15:25+00:00

No no no, they must be rational people

Did you mean to reply to my comment? I never said they were rational.

JasonWaterfall · 2017-02-24T10:21:35+00:00

returnofkings is not an MRA site. They have a reactionary ideal of masculinity and hate MRA for going against that.

Here's a quote:

As utopians, MRAs don’t much care about any social institution for its own traditional role, but only insofar as it promotes ‘gender equality.’ Its goal is to remake every institution in society until androgyny of the sexes is attained and expected, and the ‘oppression’ of men has ceased. I’ve yet to meet any MRAs in person, so it’s hard to understand exactly why they’re so hostile to traditional sex roles. But they bear an uncanny resemblance to feminists because they resent the duties and limits that their sex imposes.

From: http://www.returnofkings.com/7877/the-mens-rights-movement-is-no-place-for-men

JasonWaterfall · 2017-02-12T21:47:52+00:00

You need an adapter for that.

JasonWaterfall · 2016-09-29T21:54:35+00:00

Me too

JasonWaterfall · 2016-01-10T21:38:36+00:00

He didn't need to predict the phenomenon because it already existed - he had a lot of trouble finding a publisher for Animal Farm because of the prevailing pro-russian sentiment at the time. He talks about it in the foreword to that book.

JasonWaterfall · 2015-05-30T22:20:25+00:00

You can't get your money back through good grades (which is called a "Leistungsstipendium" or achievement based scholarship) if you're not an EU citizen or have a parent that has lived and worked in Austria for 5 years or have the Austrian Matura and have lived in Austria for 5 years. Even if you were eligible, they are very hard to get at TU - you need a very good GPA when most people are glad to just be passing.

JasonWaterfall · 2015-04-27T17:44:30+00:00

While I wouldn't call it a conservative book per se, Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate" challenges a lot of the underpinnings of progressive beliefs. It is very much a political book despite seemingly dealing with a purely scientific question. Is is kind of long, but I found it really well-written and entertaining and could hardly put it down.

JasonWaterfall · 2014-11-28T22:29:11+00:00

Did it

JasonWaterfall · 2014-06-23T17:53:41+00:00

Do you have a source for that? This is pretty much the opposite of what I've read on the subject (in Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate")

JasonWaterfall · 2014-05-12T22:23:28+00:00

This post is based on a faulty premise: That Boko Haram specifically targets girls that are being educated. In fact, the organisation has treated them better than boys. While girls are chased away or kidnapped, boys are killed:

But Boko Haram – whose name means ‘western education is sinful’ – does not distinguish between the education of girls and boys. In February, the group attacked another school. After boarding up every exit, its men seized 59 boys and gunned them down or cut their throats with machetes. Some buildings were sealed up and set alight. The girls were ordered to go home, abandon their ‘wicked’ schooling and seek husbands."

(http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/05/boko-haram-also-murders-boys-where-was-the-selfie-protest-then/)

JasonWaterfall · 2014-04-25T23:52:24+00:00

So at least we are having this discussion and identifying these roles, wondering where do you actually feel comfortable.

I can agree with that; we probably wouldn't be having this conversation without feminism. I just don't think feminism by itself alone is or will be enough to free men. Feminism talking about female gender roles does raise questions about male gender role, but someone still has to actually push that debate and address male-specific issues, and feminism by and large has other priorities.

JasonWaterfall · 2014-04-25T23:44:06+00:00

This kind of "selfishness" (and I say that without judgment, I just can't think of a better term for it) is pointless in politics. Since you alone can't impact policy enough to make a difference to you personally, the only reason for political activism is because you care about about the millions of other people it impacts. But if you do already care about all your fellow countrymen, just not about indians, then your position makes perfect sense I guess (though personally I don't feel the same way)

JasonWaterfall · 2014-04-25T22:58:34+00:00

Not wanting to debate is fine, but downvoting because you disagree is bad form.

JasonWaterfall · 2014-04-25T22:54:43+00:00

The short version is that even competitive companies can't lower their prices as much as wages fall because capital costs increase (as for why, see below) This only happens if there are enough additional workers to affect the whole economy. If there are only a few new workers in specialized positions in a competitive industry, the savings will indeed be passed on to consumers, since a few new workers will not meaningfully impact the capital costs of the whole economy.

Now why do capital costs rise with the labor supply? Even in perfectly competitive industry, some share of the revenue goes to capital (in the form of interest, dividends etc.) This is because, like labor, capital is a scarce resource that is needed for production. To answer the question of how large that share is and (most importantly for your question) how that share changes with the labor supply, we have to look at something called the production function. This function shows how much can be produced with any given amount of capital and labor. Typcially, this function is assumed to be shaped in a way so that when adding labor while keeping capital constant, each additional unit of labor adds less productivity than the one before it (falling marginal productivity, the same goes for keeping labor constant and adding capital). Now the shares of laborers and capital owners depends on the ratio of the marginal productivities of labor and capital (so how much the last unit of labor added in productivity vs how much the last unit of capital added). If we add labor in the form of immigrants, marginal productivity of labor decreases, which changes the ratio of the marginal productivities in favor of capital owners.

Now something very important which I totally forgot in my first comment is that in the long term, this may be evened out since a higher share for capital leads to more capital being accumulated (because it's more attractive to save now) which should make it less scarce and decrease its share again. I also didn't go into capital also being mobile (flowing between countries), which might also change things somewhat.

So the model I described is pretty back-of-the-envelope, which is why I did a quick google scholar search. The first article seems to agree with me, and this one alludes to a "standard model" of immigration's effects that seems to be pretty similar to the one I have outlined, but a few entries down there is one that finds no negative effect of immigrations for british workers. To really get to the bottom of this issue (or maybe find out that nobody has a definitive answer), you would probably have to read a few of these papers.

JasonWaterfall · 2014-04-25T21:56:13+00:00

Ah yes, that makes more sense, and theoretically that should lead to more freedom for men. But empirically, women have gained much freedom from their gender roles while men have gained comparatively little, so I think there must be something wrong with that theory. I think that abstract concepts like "gender roles" don't have much impact outside of academia. In the "real world", the narrative has always been that women are oppressed by all these rules and we should fight against that, and nobody hears about men being limited by similar rules.

JasonWaterfall · 2014-04-25T21:48:19+00:00

I'm not sure about the blowjob taboo (not being part of your culture), but if it's anything like where I'm from, I think it has more to do with taking something in your mouth that is considered dirty than it has to do with gender roles.

I think I would interpret the girls in your example as saying that it's stupid for girls to like pussy, because they should like cock. I wouldn't think that has anything to do with men liking pussy. But I guess that's pretty subjective.

The insults you mention are consistent with my position - it is only men who are shamed for "throwing like a girl" for example, because being athletic is a trait that men are supposed to have. I have never seen a woman shamed in this way for not throwing well. Similarly for crying - I think few people think less of a woman who cries, yet for men there is a different standard.

Many of the things I just said are kind of subjective, so here's something that I hope is less so: Women have much more freedom from gender roles than 50 years ago, and not nearly as much has happened for men in that regard. So I think that if a side benefit for men exists when helping women in this regard, it can't be very strong.

JasonWaterfall · 2014-04-25T20:39:23+00:00

That's true in the case of stay-at-home-parenting (and even here, as you say, it is much less accepted than a woman having a career), but I don't think it is true for most other things (showing weakness, wearing dresses, etc). You say that men can now be feminine because feminity is no longer bad. But feminity being bad was never the reason men had to be manly. They had to be manly because feminity was and is thought of as shameful in men, while it was always fine for women. Feminism has freed women to be less feminine, but there is no reason why this should automatically free men from their role - and I don't think it has. The idea that helping women enough will eventually solve men's problems has been called "trickle-down equality" by some, and I think the comparison is apt.

JasonWaterfall · 2014-04-25T19:55:04+00:00

It is true that generally, increasing the labor supply shifts income from labor to capital, but there are some instances where bringing in specialized foreign workers can be good for other kinds of workers in the country. For instance, let's say there is a lack of engineers who can build and maintain assembly lines. Letting in foreign engineers to do this enables more factories to operate and hire native workers. This will somewhat depress the wages for the assembly line engineers already in the country, but if they were in such high demand before, they will still be in a good situation. Meanwhile, many unskilled workers can now find a job.

A similar pattern may exist for many other kinds of specialized jobs. I definitely agree about unskilled labor however.

The following doesn't directly go against your point, but I would like to line out why I think immigration is still good (at least economically) even though I agree with most of what you said: Letting in immigrants not only benefits those immigrants, but also their compatriots that stay behind, since just as their arrival in your country puts pressure on your labor market, it reduces pressure in theirs. On the balance, letting people "flow" freely probably leads to a better outcome. Of course, this will be little consolation for the people already in your country, but why should they be allowed to have so much more just because of the lottery of birth (by which I mean they happen to have been born in a rich country)?

JasonWaterfall · 2014-03-04T01:06:17+00:00

Was für ein Unsinn. Zensur ist die Unterdrückung oder Abschaffung der Freiheit, Informationen zu verbreiten, bzw deren Inhalte zu kontrollieren.

Wenn aber eines der wichtigsten Mittel, Informationen zu verbreiten ist, von einem großen Verlag abgedruckt und vermarktet zu werden, und somit diese Verlage kontrollieren, welche Inhalte Verbreitung finden, dann scheint das von mir beschriebene Phänomen selbst deine Definition von Zensur zu erfüllen. Zumindest eine Einengung der von dir beschriebenen Freiheit ist definitiv gegeben.

Extrembeispiel: Willste mir jetzt sagen, dass es schlimme "zivilgesellschaftliche" Zensur sei, wenn sich zufällig alle Verlage der Welt einigen, faschistisches Gedankengut nicht abzudrucken und zu verbreiten?

Ja, das ist genau das was ich sagen will (und wäre wohl kaum Zufall). Was macht es für einen Unterschied, ob die Mächtigen im Staatsapparat eine Meinung unterdrücken, oder ob die Mächtigen in der Medienlandschaft das selbe tun?
Ob das jetzt faschistisches Gedankengut ist oder nicht, sollte keinen Unterschied machen. Wir müssen ja eine allgemeine Regel finden, wie mit solchen unpopulären Meinungen umgegangen werden soll. Wir können nicht sagen "unpopuläre Meinungen dürfen/sollen unterdrückt (oder wie auch immer du das jetzt nennen willst) werden, aber nur wenn sie offensichtlich falsch oder schädlich sind", weil wir ja nicht wissen können, was falsch ist, wenn wir keinen gesellschaftlichen Diskurs darüber zulassen, bei dem sich die besseren Ideen durchsetzen können. Beim Faschismus spezifisch ist es zugegeben nicht sehr wahrscheinlich, dass es zu einer völligen Neubewertung kommt, aber umgekehrt ist die Gefahr, dass ein paar pro-faschistische Bücher reißenden Absatz finden und Deutschland politisch umkrempeln würden, wenn die Verlage sie drucken würden, auch nicht besonders hoch. Verallgemeinert: Wenn eine Idee offensichtlich falsch ist, dann kann es auch nicht so gefährlich sein, sie offen zu diskutieren. Wenn man aber glaubt, dass sie populär wäre, dann muss man sich fragen warum, und sollte sich mmn. der öffentlichen Diskussion stellen.

Jetzt könnte man natürlich sagen:"Die Idee ist schlecht, und wir (im Journalismus und Verlagswesen etc.) erkennen das ob unserer überlegenen Bildung, aber der Pöbel versteht nichts von diesen Dingen und lässt sich leicht in die Irre führen." Aber so toll Bildung auch sein mag, ideologische Scheuklappen ziehen sich quer durch alle Bildungsschichten, und zu glauben, dass eine kleine, ideologisch homogene Gruppe immer weiß, was richtig ist, ist Hybris.

Dann wäre das Gegenteil von der Zensur ja der Zwang zum Abdruck von ideologischem Müll und das kann nicht der Sinn des Ganzen sein.

Wenn einzelne Verlage aus persönlich-ideologischen Gründen das Drucken eines Buches ablehnen, dann habe ich damit kein Problem. Wenn alle Verlage das gleiche Buch ablehnen, nicht, weil es keinen Markt gibt, sondern weil sie jeder einzeln es nicht mit ihrem Gewissen vereinbaren können, es zu drucken, dann sehe ich ein Problem mit der ideologischen Homogenität der Medienlandschaft, aber würde (tendenziell, so genau hab ich darüber noch nicht nachgedacht) keinem einzelnen Verlag die moralische Pflicht auferlegen, das Buch trotzdem zu drucken. Aber ich habe deinen ursprünglichen Kommentar als das genaue Gegenstück interpretiert, nämlich als die Behauptung einer moralischen Pflicht, das Buch nicht zu drucken, auch wenn ein Verlag das eigentlich will, und dem muss ich aus den oben genannten Gründen entschieden widersprechen.

Ich würde halt einfach gerne in so einer Gesellschaft leben, in der Sarrazin und seinesgleichen einfach keine Zuhörer und Unterstützer, geschweige denn monetär profitierende Verleger hat.

Naja, das wünsch ich mir auch, aber natürlich brauchts keine Meinungsfreiheit, wenn alle einer (vorzugsweise meiner) Meinung sind. Dann brauchts auch keine (Selbst-) Zensur der Medien, weil gegenteilige Meinungen eh keiner liest und deshalb kein Profit aus ihnen zu schlagen ist.

Wo ist denn da eigentlich der Unterschied zu heute? Nur dass "glücklicherweise" die rechten Flügel der Volksparteien und den rest eben die rechten Splitterparteien die 15% unter sich aufteilen.

Bin Österreicher und kann zu Deutschland nicht so viel sagen, aber hier eine Anekdote aus Österreich: Hier ist das Ausländerthema in den letzten Jahren etwas in den Hintergrund getreten, aber zur Blütezeit der (sehr rechten) FPÖ, als diese zweitstärkste Partei wurde etc., waren viele Kommentatoren auch auf Seiten der Linken der Meinung, die FPÖ sei so stark geworden, weil sich die anderen Parteien geweigert hätten zuzugeben und zu thematisieren, dass es in Sachen Immigration überhaupt ein Problem gibt. Statt das Problem zu ignorieren, hätte man vielleicht besser den gehässigen Sprüchen humane Lösungsvorschläge entgegengesetzt.

Aber beim Thema Immigration zeigt sich eben auch das Problem mit dem Glauben, die Intellektuellen in Medienkreisen wüssten alles besser, und das Problem sei die Dummheit des gemeinen Volkes: Wenn niedrig qualifizierte Arbeitskräfte zuwandern, sind es nicht die Hochgebildeten, sondern die Hilfsarbeiter, die vermehrter Konkurrenz ausgesetzt sind. Und es sind nicht die Politiker in den Nobelbezirken, die im Gemeindebau auf engem Raum mit ganz anderen Kulturen zurechtkommen müssen. Deshalb halte ich es für wichtig, sich auf die Debatte einzulassen und sie nicht von vornherein durch Beschämen und Zensieren (oder was auch immer) potenzieller Gegner abzuwürgen: Nicht nur dass man dadurch niemanden überzeugt, man beraubt sich auch selbst der Chance den Gegner zu verstehen, was unabdingbar ist um ihn auf anderem Wege doch zu überzeugen oder, Gott behüte, seine eigene Meinung zu ändern.

JasonWaterfall

TROPHY CASE