I finished Thomas Sowell's book, "Wealth, Poverty, and Politics" which I reviewed previously. Sowell spends a lot of the book talking about how various cultures have integrated into the United States over the years, and it suddenly occurred to me how wrong it is to frame discussions about race and ethnicity in terms of a minority culture versus a "white culture", and using rhetoric that pits these cultures against one another or calls for the dismantling of "white culture".
This dipshit with a Ph. D., Mikhail Lyubansky, who can often be found writing for such sterling bastions of journalistic rigor as the Huffington Post, thinks he has a handle on what "white culture" is, by giving us three tenets. You can spot what an asshole and an idiot he is by realizing that all three of these tenets are subtly or not-so-subtly negative in character and flow right into the ever-fashionable intersectionality theory that helpfully explains why white people are terrible. Those tenets are:
1. Distinction from Black culture
2. Avoidance of Self-racialization
3. Privilege
So white culture is "not black culture". That's really helpful, genius. California surfer culture is not-Portland hipster culture. Dr. Who fans are not-NFL fans. You don't define a culture by reference to what another culture is not. The truth that Lyubansky is obviously trying to avoid is that what he calls white culture is really just American culture. It is the dominant culture, in the same way that Argentinian culture is dominant in Argentina and Cuban culture is dominant in Cuba. Sure, there are sub-groups within these, many in fact, but trying to divide culture along melenin-content lines is stupid and insulting.
The entire idea of a white culture falls apart even at the most superficial level. First, you have the diversity of ethnic backgrounds, the English, Scottish, Irish, French, Germans, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, Italian, Polish, Greeks, Czechs, Slovaks, Russians, and others which, all, racially, appear Caucasian, but have very different cultures. Pockets and remnants of these cultures still exist today in various parts of the country.
There is, too, another dimension to culture in the United States that is based on regions in this country. New England has a very different culture from the South. The Midwest differs in many respects from the Northwest or Southwest. To say that there is a monolithic white culture that represents all of those different ancestries scattered across all of those regions of the country is ludicrous on its face.
The avoidance of self-racialization that he talks about is bullshit. I've never met anyone who is reluctant to call themselves white. I have mixed ancestry that includes Cherokee, but readily admit that I look white. I have a white friend in Canada and we jokingly call each other "cracker". Where there is reluctance to talk about being white, it is usually in an attempt to avoid singling anyone out by race in a racially-mixed group. The reason that white people don't like to mention race is because we've been conditioned to believe that doing so is rude, that it makes people of alternate melanin content uncomfortable. That is not a consequence of "white culture" but of the guilt that gets heaped on whites. This moron wants to treat this as some kind of self-serving behavior, when in fact it is defensive in nature, a form of appeasement. It is assholes like him that make white people act this way.
And then we have privilege, that slippery concept that somehow trumps all other cultural and socio-economic factors. Lyubansky unwittingly removes whatever veneer of respectability that the entire concept has enjoyed by trying to logically define an idea that is grounded only in ephemeral emotion. His conception of privilege boils down to possessing the knowledge and skills to negotiate social situations involving whites without having to second-guess yourself.
I'm sorry, I have to take a moment here to be stunned. Wait, you mean to tell me that the big truth that white people are seemingly ignorant of, the one thing that, generation after generation, just crushes people of alternate melanin content beneath the weight of its insidious power, is that white people tend to act and think like white people?
What the flying fuck? Is he mental? Did he just give away the entire case for multiculturalism? Isn't it obvious what the solution is? If you have a minority that has a difficult time relating to the dominant cultural group of a given geographic area, wouldn't it make sense for that minority to--I don't know, stabbing in the dark here--to try to assimilate some of the traits of that dominant culture?
"Oh, but then they would be LOSING so much by giving up their culture!" the liberal whines.
So turn it about. Imagine that, for whatever reason, you decide to leave the United States to go live in China. Are you going to try to learn the customs and mores of the local population? If you have children, are you going to teach them only English and insist that they reject Chinese culture? Do you tell them that they are doomed to failure because the Chinese will always hold them back? Or do you work your ass off and try to make a better future for your kids, just like the Chinese who were imported to America as cheap labor?
So, to recap his position, white culture is distinguished by not being black. Bullshit. White people never admit to being white. Right. I keep a mental list categorizing everyone who is not-white, but have no idea that anyone who is not-not-white is actually white. Finally, I have privilege because I don't understand what a struggle it is to be not-white. It's like nothing I could ever imagine because no white person ever has been in a situation where they felt out of their element or confused by the way people around them acted. And that lack of understanding is VERY BAD. My refusal to acknowledge that understanding makes me EVEN WORSE and I'm probably committing micro-aggressions RIGHT NOW.
The only cultural element in the United States other than American culture that could reasonably be called "white culture", given the massive umbrella that encompasses the different sub-cultures that are white, is western classical liberalism. These ideas came primarily from western Europe, places like Britain, France, and Germany. They led to the American Revolution and the creation of the US constitution, but they had their roots in the Enlightenment. It was the guiding principles of classical liberalism that prompted the West to abolish slavery in the nineteenth century.
So, there we have it. White culture. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of trying to puzzle out meaning from nonsense. I think I'll just stick to the classical liberal tenets of rationality, personal liberty, accountability and peaceful cooperation that Lyubansky thinks aren't important enough to mention in connection to "white culture", This Marxist intersectionality multiculturalism is the most useless and destructive shit you could possibly imagine.
Monday, January 11, 2016
Saturday, January 9, 2016
Feminism vs. Opportunity Cost
On Twitter, today, I came across a comic that helpfully explains what feminism is all about:
Sometimes it's a struggle to wrap my brain around where someone is coming from. I think to myself that surely people can't be this ignorant, that there must be more substance to their argument than what I'm seeing. Sadly, I've come to the conclusion that Rebecca Cohen really doesn't understand how things work in the real world. As I've often seen with feminists of her stripe, it is her ignorance that shapes her critiques. Because she does not understand why a thing is, she takes hold of her favorite argument, that it is due to patriarchy and discrimination against women. The answer that she seeks comes not from gender studies, but from economics.
Scarcity is one of the most foundational ideas in economics. In fact, I believe that you could argue that without scarcity, economics is meaningless. Understanding that means are scarce leads to many other insights into how prices form and how people prioritize some actions over others. Opportunity cost is a reflection of the fact that human beings are scarce. We can't be in two places at the same time or perform multiple actions that our bodies cannot support. It is impossible to go watch a movie and go to work (well, unless you are a projectionist). You can't play a video game while writing a blog post.
What opportunity cost means is that you must weigh the benefits and drawbacks of the choices you make, on some level. That's not to say that each morning you wake up, you debate the benefits of going to work over going to a movie, but that by committing to working each day, you have consciously foregone other possible uses of your time in favor of the choice that, to you, appears to give you the most benefit.
Consider the first panel, the women who "works outside the home" because (she?) "can't pay for basic household expenses on one income alone." I'm taking a stab in the dark here, but the off-camera implications I'm seeing is that this woman has a spouse or domestic partner of some kind who works, but does not make enough money all by himself/herself to support them both in their chosen lifestyle. The implication is that many women are forced into working to survive.
The irony here is kind of delicious. Let's assume that our working woman is married to a male. Why should we presume that she should stay home while he should work? Why don't they both get to stay home? Rebecca Cohen assumes that the man is going to sacrifice his time and energy to provide for his household, and worries that the woman needing to work is not her choice. They both have an opportunity cost for doing this, getting less time for leisure activities, or whatever other pursuits they might otherwise go after. If Cohen were truly committed to the argument she is making here, she should be saying that no one should have to work for anything
The fact is that human beings going back through time have always traded their labor for other scarce means. They do this because the alternative to working is dying, and most people would prefer to endure the discomfort of labor to spare themselves the discomfort of a long, painful death. In modern times and in wealthier nations, immediate death is rarely the alternative to working, but you will have to give up many comforts, probably the respect of others, and your options will otherwise be very limited. Most people still choose to structure their lives and households around exchanging labor for other scarce means. How much of their labor, and what they choose to do with their free time, influences what kind of lifestyle they will lead.
There is no reason that a married couple cannot survive on a single income. Simply foregoing some comforts, like cell phones, internet access, and subscription entertainment can cut hundreds of dollars out of a monthly budget. Likewise, cooking all of your own meals with inexpensive groceries can save huge amounts over dining out. Some areas of the country have high rent and high cost of living, while others are much lower. Where you live, what size house or apartment you have, what you eat, and what services you buy are all choices that you make.
Likewise, if you make good choices in workplace and apply yourself diligently to your work and to self-improvement, it is very possible to rise quickly to a point where a single income, spent carefully, can provide everything that a couple needs to survive and thrive. Rebecca, though, does not think that this is fair. She thinks that a life without all of these little luxuries is simply impossible to live. Fair enough, if her partner does not make enough money that she can have all of these things, she is free to get a job and trade her labor for the option to eat out every night and subscribe to every entertainment service she wants. She has decided that the opportunity cost from working, that is to say, staying home with a dearth of luxuries, does not outweigh the benefits. There is no timeless male conspiracy here, only the simple fact of scarcity of means, and a preference for one thing above another.
We can say the same for each of the other panels. "Quality child care" was once routinely provided by elderly family members who could no longer work and who lived with their children, but Americans have chosen to follow the model of the nuclear family, valuing privacy and space over the efficiency of built-in babysitters. This is not something to be nostalgic for, but merely a fact of revealed preferences. Given all available alternatives, and confronted with the cost of child care, some mothers choose to stay home.
The "hostile work place" is probably a reference to the fact that many jobs demand high reliability from workers, and having a child can mean taking more time off or having to come in to work late to deal with minor emergencies. Such incidents can directly impact a business' ability to function well. Even if profitability isn't directly undermined, often work must be postponed, or handed off to others, increasing their workloads. A workplace which tries to minimize these effects is not targeting mothers specifically, but workers who are producing less than others. Usually, there is a certain amount of tolerance and understanding shown from managers and coworkers, but some workplaces, often due to the nature of the work, are more exacting and demanding than others.
The bottom left panel demonstrates the concept of opportunity cost yet again. The vast majority of the continental US is within 50 miles of an abortion clinic. There is a streak through the midwest, some of the least populated parts of the country, where it is 200 miles or more, and spotty areas throughout the country where it is 100 miles or more. People in rural areas generally must accept a narrower array of goods and services than more populated areas, and are used to traveling longer distances to get what they need. Framing this is a feminism issue is absurd, akin to arguing that it is a crime against humanity that there aren't world-class brain surgeons on every street corner.
Medicaid does not cover abortions except in cases where the health of the mother is threatened, and the majority of all remaining abortions are paid for out of pocket. The average cost of an abortion is less than $500 when paid in cash. We're not talking about major barriers here. Obviously, Cohen thinks that there is no justice for women unless abortions are free and available on every street corner, but that is because she doesn't understand that resources are scarce.
If the final panel seems a bit out of place, that is because it is straight-up virtue signalling. Cohen has to show that she is an inclusive feminist by coming up with a grievance for transwomen. Transgendered women who have fully transitioned cannot have children without careful planning and investment. This generally either means artificial insemination of a genotypic female or adoption.
The funny thing about this is that it could just as easily apply to any couple who has undergone financial hardship. Waiting to have children can be a very good choice if you are smart enough and careful enough not to have an accidental pregnancy. The fact is that some couples who aren't in a good financial position to handle a child end up with one anyway. Also, some couples who can't have children are too poor to afford the alternatives.
Remove that aspect and we are left with the discrimination complaint. From the evidence I have seen, it is clear that transgender women tend to earn less per year after transitioning. The first question that comes to my mind is whether that might indicate a real drop in productivity. Would time spent in recovery from a serious surgery have something to do with it?
Are we talking about people experiencing an immediate salary cut at their current job? Not likely. So what are the circumstances of their leaving the job they held before? I can think of a myriad of ways in which an employee's gender transition might cause problems for an employer that have nothing to do with direct discrimination.
I'm not trying to hand-wave away the real problems these people face, but statistics regarding transgender pay are still sparse, and no one has yet attempted to disaggregate these numbers and tease out the particular circumstances that leads to higher unemployment and lower wages. In a future post, I'll talk more about why I think that the difference in wages for transgender individuals represents a different problem than the so-called gender wage gap, which has been shown to be largely non-existent by the simple controlling and disaggregating of factors.
Feminists such as Rebecca Cohen lack the knowledge outside their specialization to understand when a problem stops being one of discrimination and starts being one of practical limits of the real world. What's more, when directly confronted with this evidence, such people will inevitably claim bias on your part, even going so far as to call the evidence itself tainted by patriarchy. When asked to specifically debunk what you have presented, the feminist claims that it is not her job to educate you and returns to name-calling and insinuation. It would be funny, if it weren't so frustrating.
Sometimes it's a struggle to wrap my brain around where someone is coming from. I think to myself that surely people can't be this ignorant, that there must be more substance to their argument than what I'm seeing. Sadly, I've come to the conclusion that Rebecca Cohen really doesn't understand how things work in the real world. As I've often seen with feminists of her stripe, it is her ignorance that shapes her critiques. Because she does not understand why a thing is, she takes hold of her favorite argument, that it is due to patriarchy and discrimination against women. The answer that she seeks comes not from gender studies, but from economics.
Scarcity is one of the most foundational ideas in economics. In fact, I believe that you could argue that without scarcity, economics is meaningless. Understanding that means are scarce leads to many other insights into how prices form and how people prioritize some actions over others. Opportunity cost is a reflection of the fact that human beings are scarce. We can't be in two places at the same time or perform multiple actions that our bodies cannot support. It is impossible to go watch a movie and go to work (well, unless you are a projectionist). You can't play a video game while writing a blog post.
What opportunity cost means is that you must weigh the benefits and drawbacks of the choices you make, on some level. That's not to say that each morning you wake up, you debate the benefits of going to work over going to a movie, but that by committing to working each day, you have consciously foregone other possible uses of your time in favor of the choice that, to you, appears to give you the most benefit.
Consider the first panel, the women who "works outside the home" because (she?) "can't pay for basic household expenses on one income alone." I'm taking a stab in the dark here, but the off-camera implications I'm seeing is that this woman has a spouse or domestic partner of some kind who works, but does not make enough money all by himself/herself to support them both in their chosen lifestyle. The implication is that many women are forced into working to survive.
The irony here is kind of delicious. Let's assume that our working woman is married to a male. Why should we presume that she should stay home while he should work? Why don't they both get to stay home? Rebecca Cohen assumes that the man is going to sacrifice his time and energy to provide for his household, and worries that the woman needing to work is not her choice. They both have an opportunity cost for doing this, getting less time for leisure activities, or whatever other pursuits they might otherwise go after. If Cohen were truly committed to the argument she is making here, she should be saying that no one should have to work for anything
The fact is that human beings going back through time have always traded their labor for other scarce means. They do this because the alternative to working is dying, and most people would prefer to endure the discomfort of labor to spare themselves the discomfort of a long, painful death. In modern times and in wealthier nations, immediate death is rarely the alternative to working, but you will have to give up many comforts, probably the respect of others, and your options will otherwise be very limited. Most people still choose to structure their lives and households around exchanging labor for other scarce means. How much of their labor, and what they choose to do with their free time, influences what kind of lifestyle they will lead.
There is no reason that a married couple cannot survive on a single income. Simply foregoing some comforts, like cell phones, internet access, and subscription entertainment can cut hundreds of dollars out of a monthly budget. Likewise, cooking all of your own meals with inexpensive groceries can save huge amounts over dining out. Some areas of the country have high rent and high cost of living, while others are much lower. Where you live, what size house or apartment you have, what you eat, and what services you buy are all choices that you make.
Likewise, if you make good choices in workplace and apply yourself diligently to your work and to self-improvement, it is very possible to rise quickly to a point where a single income, spent carefully, can provide everything that a couple needs to survive and thrive. Rebecca, though, does not think that this is fair. She thinks that a life without all of these little luxuries is simply impossible to live. Fair enough, if her partner does not make enough money that she can have all of these things, she is free to get a job and trade her labor for the option to eat out every night and subscribe to every entertainment service she wants. She has decided that the opportunity cost from working, that is to say, staying home with a dearth of luxuries, does not outweigh the benefits. There is no timeless male conspiracy here, only the simple fact of scarcity of means, and a preference for one thing above another.
We can say the same for each of the other panels. "Quality child care" was once routinely provided by elderly family members who could no longer work and who lived with their children, but Americans have chosen to follow the model of the nuclear family, valuing privacy and space over the efficiency of built-in babysitters. This is not something to be nostalgic for, but merely a fact of revealed preferences. Given all available alternatives, and confronted with the cost of child care, some mothers choose to stay home.
The "hostile work place" is probably a reference to the fact that many jobs demand high reliability from workers, and having a child can mean taking more time off or having to come in to work late to deal with minor emergencies. Such incidents can directly impact a business' ability to function well. Even if profitability isn't directly undermined, often work must be postponed, or handed off to others, increasing their workloads. A workplace which tries to minimize these effects is not targeting mothers specifically, but workers who are producing less than others. Usually, there is a certain amount of tolerance and understanding shown from managers and coworkers, but some workplaces, often due to the nature of the work, are more exacting and demanding than others.
The bottom left panel demonstrates the concept of opportunity cost yet again. The vast majority of the continental US is within 50 miles of an abortion clinic. There is a streak through the midwest, some of the least populated parts of the country, where it is 200 miles or more, and spotty areas throughout the country where it is 100 miles or more. People in rural areas generally must accept a narrower array of goods and services than more populated areas, and are used to traveling longer distances to get what they need. Framing this is a feminism issue is absurd, akin to arguing that it is a crime against humanity that there aren't world-class brain surgeons on every street corner.
Medicaid does not cover abortions except in cases where the health of the mother is threatened, and the majority of all remaining abortions are paid for out of pocket. The average cost of an abortion is less than $500 when paid in cash. We're not talking about major barriers here. Obviously, Cohen thinks that there is no justice for women unless abortions are free and available on every street corner, but that is because she doesn't understand that resources are scarce.
If the final panel seems a bit out of place, that is because it is straight-up virtue signalling. Cohen has to show that she is an inclusive feminist by coming up with a grievance for transwomen. Transgendered women who have fully transitioned cannot have children without careful planning and investment. This generally either means artificial insemination of a genotypic female or adoption.
The funny thing about this is that it could just as easily apply to any couple who has undergone financial hardship. Waiting to have children can be a very good choice if you are smart enough and careful enough not to have an accidental pregnancy. The fact is that some couples who aren't in a good financial position to handle a child end up with one anyway. Also, some couples who can't have children are too poor to afford the alternatives.
Remove that aspect and we are left with the discrimination complaint. From the evidence I have seen, it is clear that transgender women tend to earn less per year after transitioning. The first question that comes to my mind is whether that might indicate a real drop in productivity. Would time spent in recovery from a serious surgery have something to do with it?
Are we talking about people experiencing an immediate salary cut at their current job? Not likely. So what are the circumstances of their leaving the job they held before? I can think of a myriad of ways in which an employee's gender transition might cause problems for an employer that have nothing to do with direct discrimination.
I'm not trying to hand-wave away the real problems these people face, but statistics regarding transgender pay are still sparse, and no one has yet attempted to disaggregate these numbers and tease out the particular circumstances that leads to higher unemployment and lower wages. In a future post, I'll talk more about why I think that the difference in wages for transgender individuals represents a different problem than the so-called gender wage gap, which has been shown to be largely non-existent by the simple controlling and disaggregating of factors.
Feminists such as Rebecca Cohen lack the knowledge outside their specialization to understand when a problem stops being one of discrimination and starts being one of practical limits of the real world. What's more, when directly confronted with this evidence, such people will inevitably claim bias on your part, even going so far as to call the evidence itself tainted by patriarchy. When asked to specifically debunk what you have presented, the feminist claims that it is not her job to educate you and returns to name-calling and insinuation. It would be funny, if it weren't so frustrating.
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
Thomas Sowell is Genius
I have heard a lot of good things about Thomas Sowell over the years, so last week I decided to get his latest book, "Wealth, Poverty, and Politics" from Audible. I was immediately struck by the quality of Sowell's writing, which is clear, concise and refined without being pretentious. Throughout the book, he pushes his arguments forward with skill and tenacity. I'm probably going to pick up a physical copy of this one, because I'd like to lend it out to other people who really need to understand these concepts.
Sowell starts out with a discussion of geography and its effects on human culture and prosperity. He goes into great detail about how physical and cultural isolation, much more than natural resources, serve to impoverish and stagnate a people. He contrasts this with how civilizations and peoples that can trade easily and are open to absorbing new ideas from other cultures often thrive. Add to this the attributes that make up their human capital, such as honesty, work ethic, level of education, and, combined with geographical features, you get a much better idea of why some people are wealthy, while others are impoverished.
The next part of the book talks about various immigrant populations that started out very poor and became affluent within a few generations. He talks about the Jews, Chinese, and Germans who came to America and made better futures for their children, but also discusses how these and other groups spread into Europe and Asia, and, because of their culture, were able to prosper, becoming wealthier than the majority populations.
Sowell's latest book carries a message of hope. That message is that hard work, integrity, and willingness to learn and adapt can allow any people to survive and thrive, even while living within the borders of a host nation that is openly hostile to that people, as in places such as Malaysia, Chinese immigrants are openly discriminated against. Contrast this with the narrative that states that it is only through forced wealth redistribution that poor populations can attain prosperity. That narrative is self-fulfilling to those who believe it, and who never even try to build a better life for themselves and their children.
Social justice warriors will reject this message, giving it little consideration. They really have no way to assimilate it into their worldview. The idea that poverty is the result of anything other than racism undermines their rhetoric and discredits their entire cause. They will claim that Sowell is racist (or a race traitor), that he is a biased conservative, that he hates the poor, and other attacks that would never cross most people's minds to level at another human being.
Sowell starts out with a discussion of geography and its effects on human culture and prosperity. He goes into great detail about how physical and cultural isolation, much more than natural resources, serve to impoverish and stagnate a people. He contrasts this with how civilizations and peoples that can trade easily and are open to absorbing new ideas from other cultures often thrive. Add to this the attributes that make up their human capital, such as honesty, work ethic, level of education, and, combined with geographical features, you get a much better idea of why some people are wealthy, while others are impoverished.
The next part of the book talks about various immigrant populations that started out very poor and became affluent within a few generations. He talks about the Jews, Chinese, and Germans who came to America and made better futures for their children, but also discusses how these and other groups spread into Europe and Asia, and, because of their culture, were able to prosper, becoming wealthier than the majority populations.
Sowell's latest book carries a message of hope. That message is that hard work, integrity, and willingness to learn and adapt can allow any people to survive and thrive, even while living within the borders of a host nation that is openly hostile to that people, as in places such as Malaysia, Chinese immigrants are openly discriminated against. Contrast this with the narrative that states that it is only through forced wealth redistribution that poor populations can attain prosperity. That narrative is self-fulfilling to those who believe it, and who never even try to build a better life for themselves and their children.
Social justice warriors will reject this message, giving it little consideration. They really have no way to assimilate it into their worldview. The idea that poverty is the result of anything other than racism undermines their rhetoric and discredits their entire cause. They will claim that Sowell is racist (or a race traitor), that he is a biased conservative, that he hates the poor, and other attacks that would never cross most people's minds to level at another human being.
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