"Privilege"

[narya]

This outlier, sadly, is not representative. http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/-R ... 76621.html

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That's awesome, Narya.

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[yovargas]

Indeed.

[Inanna]

our university (actually the teacher & staff union) asked for a one minute silence this last Thursday at 11:00am. The staten island incident has shaken up New Yorkers - it happens in their liberal city too.

[Frelga]

This is not 100% on topic, and I don't know who the person who posted this is, but it's the kind of thing that kicks me in the brain every now and then.

“Whiny” is a term we apply to people who habitually complain about things that don’t matter. If people are complaining about things that do matter, then we generally don’t think of “whiny” as an appropriate term to describe them.

Social justice movements tend to spring up around issues that most people don’t get. Social justice movements tend to spring up around issues that, to most people, don’t seem to matter that much. If people understood that the issues mattered, then organized movements to promote them wouldn’t be necessary.

Until their issues are properly understood, most social justice movements, almost by definition, are going to look whiny to most people. If you can’t understand why the things people are complaining about matter, those people are going to look whiny to you. That is, they’re going to look like they’re complaining about things that don’t matter.

Something to keep in mind when you’re thinking about accusing people in a social justice movement of being whiny: every social justice movement looks whiny if you don’t understand their issues. A lot of the time, the fact that calling attention to their issues is perceived as whiny is precisely the reason why the movement is necessary in the first place.

[Inanna]

Love that reasoning.


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Please bear with my typos & grammar mistakes. Sent from my iPhone - Palantirs make mistakes too.

[Passdagas the Brown]

Exactly. Put simply, the downtrodden have to shout to be heard, and a lot of people don't like shouting. Especially not from the downtrodden!

[narya]

Or put another way, the status quo is what it is because the majority of people in power like it, thank you very much, so stop complaining!

Social justice movements, by definition, are saying that society is not showing justice to a significant portion of the population, and has to have a big, in-your-face movement for the majority to even notice it.

The majority, in turn, finds it easier to dismiss these movements as "whiny", "irritating", "obnoxious", "misguided", or even "dangerous" in order to diminish the movements, and the majority's sense of responsibility.

[Passdagas the Brown]

And if more people in the US understood how antithetical such a "tyranny of the majority" is to the nation's founding principles, they might be a tad more tolerant of social justice movements driven by minority communities...

[narya]

No, the nation's founding principles were not based upon the will of the majority. The founding principles were based upon the tyranny of the minority - the American-born, Northern-European-descent, free, Protestant/Theist, English-speaking, land-owning adult male. If you exclude everyone else as not being "We the People", then it was a very small, but powerful, minority.

You will notice in my previous post I said "the majority of people in power" which is very different than saying "the majority of people". Currently, "the majority of people in power" is pretty much the 1%, and the politicians they have purchased.


Do we have a bitter emoticon around here someplace?

[Passdagas the Brown]

narya,

I'm not an idiot. I am of course aware of the origins of the United States, and that a very small number of "American-born, Northern-European-descent, free, Protestant/Theist, English-speaking, land-owning adult [white] male[s]" created the rules of the nation, including its founding document. What I was referring to was the desire, among some of those founding fathers, of creating checks against the tyranny of the majority - including through the creation of the Bill of Rights, a separation of powers that would make such a tyranny more difficult (including the creation of a Supreme Court that is only very indirectly connected to majority opinion, and that could directly contradict - and supersede - majority opinion as reflected in legislation), etc.

It's my opinion that if the American public better understood the philosophies underpinning that aversion to a majority tyranny (deriving, in large part, from John Stuart Mill), and subsequently understood how that philosophy was embedded in the bones of the republic from quite early on, that they would be more sympathetic towards movements devoted to the protection and empowerment of "minority" communities.

Hope that clarifies my opinion on this subject...

[narya]

But we are still bandying about what "majority" means in "tyranny of the majority". If I understand my Federalist Papers (which I haven't read in a looooong time) the Founding Fathers wanted to create a system of checks and balances to avoid the "tyranny of the majority" amongst themselves. They envisioned a true republic, in which each of these founding members of government would represent an equal number of constituents, and each constituent would in turn represent his womenfolk, children, and slaves. The top rank of this Republic would dispute but cooperate, to reach a consensus rather than a simple (tyrannical) majority.

But as I see it now, Congress is a few hundred people who are completely out of touch with the non-paying members of their constituency.

And to clarify, I was not attempting to imply that you are an idiot. I'm the idiot here, attempting to discuss American History when I am totally out of my league.

[Passdagas the Brown]

No worries! I just didn't want you to think that I had a white-washed view of American history.

Yes, at the time, the "majority" did not include women, children, African-Americans, Native Americans and non-citizens. And given that the US is a representative republic, and does not have a direct democracy (and had even less of one then, with no direct elections for Pres, etc) the idea was to prevent a tyranny of the majority of representatives of that limited pool of voting adults. Injustices were baked into the system at the start.

However, the philosophy driving that aversion to such a tyranny, as derived from Mill, is based on the prevention of mob rule (as existed in, say, the ancient Athenian version of democracy).

My contention is that most Americans don't even know about this foundation concept at the heart of the United States. People routinely complain about policies that favor minority communities (religious and ethnic) without realizing that they are complaining about something that is at the heart of s healthy democracy - the protection of minorities from a mob majority.

It all comes down to historical and civic education, as banal as that sounds... The more educated in those spheres the country becomes, the more fair we will likely be...

[narya]

The only way for the have-nots to make society more fair is to fall back on the tyranny of the majority (a large mob of have-nots attacking a small group of haves and taking their wealth by force) or by peacefully educating the people who have the wealth to please distribute it more fairly. It is only the haves who can do the reapportioning and make the country more fair. (By wealth I mean all forms, not just monetary.)

I think it comes back to privilege or advantage or whatever you want to call it - those who have it need to acknowledge that they have it, and are the ones who can change the status quo. And then they need to be persuaded to make the changes. These might include:
- Changing the election laws so that votes are not purchased by a very small minority of wealthy people, but are earned by swaying a majority of people of all classes.
- Changing the tax and business laws to stop funneling all the wealth to the already wealthy.
- Installing universal health care, so that the poor are not bankrupted by basic health costs.
- Spend money elsewhere besides the military-industrial complex and the industries of the wealthy donors.

[Túrin Turambar]

The only way for the have-nots to make society more fair is to fall back on the tyranny of the majority (a large mob of have-nots attacking a small group of haves and taking their wealth by force) or by peacefully educating the people who have the wealth to please distribute it more fairly. It is only the haves who can do the reapportioning and make the country more fair. (By wealth I mean all forms, not just monetary.)

I think it comes back to privilege or advantage or whatever you want to call it - those who have it need to acknowledge that they have it, and are the ones who can change the status quo. And then they need to be persuaded to make the changes. These might include:
- Changing the election laws so that votes are not purchased by a very small minority of wealthy people, but are earned by swaying a majority of people of all classes.
- Changing the tax and business laws to stop funneling all the wealth to the already wealthy.
- Installing universal health care, so that the poor are not bankrupted by basic health costs.
- Spend money elsewhere besides the military-industrial complex and the industries of the wealthy donors.

The problem with solutions like these is that, with the exception of universal healthcare, the U.S. already does all these things. Changing voting laws? Away from giving every adult citizen one vote? Changing tax and business laws? The U.S. already has one of the most progressive income tax systems and one of the highest rates of corporate taxation in the OECD. Spend money outside the military-industrial complex? The U.S. does have very high rates of military expenditure, but between the three (or four) levels of government it also has above-average rates of government expenditure on education and healthcare (3rd in the OECD, in fact). And Social Security remains the single biggest component of U.S. federal expenditure, and Social Security and Medicare between them are half the budget.

Taxing and spending can solve problems in some cases, but apparently not this one.

[River]

She said election laws. Those cover not just voting but how campaigns are to be run and, most critically, financed. At the end of the day, you need ballots in the box, but those ballots are heavily influenced by the messaging during the campaign and that messaging must be paid for. There's a pretty strong link between money spent and votes counted. The link was of enough concern that laws were passed to set some limits on the money, but those laws have been chiseled away. In the USA, money = speech. On the campaign trail, that means more money = more speech = more votes. And that money generally doesn't come from the grassroots. Also, no matter where the money comes from, it doesn't come for free. Once you've put some skin that game, if your candidate wins, you expect what you both voted and paid for. The candidates know that. They pay lots of attention to the people writing the huge checks, or bundling the smaller donations, or who're running the PACs and SuperPACs that back their personal campaigns (they aren't allowed to directly coordinate but they rely on the support). They have to. If these people become unhappy with their performance, the money spigots are throttled or shut down completely.

Of course, you occasionally get upsets. Eric Cantor lost his primary to a guy who spent less on his entire campaign than Cantor did on food for his staff. Clearly, Cantor's district had decided he was a total jerk. But those sorts of events have become very rare.

[Túrin Turambar]

There is a relationship between campaign spending and electoral outcomes, but it is not a particularly strong one (see Freakonomic's discussion and this paper). And it is not clear in which direction the relationship actually runs - are candidates who raise more money more successful, or do more successful candidates raise more money? My hunch is that the campaign funding reform so many progressives are advocating for would not actually translate to any real change in election results.

[yovargas]

The U.S. already has one of the most progressive income tax systems and one of the highest rates of corporate taxation in the OECD. Spend money outside the military-industrial complex? The U.S. does have very high rates of military expenditure, but between the three (or four) levels of government it also has above-average rates of government expenditure on education and healthcare (3rd in the OECD, in fact).

Those are all very interesting links so thanks for sharing them. (Would've liked to get clearer numbers on education though, such as if that's per capita...)


On money in politics, my concern isn't so much about campaign spending as it is about political lobbying. Big industries have a lot more money (and time and interest) to fund lobbyist groups and I fear they crowd out the voice of "the little guy". Do you view that as a legitimate concern?

[Túrin Turambar]

The U.S. already has one of the most progressive income tax systems and one of the highest rates of corporate taxation in the OECD. Spend money outside the military-industrial complex? The U.S. does have very high rates of military expenditure, but between the three (or four) levels of government it also has above-average rates of government expenditure on education and healthcare (3rd in the OECD, in fact).

Those are all very interesting links so thanks for sharing them. (Would've liked to get clearer numbers on education though, such as if that's per capita...)


On money in politics, my concern isn't so much about campaign spending as it is about political lobbying. Big industries have a lot more money (and time and interest) to fund lobbyist groups and I fear they crowd out the voice of "the little guy". Do you view that as a legitimate concern?

It is certainly true that organised and well-funded lobby groups exercise more influence than disorganised and poorly-funded ones. That said, I am not sure what, if any, corrective measures would improve the situation without negative side-effects. Or, for that matter, exactly form improvement would take. 'Group X is too powerful' is one of those claims you seem to hear from everyone, with Group X varying from person to person.

[axordil]

'Group X is too powerful' is one of those claims you seem to hear from everyone, with Group X varying from person to person.

Obviously some of those people are mistaken. but just as obviously some are not. Historically, there have frequently been groups within a country who have distorted that country's policy to their favor at the expense of the polity as a whole. That's beyond dispute.

The hard part isn't even figuring out who the problems are. It's dismantling the layers of protection they've built up around themselves over the years in the laws and the society at large, layers that now form part of the structure of the society. Witness the 2008 financial crisis, where large blank checks were more or less handed to the people who caused it, because the alternative was global currency collapse and a 1929 level Depression. We can't remove the cancer without killing the patient.

Ultimately the only fix is technological and societal change of the sort that displaces one ruling paradigm in favor of the next. Landed aristocracy don't have the sway they used to; perhaps after the next upheaval money will simply be irrelevant. Whether that's Star Trek irrelevant or Mad Max irrelevant is the question.