A 20-pound family puppy when out to see a Chicago officer who was writing their family a ticket, only to be shot by the officer. After shooting their dog, the officer proceeded to finish writing the ticket, and went on his way without apologizing. The puppy was being groomed to become a show dog, but will now have a permanent limp.
But hey, policing is a dangerous job, maybe the dog had it coming. Maybe we're being too quick to judge the man who shoots puppies. Well, just in case that wasn't enough, get a look at this.
The family told the media about this, as you can see above, only to find themselves with another visit from the police, two of them this time, both a sergeant and a lieutenant, to bring them a ticket for "not having their dog on a leash", in an obvious attempt to intimidate them for talking to the media.
I found this brilliant summary of the Hostess situation on Reddit. All credit goes to KingofKona.
I know I am going to get in trouble for posting this because there is a thing called confirmation bias in psychology that causes people to only want to hear what they already believe - it is why you see racists skip over stories that portray minorities in positive ways or why the religious will often hurry up and click to another channel if a special talking about Darwinism is on television. But I'm going to write it anyway. Why? Because it is the right thing to do.
As someone with a very deep economics, financial, and business background, this entire conversation is painful to read. There are so many misconceptions about pension accounting and the bankruptcy process that I feel like reading this thread is the equivalent of seeing those videos where people at Glenn Beck rallies are interviewed spouting off about Obama's secret muslim plot to make us all gay married communists who have interracial children and cross dress while burning flags.
Instead of writing a thirty-page explanation, I am going to explain this like I would to my five-year-old niece. I am not trying to be condescending, so I apologize for the tone. I am trying to remain sane.
For more than eleven years, Hostess was horribly run, including by a CEO who left earlier this year after awarding himself huge pay increases and demanding union concessions.
The new CEO came into office back in March or April and, after discovering these large pay hikes, ordered the top four executive salaries to $1 for the remainder of the year to make up for it, before being restored next year, evening things out.
This new CEO, with the backing of the bailout investors, went to the unions and offered them a package that included:
A twenty-five percent (25%) ownership stake in the business, which would transform Hostess into one of the largest partially employee-owned firms on the planet.
A package of bonds in the company to go to the employees with a face value of $100,000,000 that would generate interest and be repaid in the future
Two seats on the board of the directors, providing influence and power to shape the future of the enterprise
In exchange, the unions had to agree to:
Cut existing pay levels to fall in line with other major bakeries
Do like the other 90% of American manufacturing firms have and "freeze" pension plans, meaning that any new employees will have to use a 401(k) instead.
Pay more out of pocket for some other expenses such as insurance
If all of this happened, the employees of Hostess would not only get to keep their job, but they would be working for themselves. It was the best possible solution to a terrible situation caused by years of mismanagement, none of which was the fault of the current CEO who has only had the job for 8 months or so.
The Teamsters union wisely signed up. They acknowledged that the situation was bad. They talked about how terrible former management had been. They focused on the future and knew that this could work out well and, among all the potential choices, was the best that could be expected.
Then, a smaller union - the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union - said no.
They (the BCTWGMIU) were warned that if the company shut down in a strike, the finances were so weak the doors would have to be closed. Everyone would lose their job. There would be no ownership. There would be no bonds. There would be no seats on the board of directors. There would be no new employees let alone pensions for new employees. It was a complete thermonuclear scenario that would destroy the lives of 18,500 hardworking families.
The BCTWGMIU struck anyway and the Teamsters, to their credit, crossed picket lines and remained reasonable because their actions were based on facts and analysis of what was economically feasible. The company begged the BCTWGMIU to return to the table, but they refused, talking about the litany of abuses of past managements.
For anyone who is successful, well educated, and familiar with strategy such as game theory, the choice is clear. When faced with a total wipeout, you take the option that gives you the greatest long-term chance of survival. Even if the new deal had resulted in only an extra six-months of paychecks, that is six months of income for 18,500 families that relied on that cash. When you represent others, like union leaders do, their welfare is your sole concern.
That is precisely what the Teamsters did. However, the BCTWGMIU behaved like a father who commits a murder-suicide of himself and the children when a spouse leaves, convinced he is in the moral right and that he had no other choice because of his evil ex-wife. He writes a long note detailing all the past mistakes she made and how she drove him to take this action. BCTWGMIU drove Hostess straight into liquidation. The murder-suicide analogy is appropriate because that is exactly what this was: An economic murder-suicide. A vast majority of those 18,500 workers were innocent, behaved the best they could, and did the right thing in a terrible situation. Their entire lives have been destroyed by a handful of their foolish coworkers who were more interested in making a point and detailing past grievances than working with the new team that had come in and offered them a partnership stake in the firm. They were so stuck in the owner vs. employee mindset they ignored the chance to become owners.
The BCTWGMIU just struck a major blow to the little workers' rights power remaining in the United States and hurt the labor movement incalculably. Even worse, they are too foolish to see it. The ramifications have already begun. If a new factory wants to raise money, don't you think investors are going to demand that it locate in a right to work state like Texas, so if this had happened, all of the workers can be summarily fired? The legacy cost of this will be with us for decades.
TL;DR: The Teamsters Union behaved reasonably. The new CEO behaved reasonably. The BCTWGMIU decided it couldn't get what it wanted - which was not economically possible based on the numbers - and turned down the chance to own 25% of the business, collect $100 million in bonds, and get seats on the board of directors. Now they get nothing, everyone loses their jobs, the owners get wiped out, and other corporations get to come in and pick up the assets for pennies on the dollar.
Another user "Time_Loop" also wisely pointed out that this might not actually be murder-suicide for BCTWGMIU, as their union will now have a reputation of not backing down no matter what with other companies.
Don't know what I was expecting. I mean, to think that the pro-war, pro-NDAA, pro-TSA, pro-Patriot Act, pro-interventionism, pro-torture, pro-foreign aid, pro-healthcare mandate, pro-drug war, pro-bailout, pro-stimulus, pro-corporatism, pro-Federal Reserve, pro-deficit, and was primarily funded by Goldman Sachs won the election.
Absolutely shocking.
But in all honesty, it's probably a good thing Obama won. The only possible benefit I could really see from Romney winning would have been Supreme Court picks. Now, we've taught the Republican party that even though they were up against a candidate with an approval rating as low as Carter's, without a good candidate of their own they will not win. This may give rise to some actual changes in the 2016 election.
Or maybe expecting real change through the election process is a fantasy by itself. We'll see, I guess.
In a bit of actual good news, congratulations Colorodo! With the pass of amendment 64, marijuana is finally legal for recreational use by adults!
After reports of two loaded guns making it past airport screeners and on to passenger flights this week, one congressman says "hundreds" of prohibited items get past screeners every day, a situation he calls "intolerable."
So security measures have gone up to absurd levels so that you need to remove your shows, can't take water, and have to either have naked pictures taken of you or be groped, and this is still happening?! Unbelievable.
Throughout it's history as a science, economists have puzzled over prices as a very central issue. What made one good more valuable than another? Why are prices one thing and not another? What do similar prices reveal about certain goods? To solve just why prices are the way they are, economists came up with different theories of value to explain it.
OR IS IT??!?!?
Among the classical economists, the mainstream theory was the labor theory of value. This idea was pushed by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx.
Adam Smith David Ricardo Karl Marx
According to this theory, the value of a good is derived by the amount of labor required in obtaining it. Because of this, the value of that good is inherit. There is an objectively "correct" price.
The value of a commodity, or the quantity of any other commodity for which it will exchange, depends on the relative quantity of labour which is necessary for its production, and not as the greater or less compensation which is paid for that labour.
- David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Chapter 1
Karl Marx play an interesting role here, actually. By his thinking, if all value comes from labor, then any "capitalist" who makes a profit must do so by denying the laborer the full value of their output. Hence, all profit is exploitation. The labor theory of value is key to most, if not all, of his school of thought.
Of course, his theory of value is a bit unique as he's declaring for abolishing private property.
This theory was so widely accepted because of something known as the Diamond-Water Paradox. Why is it that water, something absolutely vital for human life, has such a low price while diamonds, which certainly don't serve as a basic human necessity, demand such a high price? The answer Adam Smith had come up with is that water is just a lot easier to get. It does not require anywhere near as much labor, so it has a lower price. Diamonds, however, require a lot of work both collecting and refining it, so it has a higher price.
The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.
It is too bad that Robinson Crusoe has invented nets to catch fish or game; for it lessens by that much the efforts he exerts for a given result; he is less rich.
...
It would be too completely evident that wealth does not consist in the amount of effort required for each satisfaction obtained, but that the exact opposite is true. We should understand that value does not consist in the want or the obstacle or the effort, but in the satisfaction; and we should readily admit that although Robinson Crusoe is both producer and consumer, in order to gauge his progress, we must look, not at his labor, but at its results.
The idea of value being presented here is the subjective theory of value. It states that value is not inherit to a good, but is derived from the value that man gives to the world around him. His value is derived from the relative ends a man is trying to fulfill.
However, Bastiat was unable to come up with a coherent explanation for the diamond-water paradox. After all, if this is true, why do we pay so little for drinking water? Are we honestly supposed to believe that people value having a diamond less than drinking?
Essentially, this insight showed that people are never in the position to judge a good by its class. You are never in a position to ask whether you would rather own all the diamonds in the world or all the water in the world. If you were, I doubt the diamond-water paradox would arise! Instead, people are trading discrete quantities of goods.
Imagine that I offer you a cup of diamonds for a cup of water. If you are like most people, you would accept this trade. But when you make this trade, you are not giving up drinking. Instead, you are giving up whatever end you would have fulfilled if you had another cup of water, which might be something frivolous like watering one of your plants again. This concept of what you could have done with this extra unit is known as an opportunity cost. This cost is the true cost of every exchange you ever make.
This theory also works well because it explains how trade works. If the value of things are intrinsic, then what would be the point of trading something of equal value? I'll trade you this dollar bill for your dollar bill. According to the Austrian School, a person's action shows their scale of values, or an imaginary scale by which they value one thing over another. If I buy milk at the store for $1.00, then that shows that having milk is higher on my scale of values than having $1. I "win" the trade. At the same time, the person selling the milk shows that having $1 is higher on his scale of value than having milk. He "wins" the trade. Each person comes off more satisfied and richer than before. If value was inherit, each person coming out of a trade with a more valuable thing makes about as much sense as each person coming off with the heavier object.
There should also be a note that this idea of subjective values is in no way trying to make a moral or philosophical statement. There might be some divine being out there that sets an official scale of values, such as a moral doctrine, that can accurately be called an objective standard of value. There might be some "perfect form", like Plato suggested, of beauty. One might argue that there is an intrinsic value to human life.
Economics and praxeology does not deal with such matters though, but only with how people act. If person A murders person B, we can accurately say that to his standard of values, person A preferred person B to being dead rather than him being alive. From the scientific standpoint, we cannot say whether this action is moral or not. To him, this human's life was obviously not considered intrinsically valuable.
This concept blew apart any previous idea of value, and was so influential that it's discovery is known as the Marginal Revolution. It forever changed the approach of economics as if it were a natural science, existing on its own, to something entirely dependent on people's own values, that can never be fully understood. To properly understand economics, we must understand the motivations of an acting man, not of something intrinsic to the world.
LOL, kidding, that would be retarded. Economics is a science, and those head government scientists properly know how to run the country and can control and manipulate it so it does exactly the right thing. Only those crazy Austrian Economists still think crazy things like that. Trust your leaders. They have very complicated charts and graphs, after all.
I recently found this interesting bit on Algeria calling for bans to stop controversial speech over against Muslims after a recent video apparently drove them all crazy. You see, Muslims don't think like you and me, and will kill themselves not over foreign occupation of their countries, but because they hate freedom. And since terrorism works, people want the UN to ban things they don't like on a global scale.
Algeria demanded new efforts Saturday to limit freedom of expression to prevent denigrating attacks on Islam, appealing to the United Nations to take a lead as nations engaged in new debate on the tensions between free speech and religious tolerance.
That's not what this is about at all. Suppressing the views of others is the exact opposite of tolerance. True tolerance goes hand in hand with free speech. Say whatever you want.
Yemen’s President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi told the General Assembly on Wednesday “there should be limits for the freedom of expression, especially if such freedom blasphemes the beliefs of nations and defames their figures.
Wow. It's harder to be more wrong than that. Freedom of speech is there exactly to defend blasphemes, beliefs, and the defamation of figures. People don't call for freedom of speech so that they can talk about the weather. No government should ever suppress ideas. Any idea. Ever. Including ones of revolution.
Banning "hate speech" is no different than banning thoughtcrime. Also, since when did the UN have any legal authority over any countries ever?
"A small levy on UK broadband providers – no more than £2 a month on each subscriber's bill – could be distributed to news providers in proportion to their UK online readership. This would solve the financial problems of quality newspapers, whose readers are not disappearing, but simply migrating online." - David Leigh, The Guardian
Uh huh. And a £2 levy could save the candlemakers from lightbulbs.
Businesses that are using outdated practices need to die in capitalism. You can't expect people to prop up your failed business because improving your business practices is hard. But even worse, you want to force this upon people.
I can only hope that when Romney and Obama do finally debate, they'll be given questions half as good as these.
For President Obama:
Mr. President, on the day you were elected in 2008, the unemployment rate was 6.5%, the national debt was $10 trillion, and a gallon of gasoline cost about $2.07. Nearly four years later, the unemployment rate is above 8%, the national debt is $16 trillion, and gas is about $3.85 a gallon. The number of Americans on food stamps has grown to 47 million now from 30 million in November 2008. On what basis can you say to the voters that you deserve to be re-hired for another four years?
For Governor Romney:
You are airing campaign commercials promising that you will generate "59,000 new jobs for New Hampshire," "create over 200,000 new jobs for Colorado," "create over 700,000 new jobs for Florida," "create over 100,000 new jobs for Nevada," and "create over 340,000 new jobs for Virginia." Doesn’t this undermine your message that jobs are created by entrepreneurs not by Washington politicians? How can you possibly know with such fine-tuned certainty and specificity how many jobs you will create in each state?
Paula Asher, a woman from Kentucky, was apparently driving under the influence and hit another car. She wrote about it on facebook, saying "My dumb bass got a DUI and I hit a car…LOL".
The existence of such on outrageous comment offended the judge so much that Paula was told to delete her entire facebook account. Paula didn't take this order seriously, and the judge actually found her in contempt of court over this, jailing her for two days.
This girl sounds kinda stupid, but I'm amazed at the powertrip this judge is on. This is a very clearly an abridgment of free speech. And even if we were going to go over some kind of justification against "hate speech", this wouldn't qualify.
I'm more amazed at the comments defending the decision. WTF "americathepitiful", the first amendment is not there just to defend criticism of the government. It's there most importantly for that reason, but that doesn't make it the only defended speech.
The recent ruling that the NDAA is unconstitutional has been appealed by the White House, keeping it in action for the time being, until it is reviewed by higher authorities. This stay will last until at least September 28th.
Let's review what Obama said on December 31, 2011 when he signed the NDAA, shall we?
“The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it. In particular, I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists.” - Barack Obama
Where the hell is that reluctance now? Some people might have been able to defend Obama before by saying he didn't like this part and wished it wasn't there, why in the world would they fight specifically to keep that part?! Why aren't Democrats waking up to see this is the man they elected?
How does one rob an entire nation? There are quite a few ways, actually. Most under the name "taxation", but I want to look at one that is done secretly, where very few people even realize they're being robbed. I'm talking about printing and loaning fiat currency.
Say, that some nice property you got there.
It'd be a shame if something... happened to it.
First let me explain what I mean when I say taxation is theft though.
All taxation is theft and extortion by definition. If Fat Tony rolls around demanding "protection money" from the local laundromat, we call that out as extortion, and rightfully so. The laundromat owner had no choice about contracting the mafia to protect him. They simply threatened him into accepting their "services".
But how is this different from the actions of a government? You do not "sign up" to be governed. If you think you're government's charging too high a price, you can't switch over to another company. The government is nothing more than the biggest mafia in town, both pretending to have some kind of "rightful claim" to your money, when you really have no choice about it. The only real difference here is that the taxman might actually believe his claim.
Your money or your life!
All government taxes aren't quite so obvious though. If I want to find out how much money was robbed from me directly in a sales tax, for example, it's right there next to all the legitimate trades on the receipt. I think I'm right in saying that people aren't "shocked" to find out the government took their own cut of a deal that had nothing to do with them.
Other ways are a little more surprising. For example, the inflation of a fiat currency.
Now what is inflation? How does it work? The simple answer is, money is a good, and like any other good, it is subject to the law of supply and demand. With a high supply of something, it's price drops because it's more easily attainable. We value rare things more highly *because* they are rare. If we gained the abilities of King Midas and could turn things to gold with a simple touch, the price of gold would not be very high.
So when the supply of money rises, when it inflates, the value of money falls. It has less purchasing power. You can't buy as much with the same amount of money any more, because that money is less valuable. The supply of something rises and falls for many natural reasons, like the discovery of a new gold mine for example, so you'd expect inflation in any society with any currency. However, as total supply is really hard to upset naturally, the value of money normally stays pretty consistent.
However, the inflation of a fiat currency is *not* a natural reason. Have you ever heard the phrase "money doesn't grow on trees"? The phrase means that money is not something easily attainable, and is used to encourage someone to save and to be more thrifty. People need to act responsibly with their money, and not be wasteful.
Well, for the Federal Reserve, money does grow on trees. Better yet, they don't even need to wait on the trees to bear fruit, they can just print the money themselves. If these banks are ever strapped for cash, they can literally just print money for themselves. This is not earned money. This is the creation of money ex nihilo.
How does this work out as theft from you and me though? That new money is getting it's value by stealing it from your saved money. While the central bank and government now have a lot of new money, the money you have is worth less and less. It is *exactly* the same as a tax.
Luckily for the ones printing the money, they are the last ones to feel the effect of the inflation. After they've printed the money, they still hold basically the same purchasing power as they did before. People haven't figured out that the money supply has gone up yet, and haven't had time to readjust prices.There are absolutely no downsides to them for printing more money. They have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
And it doesn't just stop there. Then these bastards have the nerve to loan the new money out and charge interest on it! But hey, I can't condemn charging interest entirely. After all, people need to be compensated for the sacrifice of their money over so much time. They worked long and hard to earn it. That money represents the contribution they've made to society by producing things people wanted, and we're creating an opportunity cost of what else they could have done with this money they earned oh wait this money was never earned the central bank just printed that money out of nothing and didn't do any work themselves even in the past to earn it nor are they taking on any personal risk by departing from their money!
And still! Still! Even while they're earning interest, if you miss your payment they get to take away your stuff as collateral! They can take your property away from right under your feet, at no personal risk for themselves. Not to mention that when the Federal Reserve loans it's money to the government, they have to tax you to pay for it! They have the all the money they could ever want, and can just sit back and get all your stuff too.
And the best part is, the nation never even sees it happening. You never face the taxation directly. All you know is that the price of everything seems to be going up, the economies in the tank, when you hear this great news from the central bank that they're going to get everything under control with nice sounding systems like "quantitative easing". You're not sure what that means, but it sounds soothing and really smart, so it must work, and you trust them to make things right.
I don't think I could come up with a more brilliant scam if I tried.
In a bit of good news, the section of the National Defense Authorization Act that allowed the indefinite detention of US citizens without charge or trial was ruled as unconstitutional!
Unsurprisingly, for a bill that Obama signed with "serious reservations", his administration seems to be fighting tooth and nail to keep this disgusting power.
To understand economics, you must always always always look towards the individual. You must understand the tree before you can even hope to understand a forest. Likewise, if you don't understand the individual, you can't understand the vast complexity of commerce among a great number of individuals.
To best illustrate this, many economists use the classic example of Robinson Crusoe, the famous castaway. I haven't read Robinson Crusoe, so instead I'm going to use Tom Hanks in Cast Away.
Even stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere, people still act economically. They work to get food, water, and all the supplies they need. More complex ideas like property rights and trade are purposefully kept out of the picture so that we can just look at this one man, fighting against nature.
Before today, this island was entirely uninhabited. This island was not part of any economy. It had rocks and trees and coconuts on it. But now that there is a human on it, with the presence of an acting man, this island is (or at least soon will be) economized.
Stranded on this desert island, Tom Hanks takes action. Now, when we say this, we mean purposeful behavior. Tom Hanks, the individual, has goals that he wants completed. His world is unstable, and he believes he can improve it. He wants food. He wants shelter. He wants warmth.
To satisfy these wants, Tom will employee some means to achieve these ends. This is purposeful action, entirely distinct from unconscious twitches and basic reflexes. Tom will employee his mind, his reason, to figure out what these means are. The things which Tom uses as a means to fulfill his ends are called goods.
One of the first things Tom will need is a source of food and water. These goods will directly satisfy his desires of staying hydrated and staying nourished. By eating, he directly satisfies his hunger and by drinking he directly satisfies his thirst. Because these goods will directly satisfy his desires, we call these things consumer goods. Please note that consumer goods do not need to be literally consumed. The clothes he is wearing, for example, are consumer goods, since they are directly keeping him warm.
But strangely enough, Tom Hanks is unable to bite through the coconut. How ever will Tom Hanks ever solve this problem?
Now, he could keep gnawing on it until it breaks, but that's rather inefficient. If he is going to eat the coconut, he's going to need to figure out a way to open the coconut up. So he picks up a rock and starts hitting it. This rock has become something known as a producer good. This rock will not directly satisfy Tom Hanks hunger problem, but he hopes that by using it as a tool, he can obtain his desired consumer good more efficiently.
However, the rock is very dull, and doesn't break through the coconuts very easily. As time goes on, Tom will want to increase his income, or the rate at which he obtains goods, by boosting efficiency. If he spends time developing that rock into something new like a knife, he will have created a special type of a producer good known as a capital good.This producer good is distinct from the rock in that it is a man-made tool, as compared to just something that was lying around naturally. Nature has been developed upon.
This capital, by the way, is what we refer to in the name Capitalism.
To create a capital good, Tom had to restrict his consumption, also known as saving, and transfer his labor from producing immediately satisfying consumer goods to the production of the knife so that he may consume more in the future. This process of creating capital goods is known as an economic investment.
But the most valuable producer good that Tom has at any time is himself! When we use our own bodies to produce something, it is called labor.
This is in direct contrast to when Tom uses his body in the way he wants, like relaxing on the beach, swimming, or sleeping. In these cases, Tom's activity is known as leisure.
Now, Tom might enjoy working, but that does not stop it from being labor. If there was no end result in his mind, then he would not consider doing the job. For example, Tom might like climbing trees to collect coconuts, but if he already knew a certain tree didn't have coconuts, he wouldn't consider climbing it.
Instead, Tom would engage his time in play, a consumer good, which is any activity that is sought for it's own sake. This could, again, end up just be climbing trees, but the distinction is that he is not directly seeking a final product, but is just enjoying the activity.
So as you can see, even in our one man economy, many of our basic economic principles are still in place. We still have production, goods, capital, and income. Economics isn't just this big, complex working of society. As long as their is a man taking action, trying to fulfill his desires, economics is taking place.
Justice Monika Schmidt sentenced Jian Chen to three years and nine months of jail time. Her crime? Killing her former lover Xian Peng after lacing his soup with sleeping pills, tying him up for six hours, and then stabbing him repeatedly in the neck and groin and cutting off part of his penis which was then flushed down the toilet.
Chen thought he deserved it because she was under the impression that he was a conman sleeping around with women, having babies with them, as a way of controlling them.
And she only got three years and nine months. Damn you patriarchy!
I must be misunderstanding the word manslaughter, because drugging someone, tying them up, and stabbing them to death and sexually mutilating them is murder in my book. Like, really really messed up psycho killer murder. Did she not know that stabbing someone in the neck usually kills someone?
Imagine if the roles were reversed! What if a man thought a woman was a gold digger, sleeping around and having babies so she could collect alimony money, so he drugs her, cuts off her breasts, and stabs her in the throat and groin to death? What would happen? We would call for his head on a pike! This is a truly monstrous act!
I can only imagine that she got this special treatment because she's a woman. Where's the outrage, feminists? Where is it?
Modern feminism just comes off as really annoying to me. On most points I would agree with them on, they already have. It comes off as really preachy over issues that I normally consider to be of minor importance at best, while it ignores much more pressing issues for its own benefit. Congratulations, not only can you vote, but you have a lot of legal and social institutions in women's favor while still retaining all the social expectations of chivalry and not being drafted to go die in drafted wars, what more do you want?
Today, they do not try to fix discrimination by encouraging that the rights of all people be respected, but instead claim that a certain group is being discriminated against and that we need to be racist and prejudice towards a different group to "balance out" the discrimination the other group was receiving. They fixing discrimination by discriminating themselves, and will only stop discriminated once you learn discrimination is wrong.
Despite their so-called progressive ways, they still divide people up into groups. Attempts to celebrate diversity just continually push the mindset that we are different from those people. Are differences are great, so don't forget how different you are from people of other skin colors. We are all the same except that we are not.
You don't see that kind of bull when people talk about hair color. Why not? Don't they want to celebrate their diversity of hair colors? No, they don't, because no one cares. That's the beauty of it! To even accept the premise that this counts as "diversity" means you accept that these people are fundamentally and irrevocably different from one another.
For true harmony, individualism is not only the best way to counteract discrimination, but it is the only way. Only once we focus on and respect the rights of the individual, judging each person for their own merit, can we get past arbitrary distinctions like gender and race.
Now, I am mainly focusing on a specific strand of feminism known as Radical Feminism.
I am sure there are many of self-proclaimed feminists out there that are actually battling sexism and discrimination. It's no secret that women's rights in the Middle East is messed up. There are many, many entirely legitimate issues that feminists can complain about.
But tell me, honestly, when you think of feminists, do you think of someone fighting for the elimination of special privileges for men and women, or someone complaining about how men rule the world? That's what I thought. Today's feminists are not the feminists of the early 20th century. Radical feminism has taken it over by virtue of being more obnoxious.
I'll start off with the idea of patriarchy, the good and the bad. Patriarchy is essentially the idea of a male dominated society, that men are a privileged class, and that women are degraded. This has appropriate uses. For example, in a monarchy it is often tradition for the male heir to inherit the thrown, even if a female sibling is older or more capable. But as monarchies are a very common form of government anymore, this is not really what the modern feminist will be talking about.
Modern "patriarchy" looks nothing like this. Patriarchy isn't just a comment on a specific group, like the royal bloodline, that favor men over women. To feminists, patriarchy extends to all culture and they have learned to apply to every and any situation they disagree with it. It lurks behind every corner. Feminists don't talk about patriarchy as a comment on a specific situation, but as if it's some invisible force controlling society.
On a side note, where the hell is the joke?
In spite of this, women make up 57% of all bachelor's and 60% of all master degrees. Women vote more than men. Women can go into any field of study, any business, and it would be seen as normal. Women wearing pants instead of dresses and skirts no longer shocks the general public. But that's all part of the secret plan to keep the women down! After all, the best chains are the one's you can't see, right? Ha ha ha!
Patriarchy has turned into a conspiracy theory.
Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.
But hold on there! What about the wage gap? Don't you know that for every dollar a man makes, a woman makes 75 cents? This appears to be true. If you add up the income of all women in the workforce and divide by the number of women, and then do the same process for men, you will find that women one average make 75% of what men make. But remember, there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
But do you not see anything odd about this? Personally, if I thought I could hire women to do the same job as a man, but I could pay her only 75% of what I would for a man, I'd hire the woman. Think of the profits! Screw patriarchy, I want to get rich!
If this was true, why aren't businessmen taking advantage of these huge savings? Do feminists simply believe that "the patriarchy" just isn't greedy enough?
What this simple statistic doesn't show you is that men and women make very different choices in where they work. Men are more likely to go into engineering while women are more likely to go into social sciences. So while men are making more money in the business world, women are in lower paying careers. This is not a form of discrimination, but a personal choice to pursue a less lucrative job. This comes from their choice.
Men and women also make different choices in how they work. Most men expect to be working full time for the rest of their lives, while women are more likely to leave at some point in their career to raise children, or at least want to leave an option open for that. Employers also need to consider this when choosing who to promote, since they don't want to lose good employees.
That's not even getting into the issues of overtime and the workplace danger. Obviously, there are plenty of rational, non-discrimination reasons men get a higher pay on average.
Just look at these male chauvinistic bastards.
Now, you might want to say that women are only making these choices because of the patriarchy. Women go into nurturing roles because that's the role given to them by society. But I don't really care about whether that's true or not. If you don't think enough women are going into the jobs you want, that's not my problem. I want to fight discrimination, not impose my personal values on other people. If you feel so bad about it, make your own choice on your own life.
And never mind that men are pushed away from the more social jobs towards a higher paying yet soul-crushing jobs because society expects them to be the bread-winners of the family. No, clearly women are the only ones being oppressed by gender roles.
But what about male privilege? Men get everything handed to them, while women have to work for everything they get. On a date, women always have to pick up the tab. Men can flirt their way out of speeding tickets while women always have to pay.
When there's a divorce, men take half of their ex's property and the children. And let's not forget that the woman is always expected to pay child support, when the woman might not have wanted the kid in the first place and the man lied about using protection. Men just treat women as their own personal piggy bank.
During a war, who is called first for a draft? Women. Women are considered disposable, dying on the battlefield while men sit around in safety back in their homes.
When the Titanic was sinking, it was men and children first, while the women are left to drown. Men set themselves first. How can anyone see this and not think men are the privileged gender? Down with the patriarchy that has driven women to make up 75% of suicides and 92% of occupational fatalities!
Of course, it's the other way around. Now, women of course have difficulties of their own and different expectations, but that's the whole point. Feminists will complain about a gender role they perceive as being placed on women, blame men for it, and totally ignore any role placed on men.
Even worse, they'll try to twist it around to make it about them, as if their privileges are actually insults. The women and children first rule shows that men consider women equivalent to children! Men don't consider women as strong and as capable as them, devaluing them to the level of children! So it's still part of patriarchy. It was all part of their clever plan of oppressing women by letting them live as they die.
Let me tell you, there are no feminist women on a sinking ship.
That's, like, the exact definition of a secondary victim.
Also, men have fathers and sons too, ya know.
These people clearly can't even tell the difference between bring privileged and being discriminated against. Why in the world should I listen to them on anything?
Now this has been quite long, yet I have so much more to say. I'll leave it with this though. Voltaire once said "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." Watch the above video, and tell me if you really think society is based around patriarchy. Ask yourselves what would happen if the situation was reversed.
