SSCReader
1d ago
Eh, we've lost of interesting posters over the years, but obeying the rules is mostly easy. Given the purpose of this place it has to select for people who can decouple , and not post angry. If you tell the mods you aren't going to obey them whether you think you are right or not, that needs to stop. No matter how interesting a poster you are. I like FNE but she pushed and pushed and pushed and struggled with not responding to people saying her ideas/pov was not correct, as if they were saying she was a moron. And using nuclear levels of sarcasm doing it.
It has to be interesting posters who are willing to voluntarily toe the line. Honestly i still feel like moderation is not harsh enough. Habitual line steppers should be gone after 3 instances. They clearly aren't going to learn.
SSCReader
2d ago
I agree! I don't think the current format is good, and I don't think OP's version of having individials have to negotiate with companies with their own budget is either.
Functionally though what is the difference between paying a company to do x or fining a company of it doesn't do x?
In the first case the company raises prices to cover the cost of X and its customers will end up paying for it, in the latter taxpayers pay for it ( some of whom may or may not be customers).
So I suppose the question is who should be on the hook for paying? Customers at least in theory have a chance of benefitting from X more individually than taxpayers most of which may well live hundreds of miles away from said business. However in taxpayers the cost is distributed across more people so probably feels like it costs less. Though that might count as hiding the cost I suppose.
As it stands we do both I guess, companies can get grants to make adaptions, and can get sued if they don't. So maybe thats the answer, a mix of both depending on the situation. Make funds available and directly fine companies that refuse anyway.
SSCReader
2d ago
You can't separate whether the government should do A or B from the government's role in the transaction of which A/B are a part
Well we can if we are just look at how efficient solutions might be as per the OP. I completely accept that some (many?) people do not think the government should do a lot of things, and that is a reasonable position to hold!
But if it IS doing a thing (like the ADA currently), then presumably we can still explore what would be more or less effective, even if we stipulate that you might not think it should be doing that thing in the first place? I mean it's all hypothetical anyway, unless one of us is secretly in the Cabinet, then we are not going to be impacting whether the thing happens nor how it happens. So a hypothetical discussion with the stipulation that discussing the how doesn't mean you are endorsing the should, doesn't seem too unreasonable?
SSCReader
3d ago
If I am going to have a government doing things that I don't like, can I at least ask that they not do it stupidly and waste a bunch of money?
Sure! And I think the government should absolutely be deciding how much money it should be spending on say the ADA per person (assuming we decide it should be done at all which is of course not a given!). But I think then leaving it up to the person to have to coordinate on which businesses to target, is basically wasting the reason why governments are useful at all, which is coordinating these kind of issues.
And you will get no argument from me that governments should be do much better at keeping track of what is paid for what and the costs vs benefits of x. I was in government (local and central) long enough that I am certain I have had several rants about it.
SSCReader
3d ago
Your framing is that the government's major role is to coordinate an existing transaction. That would be true in an actual contract; that would be false for the ADA.
Leave aside whether the government should do A or B, I am saying ONCE we decide A or B, then it's inefficient to have it coordinate one part (gathering the resources) but leaving it up to individuals to target the entity.
The advantage of government is coordination, so making it half coordinated and half not is wasting the advantage it gives you.
As I said, there is absolutely an argument that the government should not coordinate ADA stuff at all. But once we decide it should, the making each person have to target the resources individually and thus coordinate if they want to push against a bigger entity is just wasting the leverage.
SSCReader
3d ago
Well in both cases the government is putting an obligation on the entity right? To stick to a contract or to make accommodations for those with disabilities. The government puts lots of obligations on entities. Paying taxes, environmental regulations etc.
Like I say, if you think the government should not put obligations on entities at all, then that is a consistent position. But the government should, but it should farm that out at some rate per person and then leave it up to those people to coordinate against larger entities is just missing the point the government is there to be the coordinator in the first place. There is no point in that halfway house.
Either have the government coordinate it, or not at all, but having it collect all the tax money up, disburse it to individuals then make them coordinate action is just adding additional steps to the process.
SSCReader
3d ago
The Americans with Disabilities Act does not follow these rules. Private individuals are given the ability to sue other private individuals to provide accommodations for them. The threat of getting sued also encourages a lot of preemptive work on the part of companies. How much does all of this suing and preemptive work cost?
Doesn't this critique also apply to the whole civil suit edifice? If a company breaks a contract with me, it is the government that backs the court resolution with force if necessary. Which kind of highlights a problem with giving a budget per person. Currently a company might make efforts to not break a contract because I can sue them, and that should count as government spending by this metric? And if the solution applies then each person is given a contract enforcement budget, but, a big company could simply sign a contract for oil rights on my land worth a million dollars, then break the contract and I only get 5000 dollars towards trying to rectify it?
In other words your solution removes the advantage of government force against entities that are less powerful than a government but more powerful than a normal individual. The whole point is to leverage the scale of the government as the aggregate of its citizens. Which I understand is somewhat antithetical to a Libertarian, but I think your proposal is kind of the worst of all worlds. I can see an argument to take the government out of it entirely and I can see an argument to have the government do the whole thing. But where the government does it, but only to a very minor extent for each person just seems more inefficient than either.
Which isn't to say I think the ADA way is right either, I'd rather just have a mandate passed on what a company needs to do, set up a department, people make complaints and the government either finds in the companies favor and does nothing, or uses government power to force the company to comply. Then you could also measure the cost both to the company and to the government of enforcement without diluting the whole purpose of having a government.
SSCReader
3d ago
But it is a private space owned by Zorba. This isn't a democracy. If you don't behave the way the owner likes, then you can either knuckle under, leave or continue to disobey until they kick you out permanently.
You don't get to do what you want in someone elses house. That is basic etiquette, whether you agree with their rules or not.
SSCReader
4d ago
You should see me injecting butter under the skin..My wife thinks I could give BBLs down in Mexico.
SSCReader
4d ago
I like Alexa in the kitchen only, then I can set timers, play music, get recipes and the like while I am wrists deep in a turkey. Just saves a bit of time is all.
That's about it.
SSCReader
4d ago
This situation seems analogous. I guess it's reasonable to ask whether the hatred is toward Catholics in particular, or Christians generally, but it's pretty clearly a wave of hate crimes aimed at a coherent target. It's especially notable since there's zero evidence the inciting incident actually happened.
Sure, that's basically my point is that it may be generally anti-Christian sentiment not anti-Catholic. Not saying either of those things are good, just that, it isn't necessarily what we were talking about.
As to the inciting incident, assuming we are linking it to the residential schools, it depends what you think the inciting incident was. I'd suggest the talk of deaths is only accepted because of the already existing animus about the residential schools. Even if every attributed death was debunked perfectly, I would suggest that not much would change in the feelings about the matter.
Like if the Holocaust was successfully denied, and all the Jewish deaths were just attributed to the horrors of war and a starving populace and not actual gas chambers, would Jews have no animus against Nazis? Seems unlikely.
So I would say the inciting event definitely happened. In that some of the native populace was forced into schools. That animus is WHY they believe that the schools were murdering kids during rugby practice, not the source of it.
SSCReader
4d ago
They were what? Note some of the non-Catholic Churches burned down were on reservations/native land as well. So how much increased risk Catholic churches have over churches in general still isn't clear.
SSCReader
4d ago
https://tnc.news/2024/02/12/a-map-of-every-church-burnt-or-vandalized-since-the-residential-school-announcements4/
Note that "100 Christian churches in Canada have been vandalized, burned down or desecrated" is a different measure than number of churches burned down. Your source lists around 50 churches that with a fire or arson attack. Of those it lists around 27 as destroyed or razed, with another few have no description of the severity.
My count only covered those burned down. 33 looks to actually be consistent with your source as well using that metric.
So perhaps adjust your trust in the AI counting somewhat?
SSCReader
5d ago
Yeah my point is that he is probably a little too blase, about anti-Catholicism, history shows it can spill out quickly. Which is why I would certainly endorse the US being aware of that. It wasn't too long ago where it was actually open. As I said when we were talking about Christian nationalism, I think there is an underlying wedge there that can get worse.
SSCReader
5d ago
Without the context of how common arson is generally it may or may not be substantial. Plus we'd have to know the relative ratio of Catholic churches to other churches in order to know if half those being targeted means Catholic churches are at greater risk than churches generally (so Catholics are being targeted specifically for being Catholic).
SSCReader
5d ago
AI search says 33 odd churches, CBC says 24 of those are confirmed arson, and approx. half were Catholic. So 12 or so by the look of it.
Hope that helps!
SSCReader
5d ago
I'm a Catholic. If I were to imagine s/anti-semitism/anti-Catholicism/ for all of these things I keep hearing from official government sources, or from the news media (but I repeat myself, hey, oh!) it would just make me laugh.
And if you lived in Northern Ireland or somewhere else where Anti-Catholic sentiment resolved into both government and private action against your faith and Catholics? Or perhaps even 60 years ago in the US.
The reason it makes you laugh is because you haven't (presumably) lived somewhere where that sentiment creates action. And indeed, as part of our move away from that, we did have to say mandate a specific percentage of Catholic officers in the police, and increase funding for integrated faith schools and the like. The US is pretty well integrated when it comes to Catholics vs Protestants, but this is a fairly modern occurrence.
Just because the idea of Anti-Catholicism makes you laugh, doesn't mean that it can't be a problem if it actually occurred. Even just 20 years ago my brother marrying a Catholic was a huge scandal in my extended family. And my uncle still needles her about cannibalism, from time to time, though these days only when he is drunk, because my brother will kick him out.
Now there certainly can be an argument that the fear of anti-semitism in the US is overblown but I would caution against underestimating just how much sectarian problems Catholics can face.
SSCReader
5d ago
Employers will only hire humanities graduates if they are sufficiently clued in to know which are the intellectually rigorous schools and programmes.
Again this may be true for very high end employers but for most all they look for is a degree and they don't care how rigorous that degree was. I did recruitment for both private and government organizations, and while the civil service did care, no-one else did, including blue chip communications companies and local government. And the reason for that is they are not getting to pick from Oxford or Cambridge or Harvard grads or wherever in the first place. Your middle of the road office manager type can easily get a job with a non-intellectually rigorous humanities degree. Sure they might not get into Wall Street or quant jobs, but they were never going to. Your point only applies for the very top slice of jobs, for all the others, just need to have a degree to tick a box on the form, you will be fine with a degree in basket weaving or creative writing or musicology.
SSCReader
5d ago
Most of the office people in my local government and private business days had humanities degrees, I think you underestimate how little most bog standard employers care about whether the degree is humanities or not. A degree is a degree (with the exception of STEM). As long as you can signal enough that you can sit down, follow instructions for 3 or four years that is good enough.
Now that is seperate from people who think they will succeed in industries which are famously hard to break into.
SSCReader
6d ago
The average creative writing major should expect to get a mostly-unrelated job or need more education. The average screenwriting major should expect to essentially not get into the film industry at all.
But most people in almost every field except STEM, don't end up working in their degree field anyway right? A lot of white collar jobs are gated behind a degree, but it doesn't really matter what degree you have, as getting the degree is the signal. There simply are not many actual psych jobs or politics jobs, so most people getting any of these are going to end up an office manager or something similar. Might as well study something you are interested in at university level unless you have a very specific plan, and even in a lot of those instances there are simply not going to be enough jobs in that field and you will end up doing something else. And my experience (and I work in academia) is that applies to most of both men and women.
Once you realize the majority of people are going to end up working in a field unrelated to their major then creative writing isn't much worse off. The truth is the vast majority of graduates are going to end up in some kind of mundane office dronish position, unrelated to whether they want to become a writer or an astronaut or a journalist.
SSCReader
7d ago
Then you are incorrect. If I didn't commit to veganism when my wife wanted me too, then I am not going to because other people do. I have no qualms about eating cats or dogs either.
Fads come and go.
Because if things worked the way you think they do them presumably YOU and everyone else should currently support lab grown meat because it is currently not legislated against?
Its just not how things work.
SSCReader
7d ago
The problem there of course is that Vegan groups don't speak for or represent the opinion of most people, probably even for most people who might think developing lab grown meat might be somewhat useful, but still are fine with also eating animals.
So you pre-emptively create a division that might not ever have been a problem. Now if I do think lab meat could be useful, you are driving me to have to side with the vegans, in order to oppose your ban! When my opinion is probably just sure, let's try it out, might be handy for feeding people and if it turns out to be cheaper then that's a good thing, but I am still gonna enjoy my regular ole cow-burger.
It's only a good tactic if the radical side really is strong enough to co-opt the moderates, and my experience is at least for veganism that is just not gonna fly. Otherwise you are actually spurring a coalition to form, that may have remained fractured.
SSCReader
9d ago
Thats because for a few years she was much much more famous than who she was dating. Prior to that there were interminable articles when she was dating Tom Hiddleston, and Harry Styles and Joe Jonas and Calvin Harris etc. Kelce is significantly more famous in the US at least than Matt Healy or Joe Alwyn (accounting for about the last 6 years before Kelce).
Hard to sell a power couple most of your audience couldn't tell who one of the couple is. But a pop star and a sports star? That is simply PR gold, covering multiple demographics. I'm honestly surprised they aren't on even more.
SSCReader
9d ago
Ahh the horseshoe (bearshoe?) theory strikes again. Introverts, misanthropes and feminists/misandrists, all would rather be stuck with a bear than a man. They don't agree on much but on that they find common cause.
(Not claiming you are any of these things, just that "I don't want to be disturbed by a person" pattern matches to introverts/misanthropes).
It doesn't have to be. If you pick up the right prenatal classes there are a number of helpful things you can do. supporting her physically (depending on position), massaging her legs, feet, back (useful if she is prone to cramping), to more esoteric things like counter-pressure. Your wife may also not be in a position to advocate for her needs. Which isn't a problem if your medical/birth team are good, but its always possible you get an issue, you'll have to go to bat against.
In my case for my third child, the midwife waited too long to decide on an episiotomy and I had to tell them my wife was prone to a tear and if they didn't cut it was going to be much worse (a lesson learned from births 1 and 2).
Your call of course but I think you can plan find ways to be useful.
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