LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
No bio...
User ID: 657
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
But if the British or Portuguese rule a territory, it means that the locals don't.
The vast, vast majority of people working in Indian colonial administration were native Indians, to say nothing of the local Rajas who had significant influence. This is generally true of all European colonial states in Africa and Asia in the 1800s onwards. In a large sense, the locals did rule themselves, even if guided by European thought and colonial administrators.
It's really only through the power of ideologies such as nationalism that to a native in Cochin/Kochi that rule from London (not matter how hands off) is illegitimate but rule from New Delhi is legitimate.
The pre-industrial world was largely a zero-sum affair
Colonialism in the context being discussed (that is, Africa and Asia reperations) is a mostly post-industral or at the very least a proto-industrial phenomeon. A bunch of Portugese trading posts scattered around Asia and Africa isn't really colonialism proper. Only in the latter part of the 1800s (as with most European powers, scramble for Africa) did Portugal really gained substantial control over what we would call colonial states (e.g. Mozambique and Angola).
Regardless, I also object to the claim that pre-industrial trading was zero-sum. It was obviously not zero-sum, or else the participants (e.g. Portugal and costal Indian kingdoms) wouldn't have participated in it! Portugal got their spices, the Indians got their silver. The actual participants in the trading mutually benefit. The fact that traders might seek to monopolise that trade doesn't change the fact that the people actually doing the trading are mutually benefiting. They're looking to gain an economic advantage over their trading competitor not their trading partner. This is no different to modern economics - the fact that some business try to monopolise or engage in anti-competitive behaviour today isn't evidence of economic activity being zero-sum!
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
The natives weren't capable of beating back the Portuguese alone, they usually had to get help from the Dutch or somebody else.
The real answer is because, generally speaking, the natives had no reason to 'beat back' the Portugese, or any other colonial state. They benefited from colonial contact, especially in the 18th century onwards. Colonial states had legitimacy and widespread local support until the mid-20th century.
It was less the natives 'getting help from the Dutch or somebody else' but more 'Europeans getting the help from the natives' to kick out their European rivals.
I thought it was pretty well known (among intellectual types who care about these things anyway) that King's views became more radical as time went on. It's not necessarily fair to equate the ideas in King's later work with that of his earlier.
Ironically, Malcolm X was the inverse, where his views became more moderate later on.
This anti-colonial argument often underpinned by a willful ignorance of how basic economics works.
Even where the Europeans (I am talking about 18-20th century Asian and African colonialism) engaged in basic resource extraction like mining (and the economies of colonies were generally far more sophisticated in reality than one might think) it still results in substainal economic development for the locals. Europeans had to build massive amounts of infrastructive to support these economic activities, to say nothing of the associated colonial administration like hospitals, schools and law enforcement. But the most important part is that the local workers were paid for their work and there was wealth flowing to the natives of the colony. The anti-colonial (typically Marxist) persective sees economy activity has necessarily zero-sum. If someone is making money, someone else must be losing money (or having their labour 'stolen'). This is obviously wrong.
Now, were these colonial economic arrangements as fair as they could have been? Maybe not, though once you factor in the expenditures on colonial administration and that colonialism generally speaking a money-losing venture for the Europeans it becomes a lot less clear.
But the counter-factual of no colonialism is that there would have been no economic development at all, and most economic activity that did exist would have continued to be conducted under local slavery (or similar economic structures) which is far less fair than the colonial arrangements.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
The question that equates economic leftist and economic liberalism and calls economic liberalism economic rightism hurts me.
Why did Americans have to ruin the word liberal.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
You have to take anything that the media was reporting on with a huge dump truck pile of salt, if they're not outright lying that is.
The biggest issue with GamerGate was that the people reporting on GamerGate, the media and journalists, especially the videogame related media, was itself the subject of the criticism. The media obviously has a huge, self-interested reason not to accurately report criticism levelled against themselves.
Who watches the watchmen, basically.
Maybe your interlocutor is a philosophical zombie.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
My personal (least) favourite is Myth 5 - "Too much detail will lead to confusion, and many people will likely not want to read a lengthy document. "
"People are too stupid to understand what they'd be voting on anyway, and if they did get the details they might cause them to vote against it!"
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
You're making the all too common mistake of conflating empathy with sympathy. Empathy means the ability to understand where someone is coming from, their persective. Understand what it's like to be in their shoes. It does not mean you have to like or agree with their perspective. That is what sympathy is for, feelings of compassion and pity with someone's position or perspective, implicited agreeing with their plight.
The ability to empathise is always a good thing, at the very least for strictly utilitarian or pragmatic reasons. By understanding someone's perspective and motivations, you can predict how they will act in certain situations. You can better manipulate people. Hostage negotiators do this all the time - they negociate with criminals, empathise with them, understand them and use that information against them. The hostage negotiators don't like the hostage takers or agree with their goals.
when they say that not having empathy makes you a bad person
It certainly makes you a less effective person. If we think empathy is a necessary precursor to sympathy (while being distinct phenomena), then that lack of sympathy caused by lack of empathy certainly could be one definition of 'bad'. Being able to forgive people you like is easy. It's being able to forgive people you don't like where true virtue is found.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
I haven't really keep up with the polling, but when I wrote the previous post about the Voice, the support for it was hovering around 50:50 (counting don't know and no together). But support was declining consistently overtime. I'm not sure how this recent development will affect support. At this stage, I think it's anyone's game.
There isn't bipartisan support. The Nationals, the smaller, regional, conservative member of the Liberal-National Coalition, has openly opposed the Voice. The Liberal Party has yet to take a position on the Voice, playing coy, and simply continuing to ask for more details. Word on the street is that there's a strong internal division in the Liberal Party over the Voice, though Peter Dutton, the Opposition Leader, clearly doesn't support the Voice for anyone who knows anything about Australian politics.
Is it a referendum on whether voters think Labor is cool
I would say it's mostly a vote de facto demonstrating how large white guilt is in Australia
The collapse of ATSIC seems like it would have soured an entire generation on the concept.
No one is talking about ATSIC. It's like it didn't exist. It's not in the public consciousness at all. Whether this is just the result of it fading from living memory or part of a deliberate effort from left-aligned media to suppress it, I can't say. You can barely find any mention of it anywhere, least of it in the mainstream media. There are a couple of throwaway mentions in a few articles, but no one is seriously criticising the Voice by making comparisons to ATSIC. I think David Littleproud, leader of the Nationals, mentioned it once in a speech recently. That's about it.
Not claiming this is necessarily representative, but look at this rubbish blog post from Monash University 'Voice to Parliament: Debunking 10 myths and misconceptions'.
Myth 6
There’s no need to enshrine the Voice in the Constitution.
By enshrining the Voice in the Constitution, it will not be able to be abolished at the whim of Parliament/the government, in contrast to ATSIC (and just about every other Indigenous advisory body set up by the government). It will also not be afraid to give frank and fearless advice. Its composition, powers and procedures will, however, be able to be amended by Parliament to ensure its effectiveness.
Yes because ATSIC was a completely corrupt and mismanaged fuckfest, as are most of these politically motivated self interested Indigenous bodies! The ability to abolish these organisations is a feature and should remain a feature it's not a bug!
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
I so wish we could even debate the charitable interpretation as you say. But all evidence points to the contrary, we're not even at that point.
Just as one example - the Australian Government's 'National Energy Transformation Partnership' includes an 'initial priority' to "co-design a First Nations Clean Energy Strategy to ensure First Nations people help drive the energy transformation" (whatever that is meant to mean). Literally this stuff is already everywhere. Everything has to have 'First Nations/Indigenous' strategy/plan/consultation no matter how little it has to do with Indigenous issues. This is just going to institutionalise it to the highest degree - constitutionally.
Culture War Update on my previous post on Australia's Voice to Parliament.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has finally released the wording of the question that will be proposed in the referendum as follows:
“A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
Do you approve this proposed alteration?”
He has also release the proposed provisions being added:
Chapter IX Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples
129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice
In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:
There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;
The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.
Parliament is expected to vote on the wording of the referendum question in June.
Some brief comments:
The proposed question is a leading question, by implying that the recognition of the 'First Peoples' necessarily requires the establishment of the Voice. There could easily be two separate questions here:
-
One for a constitution recognising Indigenous people in the Australia Constitution, a symbolic gesture, something that has been suggested many times in the past (which I still don't support but is still far less contentious that setting up a new government body).
-
One question for the establishment of the Voice itself.
The proposed amended provisions don't actually outline the structure or powers the Voice will have, which is still a major concern of many Australians. Instead, it allows for the Australian Parliament to define it through regular legislation. While this is being touted by Labor as a smart or good or effective way to go about it (perhaps disingeniously) because it allows the Voice to be adjusted with regular legislation, I see this as concerning for two reasons:
-
Firstly, in order to pass any legislation in the Senate, Labor needs the support of the Greens. Supposing this referendum does pass, and the Labor government tries to pass the first legislation to establish the Voice, they would need to negotiate with the Greens who have an even more radical and woke conception of what the Voice would be
-
Secondly, I can easily see how these provisions can be abused by woke legal activists through the High Court, getting them to extend the Voice through implied powers. The wording 'make make representations to Parliament and the Executive Government' could easily be made to mean any number of things, 'representations' is a pretty malleable word (you could quite sensibly, if disingenuously interpret this to mean they should have representation in the House of Representatives, for example). The ability to 'make representations' being in the Constitution could easily overrule any regular legislation made by judicial activism to give certain de facto powers to the Voice (perhaps this is the point). The other provision is 'relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples', which given that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are in fact Australian citizens and are affected by literally everything in Australian politics from taxes to trade, one can easily see how this provision means 'everything'.
I strongly oppose the term 'First Peoples', which would bake a woke/progressive terminology and worldview into the Constitution.
And the thing that perhaps annoys me the most of all this, is when the Voice turns out to be a disaster in one form or another, which I'm nearly certain it will, there will be no way to actually get rid of it, now being constitutionally enshrined. This will be ATSIC 2.0 but there is no actual way to get rid of it and the corruption, even assuming the culture and media is actually conducive to it. There is no way that another referendum will occur in my lifetime to repeal this amendment. This is what annoys me so much, that this is a social 'Tesla valve' (or Cthulhu only swims left, or the slippery slope), if this does pass there is no reversing it. Reversing it would require a mass genuinely reactionary popular sentiment (on the level of Orban at least) to happen in Australia, which won't happen, and even if it did happen would introduce new different problems of its own.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Given the prevelance of single sex friendship groups and associations compared to evenly balanced friendship groups, there functionally are male societies and female societies.
I get your point, but I am yet to meet a man or woman who can reproduce asexually.
does Feminism actually have any realistic solution to how men should react to female promiscuity?
Feminism's answer or 'solution' to any problem is always the same. Men have to be more and more accommodating, to the point of remaking men if necessary. If women are unhappy, that's because men (i.e. the patriarchy) are making them unhappy! Women feeling like sluts and devalued after years of sleeping around! That's only because the negative spooks the patriarchy is slut shaming you and trying to control your sexuality! Men have to learn to accept women's sexuality (sexuality, of course, means sleeping around)! Women feeling unfulfilled after 20 years climbing the corporate ladder and having no family? That's only because the patriarchy is trying to push you back into oppressive gender roles (at a abstract, psychic level if necessary if not discrimination can be found)! Men need to accept women can be girlbosses! Feminism is just a long list of demanding men accommodated more destructive behaviours from women and give them more.
Really, this is nothing new, this is how women have excerted influence for millennia. Women complains, men accommodates or makes changes. Moral panics. The difference is that feminism is leading women down a endless self-perpetuating death spiral, a train with no brakes. Other moral panics would reach a critical point and dissipate. Here, the dissipation that feminism is pointing at is women, men and society itself.
Because there isn't a seperate 'women society' and a seperate 'men society' that are independent from each other where people from each society can voluntarily elect to interact just for a bit of fun. Nor is this some kind of financial transation for a novelty item where people can just pay the exorbitant price, or choose not to and suffer nothing for it.
This situation is incredibly dysfunctional to society and if it continues, it can quite easily become ruinous. And sure, yeah the 'market' will correct itself eventually even if takes the whole thing crashing and burning. I'm sure the Romans with their civilisation burning would have been comforted if they only knew that other empires will come after theirs.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
While we're discussing DeBoer, I want to briefly talk about his post immediately prior to this one, Of Course You Know What Woke Means.
In typical DeBoer fashion, he makes a lot of poignant points about the nature of the woke, but ultimately misses the forest for the trees. Woke isn't a 'school of social and cultural liberalism', nor is the 'woke approach to solutions to politics is relentlessly individualistic'. DeBoer does what virtually every old school anti-woke materialist socialist/Marxist does when talking about the woke - completely ignore the reality the woke/critical social justice is a leftist movement that shares some roots (even if it has developed distinctly) with the Marxism that DeBoer and people like him support. DeBoer obviously would rather incorrectly lay the blame squarely at the feet of 'liberalism' (the arch-nemesis of Marxism), then in anyway implicate Marxist concepts through association with the woke. While DeBoer does vaguely allude to the woke being 'leftist', it's pretty clear DeBoer believes that wokism is liberalism that has evolved into a quasi-leftist movement, rather than wokism genuinely descending from leftism and overtaking liberal sentiment.
Marcuse was not liberal. Angela Davis is not liberal. Bell Hooks was not liberal. Ibram Kendi is not liberal. The underlying ideology and philosophy of woke is not liberal. The fact that 'liberals' have been adopting this ideology while still (mis)labelling themselves liberal does not make woke liberal.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Sorry, but it's one study cherry-picked by the Guardian that just so happens to fit their political bias and serves as good clickbait fodder.
The article even implicitly admits if flirs in the face of most research.
Other studies have measured some financial and health benefits in being married for both men and women on average, which Dolan said could be attributed to higher incomes and emotional support, allowing married people to take risks and seek medical help.
I'm sure it could. Almost sounds like there's benefits to being married.
Also I would add that 'happiness' is a fleeting and imprecise measure in my opinion. I think modern society puts far too much emphasis on hedonia rather than eudaimonia.
This article was amended on 30 May 2019 to remove remarks by Paul Dolan that contained a misunderstanding of an aspect of the American Time Use Survey data.
This doesn't fill me with confidence.
I believe generalizations about gender are useless, as outliers in other cultures prove that the behaviors are arbitrary.
Do you believe the generalisation that men are stronger and larger than women to be useless, and outliers prove them arbitrary?
Do you believe there are no innate social/psychological differences between men and women, and it's all just socially/culturally contingent?
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
You're basically just asking what is the "True Church" of Jesus Christ which is a much larger question, and something a non-believer probably isn't qualified to answer as it goes to theology.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
it's not men who need to be convinced to be married
I agree with you on this point
(the opposite direction was true of married women)
I straight up don't believe this unless you have a source.
Being screwed over by family courts is only relevant if you're having kids with someone
Alimony and asset splits can be and often are brutal to the husband even if no kids are involved. Kids just make it worse.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
You are probably correct, I was mostly just grasping at straws (though I am reasonably confident at least as far as Amazon and PNG are concerned)
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Depends how large you're allowing a place to be for you question. Certainly there's Amish/Mennonite communities who don't use mobile phones.
You could probably find various tribes in the jungle Amazon, Papua New Guinea and maybe the Congo Jungle (I'm not just referring to the completely uncontacted tribes) who use very little technology, period. Maybe some nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples in Sahara/Sahel and the Eurasian Steppe (Mongolia?) I'm starting to run out of places. Some small groups in the Himalayas, Yunnan Mountains etc maybe? Extremely remote Laos? There's probably more tiny groups in other really remote and inaccessible areas but let's call it there.
Trade itself isn't zero-sum. That is, the very act of exchanging goods and services between mutually consenting and informed parts is not zero-sum, and is in-fact mutually beneficial.
The issue is 1) rentseeking behaviour by organisations and individuals which is self explanatory, 2) goods, particularly exotic commodities are finite, so there is competiton and an incentive to monopolise. But this doesn't change the fact that trading in of itself is mutually beneficial. Preventing someone else from trading because you traded with a third party and they did not is still a net benefit overall. You and the third party trading partner benefit. The trading competitor who was muscled out of the market doesn't lose anything except the opportunity to trade and benefit themselves, destroyed and captured ships notwithstanding.
More options
Context Copy link