Well libertarianism (which is most promenant in the United States) failing to address racial issues is exactly the source of its racism. The assumptions that "everyone starts at the same level" is problematic to say the least and this blindness leads to some absurd positions on welfare and how to solve the issue of racial disparity. Especially considering how racial disparity and economics are inherently tied together, Libertarians (who promote a specific set of economic policies) seem unable to account for that linkage in a meaningful way at best, and at worst their blindness is intentional.

And how on Earth would you try to claim that Communism is anti-Semitic?




How is it simply cultural? Economic oppression and lack of opportunity are as important to what leads to these factors as any single cultural aspect.

http://www.boston.com/Boston/politicalintelligence/2012/01/ron-paul-says-victim-sex-harassment-bears-some-responsibility-for-resolution/fyCUfBYPwVLj4eLcE4YnPI/index.html

^Yet more reason to not take Ron Paul seriously. He's more of a meme than a politician.

The meritocratic aspect of Libertarianism is "color-blind" in the strict sense that minorities do not generally have as much capital as white people. I wouldn't call this "racism" though, because poor people are pretty universally ****ed at this level regardless of their skin color.

The rational, profit- and freedom-maximizing aspect of Libertarianism is very much color-sighted racism, in addition to all other forms of prejudice. This is an unfortunate consequence of the fact that race, national identity, age, gender, birth weight, BMI, medical history, adolescent height, marital status, religion, native language, last name initial*, and basically every other human trait or behavior has a statistically significant effect on something an employer desires. "Freedom-robbing" affirmative action laws are the only things preventing employers from basing hiring decisions on actuarial tables, which should be the absolute last thing anybody should want.

(N.b. affirmative action laws are anti-discriminatory, the most pronounced impact being a list of questions you can't legally ask job applicants - such as their age, marital status, religion, political affiliations, etc. It is outright illegal for firms to set racial hiring quotas in the United States. If someone complains about affirmative action they are completely full of **** and you have my permission to hit them in the face with a rock until they gurgle blood.)

[sub](* Einav and Yariv, Journal of Economic Perspectives - Vol. 20, No. 1 - Winter 2006, pp. 175-188.)[/sub]

No. The real problem is that people are different.

But his logic is sound, it takes two to tango.

Republicans: I dare you to nominate Rick Santorum.

First, racism has to do with the belief that certain people are inherently inferior. It is possible to make true observations about sets of people being more or less advantaged with out being racist.

Second, while I can grant that looking at statistics are sometime going to make sense, you make it sound like if we don't actively combat it, hiring will turn into a by the numbers statistical number crunching game. There aren't a lot of jobs were you have enough highly qualified applicants that broad statistics are going to be more valuable than a case by base evaluation. Yes people will get boned when you have a lot more labor in one area than there is demand for. Lots of people get boned. Young people with no experience get boned worst of all. There isn't a lot to do about that, in any case.

You have to consider what kind of society would even implement affirmative actions laws in the first place. Unless we are considering the trivial case of the benevolent dictator, a society isn't going to even think about affirmative action unless there is a strong cultural push away from racism, in which case the problem is already on the mend. You can prevent discrimination as a policy, but there's really no way to prevent hiring managers from being prejudiced. Affirmative action has very little power to do any good, and can hardly be considered a solution to the problems you mentioned. Anti-intellectualism, crime, and suspicion of majority race and culture are all significant social issues that aren't effectively dealt with by economic policy. Libertarianism tries to establish very fundamental universal ground rules, with the idea that if people can agree on those, they can have a wide array of really good or really bad values in other respects, and everyone will still have a basic level of protection. Sure people won't always hold themselves to those, but it's at least an effort. All of your solutions involve the assumption that they have a society that will support them. It's a hell of a lot easier to get people to agree on a few universals than to get them to agree on every last detail of your particular plan.



The ones people complain about most loudly are the ones where less qualified application get a position because they are from a certain race. This is most common in universities. The biggest issue with this particular situation, as far as I can tell, is that the people is actually helps are the exceptions who didn't really need it, while the people it was trying to help never even made it into the running.



Fixed that logic for you.

Indeed, they are guilty of the same thing that multicultural liberals are, the "oh if we just pretend these differences don't exist then they will eventually go away."

While I agree that pointing out racial disparities is not inherently racist, the two arenas where racism becomes relevant are: 1) The analysis of what lead to and maintains those disparities and 2)what solutions are possible and/or desirable to the issue.

I would say that libertarian accounts for 1 and 2 fall short of being adequate and would go as far as to say they are racist in that they ignore the structural racism of the past and present.



I agree with your analysis of libertarians here, although I disagree with your conclusion that people are "just different."

The history of racism is much more complex than liberals, conservatives, and libertarians are willing to admit sometimes. The explanations tend to be along the lines of your last sentence as opposed to examining the very particular nature of the origins of racism.



Was this a joke?



Without getting into the rest of the post for now, how does this set Libertarianism apart from any other politic? Every proposed or actual system aspires to having "fundamental universal ground rules" and conceptions of how the random X individual fits into that system.

What sets libertarianism apart is the radical individualism, however, that is often seen (rightfully so in my opinion) as ideologically blind leading to absurd conclusions and prescriptions.

No, racism is the belief that the people of a race are inherently different and that these differences justify treating them differently. It is impossible to act upon observations about a race of people, true or otherwise, without engaging in racism.

One, a "by the numbers statistical number crunching game" already influences hiring decisions. An employer's health insurance provider uses all of this information, including the illegal stuff, to engage in price discrimination. The United States healthcare system directly provides a disincentive for firms to hire classes of people with higher healthcare costs (such as married women of child-bearing age.)

Two, you do not need to be an actuary or a statistician to understand why this is a serious danger.

Black Americans are statistically more likely to be criminals than white Americans. A company with a policy of only hiring white people will therefore hire fewer criminals than companies without this policy. If you represent the decision as a matrix game it is clear that this is a Nash equilibrium strategy.

In other words: yes, if firms were free to engage in broad discriminatory hiring policies, they would definitely do it.

The following argument has the exact same logical structure:

"You can prevent theft as a policy, but there's really no way to prevent thieves from stealing. Laws have very little power to do any good, and can hardly be considered a solution to theft."

lol.

Hiring quotas are unconstitutional, period. This has been upheld infinity times. The only people who complain about affirmative action are stupid racists who would rather blame the filthy browns instead of accepting personal responsibility for their failings.

Grutter v. Bollinger gave a partial exception to universities (5-4 decision, hurf) on the basis that the proportions of accepted students were approximately equal to the proportions of students who applied. The core of the argument is that universities need to maintain some acceptable "balance," and I honestly do not think they are wrong. Without racist/sexist universities admissions policies every single university in the United States would be an intellectually-stagnant literally-100% middle-class suburban white girl monoculture.

(fyi it's because our metrics for secondary school academic performance are biased toward white girls for some reason, not because they are smarter or deserve to be there more. Makes you think, doesn't it? Well, maybe not, but it makes me think.)

That wasn't half as profound as you thought it would be. Misanthropy is so 2011.

Absolutely not. If you ignore this stance then you're as bad as those people who dress up in fur suits on the internet and complain about how people make fun of them. I pressed sexual harassment charges against some chick who wouldn't **** me at Checkers (not at work, in the drive thru) because listening to sexual harassment is considered sexual harassment and the policemen came and now she's in prison being ****ed up the ****ter in the gay neo-nazi tranny inflation fetish manslaughter wing of her local prison.

Yeah, take that you *****.

Who wants to be couped up in some room with a load of other people listening to some old guy droning on and on about the minutae of a subject unlikely to be of any practical value? Even if it's theoretically interesting, why am I spending so long there that my brain starts to ooze out the sides of my head. It might be that men (slightly moreso than women) are just more interested in learning a trade (which can rarely be done at college) and getting the hell out. Just an idea.

I've also read theories about how college tends to make heavy use of verbal intelligence, an area where women generally outperform men. And also I've read that women are able to learn more than men from the lecture format (or at least encode them in a way more in keeping with college success).

University is for women that want to get the whorin' out of them before they succumb to marriage. Men are there to oblige.

University is for parents that want to get their kids the hell out of the house for four years before they move back in. Parents are willing to oblige with obscene amounts of money.

Or, if they don't have enough money, they're willing to stand by while while their kids willingly saddle themselves with ridiculous amounts of debt and they don't dare question the sanity of such a decision. Ha ha! We don't care if you're a slave for the next thirty years! 4 years of freedom for us!

Good for Ron Paul. If you go around wearing tight pants, it might not technically be your fault when someone comments on your bulge. If you wear them again, and it happens again, then stfu, it's your fault.

Do you think also that if you go to work and your boss says 'nice rack' to you and you say 'please don't say that' and then go into work the next day and he says it again you should stfu because it's your fault, shoulda quit?

***** was asking for it by leaving the kitchen.

Actually trades and vocational school count as post-secondary education, and in OECD nations women dominate both these programs as well as universities. So, no, the men aren't learning a trade. Mostly they're finding unskilled labour jobs in the resources sectors and getting laid off at 30 when the arthritis starts to set in.

It might just be that men (slightly moreso than women) are just more interested in dropping out of high school (which can rarely be done at college) and smoking pot in their parents' basement. Just an idea.

First, there is zero evidence for Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. Second, nobody - neither men nor women - can learn from the lecture format. Third, post-secondary completion rates are not even a thing; it's possible to explain the gender disparity by the fact that men generally take more difficult programs than women (STEM.)

Wtf are you on about. Maybe my sarcasm detector is just broken

Alan's just being weird. I have no idea what JM's excuse is.

No. There are actual cases of sexual harassment. But, if you're wearing a push-up bra and a low-cut top, I'd have to ask... uh. Why are you showing them off if you don't want compliments?

Anyway, Ron Paul will dismantle the TSA.

Ron Paul won't dismantle anything, because he's not going to be President.

Brain damage caused by inhaling black mold spores from his indoor lawn.

Ron Paul will close Gitmo.

Ron Paul will end any effort to give Americans universal health care.

ahahahaha

Just like Obama did I'm sure

You people just don't understand how to save America


USA EVERY DAY USA EVREY DAY USA EVERY DYA

6yknb gmgb

Maybe high school shouldn't suck so much for males. I like how most people try to spin it like males just aren't as mature (as evidenced by their number of trips to the vice principal's office!) and that's why they don't do as well in school. Instead of.. I don't know.. maybe the school format is letting them down.



I don't doubt number two. Out of curiosity, how would you teach?

Sorry, don't know how to play this video :(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXCZVmQ74OA

Looks like Ron Paul is going after the Juggalo vote

Is that real? That ad looks straight out of Idiocracy.

Some of the motion graphics work is pretty slick, but otherwise that ad is hilariously bad.

Yes, definitely. Some studies have suggested there is a causative relationship between early educational successes (credible encouragement during the formative years) and post-secondary continuation. That is to say, males perform poorly in public school, which essentially convinces them from a young age that they are unsuitable for school. This is similar to how teachers with math anxiety subconsciously force those fears on their students. I swear to God that locking your kids in a room with a pedophile would **** them up less than putting them in a classroom with a public school teacher. Pedophile probably has better intentions, too.

One thing I found really interesting is that men who will eventually attend university are actually more likely to have dropped out of high school at some point than males as a whole. I think this says a great deal about how well public school teachers are helping their male students.

The Socratic Method or Harkness Method. Basically small peer study groups with mentorship elements, where students are led to understanding by directly reasoning about the material and convincing others through argumentation.

Wouldn't the Harkness Method put introverts at a disadvantage?

For example, in searching for information about the method, I came across this:

Well, Ron Paul is projected to finish 3rd in Iowa anyway, so Kelly Clarkson, Chuck Norris, and Sarn can all shut the hell up about it.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/President/2012/0103/Iowa-caucus-results-Deadlock-looks-unlikely-to-provide-clarity

Santorum won Iowa, a few hundred votes over Romney.

How badly do Iowa Republicans want to hand Obama the election? Rick Santorum.

A few hundred or 13?

I'm seeing 18 now. But yes, premature call.

Edit: Oh good, the Iowa Republican party has misplaced vote totals.