prottog

The value of some places is the very fact that they're low density.

Exactly. Just look at a satellite image of Atherton, CA or Lexington MA; they're low-density residential places with plenty of greenery where each lot is sizable and crucially, near major economic centers with plenty of high-paying jobs. They're desirable precisely because they allow you more breathing room while being geographically close to the hustle and bustle of a big city.

Indeed, which is why these DEI initiatives and workplace indoctrination are dystopian.

Very dystopian, and reminiscent of countless other "social revolutions" that happened in the not-so-distant history, all with terrifying results.

Your society would be doomed to forever look back at historical grievances and never make progress.

As Ibram X. Kendi says: "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." Under your and his vision, there will never come a day when people aren't discriminated for things they had no control over.

Or weren't given access to the same loans (including federally subsidized loans)

I'm not sure which time period you're talking about, but if it's the Boston Fed 1992 research on mortgage loans, then it has had legitimate academic challenges to its methodology.

So as a white male, when you inherit your parent's house

The same advantage goes to a black male who inherits his parent's house, and the same disadvantage to anyone of any color who did not inherit a house.

where most research has been done for white ethnicities

The US was nearly 90% white as recently as 1960, and was 75% white as of the 2000 census, so of course most research that has been done in the past was done with white research subjects.

Ultimately, nobody serious rejects the fact that there was past de jure racial discrimination against blacks in this country. What many people challenge is the notion that present de jure discrimination is the only way to remedy past de jure discrimination.

Both are parts of who I am and neither deserves shame or uplifting.

This is a good point. I've always thought that my esteem of anybody should not change based on immutable characteristics of that person, or other factors that they had no material choice in being.

if we follow the meritocratic ideology that everyone has the same opportunities available to them, it would be a natural conclusion

It's a natural-sounding conclusion that has no evidentiary basis in reality. Different cultural and ethnic groups value and specialize in different things, which over generations make for significant differences in the average member of those groups.

This is one of the biggest fallacies when it comes to policies that incorporate preferences based on racial, gender, or whatever other demographic basis you can think of: that absent biases (or "structures of oppression" or what have you), each and every subsection of society will reflect the composition of the whole more or less perfectly.

Asians are 6.3% of the US population yet comprise only 0.1% of the NFL (literally a handful of players among 1500+ in the active roster). Is it because football racially discriminates against Asians? No, it's because Asians as a whole are not very interested in being professional football players. There's nothing that stops the odd individual of Asian descent from making it to the NFL.

Women are roughly half of the population yet comprise only 13% of taxicab drivers. Is there a taxicab union that's preventing women from joining? No, on the whole women aren't very interested in being taxicab drivers. There's nothing that stops the odd woman from being one, though.

So on and so forth for literally every slice of life you can think of; you will never find anything that reflects the demographics of the underlying society. Hell, even the demographics of the 50 states don't reflect the demographics of the country as a whole. Vermont is only 1.5% black, whereas Alabama is nearly 30% black. By that metric, Vermont would be 20x as discriminatory against black people, wouldn't it?

a more honest appraisal about what the real obstacles are for Black and Hispanic students

Different cultural and ethnic groups value different things. Virtually nobody who clamors for more black and Hispanic representation in Harvard's undergrad class, for example, also clamors for more Asian representation in the NFL, even though that disparity is much, much greater, with only a single-digit number of current players.

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

Elbonian Xtremesunshine Time

Ha, good one! One can only hope the Elbonian Parliament will have the sense to abolish this stupid Xtremesunshine time and observe one time zone year-round.

government can spend money selflessly

"Selflessly" insofar as everyone involved has no incentives, internal or external, that direct their behavior one way or another; which is to say, not selflessly at all.

The government isn't a machine that takes action for the good of the citizens with no feeling. It's a messy organization composed of people who are all looking out for their salaries, what makes their boss look good or their rivals look bad, whether they win the next election, and maybe sometimes the stated mission of the organization or the good of the citizens. And moreover, it does all that with the might of the law, the monopoly on violence.

If it's a similar amount of money for a similar level of outcome, I'd much rather the people use the money to better society and not government, for those reasons.

Thomas Sowell, he's basically the guy to victim blame minorities into saying that being poor is their fault

What a demeaning way to describe a human being with an incredible personal story and his life's work. And it's wrong, too: if you simplify into a sentence or two what he says about minorities (and his body of work extends far beyond that), it's that well-meaning government policies often incentivize minorities into entering cycles of poverty, and that minorities should depend on themselves first and foremost and not the government to improve their lot.

Substantially equal in terms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? In equality before the law? In being judged not for the color of their skin, but the content of their character? Yes, and we should strive to make that even more so. Perfectly equal in all respects, including access to resources? Obviously not. If you define equality of opportunity as how many horseback riding lessons and unpaid internships a child is put through, then no, there is no such equality found in America or anywhere else in the world. Even the most egalitarian nations of the world in Scandinavia (the subject of this thread to begin with) have rich people and poor people.

A child of a poor single mother, Barack Obama, made his way to the highest office of the land (not to mention significant personal wealth), whereas a child of a billionaire, John du Pont, died in prison as a convicted murderer. Both had equal opportunities to make something of themselves in a cultural, legal, and economic framework that values the individual.

In this land of equality of opportunity, 93% of people born to parents in the bottom quintile of incomes ended up earning more than their parents, with 57% ending up in a higher quintile; and a full 60% of people born to parents in the top quintile of incomes ended up in a lower quintile[0].

Meanwhile, in Norway, famed for its egalitarian attitudes and highly redistributive policies, a higher percentage were able to climb out of the bottom quintile, but a similar percentage held on to their parents' top-quintile ranking[1]. The country has more billionaires per capita than the US, and still has a legally separate and privileged group of people, the monarchy, who by definition are unequal from the rest of the populace; and it's only a few generations removed from having legal privileges for the aristocracy.

[0] https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_a...

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02_econ...

According to your first source, "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to economic growth" but it does not lead to economic stagnation or shrinkage either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to income growth" but does not lead to income decrease either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to wage growth" but does not lead to wage decrease either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to job creation" but does not lead to job destruction either. That is to say, cutting the top tax rate has no correlation with any of those four items.

So if taking more or less taxes from the rich results in no meaningful difference in ordinary American lives, shouldn't the government then default to taking less? The other way would be just wasteful. And if your argument is that no, in fact the additional tax revenue from the rich is helpful because it funds various redistributive social programs, then my counterargument is that what those programs seem to be most effective at is incentivizing creating an unemployable underclass at the taxpayer's expense[0] while enriching politically connected players.

[0]: See Thomas Sowell's extensive body of research on the general welfare of black Americans before and after the Great Society programs of the 60s.

I'll own the snark (and point out that height is only non-transferable if you aren't trying hard enough, a la Harrison Bergeron), but my point stands. Life is full of situations where someone has it better off than someone else in whatever dimension you care to look at. I believe in equality of opportunity but not equality of outcome, which is what GP seemed to suggest in coveting the personal freedoms of a billionaire.

I'd love to be as tall and athletic as an NBA player. Perhaps a height tax is in order to more fairly redistribute people along the vertical dimension.

I did not make that assumption, with the idea that in countries with free (or freer, at any rate) market-based economies with little to no capital controls, the rising tide lifts all boats, including those of the proletariat without capital, to a standard of living higher than countries with unfree economies and significant capital controls.

In fact, in two of the countries that presently have significant capital controls (China and Russia), even your human capital is controlled with internal passports that limit where in your own country you can move to.

Of course, I likewise don't dispute that I don't know what your preferences are. My original statement ("you likely wouldn't want to") was intended to be a general statement, not for you in particular as an individual.

Almost every country with significant capital controls are ones you likely wouldn't want to voluntarily move to.

Do you not believe in the value of those things?

Separately, every institute or person that has published anything has an agenda; so the fact that this particular institute has a mission that you perceive to align with their words doesn't mean that their words are wrong. It is by definition an ad hominem fallacy.

you got the benefits of the system, pay back into it

The "system" isn't the government, though it's easy to muddle that line, considering some developed countries have government spending that's over half of the GDP (with Norway sitting at around a fifth as of 2021); and the existence of a government that facilitates the "system", which is in reality the private activities of the people, does not make it that without that particular government the system will not exist at all.

Imagine a parent who tells a fully-grown child well into his adulthood that they have an ever-increasing claim on what the child produces by virtue of having given birth to and raised him. Does that not sound abusive? That's not the kind of relationship I want with my government. The government, or at least the American one, is meant to serve the people, not rule over them and allow the people to keep whatever scraps the government allows them to keep.

Every time you perform a service for somebody or make a widget for somebody -- basically any economic activity -- you are paying back into the system by fulfilling a demand that someone else has. And not just remunerative efforts: every time you pick up a cigarette butt off the street that you didn't smoke, or every time you watch someone else's kid for a night, or you volunteer at a local soup kitchen. Those are all ways that people pay back into the system.

Let's not make the mistake of thinking taxation is the only way, or even the most important and effective way. Many roles that are currently performed by government funded via taxation have only been that way very recently in human history, and I'm in no way convinced that this is either optimum or necessary.

Nobody has time to stand in line for hours to vote. Not even retired people would do that!

Someone working 3 jobs

According to the BLS[0], less than 5% of working-aged people hold more than one job, and presumably a fraction of that have three jobs. Surely society shouldn't optimize for a small minority of the population.

doesn't have time to stand in line for hours

Data on this isn't great, but one source I found[1] puts a cursory total average across all states in 2020 at around 15 minutes, with the worst average wait time being Indiana at 42.1 minutes. It's confirmed by a 2020 academic paper[2] which puts the nationwide median at 14 minutes.

I can imagine that there are outliers who have to wait unpleasantly long, and that same paper referenced above indicates that people may have unequal voting wait times based on where they live. Ideally voting should be easy for all those eligible to vote.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat36.htm

[1] https://www.lgbtmap.org/img/maps/citations-polling-place-lin...

[2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.00024.pdf

I'm an immigrant myself, having moved around the US quite a bit and currently living in a part where there aren't very many people from my country of origin. I've never once considered proximity to a large community of people sharing my ethnic background as important in choosing where to live, but of course YMMV.

It's funny because I've always thought of LA as a conglomeration of suburbia, but perhaps you're referring to "generic suburbia" as one that's composed primarily of typical white Americans? Then naturally by definition you're not going to have the same kind of access to whichever cultural group that is missing from that town. But I disagree that those kinds of places are entirely devoid of "soul", as the GP put it. It'd be like criticizing Los Angeles (plurality Hispanic, approximately 0% Danish[0]), for not having Danish festivals and grocery stores, or Jackson, MS (roughly 80% black and less than half a percent Asian[1]) for not having enough authentic Asian restaurants.

Sure, there's an argument to be made that you can find representation of anything in a big enough city, and that holds in places like NYC or LA. But that's a truism.

[0] https://www.statimetric.com/us-ethnicity/Danish

[1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/jacksoncitymiss...

The tragedy is those who want to engage but can't. Due to registration requirements, ersatz poll taxes, difficulty of getting to and from poll sites or keeping tabs on the election calendar.

I hear about this every now and then, but is it an issue in any real number? Maybe the problem of the "difficulty of getting to and from poll sites", which I can see arising due to the nature of this country being large, spread out, and automobile-centric.

Even Georgia, which was recently under fire for so-called voter restriction laws, hands out voter ID cards for free or a non-driver state ID card for under $40 that lasts nearly a decade. I can only imagine that anyone who is unable to obtain one of those has much bigger problems than voting every few years.

Real estate isn't immune to the law of supply and demand, which mandate that you can only pick at most two out of size (or quality) of the housing unit, location (and the quality thereof), and price. Most places in the US are either affordable and boring or the other way around.

soulless suburbs where there's literally nothing

This is a bit of a reductionist take on those younger people's part. You can have just as much fun at the TGI Friday's at your local strip mall as you can at the hippest restaurant no one else has ever heard of in Brooklyn. It's just a matter of who you spend that time with, and how you perceive that time, in the Stoic tradition.

I mean, of course, but is it really the best use of the limited resources of a nation? Germany isn't playing to its natural competitive advantage by pursuing solar, vs. someplace like Morocco. Nuclear would be a much better option, but we know how that ended up.

How does that follow?

We've been shaming people for decades about being fat

The shaming has been decreasing in Western societies with the "body positivity" or "health at any size" movement, if I'm not mistaken.

It's so strange that a mostly cloudy country at 51ºN spent so much money developing solar energy.

many of them are literally a 10 minute bus ride to downtown

Is that 10-minute bus ride a pleasant experience on a daily basis? If you live in a quiet part of the city but must commute back and forth to downtown during which you run a non-negligible risk of a particular unpleasant encounter, then you don't gain a whole lot by being in that quiet part.

I'd wager that most rural places about the size of Vicksburg (~20k population) are "bad" in that same way. I'm sure there are a few exceptions, but none come to the top of my head.

I live in one of those states and am visibly nonwhite and haven't stepped inside a church in a long while. Life is great here.