Seriously, Richard? Dawkins Pushes TERF Declaration

You mean getting caught up in a conflicting narrative. Get the government out of my wallet while also demanding their social security. Yeah, that one's a unique situation that Republicans tend to embrace, and it's silly, because at the end of the day, they're right to be upset the government fucks with their social security check, it's just they also need to extend that empathy to everyone else. Maybe add in everyone should have housing, should have food to eat. These things on their own are generally agreed upon, but the dividing line seems to be where money comes into play: that being, how much can the government take out of my wallet rather than how much can I just donate myself.

I think people want to do good, and want to feel good doing it. I love my little mutual aid group. You see the faces on little kids light up when you show up with big boxes of food, and toys, and for a few moments there's nothing in the world that can bring you down. The problem is, logistically speaking, charity isn't enough. Now, my mutual aid group seeks to create permanent networks for distributing goods, but we're very tiny, and the need is very great. At some point, something on the national level needs to change. To put it another way, we can only give water to thirsty people so long as we can access the source. If that dries up because the people upstream are hoarding it, we're all in trouble.

Anyway, point is, conflicting narratives can happen with liberals, too. For example, Obama got the Nobel peace prize, and proceeded to drop more bombs on Syria and Afghanistan than any previous president, and people still love the guy. Cults of personality (not talking liking the guy, just defending against all criticism) happen on both sides there, too, though. Look at the people who love Trump. Liberals were drawn to Obama's intelligence, gentle speaking, and he was cool, let's be honest. Conservatives are drawn to Trump because he "says the things others are afraid to say," and you know what? They're right.

Trump is the reactionary result of Obama. Obama was the reactionary result of Bush. Reactionaries are at the root of the issue on both sides of the liberal/conservative see-saw, IMO. Getting people pulled out of that nasty cycle is one of my goals.

..and that's why black people who want to vote need to pass a complex literacy test that everyone in Squid Game would die from if they had to take.

Here's a liberal trigger word: meritocracy.

Which VIP are you?
Lion? Tiger? Ram?

I haven't seen Squid Game.

I have no issue with meritocracy.

Now list how many members of the 1% are ACTUALLY there on merit and not inheritance.

The top 1% is a long list, but a quick look at the top 10 wealthiest seems to confirm that their wealth is a function of their efforts and not of inheritance.

If only the world (or even just America) was a meritocracy.

When I was a teenager my mom talked to a friend of hers and got me my first official job as a minimum wage dishwasher. Bill Gates' mom talked to a friend of hers and got him a contract with IBM.

"Meritocracy."

Anthony’s Huber’s right to protect his community. His parent’s right to have justice for their son.

Don’t be stupid. You’re being as intentionally obtuse as 14th doctor is.

Musk started out with $100,000 loan from his parents, who owned an emerald mine in what was then apartheid Africa. He denies his family ever owned an emerald mine, and plenty of economic forums deny it, because the lie has to be maintained about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, but his father admitted it:
https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2

I mean, this is the same man who claims he founded Tesla (after a lawsuit against the actual founders), so it's wise to expect bullshit from him. He bought Tesla. He didn't found it, and aside from his so-called genius boondoggles that people lap up for some reason, he's about as bright as a stump.


Gates' mom was on the board of trustees that worked with IBM. She got them to buy Bill's OS that didn't exist yet.
Bezos friends and family gave him $1 million, and he got millions from his buddies in the finance sector to start Amazon.
Trump was given a "small loan" of $1 million to start his businesses.
Zuckerberg was given $100,000 loan by his parents.

All this bullshit that the super wealthy don't inherit their money is wordplay, just ways to make it seem like they worked hard to get to where they were, and they've earned their billions. No billionaire works hard enough to justify being a billionaire. You'll always see these surveys by Forbes and WSJ where the top 1% talk about being self-made, but it's almost entirely bullshit. I offer one such example below.

Source: https://inequality.org/research/selfmade-myth-hallucinating-rich/

That article is from 2012. The current, in 2021, lowest level to be on the Forbes 400 is now $2.1 billion.

Oh, one more because why not?

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/31/small-business-entrepreneurs-success-parents

Your Bill Gates example is only flawed if you can show that Bill Gates' background or performance didn't merit the contract. Bill Gates, after all, already had quite a background in software engineering. When he got the deal with IBM he'd been programming computers for 12 years, had taken college computer science and programming classes, had worked for several computing firms, and had started a software company.

If your mom had gotten you the contract at IBM in 1980, would you have been anywhere near as well positioned as Bill Gates to deliver a computer operating system? If not, then the difference wasn't simply your mothers' relative influence.

Anyway, I don't make any claim that American society is an ideal or perfect meritocracy, but generally, yes, it is meritocratic.

If it were meritocratic, farmers would be sitting on piles of money, as would caregivers, nurses, and spouses. In the US it's not what you know or how hard you work, it's who you know, and whose ass you're willing to lick to climb higher. Meritocracy in late stage capitalism is a mcguffin, used as a story anchor to keep people dreaming they'll someday be rich, and allowing the rich to write the laws that will keep them rich.

Although Huber arguably had that right (under, ironically, the 2nd Amendment), it did not enable him to act against the rights of others (e.g., Kyle Rittenhouse's right to lawful self-defense).

No such right per se. The state has the authority to adjudicate that, and it did.

You're taking things you desire and declaring them rights, but the implications of those things being rights are very disturbing.

A right to justice (VERY subjective) for one party in a legal dispute is automatically an anti-right for the other party.

I stated my case, because you seemed interested in discussing it.

Catching a whiff of the "labor theory of value" disease here.

Part of the merit is wisely choosing where to devote your efforts. You cannot just break a sweat every day and expect guaranteed prosperity.

No it isn't. Under this system, there is no merit in working hard just to subsist. You dismiss the hard work of people who keep you alive just so you can dream of bigger things from people who have no problem stepping on you. I mean, if it's your fetish to be stepped on by these people, that's your choice, but it has nothing to do with merit, and everything to do with privilege. I know you hate that word, but I don't give a fuck what you hate when it's true.

Those people's services are priced according to their market value.

Have you ever actually worked anywhere? Like in a professional occupation?

I hire people as part of my job. I can assure you, what they know and what they've accomplished are pretty much the determinative factors in their hiring.

Can who they know come into it? Sure and I'll tell you how: if someone I know is reliable and gives me a recommendation for a prospective employee, I weight that very heavily in the prospect's favor. If I trust X, and X says Y is a good hire, I'm inclined to think Y is a good hire. Y's still not going to get the job unless s/he's qualified, though.

As for ass-licking, I (and every other professional I know) are immediately suspicious of it. You don't get to be in a position of any responsibility without having at least a little understanding of human nature.

As opposed to what you're pushing, which leads to repression and stagnation.

I don't hate it. I jusy recognize it for the bullshit bingo camouflage ot really is.

I don't dismiss hard work. I live hard work, and I always have. And I have lived long enough to learn there can be no guarantees without compromises I am unwilling to support.

Today, in the Paladin school of "why so many people are fucking starving," I learned that farmers are poor because what they have holds so little market value, because eating is secondary to profit generation.
That, my friends, is the real disease. This idea that a banker or CEO has more to contribute to society than the person who literally puts food on your plate. This is how detached things have become in the US, and why so many are starting to fight back. They're realizing their value, not the value the market assigns them because bean counters figure that their full bellies are just owed them by the society from which they extract their wealth. This, the idea that some people are owed wealth while others must work for it, is the mindset of privilege. What's sad is people like Paladin have the order reversed, and put the weight of responsibility on the people who work the hardest, rather than on the people who exploit the most.

Collective responsibility for failure, personal responsibility for success. It's ass backwards, and it's the "meritocracy" the US embraces.

You say you recognize it, and then you fail to describe it. Instead, you describe your insecurities with it. Privilege is real, you live it every day, and that you get to remain ignorant of its effects reinforces that reality.

It's not about some subjective self-appraisal of what you think you can contribute, but whether what you offer is of significant enough value to someone else that it allows you to support yourself.

Who's starving?

Many farmers are quite wealthy. But if they are poor, then perhaps they should get out of farming. Either they're not very good at it, or what they produce doesn't have much market value.

"I work really hard producing statuettes of Millard Fillmore! Why should I starve?!?" "Because no one wants statuettes of Millard Fillmore and you waste your time and resources making them, dumbass."

"Henceforth, your income will be according to the Big Communist Book of Objective Value, comrade. Here's 20 rubles. Go buy yourself some gruel."

So farmers offer no value? According to @Paladin, the market doesn't value the work of farmers more than it does hedge fund managers. Do you feel hedge fund managers can give you something better than what farmers offer? Do you eat money on a regular basis, and have you spoken with your doctor about it?

You own NFTs, don't you?

Seriously, who in the ever loving fuck asks "who's starving?" while living in the United States in the 21st century. I get to deal with who is starving every day. You get to talk about how the people you wank off to make enough money to remodel God's bathroom despite them not doing anything to address the material needs of others, and then you support it with a clueless stab at your idea of communism.

Darkie might get an extra cracker crumb.

Privilege is a marketing campaign devised by bitterly envious people who realized nobody gives a damn when you wail about what you like to pretend the world owes you. So they flip it around. Instead of "I deserve what you have," it's "You DON'T deserve what YOU have."

I already said you have privilege, you don't have to keep proving it for everyone to see.

That's what it comes down to for many of them. God forbid the less than worthy find a step up, and if they do, you push them right back down and tell them to play by the rules that they don't listen to anyway.

Edit: Which brings us back around to the original topic of this thread, that being there are people who get pissed if the less than worthy start to gain ground. That has to be stomped into the dirt immediately. For these people, someone else having equitable rights is seen as privilege, while those who have privilege see it as their right.

Got the minutes for those meetings?

That's never true?
Never, ever, ever, ever, ever?
No corporation exploits slave labor at starvation wages in other countries?
No corporations slurp off your taxes more hungrily than what you imagine from "welfare queens"?
This never happens?
Never?
Wow, I wonder what the rich have done to earn this level of faith and trust from you.
Did they send some Penthouse pets over to fuck you cross-eyed and stupid, and hand feed you rocky road ice cream?
No?
They told you to go roll into a ditch and die?
Hmm...
You're an odd fella.

Hedge fund managers may be responsible for millions of dollars in assets.

I still eat food on a regular basis, so I imagine the farmers haven't starved quite yet.

Sure don't. Maybe I oughta look into them...

I do. Because I maintain it isn't happening.

You're dismissive of opportunities to make oneself more prosperous because the only people who'll embrace your philosophy are the people who never earned or accomplished anything in their lives.

Didn't say that. But it's not unconditionally bound to their needs and aspirations. Nor is it detached from the real-world demand for their crops. I live in Nebraska, and still there would be no farm subsidies if it were up to me.

I do not. Nor is that essential to any position I have stated.

Grow your own garden. What's that? You can't, because everyone is stacked on top of each other in congested urban hellscapes? Who's idea was that?

Nobody has proven it, because my "privilege" doesn't exist. It is just to be assumed without question, as another fashionable display of moral purity.