Curiosity killed the cat
There
are some things that puzzle me about various ideologies. Many things
that I have read seem strange and illogical to me. Perhaps my readers
could illuminate these issues by resolving some of the questions
burning in my mind.
First, a question for libertarians. Libertarians would like to eliminate all anti-discrimination laws, arguing that in the free market, competition is so tight and profit margins therefore so low that any employer who irrationally discriminates against some group (that is, the members of that group would not be less productive workers than others) will lose money and go out of business. When the discussion turns to eliminating welfare and replacing it with voluntary charity, libertarians argue that everyone would be so much richer that they could easily afford to give the same to the poor as is these days transferred in welfare. Someone might now notice a slight contradiction between these two common arguments. So which one is it in libertarianism: there is lot of economic slack to lose money to satisfy your preferences, or that there isn't?
Second, a question for right-wingers. As I understand it, you really don't like male homosexual activity very much. But if so, why are you so enthusiastic to implement various measures that are known to statistically increase male homosexual activity, such as having all-male schools for teenage boys (just look at Britain and all the buggerer politicians there to see what this leads to) and eliminating the practice of conjugal visits in prisons?
Next, a question for American leftists. I am not quite sure why your administration's decision to wiretap people's phone conversations with known and suspected terrorists somehow means that your country has become a totalitarian police state out of the famous novel "1984". Could you elaborate a little? In fact, I cannot even think of another country in which the question of its citizens' right to communicate with the enemy free of any surveillance would even be a least bit controversial. Can you name, say, three countries that lax anywhere? Second, just to prove that my cynical assumption about the real reason for your opposition isn't true, suppose Kerry had won in 2004 and his administration had enacted the exact same eavesdropping policy. Would you still similarly oppose it? Besides, how do you reconcile your opposition of this particular issue with your overall enthusiasm of increasing state control, and thus by necessity also surveillance, in every other aspect of the economy and the personal lives of people? Why do you leftists constantly fail to grasp how ridiculous you sound when you complain that the state has become too intrusive?
Next, a question for American right wingers. As I have understood it, you guys really oppose any idea of a national ID card, and even the whole idea of ID cards in general. For the libertarians, this is just some kind of residue macho posturing learned from some Robert A. Heinlein novel. Since the concept of personal identity is pretty much the cornerstone of a functioning society that consists of good consumers and individuals, why do you think that it would be a better system to have dozens of easily forged ID cards, or none at all whatsoever? Bonus question for those of you who also oppose illegal immigration: do you believe that a system where the American citizens never need to carry or show any kind of ID to live and work in USA (or to even enter and leave the country), but all visitors in USA are expected to show one at every turn, could possibly work even in theory?
Next, I have a question for feminists. Many of you (well all right, all of you) are leftists and socialists, and therefore you supposedly want to help men who belong to the bottom 90% of the society. How does it make you feel when everything that you achieve as feminists never seems to hurt the top 10% of males as intended, but all the shit flows downhill to splash on the lower-ranking men whose lives you otherwise presumably want to improve? How do you reconcile your leftism with the notion that the top males skate away scot free while all your policies and goals always end up hurting the marginal male? Or is there any truth in my cynical assumption that this is how it's actually supposed to work?
Then, a question for the American leftists. As I have read your writings, I have come to understand that a white man who moves to some lily-white suburb and zooms in hiscar SUV past any place where
he could actually physically meet minorities, but remembers in every
turn to emphasize that he is not a racist because racists are evil and
all races are exactly the same and races don't even exist, is morally
superior to another white man who chooses to live in an area full of
ethnic minorities and thus constantly encounters them in his daily
life, but believes that races exist as useful concepts and has some
complaints about the minorities and their general behaviour. Is this
correct? Are the right words really more important to you than the
actual concrete deeds? And incidentally, why did you twist the meaning
of the word "racist" to mean someone who believes that all races must
be treated equally and with the same expectations?
Last, a friendly and lighthearted question to Americans in general. When you use the word "football", of course you mean the game that is played in NFL, instead of soccer that the rest of the world means. But it's OK, different languages are different languages. Whereas all other ballgames tend to have good descriptive names (e.g. in basketball, the task is to throw a ball in a basket, and in baseball, the task is to run through all bases) the word "football" seems rather odd to describe the game, since feet are hardly used at all in the game except in the trivial sense of running. With the same logic, you could call basketball, tennis or almost any other ballgame "football". So why does this game have such an illogical name, since something like "carryball" or "tackleball" would be technically far more accurate, so the word "football" could be used for soccer in which the game is actually played with feet?
First, a question for libertarians. Libertarians would like to eliminate all anti-discrimination laws, arguing that in the free market, competition is so tight and profit margins therefore so low that any employer who irrationally discriminates against some group (that is, the members of that group would not be less productive workers than others) will lose money and go out of business. When the discussion turns to eliminating welfare and replacing it with voluntary charity, libertarians argue that everyone would be so much richer that they could easily afford to give the same to the poor as is these days transferred in welfare. Someone might now notice a slight contradiction between these two common arguments. So which one is it in libertarianism: there is lot of economic slack to lose money to satisfy your preferences, or that there isn't?
Second, a question for right-wingers. As I understand it, you really don't like male homosexual activity very much. But if so, why are you so enthusiastic to implement various measures that are known to statistically increase male homosexual activity, such as having all-male schools for teenage boys (just look at Britain and all the buggerer politicians there to see what this leads to) and eliminating the practice of conjugal visits in prisons?
Next, a question for American leftists. I am not quite sure why your administration's decision to wiretap people's phone conversations with known and suspected terrorists somehow means that your country has become a totalitarian police state out of the famous novel "1984". Could you elaborate a little? In fact, I cannot even think of another country in which the question of its citizens' right to communicate with the enemy free of any surveillance would even be a least bit controversial. Can you name, say, three countries that lax anywhere? Second, just to prove that my cynical assumption about the real reason for your opposition isn't true, suppose Kerry had won in 2004 and his administration had enacted the exact same eavesdropping policy. Would you still similarly oppose it? Besides, how do you reconcile your opposition of this particular issue with your overall enthusiasm of increasing state control, and thus by necessity also surveillance, in every other aspect of the economy and the personal lives of people? Why do you leftists constantly fail to grasp how ridiculous you sound when you complain that the state has become too intrusive?
Next, a question for American right wingers. As I have understood it, you guys really oppose any idea of a national ID card, and even the whole idea of ID cards in general. For the libertarians, this is just some kind of residue macho posturing learned from some Robert A. Heinlein novel. Since the concept of personal identity is pretty much the cornerstone of a functioning society that consists of good consumers and individuals, why do you think that it would be a better system to have dozens of easily forged ID cards, or none at all whatsoever? Bonus question for those of you who also oppose illegal immigration: do you believe that a system where the American citizens never need to carry or show any kind of ID to live and work in USA (or to even enter and leave the country), but all visitors in USA are expected to show one at every turn, could possibly work even in theory?
Next, I have a question for feminists. Many of you (well all right, all of you) are leftists and socialists, and therefore you supposedly want to help men who belong to the bottom 90% of the society. How does it make you feel when everything that you achieve as feminists never seems to hurt the top 10% of males as intended, but all the shit flows downhill to splash on the lower-ranking men whose lives you otherwise presumably want to improve? How do you reconcile your leftism with the notion that the top males skate away scot free while all your policies and goals always end up hurting the marginal male? Or is there any truth in my cynical assumption that this is how it's actually supposed to work?
Then, a question for the American leftists. As I have read your writings, I have come to understand that a white man who moves to some lily-white suburb and zooms in his
Last, a friendly and lighthearted question to Americans in general. When you use the word "football", of course you mean the game that is played in NFL, instead of soccer that the rest of the world means. But it's OK, different languages are different languages. Whereas all other ballgames tend to have good descriptive names (e.g. in basketball, the task is to throw a ball in a basket, and in baseball, the task is to run through all bases) the word "football" seems rather odd to describe the game, since feet are hardly used at all in the game except in the trivial sense of running. With the same logic, you could call basketball, tennis or almost any other ballgame "football". So why does this game have such an illogical name, since something like "carryball" or "tackleball" would be technically far more accurate, so the word "football" could be used for soccer in which the game is actually played with feet?
I'll try to field more than one of these questions, although, some of them I find just as baffling as you do.
Regarding libertarians, their position as you describe it does seem to contain a contradiction (although there is a possible resolution which I will mention in a second). I think this is an example of "activist"-type libertarians trying to prettify their ideas too much in an attempt to be all things to everyone. In fact, an employer who discriminates against workers will give himself a competitive disadvantage, and this will cause him to lose money compared to what he otherwise would have had. However, if things are going well for him otherwise, he could still readily make a net profit and stay in business. The idea that evil irrational racists will be struck by lightning and quickly thrown out of the market is silly. If the employer is discriminating consciously, it is essentially a form of luxury spending, or "charity" spending, albeit on a cause that many people very vocally dislike. Your comparison of discrimination to charity is apt.
The way in which your description might still sort of make sense is that some libertarians argue that a free market will significantly increase marginal returns to individual workers without necessarily increasing the profits of employers much -- that is, it would strongly encourage self-employment, etc. If true, this would indeed mean that most people would have a lot more money to spend on charity, but, at the same time, employers would not be in a very strong bargaining position from which to discriminate against their employees. In any event, you'd have to ask somebody else to justify this claim, because I can't venture a guess as to whether it is true or not.
Regarding wiretaps, the beginning part of this series of questions strikes me as a strawman. You begin asking the questions by assuming that the subjects of the wiretaps are guilty of something. Isn't this equivalent to asking someone why he would be upset if murderers or robbers were summarily arrested and sent straight to prison? We have laws regarding the issuing of wiretaps for the same reason that we have laws regarding criminal trials: the protect innocent people who be falsely tried or have their privacy unfairly invaded.
Finally, regarding football, you begin with a false premise. The "rest of the world" does not call soccer "football". Do Canadians, even, do this? To the best of my knowledge, only the UK and some of its less memorable former colonies calls it that. Now, a lot of countries use words that are similar to "football", or that translate more-or-less as "foot-ball" (the latter is true in Chinese and, I would imagine, Finnish). Like you say, different languages are different languages. This point is more than merely pedantic, because countries that do speak English, not the U.S. alone, use "football" to mean something other than soccer.
As for the name "football" as applied to American football, I agree wholeheartedly that it's not a very good one, at least insofar as it is used to differentiate the game from other major sports. The "why" is that American football developed from earlier forms of rugby-like games that had a lot more kicking in them; it's also possible, according to Wikipedia, that the name "football" was never intended to refer to kicking and was originally meant only to distinguish running-based games from horse-based games like polo. Anyway, if it was possible to suddenly change its name overnight (or at all), then this would be a good idea. Of course, this is true of a lot of words and such in English, which can be an awfully confusing language at turns.
Posted by Otto Kerner | 10:35 AM
Hi, I came here from Isteve. A great blog you've got going here!
Posted by velvetgunther | 12:18 PM
American football used to feature more kicking than it does today. The name is not so much inaccurate, as it is obsolete.
Peter
http://journals.aol.com/r32r38/Ironrailsironweights/
Posted by Anonymous | 7:56 PM
First of all, not all the feminists are leftist or socialist, but this is not considered (among feminists) to be a polite topic to talk about in public.
Second, your cynical guess is right: this is how it's actually supposed to work. Feminism, especially in North America but to some extent also in Europe, for the most part functions like a trade union whose purpose, like that of any other trade union, is to raise the prices of its members' services. Ever seen the trade unions favor poorer employers over richer ones? Me neither.
Posted by Vera | 9:44 AM
Thank you for the responses, you all. I'd like to point out that I didn't see Vera's comment until I had written and posted my next article.
Posted by Ilkka | 1:11 PM