Equality of opportunity after centuries of slavery and then legal discrimination in a society that allows (and even outright promotes) inherited wealth and opportunity is not possible.
Imagine my ancestors stole all of your ancestors stuff and I still get to keep it all and anything I've built using it. We've stopped stealing your stuff now, though, so we have "equality of opportunity."
If you are part of a majority group you benefit or are at least not impeded by the cultural dominance asserted by the majority group’s control of policies, power, laws, etc. equity is about justice. People were not treated justly and still aren’t, this is why we are discussing this topic.
> 'majority group', 'cultural dominance', 'control of policies'
This is fundamentally a race-based conception of the world, a conception that defines power along racial lines, which groups and analyzes people fundamentally based on race.
We have the benefit in the last 50 years to move past this way of looking at the world, many of us have come to the realization that race isn't a useful way to group people, period. Any disadvantage you see in society that appears 'race' based can be better explained via other means. If people aren't treated justly, it's not because of racism except in vanishingly small amounts, in obscure and backwards parts of the US.
'Structural racism' falls prey to correlation is not causation, a misguided explanation for group differences, an oversimplification, and it won't generate progress as long as the cause is incorrectly ascribed.
No you’re just ignoring racism if you ignore the groups that exist. This is well known hence why the idea of someone being “colorblind” is erroneous because it is trying to ignore disadvantages and pretend the field is level.
Here’s a misunderstood concept: race is a result of unfair policies. “Black” as a racial group does not meaningfully exist without the historical racism and oppressive policies enacted on black peoples. Without distinction between groups, there would be unity. But we know, for example, black people were treated unfairly and still are in many aspects today in the US, so the construction of the black race occurs because of these differences. Aka, the marker “black” for a person identifies someone who faces systemic racism in the US. It’s not just about the wavelength of light a person’s body reflects. Racial groups are the result of history, culture, policies, and present day attitudes.
Not like Chinese Americans had it easy in the past, why aren't they adjusted upwards instead of downwards?
Fundamental issues I have with aiming for basically equal outcome by artificially tipping the scale until some metric evens out:
- Which dimensions do we make adjustments based on? is it just race or do we consider wealth etc?
- How much do we adjust? Black Americans had it tougher, boost by 10, Hispanics by 7? Chinese by -5 because they somehow succeeded without tipping the scales?
- Where does it end? We tip the scale for 200 years and if things are still out balanced keep adjusting?
Now imagine being from neither group, which would be the majority of Americans. Maybe we could limit the debate to descendants of slave owners and slaves? Also imagine that opportunity changes over time as society becomes more equal. the US 2023 is a lot different than the US 1865.
This example is about generosity. In this case you don't owe anything to your less fortunate peer, but not sharing it is greed and when greed is the driving force of our society, it's not surprising nobody wants to share his wealth. In a society of a far future that will run on generosity, being obsessed about possessions will be seen as a weakness. It seems that some proponents of the "affirmative action" sense that future society, and try to implement it here, but since they poorly understand human nature, and since their own nature is imperfect, they pervert the high ideal.
You're changing the definition of opportunity here to still mean outcome I think.
> <Outcome> is somewhat inherited, therefore there cannot be real equality of <outcome>.
The US used to be a land of 'opportunity' for poor immigrants. They came to the US and worked hard to overcome their circumstances and make a better life for themselves and their children.
It would be insulting and demoralizing to them to say that opportunity is impossible because they're poor, because their uncle doesn't own the bank down the street. The point of opportunity is that it's _possible_ to succeed, the scales are not unfairly weighed against you by law or societal prejudice.
Many things make achieving outcomes hard - poverty, mental health, bad luck - these are sometimes affected by the past too, but they don't necessarily take away opportunity in that the hope in success is still possible. This hope is important to the soul is it not? This is why opportunity is so important, it's essentially hope.
Opportunity is not a boolean "have" vs "don't have". It's a probability distribution, and much of that probability is inherited.
The son of an investment banking executive has much greater opportunity to also become an investment banker than some rando dude from the street, even if it is remotely possible. That opportunity delta is real, and it's largely, almost entirely, due to family ties.
I would not say that I have the opportunity to become a billionaire, even though it is technically possible, but astronomically unlikely.
I agree that opportunity is a spectrum but I disagree that it's inherited in our country because I disagree with your definition of opportunity. It's a spectrum in the sense that people can succeed regardless of societal prejudice or discriminatory laws, even though they'd have more opportunity if that prejudice didn't exist. Equal opportunity does not necessitate an equal outcome, nor does it imply it.
Immigrants don't have the opportunity to become president of the US because of US law, but any natural-born citizen of the country does have that opportunity regardless of the likelihood. The US has always had immigrants achieve boundless success here which is why it was considered the land of opportunity, not because everyone did - or because it was 'fair', but because it was possible.
Asians are not a homogenous group. For example, Filipino and Vietnamese outcomes did not do as well as Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese immigrants in the wave from the 60s.
There are lots of factors that contribute to an ethnic group's relative success in playing the economic game, some of which are unique to that cohort and not the ethnicity itself. Past results do not guarantee future performance.
One example: the communist revolution expelled professors and academics from China, thus many Chinese and Taiwanese-american immigrants from that generation had scholarly backgrounds which obviously translates well. Compare to a history where your people were enslaved and your cultural background entirely erased.
Another example: getting an H1B as an Indian person today is super competitive / hard, but much easier if you're another ethnicity. What does that mean for future generations of Indian-Americans? There's going to be a selection bias.
> Asians are not a homogenous group. For example, Filipino and Vietnamese outcomes did not do as well as Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese immigrants in the wave from the 60s.
There's some variation, but even so they still perform better than "white" people with the same socioeconomic status - even among Filipino and Southeast Asians: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4060715/
He can have a seat at the table, but the table is largely comprised of people who wanted him out, and can continue to make decisions he disapproves of.
This isn't a case of Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google, or Bill Gates at Microsoft, where the founder is well-respected, left of their own will, and still maintains an influence in a meaningful capacity.
But that sends a wickedly powerful statement to the market that you as a remaining board member would not hold the shares of the company you oversee... That's the discussion here.
There are a lot of reasons a board member might reduce their stake in the company. Lack of belief in the company's strategy is a common reason, especially when boardroom drama is involved. I don't think investors will read anything into it other than Kalanick is rebalancing the risk profile of his portfolio now that he no longer has control of Uber.
Activist investors play this game all the time so it says nothing about the strategy one way or another, just that the appetite for risk is higher the more control you have.
I don't have a source at the ready, but my understanding is that the existing law and/or case law determined that traveling domestically entitled one to such protection. Various federal agencies have determined via rule making that such protections do not extend to international ports of entry/airports for reasons of national security. Those determinations are what have been struck down in this case.
I'll (possibly inaccurately) assume this is in good faith. The most obvious reason that profiling is bad, even in your inaccurate and simplistic hypothetical scenario, is that just because all airplane terrorist attacks came from people of X country, does not imply that everyone from X country commits terrorist airplane attacks. Therefore you are unfairly and immorally forcing invasive searches on many innocent people of X country. If you have any empathy for the innocent people of X country, you will realize how horrible this is.
Israel profiles like crazy and it works well. When I was traveling through there, I got a lot more questions. It just makes sense. A lone adult males traveling versus an Israel senior citizen.
> Therefore you are unfairly and immorally forcing invasive searches on many innocent people of X country. If you have any empathy for the innocent people of X country, you will realize how horrible this is.
Okay, we are talking about an extra 5 minutes of scrutiny, not cruel and unusual punishment. I don't think it's really that "horrible" to make people from countries with bad track records jump through some extra hoops.
To use a real example... it would be like me doing extra background checks on Chinese people applying to my company vs. Norwegian people. Not all Chinese people are spies, of course, but I've never heard of Norwegian moles infiltrating US companies and lifting IP back to the motherland being a rampant problem.
We'll have to agree to disagree about the invasiveness. In the case of the lawsuit in the original post, it's the search of all your electronic devices. I consider that to be quite invasive.
Furthermore, CBP and ICE both claimed their authority to search electronic devices at the border extended to US citizens, so much of the profiling was not just of people from certain countries, but from people whose ancestry was from certain countries.
Lastly, I can't and won't try to convince you that it's wrong to subject people of various backgrounds to different, worse treatment, whether it's "cruel and unusual" or unfair, or invasive, or even simply inconvenient. It sounds like you aren't usually subject to such treatment or else you would probably have a different outlook on it. I recommend talking or listening to some people who do, and what their experiences are like.
I don’t have a car and don’t drive. My post shared what drivers have always told me over the past couple years. If you’re willing to drive for Scoop, you can also drive for Uber or other ride service.
Then why are you not doing it every day and recouping your costs? Seems kind of stupid to me that you're flushing money down the toilet if it's such an easy thing to do with Uber.
I’m not doing it at all because I don’t have a car - I only ride using this app.
Picking up someone on your way to work could be ideal or a challenge if you need to get to work early. I’m not sure what your point is - it should have zero opportunity cost or it’s a bad deal? Does your current job have any opportunity cost?
I also think it's an attempt to ward off a nascent unionization push.
Regarding a different, recent "olive branch" type proposal:
"The one thing they don’t want to give you is the thing that you need to get. This offer from Uber and Lyft is like a kidnapper offering you a softer blanket, as long as you agree not to ever escape. No thanks. These companies know very well that once their workers become actual employees, they will get a host of benefits automatically, and they can formally unionize to win themselves many more benefits and increased pay. These companies, which have never made a dollar even while exploiting their workers, fear this. So they offer some concessions." [1]
This is the strongest argument that can be made for universal programs when it comes to designing progressive public policy. Rich people have the time and resources to aggresively take advantage of any system that tries to implement means testing or scaled benefits. The winning play is to design programs where benefits are given completely independently of time, money, access or power, even if it means some people who do not need it will get some assistance.
The winning play is to design programs where benefits are given completely independently of time, money, access or power, even if it means some people who do not need it will get some assistance.
But then doesn't it come down to grades, test scores, and extracurriculars etc? Rich parents are already paying for huge amounts of tutoring, coaching, and test prep, along with personally chauffeuring their kids all over the place in order to rack up the extracurricular and volunteering hours.
Sure, you can mandate an "equity score" for admissions but at some point are you going to be admitting students who can't handle the coursework? Grades are more than just an arbitrary barrier.
I agree. I think the quoted professor-authors' point in the quoted passages is to make a book like SICP, designed to teach deeply rooted computer science concepts more approachable to beginners without going to the extreme of "How to build a webapp in 12 days". I support the effort, as I think it's a bummer that the choice as a beginner is often between a too-difficult SICP and overly abstract and non-theory-based tutorials.
Imagine my ancestors stole all of your ancestors stuff and I still get to keep it all and anything I've built using it. We've stopped stealing your stuff now, though, so we have "equality of opportunity."