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Well, I can tell you what's bugging me personally about this. There's a growing divide in our society between the "equal opportunity" and "equal outcome" camps.

Well, I can tell you what's bugging me personally about this. There's a growing divide in our society between the "equal opportunity" and "equal outcome" camps. And while the "equal opportunity" people mostly have the "just let me grill" attitude, "equal outcomers" are pushing increasingly harder, while doing their best to silence any opposing voices. It's now getting to a point where raising one's kids to be proud of their achievements, seek self-improvement, and pick friends based on shared values, is considered sinful and is being pushed back against. As a person who was born in a country that tried implementing equal outcomes for 70 years, and ended up with extreme corruption, poverty and social distrust, I don't want to see another round of this happen here. So I am hoping that if enough reasonable people acknowledge the problem, the society will reach some sort of a compromise before the lives of several generations are completely wasted, like they were in the USSR. And having platforms where this sort of discussion is not considered "cancerous" is a very important step IMHO.

augustt 6y ago
Any evidence at all that self-improvement is under attack, or are these all euphemisms for something else? Maybe "pick friends based on shared values" means "I wouldn't let my kids play with kids from the other side of the tracks", which should indeed get some pushback.
- john_moscow 6y ago
  Here's one for you [0]. That's an infographic from the Smithsonian museum that attributed Enlightenment-age values, like individualism, family structure, and work ethic to "whiteness" and implied that it should be opposed. They removed it after pushback (search archive.org for more). That's the tip of the iceberg though. There's a whole industry of wrapping this narrative into struggle session-like training while charging 7 figures to various-level budgets. You can find many examples like [1] if you search for Chris Rufo. Except adults sort of understand that it's a kickback-driven nonsense and don't take it seriously. So now they are taking the Critical Race Theory with very similar postulates into schools. It's not about helping minorities learn from the more successful, and reach for the stars. That's purely about making kids hate what their parents did for them, rather than building on top of that. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200715192955im_/https://nmaahc.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_caption/public/images/captioned/whiteculture_info_1.png https://web.archive.org/web/20200715192955im_/https://nmaahc... [1] https://christopherrufo.com/cult-programming-in-seattle/ https://christopherrufo.com/cult-programming-in-seattle/
  - augustt 6y ago
    I don't see anything that indicates these values should be opposed. I've seen controversy over this before and to be honest it mostly seems to be people projecting their own idea of what the left thinks - that "white values" implies they are not "black values" and that all whiteness = bad. Then they conclude from a decent summary of dominant values in America something like /r/conservative's take: "#DefundSmithsonian ... We are paying for white genocide with our tax dollars."
  - 205guy 6y ago
    Maybe I should just let this just let this comment stand for its own inanity, but dammit, someone is wrong on the internet. That poster was at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, where you might expect to learn the differences between African-American culture and the dominant White-Anglo-American Culture. Context is important. In no way it implied that "Enlightenment-age values ... should be opposed." Also, it's kind of ironic to be cheering for the takedown of speech you didn't like on a thread where you complain about the silencing of the speech you do like. If you don't like what the poster said or how it said it, maybe oppose it with more speech. About the whole industry of "training while charging 7 figures" isn't that just how the pendulum swings right now? Before it was prayer meetings and then survivalist tactics for team-building. Plus most employment in the US is at-will, so I suppose if employees don't like it, they are free to find other employers. Freedom cuts both ways too. Also, what's wrong with 7 figures? I thought the free-market and entrepreneurs charging for the value they bring to willing buyers were all good things. When you conclude it's "purely about making kids hate what their parents did for them", well, that's the kind of hyperbole that's hard to take seriously. It is totally free of argument or evidence, and it sounds so much like the conservatives of the 50's and 60's about how the peace-activists, civil rights leaders, and hippies were going to turn their sons and daughters against their parents.
gamblor956 6y ago
"Equal outcome" is a term created by the right to dismiss liberal policies that are about equal opportunity. The equal opportunity people, aka liberals, mostly just want people to have the same access to schools that whites have had for decades. The "equal outcomers," aka the right, have decided that minorities having equal access to schooling is a conspiracy theory at the highest levels, and have been attempting to silence the opposition. (See, e.g. Glen Beck and Tucker Carlson urging their followers to doxx and threaten their critics.) It's now getting to a point where raising one's kids to be proud of their achievements, seek self-improvement, and pick friends based on shared values, is considered sinful and is being pushed back against. Again, this is something to take up with the right, which is dismissive of science, academic performance, or the general use of one's brain (see e.g., the current administration), and which has instituted ideological purity tests for leadership positions (see e.g., the NRA, the Federalist Society, the current administration, etc.). On the left, academic, athletic, cultural and artistic treatment are celebrated, but not at the expense of values. See, for example, Hollywood, the NBA, the music industry, etc. Compare to the NFL, the most popular sport among conservatives, where athletic achievement is the only thing that matters--cheating, drug use, physical violence, and other personal misbehavior is acceptable by athletes and coaches as long as they're winning).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- john_moscow 6y ago
  >mostly just want people to have the same access to schools that whites have had for decades. I would disagree with that. Kids from the families with inherited wealth always enjoyed their hilltop mansions, gated communities, private schools and Ivy League admissions by donation. And they continue doing that, they're above the rules. Nobody is going to put a low barrier social housing in their backyard, or force their kids to network with us, the plebs. It's the middle class that made their own wealth is under attack now. Doctors, engineers, small business founders. Apparently, we can't have in a community with no used needles near the playgrounds. Because poor homeless. I can't apparently spend time teaching my pre-school kids to read and to write, so once they go to school, they can focus on more advanced stuff with other like minded kids. For the sake of social justice, the class has to be diluted by a few troublemakers whos parents didn't care. But, of course, not the class where the Governor's kids go. Mind you, nobody will mind if you go and help the affected people directly. Go offer free counseling to homeless. Go teach Python to kids from poor families. Go do lemonade stand projects with underrepresented minorities. But do it in your own free time and at your own expense. I am pretty certain, many reasonable people will follow, since our society generally values being generous and positive. Except that's not what the activists are doing. They don't want to solve the problem in their free time, they want others to somehow find time and solve the problem for them. >See, e.g. Glen Beck and Tucker Carlson urging their followers to doxx and threaten their critics. I've seen the piece from Tucker Carlson. NYT journalists threatened to publish his home address. He stated that it already happened before, leading to threats to his family, and said that if they do it again, he will retaliate. He didn't mention any personal details there, so the NYT pulled back and they've reached a stalemate. >See, for example, Hollywood, the NBA, the music industry, etc. Hollywood has deteriorated to releasing heavily engineered comic book films. The art aspect is gone, the creativity is gone, many genres like parody/comedy are gone. Mainstream music isn't at it's peak either. It's pretty consistent with the left-leaning big tech, that focuses on making people replaceable drones following procedures, because they have much less bargaining power this way. I am not into sports, so no clue on NBA/NFL.
jf22 6y ago
A lot of countries only said they were trying for "equal outcomes" while rather openly being authoritarian states.
- godelski 6y ago
  I'm confused about this response. A powerful authority is how you enforce those "equal outcomes." You can have authoritarian left (communism) or authoritarian right (fascism), but both are authoritarian. Let me put it this way: Fascism is authoritarianism but authoritarianism isn't fascism. Edit: Can someone explain the downvotes? Is the argument that there isn't an authoritarian left? I'm referring to this basic model [0] [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Political_chart.svg/1200px-Political_chart.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Po...
  - john_moscow 6y ago
    Once you have a strong central authority, you are not equal by definition. The stronger and more centralized the power is, the easier it is for the ruling class to pass the status to their kids. So ambitious people won't dream of starting companies and changing the world. Their only route to success will be to join the party ladder and play political games. USSR in a nutshell.
notacoward 6y ago
That's a noxiously inaccurate caricature of what people in each "camp" believe (to the extent there even are two camps). Practically nobody believes in strict communist-style equal outcomes. The most any significant number want is more equal outcomes, because the distribution of outcomes has clearly diverged from the distribution of any real merit. What the majority want is equal opportunity, just like they say. That's something we don't have, and it's disgusting to appropriate that phrase for those whose beliefs are more accurately described as discriminatory and/or segregationist. It's equally disingenuous to imply that pride in achievement or desire for self-improvement are either distinguishing characteristics of or unique to that group. The vast majority of those you deride as "equal outcome" believers also have those characteristics. If anything, it's the "OK for heritage to determine outcome" crowd who don't believe in achievement and improvement. People call that kind of twisting of facts and words "cancerous" because it is. You could argue reasonably that attempts to address current inequity are misguided or have gone too far, but not by misrepresenting what people believe.
deleted 6y ago
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idreyn 6y ago
The distribution of outcome in one generation is, rather explicitly, the distribution of opportunity granted to the next one. Policies like progressive taxation and universal welfare programs that can be cast as equal outcome initiatives are, in the minds of their proponents, often about checking this runaway feedback loop that might otherwise leave all the opportunity (wealth, by another name) piling up with fewer and fewer people.
failuser 6y ago
Soviet Union was never about equal outcome. It was proclaimed, but worked around in every way possible. Jews were limited in access to education, ex-nobility was limited in rights, the party members were given all kinds of preferential treatment and nomenklatura living in relative luxury while the peasants were starving. Hey, even the city dwellers were privileged compared to peasants who were tied to the land and required visas for inner travel. And access to Moscow and its opportunities was tightly controlled.
- ethanwillis 6y ago
  I think this is the point. It's not going to work out here either, but it will still be proclaimed.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- john_moscow 6y ago
  >It was proclaimed, but worked around in every way possible. It always does. Each time someone proclaims equity, they carve out some sort of exception for themselves and their family. Like the mayor of Chicago that mysteriously had heavy police presence around her home, while ordering them to stand down everywhere else. [0] https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2020/8/20/21377608/lightfoot-police-home-security-protests-george-floyd-pandemic-logan-square https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2020/8/20/21377608/li...

augustt 6y ago

Any evidence at all that self-improvement is under attack, or are these all euphemisms for something else? Maybe "pick friends based on shared values" means "I wouldn't let my kids play with kids from the other side of the tracks", which should indeed get some pushback.

john_moscow 6y ago
Here's one for you [0]. That's an infographic from the Smithsonian museum that attributed Enlightenment-age values, like individualism, family structure, and work ethic to "whiteness" and implied that it should be opposed. They removed it after pushback (search archive.org for more). That's the tip of the iceberg though. There's a whole industry of wrapping this narrative into struggle session-like training while charging 7 figures to various-level budgets. You can find many examples like [1] if you search for Chris Rufo. Except adults sort of understand that it's a kickback-driven nonsense and don't take it seriously. So now they are taking the Critical Race Theory with very similar postulates into schools. It's not about helping minorities learn from the more successful, and reach for the stars. That's purely about making kids hate what their parents did for them, rather than building on top of that. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200715192955im_/https://nmaahc.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_caption/public/images/captioned/whiteculture_info_1.png https://web.archive.org/web/20200715192955im_/https://nmaahc... [1] https://christopherrufo.com/cult-programming-in-seattle/ https://christopherrufo.com/cult-programming-in-seattle/
- augustt 6y ago
  I don't see anything that indicates these values should be opposed. I've seen controversy over this before and to be honest it mostly seems to be people projecting their own idea of what the left thinks - that "white values" implies they are not "black values" and that all whiteness = bad. Then they conclude from a decent summary of dominant values in America something like /r/conservative's take: "#DefundSmithsonian ... We are paying for white genocide with our tax dollars."
- 205guy 6y ago
  Maybe I should just let this just let this comment stand for its own inanity, but dammit, someone is wrong on the internet. That poster was at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, where you might expect to learn the differences between African-American culture and the dominant White-Anglo-American Culture. Context is important. In no way it implied that "Enlightenment-age values ... should be opposed." Also, it's kind of ironic to be cheering for the takedown of speech you didn't like on a thread where you complain about the silencing of the speech you do like. If you don't like what the poster said or how it said it, maybe oppose it with more speech. About the whole industry of "training while charging 7 figures" isn't that just how the pendulum swings right now? Before it was prayer meetings and then survivalist tactics for team-building. Plus most employment in the US is at-will, so I suppose if employees don't like it, they are free to find other employers. Freedom cuts both ways too. Also, what's wrong with 7 figures? I thought the free-market and entrepreneurs charging for the value they bring to willing buyers were all good things. When you conclude it's "purely about making kids hate what their parents did for them", well, that's the kind of hyperbole that's hard to take seriously. It is totally free of argument or evidence, and it sounds so much like the conservatives of the 50's and 60's about how the peace-activists, civil rights leaders, and hippies were going to turn their sons and daughters against their parents.

gamblor956 6y ago

"Equal outcome" is a term created by the right to dismiss liberal policies that are about equal opportunity. The equal opportunity people, aka liberals, mostly just want people to have the same access to schools that whites have had for decades. The "equal outcomers," aka the right, have decided that minorities having equal access to schooling is a conspiracy theory at the highest levels, and have been attempting to silence the opposition. (See, e.g. Glen Beck and Tucker Carlson urging their followers to doxx and threaten their critics.) It's now getting to a point where raising one's kids to be proud of their achievements, seek self-improvement, and pick friends based on shared values, is considered sinful and is being pushed back against. Again, this is something to take up with the right, which is dismissive of science, academic performance, or the general use of one's brain (see e.g., the current administration), and which has instituted ideological purity tests for leadership positions (see e.g., the NRA, the Federalist Society, the current administration, etc.). On the left, academic, athletic, cultural and artistic treatment are celebrated, but not at the expense of values. See, for example, Hollywood, the NBA, the music industry, etc. Compare to the NFL, the most popular sport among conservatives, where athletic achievement is the only thing that matters--cheating, drug use, physical violence, and other personal misbehavior is acceptable by athletes and coaches as long as they're winning).

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
john_moscow 6y ago
>mostly just want people to have the same access to schools that whites have had for decades. I would disagree with that. Kids from the families with inherited wealth always enjoyed their hilltop mansions, gated communities, private schools and Ivy League admissions by donation. And they continue doing that, they're above the rules. Nobody is going to put a low barrier social housing in their backyard, or force their kids to network with us, the plebs. It's the middle class that made their own wealth is under attack now. Doctors, engineers, small business founders. Apparently, we can't have in a community with no used needles near the playgrounds. Because poor homeless. I can't apparently spend time teaching my pre-school kids to read and to write, so once they go to school, they can focus on more advanced stuff with other like minded kids. For the sake of social justice, the class has to be diluted by a few troublemakers whos parents didn't care. But, of course, not the class where the Governor's kids go. Mind you, nobody will mind if you go and help the affected people directly. Go offer free counseling to homeless. Go teach Python to kids from poor families. Go do lemonade stand projects with underrepresented minorities. But do it in your own free time and at your own expense. I am pretty certain, many reasonable people will follow, since our society generally values being generous and positive. Except that's not what the activists are doing. They don't want to solve the problem in their free time, they want others to somehow find time and solve the problem for them. >See, e.g. Glen Beck and Tucker Carlson urging their followers to doxx and threaten their critics. I've seen the piece from Tucker Carlson. NYT journalists threatened to publish his home address. He stated that it already happened before, leading to threats to his family, and said that if they do it again, he will retaliate. He didn't mention any personal details there, so the NYT pulled back and they've reached a stalemate. >See, for example, Hollywood, the NBA, the music industry, etc. Hollywood has deteriorated to releasing heavily engineered comic book films. The art aspect is gone, the creativity is gone, many genres like parody/comedy are gone. Mainstream music isn't at it's peak either. It's pretty consistent with the left-leaning big tech, that focuses on making people replaceable drones following procedures, because they have much less bargaining power this way. I am not into sports, so no clue on NBA/NFL.

jf22 6y ago

A lot of countries only said they were trying for "equal outcomes" while rather openly being authoritarian states.

godelski 6y ago
I'm confused about this response. A powerful authority is how you enforce those "equal outcomes." You can have authoritarian left (communism) or authoritarian right (fascism), but both are authoritarian. Let me put it this way: Fascism is authoritarianism but authoritarianism isn't fascism. Edit: Can someone explain the downvotes? Is the argument that there isn't an authoritarian left? I'm referring to this basic model [0] [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Political_chart.svg/1200px-Political_chart.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Po...
- john_moscow 6y ago
  Once you have a strong central authority, you are not equal by definition. The stronger and more centralized the power is, the easier it is for the ruling class to pass the status to their kids. So ambitious people won't dream of starting companies and changing the world. Their only route to success will be to join the party ladder and play political games. USSR in a nutshell.

notacoward 6y ago

That's a noxiously inaccurate caricature of what people in each "camp" believe (to the extent there even are two camps). Practically nobody believes in strict communist-style equal outcomes. The most any significant number want is more equal outcomes, because the distribution of outcomes has clearly diverged from the distribution of any real merit. What the majority want is equal opportunity, just like they say. That's something we don't have, and it's disgusting to appropriate that phrase for those whose beliefs are more accurately described as discriminatory and/or segregationist. It's equally disingenuous to imply that pride in achievement or desire for self-improvement are either distinguishing characteristics of or unique to that group. The vast majority of those you deride as "equal outcome" believers also have those characteristics. If anything, it's the "OK for heritage to determine outcome" crowd who don't believe in achievement and improvement. People call that kind of twisting of facts and words "cancerous" because it is. You could argue reasonably that attempts to address current inequity are misguided or have gone too far, but not by misrepresenting what people believe.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

idreyn 6y ago

The distribution of outcome in one generation is, rather explicitly, the distribution of opportunity granted to the next one. Policies like progressive taxation and universal welfare programs that can be cast as equal outcome initiatives are, in the minds of their proponents, often about checking this runaway feedback loop that might otherwise leave all the opportunity (wealth, by another name) piling up with fewer and fewer people.

failuser 6y ago

Soviet Union was never about equal outcome. It was proclaimed, but worked around in every way possible. Jews were limited in access to education, ex-nobility was limited in rights, the party members were given all kinds of preferential treatment and nomenklatura living in relative luxury while the peasants were starving. Hey, even the city dwellers were privileged compared to peasants who were tied to the land and required visas for inner travel. And access to Moscow and its opportunities was tightly controlled.

ethanwillis 6y ago
I think this is the point. It's not going to work out here either, but it will still be proclaimed.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
john_moscow 6y ago
>It was proclaimed, but worked around in every way possible. It always does. Each time someone proclaims equity, they carve out some sort of exception for themselves and their family. Like the mayor of Chicago that mysteriously had heavy police presence around her home, while ordering them to stand down everywhere else. [0] https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2020/8/20/21377608/lightfoot-police-home-security-protests-george-floyd-pandemic-logan-square https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2020/8/20/21377608/li...