4 ms·

Societal privilege is not measured in terms of the net income of the people who hold the privilege, it is measured in the influence those people have over the w

by lisper 5y ago

Societal privilege is not measured in terms of the net income of the people who hold the privilege, it is measured in the influence those people have over the workings of society. For example: particle physics commands huge budgets despite having produced nothing of value for the last 50 years. It commands these huge budgets because particle physicists have societal privilege. When a particle physicist says that society should write a check for billions of euros to build the LHC, society does it. That is societal privilege.

rimunroe 5y ago
> particle physics commands huge budgets despite having produced nothing of value for the last 50 years The World Wide Web on which you posted your comment was invented at a particle physics lab 33 years ago.
formerkrogemp 5y ago
> Societal privilege is not measured in terms of the net income of the people who hold the privilege, it is measured in the influence those people have over the workings of society. For example: the military industrial complex commands huge budgets despite having produced nothing of value for the last 50 years. It commands these huge budgets because generals, senators, and admirals have societal privilege. When a general, senator, and CEO say that society should write a check for billions of euros to build the F-35 or blow up some children, society does it. That is societal privilege.
- 7speter 5y ago
  > For example: the military industrial complex commands huge budgets despite having produced nothing of value for the last 50 years. I think some Ukrainians using javelin anti tank missiles would like to have a word with you…
  - formerkrogemp 5y ago
    A bunch of dead kids in Yemen, Afghanistan, and Iraq would like a word. Oh, they can't talk anymore. Our military has never been about spreading and protecting democracy.
kragen 5y ago
That's a certain amount of privilege, it's true, but the Superconducting Supercollider got canceled, and every country has protectionist economic policies that run counter to the recommendations of virtually all economists, even economists primarily concerned with social justice like Amartya Sen. The LHC cost €7.5 billion, and that's the largest particle physics project ever. I have to admit that's noticeably more than I have in my pocket at the moment, so in a sense it's "a huge budget", but it's only slightly more than the US$5.6 billion spent on the Petronas Towers, which is a single office building in Kuala Lumpur. Well, two office buildings. You know what has a huger budget? Sweet potatoes. The yearly sweet potato market is US$43 billion. That's enough to build almost six Large Hadron Colliders per year. So by that measure particle physicists have about 1% of the societal privilege that sweet potatoes do. (And that despite CERN, where the LHC is, having invented the WWW.) I mean I know that from inside NASA or Google it looks like Ph.D.s run the world and professors wield godlike power. But actually, in the context of world society, academia has a fairly small role.
- heavenlyblue 5y ago
  You mean 10%?
  - kragen 5y ago
    US$43 billion per year is US$473 billion (or more likely US$350 billion at the time) over the 11 years it took to build the LHC. So maybe 2%.
- lisper 5y ago
  The dollar amount is not what matters. What matters is that the sweet potato market is a market, so those $47M are coming from people who (I presume) choose to buy sweet potatoes of their own free will, and so are manifestly professing their collective belief that they are getting $47B worth of value for their money. Particle physicists didn't raise the money for the LHC by selling a product on the open market, they raised by lying to politicians, who in turn extracted the money from taxpayers. If someone without societal privilege (like Anna Sorokin for example) had done that they would be put in jail. Instead the physicists got tenure despite having delivered essentially nothing of value. That is societal privilege.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
You are describing some make-believe fantasy land - it took physicists decades of begging to get the measly couple billion for the LHC and we spend almost 250 billion a year on casinos every year. If that is your measure of privilidge, then a pitboss at casino has more privilidge than an average phisicist does. And by design they produce nothing on value and never will. Other proffeshions that command huge budgets include Architects and bricklayers - we spend 2 trillion on construction in a single year, that's more than all spending on Physics for all of recording history combined. Or doctors, city planners, bankers, etc. I don't know what beef you have with themm but at least run this mental experiment: Imagine a girl brings her boyfriend over for dinner, and he tells them her parents he a physicist working on the most cutting edge research. Is their first throught going to be 'oh, that's great, if they get married she will live a life of privilidge?'. If the parents had to advise between him and a heart surgeon, or a senior manager at a bank, a succefull lawyer, a developer at google - what do you think it will be? Bottomn line is this: when pressed on privilidge, you can't come up with anything measurable where physicists will be even be in the top 10, because such a metric does not exist. it's just some impression you formed that you are trying to justify.
- lisper 5y ago
  It's not the dollar amount. It's the fact that particle physicists told lies in order to get that money, but instead of being sent to prison like Anna Sorokin did for doing exactly the same thing, they got tenure. Societal privilege manifests itself in all sorts of ways both big and small, but the ultimate measure of it is in the difference between how people are treated for doing the exact same thing depending on whether they have it or not.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    So you equate a scientist being wrong about yet-undiscovered laws of nature with lying? So if Eithstein would be wrong about theory of relativity, we should have burned him at the stake? It's like what we did in the dark ages, but in reverse?
    - 5y ago

by lisper 5y ago

rimunroe 5y ago

> particle physics commands huge budgets despite having produced nothing of value for the last 50 years The World Wide Web on which you posted your comment was invented at a particle physics lab 33 years ago.

formerkrogemp 5y ago

> Societal privilege is not measured in terms of the net income of the people who hold the privilege, it is measured in the influence those people have over the workings of society. For example: the military industrial complex commands huge budgets despite having produced nothing of value for the last 50 years. It commands these huge budgets because generals, senators, and admirals have societal privilege. When a general, senator, and CEO say that society should write a check for billions of euros to build the F-35 or blow up some children, society does it. That is societal privilege.

7speter 5y ago
> For example: the military industrial complex commands huge budgets despite having produced nothing of value for the last 50 years. I think some Ukrainians using javelin anti tank missiles would like to have a word with you…
- formerkrogemp 5y ago
  A bunch of dead kids in Yemen, Afghanistan, and Iraq would like a word. Oh, they can't talk anymore. Our military has never been about spreading and protecting democracy.

kragen 5y ago

That's a certain amount of privilege, it's true, but the Superconducting Supercollider got canceled, and every country has protectionist economic policies that run counter to the recommendations of virtually all economists, even economists primarily concerned with social justice like Amartya Sen. The LHC cost €7.5 billion, and that's the largest particle physics project ever. I have to admit that's noticeably more than I have in my pocket at the moment, so in a sense it's "a huge budget", but it's only slightly more than the US$5.6 billion spent on the Petronas Towers, which is a single office building in Kuala Lumpur. Well, two office buildings. You know what has a huger budget? Sweet potatoes. The yearly sweet potato market is US$43 billion. That's enough to build almost six Large Hadron Colliders per year. So by that measure particle physicists have about 1% of the societal privilege that sweet potatoes do. (And that despite CERN, where the LHC is, having invented the WWW.) I mean I know that from inside NASA or Google it looks like Ph.D.s run the world and professors wield godlike power. But actually, in the context of world society, academia has a fairly small role.

heavenlyblue 5y ago
You mean 10%?
- kragen 5y ago
  US$43 billion per year is US$473 billion (or more likely US$350 billion at the time) over the 11 years it took to build the LHC. So maybe 2%.
lisper 5y ago
The dollar amount is not what matters. What matters is that the sweet potato market is a market, so those $47M are coming from people who (I presume) choose to buy sweet potatoes of their own free will, and so are manifestly professing their collective belief that they are getting $47B worth of value for their money. Particle physicists didn't raise the money for the LHC by selling a product on the open market, they raised by lying to politicians, who in turn extracted the money from taxpayers. If someone without societal privilege (like Anna Sorokin for example) had done that they would be put in jail. Instead the physicists got tenure despite having delivered essentially nothing of value. That is societal privilege.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

You are describing some make-believe fantasy land - it took physicists decades of begging to get the measly couple billion for the LHC and we spend almost 250 billion a year on casinos every year. If that is your measure of privilidge, then a pitboss at casino has more privilidge than an average phisicist does. And by design they produce nothing on value and never will. Other proffeshions that command huge budgets include Architects and bricklayers - we spend 2 trillion on construction in a single year, that's more than all spending on Physics for all of recording history combined. Or doctors, city planners, bankers, etc. I don't know what beef you have with themm but at least run this mental experiment: Imagine a girl brings her boyfriend over for dinner, and he tells them her parents he a physicist working on the most cutting edge research. Is their first throught going to be 'oh, that's great, if they get married she will live a life of privilidge?'. If the parents had to advise between him and a heart surgeon, or a senior manager at a bank, a succefull lawyer, a developer at google - what do you think it will be? Bottomn line is this: when pressed on privilidge, you can't come up with anything measurable where physicists will be even be in the top 10, because such a metric does not exist. it's just some impression you formed that you are trying to justify.

lisper 5y ago
It's not the dollar amount. It's the fact that particle physicists told lies in order to get that money, but instead of being sent to prison like Anna Sorokin did for doing exactly the same thing, they got tenure. Societal privilege manifests itself in all sorts of ways both big and small, but the ultimate measure of it is in the difference between how people are treated for doing the exact same thing depending on whether they have it or not.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  So you equate a scientist being wrong about yet-undiscovered laws of nature with lying? So if Eithstein would be wrong about theory of relativity, we should have burned him at the stake? It's like what we did in the dark ages, but in reverse?
  - 5y ago