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> The dollar amount is not what matters. Are we gonna be moving goalposts all day? First it was not the pay, you said it was how much inflience they have over

> The dollar amount is not what matters. Are we gonna be moving goalposts all day? First it was not the pay, you said it was how much inflience they have over society, and that influence was measured in a dollar amount. Now it's the 'lying' and 'collective belief'. What's next, the holy spirit graces them with better afterlife? > What matters is that the sweet potato market is a market.. choose to buy sweet potatoes of their own free will Who said it matters? I voted of my own free will, and my vote funded the LHC. Is my free will in the form of voting less legitimate than my free will the form of money? In the same post you are saying that privilidge isn't about money, but you are also implying that you have no free will without money? What about markets where no person ever bought anything of their own free will, all corporation to corporations markets? For example there is a market for planet destroying coal, for clothes and rare-earth minerals produced with slave labour, etc. Do those industries have more privilidge than academia does? Fine, let's compare it to something that isn't a market -> recommendations of the Doctors and the CDC, or the Catholic Church, or the spending on the road network, or the military. All of them have bigger budgets. There is no way that this logic works. This entire series of posts is clearly clutching at straws. Real privilidge is measurable - Men used to make more money for the same job, black people were less likely to get the job, they died younger, etc.

kragen 5y ago
> Who said it matters? I voted of my own free will, and my vote funded the LHC. Is my free will in the form of voting less legitimate than my free will the form of money? Yes, because your vote spent other people's money, not your own. > This entire series of posts is clearly clutching at straws. Real privilege is measurable - Men used to make more money for the same job, black people were less likely to get the job, they died younger, etc. College graduates make more money for the same job, are more likely to get the job, and they die older. For college professors this is even more true, at least if we're talking about former professors going into industry in the first two cases. So clearly by your definition traditional academia does have significant privilege. Where I differ from Ron is that I think it's well-earned and not very large in absolute terms.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  > Yes, because your vote spent other people's money, not your own. It's our money, I pay taxes too, significantly more than average. So you don't believe in democracy? If half the population has net worth of rougly zero, does that part of the population not have legitimate free will? In such a society, what stops the half that is wealthy from becoming exploitative towards the poor, putting in place policies that make sure the poor stay poor. What if they take student loans furhter and make the kids start their life with a loan for mandatory schooling, from primacy school onwards. Making real estate so expensive that the only way majority can have housing is for it to be provided by the company in company towns, and if you quit your job you loose roof over your head. And making healthcare so expensive that it can also be only provided by your employer, and if you loose your job with a chronic health condition you are basically sentenced to die. oh, wait, we have already done that bit. What stops the wealthy part from turning it into Feudalism version 2 - there are lords, there are some 'free merchants' like white collar proffeshional, and then there are the serfs?
  - kragen 5y ago
    > So you don't believe in democracy? No, not really. It's better at preventing the worst harms of government than the alternatives that have so far been tried, such as feudalism ("aristocracy"), dictatorship, and especially colonialism, but democracy still regularly perpetrates atrocities and steals from the poor to enrich the rich. Hopefully we can find a better form of social organization soon, one that doesn't offer the ruthless and ambitious quite so much leeway to enrich themselves by harming others. I, too, condemn the strawman the rest of your comment rightly condemns, which as far as I know consists of policies that nobody has ever advocated. Within the broad class of democratic societies, those that have stronger protection for private property and tighter limits on government power are the ones that are best at protecting the poor from the depredations of the rich and otherwise privileged. Sometimes it has been said that democracy consists of two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner, but Trump's election demonstrates the truth is even worse: they apparently voted to eat library paste and boiled leather.
    - 5y ago
lisper 5y ago
How am I moving the goalposts? I originally wrote: > 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. "The dollar amount is not what matters" seems to me to be entirely consistent with that.

kragen 5y ago

> Who said it matters? I voted of my own free will, and my vote funded the LHC. Is my free will in the form of voting less legitimate than my free will the form of money? Yes, because your vote spent other people's money, not your own. > This entire series of posts is clearly clutching at straws. Real privilege is measurable - Men used to make more money for the same job, black people were less likely to get the job, they died younger, etc. College graduates make more money for the same job, are more likely to get the job, and they die older. For college professors this is even more true, at least if we're talking about former professors going into industry in the first two cases. So clearly by your definition traditional academia does have significant privilege. Where I differ from Ron is that I think it's well-earned and not very large in absolute terms.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
> Yes, because your vote spent other people's money, not your own. It's our money, I pay taxes too, significantly more than average. So you don't believe in democracy? If half the population has net worth of rougly zero, does that part of the population not have legitimate free will? In such a society, what stops the half that is wealthy from becoming exploitative towards the poor, putting in place policies that make sure the poor stay poor. What if they take student loans furhter and make the kids start their life with a loan for mandatory schooling, from primacy school onwards. Making real estate so expensive that the only way majority can have housing is for it to be provided by the company in company towns, and if you quit your job you loose roof over your head. And making healthcare so expensive that it can also be only provided by your employer, and if you loose your job with a chronic health condition you are basically sentenced to die. oh, wait, we have already done that bit. What stops the wealthy part from turning it into Feudalism version 2 - there are lords, there are some 'free merchants' like white collar proffeshional, and then there are the serfs?
- kragen 5y ago
  > So you don't believe in democracy? No, not really. It's better at preventing the worst harms of government than the alternatives that have so far been tried, such as feudalism ("aristocracy"), dictatorship, and especially colonialism, but democracy still regularly perpetrates atrocities and steals from the poor to enrich the rich. Hopefully we can find a better form of social organization soon, one that doesn't offer the ruthless and ambitious quite so much leeway to enrich themselves by harming others. I, too, condemn the strawman the rest of your comment rightly condemns, which as far as I know consists of policies that nobody has ever advocated. Within the broad class of democratic societies, those that have stronger protection for private property and tighter limits on government power are the ones that are best at protecting the poor from the depredations of the rich and otherwise privileged. Sometimes it has been said that democracy consists of two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner, but Trump's election demonstrates the truth is even worse: they apparently voted to eat library paste and boiled leather.
  - 5y ago

lisper 5y ago

How am I moving the goalposts? I originally wrote: > 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. "The dollar amount is not what matters" seems to me to be entirely consistent with that.