6 ms·

Too controversial? Really? This is a pretty mainstream point of view, although perhaps not the one in political ascendancy at the moment. Hardly the stuff of ce

by lukev 14y ago

Too controversial? Really? This is a pretty mainstream point of view, although perhaps not the one in political ascendancy at the moment. Hardly the stuff of censorship. I strongly suspect there was some other reason it wasn't posted.

rubymaverick 14y ago
My suspicion is that it just wasn't that good. This was given at a TEDx event, not an official TED conference, which means they have no control over the content and are pretty free to not post it. Only a few of the TEDx talks ever make it on the TED.com website. And you are right, this is hardly controversial. You couldn't find a politician who would disagree that a strong middle-class is the backbone of our society.
- Cyranix 14y ago
  The sound bite that stuck out most to me was For instance, it is a small step from "job creator" to "The Creator". We did not accidentally choose this language. Weird leaps of logic and data that don't directly support an argument regarding job creation are sufficient reason not to feature this talk (in addition to the partisan rhetoric which is verboten for TED).
  - Retric 14y ago
    While the wording could use some work, it is something to think about. When people ask what I do my general response is, "I destroy jobs". I could just as easily say, "I create wealth" or whatnot, but for people stuck in the mindset that job's are created when work needs to be done it's an accurate statement. The reality is, the idea of a 'job creator' is somewhat ridiculous, but the language was chosen for a reason which is worth examining.
nodata 14y ago
Apparently it's too partisan: "This idea is an article of faith for republicans _and seldom challenged by democrats_ and has shaped much of today's economic landscape."
_delirium 14y ago
It does sound like it was at least a vaguely political decision, mixed with image-maintenance PR concerns, if the email excerpts from the related article (http://nationaljournal.com/features/restoration-calls/too-hot-for-ted-income-inequality-20120516 http://nationaljournal.com/features/restoration-calls/too-ho...) are genuine. Fwiw, TED doesn't publish all talks, especially not all TEDx talks, so it's not as if this was singled out to be suppressed. But it sounds like it wasn't selected for publication due to a mixture of: 1) Anderson personally disagreeing with its politics; and 2) TED's attempt to carefully manage its image on anything political, which involves closely planned and timed releases of things like the two "political" videos they did publish, on global-warming and contraception. The main PR mistake TED made, afaict, was to say enough to give an impression that it was political. If it just got lost in the shuffle, like most TEDx talks do (few are posted on ted.com), it'd be one thing, but Anderson arguing against points in the talk, and then giving the impression that it was scheduled and later pulled due to partisanship concerns, created a fiasco where one wouldn't have existed.
- saraid216 14y ago
  Well, according to the article, Anderson didn't personally disagree with its politics. That's what makes it interesting to me. > "Nick, I personally share your disgust at the growth in inequality in the US, and would love to have found a way to give people a clearer mindset on the issue, without stoking a tedious partisan rehash of all the arguments we hear every day in the mainstream media.
PaulHoule 14y ago
I dunno. The New York Times regularly posts hand-wringing debates between "the usual suspects" on this issues. Everybody in these debates seems to take it for granted that taxing the rich will hurt economic growth, but maybe just maybe there are some benefits to equality that will make up for that. Nobody mentions that an economy has a hypothetical failure mode (like the game of Monopoly) where all of the money ends up in one person's hands -- and then trading stops.
- Symmetry 14y ago
  Nobody mentions that an economy has a hypothetical failure mode (like the game of Monopoly) where all of the money ends up in one person's hands -- and then trading stops. Huh? I'm having a really hard time imagining how this could possibly happen. Does that person not ever need to buy anything? If they don't buy things they're taking that money out of circulation, and if you have a central bank targeting anything (or free banking, or most banking systems humans have tried) the people who can make more money will make more money in order to hit their targets. I'm pretty sure that nobody mentions that because the idea is, well, pretty ridiculous.
  - drewrv 14y ago
    It's not as ridiculous as you think. Yes that person needs to buy stuff, but not enough stuff to support an entire economy.
  - yummyfajitas 14y ago
    The single person owns robots who perform every task he desires at a cost lower than human subsistence wages. Of course, even at that point the remaining humans can just form an economy among themselves which the rich man doesn't participate in...
    - pjschlic 14y ago
      Someone having money doesn't preclude someone else in the economy from CREATING VALUE. Hacker News is a site filled with people who understand that it's possible to create value out of nothing. Your scenario is impossible, but assuming someone acquired all of X currency and refused to let anyone else have any, that currency is effectively nonexistent - currencies are only worth what they can be exchanged for. People would trade using something else.
nilsbunger 14y ago
It probably isn't the content, but the one-sidedness. Tying loss of the middle class to tax policy is a political statement, and probably not even correct - or at least he didn't give much evidence for it. I happen to agree taxes on the rich should go up, but that's not the point
- btilly 14y ago
  He pointed out how falling taxes on the rich correlated with a decline of the middle class. But that could just be coincidence. I could point out that the largest expansion of the US middle class on record happened during the 1950s when the top personal income tax rate was over 90%. But that could just be coincidence as well. I can point out that economic theory says that the economic impact of giving a person a dollar is directly connected to their likelihood of spending it. Since the rich are less likely to spend than the middle class and the poor, taxing them hurts the economy less than taxing anyone else. But once you descend into economic theory, everyone has a theory and an argument and you get a morass that normal people can't make heads or tails of. I could point out that the Republican ideology that less taxes on the rich is always good has exactly no evidence supporting it. That's a very thin amount of evidence for the huge social experiment that we're currently running in this country. But once you descend into politics everyone already has their minds made up, so that's a lost cause. All of which begs the real question; if the proposition is true, what evidence would suffice to actually convince people of it who are not already convinced?
  - Drbble 14y ago
    http://begthequestion.info http://begthequestion.info
    - btilly 14y ago
      Your pedantry is wrong. Languages are defined by usage, not by some proscriptive description. It is true that "begs the question" is the name of a specific philosophical fallacy that has been discussed for millennia. However in English it is common to say "begs the question" where you mean "raises the question", and therefore that is acceptable usage among native English speakers. (I don't know where that usage came from, at a guess it is a shortened version of the phrase "begs us to ask the question". Anyways it is common usage.) Now did you have a comment on the actual content of what I said?

by lukev 14y ago

rubymaverick 14y ago

My suspicion is that it just wasn't that good. This was given at a TEDx event, not an official TED conference, which means they have no control over the content and are pretty free to not post it. Only a few of the TEDx talks ever make it on the TED.com website. And you are right, this is hardly controversial. You couldn't find a politician who would disagree that a strong middle-class is the backbone of our society.

Cyranix 14y ago
The sound bite that stuck out most to me was For instance, it is a small step from "job creator" to "The Creator". We did not accidentally choose this language. Weird leaps of logic and data that don't directly support an argument regarding job creation are sufficient reason not to feature this talk (in addition to the partisan rhetoric which is verboten for TED).
- Retric 14y ago
  While the wording could use some work, it is something to think about. When people ask what I do my general response is, "I destroy jobs". I could just as easily say, "I create wealth" or whatnot, but for people stuck in the mindset that job's are created when work needs to be done it's an accurate statement. The reality is, the idea of a 'job creator' is somewhat ridiculous, but the language was chosen for a reason which is worth examining.

nodata 14y ago

Apparently it's too partisan: "This idea is an article of faith for republicans _and seldom challenged by democrats_ and has shaped much of today's economic landscape."

_delirium 14y ago

It does sound like it was at least a vaguely political decision, mixed with image-maintenance PR concerns, if the email excerpts from the related article (http://nationaljournal.com/features/restoration-calls/too-hot-for-ted-income-inequality-20120516 http://nationaljournal.com/features/restoration-calls/too-ho...) are genuine. Fwiw, TED doesn't publish all talks, especially not all TEDx talks, so it's not as if this was singled out to be suppressed. But it sounds like it wasn't selected for publication due to a mixture of: 1) Anderson personally disagreeing with its politics; and 2) TED's attempt to carefully manage its image on anything political, which involves closely planned and timed releases of things like the two "political" videos they did publish, on global-warming and contraception. The main PR mistake TED made, afaict, was to say enough to give an impression that it was political. If it just got lost in the shuffle, like most TEDx talks do (few are posted on ted.com), it'd be one thing, but Anderson arguing against points in the talk, and then giving the impression that it was scheduled and later pulled due to partisanship concerns, created a fiasco where one wouldn't have existed.

saraid216 14y ago
Well, according to the article, Anderson didn't personally disagree with its politics. That's what makes it interesting to me. > "Nick, I personally share your disgust at the growth in inequality in the US, and would love to have found a way to give people a clearer mindset on the issue, without stoking a tedious partisan rehash of all the arguments we hear every day in the mainstream media.

PaulHoule 14y ago

I dunno. The New York Times regularly posts hand-wringing debates between "the usual suspects" on this issues. Everybody in these debates seems to take it for granted that taxing the rich will hurt economic growth, but maybe just maybe there are some benefits to equality that will make up for that. Nobody mentions that an economy has a hypothetical failure mode (like the game of Monopoly) where all of the money ends up in one person's hands -- and then trading stops.

Symmetry 14y ago
Nobody mentions that an economy has a hypothetical failure mode (like the game of Monopoly) where all of the money ends up in one person's hands -- and then trading stops. Huh? I'm having a really hard time imagining how this could possibly happen. Does that person not ever need to buy anything? If they don't buy things they're taking that money out of circulation, and if you have a central bank targeting anything (or free banking, or most banking systems humans have tried) the people who can make more money will make more money in order to hit their targets. I'm pretty sure that nobody mentions that because the idea is, well, pretty ridiculous.
- drewrv 14y ago
  It's not as ridiculous as you think. Yes that person needs to buy stuff, but not enough stuff to support an entire economy.
- yummyfajitas 14y ago
  The single person owns robots who perform every task he desires at a cost lower than human subsistence wages. Of course, even at that point the remaining humans can just form an economy among themselves which the rich man doesn't participate in...
  - pjschlic 14y ago
    Someone having money doesn't preclude someone else in the economy from CREATING VALUE. Hacker News is a site filled with people who understand that it's possible to create value out of nothing. Your scenario is impossible, but assuming someone acquired all of X currency and refused to let anyone else have any, that currency is effectively nonexistent - currencies are only worth what they can be exchanged for. People would trade using something else.

nilsbunger 14y ago

It probably isn't the content, but the one-sidedness. Tying loss of the middle class to tax policy is a political statement, and probably not even correct - or at least he didn't give much evidence for it. I happen to agree taxes on the rich should go up, but that's not the point

btilly 14y ago
He pointed out how falling taxes on the rich correlated with a decline of the middle class. But that could just be coincidence. I could point out that the largest expansion of the US middle class on record happened during the 1950s when the top personal income tax rate was over 90%. But that could just be coincidence as well. I can point out that economic theory says that the economic impact of giving a person a dollar is directly connected to their likelihood of spending it. Since the rich are less likely to spend than the middle class and the poor, taxing them hurts the economy less than taxing anyone else. But once you descend into economic theory, everyone has a theory and an argument and you get a morass that normal people can't make heads or tails of. I could point out that the Republican ideology that less taxes on the rich is always good has exactly no evidence supporting it. That's a very thin amount of evidence for the huge social experiment that we're currently running in this country. But once you descend into politics everyone already has their minds made up, so that's a lost cause. All of which begs the real question; if the proposition is true, what evidence would suffice to actually convince people of it who are not already convinced?
- Drbble 14y ago
  http://begthequestion.info http://begthequestion.info
  - btilly 14y ago
    Your pedantry is wrong. Languages are defined by usage, not by some proscriptive description. It is true that "begs the question" is the name of a specific philosophical fallacy that has been discussed for millennia. However in English it is common to say "begs the question" where you mean "raises the question", and therefore that is acceptable usage among native English speakers. (I don't know where that usage came from, at a guess it is a shortened version of the phrase "begs us to ask the question". Anyways it is common usage.) Now did you have a comment on the actual content of what I said?