popper wrote:pancakes3 wrote:edit: I didn't mean to post a whole screed - I initially intended to just post the first sentence
we don't live in a society where people are free from oppression and exploitation but it would be great if we did, so seems like Popper answered his own challenge there.
i think there are many republicans who think that we do live in such a utopia, and that's the problem. they don't understand or don't want to understand how their perceived utopia comes at the cost of the oppression and exploitation of others.
one remedy is to construct such a society. then we can have the luxury of engaging in a meaningful conversation about how to redress the wrongs of the past. i'm not sure if Popper is alluding to reparations or whatever, but the conversation about reparations, affirmative action, etc. is not about atonement. it's about bringing about the here and now, and how to most effectively and efficiently shape the current society to get to one free of oppression and exploitation. whether it's racial discrimination, national origin discrimination (immigration), sex/gender discrimination, we live in a society where 80% of the wealth is controlled by 20% of the population*. That 20% of the population is disproportionately dominated by native born white men. How many "remedies" are necessary to even get that 20% to be the populational proportion of women, people of color, lgbtq+? Then how many "remedies" does it take to get that 20% to shift to 25%, 30%, 50%?
the footnote to this is that i think, naively, so many people think that there exists some plan and roadmap to get to this utopia, and it just takes the pulling of certain levers of power by the right person to get us there. Obama. Trump. Bernie. Whoever. ::buzzer:: Wrong. It's a continuous, dynamic process of neverending improvement that incorporates (a) thoughtful, well-informed, meaningful actions; (b) innovation and progress; restrategizing; (c) the willingness to recalculate and change direction when necessary.
As an example, the agricultural policies of the 1800's are different from the 1900's from the 2000's and it's not that earlier agricultural policies and practices were wrong, oppressive, or exploitative per se (well except for that whole slavery, and then sharecropping hiccup), but it's apples to oranges. The technology has changed, the crops/diet have changed, the demographics have changed, the the economics have changed, the climate has changed, etc.
Asking a basketball forum to summarize and itemize a blueprint for a utopia is like asking my uber driver to explain God to me before I get to Dulles. Inappropriate and insufficient.
*The 80/20 principle is so pervasive that it has a name - the pareto principle and it pops up EVERYWHERE. An obscure italian "economist" first observed that 80% of the land in Italy was controlled by 20% of the population. Then it was observed with regard to the world's wealth. It's a famous rule in sales, where 80% of sales come from 20% of clientele. It comes up in workplace accidents (80% of workplace accidents caused by 20% of the hazards), medicine (80% of costs are attributed to 20% of patients), computer science (80% of crashes are caused by the same 20% chunk of code), 80% of your driving comes on 20% of the roads you frequent most. Some people think this is just a law nature, and that wealth inequality is just a mathematical certainty controlled by the invisible hand but not necessarily. Blockbuster used to subscribe to the pareto principle, 80% of video rentals came from 20% of their titles, but Netflix has broken that. New industries that are more widely adopted have shown to start skewing egalitarian. And it makes sense. Many of the pareto connections that we have observed are all tied to wealth (landowning Italians, health care costs, sales) so if the product is AFFORDABLE, and the people have MONEY, there's no reason for the pareto principle to control.
Excellent post except for the comment that most R's think we live in a utopia. Every R I know thinks the opposite. You are right though that wealthy D's and R's are perfectly happy with our corrupt system.
Your paragraph describing a country that could aspire to or perhaps achieve some significant measure of continuous and dynamic improvement is spot on and well said. IMO that would require an education system that is top tier. As you know, our K-12 has been going down hill for years. I wish this thread would focus more on that.
if every R is unhappy with the status quo, then why keep voting for a party where by definition, is the party that is opposed to change?
Also, you misunderstand my post. i did not say that R's think we live in a utopia. I said that many R's think that we live in a society where people are free from oppression and exploitation.
However, to your point, if R's think that we are currently a society where one group of people oppresses and exploits other groups of people, why would they/you not want to change that?
Because again, conservatives - the word CONSERVATIVE, means that they are averse to change, and prefers "traditional" a/k/a historical norms.
