On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:22 AM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
Glen -
Well intuited/analyzed/stated as always!
On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 09:50 -0700, glen wrote:
The asymmetries being amplified by our new openness are simply
different from those that dominated before the openness. Our new
masters will be (are, actually) people like the brogrammers ... people
like Musk and Schmidt. And it's not really money that the "haves"
have... it's the agility (and other salient attributes) to manipulate
the new social manifold.
What is the alternative?
Marcus
And yes, this is what I'm asking this august body to consider... are there alternatives?
Are our only options extremes such as all rushing headlong to become the new "robber barons" ourselves, based on your (possible) ability/agility to manipulate said "new social manifold" (great term by the way, unless it is just another way avoiding saying "landscape";) or taking the oppressive route as told in Vonnegut's tale of imposed social equality through handicapping everyone down to a least common denominator.
The complaints that I hear are that women and people of color are routinely subjected to verbal abuse, harassment, threats of violence, and violence; african american males spend their lives in prison while privileged white males get slapped on the wrist for the same infractions. So society currently imposes drastic, life threatening handicaps on the disadvantaged.
The only fear that this engenders in you is that someone might impose handicaps on you, too? That would be an oppressive route? While the status quo is only threatening to rape women and to lynch people of color -- the majority of people in the world -- so it's okay?
Better a society where white men are free than a society where everyone is oppressed? I'm sure it rings true to a lot of misogynist, racist trolls, but that's not the way I want to roll.
Nobody I know is trying to handicap the white men. Their ancestors may have been rapists, murderers, kidnappers, and thieves, they may hold the majority of wealth in the world, but let's let bygones be bygones. What is asked is that they stop treating non-straight, non-white, non-males like slaves, and they stop allowing others to treat the non-SWMs like slaves, and that they stop blaming the non-SWMs for all the misery visited on them by SWMs as if the jerks would be really nice bros if not provoked.
The ideal here, as I understood it, is a kind of meritocracy where those who perform better are rewarded for their performance. Make it so.