August 28, 2017

According to wing nuts: Hurricane Harvey Is When We Need Price Gouging, Not Laws Against It

Hurricane Harvey has hit Texas and is doing a great deal of damage to both life and property. Which is exactly when we need, positively desire, there to be price gouging, instead of the laws we have against it. The basic underlying economics being that we want whatever scarce resources there are to be applied to their most valuable uses. Further, we want to encourage the provision of more supply of them--both of these being the things which the price system manages for us. That is, allowing prices to rise in the aftermath of a disaster does exactly what we want to happen.

So, why all these laws against it? As Texas does indeed have laws against it:

My own version of dealing with price gougers would be to thank them for the good work they're doing--I doubt that's what Ken Paxton has in mind there.

"Price gouging by Texas merchants in the path of Hurricane Harvey has drawn the attention of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who said Saturday that his office is looking into such cases.

“We’ve already found one big retailer that was charging $42 for a case of water,” Paxton told Fox & Friends. “Another, a gas station $99 for a case of water.”

"We’ll be dealing with those people as we find them,” he said.

He wants to punish such people. The economics of this is really terribly, terribly, simple. As a result of the disaster--of any disaster that is--some things are in short supply. Perhaps because some of the supply got damaged, or perhaps because people need to substitute. Floods could, for example, knock out the municipal water supply, leaving people needing bottled water. So relative to the available supply demand has risen. We now need some method of rationing that limited and scarce supply over that increased demand. Rationing by price is always the efficient way of doing this.

We also want something else to happen--we want supply to increase as fast as we can manage that. As we know from our basic Econ 101 supply and demand curves the way to increase supply is for the price to increase. We want, for example, people to start trucking bottled water from Louisiana to Texas. More money to be made by doing so will encourage people to do so. And as that extra supply arrives then prices will go down again as demand is met.

We want people to use less of the scarce resource, we want people to supply more of the scarce resource, allowing the price to rise is the one known way of achieving both those goals. So, why is it that we have these laws against it all? The answer is that we're human, we are interested in both efficiency and equity and the people more interested in that equity are the ones who have written these laws. The balance, to my mind at least, going much too far toward that equity and against that efficiency.

more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/08/27/hurricane-harvey-is-when-we-need-price-gouging-not-laws-against-it/?c=0&s=trending#4a9996413fa9


uh..... what?

August 28, 2017

Worlds greatest troll strikes again: The sole point of the Arpaio pardon is liberal tears

Pardoning racist "Sheriff Joe" will backfire eventually. But if it pisses off liberals, the Trumpers are stoked

It ought to make perfect sense now. For several years, I’ve been comparing Donald Trump’s online behavior to that of an online comment-section troll, or, more specifically, a Twitter troll who’s managed to build a political movement around the concept of deliberately jabbing political opponents simply to watch them freak out. But now, after 221 days of the catastrophic Trump presidency, it should be abundantly obvious that he’s setting policy and making decisions based exclusively on trolling both Democrats and “Never Trump” Republicans.

After all, a significant chunk of Trump’s reputation is wrapped up in his obnoxious Twitter habit — a habit that seems to be partly inspired by the tone and content of “Fox & Friends,” mixed with his desperate need for constant attention. Just about everything he does is geared toward fluffing his rally supporters, including the tormenting of liberals. For example, his desire to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act wasn’t about constructing a better health care system; it was about crapping all over the legacy of his predecessor, Barack Obama, and especially Obama’s supporters. It was about revenge. And his people don’t seem to care that their health coverage would’ve been among the first to be rescinded if one of Trump’s many replacement bills had passed. They didn’t care because Trump’s obsession with repealing Obamacare pissed off liberals.

While there have been many other examples of Trump’s trolling beyond the confines of social media, the most recent example has been the pardoning of racist and convicted criminal Joe Arpaio, the disgraced former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. The close proximity between Trump’s horrendous comments about the Nazi terrorist attack in Charlottesville and the pardoning of Arpaio isn’t mere coincidence. I’d wager that Trump made the decision to pardon the controversial Phoenix sheriff as payback against his political opponents for criticizing Trump’s remarks in which he appeared to sympathize with the white supremacists, KKK members and neo-Nazis who gathered in Charlottesville.

We already know that Trump was furious about the response to his response, to the chaos in Charlottesville. We also know that Trump’s response has damaged his poll numbers and seemed to amplify discussions about his precarious mental health and the possibility of impeachment. Pardoning Arpaio sounds like a great big “screw you” to critics of his three ill-fated attempts at public remarks about Charlottesville, and saving Arpaio from a prison sentence was his way of punishing the opposition by running to the rescue of a notorious birther and anti-immigration racist. And we know that Trumpers love to stir up what they call “liberal tears.”

Confirming Trump’s intentions, Kurt Schlichter, an occasional Fox News analyst, Townhall.com writer and Trump supporter, tweeted on Saturday:

https://twitter.com/KurtSchlichter/status/901258810966200320

more: http://www.salon.com/2017/08/28/worlds-greatest-troll-strikes-again-the-sole-point-of-the-arpaio-pardon-is-liberal-tears/

August 11, 2017

How Patriotic! NRATV host: Tell North Korea "Sacramento changed its name to Guam"

Grant Stinchfield, host of the National Rifle Association's news outlet NRATV, suggested telling North Korea that Sacramento, CA, has changed its name to Guam amid news reports that North Korea threatened to launch missiles at or near the U.S. island territory.

Guam is currently preparing for a possible “imminent” missile strike. In an August 11 tweet, Stinchfield wrote, “Let’s send a note to North Korea that Sacramento changed its name to Guam!”

https://twitter.com/stinchfield1776/status/895862619285970944

more: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/08/nra-tv-host-openly-roots-for-north-korea-to-nuke-california-instead-of-guam/

August 9, 2017

It Was Wrong to Fire Me Just Because I Told All My Coworkers I Was Planning on Exiling Them to Moon

As a long-time champion of free speech, I was shocked and appalled on Monday to discover that I’d been let go from my job at Linens ’n Things, simply because some of my so-called co-workers were “offended” by the lengthy manifesto I posted in the breakroom explaining my plan to exile them all to a system of prisons on the dark side of the moon. As a classical liberal, I believe in the free exchange of ideas—specifically, the idea that my coworkers should be forced into the shoddily-constructed rocket ship I’m building in my garage and blasted to the moon immediately—and I find this kind of clumsy censorship to be extremely troubling.

As many other anti-idiotarians have already pointed out, it’s a mistake to dismiss my “Moon Prison Manifesto” simply because I wrote it in crayon. Despite its appearance, it was a carefully documented work drawing from many well-regarded scientific sources. For example, I traced the design for my “Moon Prisoner Transport Rocket (ONE-WAY ONLY)” from a scan of the cover of The Adventures of Tintin: Explorers on the Moon that was published in Wikipedia, which is more or less peer-reviewed. And where was the outrage in the Linens ’n Things boardroom when Guy Pearce made an entire feature film about Moon Prison? Of course I can provide a source for that assertion: I’m a rationalist. Strap in for a Moon Prison trailer, snowflakes:

Lock-Out’s prison is not technically on the moon, but if you think I care about nuance, you clearly haven’t read my “Moon Prison Manifesto.” So unless you were out manning the picket lines against Lock-Out back in 2012, spare me the fake outrage over my Official Moon Prison Top Secret Blueprint Briefcase and the “If Your Name Is On This List, I Hope You’re Looking Forward to Moon Prison” flyers I put under everyone’s windshield wipers. If the work environment is so “hostile” now that my co-workers know I am doing everything I can to exile them all to the moon as quickly as science allows, perhaps the solution lies not in firing me, an innocent bystander in all this, but in allowing the rest of the Linens ’n Things team to live out their natural lives in a way that’s more suited to my estimation of their potential: in an underground Moon Prison buried deep beneath the Korolev Crater. While this, too, may be a “hostile work environment,” in the sense that the moon is hostile to all human life, it will also ensure that Linens ’n Things is much less hostile to me, personally.

more: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/08/08/it_was_wrong_to_fire_me_over_my_moon_prison_manifesto.html

August 8, 2017

Alt-Right Activists Call for Google Boycott After Employee Is Fired for Anti-Diversity Paper

Google fired a software engineer yesterday in response to public outrage over the man’s 10-page screed against women being represented proportionally in tech companies. But the firing has become a call-to-arms for alt-right voices on the internet who are crowdfunding money for the engineer, James Damore, and are now calling for a boycott of Google.

The calls for a boycott have gained steam on Twitter, where names like Mike Cernovich, Michael Tracey, and Paul Joseph Watson have joined the chorus of people with usernames like CNNisRetarded, TheMuddyCuck, and Grammar Nawtsy in being angered by what they call “diversity crybullies.”

Some of the calls to boycott the tech giant refer to getting “red pilled,” a term popular in alt-right circles for when people see reality clearly. The term comes from the 1999 sci-fi film The Matrix, where the hero takes a red pill to see the real world around him. In this case, alt-right activists believe that getting red-pilled means you can see the misandry inherent in Google’s decision to fire the engineer.

More: http://gizmodo.com/rip-chantek-the-signing-orangutan-who-was-just-like-us-1797630955

August 8, 2017

Google Fires Male Engineer Behind Anti-Diversity Memo

James Damore, the engineer who wrote the memo, confirmed his dismissal, saying in an email to Reuters on Monday that he had been fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.”

Damore said he was exploring all possible legal remedies, and that before being fired, he had submitted a charge to the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) accusing Google upper management of trying to shame him into silence.

“It’s illegal to retaliate against an NLRB charge,” he wrote in the email.

Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc based in Mountain View, Calif., said it could not talk about individual employee cases.

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai told employees in a note on Monday that portions of the anti-diversity memo “violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace,” according to a copy of the note seen by Reuters.

more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/google-fires-employees-memo_us_598950b3e4b0449ed504f9cf?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

And the right wing media is up-in-arms.... go figure...

Here's the screed: http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320

Reply to public response and misrepresentation

I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem. Psychological safety is built on mutual respect and acceptance, but unfortunately our culture of shaming and misrepresentation is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber. Despite what the public response seems to have been, I’ve gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers expressing their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues which they agree with but would never have the courage to say or defend because of our shaming culture and the possibility of being fired. This needs to change.

TL R

Google’s political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety.
This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.
The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology.
Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression
Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression
Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.
Background [1]

People generally have good intentions, but we all have biases which are invisible to us. Thankfully, open and honest discussion with those who disagree can highlight our blind spots and help us grow, which is why I wrote this document.[2] Google has several biases and honest discussion about these biases is being silenced by the dominant ideology. What follows is by no means the complete story, but it’s a perspective that desperately needs to be told at Google.

Google’s biases

At Google, we talk so much about unconscious bias as it applies to race and gender, but we rarely discuss our moral biases. Political orientation is actually a result of deep moral preferences and thus biases. Considering that the overwhelming majority of the social sciences, media, and Google lean left, we should critically examine these prejudices.

Left Biases

Compassion for the weak
Disparities are due to injustices
Humans are inherently cooperative
Change is good (unstable)
Open
Idealist
Right Biases

Respect for the strong/authority
Disparities are natural and just
Humans are inherently competitive
Change is dangerous (stable)
Closed
Pragmatic
Neither side is 100% correct and both viewpoints are necessary for a functioning society or, in this case, company. A company too far to the right may be slow to react, overly hierarchical, and untrusting of others. In contrast, a company too far to the left will constantly be changing (deprecating much loved services), over diversify its interests (ignoring or being ashamed of its core business), and overly trust its employees and competitors.

Only facts and reason can shed light on these biases, but when it comes to diversity and inclusion, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence. This silence removes any checks against encroaching extremist and authoritarian policies. For the rest of this document, I’ll concentrate on the extreme stance that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and the authoritarian element that’s required to actually discriminate to create equal representation.

Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech [3]

At Google, we’re regularly told that implicit (unconscious) and explicit biases are holding women back in tech and leadership. Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story.

On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because:
They’re universal across human cultures
They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify and act like males
The underlying traits are highly heritable
They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective
Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.

Personality differences

Women, on average, have more:
Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing).
These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.
Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness.
This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women’s issue. This leads to exclusory programs like Stretch and swaths of men without support.
Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.
Note that contrary to what a social constructionist would argue, research suggests that “greater nation-level gender equality leads to psychological dissimilarity in men’s and women’s personality traits.” Because as “society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian, innate dispositional differences between men and women have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality becomes wider.” We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism.

Men’s higher drive for status

We always ask why we don’t see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.

Status is the primary metric that men are judged on[4], pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths.

Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap

Below I’ll go over some of the differences in distribution of traits between men and women that I outlined in the previous section and suggest ways to address them to increase women’s representation in tech and without resorting to discrimination. Google is already making strides in many of these areas, but I think it’s still instructive to list them:
Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things
We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles and Google can be and we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this).
Women on average are more cooperative
Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf may be doing this to an extent, but maybe there’s more we can do. This doesn’t mean that we should remove all competitiveness from Google. Competitiveness and self reliance can be valuable traits and we shouldn’t necessarily disadvantage those that have them, like what’s been done in education. Women on average are more prone to anxiety. Make tech and leadership less stressful. Google already partly does this with its many stress reduction courses and benefits.
Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average
Unfortunately, as long as tech and leadership remain high status, lucrative careers, men may disproportionately want to be in them. Allowing and truly endorsing (as part of our culture) part time work though can keep more women in tech.
The male gender role is currently inflexible
Feminism has made great progress in freeing women from the female gender role, but men are still very much tied to the male gender role. If we, as a society, allow men to be more “feminine,” then the gender gap will shrink, although probably because men will leave tech and leadership for traditionally feminine roles.
Philosophically, I don’t think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make it appealing to equal portions of both men and women. For each of these changes, we need principles reasons for why it helps Google; that is, we should be optimizing for Google—with Google’s diversity being a component of that. For example currently those trying to work extra hours or take extra stress will inevitably get ahead and if we try to change that too much, it may have disastrous consequences. Also, when considering the costs and benefits, we should keep in mind that Google’s funding is finite so its allocation is more zero-sum than is generally acknowledged.
The Harm of Google’s biases

I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more. However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices:
Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race [5]
A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates
Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
Reconsidering any set of people if it’s not “diverse” enough, but not showing that same scrutiny in the reverse direction (clear confirmation bias)
Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can incentivize illegal discrimination [6]
These practices are based on false assumptions generated by our biases and can actually increase race and gender tensions. We’re told by senior leadership that what we’re doing is both the morally and economically correct thing to do, but without evidence this is just veiled left ideology[7] that can irreparably harm Google.

Why we’re blind

We all have biases and use motivated reasoning to dismiss ideas that run counter to our internal values. Just as some on the Right deny science that runs counter to the “God > humans > environment” hierarchy (e.g., evolution and climate change) the Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ[8] and sex differences). Thankfully, climate scientists and evolutionary biologists generally aren’t on the right. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of humanities and social scientists learn left (about 95%), which creates enormous confirmation bias, changes what’s being studied, and maintains myths like social constructionism and the gender wage gap[9]. Google’s left leaning makes us blind to this bias and uncritical of its results, which we’re using to justify highly politicized programs.

In addition to the Left’s affinity for those it sees as weak, humans are generally biased towards protecting females. As mentioned before, this likely evolved because males are biologically disposable and because women are generally more cooperative and areeable than men. We have extensive government and Google programs, fields of study, and legal and social norms to protect women, but when a man complains about a gender issue issue [sic] affecting men, he’s labelled as a misogynist and whiner[10]. Nearly every difference between men and women is interpreted as a form of women’s oppression. As with many things in life, gender differences are often a case of “grass being greener on the other side”; unfortunately, taxpayer and Google money is spent to water only one side of the lawn.

The same compassion for those seen as weak creates political correctness[11], which constrains discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC-authoritarians that use violence and shaming to advance their cause. While Google hasn’t harbored the violent leftists protests that we’re seeing at universities, the frequent shaming in TGIF and in our culture has created the same silence, psychologically unsafe environment.

Suggestions

I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don’t fit a certain ideology. I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).

My concrete suggestions are to:
De-moralize diversity.

As soon as we start to moralize an issue, we stop thinking about it in terms of costs and benefits, dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral, and harshly punish those we see as villains to protect the “victims.”
Stop alienating conservatives.

Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people view things differently.
In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those with different ideologies to be able to express themselves.
Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is require for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.
Confront Google’s biases.

I’ve mostly concentrated on how our biases cloud our thinking about diversity and inclusion, but our moral biases are farther reaching than that.
I would start by breaking down Googlegeist scores by political orientation and personality to give a fuller picture into how our biases are affecting our culture.
Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races.

These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on some of the non-discriminatory practices I outlined.
Have an open and honest discussion about the costs and benefits of our diversity programs.

Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.
There’s currently very little transparency into the extend of our diversity programs which keeps it immune to criticism from those outside its ideological echo chamber.
These programs are highly politicized which further alienates non-progressives.
I realize that some of our programs may be precautions against government accusations of discrimination, but that can easily backfire since they incentivize illegal discrimination.
Focus on psychological safety, not just race/gender diversity.

We should focus on psychological safety, which has shown positive effects and should (hopefully) not lead to unfair discrimination.
We need psychological safety and shared values to gain the benefits of diversity
Having representative viewpoints is important for those designing and testing our products, but the benefits are less clear for those more removed from UX.
De-emphasize empathy.

I’ve heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective empathy—feeling another’s pain—causes us to focus on anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other irrational and dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts.
Prioritize intention.

Our focus on microaggressions and other unintentional transgressions increases our sensitivity, which is not universally positive: sensitivity increases both our tendency to take offense and our self censorship, leading to authoritarian policies. Speaking up without the fear of being harshly judged is central to psychological safety, but these practices can remove that safety by judging unintentional transgressions.
Microaggression training incorrectly and dangerously equates speech with violence and isn’t backed by evidence.
Be open about the science of human nature.

Once we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to discrimination, we open our eyes to a more accurate view of the human condition which is necessary if we actually want to solve problems.
Reconsider making Unconscious Bias training mandatory for promo committees.

We haven’t been able to measure any effect of our Unconscious Bias training and it has the potential for overcorrecting or backlash, especially if made mandatory.
Some of the suggested methods of the current training (v2.3) are likely useful, but the political bias of the presentation is clear from the factual inaccuracies and the examples shown.
Spend more time on the many other types of biases besides stereotypes. Stereotypes are much more accurate and responsive to new information than the training suggests (I’m not advocating for using stereotypes, I [sic] just pointing out the factual inaccuracy of what’s said in the training).
[1] This document is mostly written from the perspective of Google’s Mountain View campus, I can’t speak about other offices or countries.

[2] Of course, I may be biased and only see evidence that supports my viewpoint. In terms of political biases, I consider myself a classical liberal and strongly value individualism and reason. I’d be very happy to discuss any of the document further and provide more citations.

[3] Throughout the document, by “tech”, I mostly mean software engineering.

[4] For heterosexual romantic relationships, men are more strongly judged by status and women by beauty. Again, this has biological origins and is culturally universal.

[5] Stretch, BOLD, CSSI, Engineering Practicum (to an extent), and several other Google funded internal and external programs are for people with a certain gender or race.

[6] Instead set Googlegeist OKRs, potentially for certain demographics. We can increase representation at an org level by either making it a better environment for certain groups (which would be seen in survey scores) or discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I’ve seen it done). Increased representation OKRs can incentivize the latter and create zero-sum struggles between orgs.

[7] Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.”

[8] Ironically, IQ tests were initially championed by the Left when meritocracy meant helping the victims of the aristocracy.

[9] Yes, in a national aggregate, women have lower salaries than men for a variety of reasons. For the same work though, women get paid just as much as men. Considering women spend more money than men and that salary represents how much the employees sacrifices (e.g. more hours, stress, and danger), we really need to rethink our stereotypes around power.

[10] “The traditionalist system of gender does not deal well with the idea of men needing support. Men are expected to be strong, to not complain, and to deal with problems on their own. Men’s problems are more often seen as personal failings rather than victimhood,, due to our gendered idea of agency. This discourages men from bringing attention to their issues (whether individual or group-wide issues), for fear of being seen as whiners, complainers, or weak.”

[11] Political correctness is defined as “the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against,” which makes it clear why it’s a phenomenon of the Left and a tool of authoritarians.

August 4, 2017

'Pharma bro' Martin Shkreli found guilty of 3 of 8 charges, including securities fraud

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A federal jury found notorious "Pharma bro" Martin Shkreli guilty of multiple criminal charges Friday.

Shkreli, 34, was convicted of some of the eight criminal counts that he had faced, which had included securities fraud and conspiracy to commit both securities fraud and wire fraud, after a more-than-month-long trial in Brooklyn, New York, federal court.

Of the eight counts, Shkreli was found guilty of three. Those included conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and two counts of securities fraud. He was found not guilty of five counts, including those related to wire fraud.

He faces years in prison when he is sentenced.



more: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/04/pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-convicted-in-federal-fraud-case.html