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Re:Research Finds No Gender Bias in Academic Science by brnaftr361 on Sunday April 30, 2023 @12:56PM (#35764407)
Does that actually follow, though?

My own perspective on the matter as someone who sorta bootstrapped from a pretty shitty strating position is: no. If we took a cross section of people doing reasonably well what they've done is complied with society's demands, more succinctly they've served the market. They aren't exceptionally smart, talented, or disciplined, they just selflessly (including moving far and wide) elected a corner of the market that was valuable, and where they were themselves valued. And from my experience: they have really poor spending habits, they have shallow economic and political positions. And this is sort of the paradigmatic flaw with throwing money at people, in a lot of cases they do not have the faculties to comport themselves in such a manner where it is a benefit to themselves nor to their fellows. I fear many of these people, when they're put through some serious adversity, will succeed in recovering themselves.

I'm not trying to make an argument which paints me as some superior element to these folks, but rather these are mistakes that I have personally made and lived through while also existing on the precipice of dangerous self-amplifying poverty. To some extent, and with the way that things are structured, I think this very much attends to the "teach a man to fish" logic, and that lending that kind of real, personalized trivium is the way forward.

Italy has (or had) such a program: they would disburse pooled funds to a minimum of 3 unemployed individuals who were then expected to use said funds to start a business. To my knowledge many of these were cooperatives, which I think is an ingenious way of remediating some of the more egregious issues which we see bubbling up in our day-to-day lives in the US.

Now, I won't discount the fact that having a decent starting position is a huge boon; the crux of my argument here is that modifying it without respect to the nuance, as I've seen it, can lead to even worse outcomes. And I think the quasi-exclusive programs also nucleate certain perspectives, culture, and communities which themselves can be pretty detrimental. For instance I grew up in trailer parks, I have some aspects of white trash that I very deliberately maintain to my own detriment because it is part of my identity and a mark of pride, and sequestration of those habits makes me legitimately uncomfortable.

Also don't bother comparing the US and Europe, the latter without the former has historically been very volatile and I don't believe there's any reason to expect that things will have changed. As to why that matters: the US must have certain integral aspects both socially and politically which favor its position as the "world peacekeeping force" (read: world police), including egregious spending on "defense". And this is apparently perceived at large as justified. Moreover, military participation is also quite high, in part because of the way that America at large is structured. It is very much a multifaceted incentive complex. And I think that, over the years, it has very much seated America as the lynchpin of the globalized system. Personally, I don't like it, but I very much anticipate the effacement of America's current position as a global leader is going to lead to a very traumatic shift in the way of the world as we know it. The US is itself structured in a completely different way than is Europe as well, with considerable contrasts in needs and wants in comparison to Europe and in contrast with our own many, varied, and multifaceted communities. Rural America is not urban America.

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