flumbaps
I'm guessing you're probably a smart person who thinks ahead and makes smart choices - you have to understand that not everyone in the world is like that. Punishing people who are not like that is unlikely to change them. You can't punch someone in the face to make them smart. You can punch someone in the face to make them obey you, but in this context that would mean singling out all irresponsible people and then punishing them before they take out a loan, not after. If you were able to identify irresponsible people then you might as well just not lend them any money.
Which brings me to the real benefit of bankruptcy. That is, if you really want to stop irresponsible borrowing, then it makes a lot of sense to also discourage irresponsible lending. Banks and credit unions are far more rational than the general population. If individuals are allowed to go bankrupt, there is a clear incentive not to lend money to people who don't have the means to pay off the debt. By providing that incentive, it then becomes the problem of the lender to identify whether or not an individual is likely to be able to pay of a loan. The lender is has a lot of information and resources through which they can make such a determination.
Now, different people have different ideas about the morality of this situation. Some would say that it's wrong for banks to take advantage of the irrational people, so it makes sense to provide incentives for responsible lending. Others would say that if individuals are irrational, then they get what they deserve, and banks should only be required to behave rationally. Personally, I don't think stupidity is morally wrong (otherwise dogs would be pure evil), and it's often quite self serving to argue otherwise.
I don't think we've ever tried having the market solely allocate resources. I think pretty much every government has regulated trade, collected taxes, that sort of thing. What seems to have worked best would be letting the market allocate resources to some extent, but collecting taxes and investing in long term goals (such as research and infrastructure). But maybe this isn't necessary, maybe in a truly free market there would always be genius entrepreneurs like Elon Musk appearing every now and again to progress humanity. Still, there's a massive difference between the kinds of long term planning that modern western democracies already do and a communist dictatorship.
Most modern democratic governments already regulate their financial markets, and already invest in research grants, infrastructure projects and support for start ups. The fact is, providing incentives to work towards long term goals is exactly the kind of thing that free markets aren't good at.
However, that doesn't negate your point that we could end up ruining it all through war. The thing is, most people want to follow, and they aren't very choosy about who leads them. Leadership tends to attract the kind of people who enjoy power, and so, even if resources are abundant, there is always something to fight about.
The technology that could bring about a lasting peace wouldn't be robotics, it would be some social mechanism through which we could obtain wise leadership. Which is certainly possible. Information technology opens up the possibility of entirely new levels transparency and accountability. Alternatively, there is the possibility of extremely rigid population monitoring and control.
Frankly, I think the most likely possibility is that there will only be a very brief period of time (maybe 50 years) between the point where we can automate all manual tasks, and the point where we have AI or augmented human minds, that are (by definition) impossible for us to predict.
Which brings us to the next point, which is a bit of a mess, so I'm going to have to pick it apart in detail. Firstly, you are essentially saying that all people are not equal, and so it is not "fair" for wealth to be shared equally. This is true, but irrelevant. No-one has asked for wealth to be shared equally, we are asking for less of a concentration of wealth. We are saying "the system is not fair" you are replying "total egalitarianism is not fair" - irrelevant! Secondly you say that the only thing a society needs to do in order to be fair is make sure that everyone has the same rights in regard to the law. This is either obviously false or impossibly hard, depending on how you define the application of law. If you just think that the rules should be applied equally, then this is obviously not enough to ensure a fair society. For example, you could make it cost $100,000 to run for office. This is a rule that may be fairly applied to everyone, no matter their wealth. It just so happens that only rich people will be able to afford it. For another example, you could have entrenched media companies that act as gatekeepers into the political process (as we currently do). Now, nothing stops an individual with no connections to these entrenched interests from starting their own media empire - but even if they had a chance of succeeding, it still forms a massive barrier to entry that could hardly be called fair. If you expand your idea of what the law covers to include such things, then you're essentially saying is that the only thing society should do is have fair laws that are applied fairly, where a person of merit has an equal chance of success regardless of the circumstances of their birth. Which is great, but impossibly hard and definitely not what is happening right now. The third thing you say is that anything beyond the fair application of law is a race to make everyone the same. This is clearly not true. I don't want to live in a world where everyone is the same. I just don't think our current system is fair. Personally I think that everyone deserves to be fed, clothed, sheltered, educated and given access to healthcare just as a participation prize for being a human being. I think we can easily afford it (for proof, just look at countries with low income disparity). The set of standards I am describing is what people call human decency. It is not total egalitarianism. The last thing you say, almost in passing, is that making everyone the same in every aspect renders everyone poor by default. This is a strangely pessimistic view of matters. If you rendered everyone the same, then you'd render everyone average income by default, not poor. Unless you were talking about poverty in an objective rather than relative sense, which is either untrue or else you have very high standards. Even if we did descend into some kind of egalitarian nightmare where everyone was provided for equally (oh lord! the horror!) the quality of life would be fine. There's plenty of resources to go round, especially in the West where we have a lot of wealth. The real problem would be providing incentives for people to work, but I doubt that was the point you were making. (Incidentally we could, for example, create a currency that affords social status and narcotics rather than general material goods - which is, I suppose, just a streamlined version our current incentive system.)
That kind of system is a huge simplification, but similar things could be done with analogue computing. In particular, I think probabilistic computing could be done by setting up network feedback loops corresponding to underlying Bayesian networks, where stable points correspond to highest likelihood parameterisations. (I may actually do some work in this direction next year, because it's pretty cool stuff.)
b) The coach, according to the author, made that call after she recounted the story. Presumably in a lot of detail, and after numerous other coaching sessions in which her coach would have built up a detailed picture of how she worked and where her weaknesses lay.
Given that, I don't think we are in a situation where we should bias in favour of innocent until proven guilty. We can just make our own best guess based on what we know.
Your evidence 2 and 3 are weak. Being in a high pressure job often means being in a position where you (and the company) can't afford a big disaster. Lots of people are hard on themselves, it doesn't mean she was on shaky ground because of her competence (her colleagues wanted her around for another year at least). She insisted on leaving to make this guy happy because his stated reason for rejecting the job was her. Her colleagues wanted the guy to join them and they didn't have any reason to refuse her resignation. That doesn't shed any light on why the man was unhappy with her in the first place.
The guy didn't give convincing examples or well thought out reasons, he seems to have just made a guess that she was incompetent. You think his guess is unbiased and the coach and the author's guesses are biased. Even though it is the coach's job to make objective judgements about these things. In this scenario the man, the author and the coach all make judgements given information we are not privy to. Each of them has their own biases, their own agendas. I think the man's inability to explain his dislike when pressed, and the fact that the coach is supposed to provide negative criticism indicates that the coach's judgement is most likely correct.
The story does not strongly point to the problem being her not her gender. The guy in question did something extraordinary (pulling out of an accepted job offer) without being able to give much justification besides vaguely disliking her. If she was incompetent or had a poor personal manner then that is exactly something you would expect the man in question, her colleagues and her coach to bring up.
You can interpret this story in two ways:
a) The man had a non-sexist reason for disliking the author so much he backed out of an accepted job offer, but he was unable or unwilling to express that reason specifically, even though he was willing to tell her that she was the problem. The author is incompetent or unlikable, her colleagues are too incompetent to notice or say anything and the author's coach is so incompetent that she just spouts feminist paranoia instead of actually being helpful.
b) The author, the coach and the author's colleagues are all reasonably professional and competent, the man in question is from a culture where older men don't tend to like being under the authority of young women and this made him increasingly uncomfortable over time. He backed out of the job because of this feeling of discomfort, but was unwilling to give that as his reason because he knew it would be seen as unprofessional.
I believe that your choice of which of these to believe indicates that YOU are sexist.
The fact is, when a set of beliefs is used as a foundation for nation building, it usually gets twisted over time to create an oppressive regime. Think about the rhetoric of Communism, how explicit that is about equality and fairness, and how well that turned out. It is not amazing that Islamic nations are shitty places to live. What is amazing is that secular, democratic, capitalist nations are quite nice places to live.
I've also stated that, in practical terms, it is the behaviour and beliefs of the religious leaders that matter more that the laws themselves. The community Islamic courts you cite are a perfect example of this. You seem to expect them to behave according to some monolithic interpretation of Sharia law. Whereas, in reality, these courts are run by the Islamic community and are presided over by local religious leaders who make decisions (and interpret the laws) according to their own beliefs, informed by their own prejudices and self interests.
If you have any doubt that this is true, then simply consider that there are moderate Muslims in the world, and there are Muslims that believe God wants them to commit murder. Do you think it is a coincidence that those who see the West as the devil come from countries where the West has severely harmed in the past through selfish and corrupt interference? Do you think it is by chance that within the West and within countries allied with the West, we find more moderate viewpoints?
Religious rhetoric aligns itself with realpolitik. It is naive to see it in any other terms.
Think of it this way, if there were no courts and no defence lawyers and no-one ever bothered to read the legal statutes for themselves, then would the actual text of the law mean anything? Or wouldn't it rather be that, in application, the law would tend serve the interests of the police?
Also, being judgemental and having a superiority complex are very different to bullying. Thinking you are better than someone is very different to telling them they are worse than you.
I don't know anyone who actually dresses for attention. I know plenty of people who dress unusually though, since I'm part of the rock/goth/alternative community in my city. Every one of them dresses according to their sense of aesthetics. They dress in a way that they think looks good.
I get the feeling that a lot of the people complaining about hipsters are like when you get regular people complaining about modern art or jazz music. Ignorant people making assumptions. I'm not saying I understand hipster fashion, but I at least know that I don't understand it. I find it hard to believe that many people dress in a way that they personally think looks bad in order to be fashionable.
Usually that accusation is justified. Even if the complaint itself is reasonable, in most cases, the act of complaining is not. For example, if you see someone who is overweight, the sentence "you are fat" is arguably objectively correct. However, the act of saying that sentence out loud reveals something about the speaker. The weight level of a stranger is not their business. They do not convey any new information. It seems likely that the motivation for making such a statement is some desire to hurt the stranger. Desiring to hurt strangers is a bad thing, and is pretty much the definition of "hater". A "hater" is someone who lets their own personal emotional problems colour their perspective of the world, generally seeing other people in a negative light, and generally thinking it is okay to hurt strangers for no reason. The world is chock full of people like that and if you can't see that, it's probably because your perspective is similarly skewed.
To clear up a few things, context is important. It shouldn't be socially acceptable to publicly throw vitriol at strangers who are deemed attention seekers. (If you don't like attention seekers, don't give them attention. Nothing more is reasonable.) On the other hand, someone singing badly outside your apartment clearly directly affects you. People who campaign against fox hunting are personally invested in the issue. Whether or not it's reasonable for them to get upset about it is a matter of opinion - and is closely related to whether or not their views are deemed reasonable. The anti-fox hunting movement is generally seen as legitimate, even by people who disagree with them. However, not everything that people campaign on is regarded as reasonable, take the Westboro Baptist Church for example.
Being turned into a hipster meme is pretty harsh, whatever you say. Even the hardiest of Internet tough guys break down under torrents of social media abuse. There are countless examples of Reddit mob justice singling people out and breaking them down. It's obviously a deeply unpleasant experience, and unless you've been through it, I don't think you're in a position to make light of it.
Lastly, I just want to say I find it hard to understand why you don't have any concept or understanding of what bullying is. The most likely explanation is that you are prone to negativity and you're being self indulgent about it. So, given your commitment to absorbing other people's perspectives, why don't you take on board mine? I think you're probably an overly negative person. If you see the majority of people around you negatively, then you have unrealistic standards (by definition). Unrealistic standards will make you unhappy, because you will be perpetually disappointed and full of complaints. It's better to care less about the faults of others and enjoy their good points. In fact, if you want to live a happy life, then you need to have tougher standards on yourself than you do on others. That might sound counter intuitive, but it's pretty obvious that most people live pretty unhappy lives. If you want to live a happy life then you need to do better than them - and you can't get upset at their failings, because that'll make you unhappy.
Really? You think that state run education is terrible all over the globe? I don't think the problems with the US system are universal. Certainly here in the UK, education is pretty good. The UK is smaller, but we're only talking a factor of five here.
Asking people to educate their own children is unrealistic. Teaching is not easy. Good teaching requires intelligence, skills, knowledge and understanding that most people don't have. Private tuition requires a lot of money, which most people don't have. You can claim these things are a cop-out, but I think you're being naive. You are a successful high school dropout. Which means you're probably very smart, motivated and independent. Most people are not like you. It's unrealistic to judge other people by your own standards. Most people need education while they are young in order to give them vitally important abstract thinking skills they simply wouldn't be able to figure out on their own. Most people are not capable of providing such an education for their own children. Education has always been a mechanism of control, but that's because most people need to be taught some measure of control. The people that don't need it can think for themselves anyway, so it doesn't matter.