The California Exodus

What's really funny is that I first heard that joke nearly thirty years ago.

Yes it does.

A phenomenon can be observed to be inevitable as a statistical trend without representing a pre determined outcome for any particular data point.

Unchecked conservatism, without fail, leads in the direction of stratification. That's not to say stratification cannot occur otherwise, it certainly can, but I stand by my assertion that a conservative viewpoint is fundamentally incompatible with efforts to reduce social divides.

The clue is in the name, it is the philosophy of conserving one's position and status. The apex of conservatism is a feudal monarchy which is not coincidentally the extreme case of social stratification. We've spent centuries redressing that balance, often violently.

Where society makes no efforts to reduce inequalities they do not merely disappear. On the contrary they are self perpetuating and an ideological objection to such efforts can lead nowhere else except further inequalities.

They do make great ginger ale and also poutine.

here's the rub
the opportunity and environment in which to develop those attributes is itself a privilege.

And yet some people prosper without that privilege.

Of course they do.

Who claimed otherwise?

Neither @Spaceturkey, @garamet nor I have.

Some women prosper in Saudi Arabia, but not many and only because people have taken great risks to push back.

Hiram Rhodes Revels served as a senator in an era when case law could still be used to argue being black precluded being a citizen. Wouldn't have happened without the enormous sacrifices made in the name of abolition and black rights.

Given enough attempts you'll eventually roll ten sixes on ten dice even if they're loaded against you. Bet you wouldn't put your life savings on it.

Winning against the odds in an unfair game doesn't change the fact it's unfair.

yet even more are willfully blind to having had it...

Anyone who insists the consequences are inevitable.

Nope.

Read it all again.

No one, not one person, has said no one can succeed against the odds. I'd be the last person to do that.

What we have said is that conservatism inevitably stacks those odds, it lends itself to reinforcing the existing power base. Individuals may buck the trend, but the trend is inevitable nonetheless.

It's literally where the word "conservative" comes from, the tendency to conserve the existing social order. It doesn't mean free market capitalism or social mobility, it means resistance to change where that change upsets the status quo.

Any group who are disadvantaged in a truly conservative society will inevitably remain that way. They will, in fact, become more so as their disadvantages serve to further stack the odds against them.

If you really doubt that PoC are still at an enormous disadvantage in most Western democracies then I'm not sure what would convince you. If they aren't, why the massive discrepancies in outcomes?

Left wing politics aren't stereotypically seen as the politics of rebellion without good cause, they are the politics of usurping that social order by means of placing a responsibility on society (ie, government) to rectify inequality.

Neither is truly better than the other at core, both contain elements which real world societies rely in to function, nor do they really represent the full scope of how those societies work in the real world, but in their unchecked forms they do have consequences both good and bad.

In the case of conservatism that includes playing with a fixed deck.

This is really bad logic. Really bad.

The consequences of a major hurricane making landfall are inevitable: there will be widespread flooding and destruction of property. But that does not in any way imply that any given house will fall down, or even be damaged.

To claim that "inevitable consequences" means "the exact same consequences for everyone" is either a failure to understand the English language, or just plain grasping at straws because you don't like the implications.

No one here has. Being gone for years has not improved your reading comprehension.

As a side note, I remember taking trips from my hometown to the Bay Area Ain the summer and always having to pack a jacket because everything past Vallejo was fucking freezing. Even with climate change, anything over 75 degrees is considered a heat wave in SF.

You can't underestimate the wind chill factor on the water, as I've learned from 3 years of watchstanding in Yokosuka

That is a very flawed metaphor. An ideology is not some monolithic force pushing uniformly towards one narrowly defined outcome. The hurricane isn't a legion of individual minds, doesn't argue within itself about it's own terms, conflicting priorities and how best to carry them out, and it doesn't have to worry about sabotaging itself with any divide between idle academic navel-gazing and practical efforts.

Humans, on the other hand, place a high value on broad, abstract concepts distinct from themselves as individuals, because it frees them from ever looking at the "self" as the problem or the solution. Then it can always be someone else's fault, someone else's problem to solve.

If your position forces you to insist that every benefit or advantage was attained at the expense of someone else, then I am not the one skirting inconvenient implications. You can't just insist that achieving an advantage necessarily means depriving someone else of the same, and then blow right past any requirement that you connect those two outcomes directly, at the individual level. That's mindless generalizing trying to pass itself off as profound. Down that path lies the diseased thinking that discipline and aptitude themselves are unfair privileges, that people must be forced to collectivize their efforts and uniformly distribute the results without regard for individual merit or free will. It's an agenda of compassionate slavery. Better some be made to shoulder more of the burden, than for anyone to suffer or do without.

And to preempt:

garamet and spaceturkey:

"I know you are but what am I? Hurr hurr!"

I like the part where you compare people to hurricanes. Please continue.

It's not a metaphor. It's a demonstration that the proposition "inevitable consequences means the same consequences for everyone" is false.

And it is.

It doesn't.

Nor does the position of anyone else posting in this thread, as far as I have seen.

So that is totally irrelevant. It's what we commonly call a "straw man" in logic.

How many exceptions are necessary before admitting that "inevitable" was a poor choice of terms, that it is not inevitable at all, but an entrenched position in service of bias?

Maybe you read this differently from me:

Just one example.

It's relevant. Responds directly to the premise. If it's a strawman, it's in reply to another strawman. The notion of people only prospering on the backs of others.

As has been repeatedly reinforced by everyone now, inevitable would be a bad choice of word if referring to the effect on a single individual, but you're the only person reading it that way. From a statistical and systematic perspective it is totally valid to say something is practically inevitable.

It's something that causes problems when discussing policy like minimum wage and employment conditions laws.

It's common for opponents of such laws to say they are unnecessary because the individuals at those minimum conditions could do something to lift themselves personally out of them.

Even if that is true for every individual, the system means it cannot be true for all of them at the same time. Having some people working in the least respected and worse treated jobs is inevitable.

Stratification is an inevitability of true freedom. I will not sacrifice individual free will for collective prosperity, and I am not offering to pay for anyone else's decisions.

You really don't get this, do you?

If I decide that as a gesture of goodwill I will go out and give $100 to some random person I meet, the "inevitable consequence" of that choice is that someone is going to get $100.

The fact that all but one of the people I encounter are "exceptions" (as you call it; that is the term that is not appropriate) makes no difference. Someone getting $100 is the inevitable consequence.

The term "inevitable" is not at all a poor choice of terms. "Exceptions", however, is a very, very, very poor choice of terms. It is in fact a demonstration of your total inability to understand the logic of the statement.

This is one of the clearest, best statements of fundamental selfishness that I have ever come across. Thank you for having the honesty to admit so openly what so many of us have been saying for so long about libertarianism and unrestricted capitalism.

You say that as though at were a confession of something shameful, but you will no doubt absolve yourself of any responsibility to actually prove it in any substantial way.

"Shameful" is a subjective term. If being selfish is not a source of shame to you, that is your right.

But while "shameful" might be subjective, your statement that you "will not sacrifice individual free will for collective prosperity" is a very objective statement of selfishness. It is almost the very definition of selfishness.

I am not trying to shame you for your selfishness. There was nothing sarcastic in my congratulating you on being so willing to state it openly. If you want to be selfish, that is your right. But most people aren't honest enough to admit it so oenly.

I truly and honestly applaud your honesty in stating your selfishness.

I see FF can't read anything more than a sound bite...

Ah. So it being true even once is enough to defend your position, but one person being able to rise above their circumstances is not enough to support mine. Got it.

Great. So we can both lay out terms that will necessarily be satisfied at least once. But I am not the one trying to argue that in support of some generality. If you're going to assail someone's ideology, you do not get to say, "it resulted in this outcome this number of times, therefore it will happen in a sufficient number of cases to be accepted as the inevitable outcome."

You've been away for a while. So has @Uncle Albert. His last post before Anc took over the board was "Fuck me running." (You can look it up.)

He don't like being told anything by anybody. He's got his (paltry as it is) and fuck everyone else. The very fact that you've been able to engage him in an actual give-and-take conversation (as opposed to his snide one-liners and neg-reps) is a credit to your intellect, rationality, fortitude, and patience.

Just don't expect anything from him other than a when he gets bored with/challenged by the conversation.

Lately he also seems to be suffering from the Jenee Effect, which involves misunderstanding your post and claiming you said something you didn't.

So is "inevitable," the way you bullshitters are trying to play it.

In the narrow context of my labor and the product thereof, granted. I am not ashamed to be the primary beneficiary of my own efforts.

Only if you deny the nature of collectivism is entitlement at the expense of others against their will, which leaps beyond selfishness to the realm of parasitic selfishness. At least I am not demanding anyone be forced to labor for my benefit.

Most people aren't honest enough to admit they thing the universe owes them a living, either.

Most magnanimous of you.

That's not "lately".

Don't you remember that marathon "roundabouts" thread? All the rational arguments in the world didn't cause him to budge at all.

He hasn't changed.

No, motherfucker. I didn't "get" mine. I earned it. Since I was old enough to lift a rake or push a lawn mower. It wasn't given to me. It wasn't privileged to me. And I don't need to justify my claim to it.

I'd forgotten that. Okay, so he's found one person in the universe who subscribes to his worldview, even though his is so often at odds with hers. Must be