hat you want is a literal oxymoron: a civilised violence. — StreetlightX

No, what I want is practical measures. "Civilized" doesn't come into it.

And even then, only on the part of the oppressed, considering your near silence - or at least disproportionate whining - when it comes to Isreali atrocities. — StreetlightX

Once again we're doing theater. Should I preface all my posts with a denunciation of Israeli actions or can we treat each other as people rather than carricatures?

I'm sorry you're too stupid to reckon with the implications of your own words. — StreetlightX

No, I understand the implications of my own words precisely - that it's better to die rather than to die and cause more pointless death on the way.

I would have thought that isn't controversial, but one can be wrong.

Which, again means: only Isreal can exercise violence. — StreetlightX

I'm sorry, I though you were going to show me where I said I'd prefer Palestinians to "lay down and die in silence"?

But of course all you can offer is an interpretation in line with your theater. Liar.

Isreal will continue to genocide Palestinians regardless of rocket attacks. — StreetlightX

True.

Whether they ‘help’ or not is - like the rest of your questions - is completely inconsequential. The focus on the rocket attacks is a sideshow, peddled by the propagandised and the enablers, — StreetlightX

Now it's only one tiny step from this conclusion to the realisation that yes, it actually matters whether or not the rocket attacks help. But that's only if you actually care about the result.

who would demonstrably otherwise prefer they lay down and die in silence - which is literally something you said, you fucker, and not a ‘lie'. — StreetlightX

Quote me then. Show me these exact words coming from this account.

Obviously you can't, liar.

Your shit take on Palestinian resistance - which, apparently, has nothing to do with actual Palestinians. — StreetlightX

So, does firing rockets at Israeli cities help actual Palestinians, or does it simply kill them faster? Does saying that Israeli citizens are "in the camp of the oppressor" help actual Palestinians?

Oh right, helping the actual Palestinians isn't the point. What is the point?

Actually, you insisted on this after I pointed it out. Having you admit that you're literally talking about a fantasy is quite good enough in my book. It means you have nothing to say and, in the case that you do, it means nothing. — StreetlightX

And yet you found it necessary to lie about me repeatedly. Weird to lie about nothing. Oh and also you fantasized about lining me up against the wall and shooting me. I think it's very important that we keep that in mind here.

By the way, you're evading my question.

What exactly does 'helping' or not have to do with anything? — StreetlightX

You're the one who insists I'm "enabling genocide", that I'm sitting in some ivory tower, divorced from the actual situation. You tell me how what I'm doing is so different from what you're doing.

You said a shit thing, and it remains shit no matter how hard you bloviate around it. No wonder that you've dropped it entirely in order to wonder in the weeds of irrelevance. — StreetlightX

What have I dropped?

Ah, the last bastion of the weasel - “I’m not actually talking about what’s going on in Palestine, I’m just war-gaming it for my intellectual edification, even as it has nothing to do with the realities of the situation”. “Also this doesn’t make a difference so who cares lol”. — StreetlightX

I'll just repeat what I said:

I don't see how you imagine that attributing to someone the "right" to commit useless violence helps them. — Echarmion

Do you imagine that calling me names and fantasizing about committing violence is somehow helping?

Except rhetoric like yours is routinely wheeled out precisely in order to uphold the conditions of atrocity, — StreetlightX

Ah yes, I'm just a symbol of oppression. This is all an elaborate theater piece where you are the knight in shining armour tilting against the evil oppressor. What anyone actually says or believes is irrelevant, so long as you imagine yourself on the "right" side. And if it so happened that you judged Israel to be home to an oppressed people, you'd effortlessly argue in favour of killing Palestinian children.

Which, in the context of the open-air concentration camp that is Gaza, is indistinguishable from demanding that Israel alone has the exclusive rights to exercise violence. — StreetlightX

I don't see how you imagine that attributing to someone the "right" to commit useless violence helps them.

Your gatekeeping of violence does not take in some rarefied intellectual game-space where a genocided population gets the pleasure of picking when and how they enact resistance to a power that crushes them at every turn. — StreetlightX

That's precisely where it takes place. I'm not under the illusion that any talk about who has the "right" to commit violence changes the situation on the ground.

You, on the other hand, seem to think that there is some mystical connection between what's written in this thread and the fate of actual people in Palestine.

There's a reason that when they lined up the Nazis and the collaborators against the wall - the latter of whom always protested that they were just trying to make things bearable - they shot the collaborators first. — StreetlightX

Does thinking about lining me up against the wall and shooting me arouse you?

You want Israel, a genocidal state, to hold the exclusive means of violence. — StreetlightX

No, I don't. I want violence to be useful.

At least people like twoBit are clear minded in their shittyness - your liberal civility politics is the worst of both positions - one that plays enabler to genocide while pretending to call it an evil. An evil that you're so concerned about that your counsel is to 'just let it happen baby'. — StreetlightX

And what's your "counsel" then? You're accusing me of "enabling genocide" by disagreeing with you. So what is it that you do that is so important in the fight against genocide? Does your unwavering support on an internet forum turn into a weapon in some poor Palestinians hands?

If by 'discussion' you mean, "it is preferable that the Palestinians are genocided in silence" then yeah, that's aiding the opressers you fuck. — StreetlightX

Never said that, you duck.

These are the kinds of people who watched the Death Star blow up in Star Wars and then cried about all the innocents who were on board. — StreetlightX

"These are the kinds of people". You sound like an Israeli nationalist.

Regardless, it's hopeless to discuss further when a handful of interlocutors are, like a magnetized needle fixated towards the North, incapable of pointing anywhere else besides the agency of Palestinians, who have the least agency of all involved. — Maw

Who is doing that? The only person who has said anything along these lines (that I have read) is @BitconnectCarlos, and basically everyone else here has disagreed with him.

The discussion here focuses on the Palestinians and ways out of the conflict because everyone agrees that what Israeli forces are doing is fucking evil and deplorable, so what is there to discuss?

I have asked you this before, and you have not reacted: is any discussion of anything but atrocities and murders commited by people associated with the Israeli state automatically aiding the oppressors? @StreetlightX certainly seems to think so, given he feels the need to lie about, belittle and insult me for deviating from that line.

Before the oppressor (and his patrons/apologists) can legitimately criticize and condemn the oppressed for his means and methods of resistance, he/they must completely dismantle the entire state-apparatus of oppression now. Until then, the logic of oppression entails that there must not be any "innocents" in the oppressor's camp, especially in so far as the oppressor tactically discounts them – his own noncombatant civilians – as potentially "acceptable losses" as the necessary cost of maintaining his strategem of oppression — 180 Proof

What's the "oppressor's camp"? Do it's inhabitants get any say in whether or not they are placed here, or do they become mere bargaining chips for "the oppressor" to spend and "the oppressed" to cash in?

It's one thing to say that Netanjahu or whoever else we consider an oppressor bears the blame for all Israeli causalities as well. It's another to just exclude those casualties from moral consideration entirely. Blame is not a zero-sum game. I can assign the full blame to the oppressor and also apply the full blame to whoever orders the deaths of civilians without even a military justification.

In order to survive, the oppressed must resist – always have and always will – by any means necessary. — 180 Proof

This seems backwards. In order to resist, you must first be alive and second in a position to impose costs on your oppressor. Otherwise what you're doing is not resistance but suicide.

And because I'll be accused of blaming the victim or demanding non-violent resistance: I'm not saying never use this or that method, I'm saying use something that works.

So if any oppressor-state is serious about stoping "terrorism", that oppressor-state should begin by giving up its own policies of state-terrorism and military-economic support for client/proxy-terrorism. — 180 Proof

I totally agree. It's first and foremost the Israeli state who should stop all violence, no matter how many rockets are allegedly fired.

Except this arbitration is still being directed towards those who are oppressed, not the oppressors, therefore falling for the liberal demand that the latter not only solve their own emancipation but that they are issued limitations for the "correct" way to do so. — Maw

I don't really understand this line of argument. Are you saying that what the Hamas is doing is both moral and reasonable (from the perspective of instrumental reason) or are you saying that since Hamas represents oppressed people, I shoudn't talk about whether or not what they're doing is either moral or reasonable? Isn't the entire point of having a topic about this on the philosophy forum to talk about the "correct" way to do stuff, from either perspective?

Both articles mention non-European majorities in the UK based on government statistics, the more recent in the subtitle.

We're off track and I'm done with the:" I'll implying every last fact you put out is highly questionable and needs a citation," game. I've provided numerous sources, but I'm not going to bother if your method of argument is claiming I'm being disingenuous on every last fact claim, when I've demonstrated that I'm not by following up on the first several, particularly if they're just going to be dismissed anyhow. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is what you wrote:

People in general underestimate the scale of the shift. The major European nations, France, the UK, and Germany, will all be minority European by around 2080. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a pretty specific and extraordinary claim. I'm not "implying" this is questionable, I said so directly. It's simply not the kind of thing where I'd go "well he seems pretty knowledgeable otherwise, so I'll just roll with it".

And I want to point out that you do seem otherwise pretty well informed, and you're making good points. Which makes things such as the one above stand out to me.

Right, and said bias is to be sought out, and quantified. This is a fairly common target for publication, an analysis of the field and its biases themselves.

It's funny that you use that example, because projecting such purpose on to research findings is an explicit aim of critical theory. In science, it is, as you rightly describe, a bug, in critical theory it is a feature. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, I guess the argument of a proponent of Critical Theory would be that just calling it a "bug" doesn't make it go away. It's always there. Critical Theory just makes it explicit and therefore opens it up for discussion, rather than letting the existing power structures simply determine it. Replacing the already present focus with a new one, explicitly chosen for the benefit of humanity.

That's the Taliban, not Saudi Arabia. But they all look the same to you, huh? — frank

The Taliban can at least argue that they've been invaded by superpowers twice, so they didn't have much time to consider reforming their ways.

This is getting very off-topic though.

I'll take that as a yes then. — StreetlightX

Likewise.

I'd be willing to entertain what you're saying with the note that I do believe that proportional self-defense is always a valid option. Both options - response or non-response - would be morally acceptable but I'm not an expert in these kind of issues so I need to reserve judgment for this.

It would need to be strategically justified for me to consider it. If we stopped responding to them and they just keep launching rockets then it's no-go for me. It may embolden them or it may appease them; I have no idea. — BitconnectCarlos

Basically, I see two ways this conflict ends - some new coalition gets to power in Israel (or else the international community forces their hand), unilaterally stops all escalation and provides material support to Palestine, thereby depriving would-be extremists of people willing to risk their lives.

Or Apartheit and oppression continue indefinetly, with thousands more deaths and many more displaced people, until the Palestinians are eventually ground down so much they're no longer recognisable as a people.

It's not hard for me to decide which of these I want to happen.

It's working well by and large. Progress for women is a work in progress there. — frank

Are they allowed to leave their house without a male guardian yet? I'm sure in another 50 years, they'll have worked hard enough to outlaw marital rape. We all know marital rape is important to prevent the US from invading your country.

Presumably you're the kind of person who'd tell a rape victim to sit there are take it if the rapist is stronger. — StreetlightX

Presumably, you're the kind of person who'd disembowel a village chief in front of his wife and children because he accepted rice from the imperialists.

Leaning toward the left is like becoming a mystic, you start saying things you know sound crazy, but they're true. — frank

Not that Saudi is likely to consider democracy. Their government is working fine. They ally with the US because the US threatened to destroy them in the 1970s. True story. — frank

It's working fine for the richest 1%.

Are you honestly asking me why Israel doesn't just let Hamas fire rockets into Israel and not respond? — BitconnectCarlos

Yes.

I don't know, maybe this is some kind of 500 IQ move that'll get them to stop and reduce violence in the long run but I honestly have no idea. If you're saying it's the best strategic move maybe I could entertain that purely on strategic grounds, not moral grounds though. — BitconnectCarlos

It's the reverse, I'm saying it's the best move on moral grounds. Nothing is gained from cycles of escalation (except of course power for Israeli politicians and Hamas' warlords).

Given this, it's audacious to expect Palestinians to limit modes and mechanisms of emancipation by demanding that they act solely through nonviolent methods and peaceful resistance. Violent resistance has a historically successful track record of securing freedom and self-determination, and to demand that the oppressed struggle for emancipation through limited, pre-approved means presents itself as an implicit justification for the state of oppression. — Maw

All true. But this does not somehow make any consideration of tactics and the relation between ends and means superfluous. The results of an escalation are obvious - people will die, most of them Palestinians. And then it will provide further cover and justification for continuing and deepening the oppression.

And again I'm not imagining I'm somehow talking to Palestinians here. I just don't understand how anyone can see anything positive in stuff like rocket attacks on Israeli cities.

So, should the U.S. pull the pack our bags (of money) and go home? I'm hip. — James Riley

Yes. Or even better actively work against further escalation and expanding settlements.

They aren't thousands of miles away second-guessing their own actions, like an armchair quarterback who would have them concede because, well, they are the underdog. — James Riley

All of us here are armchair quarterbacks. Cheering them does them no good either.

So one thing you need to get straight is that lauding democracy is a neoliberal ploy. When you can't buy off religious leaders, you want democracy so you can subvert it and raid. They know that. — frank

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

Oh thanks. And here's me thinking you have to work at it. — frank

Saudi Arabia is ruled by a tiny minority of very rich and powerful men. Are you telling me they're trying?

See "How does it feel" below. — James Riley

Everyone has their feelings. If that's all you want to talk about, I see no point.

As to your second question, yes. The Israelis are a sovereign. As sovereign is an amalgam of the faceless. You suffer for the sins of your sovereign. That's why, as an American, I don't want my sovereign backing another sovereign that is making people feel like straight up evil is the only card they have to play in response to what they feel is straight up evil. — James Riley

I think this is a terrible moral philosophy. It turns persons into just replaceable cogs in a machine. Essentially giving whatever sovereign rules a country the right to dispose of their citizens lifes.

I you want morality to stay in the room, then get off the Palestinian's back. — James Riley

This is just ad-hominem. Do you suppose the Palestinians read this thread as a guideline as to what to do?

I only support violence when it's for self-defense and if Hamas is going to launch rockets from inside Gaza then Israel, like any nation state, has a right to respond. — BitconnectCarlos

That's sidestepping the question. I didn't ask whether you think Israel has some kind of "right to retaliate". I asked why they don't just stop doing it.

I don't like the occupation but until the Palestinians renounce violence as a political tool I think the occupation is a necessary evil. — BitconnectCarlos

How about the Israelis renounce violence as a political tool? Clearly Israel is more powerful and less at risk. Just stop responding with violence.

Saudi Arabia is a strong nation, attempting to make progress on human rights. — frank

No-one needs to "attempt" to make progress on human rights. We already know what those are, you can just adopt them.

I think the world is just going to watch. Unless the Saudis decide to attack Israel. — frank

The Saudis? I can't imagine they would. They'll just milk the conflict for their own gains. Oppressed Palestinians are useful to them, as it allows them to distract from their own oppression.

It's not pointless. You're paying attention, aren't you? That's the point. — James Riley

The point is death? For its own sake or what?

It's kind of a "How does it feel, MFs?" kind of statement. — James Riley

Yeah, that's just straight up evil in my book.

You see, that's just it. Nothing they do would present such a case. Your argument reminds me of the arguments of some preceding the Civil War in the U.S. "Just wait, it will work itself out and go away." It had been generations. Sometimes, the gig is up. You can get on the trains or you can kick them in the nuts as you go down. — James Riley

Who is "they" here? Are we treating all Israelis as some kind of faceless amalgam, where one part can stand in for the sins of another?

If justice had anything to do with it, we wouldn't have the situation in the first place. — James Riley

If morality goes out the window in difficult situation, why have it at all?

Though I want to point out I'm not blaming Palestinians for doing what they do. They're in a terrible situation and will do whatever they think they have to do.

My problem is with people sitting in front of a computer casually accepting or dismissing death and destruction.

I'd laugh if it wasn't so tragic. The exact, exact same arguments were made to the Comanche. In fact, some leaders were brought back east to see the might of the U.S. and the futility of resistance. That didn't help and, understandably, it wouldn't.

Edited to add: The Palestinians have a much greater chance than did the Comanche. — James Riley

Again, I'm not saying I don't understand why people would act this way. I just don't see what's good about it.

Biden needs to say something. — frank

Didn't he already tweet a message of support to Israel?

It doesn't seem likely that the Biden administration would do anything of consequence to stop Israel.

No, it's not. — James Riley

Why not? What's the utility of pointless death? I can understand fighting back even if you don't have a chance to win, but not if the people you hurt are not the people attacking you. And I mean "people" in the sense of individual persons here, not in the sense of sharing a nationality or language or "culture".

It's never pointless. — James Riley

I'll believe that if anyone can point out a practical way that rocket attacks or similar actions have the least bit of a positive effect on the situation of the oppressed.

They are fighting oppression. Use of methods which adversely impact innocents is a consequence of inequality. You want a fair fight? Then arm up the parties until they are on an equal footing. Don't want to do that? Okay, I understand why you would not want to do that. But then you live with the consequences of your oppression. — James Riley

I'm not objecting to their methods in a vacuum. I'm not saying they should "fight fair or fight not at all". I'm saying that what you're doing must have some practical chance of resulting in a situation that is "less bad". And I don't see such a chance here.

By the same logic used to oppress you. I would fully understand Comanches raiding settler's homesteads and slaughtering the "innocent" women and children, and inviting reprisals against their own kin. — James Riley

Understand, yes. Justify, no.

If we wanted a fair fight, we should have got naked, jumped on a horse and took over their land that way, leaving our guns at home. Or we could have armed them up and trained them to fight and kill us on the terms we want to be fought and killed on. That's just fundamentally stupid. — James Riley

At least the comanche raiders could believe that if they killed a bunch of civilians, the Europeans might retreat and they might get to keep their lands. But you'd have to be delusional to think that firing rockets at cities is going to get the Isreali military to back down, much less improve the chance of anyone else coming in to help you.

You arguments show me who you are as a person. A rat. — StreetlightX

Thanks for taking off your mask.

And there it is.

Not a peep about the violence of settler colonialism of the Isreali state but - 'they should die in silence'.

Fucking warped. — StreetlightX

Yeah you're just putting words in my mouth. But that's par for the course with you.

I don't care to repeat all the correct condemnations of Israeli behaviour that have already been voiced in this thread. What I think of Israel's actions isn't relevant to my point, but obviously for you it's all about who I am as a person, not what my arguments are.

This would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. "If you can't win against a force that is successfully exterminating you bit by bit, then you ought to roll over and die in silence". — StreetlightX

Better to die in silence than take other innocent people with you.

Violence against oppression isn't evil. — Benkei

Pointless violence, however, definetly is. Hamas isn't fighting oppression. They're getting Palestinians and Israelis killed for zero gain.

And the conclusion that if there's no way out and they should just roll over and accept is ridiculously nihilistic. Evil should be resisted especially when success is unlikely. — Benkei

By what logic should you do something especially if it's unlikely to succeed? That's just indulging in a heroic fantasy.

If you only look at the results and don't look at causes, both parties will look equally guilty. That's why people keep repeating "each civilian casualty is a tragedy" as a mantra because that reinforces equivalence. Intuitively it feels good, appears empathetic but really just glosses over the fact that not every tragedy is equally tragic. Just looking at the number of casualties on both sides makes this clear. The tragedy that befalls Israelis is of their own making, the tragedy that befalls Palestinians is wreaked upon them by the Israelis. — Benkei

There is, however, also a problem inherent in treating this as a conflict between "two sides", where we can somehow add up atrocities and murdered civilians and come out with a moral judgement of an entire population.

Saying that the tragedy that befalls the family of a killed Israeli civilian is "of their own making" is reductive to the point of being false. What is the purpose of such a statement? It doesn't hold up as a moral judgement of individuals, nor does it provide any insight into the conflict or it's solutions.

Evils don't cancel out. The Palestinians are certainly oppressed, and against some kinds of oppression, violence can be justified. But only if there is a plausible connection between said violence and the end of oppression. And that connection simply doesn't exist here. The Hamas has no military solution, and as such it cannot justify its military actions as fighting against oppression.

Because that isn't projected, Europe is much larger than the three largest Western European nations' populations combined. The French government doesn't collect data on race, so extrapolations are all by third parties. The topic itself is considered politically sensitive. — Count Timothy von Icarus

"It's politically sensitive" isn't an excuse for making a claim without evidence.

However, the UK is more open to discussion, and the ONS has been predicting Europeans would be a minority in the UK in the 21st century for 20 years, with confidence intervals generally dipping more than they increase:

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/when-britain-becomes-majority-minority

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/sep/03/race.world

Already 33% of births in the UK have at least one foreign born parent, although that includes European migrants. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Neither of these articles supports your claim.

This is not an accurate accounting of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It had long been in a state of decay pre-1914, similar to the Austrian Empire. When it was dissolved, there was no existing state structure that European meddling could make disappear. A more appropriate argument might be that there was a power vacuum that the European states failed to sufficiently fill, although it's really unclear that they could have filled it if they wanted to.

I mean, what are you claiming existed outside the Ottoman administration for the Europeans to undermine?

In any event, the former Ottoman states did better than the former Austrian ones did initially. The hallmark instability came after WWII. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I didn't try to give an accurate account of the collapse of the Ottoman empire. What I wanted to point out is that the regional powers - Britain and France - used ethnic and religious divisions to try and destabilise each other's territories, including arming terrorist groups, allowing such groups to shelter in their territories etc.

This is not meant as a deterministic claim that, given foreign interference, no stable peace in the middle East was possible. But it would be wrong to assume that European influence on the trajectory of the region was confined to simply drawing borders.

If your theory is jettisoning the sciences under the theory that they are inheritally corrupted by power relations, and it's raison d'etre is addressing political concerns, then turning off voters or developing anti-racism interventions that increase racism seem like fairly large problems. A politically unpopular system of thought that focuses on epistemology or aesthetics doesn't have the same issue of being self defeating.

Critical theory, by definition, puts its moral claims ahead of the sciences' epistemological claims. — Count Timothy von Icarus

By what definition? That science is a social activity and that scientific results are therefore influenced by social relations - power structures - is an epistemological claim.

To use an example that's unrelated to race: The idea that the basic structure of the universe ought to "make sense" and be "aesthetically pleasing" has arguably had a large influence over basic research in physics. Critics say this has lead to one-sided interpretations of data and contributed to the stagnation in the field.

So I don't think any claim to the effect that power dynamics influence the generation of knowledge is prima facie absurd. We'd have to look at the actual argument in question to say more.

There are fundamental biological differences among some groups. I don’t recall agreeing to the assumption there isn’t. — DingoJones

I didn't ask you to agree with any such assumption. I posited that in a situation where this is the case, then going "this group has worse outcomes, therefore it's being discriminated against somehow" is a viable first approximation. For reference, we can assume the ethnic groups are french and germans, or New York and Chicago citizens.

Describe the differences in demographics however you like, makes no difference to my point. — DingoJones

Your point is that different outcomes mapping to, say, ethnic groups is not a sign of a problem, even if we assume there are no fundamental biological differences between the groups?

Why did you ask the question then? And why wouldn’t you just ask for a specific example if that’s what you wanted?
I explained the concept to you, do you not understand it and need an example or are you just asking leading questions so you can play gotcha? — DingoJones

My claim is that "equality of opportunity" and "equality of outcome" describe different judgements of an outcome. You claim that they describe different methods. I obviously don't believe that, so I don't believe you can actually describe any method. So I expected you to not do that, and instead claim that you cannot do so in the abstract. So now I am asking you to do it in the concrete then, though I expect you cannot do that either, because that would prove me wrong, while I think I am right.

Regardless, I'd rather the trains not run on time, than have corporate trains taking us to work on schedule. And there is something insidious about the Plutocracy picking and choosing which government functions they will assume via philanthropy. We end up having to choose sides between the Plutocracy and cartels, whilst leaving government, emasculated, as a punching bag; diverting the anger of the masses away from the Plutocracy and the cartels. — James Riley

Yep, that's exactly the argument againts philantropy I find convincing as well.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. What would make a cross-cultural political trend natural versus unnatural? — Count Timothy von Icarus

The only useable definition of the word "natural" is that it refers to everything that is not in some way consciously guided by humans. Sentiments concerning immigration are very clearly consciously guided by humans, given the vastly different stances historically taken, sometimes in close proximity.

In any event, it seems apparent that public sentiment and political conflict vis-a-vis political feasibility, are essential to public policy decisions. In general, how people do act is far more important to formulating policy than how they ought to act. If people acted how they ought, we shouldn't need armies, taxes to cover externalities such a pollution, or prisons. However, they act how people do act, necessitating things like standing armies and prisons. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is an important difference, however, between accounting for the fallibility of humans and fatalistically accepting it. Obviously one must expect that political actors will seek to exploit the basic human tendency towards xenophobia. Just like you must expect that a store will have to deal with thieves. But if you preemptively structure your policy on the assumption that such behaviour is inevitably succesful, you obviously hand over political power without a fight.

As evidence of the destabilizing effects of rapidly shifting demographics in West I'd submit the rise and major electoral success of Far-Right parties, and the large shift towards minority rule and ethno-nationalism in the American Republican party. You can see this in any week's headlines. This week France's military is warning of a civil war over migration for example

This destabilization has far reaching consequences not just for the citizens of Western nations, who are protected by stable institutions and high functioning states, but more so for people living in developing nations who stand to benefit from a stable international system, particularly vis-a-vis developed nations getting thier shit together on global warming. It's not that much of a winding causal path between the destablizing effects of rapid demographic shifts on politics, the rise of the Far-Right, and the lack of progress on containing carbon emissions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think this is a much too narrow single-issue view of the political shifts we've been seeing across Western Europe and the US. For one, it's not particularly convincing to argue that the reason nativism has gained ground in Western Europe is too much immigration, when the size of etnic minorities in Western Europe is still tiny compared to that of the US. In this scenario we'd expect that the appeal of nativist parties is roughly proportional to the size of ethnic minorities, but that does not seem to be the case. Instead, the changes in voting patterns in both the US and Western Europe are markedly consistent, and are parts of long trends going back to the 1980s - well before ethnic minorities were a significant issue in most european countries.

Picketty has therefore advanced the thesis that the rise of the nativist right can be explained much more consistently as a reaction to the transition of the traditionally social-democrat left wing parties from parties of the disadvantaged classes to parties of the intellectual elite.

Direct migration to developing countries can only benefit a vanishingly small minority of people in developing countries. Even if the US and Europe trippled immigration rates, you still wouldn't get close to 5% of the developing world moving to developed nations. This is why, to my mind, the left should take the destablizing effects of immigration more seriously, or at the very least get rid of the fantasy that pops up fairly often (from John Oliver for example) that declining birth rates in developed nations will allow meaningful percentage of people in developed nations to act as "replacements," for the declining population. The numbers don't add up, you're talking slow decline in developed nations versus multiple billions in population growth in the developing world, primarily Sub-Saharan Africa, over the next 80 years. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree with this insofar as it's important to see immigration as the symptom a problem - that of massive global inequalities, which cannot be solved simply by being more accepting of immigration. The fact that the left is unwilling to adress this dimension of the problem can be explained as a symptom of the shift of it's electorate from the disadvantaged classes towards the highly educated (who are more likely to derive benefits from globalisation and it's inegalitarian effects).

People in general underestimate the scale of the shift. The major European nations, France, the UK, and Germany, will all be minority European by around 2080. This represents a more rapid demographic shift than the Americas saw after 1492. Governments need a plan for handling that shift, and CRT, with its extreme moralizing trend, is supremely unhelpful at framing the discussion. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I have found no source that supports a claim that "Europeans" will be a minority in Europe by 2080. That seems like an extreme and highly questionable prediction.

My problem with CRT is that it generally refuses to conceive of immigration in any terms except racism. That is, any policy in favor of restricting immigration must have at its core, racist intent. This simply isn't the case. Given that immigration appears likely to be, with enviornmental issues related to pollution, the defining political issue of the next century, it's a pretty big liability to be caught up in reductive moralizing on the issue. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Obviously a theory concerned with race will analyze the issue of immigration in terms of race. CRT is not a theory of everything or purports to be one.

1. Historically, essentializing race as respects political representation doesn't tend to end well historically, as it results in the increased politicization of demographics. This doesn't mean race based interventions are necissarily wrong. There is a powerful case to be made for affirmative action alongside other forms of redistribution. However, I'd default towards overall redistribution in most cases. Money, access to healthcare and housing: these are relatively fungible. Access to elite schools, government posts, or mentorships are comparatively quite scarce, so in those cases race based programs make sense, since extending the benefit to everyone isn't feasible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I mostly agree with your solutions here, but I do want to point out that CRT is really a reaction to the consistent importance of race in political conflicts in the US. That clearly predates CRT.

2. CRT fails to motivate voters. It makes voters less likely to support redistribution, even those it is intended to help most. This seems like a pretty glaring flaw for a framework that aspires to become the main paradigm for left leaning political parties world wide. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As a political strategy, this is a fair point. Though I don't see many politicians openly espousing CRT.

On a related note, one of the few academic studies I've seen on anti-racism training at a university had the effect of making students less likely to be friends with members of another race. That does seem like an issue, when your treatment makes you patients worse. And as much of an issue is the fact that CRT can dismiss such positivist critiques of the results of its interventions by claiming that the social sciences themselves are tools of oppression and not to be trusted, which leads to...

3. CRT's focus on moralizing and zeal, and rejection of the validity of various branches of science would appear to make it difficult for adherents to reform their efforts. If you start with the assumption that you are right, and dismiss established methods for testing your assumptions, you end up with a political doctrine that lacks internal course correction mechanisms. Essentially, you swap doctrine for dogma. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's kind of difficult to tell how valid this is as a cirticism of CRT, given that it refers more to the public perception of CRT advocates than to anything CRT explicitly says. We'd have to discuss any specific version of the theory to tell whether it "starts with the assumption that it's right" and dismisses any kind of criticism.

Anyhow, I think it's overly pessimistic to think that multi-ethnic states are doomed to faliure by their borders. Ethnic identity is something that gains utility as other institutions and forms of identity fail. That is, ethic identity tends to be important because the state is failing moreso than the states fail due to ethnic identities. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That is probably true, but it's difficult to build effective institutions and national identities if parts of the population feel excluded. The European experience does show that cooperation can fairly rapidly defuse ethnic tensions. Though, in line with the argument of the article you linked, this happened after military victory. In any event, noone seems to have the methods at hand to repeat the success of European integration.

People generally blame instability in the Middle East on its post WWI borders, but you'd be hard pressed to find any place on Earth other than China where the populations have spent more time living under consolidated empires than the Middle East, which was unified far more often than not throughout its history. Tribal antipathy wasn't an intractable problem when the Ottoman, Persian, Roman, etc. states were ascendant in the region, it became one when strong states disappeared. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Strong states disappeared partially because of excessive european - in this case British and French, meddling though. The conflict over the middle east extends well beyond merely the Sikes-Picot agreement. Britain and France fought a veritable cold war in the middle east until the 1950s.

When a better system is possible, people will use it. Why wouldn't they? — synthesis

Because implementing a better system is a question of political power, among other things. According to you, the economic system should always have been the best possible one from the start, but that clearly isn't the case.

The problem with the present system is mostly corruption and this is problem with all systems. The simpler and more transparent systems are, the less chances there are for corruption, so this is why many believe that simplification (decreasing size and complexity) is the way to go.

The larger organizations become, the more inefficient they become (although Amazon seems to be an outlier). Governments are particularly prone to this syndrome as accountability is minimal. — synthesis

The accountability of democratic governments is strictly higher than that of non-democratic coroporations.

Based on the traits of each demographic. There are general trends within demographics. (Cultural, biological etc) — DingoJones

I specifically stated "if you believe there are no biological differences". Cultural differences cannot justify different outcomes as every difference can be framed as "cultural" and consequently no comparison would be possible.

It would be specific to each case. It’s a question of what you are building the system to do (equality of outcome or equality of opportunity) and which way is better. The exact method used would be whatever is best suited to equality of opportunity — DingoJones

That's exactly the answer I expected to get. Ok then, give me one specific case and sketch the different methods.

I don’t think the groups will naturally corespondent to the demographics. Certain professions for example attract certain kinds of people. These professions will naturally have more people of that certain kind. Some fields or areas will not have diversity because the interest in that field or area isn’t all that diverse. — DingoJones

Based on what though? Why would interests just happen to line up with some unrelated demographic grouping? That'd imply precisely that the demographic grouping and the interest are not independent.

I think you are using those terms idiosyncratically, and that’s why you think it a false dichotomy. Those two things are indeed two methods and they are mutually exclusive. — DingoJones

Can you tell me what the methods are, then?

We should be happy to live in age where material is abundant. The economic system is what it is. You make it the best you can and move forward (the way you do everything else).

Everybody understands what your complaining about but its like yelling at the moon for keeping you awake at night. Some things are what they are. — synthesis

Yeah, sure, economic systems can never be changed (except when they are).

Well in the context of race/gender etc I think the idea for some is that the proper metric for a fair group selection is diversity. That idea is about “equality of outcome”, the goal is for the group to have a proper amount of of diversity. A mainstream example would be affirmative action. — DingoJones

For a first approximation, that is probably a good strategy though. If, for a given field, you don't think there are any significant biological differences between the groups involved and the sample size is large enough, results should correspond to the makeup of the population in general. If they don't, something else is going on. Now something else is almost always going on, not necessarily something bad. But it's a legitimate cause for concern if the ratio is way off from what it should be given the makeup of the population.

The specific method of “equality of opportunity” is usually about creating a system where everyone has a fair shot, an equal playing field.
I agree with your view and on looking at the output, that’s a good way to check what a systems actually doing but I was more talking about system design. Specifically, whether the idea of “equality of outcome” is better than “equality of opportunity”. — DingoJones

But what is the actual system design like? My point is exactly that there is no way to design a system for equality of opportunity in the abstract, because you first need to decide what specific outcomes actually represent equality of opportunity, and then you design your system so it gives you the outcomes you want. There is no algorithm you can turn to to avoid having to make the value judgement about what you actually want the system to account for, and what you want it to equalize.

Yes, that was the point I was making. I think we are using terms a bit differently, I’m not sure we are in disagreement about the concepts. — DingoJones

I consider the dichotomy between equality of outcome and equality of opportunity to be a false one. The terms imply two distinct methods, when in reality it's not a question of method, but of goals.

The difference is that in the former, you earn your success, in the later you are given success regardless of what you do. — synthesis

* citation needed

Are you aware of another functioning economic system? Is feudalism still in operation? How about slavery?

Socialism is simply a transfer mechanism, and Communism is state capitalism, and communism, a pipe-dream. — synthesis

Neofeudalism arguably exists. But regardless past economic systems did function. The fact that they're no longer operational doesn't change that.

The ubiquity of slavery in ancient history should be apparent in reading any histories of the era. It existed in all state level societies. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That we have sufficient historical evidence for. And slavery in this context is a broad category, which is sometimes difficult to distinguish between other kinds of servitude.

As for levels of violence in pre-state societies, the bibliography of Pinker's "Better Angles of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined," has a copious list of sources. Both modern observation of hunter gatherer societies and forensic archeology converge on extremely high rates of homicide, significantly higher than Europe even if you take 1914-1945 as your measuring period, or the nations with the highest homicide rates today (concentrated in Central America). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'd concede the levels of violence point. What I reject is the implication that because all societies have been varying degrees of worse in the past, this makes all past behaviour of different societies roughly equivalent.

I mention Africa in terms of neopatrimonial political systems because SSA has the best examples of pure neopatrimonial models, and Francis Fukayama draws most of his examples from the region in his "Origins of Political Order," and "Political Order and Political Decay." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Fair enough, I remember the term from Fukuyama, though not the particular example.

Countries with governments set up to ensure given levels of representation by given ethnic groups, rather than open elections (e.g. Lebanon's history) are far more likely to enter a civil war and more likely to return to war if an ethnic based political system is used following a cease fire. This is a replicable finding, although obviously all IR studies deal with low N studies and lack of experimentation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the problem here is that most of these countries have to deal with arbitrary border drawn without regard for ethnic groups, as well as with a lack of institutions to deal with the resulting conflicts. This doesn't seem to be good evidence that the quota system here is significant as a cause of the problem.

I don't know what you mean by "intentionally exploitative policies." This is obviously true, although you could argue that modern capitalism was less exploitive that the systems that preceded it. In any event, my point was specific to colonies. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What I meant was that colonial administration was in almost all cases deliberately set up for the extraction of wealth to the Metropole, though in terms of the magnitude of the extraction, there are differences between the first (roughly until 1800-1850) and the second phase of colonial rule.

It's certainly not a settled matter, but the balance of findings in historical macro economic analysis is definitely on the side of colonies being net money losers for European nations. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If you include private wealth extracted? That'd be the opposite of everything I have heard on the topic.

They were pursued for prestige and strategic reasons, and had the side benefit of letting the well-connected loot the treasuries of European nations, but they were a net drain on the host nations, particularly later colonial projects during the 19th century. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Second phase colonial projects tended to be less overtly exploitative in terms of the budget balance between the colonies and the Metropole, but generally still very lucrative for private citizens of the Metropole, who had appropriated most of the resources of the colony.

Secondly, the nations that gained the most from colonies (analyses generally conclude Spain saw short term benefits from gold and silver inflows) were impoverished by the early 20th century and relied on "catch up growth," to grow near to the main European powers in terms of development. Even today, Spain and Portugal, with their vast, early empires are significantly poorer than France and the UK.

Meanwhile, Denmark's rise to being one of the most developed nations in Europe occured after it lost its colonies. Austria's development trajectory increased after losing its empire. Switzerland and the Nordic nations are the most developed in Europe, despite the lack of colonies. Finland and Korea were impoverished backwaters into the 1950s, and modernized via institutional reform, not colonization, meaning colonies are neither necessary, nor sufficient for development. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think anyone argues that colonies are a necessary or sufficient condition for development. But this does not mean that the colonies did not represent transfers of wealth to the colonisers, or that they don't have a lasting structural impact on international relations. I'm not arguing for some deterministic model of human development. Colonies can develop very rapidly after the retreat of the Metropole, and conversely having colonies isn't a guarantee for a powerful economy or technological advances. But it'd nevertheless be very hard to argue that colonisation wasn't exploitative and ultimately immoral.

The risk of CRT reducing development to extraction is that it then follows that simply transferring wealth to marginalized groups will be enough to reduce violence and increase standards of living. Yet this experiment has been run, with many poor nations inheriting vast natural resource wealth, and the result has often been a small minority benefiting from said wealth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But clearly keeping the wealth concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority isn't really a solution either, so I'm not sure what the thrust of this argument is. Are you arguing that the approach of CRT to wealth redistribution is wrong, of that wealth redistribution is generally inefficient?

As to immigration causing congestion effects for other immigrants, or immigration reaching a tipping point at which the host nation's populace experiences an increase in anti-immigrant and anti-welfare state sentiment, this is a finding that appears in the immigration literature over and over, and can be found on Google Scholar readily. For example: — Count Timothy von Icarus

This may be true, but I'm not sure what we can conclude about the merits of immigration strategies based on such sentiments, because they're not natural occurrences but results of political and ideological conflict.

Aside from academic sources, you can also look to industry. 19th and early 20th century industrialists made no secret of their attempts to intentionally hire a diverse workforce because it reduced the risks of worker cooperation and unionization efforts. Moving to today, Amazon had a leak showing that it also pursues diversity as a means of reducing the risk of unionization efforts, using it as a key metric of risk in statistical models. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Which is why the socialist movement of the 19th and early 20th century was explicitly internationalist, as many modern socialist movements are as well. But again I don't quite see the relation to the claim that reducing immigration would be an overall positive, or what the relation with CRT is (apart from an allegation that wealthy elites cynically use CRT for their own ends, which is plausible, but not really a statement on CRT itself).

As to Whiteness existing outside the US in the early 20th century as a unifying concept, I submit as evidence that it wasn't the fact that Europe experienced huge waves of ethnic cleansing (Germans totally removed from large swathes of Eastern Europe they had inhabited for centuries, Armenians subject to genocide in Turkey, the Holocaust of European Jews, the genocided in the Balkans, etc.). Racial theorists of the time also posited different European groups as different races. White, as an overarching identity shows up first as a meaningful social force in the US, and has gained relevance in Europe following the Post-War integration of Europe and the introduction of large non-European populations into Europe. Certainly a form of white identity existed in Europe prior to the 20th century, but it was not the inclusive identity it became in America. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a fair point. Though I think the level of inclusiveness of "Whiteness" in both the US and Europe prior to the 1950s was more a matter of degree. An important factor here is that the US is a unified country with a federal government and a two-party system. This necessarily structures political conflict along more "inclusive" lines. Nevertheless, Republicans could oppose segregation in the south while opposing citizenship for white immigrants in the north.

Finally, as to: "The only way equality can be measured is by comparing outcomes," sure. The next step though, advocating for the elimination of anything that shows disparities in outcomes, is necissarily making the error of confusing correlation with causation.

CRT advocates have a real problem with doing absolute junk science, or badly misrepresenting the results of academic research, and then, when confronted with this, deflecting in an almost Freudian way with: "academia itself is a racist institution, and your disagreement is a sign of internalized racism/white fragility."

For example, the slide below is the definition of statistical error: — Count Timothy von Icarus

I really don't know enough about who the CRT advocates are or what position they have on specific issues to comment on those individuals. The problem here is determining to what extend there is a problem with CRT, and to what extend there is a problem with amplifying extreme voices.

Standardized tests for civil service positions were implemented with the exact goal of reducing bias in hiring. If the goal is to increase minority hires/admissions, then the solution might be to give those groups even larger preference on exams. The push to remove testing entirely isn't required to shake up admissions rates. A quota system would be the most effective means of doing that. I'd argue that tests are being jettisoned more because disparities in the test scores of those admitted/hired allow critics of affirmative action to use an easy quantitative means to critique said practices, rather than for any practical selection reason. Standardized tests allow bright students with poor grades due to poor quality, non-challenging academic settings to demonstrate their talent, which could be a boon for minority students. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Arguably, trying to get rid of standardized tests could be seen as a symptom of desperation and lack of trust in any possibility of a fair educational system. Practically, education is an area where you mostly want equality of outcome. If there are consistently unequal outcomes based on socio-economic factors, something is wrong. But if all attempts to reform the educational system on a larger scale, concerning financing, resource allocation etc. consistently fail politically, one might instead fall back on a more narrowly identitarian strategy to change the status quo.