[T]hose who make good decisions tend to enter a virtuous cycle: good decisions lead to better outcomes, which in turn provide more opportunities and resources to make even better decisions in the future. This compounding effect also leverages white supremacy to result in an ever widening gap between those who make consistently good choices and those who do not.The idea is that people make bad decisions because they lack the opportunities and resources to make good ones. One example might be starting a savings account early in life and benefiting from the power of compound interest.I'm afraid the argument leaves me unmoved. Granted, the more money you have in youth, the easier it would seem to be to set some of it aside as savings. Honestly, though, it's not a pattern I've ever detected in real life. Whether people live within their income appears to be remarkably untethered to whatever their income happens to be. Some people are dirt poor and manage to make ends meet and set aside money for a rainy day; my Depression-Era parents were a good example. Others are rich as Croesus and consistently overspend. It's not a question of how much you earn but of your ability to see reality clearly and control your own impulses: if you can't afford it, you can't afford it, no matter what you think you deserve to be able to afford.
Satire/serious?
Powerline's Week in Pictures featured this headline, which I assumed was a joke: "New Study Reveals That People Who Make Good Decisions Have an Unfair Advantage." No, it's a real article title, but I will say that the point is not necessarily that making good decisions is itself an unfair advantage. The authors appear to be arguing that white supremacy unfairly endows the wrong kind of people with a magical power of making good decisions, and in that sense the healthy results of the good decisions are an unearned benefit. The argument still gets a high Lame-O-Meter rating from yours truly, but it's not quite as absurd as the headline implied.Here's the crux:
After perusing that site for a little while, I still can't decide if it's satire or not. It seems like it ought to be, but if so it's so committed to the bit that it's difficult to be sure.
ReplyDeleteIt's not on the (short) list of satire sites I found, and I'm tempted to invoke Poe's Law. If it is satire, it has backed into reality. I've been told (by a middle-aged and very sincere activist) that expecting self-restraint and similar behaviors like saving money is trying to impose white culture on minorities, and thus unfair. She was completely serious. So ... I'd give the site 50/50 if it is satire, or if reality has become satire and vice versa. (Also known as "Darn it, DuffleBlog, you're supposed to be satire, not DoD policy!")
ReplyDeleteLittleRed1
I ran that article by a progressive philosopher I know. He writes, “I looked all over that website to see whether it's satire and I'm still not sure.”
ReplyDelete" which in turn provide more opportunities and resources to make other decisions in the future" I think we've all seen people whose success led them to assume that the same type of plan would always be successful.
ReplyDeleteThe only way I could make sense of it was to mentally add scare quotes around good, i.e. those are choices that reinforce white supremacy.
ReplyDeleteI would think it is not satire, because as a social worker I heard many peers express a sort of "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" theory that Structural Racism was so profound that it prevented many people from ever overcoming it despite great effort.
ReplyDeleteIt has the feel of pushing the blame for educational outcomes back farther and farther, all the way to birth (or perhaps pregnancy, but never to conception). "Darn it, The racist lack of education must start before age 10...before age six...before age 2." If people are richer, or more educated, or less criminal, it can only be because they started with an advantage. It can't be that richer people have more skills, unless they are the skills necessary to cheat others or take advantage somehow. Or to only "succeed" in societies that artificially favor them in racist ways.
It's all circular, and it's maddening, as it prevents anything really constructive being done. I now hold the theory that they secretly like the evil rules because they themselves are favored and succeed. However, this can never be admitted.
It's certainly a way to argue that favored classes are entitled to endless compensation and coddling, because their pitiful condition is matched in severity only by the insurmountable obstacles they face in improving their condition in any way. No, we don't need more opportunities or even support in overcoming obstacles, just give us a bunch of money and make us exempt from any consequences, because nothing can ever be our own responsibility to improve. It's all your fault, and will be forever. Just cough up the goodies.
ReplyDeleteOthers are rich as Croesus and consistently overspend.
ReplyDeleteI am reminded of what the Washington Redskins owner said about coach George Allen: "I gave him an unlimited budget, and he has exceeded it."
My take is that it is not satire. It is nearly impossible to satirize the left. One will write a satire on the left, only to find out that someone on the left has already said what someone on the right wrote as satire.
Conversely, there is a reason why the Babylon Bee has been subjected to so many "fact-checks." What the Babylon Bee considers a statement to be blatant satire, many on the left consider it to be a plausible statement. Thus the need to "fact-check" satire.
Thus the comments about “Darn it, Bee, you’re supposed to be satire, not prophecy!”
DeleteLittleRed1