[Discuss] Next discussion

Wed May 3 10:32:55 EDT 2023

Marshall Plan black neighborhoods.

"I am going to tap out of the group then I will engage in the discussion" -
Art

On Wed, May 3, 2023 at 9:57 AM Arthur Bruce <lordbruce42 at proton.me> wrote:

> I love Bryce like a brother and even though we sometimes mis-align in what
> we perceive as the most salient aspect in a matter I find him very rarely
> boring, frequently brilliant, at all times exceeding my expectations, as
> high as they are. What is more, he has forgiven me the far too many ways in
> which I have sinned against him. We have worked through uncountable
> disgruntlements yet his unique personality draws me inexorably to him.  It
> pains me, therefore, to forgo any opportunity to spend time in his company
> and yet I really must, for the sake of my own soul, decline to participate
> in any further bar discussions for my mental health. I already have other
> people in my life that provide me all the drama I need.
>
> Stuart, it really has been a pleasure to know you and come to know your
> unique lifestyle. I appreciate your deeply developed worldview -- I agree
> with quite a bit, and reject, for myself, great swaths of it. But, again, I
> am pleased that you think deeply about so many things, and I appreciate so
> much about how you communicate, however frustrated I unfairly have become
> all too often.
>
> Mi Estimado Arturo -- Lo siento tu y yo somos antipatico -- I wish you the
> best, but I do not appreciate the person you think I am -- I do not
> appreciate the academic arrogance -- maybe in the end, whatever it is, I am
> fairly certain we bring out the worst in each other. I think you mentioned
> PTSD, dittos man. Complete dittos.
>
> I am confident I have no points of view that are not covered by Bryce
> and/or Stuart, and it does no good to have a three against one situation.
> Rejecting a worldview, obviously, does not mean rejecting the person. I
> reject many worldviews, including the worldview that some people have such
> deep gnosis that they are immune from committing logical fallacies, whereas
> everything their "opponents" utter are ostentatiously festooned with such
> obvious blundering stupidities that they can arrogantly claim to be "tapped
> out." The technical term for such worldviews are "pseudo-intellectual."
> Again, Stuart and Bryce can provide the needed counterweight.
>
> This is a brilliant article by way of introduction to the "ideas so
> stupid..." rubric, going back to Orwell
>
>
> https://www.redbluffdailynews.com/2021/10/18/ideas-so-stupid-only-intellectuals/
>
> This is attack on the foundational source of the ideas, such as "systemic
> racism" or gender-fluidness
>
>
> =================================================================================
>
>
> "Now I see it is hard for you, as a group, to acknowledge facts for events
> in hindsight. Tilting the scales back to balance in favor of the
> disenfranchised is not favoritism, but justice."
>
> I am not interested in being lumped into a bucket that you have some odd
> fetish to put me/us into. There is simply no verisimilitude in your claim
> that we dispute facts or events. That is bizarre that you claim that when
> we specifically acknowledge whatever actual facts you adduce. What is at
> issue, and I would prefer you do your own research by reading Thomas
> Sowell, simply because I cannot improve on his reasoning. He is very clear,
> and all my ideas are from him. I cannot do justice to the totally of his
> lifelong research into the topic of discrimination. But basically, and you
> don't have to buy this, because you can have your own frame of reference,
> but ...
>
> The crux of his issue is whatever you adduce as evidence of systemic
> racism, and therefore whatever steps you take to eliminate that systemic
> racism results in it turning out that there was no racism actually involved
> despite there perhaps seeming to have been. To wit, when redlining is
> removed they find that black default rates are disproportionate to white
> default rates. Which is to say that the red lines did not in fact
> discriminate incorrectly. Restrictive covenants are always evil when based
> on such an idiotic concept of "race." How much more clear do we have to be.
> What is disagreed is that because something ackowledgedly bad happened in
> the past I must be punished now. Or some group now must be advantaged now,
> under some theory that they were disadvantaged in the past. Affirmative
> action, is fine, when used to redress provable harms individuals have
> suffered, specific people passed over for promotion unfairly. Group
> outcomes is not proof of anything -- never have the outcomes for groups
> been "equal." The whole concept of disenfranchisement or marginalization is
> not a conversation I want to have -- mostly because it offends you that we
> do not comport to your preferred paradigm. And mainly because it is too
> complex to craft any actual remedy that does not have unintended
> side-effects and even more greatly that you are too keen to put us in
> thought-boxes and beat us up with your tendentious view of facts and logic.
> Mainly because you have such ideas that necessitate an "impossible
> conversations" approach and this takes a coordinated effort that is
> difficult without planning and frankly I have no interest in convincing
> anyone of anything
>
>
> https://www.amazon.com/How-Have-Impossible-Conversations-Practical/dp/0738285323
>
>
>
>
> Here are some starter Sowell references. Do not read them for me, read
> them for your own edification of the existence of a man deeply revered, of
> a man who started in impoverished circumstances, as a Marxist, and then via
> his own intellect transcended that blinkered framework.
>
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ivf9jrXGAY&list=PLEbhOtC9klbCr0iN2ANJbaV477B0eSpc6&index=24&t=0s
>
>
> This is not a deep analysis, but it is a consumer grade synopsis based on
> his profound 40+ year study of discrimination around the world.
>
> https://www.nationalreview.com/2008/07/bankrupt-exploiters-thomas-sowell/
>
> Isn't it funny how banks have fallen prey to their own "predatory" lending?In
> one of those front-page editorials disguised as “news” stories, the New
> York Times blames “the lucrative lending practices” of banks and other
> financial institutions for helping create the current financial crisis of
> millions of borrowers and of the financial system in general.
>
> It must take either a willful determination to believe whatever they want
> to believe or a cynical desire to propagandize their readers for the New
> York Times to call “lucrative” the lending practices that have caused many
> lenders to lose millions of dollars, some to lose billions and some to go
> bankrupt.
>
> Blaming the lenders is the party line of Congressional Democrats as well.
> What we need is more government regulation of lenders, they say, to protect
> the innocent borrowers from “predatory” lending practices.
>
> Before going further down that road, it may be useful to look back at what
> got us into this mess in the first place.
>
> It was not that many years ago when there was moral outrage ringing
> throughout the media because lenders were reluctant to lend in certain
> neighborhoods and because banks did not approve mortgage loan applications
> from blacks as often as they approved mortgage loan applications from
> whites.
>
> All this was an opening salvo in a campaign to get Congress to pass laws
> forcing lenders to lend to people they would not otherwise lend to and in
> places where they would not otherwise put their money.
>
> The practice of not lending in some neighborhoods was demonized as
> “redlining” and the fact that minority applicants were approved for
> mortgages only 72 percent of the time, while whites were approved 89
> percent, was called “overwhelming” evidence of discrimination by the
> Washington Post.
>
> Some people are more easily overwhelmed than others, especially when they
> find statistics that seem to fit their preconceptions. But if we do what
> politicians and the media seldom bother to do — stop and think — an
> entirely different picture emerges.
>
> In our own personal lives, common sense leads us to avoid some
> neighborhoods. If you want to call that “redlining,” so be it. But places
> where it is dangerous to go are often also places where it is dangerous to
> send your money.
>
> As for racial differences in mortgage loan application approval rates,
> that does not tell you much if you are comparing apples and oranges.
> Income, credit history, and net worth are just some of the things that are
> very different from one group to another.
>
> More important, in the same ways that blacks differ from whites, whites
> differ from Asian Americans. The fact that whites are turned down for
> conventional mortgage loans, and resort to subprime loans, more often than
> Asian Americans do is seldom reported in “news” stories about lending
> practices, even though such data are readily available.
>
> Shocking as it may be to some, lenders are in the business of making
> money, and they don’t much care whose money it is, so long as they get paid.
>
> Politicians, on the other hand, are in the business of getting votes, and
> they don’t much care whose votes it is — or what they have to say or do in
> order to get those votes.
>
> It was government intervention in the financial markets, which is now
> supposed to save the situation, that created the problem in the first place.
>
> Laws and regulations pressured lending institutions to lend to people that
> they were not lending to, given the economic realities. The Community
> Reinvestment Act forced them to lend in places where they did not want to
> send their money, and where neither they nor the politicians wanted to walk.
>
> Now that this whole situation has blown up in everybody’s face, the
> government intervention that brought on this disaster in the first place is
> supposed to save the day.
>
> Politics is largely the process of taking credit and putting the blame on
> others — regardless of what the facts may be. Politicians get away with
> this to the extent that we gullibly accept their words and look to them as
> political messiahs.
>
>
> ------- Original Message -------
> On Saturday, April 22nd, 2023 at 12:16 PM, Arturo Davila Andino <
> davand.art at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think you are taking a reductionist interpretation of what I wrote.
>
> Since I don't know wether your stance in willfully in mistaking my
> argument, I am writing short response.
>
> Redlining was explicitly racist. No amount of correlation between race and
> income should be a basis to justify discrimination. My brother, we are even
> talking about loans at the time of the depression; everyone was poor. The
> "law" was very clear and the society was sick (
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levitt_%26_Sons#:~:text=This%20%22restrictive%20covenant%22%20stated%20in%20capital%20letters%20and%20bold%20type%20that%20the%20house%20could%20not%20%22be%20used%20or%20occupied%20by%20any%20person%20other%20than%20members%20of%20the%20Caucasian%20race.%22%5B12%5D
> )
>
> The Executive Order 9066 was very clear as well for taking the rights of
> american citizens when they needed those rights the most.
>
> Now I see it is hard for you, as a group, to acknowledge facts for events
> in hindsight. Tilting the scales back to balance in favor of the
> disenfranchised is not favoritism, but justice.
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 5:20 PM Stuart D Gathman <stuart at gathman.org>
> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 23 Feb 2023, Arturo Davila Andino wrote:
>>
>> > I think we all agree that rules within a society are entirely
>> fabricated and
>>
>> Strongly disagree. Rules within a society approximate reality - the
>> less accurate, the sicker the society.
>>
>> > One example of this is the practice of redlining, which was used by the
>> > Federal Housing Administration in the mid-20th century to deny loans to
>> > people in certain areas, primarily Black neighborhoods. This practice
>> helped
>>
>> On the other hand, making loans to people who couldn't afford them
>> led to the crash of the mortgage system.
>>
>> > discrimination and marginalization. (I am not even getting started
>> > on Internment of Japanese Americans in 1942)
>>
>> You should, as that was blatantly unconstitutional.
>>
>> > A controlling tactic we humans use to subjugate people is using facts
>> and
>> > ignoring their feelings. By focusing on objective facts and ignoring the
>>
>> Reality has a way of smacking people who ignore facts in the face -
>> without any help from unfeeling people. If someone is truly unaware
>> of facts (as opposed to willfully ignorant as in Hosea 4:6), it is
>> kindness to try to inform them, especially if they are in danger.
>>
>> > I am not advocating for the elimination of hierarchies or social rules,
>> but
>> > I will always be a passionate supporter of the disenfranchised. The
>> reason
>>
>> Favoritism to the poor is just as wicked as favoritism to the rich
>> or to the crowd. Exodus 23:3, Leviticus 19:15
>>
>> Supporting the disenfranchised with your own time and resources
>> is a virtue. Stealing other people's time and resources
>> to do so is wicked. (Note Robin Hood did not steal from the rich,
>> but was simply returning money literally stolen from the poor at
>> swordpoint - it wasn't even legally
>> taxed.)_______________________________________________
>> Discuss mailing list
>> Discuss at gathman.org
>> https://gathman.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>
>
>
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