Are ethnic jokes inherently wrong, racist, or offensive?

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

I would not consider JP to be a “traditional liberal”. This article makes a good case for deeming him a Conservative. Some of his views and comments are very similar to religious conservatives.

[_Robert_]

Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek notes that “the conservative attitude is a fear of change”

The transgender ‘bathroom thing’ became a huge issue at my workplace. An exceptionally nice person was put in a spotlight and soon after she left the company much to the relief of the conservatives. She switched over the holiday break and you would think it was ‘the end times’ they way some people reacted, FFS.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake,

Okay Enco, so where does free market capitalism lead?

You are wont to give simple examples to undermine a viewpoint. So deal with the owner of real property in fee simple (that means legally that the owner has all of the right title and interest that law can bestow) in which the sale is conditioned on the prospective purchaser not selling or transferring to Blacks.

First of all, if a seller made such an offer to  me, I would refer the owner to the bumper sticker  “We Are All Africans” and the afforementioned Mr. Cobb.

 

Second, I would ask the owner what I ask you: Why would I want deprive myself of all the equity I could earn by agreeing to limits on to whom I can resell the property?   And why would I want to deprive myself of equity from the 10th largest economy on the Planet?  (Yes, you read that right.  Black Americans are not exactly “The Wretched of the Earth.”)  By “equity,” I mean profit minus liability, not “Woke” gibberish.

Three, with the Chinese making coral atolls in the South China Sea, Mark Twain’s saying about real estate is no longer true.  “They” are making more land after all.  No one has to deal with bigots or anyone else to get real estate.

Nice try at smearing free-market Capitalism.

 

[Davis]

So, it’s no wonder if there is hostility involved.

I’m not sure what your point is Simon. Are you referring to the hostility coming from trans-gender people who are fighting to have the equality they deserve according to the charter of rights and freedoms recognised under the law…or are you referring to the hostility coming from a person afraid of change to the status quo resorting to misinformation campaigns that make life demonstrably more difficult for transgender people despite fully well knowing what he is saying is a distortion of the facts. Which one is “no wonder”?

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by Davis.

[jakelafort]

Enco,

You answered the question. Thank you for that.

The problem is you did not address the issue. The ills of free market capitalism are manifold and malignant. The two M’s but in this case they melt in your hands not in your mouth. I gave you one tiny manifestation of free market capitalism. It is not a hypothetical issue either. It is a real one. It was heard by the supreme court. Ya see capitalists care about not only cash but about social issues. The moneyed interests do not always care for niggers and kikes. If a prospective neighbor could swoop in and sell to the untermensch would you pay top dollar? There go the property values now whenever that swarthy couple with pickaninnies has moves in. If you legally lock in the restriction good christians can feel secure that their white women wont be raped and perhaps more importantly that their investment will not be sabotaged by THOSE PEOPLE.

Thus the practice of restrictive covenants in which the seller was contractually barred from alienation to the undesirable was an M. O. of free market capitalism. Attorneys were drafting documents loaded with such covenants until the supreme court ruled against the practice. The stinking aforementioned practice extended to vacation destinations. One word in an ad informed all readers that Blacks and Jews were not welcome. RESTRICTED. Taking your jewish family to the Poconos for the summer at a resort on a lake? Sorry sir, we are booked!

Capitalism that is free runs amok and creates a cesspool. If you are not a racist that is utterly cool. How you would handle a restrictive covenant is utterly irrelevant.

[Davis]

Enco,

Mixed systems (capitalism and socialism) countries…basically every western country except the US…recognise the need for free markets, incentives to produce and innovate, generate wealth and growth. Only countries with very special circumstances (like small countries with vast amounts of valuable resources) can see growth or wealth without this. But you have to be a blind idiot to not see the fall out from a capitalist system. A small list of the issues:

• Most businesses fail
• You need to win a genetic lottery to have the intelligence, fortitude and drive to succeed
• You need to be born in the right circumstances (or luck out in obtaining it otherwise) to get the education and capital to succeed (yes I know there are exceptions but they are, by definition, exceptional).
• You also need to be fortunate in your endeavours as chance plays a huge role in many of the decisions you make
• You need to avoid unpredictable misfortune (and a few badly timed doses of bad luck can have you on the street in no times)
• Few if any agents are rational in their economic decisions
• Uncontrolled forces can easily lead to market manipulation, monopolies, abuse and misleading advertising (something governments are famously bad at controlling).
• You can do everything right and still fail

This is just a short list. Even if everyone was equal in capital, intelligence, drive and fortitude you’d still have losers and mass inequality over time. You’d still have accidents, natural disasters, series of misfortunes, mental problems, social ills, addictions, disabilities, failures etc. Mixed systems realise this and try to deal with this by providing social services for everyone regardless of why they need them. This has huge advantages including highly reducing the levels of pointless suffering, significantly lower levels of crime and domestic problems and creates an over all healthy society. It is ridiculous to praise the benefits of capitalism without recognising its failures. Dealing with the fall out is not an attack on capitalism…it is pragmatism, humanitarianism and rationalism.

I mean just compare the United States with Canada, their different approaches. Despite being a 10th of the US’s population it is a wealthy country with healthier and happier people, with less violence, less poverty, fewer social problems and a less sociopathic treatment of marginalised people. Hardly remotely perfect but a shit-ton better than the US. But it’s okay, if you want to continue living in a country where the successful prosper and the losers can rot in a gutter along with all the problems that come with it…then fight for the status quo like you nearly always do.

[jakelafort]

No cogito
Ergo Enco

Don’t be that guy.
Use your noggin.

Ain’t no humans ya ought to worship. Ain’t no political or economic systems either. If you can’t criticize some aspects of your political/economic viewpoints you are an ideologue-it is religious thinking which is to say it is not thinking at all.

[Simon Paynton]

Davis wrote:

Are you referring to the hostility coming from trans-gender people who are fighting to have the equality they deserve according to the charter of rights and freedoms recognised under the law…or are you referring to the hostility coming from a person afraid of change to the status quo resorting to misinformation campaigns that make life demonstrably more difficult for transgender people despite fully well knowing what he is saying is a distortion of the facts.

Both sides feel they’re under attack, or in a war.  This is unfortunate.

I think JP has chosen the wrong target.  If his target is authoritarianism, he should just keep it as that.  He’s messing with things he doesn’t understand, and causing harm in the process (apparently).

[Davis]

Both sides feel they’re under attack, or in a war.  This is unfortunate.

Transgender people have been and still are, objectively under attack. This isn’t a feeling. They are.

JP feels under attack in the same way white people in segregated southern states felt under attack when they were forced to, at least under the law, treat black people with equality (which they resisted kicking and screaming, ignored for a long time and even until today find ways to get around this). JP isn’t under attack, he is simply resisting treating people with equality and dignity and doing the same shit white folks did/do in Southern states. Lie, exaggerate, attack, manipulate and play to their audiences.

So I don’t consider both sides equal. One is a marginalised group trying to assert the equality and dignity they deserve under the law…the other feels under attack because he has to give up a tiny minuscule ounce of his status-quo privilege by changing one tiny little habit re: the pronouns he uses (and even then he is only expected to do it under very specific circumstances with negligible possible repercussions).

A very good skill to develop when reading social and political problems is resisting the urge to weigh two sides of a debate as though they are equally balanced. They are clearly not here.

It seems like in this case…as in many cases…his crusade for free speech doesn’t really mean free speech for all…but the freedom for him to lie, manipulate and make life difficult for others. When it is against his interest…free speech is a luxury his opponents cannot afford.

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by Davis.

[—]

Originally it was more of a one-sided war waged predominately by some members of Abrahamic faiths who can’t accept that they don’t own society (well, they do own some societies, but none of the ones I haunt). But in our latest salvo of wordy warfare, we folded every word starting with ‘trans’ under the trans* umbrella. The Catholics in particular were super pissed that we now own ‘transcendence’, ‘transgression’, and ‘transubstantiation’. It’s almost as bad as the time that ‘the gays’ destroyed all of their marriages.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

But in our latest salvo of wordy warfare, we folded every word starting with ‘trans’ under the trans* umbrella. The Catholics in particular were super pissed that we now own ‘transcendence’, ‘transgression’, and ‘transubstantiation’.

Most excellent 🙂

 

[jakelafort]

Savor the bread and wine. Cannibilism is divine!

whereas transgenders a sign
of el diablo

[jakelafort]

So Simon has the needle moved at all in your assessment of J.C. and J.P.?

[_Robert_]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

But in our latest salvo of wordy warfare, we folded every word starting with ‘trans’ under the trans* umbrella. The Catholics in particular were super pissed that we now own ‘transcendence’, ‘transgression’, and ‘transubstantiation’. Most excellent 🙂

Yeah ! It is transparent now how the Church is all about the transfer of money from the poor to line their pockets with the promise to transport your fictitious soul to fictitious heaven

[Simon Paynton]

@jakelafort – I’m disappointed that he seems to have acted like a bit of a dumbass, and forgotten the welfare of transgender people who are being used as a weapon by both sides.  I’ve heard one transgender activist say, publicly, (literally) that if you question publicly an aspect of transgender orthodoxy, a transgender person is going to kill themselves.  How does that help anything at all?  Is that not using people as a weapon?  Sounds like a controlling narcissist to me.

It’s a culture war, and he’s spearheading one particular aspect of one side.  Wars are messy.  There should never have been a war involving transgender people in the first place.  He should have chosen some other angle where already vulnerable and oppressed people don’t get hurt further.

Maybe he could incorporate lessons from this in his third book.

For example, he could have focused on “narcissism in political extremism” which I think is the real problem.  Political extremism attracts toxic people, who don’t do the people they are claiming to fight for, any favours.

[Author]

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