Sunday School

[jakelafortParticipant]

Ysumlin i share your wrath as to racism. I have since childhood.

The problem is people use labels to categorize. That just won’t change.

I am not sure that there has been a period since recorded history that is devoid of shocking exploitation. I am excluding some indigenous peoples who lived in North America, Africa, and South America. The issue is tribalism. The greater the complexity of the culture and its identification with ideology borne of religion and politics the greater the exploitation. Whoever has the power abuses it.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Simon Paynton,

Economists Milton and Rose Friedman and Philosopher Antony Flew discussed this decades before Jordan Peterson.

What they said is that Equal Rights and Justice Before the Law are perfectly compatible and indeed required for human freedom, as is Equality of Opportunity in the sense of removing arbitrary barriers to human qchievement.

However, Equality of Outcome is anathema to human freedom and achievement because they require the “haves” to labor and give up their rights on behalf of the “have-nots.” Also, enforcing Equality of Outcome requires a Government that is an unequal Master over all.

This is exemplified by the Twentieth Century Communist “experiment” in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Red China, North Korea, and the ultimate example of Pol Pot’s Cambodia. The latter’s slogan was: “To Keep You Is No Benefit! To Destroy You Is No Loss!”

[jakelafortParticipant]

Enco, i challenge you to critique what you’ve just written. Where are the weak points?

[AutumnParticipant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

I know it’s boring, but I’m not sure about these definitions of equality and equity.

While simplified, that is how they are generally used today in the context of rights and fairness. There is some degree of overlap or interchangeability likely because historically, in the context of human rights, everything fell under ‘equality’.

But this tended to lead to approaches where we’d make blanket policies promoting identical treatment managing exceptions as they arose. It was tedious, inefficient, and tended to promote bias.

Equity treats that concept of identical treatment as extraneous or at least secondary looking more and individual need. It doesn’t guarantee equality of outcomes. Instead of looking at equal treatment, it prioritizes equal consideration.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Autumn wrote:

Instead of looking at equal treatment, it prioritizes equal consideration.

Then that’s one specific kind of fairness or equity.

[AutumnParticipant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Autumn wrote:

Instead of looking at equal treatment, it prioritizes equal consideration.

Then that’s one specific kind of fairness or equity.

What does that mean?

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Autumn wrote:

What does that mean?

Like I said (above), there are a number of different varieties of fairness, all based on the idea of equality.  This one specifies equal respect for people’s needs, so that the greater the need, the greater the help, in order to make opportunities equal.

[AutumnParticipant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Autumn wrote:

What does that mean?

This one specifies equal respect for people’s needs, so that the greater the need, the greater the help, in order to make opportunities equal.

Not really, no.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Autumn wrote:

Not really, no.

What then?

[AutumnParticipant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Autumn wrote:

Not really, no.

What then?

I mean, it’s not help, it’s equity. If we classify it as help, then who is getting greater help?

My old office building with my previous employer was four stories tall. Each floor had a large multiple occupancy men’s room and a large multiple occupancy women’s room. The first floor washrooms also had change rooms and showers, enough that there was almost never a wait.

On the first floor, there were two accessible single occupancy restrooms, one of which had an accessible shower. Both had a changing table. These washrooms were used by people with physical disabilities, trans people who felt uncomfortable in the men’s or women’s rooms, parents with babies (less common, mind you), and sadly people who just wanted a private bathroom but probably could have used the other facilities comfortably (though who can say for sure).

For most people, they had plentiful and easy access to bathrooms. I’d never once noticed a wait once I was far enough along in transition that I no longer felt the need for the single occupancy spaces. The single occupancy accessible rooms, however, were frequently occupied for long periods of time and experienced line ups. Not only that, but in order for most people to use these washrooms, they had to take the elevator or the stairs (if they could) between one to three floors down, often to find the rooms were occupied while they had to return to meetings before they could go (or in my case, often, photoshoots).

Everyone who used the building had need of toilets. Who received greater ‘help’ in finding one? Cisgender, able-bodied people because the entire system prioritized them. And it caused problems. Eventually, they did some redesign so that every other floor had gender-neutral washrooms alternating with traditionally segregated washrooms on the other floors.

The big difference here is that the previous system really did look at this normalized scenario, and then retroactively considered those outside the normalized group. And even with the retroactive fix, inequity remained, but to a lesser degree.

Had the situation been approached with equity as a consideration, the design would have looked more like the University down the street constructed just a little bit after our offices. These ideas of help and fairness aren’t irrelevant. Fairness especially. But we can look at it as a paradigm shift on how we approach creating spaces, programs, policies, infrastructure, investment etc. It’s a matter of what humans need from those spaces accounting for the fact that we are not all the same and that normalization shouldn’t be a leading design consideration even accepting we may not be able to anticipate all variations on need.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

OK then, not necessarily more help, but different help.  The point is that people’s needs are respected equally.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake,

Well, the authors, the Friedmans and Antony Flew, did, in fact say all of what I said they did, and what they said did, in fact, correspond with historical experiemce.

The only thing I could add to it is that the Communist “experiment” that proclaimed “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” in fact was (and in Red China and North Korea still is) really a “Dictatorship Over The Proletariat.” And their words of “Power To The People” really meant Power to the People in the Party over all the other peoples.

A preacher once said: “Communism only works in two places: Heaven where the don’t need it and Hell where they already have it.”

To which I reply: “There is no Supernatural hereafter, so Communism really doesn’t work, M’Lady!” *Tips Lenin Kangol Cap.*

[Author]

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