I understand the majority of the story, and through some personal experience really feel for women who have a controlling and abusive man. I find the story a bit strange though. It begins describing how boys inherit the idea of some beautiful woman that they are owed instead of it being something that requires constant work and effort. I agree/understand this part. But then it describes him trying to limit public access, how he has no document showing ownership, etc and this is where I get lost. To me that is what marriage is, giving up freedom for a partnership. To turn my husband self into a park, I feel like it is completely understandable my wife wants some space that is "public" and other that is "private". The key is healthy boundaries, ones set by compromise and understanding through honest communication. That's what separates healthy and abusive relationships, not the boundaries in the first place.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the story and if I am let me know, I just feel like it describes the ideal situation as one's partner entirety is open to the "public", and where setting boundaries itself is abusive, which I feel like is not really how most people feel nor what they want in a relationship.
I'm not the author, of course, so I can't say for certain that I have the most correct reading of it. But, if I'm reading your interpretation right, here's what I'd say:
The story analogizing women to land -- which has no voice, no agency, no mind -- is the critical part. If one is consensually "limiting public access" with another sentient human being, that's wonderful -- because you'd be doing that in dialogue, in true partnership, on the same footing, etc. "Hey, we're in a marriage now, that means we agree to not sleep with other people. Deal? Deal." I think the author (and certainly I) would heartily endorse that sort of "wanting some space that is public and some that is private".
The key word in your comment, to me, was "healthy" -- as in "healthy boundaries," and honest communication etc. You're right, it's not boundaries as such that describes abuse or even the entitlement on which abuse rests. It's the kind of boundaries.
What Bancroft is saying in the parable is that, if men see women as pieces of land -- private land, at that -- that they have a god-given right to, then anything healthy between men and women is by definition impossible. That's why, in the parable, the boy's compromises and concessions are in fact no such thing: because they're still founded on inhuman premises.
There are aspects of the parable here that the book goes into a lot more detail on -- male jealousy, in particular -- that overlap a lot with what you and me are talking about. I urge you to read it! The boy limiting public access on these entitled premises is what a lot of men will do, on either side of the "abuse" line: losing their shit when their attractive girlfriend, who they chose in part because of her attractiveness, goes out in public looking attractive, and he sees other people (other men) looking at her. Maybe next time he tells her "you're not wearing that outfit", thus "limiting public access" but not in the healthy sense that you mean it, because she's not treated as sentient, she's not part of a conversation. She's just coerced. (This is excused or minimized as "culture" or "values" by many!)
But again, if I'm reading you right, I think the part where you got lost is just that. Ironically, it's probably because you have a pretty healthy view of relationships that just how fucked up the boy in the story is confused you!
Yeah that helps it make more sense. I was reading it as Bancroft comparing woman to land, instead of it being Bancroft showing there are men who treat women as land. I'll definitely give the book a read.
There's some intersection point between long term decreasing in China's ability (demographic collapse) and long term increase in China's ability (their current build up of military hardware in air, land, and sea that is currently outpacing America's). Maybe somewhere in 10-20 years where their regional military power is much higher than America can project across the Atlantic but they still have a lot of military aged men.
Atlantic? IDK if China even has aspirations to play World Police like the US. Military protection of things like their interests and the stability of Belt and Road, sure, but I don’t see China trying something like the Gulf War or OEF.
It’s very possible that they will be able to dominate South China Sea and their zone of the Pacific, even now, given the proximity advantages and ship/missile production; and I think that would be satisfactory to them.
20 years from now, China’s sphere and America’s sphere are separate, with China having a lead in competing for Africa, and Europe in a very weird place socially, economically, demographically, and WRT Russia/US competition.
I mean... this one's actually a pretty good paper, but we also had Linus Pauling pontificate on Vitamin C, so maybe we should cool it with the appeals to Nobel authority alone.
It's not easy to separate cause and effect from direct and strong correlations that we experience.
The job of a scientist is not to give up on a hunch with a flippant "correlation is not causation" but pursue such hunches to prove it this way or that (that is, prove it or disprove it). It's human to lean a certain way about what could be true.
I was thinking more people would be annoyed by it bringing up unrelated conversations, thinking more I'd say you're probably right that more people are expecting it to remember everything they say.
Yeah this is usually how it happens. Whether its ancient Rome, modern Russia, Venezuela, etc all the dressings of the old Republic stay but become subverted by an autocrat.
I assume the idea is more money could've been invested into bringing the bottom rungs of American society up and created a more skilled and educated workforce in the process.
The US has pushed a shit ton of money into education. I mean an unreasonable amount of it went to administrators. But the goal and the intent was certainly there.
Education is part of it. But a lot of the social capital which makes societies prosperous is separate from what we usually consider to be education. On an individual behavior level that includes things like knowing how to show up for work on time, sober, and properly dressed, and follow management instructions without arguing or taking things personally. These are skills that people in the middle and upper classes take for granted but they forget that there are a large number of fellow citizens in the economically disconnected underclass who never had a good opportunity to learn those basics. As a society we've never done a good job of lifting those people up.
> On an individual behavior level that includes things like knowing how to show up for work on time, sober, and properly dressed, and follow management instructions without arguing or taking things personally. These are skills that people in the middle and upper classes take for granted
I don't see your point.
Those rules does not apply to the upper class and middle class workers have way more leeway regarding that than the lower class.
This seems to be saying that a large fraction of poor people are poor only because of bad habits, which they have only because nobody taught them any better?
There will be some people like that (e.g. middle class kid has terrible work ethic; communicates it to his kid and now that kid has bad habits), but in the large it's more about culture than individual habits.
If one person doesn't show up on time, that's a bad habit. If no one shows up on time then that's a cultural issue[0], and much more devastating.
As an example, Zim dug itself a huge hole by kicking out the productive white farmers in 2000-2001. One of the key issues charitable foreign people trying to help Zimbabwe addressed was in re-educating the local population in why it matters that all the planting work is done by a certain time of year. The white farmers had all that knowledge, and cultural experience of hard work, and had made Zimbabwe the breadbasket of Africa.
The productive decline of the farms is because of the fast-track land reform. Before 2000-2001, there were no effective national programs to prepare the people to run the farms. The opposition party was gaining ground, and so to stay in power, the ruling party rushed the land reform with no preparation.
Not sure how this is a relevant example of a culture that don't value punctuality.
Well, for the reason I said. You've reframed it in a way that removes responsibility from everyone involved, but that's just an example of how to reframe things. It's not actually useful.
> You've reframed it in a way that removes responsibility
No, the comment you're replying to pretty clearly put the responsibility on the party that "rushed the land reform with no preparation".
And also accurately noted that a nation seizing capital and redistributing it to people who don't know how to use it is rather different from what had been the thread topic of personal skills / useful habits being purportedly unattainable by the lower classes without explicit instruction.
What's your point? I didn't make any claims about averages. We could do a lot more to improve opportunities and social mobility for people caught in the permanent underclass.
But we have. The underclass today has much better lives in many aspects than the highest class from many decades ago. The absolute level of wealth has increased, it's simply that the delta between the high and the low is widening.
Would you rather live equally in poverty or live comfortably with others who are way more wealthy than you? Surprisingly people do seem to prefer the former, though I'd prefer the latter
> I mean an unreasonable amount of it went to administrators. But the goal and the intent was certainly there.
This is wrong.
The increase in administrator pay began well after the crises cited in OP.
You could cite spending on the sciences (and thus Silicon Valley), but the spending by the US did not accrue to administrators; and further, federal money primarily goes to grants and loans, but GP is citing a time over which there were relatively low increases in tuition.
Edit: Not at home, but even a cursory serious search will turn up reports like this one that indicate the lack of clarity in the popular uprising against money "[going] to administrators"
> For universities, yes. But not for primary education. Administrative bloat is the worst in K-12.
First, where is your data?
Second, this discussion is clearly about post-secondary education ("the idea is more money could've been invested into bringing the bottom rungs of American society up and created a more skilled and educated workforce in the process.")
I have the same thing, I can "walk" through my childhood home. I see how the living room was set up, I can walk from there to my bedroom and "see" everything. Honestly if I had good art skills I feel like I could draw it out pretty well. However I would in no way describe it as looking like I'm there at the real thing or looking at photograph, not even close really. It's kinda just a hazy construct in my mind.
I feel like that is where a lot of the miscommunication comes from, people who think others can close there eyes and be transported somewhere else by imagining it. That is unless I actually just have aphantasia.
There's a lot of companies with IP that can be extracted or systems that can be sabotaged by a bitter employee. There's also the extreme cases of someone who knows they are being fired who can do a shooting/arson/some other extreme scenario.
I'm not saying I agree with the shock approach but there are definitely some generic risks that I don't think paint a bad picture of the company by their existence.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the story and if I am let me know, I just feel like it describes the ideal situation as one's partner entirety is open to the "public", and where setting boundaries itself is abusive, which I feel like is not really how most people feel nor what they want in a relationship.
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