The EPI is heavily funded by labour unions which have a major stake in the continued acceptance of central tenets of Marxist/postmodernist ideology, like the existence of race/gender/class based social dominance hierarchy and the importance of creating laws that discriminate against the identity group that is perceived to be at the top of this hierarchy.
It frames everything through a lens of identity power struggles. Therefore, whether an argument is scientific and factual is secondary to what identity group the person making it belongs to, and what their group stands to gain from it.
This ideological lens is anti-science, anti-cooperation, extremely racist/sexist and ultimately focused on only one objective: reducing the power of the group perceived as being at the top of the social dominance hierarchy.
The author of the memo framed his argument in exactly this way.
To quote the memo:
"As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.”"
The author literally thinks 'Left' policies are part of a Communist power struggle.
If the above comment is toxic, then so is the original memo.
And here I thought I was just a capitalist who believes that people should all be given an equal shot to choose their own path in life and that how things have been does not necessarily dictate how things should be.
Turns out I'm a hateful, dogmatic, sexist racist as well as a malevolent nihilist, postmodern feminist, and a Marxist to boot.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Those -isms really snuck up on me (they really are an insidious bunch, aren't they?). Good thing there are people out there that know way more about people's position and why they have them than they do themselves. Otherwise, we may have to picture the world we want to live in and work toward it without thought to all of the pseudo-cruft attached to specific iterations of ideas throughout history in various places and times by specific individuals that some people might highlight and promote as The One Truth of an Idea to further their own political agenda. It's all very obvious, now that you bring it up.
I did not say that you're a "hateful, dogmatic, sexist racist". I said that postmodernism and feminism are.
Very few people subscribe to all of the beliefs of a particular ideological and philosophical framework. But the tenets of an ideology are there, even if a particular adherent is unaware of them.
An ideology manifests itself in its effects on the world. In postmodernism and feminism, we see that in the completely dogmatic and anti-science reaction to the memo. Here was a memo that was produced in good faith, stayed fully within the realm of established science in its assertions, and within the realm of the reasonable in its opinion, and yet we have absolute lies being trotted out by its critics about its content, and an ideologically motivated firing of its author.
This is not an accident. It's a result of an anti-science dogma that frames the world as a power struggle between identity group, and where facts are only acceptable when they aid in the fulfilment of the postmodernist/feminist agenda: which is to flatten the social dominance hierarchy that, according to the postmodernist/feminist framework, is formed by various identity groups. This is inspired by Marxism (as the historical record shows), whether or not you personally identify as a Marxist yourself.
That's your point of view (and likely the author would agree with you). Let me explain mine.
I see the memo and the citations it trots forth, not as an authoritative treatise with well sourced, scientifically sound backing, but as a cherry picked hodge-podge of descriptive science (where the citations were, in fact, scientific publications - many were blog posts and opinion pieces) abused to support a prescriptive framework.
This is not an anti-science position. It is a position that understands the limitations of science. A scientific fact that may successfully describe the past or current condition doesn't consider other states that could have happened under similar conditions and certainly doesn't lock us into a way forward. Descriptive science can tell us the process that gave giraffes their long neck but doesn't have much to say about why other creatures didn't select for long necks as well under similar conditions but instead found a different niche nor does it have anything to say about niches left unfilled. It also doesn't have much to say about what giraffes will look like in 10,000 years under different conditions. It's the difference between analysis and synthesis. Turning successful analysis into successful synthesis is only possible under very simple conditions relative to the messiness of the world[1] and the complex and chaotic interactions that are possible. Nowhere is this truer than in the realm of human behavior.
This is one reason the memo only had the veneer of reasonableness. Either the author was unaware of what he was doing (deeply misguided but in good faith) or thought others would not catch on to the bait and switch (in which he was promoting his own agenda in bad faith). I lean toward the former since he seems genuinely surprised that other people had a problem with his analysis and cherry picking facts and abusing statistics to make a political point is very common (on the other side of the political specturm too, of course).
[1]Which is why we've had better luck as a species crafting synthesis in different fields from mathematics -- building from the ground up rather than trying to tease the relevant parts from the morass where we are in danger of missing important ingredients or making effort killing assumptions.
The article that is linked here is written by a PhD in sexual neuroscience, and defends the claims made in the memo as scientifically valid.
Instead of responding to the memo, and proving the assertions contained in it wrong, Google's executives fired him, and Google VP Daniele Brown justified the reaction by claiming that the memo advanced "incorrect assumptions about gender".
And you claim this is not an expression of dogmatism, and is not hostile to science, which I see as yet another manifestation of this anti-science dogmatism.
>A scientific fact that may successfully describe the past or current condition doesn't consider other states that could have happened under similar conditions and certainly doesn't lock us into a way forward.
That's a sweeping and over-simplistic generalisation, and trying to justify the extreme rejection of and intolerance toward the memo based on it is a stretch, to say the least.
The individual was fired for stating facts and an opinion (which any society that values rational debate and dialogue will tolerate) that went against an unscientific dogma. A dogma that is as certain of the correctness of its own conjecture about gender as it is about the inapplicability of science to understanding statistical differences between genders in socioeconomic outcomes. An individual, especially a male, is not permitted to express an opinion that contradicts the dogma on the causes of differences in gender outcomes, and the proper reaction to said differences.
That's what the Google engineer's firing demonstrates.
You've been posting like this over and again. It amounts to waging ideological battle on a site that exists for thoughtful and considerate intellectually interesting discussion. Please don't, it's not what we're here for.
There is nothing to debate against, unfortunately. If I'm being repetitive, it's because the justifications for the firing are so utterly baseless.
Also, if the upvote/downvote ratio is any indication, many people appreciate my contributions, even if they're not agreeable.
One final point I'd add is that this is an explicitly ideological issue. A Google engineer was fired for violating Google's corporate ideology (on diversity and gender). There is no way to address the issue in a meaningful way without addressing said ideology.
Let me ask this: what difference does the statistical differences found between genders in the general population matter for any small subset of that population?
If I had test scores from 1-1000 with 1 being the worst and 1000 being the best for a million people that match a normal distribution and I told you that I have a set of 10 that I picked non-randomly but I don't tell you how, what can you tell me about that sub-set of 10?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
What does it say about how that set of ten will do on the next test given only that you know the test will be an iteration on the last with some differences?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
So, why would it matter if, statistically, females exhibit certain behaviors more or less than males in the general population when applied to the subset that apply and work for Google?
Same. Answer.
What disturbs me (having Google stock, as many do) is how a person that doesn't understand this basic fact got past the Google hiring process and ended up an employee.
>what difference does the statistical differences found between genders in the general population matter for any small subset of that population?
With all due respect, this is an absurd question. Statistical differences between the genders in the general population will very plausibly cause differences in the representation of each gender in a particular field, like computer science.
Do I really need to elaborate more on why this is the case?
To claim that the causes of gender differences are a settled science, that agrees with the postmodernists and feminists, and so assuredly that an opinion based on a different interpretation deserves to be punished and otherwise ignored, is absolute nonsense.
If anything, the social constructionist position on gender differences has been thoroughly discredited by the experimental evidence, to the point where the media and Google's reaction to the memo is, without a doubt, an expression of anti-scientific dogma.
Google is not selecting their employees at random. Google is not promoting people at random. Google is not placing employees in a neutral environment relative to the rest of the population. Google is not providing neutral support to employees relative to the general population.
There is no reason to expect that their subset of the population should conform to a general population skew.
In short, plausibility =/= probably.
You repeat yourself a lot for someone who keeps bringing up dogma in this conversation like it means something in context. Can you point to my dogmatic position?
The guy was fired because he let everyone know that he is more than happy to point to descriptions of the general population and sinister world spanning conspiracy theories in order to maintain a dismissive and belittling attitude within the work environment toward women that happens to support a status quo that directly benefits himself rather than support the stated goals of the company.
>There is no reason to expect that their subset of the population should conform to a general population skew.
Absurd. Differences in the general population will translate into differences in the number of men that pursue CS and related fields, which will affect the gender composition of the applicant pool that Google recruits from.
>Can you point to my dogmatic position?
The dogma is in you ignoring and denying basic statistics and common sense in order to defend the ideological premise underlying Google's discriminative (affirmative action) policies.
>The guy was fired because he let everyone know that he is more than happy to point to descriptions of the general population and sinister world spanning conspiracy theories in order to maintain a dismissive and belittling attitude within the work environment toward women that happens to support a status quo that directly benefits himself rather than support the stated goals of the company.
This grossly mischaracterizes the content of the memo and the veracity of his arguments. Your comment displays utter and unscrupulous intolerance to opinions that disagree with your postmodernist viewpoint on gender.
It rejects the relevance of overwhelming empirical evidence on the causes of gender differences in the general population, that are manifestly relevant to gender representation in tech. Your comment embodies the prioritisation of dogma over science, and the willingness to use any means, including blatantly mischaracterizing the arguments made by ideological opponents in order to justify their being fired, to achieve one's ends.
Ok, since we asked you to stop doing this ideological boilerplate thing and you've repeatedly ignored us, we've banned this latest account. Would you please not create accounts to abuse Hacker News with?
You realize that science is ideological, epistemological, and political?
Edit: I appreciate all of the vote downs. Empiricism is as guilty in choosing models according to power dynamics as any ideological endeavor. See phrenology. To suggest science isn't political and ideological is absolutely delusional.
That is the postmodern anti-science belief, which assumes that truth is not really truth. It is just a device used in power struggles between identity groups. It's so extreme that there was actually paper published on feminist glaciology [1]. This is not science. It is just dogma and actually hostile to the principle of science as a pursuit of objective truth carried out by people of good faith.
Who do you think defined notions of truth? Scientists? Or were scientists philosophers interested in epistemology?
No, not being a smart ass. "Science" as we know it today is an invention. It hasn't been around forever. It is relatively new. Yes it is political. Yes it is epistemological. Yes it is ideological.
In terms of social sciences, it is far harder than we like to think.
What we choose to measure, how we choose to measure it, what we choose to ignore, diversity of contexts, etc. are political and ideological decisions.
If you would be interested in reading a rather dense and difficult text, Foucault's Discipline and Punish might be of interest.
You haven't read a single text that falls under the banner of Postmodern. Please stop using the term.
As the other commenter has noted, you need to historcise.
Continental philosophers didn't just plop onto the scene buoyed by multimillion dollar marketing budgets; the epistemology issues they raised are real. Your ridiculous claims of Marxist thought, Feminist thought, etc. betray your ignorance.
So yes, I disagree with every single one of your assertions, but RTFM isn't applicable here, so I avoided stating it outright. Your valuing and clinging of random opinion over informed knowledge is at least as telling as your initial professions. You may have been able to fake it around your equally uniformed peers.
Replace the term "Feminist" with "A person believing in equal rights for women" and your deeply seated, neurologically stuck repetition of misogynist statements rings clear across all communications.
The giants of postmodernism, like Jacques Derrida and Jean-Paul Sartre, were fanatically Marxist before they became postmodernists. They themselves described their philosophies as evolutions of Marxism. Derrida for his part described his outlook as carrying on the spirit of Marxism.
The philosophy very openly calls for deconstruction of all existing values and power structures, and a radical rejection of what the modernist interpreted as reason.
I think you are deliberately downplaying this element of postmodernist philosophy and I don't think you're doing the discussion any favors by casting your opponents as bigots.
I don't recall ever reading Derrida as a fervent Marxist. Sartre's somewhat predates postmodernist canon. Marx would be a bit of a grandfather in deconstruction. Hard not to move forward without acknowledging his presence[1].
> They themselves described their philosophies as evolutions of Marxism.
Citation needed certainly in the case of Derrida.
With that said, to have a peek at J's posts. Every single message is prefaced with the rubbish connection, and by suggesting that there is some lineage to Marx is giving the individual more credit than he is due. Doubly so that it is clear he has never read a Postmodern text.
Also, as I have been citing Foucualt, it might be worth noting that his view of power contrasted against Marx's.
To suggest that the toolbox of Postmodern thought is all Marxism and Feminist is absolutely ridiculous.
In Spectres de Marx Derrida describes a political movement that gets back to the roots of Marxism (and away from the supposed bastardization of Marxism that Leninism/Stalinism represented), so to speak, with a new deconstructionist coalition that continues in the "spirit of Marxism". The book was a crystalization of views he had developed over the preceding decades, when he had done the most to develop postmodernism.
While postmodernism differs from Marxism in many ways, and while its progenitors were inspired by and attempted to build on top of Marxism to different degrees, it certainly comes from the same intellectual tradition of radicalism, and advocacy of overthrowing power structures, as Marxism, and was formulated mostly by intellectuals that accepted several of the basic suppositions of Marxism.
This shouldn't be surprising, considering how prevalent Marxism was among French intellectuals in the postwar period.
As for whether Marxism has any redeeming value, I'd argue that even if it did, the recklessness of its attacks on the capital owning class, in concepts such as surplus value, exclude it as a perspective worthy of being given that level of respect. Marxism crosses a line in human relations that is hard to come back from, and hard to build a humanistic society on top of.
> The book was a crystalization of views he had developed over the preceding decades, when he had done the most to develop postmodernism.
Key point is that his readings of Marxism weren't central to his core tools of Postmodernism, nor is that reading indicative of any fervent Marxism from "before". Wrong on all counts.
> its progenitors were inspired by and attempted to build on top of Marxism to different degrees.
> and was formulated mostly by intellectuals that accepted several of the basic suppositions of Marxism.
Again, citation needed on the majority of the tenuous connections. You are being a tad too obsessive here.
Sorry, but being a green account to respond to my single post screams another J account. "The lady doth protest too much." The rest of your post? Equally misguided with nothing to do with Postmodernism, and less relating to the Foucaultian aspect I referenced.
Nope. But the original memo defends discrimination against women and makes recommendations for future discrimination. Implementing these suggestions would be literally illegal for Google (subject to EEOC), and in fact Google is already in a lawsuit defending their alleged discrimination.
> Status is the primary metric that men are judged on, pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. - Defeatist. If society pushes men into leadership, then there's nothing we can or should do about it?
> Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths. - This defends putting women into less-desirable jobs because desirable ones are not really that desirable? This argument is self-defeating.
> I don’t think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make it appealing to equal portions of both men and women. For each of these changes, we need principles reasons for why it helps Google; - Discrimination is justified if it helps the bottom line.
> We’re told by senior leadership that what we’re doing is both the morally and economically correct thing to do, but without evidence this is just veiled left ideology that can irreparably harm Google. - You're not allowed to believe that discrimination will hurt the bottom line. Even if senior management tells you so.
> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate - The alternative is to increase the false positive rate for those candidates.
> Having representative viewpoints is important for those designing and testing our products, but the benefits are less clear for those more removed from UX. - Having representation is leadership is not important.
> Prioritize intention. - This is also illegal. Google is a government contractor and will be required to implement affirmative action policies if its employees are too different from the general population. That's because they're taking money from all taxpayers and redistributing it to or away from certain groups. Intention here is irrelevant.
I don't see any reference to discrimination against women in any of that. Could you possibly pick one of the points and explain to me how it is discriminatory against women?
I saw that, I just don't see anything advocating discriminating against women. Advocating to not discriminate for women is not the same thing as discriminating against women. I think for a lot of people this distinction doesn't matter.
> Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things
> Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles and Google can be and we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this).
Those comments in no way "defend discrimination against women".
Serious question: does your mind think they actually do? This might be a good illustration of why people differ so much on the same objective facts, the human brain automatically adds additional context (that isn't necessarily physically present) into perceptions.
We're reading the same document, but what you don't realize is your brain is adding additional context and information that is simply not in the document. Therefore, you are confused about what the author is saying.
Can you give me some indication that you understand what I'm talking about? You don't have to agree, just a sign that you know what I'm saying. I'm wondering if your brain maybe censors certain sorts of ideas, such that you effectively don't even "see" them.
> he doesn't outright say to discriminate, but he does imply it
The truth you are missing about the world is contained right within that statement. I recommend printing it out and hanging it on your wall as a reminder, and let your mind chew on it for a few months. Resist the urge to draw conclusions, just mull it over, you might be surprised.
Do you believe these comments defend discrimination against women? I'm trying to understand how one could see it that way. I see both of these statements as unquestionably true, and the sexism accusation as stifling the type of free expression needed for rational dialogue. If facts are sexist, then the definition of sexism being used is wrong.
It's subtle, but yes. These 2 lines essentially state that as women are more interested in people, there are some roles they might not be able to perform. A little further down he makes a similar claim that since women look more towards work life balance, technical and leadership roles may not seek out leadership roles as much as men. This can be used again to claim women don't belong in those roles. This is also bullshit, as I know several women who run a company and have a decent life.
Strip away his science and his words, he's a misogynistic techbro (I'm reminded of ESR) who wants to pretend technology is some sort of meritocracy and that a woman doesn't play well in that situation. Almost every one of his claims has a hanging but attached to it.
The author mentions many many times throughout his memo that these are 'average' observations and by no ways representative of the entire female population. The author did not say that all women are more interested in people, merely that there is a higher proportion in comparison to the male population.
The author suggests that when these average statistics propagate into life decisions and employment preferences, you end up with an equilibrium with less females in these roles.
You write 'This can be used again to claim women don't belong in those roles' but the author did not use this to claim such a thing! 'I know several women' precisely coincides with what the author wrote. Again, he pointed out multiple times throughout that he was not generalizing but was merely looking at average trends.
The author advocates for ending programs designed to get more females into technology and leadership positions because he views them as discrimination. His basis is precisely what you mentioned, that on average women are X. In his mind, the fact that men are more status oriented than women means that men will be disproportionately in leadership roles. That's "just the way it is" and we should accept it and create "separate but equal" opportunities (part time work in this case). It's not outright discrimination, but it's ignoring several other factors that cause women not to seek leadership positions. He's trying to use some very basic differences and ignoring a much broader picture.
So, you believe that equality ,in this context, is a reality only if the distribution of gender in corporate employees reflects more or less the distribution in general population?
> These 2 lines essentially state that as women are more interested in people
In the aggregate, this is objectively true based on my observations, and you can see this exact same sentiment passionately expressed by feminists.
> ...there are some roles they might not be able to perform.
This part is your mind playing tricks on you. You have certain beliefs, and you are trying to find anything to confirm them.
You have misunderstood what the author was saying, I would suggest because you are not trying to understand it, but rather are trying to find examples to substantiate your worldview.
There is no imagination, he might be citing scientific research, but this is no different that similar essays written by other technologists who don't agree with feminism and lean conservative and libertarian. ESR is a prime example, and this essay reminds me of his work. However,
>Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles and Google can be
The line immediately before states that women tend to be more people-oriented than object-oriented. The line between these 2 states is crystal clear: women are more people oriented than men, and there are limits to how people oriented certain roles and the company can be, therefore, women will not have the same opportunities as men. If you want to take his words at face value, go ahead, but his entire essay is for Google to stop programs aimed at gender inclusion.
> That's absurd. You're not even interpreting his comments at face value. You're attributing a subtext to them that only exists in your imagination.
Really? The first bullet point is "women are more people oriented". The second bullet point is that there are limits to how people oriented specific roles or even Google as a whole can be. If you want to take his words at face value, go ahead, but the belief that there are some roles than women cannot do due to their differences is consistent with the rest of his essay.
Logical thoughts?
"Women are X"
"There are limits to how well certain positions and Google can support X".
So, what exactly am I supposed to draw from this? You're insistent I am wrong, but you're offering no explanation as to why I am wrong. I don't disagree that women are more sociable than men. I disagree this means certain roles within the company cannot support that trait.
Further down:
"Women value work life balance"
"Men are status achievers"
"Because of that, men will appropriately be in leadership and technology roles, also women suffer anxiety more."
Side note, convenient he leaves out that women are statistically able to deal with stress better than men.
His conclusion is that rather than creating programs that encourage women to enter leadership positions, leave that to the men and give women access to part time roles.
If you want to say I am wrong, so be it, disagreement is fine, but you have yet to counter anything I have said with an opposing understanding, just ad hominen attacks and criticism.
> You're insistent I am wrong, but you're offering no explanation as to why I am wrong.
The explanation was in my previous comment.
I will give you another hint: you are misinterpreting the meaning of "women" in your excerpted quotes.
> If you want to say I am wrong, so be it, disagreement is fine, but you have yet to counter anything I have said with an opposing understanding, just ad hominen attacks and criticism.
I don't think there's a way to reply that will satisfy you, there is a crucial part of objective perception that you are lacking.
> It makes a statistical observation that refutes the notion that sexism is the cause of gender disparity in the STEM fields.
It does no such thing, because:
(1) STEM fields, especially applied rather than theoretical ones, involve people as much as things
(2) While in some STEM fields gender disparities are apparent from fairly early in career progression, that's not true of all STEM fields; in some (many of them around biosciences) women are overrepresented in education and entry-level work, but still lag men in pay and advancement (problematically for the “it's about men wanting to deal with things and women wanting to deal with people” explanation of STEM gender disparities, this leaves women dealing more with things while the men move to higher levels where they deal with people.)
>STEM fields, especially applied rather than theoretical ones, involve people as much as things
This doesn't negate my point.
You're correct that I oversimplified: some STEM fields are indeed less 'biologically geared' to men. But the principle remains: biologically established differences in interest can very plausibly explain the differences seen in gender representation in some STEM fields. It is the assertion of this fact that has invited unfounded accusations of sexism.
>women are overrepresented in education and entry-level work, but still lag men in pay and advancement
That alone says nothing about the presence or absence of systemic discrimination.
> That alone says nothing about the presence or absence of systemic discrimination.
And, you'll note, I never claimed it did: I cited it as a fact about the gender imbalance in STEM which is not explainable by the facile “men like dealing with things while women like dealing with people” explanation which you described upthread as being, on its own, a refutation of the idea that gender imbalances in STEM are in any part due to systemic discrimination (which could only be true if it explained all aspects of STEM gender imbalance and left no room for systemic discrimination.)
Were it offered merely as a factor which explained some subset of the gender imbalances in STEM, that would be more reasonable.
>Were it offered merely as a factor which explained some subset of the gender imbalances in STEM, that would be more reasonable.
Yes that is a more accurate construction. For the sake of expedience I wasn't this precise, and left it to the reader to sauce out this more precise meaning, which given the format, I think was entirely reasonable.
You're correct, it is a hateful, sexist comment, and I won't take it back or apologize for it. The "angry white male stereotype" has been at the heart of programming for a long time; misogyny has been at the heart of programming for a long time. As eloquent and research based as this paper is, it's just another in that long line of thinking.
They could very plausibly explain the differences in the number of men who write software relative to women. The only explanation is absolutely not "systemic discrimination against women".
I know it's trendy to defend feminist talking points, but it ultimately leads to what we see now with the Google firing: a public conversation where facts take a secondary role to ideology/dogma.
Why could it plausibly explain the differences? Seems like a huge leap to me. Basically there is some evidence that men and women are different, on average, to some extent, at the neuropsychological level. There is no evidence linking sex-related neurological traits to being good at or enjoying writing software.
On the other hand, there is evidence that cultural biases specifically discourage women from entering, and push women out of, STEM careers.
It does not defend discrimination against women. That's absurd. Quote me a single section that "defends discrimination against women". Incredibly harmful false accusations like this seem to be par for the course anytime someone goes up against postmodernist/feminist dogma.
>Predictions that automation will make humans redundant have been made before, however, going back to the Industrial Revolution, when textile workers, most famously the Luddites, protested that machines and steam engines would destroy their livelihoods. “Never until now did human invention devise such expedients for dispensing with the labour of the poor,” said a pamphlet at the time. Subsequent outbreaks of concern occurred in the 1920s (“March of the machine makes idle hands”, declared a New York Times headline in 1928), the 1930s (when John Maynard Keynes coined the term “technological unemployment”) and 1940s, when the New York Times referred to the revival of such worries as the renewal of an “old argument”.
>As computers began to appear in offices and robots on factory floors, President John F. Kennedy declared that the major domestic challenge of the 1960s was to “maintain full employment at a time when automation…is replacing men”. In 1964 a group of Nobel prizewinners, known as the Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution, sent President Lyndon Johnson a memo alerting him to the danger of a revolution triggered by “the combination of the computer and the automated self-regulating machine”. This, they said, was leading to a new era of production “which requires progressively less human labour” and threatened to divide society into a skilled elite and an unskilled underclass. The advent of personal computers in the 1980s provoked further hand-wringing over potential job losses.
and based on a simplistic understanding of how automation impacts the demand for labour.
Automation reduces costs, and this increases consumer spending on more difficult to automate goods/services. [2]
That has been the pattern for 200 years, and why wages today are 20X what they were in 1800.
Unfortunately, ideas like yours are very common [3] and lead to terrible government policy.
>Poverty in the US is overwhelmingly an issue for women and children. If we valued women so much, this travesty should not be true.
This is incorrect. 14% of women are under the poverty line, to 10% of men. That's not "overwhelming". On the flip side, a significant majority of the homeless are men.
The gender difference seen in the poverty statistic is in my estimation due to the fact that women are generally less motivated than men to earn money, and thus less willing to make sacrifices to do so (which is why men overwhelmingly work dangerous jobs, and are 10X more likely to die in a work place accident as a result). This will result in the lower income levels seen in the female demographic, which will extend to more women having income levels that fall under the poverty line.
So, about 40% more women are poor than men and you think this is not substantial? We have expressions like the feminization of poverty and the pink collar ghetto for a reason. This has been studied and there are scholarly resources on the subject.
You explanation is a big fat blame-the-victim position.
I am aware there are more homeless men than women. The reasons for that are complicated. They typically tend to be less pathetic than homeless women. It in no way justifies acting like the difference in poverty rates is small and due to personal laziness on the part of women.
Contrary to what people like you routinely assume, I don't publicly admit to being homeless in order to garner sympathy from internet strangers. I merely do so in order to make it clear that I have first-hand experience with the problem space, in addition to having taken a college class on the subject.
I don't have any fantasies at all that most strangers on the internet care one whit about my personal welfare.
>Put me in the camp that's very anti-AirBnB as a resident who doesn't want where I lived turned into a hotel. I live in NYC.
You're simply demonstrating NIMBYism. You get to stay in one of the most geographically desirable locations in the world and in order to pay lower rent you want to prevent others who live in much less geographically desirable places from renting units in your locale so that they can get to enjoy something you get to enjoy year round, for a few days of the year.
Who says it's only about rent? People who live in a place for only a few nights in general behave very different than where they live for a longer time.
I live in a > 100 year old building with bad acoustic insulation with 10 small apartments in it. For some time, the tenant above rented his apartment via AirBnB which was totally annoying and I'm really happy it stopped.
I'm mostly talking about loud noise in the middle of the night, disturbing all the other tenants. Be it coming home drunk at 4am and puking in the stair case, having lots of parties, shouting, door slamming, etc.
The disruptive behavior should be dealt with directly, in a manner that's agnostic to whether the person staying is a short term tenant, a long-term tenant, or a nonpaying guest of the owner, not by discriminating against short term tenancy based on a generalisation about the people who utilise it.
Also, from what I've seen, most opposition to Airbnb is motivated by its alleged effect on rental rates for long-term tenants, which is the least justifiable reason to oppose it in my opinion.
Or, maybe, he just want the people living on the other side of his bedroom wall to be some stable neighbors and not seeing someone new every three days.
Higher incidents of noise violations, higher trash output, there are a bunch of factors that make hotel guests / airbnb guests less desirable than a typical tenant.
Wow, this is the worst comment I've read on this so far. You're saying that differences in extrinsic incentives (tennant vs. resident) should be treated the same as biological differences when discriminating between good and bad neighbors. Are you kidding?
The equivalent of your statement is saying that a licensed doctor and a stranger who claims to know what he's doing should both be able to perform surgery on you - because we wouldn't want to discriminate.
>You're saying that differences in extrinsic incentives (tennant vs. resident) should be treated the same as biological differences when discriminating between good and bad neighbors. Are you kidding?
Legal discrimination based on inborn traits, like race, gender or place of birth, is probably worse, because the targeted group can't change those traits, but both are bad because they discriminate against people based on generalisations about the group they belong to rather than a harmful action they engage in.
>The equivalent of your statement is saying that a licensed doctor and a stranger who claims to know what he's doing should both be able to perform surgery on you - because we wouldn't want to discriminate.
Well, first of all, it shouldn't be illegal for an unlicensed person to perform surgery. It's none of anyone else's business what two consenting adults agree to do together. But that aside, it's not the equivalent at all. The licensed doctor has qualifications that attest their medical knowledge.
Uh, no, all of the suburban neighborhoods and high-density urban buildings I've lived in have had move-ins and move-outs basically every week of the year. I've never enjoyed, nor felt the need for, low turnover among neighbors.
Possibly there are arguments that this is a right under certain circumstances (HOA, co-op, etc. agreements) but it's not obvious that low turnover among neighbors is a right in general.
It's not NIMBYism because it sounds like that poster is generally against intermixing residential housing with hotels. Favoring separation of residential zones from commercial hotels is "not in anyone's backyard"...
Raising height limits and rezoning tourist areas for mixed-use is a better approach anyway - as a tourist, I use AirBNB because I can't afford the high priced hotels in popular NYC areas. I would vastly prefer staying in a proper hotel in the city, but it's too expensive (presumably because of limited supply)... the only happy person is the land lord who gets hotel revenue without hotel regulations.
I signed a 12 month rental agreement for an apartment in Reykjavik in 2015. About a month after I moved in, the apartment above me was sold to an ABnBer, and for the rest of the year I had a rotating troop of loud holidayers cycling through. I took to sleeping with earplugs every night, and still often was kept up until 1 or 2 on a weeknight. Needless to say, I moved the second the contract expired.
You can't persuade AirBnB users to give a shit about the noise they are causing, because they're going to be gone in 2 weeks. They don't care if the rest of the apartment hates them. It was toxic behavior that lowered the value of all the other apartments, and it harmed my quality of life quite severely.
But here's the important bit. This problem is not like someone buying a house near an airport and then complaining about the noise. Apartments become AirBnB rentals very suddenly, with no warning. There's nothing you can do to plan or defend against it, and it can happen to anyone. It's life ruining stuff, it harms your sleep, it harms your property investments, it increases your building maintenance costs and it increases your rental costs[1], and it happens randomly out of the blue.
It's an approach used by a lot of companies that I've started to think of as "societal strip mining". AirBnB is making it's money by offloading costs of business that it should rightfully pay itself to random other people around it, and pocketing the difference.
A newly created hotel in the middle of an otherwise quiet suburb would be required to soundproof it's premises and build parking under the site for it's customers. AirBnB apartments ignore soundproofing and create a system that encourages their customers to fight the locals for street parking (AirBnB customers usually win, because they're not on a 9-5 work schedule). It's no different to Uber saying "local regulations are not our problem, so we're not going to pay for cameras in Uber vehicles, and we're not going to safety check the vehicles every 3 months either. Whether our drivers do these things or not is between them and the government". BAM, fleet maintenance costs drop to zero, giving them a competitive edge against local taxi companies. Every now and again someone gets brutally raped or a car goes off a bridge as a result of pressuring their drivers to bypass regulations, but Uber isn't the one that has to pay.
I'm not impressed by this NIMBYism argument. AirBnB is taking the piss. They've had every opportunity to be a responsible business and work to support the tourism boom in Iceland in a positive manner, and instead they've made the lives of locals a lot harder and more expensive than it need be in the name of a quick buck. I for one will embrace with open arms any legislation which will shut them out of my city.
[1] 44% of Reykjaviks rental market is now listen on AirBnB, up from 23.5% 12 months ago, the average cost of rent has increase ~$1000USD per month in two years.
I can't for the life of me understand why you're being downvoted. Other than your clear opinions, your analysis is spot on. This sums it up:
> It's an approach used by a lot of companies that I've started to think of as "societal strip mining". AirBnB is making it's money by offloading costs of business that it should rightfully pay itself to random other people around it, and pocketing the difference.
How can anyone disagree with that? That paragraph is pretty obviously true _regardless_ of whether you like or dislike Airbnb. They are quite obviously taking advantage of the economic conditions (and lack of enforcement of many laws) and engaging in a form of indirect arbitrage of the housing stock. It makes perfect business sense and you may even think it's good, but doesn't make the quoted paragraph and less true.
I'm not sure exactly where I stand with this in the big picture, but quotes like "You're simply demonstrating NIMBYism." are as overly simplistic. You could just as easily say the users of Airbnb are "simply demonstrating selfishness" in their taking advantage of places _not_ meant to be hotels.
You've provided a well-thought-out, evidence-based response, but it seems people are disagreeing with the content.
I too agree that there are businesses out there that offload costs onto society. Some people use these services responsibly, enjoy a cost-savings, and will usually ardently defend the merits of the company that provides it.
Some number of other people do not use the service responsibly, and through their behavior, can cause serious harm, annoyance, and time/financial costs to random members of society.
Where Airbnb differs from casinos, breweries, tobacco companies, oxycotton manufacturers, payday loan brokers, fireworks manufacturers, bomb manufacturers...
> Where Airbnb differs (...) is that Airbnb is a tech company, I guess.
I disagree. IMO it's different simply because it's new and growing extremely large. All your other examples are old-school things that expand slowly, locally, and that we have plenty of experience in handling. They're also all regulated, and actually follow those regulations.
I think "societal strip-mining" is a very apt description of Uber and AirBnB.
I think their technology has given them the ability to coordinate laborers with buyers like never before.
It isn't centralized like a casino or brothel, because the workers are geographically dispersed and don't have to show up to a physical building/boss for instructions.
It is more effective than craigslist or a newspaper, because their technology has evolved and is trusted enough to deliver quality service in real-time.
There is a big war on how to regulate/clamp down on this (depends on your view), but it is likely their technology that made the difference compared to other business models.
this doesn't give them a free pass, it just explains why/how it happened maybe ^.^
Did/does your building have the equivalent of an HOA? I know my neighborhood has banned short term rentals.
The neighboring town zoned an area for short term rentals, forced registration with the city, and added some fees. It turned all of the legit short term rental owners effectively into enforcement of rentals outside the zone so they can control supply. It worked out pretty well and seemed to be a good balance of control and free market.
>Did/does your building have the equivalent of an HOA? I know my neighborhood has banned short term rentals.
Part of the problem is that landlords are able to charge so much more for AirBnB here that none of the landlords really want to rule out the possibility of getting in on the gravy themselves, hence the stat about half the rental market being on Airbnb.
Most buildings have an owners association of some kind, but it doesn't have the power that HOA's seem to have according to the Internet. As far as I know (and I'm not very knowledgeable on this), if there was any kind of major disagreement, such as some owners trying to stop others from doing short term rentals, ultimately it would have to end up in court to force someones hand.
That sounds terrible, but would it be less terrible if your loud and obnoxious neighbors were long term renters?
My vacation rentals have rules, especially about noise. If you break the rules I can literally force you to leave right then, as in, collect your stuff and go right now. You have no recourse. The police will help me toss you if you don't go willingly.
If I rented to you long term, I don't have that luxury. I'd have to evict you over months of court precedings and you'd have plenty of time to vindictively trash my property. In fact, this is one of the main reasons I don't do long term rentals.
As I said elsewhere, I wouldn't hesitate. I screen visitors well and I get 5 star reviews.
Any one star reviews can be explained away easily. I've never had to do it as a host, but I've stayed at places with some one star reviews where the host provided a reasonable explanation in response.
What's your point? Being evicted is a big deal. It's can be difficult to get a next nice apartment if you've been evicted before, especially if you were evicted from your immediate previous apartment.
There is no deterrent whatsoever for Airbnb guests, who have no stake in the lease or the local market.
No, they have a public rating to maintain on airbnb. Evictions are actually easy to hide, just move to a different state or keep looking for the next sucker on CL that is a newbie landlord.
That's silly, as anyone who has used Airbnb knows. Your renter rating on Airbnb is meaningless. If you somehow got a bad one, you'd just create a new profile. I've created new profiles for Airbnb rentals simply because I couldn't be arsed to remember which email address I'd used, and had no problems.
I can only speak for myself and the 5-6 people I know who rent their properties on these platforms; we don't rent to new profiles.
Clearly some people do rent to new profiles. There are fools everywhere, but they won't be fools for long. It will only take a few bad experiences, and then they'll learn.
You are not most people on Airbnb. I've rented pretty amazing places on fresh profiles. And really, it's not as if the idea that online rating systems are unhelpful is new to anyone.
From a single renter's point of view, you have a big pool of places. You'll find one that doesn't mind your new profile. I get that.
From a single host's point of view, you have 0% chance of renting with me or the hosts like me.
So we're looking at this from different views. I get that people with new profiles CAN find a place, even a nice place. Please get that they won't find it with cautious hosts that are careful about their visitors.
On one hand everyone is pissed that people are buying properties just to rent on airbnb (and home away, flipkey, vbro, etc...) and on the other hand we need to protect these same people from themselves?
You can't protect the predator and its prey.
If you want fewer people buying up properties for short term rentals you should want the weaker ones to have bad experiences and tell all their friends.
It's entirely possible to point out that both sides of the market may be harmed when "disrupting" a regulated industry. AirBnB takes a cut of the savings, but the risks are borne by the market participants, whether that means having your property trashed by bad guests, or your trip ruined by bad hosts. The "predator" in your analogy would be AirBnB itself.
>Evictions are actually easy to hide, just move to a different state or
That depends __entirely__ on where you live. In Iceland, your renting a building is registered with your kennitala (national identification number). Get evicted or damage the property, and all the real estate managers in the country know.
>where this forum is based thus my reasonable presumption
The 16th word in the post you responded to was "Reykjavik".
Second line, first sentence. The post contains the word Iceland once and the word Reykjavik twice. There is only so much I can do to help you on this front.
And you responded to a comment that wasn't originally about Iceland. This is a general conversation about airbnb, not airbnb in Iceland, which was my point.
So again, you replied to a general conversation with a specific in Iceland. Does that mean we all have to converse about airbnb in Iceland with you? If that's the case, I hope you like having conversations with yourself.
>That sounds terrible, but would it be less terrible if your loud and obnoxious neighbors were long term renters?
The rate of loud and obnoxious long term renters is lower, due to the risk of people going to your landlord and forcing your eviction.
This can only be done if your behavior is chronic and long standing as an individual. There is no local law I am aware of allowing action against a cycle of short term tenants.
>My vacation rentals have rules, especially about noise. If you break the rules I can literally force you to leave right then, as in, collect your stuff and go right now.
A landlord who does this will get negative reviews, which will directly lower their income. AirBnB landlords are literally paid to ignore complaints.
>The rate of loud and obnoxious long term renters is lower, due to the risk of people going to your landlord and forcing your eviction.
I agree that the rate is higher, but not the reason. Most bad renters know it's almost impossible to get evicted from a long term rental. You must not know anyone who is a long term landlord, because you throw around the word eviction like it's nothing. It's a long and expensive process at the end of which you'll most likely have extensive property damage on top of lost rent.
Frankly, you're overestimating the importance of a negative review. If we ever had to kick someone out it would be for a good reason. If you had a party at the house, that would be against our contract and you'd get tossed. I'd then get a bad review, mixed in with all my other 5 star reviews. To that one review I would simply respond "Visitor threw a party with 20 people which was in violation of our contract. This is not a party house and we're upfront about that. Anyone who thinks they can rent my property under false pretenses should heed this review and not rent from me."
Now I'm better off on airbnb. My average review is still high and now prospective visitors know I won't put up with shit.
Reducing something to a term doesn't negate it. There are many things which, if they start happening in your back yard, you would have valid reasons to object to and work against. Yet you could call all of them NIMBYism. So what? That's not shorthand for wrong.
The neighbourhood around you turning into a transient state where your neighbours change on a daily basis? To me that's a valid cause for concern. To others, young professionals renting in a busy city and moving every 6-12 months? Probably not so much.
Both positions are valid and deserving of consideration.
If you appreciate Airbnb when out of your own city but oppose it when it's in your city, then your opposition is not grounded in an objective analysis of what is in the general public's interest, and should therefore be dismissed in my opinion.
So Chicago has WAY easier zoning laws compared to SF. Still has zoning laws, but they are in a totally different / less crazy league.
Still, my condo has a no AirB&B clause. I would not have bought it if it allowed neighbors in the building to AirB&B.
Not 100% that clause is still enforceable, but I sold it a few years ago. I would sell ASAP though if I caught wind a neighbor was going to rent their unit. A quiet home is worth a lot to me.
It's just about keeping out people who might live in apartments. Really not racist or classist, just that we want our neighborhood to stay for people who can afford millions in land.
I love how "austerity" is the catch all cause of all social problems, despite social welfare spending as a share of GDP massively increasing in the UK over the last 50 years.
This is a self-correcting problem. Traders who fall for fake walls lose their capital, and thus influence on the price, to those who do not. The feedback loops and incentives of the market cause it to evolve toward a more price-stable configuration.
When you unbound the supply of a currency, it naturally inflates. Inflation being relative to the value derived from any given indicator. Speculation drives confidence drives speculation, forever.
That's the exact opposite of bitcoin. The supply is very clearly bounded to 21 million coins total, with a predefined distribution rate that can't be changed.
Do you think that increasing the number of decimal places actually increases the supply?
If everyone started talking about cents instead of dollars that wouldn't mean there's 100x as much money... 1 cent would still be worth 1/100 of a dollar.
Likewise, if you started dividing down to 1/1000 of a dollar it wouldn't be inflation. Each 1/1000 of a dollar would still be worth 1/1000 of a dollar.
Edit: and if you suddenly replaced every dollar with 1000 newdollars, those newdollars are also worth 1/1000 of what they were before.
Pizza has intrinsic properties, like physics that constrain it. You have more pizza pieces numerically, yes. I'm wondering why you think this is a compelling analogy.
When people say they expand the money supply it means diluting the existing holders. The actual unit of accounting doesn't really matter. Subdividing bitcoin units does not dilute existing holders.
For a scientist's analysis of the memo, see this:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manifes...