During South Africa’s apartheid era, racist unions, which would never accept a black member, were the major supporters of minimum wages for blacks. In 1925, the South African Economic and Wage Commission said, “The method would be to fix a minimum rate for an occupation or craft so high that no Native would be likely to be employed.” Gert Beetge, secretary of the racist Building Workers’ Union, complained, “There is no job reservation left in the building industry, and in the circumstances, I support the rate for the job (minimum wage) as the second-best way of protecting our white artisans.” “Equal pay for equal work” became the rallying slogan of the South African white labor movement. These laborers knew that if employers were forced to pay black workers the same wages as white workers, there’d be reduced incentive to hire blacks.
South Africans were not alone in their minimum wage conspiracy against blacks. After a bitter 1909 strike by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen in the U.S., an arbitration board decreed that blacks and whites were to be paid equal wages. Union members expressed their delight, saying, “If this course of action is followed by the company and the incentive for employing the Negro thus removed, the strike will not have been in vain.”
Our nation’s first minimum wage law, the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, had racist motivation. During its legislative debate, its congressional supporters made such statements as, “That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country.” During hearings, American Federation of Labor President William Green complained, “Colored labor is being sought to demoralize wage rates.”
Walter E. Williams, “Minimum Wage and Discrimination”, Creators Syndicate, 2017-02-08.
September 15, 2020
QotD: Racism and the minimum wage
September 14, 2020
That Time the Ladies of New Orleans Peed on Union Soldiers
Atun-Shei Films
Published 24 Sep 2019In 1862, shortly after the capture of New Orleans by Union forces during the Civil War, General Benjamin “the Beast” Butler issued the infamous “woman order” because the wealthy ladies of the city wouldn’t stop dumping pee on his men.
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September 12, 2020
Andrew Sullivan on a “genetic case for communism”
Actually, this isn’t the case Sullivan himself is making, but he’s summarizing a recent book by Fredrik deBoer, The Cult of Smart: How our broken education system perpetuates social injustice:
There aren’t many books out there these days by revolutionary communists who are into the genetics of intelligence. But then there aren’t many writers like Freddie DeBoer. He’s an insistently quirky thinker who has managed to resist the snark, cynicism and moral preening of so many others in his generation — and write from his often-broken heart. And the core of his new book, The Cult of Smart, is a moral case for those with less natural intelligence than others — the ultimate losers in our democratic meritocracy, a system both the mainstream right and left have defended for decades now, and that, DeBoer argues, gives short shrift to far too many.
This isn’t a merely abstract question for him. He has grappled with it directly. As a school teacher he encountered the simple, unavoidable fact that some humans are more academically gifted than others, and there’s nothing much anyone can do about it. He recalls his effort to teach long division to a boy who had managed to come a long way socially (he’d gone from being a hell-raiser to a good student) but who still struggled with something as elemental as long division: “At one point he broke into tears, as he had several times before … I exhaled slowly and felt myself give up, though of course I would never tell him so. I tried to console him, once again, and he said, ‘I just can’t do it.’ And it struck me, with unusual force, that he was right.”
What DeBoer tries to do is explain how our current culture and political system is geared to torment, distress and punish this kid for no fault of his own. “This is the cult of smart,” DeBoer proclaims. “It is the notion that academic value is the only value, and intelligence the only true measure of human worth. It is pernicious, it is cruel, and it must change.” It has become un-American — or perhaps it always was? — to say that an individual has natural limits, that, even with extremely hard work, he won’t always be able to realize his dreams. And this is not because of anything he has done or failed to do — but simply because of his draw in the genetic lottery of life. The very American cult of education is supposed to end this injustice — except that it doesn’t, because it can’t, and its brutal logic actually exposes and entrenches the least defensible inequality of all, the inequality of nature.
This genetic reality — in fact, the very idea of nature existing at all — is currently a taboo topic on the left. In the most ludicrously untrue and yet suffocatingly omnipresent orthodoxy of our time, critical theory leftists insist that everything on earth is entirely socially constructed, that all inequality is a function of “oppressive systems”, and that human nature itself is what John Locke called a “white paper, void of all characters” — the famous blank slate. Freddie begs to differ: “Human behavioral traits, such as IQ, are profoundly shaped by genetic parentage, and this genetic influence plays a larger role in determining human outcomes than the family and home environment.”
People are not just born unequally and unfairly into class, and culture, and place, they are inherently unequal in various ways in their very nature: “not everyone has the same ability to do calculus; not everyone has the same grasp of grammar and mechanics … we can continue to beat our heads against the wall, trying to force an equality that just won’t come. Or we can face facts and start to grapple with a world where everyone simply can’t be made equal.” And this is not a counsel of despair. What Freddie is arguing is that, far from treating genetic inequality as a taboo, the left should actually lean into it to argue for a more radical re-ordering of society. They shouldn’t ignore genetics, or treat it as unmentionable, or go into paroxysms of fear and alarm over “eugenics” whenever the subject comes up. They should accept that inequality is natural, and construct a politics radical enough to counter it.
[…]
This genetic case for communism can leave a reader a little disoriented, I have to say, if only for its novelty. But it is more coherent, it seems to me, than a leftism that assumes that genes are irrelevant to humans and society, that the ultimate goal is to be as smart and thereby wealthy as possible, and that we can set up an educational system where everyone, regardless of their genetic inheritance, can succeed or fail by their own efforts. What sounds like a meritocratic dream is, in practice, a brutal and unforgiving formula for most who can’t achieve it — and has obviously failed if its task is to foster equality. In fact, mass education appears to have increased the gulf between rich and poor. As Freddie notes, “education is not a weapon against inequality; it is an engine of inequality.”
September 11, 2020
QotD: “Karen” and other stereotypes
I love stereotypes. They help us understand what the Greeks called syndromes, carrying them beyond the narrow world of medical jargon. “Karen” began as the stereotype for the woman who “wants to see the manager,” but was soon extended through a gallery of related traits. One thinks affectionately through a shortlist of the Karens one has known. For the Christian, it can impact one’s prayer life. (I found myself once praying for a certain Karen Surname, then spontaneously extending it to “Karens everywhere,” with a memorial for the Beckies. I noticed as I searched my memory that many of these Karens were biologically male.)
And today I wonder, as I have often done, at the genius of colloquial language, and the unerring way with which it uncovers fresh stereotypes, that enhance our perception of reality, in a way like painting and the other fine arts. (In a lost portrait, Leonardo depicted a Karen of the Renaissance.)
David Warren, “Karens & their kind”, Essays in Idleness, 2020-06-10.
September 10, 2020
QotD: The power and wisdom of the voters
H.L. Mencken, Minority Report, 1956.
September 9, 2020
Today’s intelligentsia: helpless captives of their uber-woke disciples
Theodore Dalrymple on the temptations of power:
A building burning in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd.
Photo by Hungryogrephotos via Wikipedia.
One must not exaggerate, of course. We do not yet live under a Soviet-type tyranny in which every university thesis, on no matter how arcane a subject, was obliged by hook or by crook to quote Lenin. It is still possible, though not at all easy, to live as a scholar in our societies outside the university system. But it does not require the tyranny of the complete police state to obtain a high degree of intellectual conformity, as we can now observe at our leisure. Young university academics of my acquaintance in several countries tell me that they are now afraid to speak their mind, not because they would fear for their lives, but fear for their promotion. This is not the same, or as terrible, as fearing for their lives, but it is nonetheless very far from the Millian ideal of freedom of thought and speech.
There is much worse. It is not merely that they must keep their mouth shut and not say what they think, bad enough as this must be for those who have chosen the life of the mind; it is that they must positively subscribe to things that they believe to be bad or false. And this is a mark of totalitarianism. They must subscribe to doctrines they believe absurd, for example by describing in job applications their future efforts to promote diversity, so-called. By making the expression of untruth the condition of employment, probity is destroyed in advance. Those who lack it are easier to control.
Increasingly, social movements do not allow any neutrality with regard to the causes that they promote. Non-adherence is no different from enmity and derogation is evil: if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem. In vain might you argue that your interest is elsewhere, in the taxonomy of grasshoppers, for example, or in the biochemistry of acorns, or in the bibliography of Alexander Pope: there is one subject that trumps all others in importance, and on it only one opinion is permissible. You must pass a test of loyalty.
The latest of these movements is, of course, Black Lives Matter, and its success in cowing so large a part of the intelligentsia is in a way admirable, a model of political organization for the future, though one much to be feared. By claiming that silence is violence, it has made hand-wringing (to avoid its anathema) the mark, and almost the whole, of virtue. It has successfully reversed Martin Luther King’s goal, such that the colour of a man’s skin is once again more important than the content of his character, and it has made respectable that most Stalino-Maoist of notions, that people should be promoted and rewarded according to their social (in this case, racial) origins. And anyone who disagrees is an Enemy of the People, the word People being here used in a severely technical sense, to mean the arbiters of the allocation of rewards.
How have you enjoyed your six-month visit to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Rationalia” (rule by experts)?
Tabitha Alloway clearly isn’t a fan of technocratic “experts” running our lives — and who can blame her?
Cropped photo of Neil deGrasse Tyson on stage with Richard Dawkins at Howard University in Washington D.C. on 28 September 2010.
Photo by Bruce F. Press via Wikimedia Commons.
Expert advice has ping-ponged on COVID-19 like a bead in a pinball machine. Even the medical literature itself has been rife with contradictions and retractions. Lawmakers have tripped over themselves trying to outdo one another in creating the most laws and regulations during the lockdowns in response to the nebulous (and ever-changing) “science” of the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, suicides, domestic violence, hunger and starvation, and economic difficulty have been on the rise. The Nobel Prize-winning Michael Levitt has said, “There is no doubt in my mind that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor.” Stacey Lennox, writing for PJ Media said, “COVID-19 may go down as history’s most devastating example of expert arrogance and media malfeasance.”
[…]
A few years ago Neil deGrasse Tyson made waves with his “Rationalia” government proposal: Create a world in which all policies are based on “weight of evidence.” Let science rule us.
This utopian proposal was quickly criticized by a number of voices. Popular Science charged that such a misguided idea would lead to “vast human suffering,” and pointed out some obvious problems:
“Scientists study what they want, and they study what they can get paid to study, so the work of science is not free from the pressures of money, nor interaction with the business world … In a hypothetical world where a single person (let’s call him ‘Neil’) decided policy based on precisely measuring the weight of evidence, how that person selected evidence would matter a great deal, and would likely come down to values.”
But of course.
The idea that science could be wholly objectively applied, free from the biases, personal values, and limited understanding of the expert legislating (or proposing) it is a childish fantasy. While Tyson dreams of an unerring scientific principle formulated as a rule for society, his Rationalia proposal makes no room for human error, passion, and prejudice. Our application of science is necessarily limited by our ever-changing understanding of it. And while science can tell us what happens when X meets Y, it cannot tell us if it is moral and good for X to meet Y.
We have more than a little evidence from history that science (or what was accepted at the time as science) has most certainly caused “vast human suffering” when wielded by unscrupulous men and fascist dictators. From the murder of Aboriginal Australians to the forced sterilizations in America, eugenics, genocide, and racism have sprung from (or found their apology in) social Darwinism. As Robert F. Graboyes noted in U.S. News & World Report, “Nazi Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess stated — probably sincerely — that ‘National Socialism is nothing but applied biology.'”
Bumbling do-gooders and their victims are not immune to unintended consequences either, as we have so lately observed.
September 8, 2020
2020 is a cracking year
And by “cracking” I don’t mean the old Victorian expression for “very good”. Sarah Hoyt explains the cracks at the Libertarian Enterprise:
“Covid 19 Masks” by baldeaglebluff is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
It’s 2020 and we’re all cracking.
And no, by that I don’t mean that we’re cracking like crazy on our writing. Most of us are having trouble writing. A lot of us are having trouble reading. Though I’ve finally got out of the Pride and Prejudice fanfic jag.
I’ve seen people suddenly lose it and start crying over dirty dishes. Or the fact we ran out of peanut butter.
Okay, that was me. Yesterday. But I’ve been watching signs of just that much fragility in everyone I know.
Part of it is the lockdown. Man — and verily, woman — is a social animal. Not only is it not good for Man — do I need to say “and woman again?” — to be alone, it’s not good for us, when going out to be confronted with “truncated” human faces.
It is instinctive in humans to see human faces in everything. Don’t believe me? Look at a random pattern long enough, and you’ll find faces. Truncated human faces, the mouth gone, are deeply unsettling to the back of our brain. It is wrong, mutilated.
Suicides are through the roof. Mental health issues abound. The young are suffering particularly badly, because on top of all they believe they’re going to die. (The rest of us are already dead from the ice age, acid rain, fossil fuel depletion, alar, global warming, ozone depletion … I’m sure I’m forgetting some things. After so much death, one becomes resilient. Those of us forty and over won’t die. Even if they kill us.)
But the other part of it is that in a contentious political year there’s nowhere to escape.
Remember when you used to have friends that believed exactly the opposite of what you did, and you both knew it, but you were still friends? You couldn’t talk politics, but you could talk knitting, embroidery, kids, gardening, furniture refinishing, science fiction? You could sit down and have a cup of coffee with someone whose political views you considered despicable and not mention politics? Not even once?
But that was before the invasion of those for whom everything is political. Oh, cancel culture already existed. Before social media, I was terrified of saying the wrong word and revealing my real thoughts, and getting blacklisted by publishing houses.
But there were spaces you could draw a breath. Places where you didn’t have to talk and/or think about politics.
September 5, 2020
Kareem Shaheen on the shame of mask-shaming
In The Line, Kareem Shaheen — who is a mask-wearer and was one before they were made mandatory — explains why shaming anti-maskers is a terrible way to encourage compliance, but a great way to virtue-signal:
“Covid 19 Masks” by baldeaglebluff is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
The mask shaming mirrors the way social media has warped our culture. The Twitter and ‘gram “in crowd” flaunt its mask use to demonstrate an ostensibly superior grasp of morals and science — and to bully those who don’t follow its cues. Those who perceive themselves to be on the outside of this circle can’t help but cringe at the manipulation and grandstanding behind these seemingly well-intentioned gestures.
Mask resistance, then, becomes a virtue signal of its own.
And, of course, Twitter itself has been a cesspool of counter-productive shame. Back in July, the hashtag #NoMasks trended, which gave the illusion of a groundswell of opposition against mandatory masking laws. But an analysis by First Draft, a nonprofit based in the United Kingdom, examined 8,000 Twitter accounts that used the hashtag. It found that the majority of people who tweeted #NoMasks were actually pro-mask. Their condemnation of the supposed anti-mask contingent actually boosted #NoMasks, bringing more people in contact with related conspiracy theories and arguments against wearing masks.
The moralizing is all the more galling because our own governments were forced to do an embarrassing about-face on their efficacy.
In the early weeks of the pandemic, health agencies in Canada and the United States recommended against wearing masks because there was insufficient evidence that they could prevent the spread of the virus, remember? They said that masks would provide a sense of false security, and suggested that we were all too dumb to know how to wear them properly.
This despite widespread use of masks in Asia, and while there was a growing consensus in hard-hit parts of Europe that they were effective and necessary.
With so much confused messaging, it’s no mystery that so many people are now skeptical about wearing masks. Sure, some of the most ardent mask-haters are also Q-Anon-spouting, anti-vaxxer crystal-healing masks-are-fascism conspiracy theorist kooks. But not all them fit that description.
And the problem with all of this is that if you’re actually trying to convince people to wear masks — as opposed to merely demonstrating your own superior morality via the veil — shame is one of the least effective methods of persuasion.
September 4, 2020
“They have insurance”
Brad Polumbo debunks the notion that it’s somehow “okay” to loot and vandalize businesses “because they have insurance” and that somehow means that nobody suffers.
A building burning in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd.
Photo by Hungryogrephotos via Wikipedia.
Since the death of George Floyd in late May, violent riots and looting have broken out in many major cities, eventually overshadowing peaceful protests and calls for criminal justice reform. From Portland to Chicago to Kenosha, rioters have smashed windows, lit fires, attacked government properties, assaulted people in the streets, and looted storefronts.
In Minneapolis alone, vandals have destroyed at least 1,500 properties, many of them minority-owned businesses, and caused billions of dollars in property damage. Many people have been injured or killed during the chaos.
[…]
Even if all the affected property was fully insured — and it wasn’t — rioting has taken a vast human toll as well.
Consider that at least 15 people were killed during the initial riots after Floyd’s death, and that more have died in the unrest since. When arson and looting consume the streets, people inevitably get hurt and caught in the crossfire. That’s why the Minneapolis police found a burnt corpse in a pawn shop days after arsonists had passed through.
Insurance might fund that property’s restoration, but it can’t bring a dead man back to life.
[…]
Big companies like Walmart and Target generally have expensive, premium insurance plans. But many of the mom-and-pop enterprises and small businesses targeted in the riots didn’t have expensive insurance plans. In some cases, their more modest plans don’t cover damage from riots or don’t cover it in full.
“Situations where there’s a lot of devastation like this, a lot of times people find they’re underinsured and don’t have enough coverage,” Illinois Insurance Association Hotline President Janet Patrick told CBS Minnesota. “And so once the damage has been done, it’s too late. You can’t buy more coverage.”
According to Insurance Journal, 75 percent of US businesses are under-insured. And according to the New York Times, about 40 percent of small businesses have no insurance at all.
September 3, 2020
Fallen Flag — The Great Northern Railway
This month’s Classic Trains featured fallen flag is an American railway that definitely deserved to call itself “great”, James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railway. Hill was noteworthy as the only “Robber Baron” of that era who was scrupulous in avoiding government entanglements (including grants, loans, subsidies, and other forms of money-with-political-strings-attached), building his entire railway system using private funds and rational profit-oriented economic decision-making (the other transcontinental lines often over-built to claim higher subsidies or added money-losing branch lines to please powerful politicians). The result was that when economic hard times hit the railway business, his was the only transcontinental that never needed to declare bankruptcy.
In an earlier post, Dane Stuhlsatz summarized the GN’s engineering:
Hill’s line […] was methodically surveyed and built, on the shortest routes possible, with the least gradient possible, and using the best steel and other materials on the market at the time. Rather than political largess, Hill made his decisions based on profit and loss. But, for all the efficiency that Hill built into his line — he was able to transport across the country faster, cheaper, and with less maintenance costs than could the UP and CP — arguably the most important aspect for the viability of his business was the freedom to conduct business untethered by the strings that accompanied government subsidies.
Route map of the Great Northern Railway, circa 1920. Red lines are Great Northern trackage; dotted lines are other railroads.
Map by Elkman via Wikimedia Commons.
George Drury outlines the origins of the railway:
In 1857, the Minnesota & Pacific Railroad was chartered to build a line from Stillwater, Minnesota, on the St. Croix River, through St. Paul and St. Cloud to St. Vincent, in the northwest corner of the state. The company defaulted after completing a roadbed between St. Paul and St. Cloud, Minnesota, and its charter was taken over by the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad, which ran its first train between St. Paul and St. Anthony (now Minneapolis) in 1862.
For financial reasons the railroads were reorganized as the First Division of the St. Paul & Pacific. Both StP&P companies were soon in receivership, and Northern Pacific, with which the StP&P was allied, went bankrupt in the Panic of 1873.
Canadian-born “Robber Baron” James J. Hill (1838-1916) in 1914.
In 1878 James J. Hill and an associate, George Stephen, acquired the two St. Paul & Pacific companies and reorganized them as the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway (“the Manitoba”). By 1885 the company had 1,470 miles of railroad and extended west to Devils Lake, North Dakota. In 1886 Hill organized the Montana Central Railway to build from Great Falls, Montana, through Helena to Butte, and in 1888 the line was opened, creating in conjunction with the StPM&M a railroad from St. Paul to Butte.
In 1881 Hill took over the 1856 charter of the Minneapolis & St. Cloud Railroad. He first used its franchises to build the Eastern Railway of Minnesota from Hinckley, Minnesota, to Superior, Wisconsin, and Duluth. Its charter was liberal enough that he chose it as the vehicle for his line to the Pacific. He renamed the road the Great Northern Railway; it then leased the Manitoba and assumed its operation.
[…]
Even before completion of the route from St. Paul, the Great Northern opened a line along the shore of Puget Sound between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1891. In the years that followed, Hill pushed a number of lines north across the international boundary into the mining area of southern British Columbia in a running battle with Canadian Pacific. In 1912 GN traded its line along the Fraser River east of Vancouver to Canadian Northern for trackage rights into Winnipeg.
Great Northern gradually withdrew from British Columbia after Hill’s death. In 1909 the Manitoba Great Northern Railway purchased most of the property of the Midland Railway of Manitoba (lines from the U.S. border to Portage la Prairie and to Morden), leaving the Midland, which was jointly controlled by GN and NP, with terminal properties in Winnipeg. The Manitoba Great Northern disposed of its rail lines in 1927. They were later abandoned.
Postcard photo of the Great Northern Railway’s “Empire Builder” streamliner between Everett and Seattle, Washington, circa 1963.
Great Northern Railway postcard via Wikimedia Commons.
The Great Northern and Northern Pacific lines agreed to a merger in 1901 (both lines were controlled by Hill) but the plan was vetoed by the Interstate Commerce Commission. A second attempt in the 1920s after Hill’s death was again turned down by the regulator unless the combined company divested ownership of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy which was both railways’ connection from Minneapolis to Chicago. It was only on the final attempt in 1970 that the deal gained the government’s grudging approval and the Great Northern, Northern Pacific, and CB&Q merged to form the Burlington Northern.
Britain and France vs. The World | The Suez Crisis | Part 2
TimeGhost History
Published 2 Sep 2020After much delay, Britain and France finally keep to their side of the bargain with Israel and begin their bombing campaign of Egypt. But the condemnation from America and the UN calls into question how long the invaders can keep this up.
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Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/Visual Sources:
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A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
TimeGhost History
2 days ago (edited)
This episode is pretty much the same as the last, only turned up to 11. Israel continues making gains in Sinai, but they are now aided by British and French air forces that have finally arrived.Meanwhile, Britain and France continue lying through their teeth about any collusion with Israel. The British Foreign Minister will lie to his own Parliament about military collaboration while French ships are supporting an Israeli offensive against the settlement of Rafah.
The economic costs of this also become very apparent in this episode. Nasser successfully closes the Canal, and with America in no mood to help, the whole of Europe faces oil shortages.
In short, the whole thing is a mess. Don’t worry though, Indy will guide you through it.
“[L]ooting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society.”
Not everyone on the progressive team is all-in on the “Loot your way to utopia”, as Graeme Wood (risking cancellation by his co-religionists) criticizes Vicky Osterweil’s paean to looters and looting:
Last week, NPR’s Code Switch published an interview with Vicky Osterweil, the author of In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action. NPR summarizes the book as an argument that “looting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society.” If the real, lasting change you wish to effect is burning society to cinders and crippling for a generation its ability to serve its poorest citizens, then I suppose I am forced to agree. Osterweil sees an upside. Looting is good, she says, because it exposes a deep truth about the great American confidence game, which is that “without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free.” She came to this conclusion six years ago, and in her book, which is written “in love and solidarity with looters the world over,” she defends this view as ably as anyone could.
Osterweil’s argument is simple. The “so-called” United States was founded in “cisheteropatriarchal racial capitalist” violence. That violence produced our current system, particularly its property relations, and looting is a remedy for that sickness. “Looting rejects the legitimacy of ownership rights and property, the moral injunction to work for a living, and the ‘justice’ of law and order,” she writes. Ownership of things — not just people — is “innately, structurally white supremacist.”
The rest of the remedy is more violence, which she celebrates as an underrated engine for social justice. The destruction of businesses is an “experience of pleasure, joy, and freedom,” Osterweil writes. It is also a form of “queer birth.” “Riots are violent, extreme, and femme as fuck,” according to Osterweil. “They rip, tear, burn, and destroy to give birth to a new world.” She reserves her most pungent criticism for advocates of nonviolence, a “bankrupt concept” primarily valuable for enlisting “northern liberals.” Liberal is pejorative in this book. Martin Luther King Jr. is grudgingly acknowledged as a positive figure, but not as positive a figure as he would have been if he had kicked some white-capitalist ass and put a few pigs in the ICU. The “I Have a Dream” speech was, Osterweil writes, “the product of a series of sellouts and silencings, of nonviolent leaders dampening the militancy of the grass roots” and “sapping the movement’s energy.” More to her taste is Robert F. Williams, who practiced armed resistance, and Assata Shakur, who murdered a New Jersey police officer and remains a fugitive in Cuba. The violence needn’t be in self-defense — Shakur’s certainly was not. Osterweil quotes the “wisdom” of Stokely Carmichael: “Responsibility for the use of violence by black men, whether in self-defense or initiated by them [emphasis mine], lies with the white community.”
By now you have guessed that I am not the audience for this book. I have a job, and am therefore invested in building a system where you get paid for your work and pay others for theirs, and then everyone pays taxes to make sure that if these arrangements don’t work out, you can still have a dignified life. (Easily my favorite line in the book was written not by the author but by her publisher, right under the copyright notice: “The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property,” it says. “Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.”) My job sometimes entails traveling to countries recently or currently destroyed by civil unrest, and that experience has made me appreciate the fragility of peace, and has not made me eager to conduct a similar experiment in my own city.
QotD: Racism
America’s race relations problems arise from its shameful history with slavery. Black Americans clearly feel a sense of solidarity based on that history. I can understand the magnificent language of the Declaration of Independence or the majestic ideas behind the US Constitution are tainted for black American students knowing, as they learn about them, that they didn’t apply to their ancestors. It must be hard for them to take the same pride in the foundation of their great nation as white classmates. I get that “Plymouth Rock landed on us” idea.
Many White Americans do feel a corresponding sense of shame but it’s daft to feel guilty for stuff people who share some random attribute with you did. Short people are not to blame for Napoleon and nor (fun though it is to tease them about him) are French people. No doubt we all do feel pride and shame about our ancestors’ achievements and sins, but it’s nuts to base law or policy on those irrational feelings or to allow them to taint relationships today.
Even if we were to go down the mad road of punishing people for the sins of the fathers, we’d have to find out what those “fathers” actually did, person by person. To do it skin tone by skin tone would itself be racist. It would involve, for example, some British people being heroes because their ancestors sailed with the Royal Navy squadron detailed to suppress the Slave Trade while others are villains because theirs crewed slave ships. There would be no way of knowing if you were hero or villain until you played that historical lottery.
As I told a Jewish American friend who teased me one Fourth of July about losing the American Revolutionary War, “That was a dispute between two sets of my ancestors — yours were in Germany at the time. Stay out of our family quarrels.” That’s a good joke but it would be dumb to base a social science on it. Yet America’s “grievance studies” types have done something remarkably similar in creating the wicked notion of “white privilege”.
Tom Paine, “Checking my privilege”, The Last Ditch, 2020-06-02.
September 2, 2020
Trust – the limiting factor on Chinese tech firms’ growth
Henrik Tiemroth on the “glass ceiling” that Chinese technology companies are struggling with:
The rise of Chinese technology firms has been one of the major developments of the last decade. As some of those companies expand their operations overseas, some observers see China laying the groundwork for a broader imperial project, using their growing digital might to project power and influence. By 2030, will we all be sending messages on WeChat, searching on Baidu, and shopping on Alibaba?
Probably not. As China’s major tech firms attempt to expand to global markets, they are running into a glass ceiling of their government’s own making: people don’t trust them. The recent ban on ByteDance’s popular social media app TikTok in the United States demonstrates the extent – and the limits – of China’s digital ambitions.
TikTok was the first Chinese internet product to have a mass following in the United States. As of 2020, the app has 100 million active users in the US – about a third of the population. But the popular and seemingly innocuous app for making, viewing and sharing quippy homemade music videos has been declared a national security threat.
In August, President Trump signed an executive order effectively banning the app, along with WeChat, unless their US operations are taken over by a domestic company. Given the close links between Chinese companies like ByteDance and the government, they argue, the data collected on American users of the app could be used by the Chinese state for espionage or other nefarious purposes.
The Trump administration is not the first government to take this step. In July, India banned TikTok, along with 59 other Chinese apps, amid rising tensions with China. The government cited similar concerns about the potential for mining and misuse of private data. Indonesia temporarily banned the platform in 2018, and Japan is reportedly considering following the US’s lead.
Across the world, people are becoming warier of who uses their data and how. Lawmakers are perking up, as the implications of data for national security are becoming more clear. In 2018, the European Union implemented landmark data privacy laws. In the US, tech CEOs are regularly dragged before congressional committees and a bipartisan movement for regulation is building.
Chinese internet companies face those same concerns and then some. It’s one thing to have your personal data used to promote conspicuous consumption. It’s another entirely to have it weaponized by a sophisticated digital surveillance state at the cutting edge of data-driven totalitarianism.
