Reddit mentions: The best sociology books

We found 562 Reddit comments discussing the best sociology books. We ran sentiment analysis on each of these comments to determine how redditors feel about different products. We found 245 products and ranked them based on the amount of positive reactions they received. Here are the top 20.

1. The Price of Admission (Updated Edition): How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges--and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates

    Features:
  • Used Book in Good Condition
The Price of Admission (Updated Edition): How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges--and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates
Specs:
ColorWhite
Height8 Inches
Length5.19 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateSeptember 2007
Weight0.8 Pounds
Width0.85 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

3. The Spirit Level New Edition: Why Equality Is Better For Everyone

    Features:
  • PENGUIN GROUP
The Spirit Level New Edition: Why Equality Is Better For Everyone
Specs:
Height7.73 Inches
Length5.08 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateDecember 2010
Weight0.64374980504 Pounds
Width0.92 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

4. Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed

    Features:
  • Used Book in Good Condition
Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed
Specs:
Height9.5 Inches
Length6.25 Inches
Number of items1
Weight1.06262810284 Pounds
Width1 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

5. Who Rules America? The Triumph of the Corporate Rich

Used Book in Good Condition
Who Rules America? The Triumph of the Corporate Rich
Specs:
Height8.9 Inches
Length6.7 Inches
Number of items1
Weight0.70988848364 Pounds
Width0.5 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

6. Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life

    Features:
  • Free Press
Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life
Specs:
Height8.375 Inches
Length5.5 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateMay 2015
Weight0.45415225972 Pounds
Width0.64 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

7. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters

    Features:
  • Oxford University Press
The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters
Specs:
Height5.6 Inches
Length8.4 Inches
Number of items1
Weight0.96121546232 Pounds
Width1 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

10. Story of Civilization

Story of Civilization
Specs:
Height14.5 Inches
Length10 Inches
Number of items1
Weight35.75 Pounds
Width12 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

11. Sociology

Sociology
Specs:
Height10.476357 Inches
Length7.688961 Inches
Number of items1
Weight6.42427031468 Pounds
Width2.039366 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

12. Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America

    Features:
  • For discerning player
  • Material: Aluminium
  • Performance Product
Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America
Specs:
Height9.19 Inches
Length6.28 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateApril 2014
Weight1.06262810284 Pounds
Width0.84 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

13. We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism

    Features:
  • Used Book in Good Condition
We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism
Specs:
ColorWhite
Height8 Inches
Length5.2 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateOctober 2010
Weight0.44 Pounds
Width0.65 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

14. Why Parties?: The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America (American Politics and Political Economy Series)

Why Parties?: The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America (American Politics and Political Economy Series)
Specs:
Height9.25 Inches
Length6.25 Inches
Number of items1
Weight1.09349281952 Pounds
Width1 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

15. Survival into the 21st Century: Planetary Healers Manual

Used Book in Good Condition
Survival into the 21st Century: Planetary Healers Manual
Specs:
Height11 Inches
Length8.75 Inches
Number of items1
Weight1.75 Pounds
Width0.75 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

16. Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying

    Features:
  • Used Book in Good Condition
Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying
Specs:
Height9.3 Inches
Length1.1 Inches
Number of items1
Weight1.2015193279 Pounds
Width6.4 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

17. For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education (Race, Education, and Democracy)

    Features:
  • Beacon Press
For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education (Race, Education, and Democracy)
Specs:
ColorMulticolor
Height8.78 Inches
Length5.69 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateMarch 2016
Weight0.91271376468 Pounds
Width0.95 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

18. The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

    Features:
  • devastating critique of the mind-set behind the failed social policies
The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy
Specs:
Height8 Inches
Length5.3125 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateJune 1996
Weight0.59083886216 Pounds
Width0.8 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

19. By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission

By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission
Specs:
Height9.55 Inches
Length6.47 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateMay 2015
Weight1.1 Pounds
Width1.18 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

20. Our Final Century? : Will the Human Race Survive the Twenty-First Century?

Our Final Century? : Will the Human Race Survive the Twenty-First Century?
Specs:
Height7.79526 Inches
Length5.07873 Inches
Number of items1
Weight0.37699046802 Pounds
Width0.59055 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

🎓 Reddit experts on sociology books

The comments and opinions expressed on this page are written exclusively by redditors. To provide you with the most relevant data, we sourced opinions from the most knowledgeable Reddit users based the total number of upvotes and downvotes received across comments on subreddits where sociology books are discussed. For your reference and for the sake of transparency, here are the specialists whose opinions mattered the most in our ranking.
Total score: 49
Number of comments: 5
Relevant subreddits: 4
Total score: 38
Number of comments: 5
Relevant subreddits: 3
Total score: 28
Number of comments: 7
Relevant subreddits: 5
Total score: 8
Number of comments: 3
Relevant subreddits: 3
Total score: 7
Number of comments: 5
Relevant subreddits: 1
Total score: 6
Number of comments: 4
Relevant subreddits: 1
Total score: 6
Number of comments: 3
Relevant subreddits: 2
Total score: 6
Number of comments: 3
Relevant subreddits: 3
Total score: 4
Number of comments: 3
Relevant subreddits: 3
Total score: 3
Number of comments: 3
Relevant subreddits: 2

idea-bulb Interested in what Redditors like? Check out our Shuffle feature

Shuffle: random products popular on Reddit

Top Reddit comments about Sociology:

u/FuntCase89 · 1 pointr/IntuitiveDominant

United Kingdom.

My political views are... complicated. On political spectrum tests, I'm very much left-libertarian, but a lot of my views don't fit the typical leftist picture.

For me, politics should be about achieving one or more end goals, rather than blindly following any particular ideology.

For me, the main end goal which politics should achieve is achieving the greatest well-being for the greatest number of people, with safeguards in place using principles of distributive justice, to ensure that no minority group is made to suffer disproportionately for the benefit of the majority.

Despite my Marxist leanings, I'm actually in favour of a regulated free market that encourages growth of small businesses and discourages monopolies, as a successful free market requires competition. I like the idea of anarcho-syndicalism, in principle, but I believe that it's unworkable in a country with a high population density like the UK.

Certain things, in my opinion, cannot be improved with free market forces. Commodities with inflexible demand, like healthcare, utilities, public transportation, should be operated and funded by the state. I'm also a firm believer in the benefits of affordable state housing for the poorer sections of society. Under the current deregulated system, private landlords have been steadily increasing rents to suck up a higher proportion of people's incomes, transferring wealth from the poorest to the richest.

Wealth inequality is very strongly associated with poorer quality of life in many aspects for people in developed countries (the book The Spirit Level provides solid evidence that this is the case.)

Like most iNtuitive-doms here, I'm a very strong believer in personal autonomy, that the state should interfere as little as possible in the private lives of its citizens.

u/YesYesLibertarians · 1 pointr/politics

My pleasure :) Thank you for being open-minded. I know lots of people will disregard documents hosted at Mises.org out of hand as "biased". I would rather call it "starting with a radical thesis." :)

> their assumption is that if people don't give to the government, they will automatically donate most of that same money to comparable charities, which is simply not the case.

I won't defend it if they actually made that argument in the paper, but I don't think the validity of the argument hinges on what the person would've otherwise spent the money on. I'd like to clarify the opportunity cost argument as I've seen it elsewhere (like from Harry Browne in Why Government Doesn't Work): Every cent we spend involves an opportunity cost, but our free will in the exchange is what allows us to maximize the effect of that spending. Yet when the money is taken from you arbitrarily, all you get is opportunity cost with no opportunities. The money might get spent on roads or food stamps, but it also might get spent on bombs or waterboarding sessions. You don't have the control you would have in a free exchange.

> [Taxation] is not slavery.

I suppose it isn't, literally speaking. But to someone who considers taxation a form of theft, it is in the same moral category. If I owe for using government services, why don't they just bill me? They can find the time to do that when it comes to their water and power monopolies.

According to the Grace Commission, that money gets spent much more on finance payments than on any of those federal services we know and love. Dated as the report is, I hope it helps make the point that you can't count on your taxes being spent on the things from the government you actually value.

> [Breaking up families is] better than letting people starve. I'm not sure how best to combat this type of warping.

I'm of the opinion that it is not better, not just because these people being helped are not actually in mortal peril, but because I believe it's possible to do an equal amount of good without the unintended consequences. Simply leave the care of the poor to those who are intrinsically called to do it. Those people operate on different incentives from the state. They will have greater effect if their efforts aren't crowded out or counteracted by state actions. Besides, if a society is not already inclined to help the poor, what hope do we have of producing a government that can do it?

How we care for the downtrodden says something about who we are as a civilization. I don't think it says very good things about us if we're willing to shuffle other people's money around mostly on bureaucratic costs, in a system that turns the poor into political footballs, then pat ourselves on the back like we did something good.

u/Steph_Swainston · 3 pointsr/Fantasy

Hi, rogerd,
Thanks for understanding Castle so well. I might have to break this into separate replies:

  1. I don't think the trend has died down, if anything it's worse. I can certainly write a book a year, but at that time I had a lot of other things to deal with -- repairing my house, neighbours bullying, noise pollution, chronic pain, lack of money -- so I suffered a great deal of stress. I moved house and I'm in a better position now. Small presses are probably the answer for me. I'm 107K words into the next novel, and I'll finish it next year.

  2. Exactly! And it mirrors some things I've seen in the real world -- I'm fascinated by different character types and what people will do for fame. And what fame actually entails. I've studied the careers of, say, Lance Armstrong, Jim Slater, and I'm looking at Donald Trump. These people have done extraordinarily nasty things in order to gain success (fame & fortune) and -- what's amazing is -- society lets them. Not only lets them, but upholds them. There is a myth that if they're successful, they must have done something right. Things which people will excuse, because they're famous, or because they have built a personal myth in which people want to believe. So [Ata](/s "gets away with killing Shearwater Mist"), because the unspoken rules of our society are reflected in theirs.

    Another aspect is what sort of people gain success? We have a belief that, if you are naturally blessed with talent, or if you work hard you'll be successful. That's a myth too -- the book Outliers shows the processes that are really going on. Also a Vice article. Another book.

    Jant is more laid-back than the others (horizontal, in fact), because he can fly, he can take a bunch of drugs and still maintain immortality. The immortals are on a spectrum -- at one end are the biological freaks like Jant (and Simoon), and at the other end are people who practise all the time, like Hurricane. Lightning is somewhere in the middle.

    And I'm showing the other ways people rise to success, or 'get in to the Circle'. I was very naive at the beginning. I thought success in our world was due to personal effort. But you can see how Mist and Ata were both born to seafaring lives -- Shearwater Mist was a coastal trader (so was his father). Ata was from Grass Isle. In Fair Rebel and the next book it's deeper so for example [Gayle](/s "the Lawyer has been "hothoused" into it by her parents -- also lawyers -- who started her in law at an early age"). I'm interested in the effect that has on her, and also to compare her with [Simoon](/s "the Treasurer, who finds his mathematics effortless and enjoyable").
u/MarsColony_in10years · 5 pointsr/DecidingToBeBetter

It's always been something like utilitarianism for me. "The greatest good for the greatest number of people in the long run". I'd die for that. The problem is that "good" is really poorly defined. "In the long run" is a long time.

I was very opinionated and politically active in highschool, before deciding that my passions were ill-directed. Righteous dynasties continuously rise up to defeat the old corruption, only to become corrupt themselves after enough generations have passed. Even more influential than political struggles are things like disease. The black death wiped out a third of Europe, and suddenly there weren't enough people to farm the fields. Demand for labor skyrocketed in response to the lack of supply, and the value placed on those human lives went up. This spurred inventions of labor saving devices like the printing press, and arguably contributed significantly to the enlightenment, the industrial revolution, and the notion of human equality. Did the benefits outweigh the drawbacks? If so, should I also vote for disasters that I think might cause net gain in the long run? It's all to ambiguous, and for years I figured that the best I could do was to think about it all, and exchange thoughts with others. I built myself up from an introvert into an extrovert, and explored all the worldly pleasures i could, in hopes of experiencing everything I could of the world.

A year or so ago, I came across a concept that inferred the existence of a much clearer purpose in life. Before that, I had just resigned myself to the idea that my purpose in life was to try to find a purpose in life, so that maybe hundreds or thousands of years from now, some philosopher will finally figure out what humanity's purpose should be. I never really expected to find it myself, but then I encountered the concept of Existential Risk.

Statistically, the average length between a modern-style civilization’s rise and fall is about 300-500 years. (Motesharrei, Rivas, & Kalnay, 2014) That's just history, though, and we've changed a lot since then. In 2004, Sir Martin Reese published the first works since the cold war examining what our chances were of wiping ourselves out as a species. He concluded that we had about a 50/50 shot of surviving for another century, although he stressed that this figure is a hard one to calculate. (Rees, 2004) More recently, a number of scholarly research organizations have sprung up to investigate the topic further. At the forefront of these is Oxford University, and the Future of Humanity Institute. Nick Bostram is one of the more public scholars from that institute, and I highly recommend his books on the topic. He is much more hesitant to assign a probability, but in 2008 he helped conduct an informal survey at a existential risk conference. The median estimate for the chances that humans would survive the century was about 20%. (Sandberg & Bostrom, 2008) All these numbers have large error bars on them, but I like to summarize them rather than getting into debates the exact figures: We will almost certainly last another 10 years. We will probably last another 100 years. We probably won't last another 1,000 years though.

The implications of this seem pretty clear: my purpose in life should be to lower these risks. It's actually a pretty elegant solution to my original uncertainty. I don't need to be able to put my finger on exactly why human lives are valuable; all I need to be sure of is that intelligent life is valuable. I started a comparative cost/benefit analysis of various options, including underground/underwater cities, and the colonization of Mars. These were all rough Fermi-approximations, because good numbers are hard to come by. My results came up that Mars would be the most protective, but wasn't quite as cost effective as underground or underwater cities, at least in terms of $/percentage point reduction in existential risk. Deep sea mining is currently an expanding field, but they are just retrieving certain objects and bringing them to the surface for extraction of precious metals. They invested billions just to develop the technology this far, but precious metals aren't useful as large-scale building materials for underwater colonies. This means that such colonies are unlikely to be self-sufficient, so they are only likely to be a sort of fallout shelter. Underground cities could mine what was nearby, but would have to eject large amounts or material to the surface to make room. In terms of $/percentage point reduction in existential risk, our best options at the moment would probably be to staff more of the fallout shelters from the cold war, which now operate with only a skeleton crew. Even better would be to solve our sexism issues in the military, so that women were free from harassment. This is because then there would then be a viable population, distributed among military bases, bunkers, and submarines, which would stand a very good chance of surviving an apocalypse scenario.

However, in doing all this thinking, I considered exactly what it was I was trying to optimize, and exactly what it is that makes life valuable. If individual lives are all that matters, and not the continuity of the species, then we should all stop reproducing and just maximize our enjoyment of the remainder of our lives. If it makes sense to maximize the duration of intelligent life though, then it also makes sense to maximize the scope. This means the ideal is humans seeding a self-sufficient colony on Mars, and then building space stations in the asteroid belt out of the materials there, and some day spreading to other stars. Trillions of lives spread across the galaxy, instead of all our eggs in this one blue and green basket.

The problem with just surviving a existential threat is that we may never rebuild to become space fairing again, and all that potential will never be achieved. The Exyptians built the pyramids, then forgot how, then forgot how to even read hieroglyphics, then forgot even that they had once build such impossible things. Even if an existential threat only killed a small percent of the human race, it would still be bigger than anything we've experienced in centuries. Even WWII is barely a blip on the graph of increasing life expectancy, and that tore the world in half. It's hard to even imagine more destructive forces. What are the odds that a society under such stress would keep up it's space program when there were more immediate concerns? NASA only costs half a percentage point of the US budget, but studies repeatedly show that most people don't see the benefits, and think it is over-funded. People were under the same opinion during the space race, when NASA's budget was 5%, but the opinion didn't improve when the budget was cut by 90%. If society is stressed, NASA will likely shrink by another 90%, and is unlikely to return. A brief window of opportunity is now open, which may never be open again. My purpose in life is to make sure that we don't miss it.

Work Cited:


Motesharrei, S., Rivas, J., & Kalnay, E. (2014). Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies. Ecological Economics.

Rees, M. (2004). Our Final Century: The 50/50 Threat to Humanity's Survival. Arrow Books Ltd.

Sandberg, A., & Bostrom, N. (2008). Global Catastrophic Risks Survey. Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University.

u/TapDatKeg · 12 pointsr/Omaha

> If equal rights is a motivating factor for you, then you really only have one choice and that is to vote Democrat.

Equal rights to me means the rights of everyone, not just the people I agree with. Democrats tend to be a little too selective about which groups deserve which rights IMO. Like this, but the umbrella also represents other Constitutional rights. Republicans aren't better, they just favor other groups. My view is that it should cover everyone equally, but that feels like a minority opinion.

> Also, could you explain what frightening ideas the Democrats have said they would do if they have power?

Off the top of my head: stuffing the SCOTUS, breaking up Democratic strongholds into multiple states, allocating more Senators to states with large populations (or eliminating the Senate altogether), eliminating the Electoral College, etc. In fact, here's a book, written in earnest by a liberal Democrat, that offers a breadbasket of ideas many in the party are seriously considering for after they win back Congress and the White House.

I'm not going to quibble over the merits of these ideas. What's frightening to me is the serious consideration of proposals intended to create a "lasting" (read: permanent) majority. While I understand the appeal from an emotional standpoint, I think history is rife with examples warning against this type of arrangement.

Why? For one, it seems like the surest way to bring one of the most ambitious social experiments in history to a disappointing conclusion. Broadly, a one-party state that controls the Legislative, Executive AND Judicial branches is an oligarchy. What is the point in having a Bill of Rights if the court is packed with justices who will arbitrarily reinterpret those rights to suit the whims and political expediency of Congressional leaders? It gives the illusion of legitimacy, but really it's a democracy in the same way North Korea is a democracy.

To circle back to what I said earlier about equal rights, this concept is terrifying to me personally because a group with a tenuous relationship to freedom and equal rights is openly talking about how they can rig the system to grant themselves the ultimate say in the matter. I 100% do not trust them with that kind of power.

To be clear: I'm not saying "IF TEH DUMBOCRAPS WIN, THE US WILL TRYANNY AND WAR IN TEH STREETZ!!" What I am saying is that I am hesitant to vote for people who fantasize about how they could take over and rule over me the rest of my life. I don't want to enable Trump any more than I want to enable that agenda. I don't trust either party with my life, safety, liberty, economic security, etc. Hence why I'm conflicted.

u/Etular · 2 pointsr/worldpolitics

> What's your revenue, asshole? Let me help you: zero. You're a social parasite. Instead of posting excruciatingly long and bullshity posts (not only this one, all of your posts are depressingly horse-manurey), maybe you could actually DO something useful.

I'm going to be heading to university this September, with the hope of working in academia - I don't have a job yet because, instead, I'm planning it out. Following university, I've be heading to the continent through European Voluntary Service, and possibly EURES as a means of finding a job. I have business start-up ideas, myself, written down, but I'm not that much of an idiot to try to create one either straight away, and especially not in this climate.

And, for the record, I contribute more to the economy than you do by a long shot, as I'm one of the people who contributed £22.7 billion to the UK economy in 2007/8, and have been similarly up to this year, where I am still volunteering.

Do I take any of that money home? No, but I certainly give to the economy, and take absolutely nothing from it, as I'm still living with my employed parents. If I were to rely on the welfare system, my contributions to it would make me fully entitled to do so, as would everyone else's - everyone is entitled to welfare; that's why it exists.

> And, just so that you'll feel shitty, my company is 15 years old, not a fucking startup like you arrogantly and dismissively suggested, employing young people from 15 fucking countries from around the world, making 200% above the EU average for the industry (which is a top-earning industry, btw), free in-house daycare, no overtime whatsoever, 30 days paid vacation, every Friday is optional non-working, etc, and my salary is below the team's average.

I don't feel shitty, actually, but I you seem to have some big issues - if your company was so successful, assuming you aren't one of the many individuals who deserve to be mocked on /r/QuitYourBullshit, then surely you wouldn't be so violently aggressive towards your potential consumers. What do you have to gain by claiming that they're all lazy, other than to promote right-wing biases that have already been thoroughly debunked?

Tell me, as I await for the experts to point holes in your fabricated story, what industry are you in? Dare I ask, what is your company, and where is it based? Do tell me your long-winded story about how "hard work" let to your success.

> You think social equality not possible? A lie? That all is lost? Fuck you! It is certainly impossible with people like you. Now, please do me a favor, and commit suicide. Now. Please. I can't stand human waste such as yourself.

That makes little sense to the topic, but okay. My opinion is, obviously, that social equality cannot work in a free market, capitalist system - a belief that is further reinforced by research such as that found in The Spirit Level, which draws upon other well-documented conclusions.

Enlighten me, where is your argument and sources? As all I see is a whiner getting an e-peen from preaching to the masses that they just "aren't trying hard enough". A person who eithr likes to pretend he has a business, or who created a business pre-depression and profited most from the collapse, and now likes to look down upon those less fortunate than themselves.

Whether nouveau riche and forgot his roots, or old money, all I see is a bitter, despicable man obsessed with schadenfreude - loving to laugh at those poorer than him, who couldn't succeed at the rat race, and having no sympathy because, quite frankly, "they deserved it".

> Instead of posting excruciatingly long and bullshity posts

You're clearly not a very literate man, are you? If you were, this wouldn't be a problem. I bet it burns you up inside to know I am better at this than you. Trust me, it only takes me about 5-10 minutes to write this - it's not a waste to see your reaction to this post.

___

On that note, to do a little snooping myself, I would never have expected someone who owns such an allegedly-multicultural 50-person company to be such a raging antisemite, but I guess that's just what business leaders are like these days. Your profile is a goldmine - it certainly isn't the only cultural gaffe you make, but most are deleted from their original source.

u/deviden · 4 pointsr/TrueReddit

> Rather, they see that the social safety net is actively harmful, and often, believe that federal assistance is the worst way to effect benevolence unto the poor.

I'm British and a socialist, so while I can't speak to the efficacy of your specific social safety net I can say that desiring to see all such safety nets totally removed sounds pretty heartless to me. The assumption that the market fixes everything is demonstrably untrue and leaving the unfortunate at the mercy of a handful of benevolent philanthropists sounds highly unreliable. It could also be a smokescreen for "I don't care about them - I just want to pay less tax".

> If it weren't for partisanship, we'd realize that both the liberals and the conservatives stated goals have merit, and are equally noble

Can't speak for your American equivalents but here in Britain the noble sentiments of our political parties are much less interesting that the things they've actually done. Noble intentions are meaningless. Of course we'd all like to see an end to poverty, better schooling for everyone, etc, etc, but if your way of achieving those ends turns out to be suspiciously close to "letting the rich get richer while the poor get shafted" then I'm going to call shenanigans on your noble intent.

> This book might help understand their view: http://www.amazon.com/Please-Stop-Helping-Us-Liberals/dp/1594037256

Huh. So if American businesses could pay their workers at Chinese sweat shop levels then more black people would be employed? Forgive me for failing to see the altruism at work in that line of thinking. Alternatively you could all contribute a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of your wages to pay for a better state education system that would help to enable a true meritocracy to exist.

u/liatris · 2 pointsr/TumblrInAction

Dr. Thomas Sowell wrote an amazing book on this topic. The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

Sowell discusses the premise behind Vision of the Anointed

>Sowell presents a devastating critique of the mind-set behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years. Sowell sees what has happened during that time not as a series of isolated mistakes but as a logical consequence of a tainted vision whose defects have led to crises in education, crime, and family dynamics, and to other social pathologies. In this book, he describes how elites—the anointed—have replaced facts and rational thinking with rhetorical assertions, thereby altering the course of our social policy.

Also Intellectuals and Race

>Intellectuals and Race is a radical book in the original sense of one that goes to the root of the problem. The role of intellectuals in racial strife is explored in an international context that puts the American experience in a wholly new light.

>The views of individual intellectuals have spanned the spectrum, but the views of intellectuals as a whole have tended to cluster. Indeed, these views have clustered at one end of the spectrum in the early twentieth century and then clustered at the opposite end of the spectrum in the late twentieth century. Moreover, these radically different views of race in these two eras were held by intellectuals whose views on other issues were very similar in both eras.

>Intellectuals and Race is not, however, a book about history, even though it has much historical evidence, as well as demographic, geographic, economic and statistical evidence-- all of it directed toward testing the underlying assumptions about race that have prevailed at times among intellectuals in general, and especially intellectuals at the highest levels. Nor is this simply a theoretical exercise. The impact of intellectuals' ideas and crusades on the larger society, both past and present, is the ultimate concern. These ideas and crusades have ranged widely from racial theories of intelligence to eugenics to "social justice" and multiculturalism.

>In addition to in-depth examinations of these and other issues, Intellectuals and Race explores the incentives, the visions and the rationales that drive intellectuals at the highest levels to conclusions that have often turned out to be counterproductive and even disastrous, not only for particular racial or ethnic groups, but for societies as a whole.

u/emazur · 4 pointsr/Libertarian

The Law by Frederic Bastiat (awesome, short, soooo many quotable quotes)

Healing Our World by Dr. Mary Ruwart (old version available free)

Haven't read any of his books (have listened to many lectures and radio show), but something by Harry Browne should do quite nicely. I've heard great things about Why Government Doesn't Work

Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity - John Stossel (do check out his excellent Fox Business show "Stossel" on hulu.com, and look for his old 20/20 specials on libertarianism - they're fantastic)

good economists: Peter Schiff, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Walter Block

You might be better off waiting til you get more comfortable with libertarianism, but G. Edward Griffin's Creature From Jekyll Island is a must read. It's more about the monetary system and the Federal Reserve than libertarianism in general though.

I haven't read anything that makes a good argument against libertarianism, but can recommend a guy who makes a seemingly good argument against capitalism and for socialism - Michael Parenti. I haven't read any of his pro-socialist books (but have one on foreign policy called The Terrorist Trap which is quite good and very short. Libertarians and socialists tend to agree on not inviting war and not waging war). But I have listened to his pro-socialist lectures - they're well delivered and impassioned and a person who didn't know any better would easily be tempted. They're worth listening to to use his arguments and twist them to actually make the case FOR libertarianism. He'll use some faulty facts/data that leftists typically do such as "Hoover was an ardent free-market advocate and we can blame him and capitalism for causing the Great Depression" (we can blame him for the depression all right (prolonging it, to be specific), not b/c he was a capitalist but b/c he really started all the policies that FDR continued when he got into office)

u/nac_nabuc · 1 pointr/Documentaries

> but corruption as we traditionally know it...

Maybe they do not mean corruption in the traditional "bribing" sense, but more subtle ways or just in the sense of decay, lack of integrity or honesty. In this sense there is a very good case for it I'd say. When hundreds of millions of dollars are poured over politics by big interest groups, you have to be quite optimistic or flat out naive to think that's all honest. Of course, the US are still a better place than China, Brasil, Russia or Mozambique... but that wouldn't unvalidate the criticism. I accept that a compared view should be taken to realize how well off most of us here are, but it shouldn't lead to us giving up standards. If it's true that normal citiziens have virtually no way to really affect politics, that the agenda basically dominated by affluent americans, it would be a big problem and just unacceptable. And from what I know, there is a pretty good case.

https://www.amazon.com/Affluence-Influence-Economic-Inequality-Political/dp/0691162425

u/liverandeggsandmore · 4 pointsr/news

Daniel Golden won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his reporting on admissions preferences at elite American universities given to the children of wealthy donors and influential alumni.

He turned his reportage into an excellent book, released in 2007, titled "The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges--and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates".

The context of his book is, of course, only partly related to the topic of this post, but it does add an important piece to the picture of how the wealthy and powerful receive advantages at every stage in the game. And how they are able to transmit said advantages to their children, to help them get a leg up in their rise to the top.

u/therecordcorrected · 2 pointsr/worldevents

I would be impressed if a bernout recognized a Pulitzer Prize winning author before mouthing off. But then spouting off is what they are good at. Pretty sure she doesn't need a journalism degree when Applebaum was an editor at The Spectator, and a columnist for both The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph. She also wrote for The Independent. Working for The Economist, she provided coverage of important social and political transitions in Eastern Europe, both before and after the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In 1992, she was awarded the Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust Award. Applebaum lived in London and Warsaw during the 1990s and was, for several years, a columnist for London's Evening Standard newspaper. She wrote about both foreign and domestic policy issues. She earned a BA (summa cum laude) at Yale University (1986), where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. As a Marshall Scholar at the London School of Economics she earned a master's degree in international relations (1987).

Awards and honors

  • 2004 Pulitzer Prize (General Non-Fiction), Gulag: A History 2010 Petőfi Prize
  • 2012 National Book Award (Nonfiction), finalist, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944–1956
  • 2013 Cundill Prize, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944–1956
  • 2013 Duke of Westminster's Medal for Military Literature, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944–1956

    So I am feeling pretty good about her knowledge on the topic while I am feeling that given you have contributed nothing but snark on the topic so far, that you know absolutely nothing about it. And given all your comments on Reddit, that seems to be true in general. Nothing but snark, conspiracies, unwillingness to believe documented evidence, no ability demonstrated at all for deep thinking on any subject. I think you need to read this book that is coming out soon as it might give you pause on future comments out here, or at least it should:

    https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-Established-Knowledge/dp/0190469412/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446038305&sr=8-1&keywords=death+of+expertise
u/RussellChomp · 20 pointsr/politics

A friend of mine in high school went to Harvard and I visited him in Boston frequently.

From what I saw, if you are above a certain threshold of intelligence then it can actually be easier to make As in certain subjects at Harvard than at lower ranked universities due to the leniency of Harvard's administration and its grade inflation. My friend had armies of tutors and advisors watching over him to ensure that he graduated with a high GPA and he could turn in late homework in most of his classes, while my advisors barely knew my name and if I missed a deadline then I knew it would impact my grade. These kinds of things are even more important when you are college aged, learning how to be an adult, and generally in need of support, mentors and role models. My friend was guided, and coddled, by Harvard's administration, whereas I eventually learned to think of mine as a cold, uncaring machine that only valued me for my test scores and spit me out after 4 years.

This isn't true for all subjects, but if you are smart enough to make As in a subject like English at both Harvard and a local university, then you will probably have an easier time at Harvard.

Edit: Also, if anyone is interested in the book the quote in the comment above mine came from

u/__Pers · 6 pointsr/ApplyingToCollege

Sounds like you have a great opportunity, one that deserves a good deal of consideration. Congratulations!

Your father has it right. If you're planning to attend medical school, the prestige of your undergraduate institution is not critical provided you get the preparation you need to go to a good medical school. And it sounds like you will.

>At a fundamental level will the courses at a typical T120 private college (say Temple) cover the same material and at the same depth as say NYU (29) school?

For the most part, they'll cover the same material for the same courses. A lower ranked university may emphasize teaching more from their faculty than a top ranked university, meaning that the quality of the education you receive as a student is likely to be better (heretical as it is to say on this sub). Whatever time they're spending chasing research grants, recruiting postdocs, and cranking out sausages (research articles) is time away from considering how best to teach. I know when I taught at the university (at a top-20 research institution by most rankings), I was told that I just needed to check the teaching box, do a good enough job to get by, avoid complaints, maybe win a department teaching award or two, but don't go overboard, that for a junior faculty member it's far better to spend that energy building your research program.

Your peer group may be more diverse, academically, socioeconomically, spiritually, at your "lesser" school than at an Ivy League university, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Some, such as Deresiewicz, have argued that this is a generally positive thing, that the Ivy League calibre schools are turning out "leaders" preternaturally good at conforming to expectations, avoiding risk, and validating the norms that have led to a manifestly unequal and unfair society.

u/__worldpeace · 100 pointsr/AskSocialScience

This is a great question that I have thought about a million times. I have actually spent a lot of time trying to find a book on it, but I have not come across one that is specifically about Sociology or Psychology.

I first started to think about this when I was getting my masters degree (in Sociology). Often times I was super excited to share the things I would learn with my family and friends, and how the things I was (and still am) learning are often in contradiction to the things I was told/learned growing up. For context, I'm a white girl who grew up in an upper-middle class politically conservative suburb in a large city with successful parents, and I was always given everything I wanted/needed. I considered myself a Christian and I told people that I was a republican (although I knew nothing about politics and was just identifying with my parents).

Then I started studying Soci and my entire perspective on the world changed. It opened my eyes and forced me to look beyond my tunnel vision of society. It was really hard at times to come to terms with things that I thought I already understood, especially social issues that I had never thought about before or issues that had always been presented to me in a one-sided, biased manner.

A good example of this is the trope of the Welfare Queen. I was told that poor people, esp. poor black people, were moochers and only wanted handouts because they were lazy and didn't want to get a job. Of course, I learned that the Welfare Queen (and welfare "fraud") is a myth that was promulgated by Ronald Regan in order to stigmatize people in poverty so that he could convince Americans that rolling back the social safety net was justified because it was only being used by poor black (read: undeserving) citizens. The truth is that most people on welfare do have jobs (i.e. the 'working poor'). Also, the welfare reforms of 1996 created a 5-year maximum lifetime cap on benefits so that welfare "cheaters" (which did not exist anywhere near the level that we're often told) were literally unable to collect benefits for life (also, contrary to popular opinion, women do not have more babies to get more benefits. In fact, if a woman has a child while receiving benefits, she and her family will be removed from the rolls). Welfare is probably one of the least understood/mischaracterized social issue in American society.

Science in general is often met with the sting of anti-intellectualism, which is part of the answer to your question. However, I think social science in particular gets it worse than the 'natural' sciences like Biology and Chemistry. I used to say that it was because people were generally more suspect of social sciences, but I think it's more than that. People like to dismiss facts about social issues that they don't agree with or have a different view on because it's much easier to disagree that we live in a post-racial society (we don't) than it is to disagree on the functions of bodily organs. People also tend to conflate their individual life experiences with overall reality (i.e. "well, i've never experienced [blank] so it must not be true or its exaggerated" or "well, I know someone who is [blank] but [blank] doesn't happen to them"). You get what I am saying here? Most people don't question or critically think about social norms or commonsense 'truths' because these 'truths' are so embedded in our milieu that its hard to imagine otherwise. So instead of thinking critically, people dismiss sociological knowledge as either "elitist" or "not real science" so that they can remain undisturbed in their own little worlds.

Once I saw a question on r/askreddit that asked what the slogan of your college major or job would be. I would say, "Sociology: reminding people of uncomfortable truths since 1838" or "Sociology: everything you were taught about society was a big lie" lol.

I'm sorry I can't find any literature for you, but I can recommend these instead:

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters.



u/black_square · 1 pointr/neoliberal

I'm far from an expert (or even particularly knowledgeable) on political philosophy but I highly recommend The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy for an overview of the important concepts of political philosophy. It has a bit of a focus on Rawls and Nozick, but covers pretty much all the other bases too.

Again hardly an expert on IR, but I found The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations to be an excellent intro textbook.

These aren't necessary 'neoliberal' books, but I would highly recommend them to anyone before wading through some of the classic primary sources on these topics. People might get a little bit lost in there otherwise.

u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/atheism

In fact the World's Greatest History Book(s) is The Story of Civilization by Will Durant.

What's neat about them from a atheist point of view is it dedicates a great deal of attention to the theistic qualities of the various civilizations, how they develop from the primitive to the modern and how they all have so much in common in general and nothing in specific.

Making it pretty clear it's all made up.

u/AdamDe27 · -9 pointsr/news

The ONLY thing you can truly do is stop making being a victim 'cool'. Hear me out:

White privilege exists in the same way sexism does: A very small microcosm of the total world. But, it is used as an excuse constantly.


When you create programs to help one type of person over another it just reaffirms this position and perception bends that way. Instead of people chanting that African American communities are more likely to be poor, and have higher unemployment because of white privilege, we need to instill the concept that if you work hard, and have motivation, that regardless of the street you live on, or if your parents are still together you CAN succeed! But freebies and assistance reaffirm that they NEED the help and can't help themselves.

this book "Please stop helping us" (written by a black man) is really an interesting read on the subject.

u/woodwordandbern · 67 pointsr/KotakuInAction

I looked into his background and I swear to god this is true, I can't post where his dad works etc, but it is true. This kid has legacy status and his dad is a c-suite level executive. They are affluent from the Beverly Hills area.

The real question gamergate and sjws need to ask themselves is......

Should these affluent people be given affirmative action, when they come from wealthy backgrounds?

I hope that gamergate and the sjws can come together to oppose legacy status in society.

Why are the Zoe Quinn's (VV Family), Lifschitz's, Romero's, Graner's being given preferential treatment in the video game industry, when they come from affluent backgrounds? Why can't they help poor inner city people, Appalachian people, etc. Theres plenty of homeless in San Francisco that need help too. It's always these damn legacies that get help.

How legacy status works

http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges/dp/1400097975

u/oldgaius · 2 pointsr/geopolitics

‘The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations’ (Oxford University Press) is excellent. It covers international relations theory, plus the global issues and changes facing world politics, effectively setting the stage for any deeper reading on geopolitics and international relations.

I’d also recommend iTunes U for introductory courses, plus podcasts and lectures (app of choice or YouTube) from academics. Plenty of good stuff out there for free to supplement reading.

The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (Oxfo04) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0198739850/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_4KysDb9BXX7A6

u/issue9mm · 4 pointsr/TrueReddit

I'm not a conservative, but "cutting holes in the social safety net" isn't the goal of the conservatives. Rather, they see that the social safety net is actively harmful, and often, believe that federal assistance is the worst way to effect benevolence unto the poor.

If it weren't for partisanship, we'd realize that both the liberals and the conservatives stated goals have merit, and are equally noble. Similarly, in practice, both are equally ignoble, and equally meritless.

That said, that conservatives have a different way of helping the poor than the one you prefer doesn't make them heartless.

This book might help understand their view:
http://www.amazon.com/Please-Stop-Helping-Us-Liberals/dp/1594037256

u/spencerflagg · 1 pointr/Anarcho_Capitalism

pie in the sky? maybe, but a beautiful and uplifting lecture nonetheless. i highly recommend listening to the whole thing. i hope there are some legs to the idea.

just the mp3 here: http://feeds.cato.org/~r/CatoDailyPodcast/~5/vFsWRgMyfmY/Lets-Render-Some-Federal-Codes-Unenforceable.mp3

and the book where he talks about it in detail:
http://amzn.com/0385346514

u/_AnObviousThrowaway_ · -2 pointsr/AskTrumpSupporters

Not the first poster but I can take this one. This is one of the first myths Thomas Sowell busts in The Vision of the Anointed. I'd recommend buying the book, but in lieu of that here's an online version, relevant part starts around page 26.

>As early as 1968, nearly half of all schools in the country-public and private, religious and secu-lar-had sex education, and it was rapidly growing.49 As sex edu-cation programs spread widely through the American educational system during the 1970s, the pregnancy rate among 15-to 19-year-old females rose from approximately 68 per thousand in 1970 to approximately 96 per thousand by 1980.50 Among unmarried girls in the 15-to 17 -year-old bracket, birth rates rose 29 percent between 1970 and 1984,51 despite a massive increase in abor-tions, which more than doubled during the same period. Among girls under 15, the number of abortions surpassed the number of live births by 1974.52 The reason was not hard to find: According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the percentage of unmarried teenage girls who had engaged in sex was higher at every age from 15 through 19 by 1976 than it was just five years earlier.53 The rate of teenage gonorrhea tripled between 1956 and 1975.54 Sar-gent Shriver, former head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, which led the early charge for more sex education and "family planning" clinics, testified candidly to a congressional committee in 1978: "Just as venereal disease has skyrocketed 350% in the last 15 years when we have had more clinics, more pills, and more sex education than ever in history, teen-age pregnancy has risen."55 Such candor was, however, the exception rather than the rule among those who had pushed for sex education and birth con-trol ("family planning") clinics

u/uhpvrq · 6 pointsr/worldnews

> capital allocation should remain in the hands of those who have proven themselves good at allocating capital.


  1. Dollarocracy
  2. Who Rules America?
  3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States
  4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
  5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
  6. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-dramatic-rise-and-fall-of-labor-unions-in-one-chart-2012-5
  7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
  8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy

    It's easy to claim that one is deserving of their wealth (and then some more), when it is their wealth that allows them to change the rules of the game to their advantage.

    But you already knew that.
u/AbolishProsecute_DHS · 1 pointr/ChapoTrapHouse

You're unfamiliar with the relationship between the labor movement and the environmental movement? Might I suggest reading more than an undergrad's thesis on the subject?

>You do realize just because you're a historian doesn't mean you can comment on any aspect of history right?

Ah yes Brooks Flippen, totally ignorant of this aspect of history.

Like my dude you literally cited a fucking time magazine article incidentally which bolsters my argument then your own.

>Those national myths began to fall apart on a broad scale in the 1960s and ’70s, as the American Indian Movement and the environmental movement, respectively, reminded people that in fact that land was already being used and its resources were finite.

This is so mindbogglingly stupid. You say your a progressive and you want a portrait of Jeff Flake while also thinking you possess good political insights...reflect on that.

>I know this place is hyper leftie and labour scholars are loved but they're not gods.

Since you love conservatives so much here's a book for ya.

https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-Established-Knowledge/dp/0190469412/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538237951&sr=8-1&keywords=death+of+expertise

u/zaikanekochan · 2 pointsr/Libertarian

Please Stop Helping Us is a great book on this subject, and a pretty easy and entertaining read.

u/walt_hartung · 2 pointsr/aznidentity

I havent read it, but this is supposed to be pretty good. Might be a good place to start:

The Price of Admission

u/grandpagotstitches · 1 pointr/Ask_Politics

Users kingofthenorthpole and zmild gave great advice. If you read some history about Islam and the Middle East and read the news consistently too, you'll soon have a reasonable opinion that you'll be able to back up. It won't be a warped view either, so feel confident in your ability to figure these things out yourself and then express those views. Keep in mind some words from Kant:

> Those guardians who have kindly taken supervision upon themselves see to it that the overwhelming majority of mankind--among them the entire fair sex--should consider the step to maturity, not only as hard, but as extremely dangerous. First, these guardians make their domestic cattle stupid and carefully prevent the docile creatures from taking a single step without the leading-strings to which they have fastened them. Then they show them the danger that would threaten them if they should try to walk by themselves. Now this danger is really not very great; after stumbling a few times they would, at last, learn to walk. However, examples of such failures intimidate and generally discourage all further attempts.

I also think you should take a look at William Domhoff's arguments about the nature of the Council on Foreign Relations, its importance, and its history. It's an interesting and detailed argument about the creation of our foreign policy that you should at least consider. As a disclaimer, he certainly could be wrong, and not many people agree with him. But it's an interesting read nonetheless.

> I see general policy-discussion organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, along with the "think tanks" that provide advice to them, as the main ways in which corporate leaders attempt to reach policy consensus among themselves and impress their views upon government. As I have claimed since the early 1970s (e.g., Domhoff, 1970a, 1971, 1974, 1979; 2014, p. 93), they have four main functions within the corporate community and three roles in relation to the general public:

> 1. They provide a setting in which corporate leaders can familiarize themselves with general policy issues by listening to and questioning the experts from think tanks and university research institutes.
2. They provide a forum in which conflicts between moderate conservatives and ultraconservatives can be discussed and compromised, usually by including experts of both persuasions within the discussion group, along with an occasional liberal on some issues.
3. They provide an informal training ground for new leadership. It is within these organizations that corporate leaders can determine in an informal fashion which of their peers are best suited for service in government and as spokespersons to other groups.
4. They provide an informal recruiting ground for determining which policy experts may be best suited for government service, either as faceless staff aides to the corporate leaders who take government positions or as high-level appointees in their own right.

> In addition, the policy groups have three useful roles in relation to the rest of society:

> 1. These groups legitimate their members as serious and expert persons capable of government service. This image is created because group members are portrayed as giving of their own time to take part in highly selective organizations that are nonpartisan and nonprofit in nature.
2. They convey the concerns, goals, and expectations of the corporate community to those young experts and young professors who want to further their careers by receiving foundation grants, invitations to work at think tanks, and invitations to take part in policy discussion groups.
3. Through such avenues as books, journals, policy statements, press releases, and speakers, these groups try to influence the climate of opinion both in Washington and the country at large.

> The CFR publishes annual reports, makes it positions known through articles in its highly regarded journal, Foreign Affairs, and has sponsored events and historical pamphlets commemorating what it considers to be significant milestones.
This picture is opposite of what conspiratorial thinkers claim, as I showed in a detailed critique of three well-known and widely read conspiracists of the 1960s, Dan Smoot, Phyllis Schlafly, and Reverend William S. McBirnie (Domhoff, 1970b, Chapter 8)...
After the role of the CFR's role in shaping postwar foreign policy is demonstrated in the first section of the chapter, I turn in the second section to a detailed account of how international corporate leaders, Wall Street financiers, and policy experts concerned with international relations worked through the war-peace study groups to develop the plans that shaped the economic framework for an increasingly internationalized postwar economy, starting with the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, commonly known as the World Bank.

u/hashtagfeminism · 3 pointsr/CombatFootage

It's a very dry read but there's a 1000 page CPA report that covers the entire occupation and what the US did after the invasion in mind-numbing detail, what went wrong and why. Let me see if I can find it, I wrote a low-level uni paper on it like a year or two ago. I think it was written by Paul Bremer but as I recall it was very frank about the mistakes that occured.

Edit: Here it is: https://books.google.se/books?id=OjM3DTks4ekC&pg=PA455&lpg=PA455&dq=coalition+provisional+authority+inspector+general+report+pdf&source=bl&ots=hSKJEkUytk&sig=ofhqub7tKjjNociRy8vg77vHwK4&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjesuKa86zSAhXB6CwKHbVpAsE4ChDoAQhIMAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

This report covers basically the entire occupation and thus the reason why IS exists, or at least exists as something more than just another Syrian Islamist opposition faction.

I haven't read any books about ISIS beyond that. If you want a book on politics/foreign affairs/the international system that covers
relevant concepts like power vacuums, states and so on, this book is the best textbook I've ever had in uni and it has pretty much everything: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Globalization-World-Politics-Introduction-International/dp/0198739850/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1488081222&sr=1-1

u/GnomeyGustav · 2 pointsr/technology

This looks very interesting! Have you read this book by the same author? I'll have to pick that one up as well. Thanks for the suggestion!

EDIT: I think I found a preprint of this article in case anyone else is interested.

u/Caffeine_Cowpies · 8 pointsr/worldpolitics

But does that get to the issue with Democracy?

*Note: I agree that the best system of governance is Democracy, but it is still a system created by humans, who have flaws, and no system is perfect*

The fundamental premise of Democracy is that an informed public will make the right choice on how to govern themselves. It assumes that the issues of the day do not invoke emotions, and that people are rational actors. So, like in Economics, there are fundamental assumptions on the theories that in reality are not true.

Another problem is, like you said, the death of debate. I would point you to the book "The Death of Expertise" which goes into how people seem to dismiss, if not outright question and delegitimize, educated professionals doing what they are trained to do. And, the Republican party especially, want to cast doubt on all research on climate change for the Gas & Oil company's benefits. So it's in their benefit to delegitimize them, but in doing so makes everyone question experts. I'm not saying no one should ever question experts, but I constantly hear this "Those researchers are just trying to get grant money." Which 1) is not how the grant approval process works and 2) is ignoring the massive amount of profit Oil companies makes and how anything that could jeopardize their money making scheme would be viewed as a threat. Now, that's just climate change. But think of flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, etc.

Also, on your theme of death of debate, what we call debates are not even debates. Take Ben Shapiro as an example, now he is educated but he also uses certain tactics that make an idea sound logical, when, in some cases, they are not. Now, it's not even about debate to find an ultimate truth and the best solution forward. No, it's about VICTORY. Well, how can you defeat someone if you feel that person is entitled to their position, whether that is on the battlefield, sports field, or in politics.

AND even more, we need less educated people because someone needs to dig ditches. So how do you educate people enough to be an informed public but don't dilute the value of an education? (because if everyone can be a doctor or lawyer, it wouldn't be worth much.)

So yeah, that's the flaw with Democracy. We are a large amount of people, with varying educational backgrounds, trying to understand something as unique and complicated like government, but elect people because they "keep it simple". We're fucked.

u/sbdeli · 0 pointsr/The_Mueller

I really wish I lived in the world you’re describing, but that’s not how I see it. The Democrats have consistently underestimated the threat Trump poses, and under-reacted in opposing him.

I think we would do well to spend less time assuring ourselves that:

“it could have been worse”

“we can still undo this later”

“he’s obviously guilty, it’s a matter of time”

And more time thinking of how to effectively resist and block his agenda, here in the present tense. Quite frankly I think our Republican friends across the aisle do a consistently stronger job of this.

I’m a big fan of the Indivisible Guide, written by former democratic congressional staffers who witnessed the rise of the Tea Party, and have written a guide on how to emulate the most effective portions of their model of political organization.

As well as David Faris’, “It’s Time to Fight Dirty”: How Democrats can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics

u/mlbontbs87 · 0 pointsr/TwoXChromosomes

This book provides some compelling data regarding why it may not be as 'risk free' as you think. Fact of the matter is that the human animal is more than just physical organs, and consequently there are significant psychological ramifications to every choice we make. Abstinence before marriage and monogamy during marriage is effective and stable precisely because it safeguards us from the psychological toll promiscuity takes on us.

u/SeriouslyItsAmy · 2 pointsr/SandersForPresident

DSA, I would guess. They’re the only organization you’ve identified not committed to a candidate or party, but an ideology instead.

Honestly, though.Progressives are at a disadvantage right now. Manchin won’t last in WV. Jones won’t last in AL. If Dems win the Senate, House and WH in 2020, do the following please:

  1. Abolish filibuster for everything
  2. Admit DC, PR, VI and Guam as states
  3. Reestablish VRA
  4. Nationally restore felon voting rights
  5. Split California into 7 states

    Then, we have, like 14 new Senators, and people who can actually vote for them. Read this: It’s Time to Fight Dirty by David Faris

    We just need the will to change
u/shibaizutsu · 1 pointr/PoliticalScience

Hey thanks, sorry for being newbie, but that looks really difficult tho.. is there no book covering all that basic concepts in one volume? I was recommended this by my friend http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sociology-Anthony-Giddens/dp/0745643582 I've been reading that and it's quite easy to understand. Is there something along that line but in polsci? Something that covers all version of political parties, all version of communism, etc. Something to get started with..

u/ganbaruzo · 2 pointsr/Teachers

Your actions will speak louder than your words in convincing your students you understand them. Show them through your actions that you care about and respect them as holistic people (not just consumers of your subject matter). Also, it may be possible to go too far in trying to convince the students you understand ... there are aspects of their experiences you may not be able to understand, even if you went to a Title 1 school.
https://www.amazon.com/White-Folks-Teach-Hood-Rest/dp/0807006408

u/chrisv25 · -1 pointsr/news

It is the way of things. I have given up on trying to set it right. Reading http://www.amazon.com/The-Story-Civilization-Volume-Set/dp/1567310230 convinced me that the truths of human kindness have existed for a very long time and we willingly ignore them. I do my best to care for my loved ones. My social justice warrior days are over. I can't win. Worrying about it just seems to lessen the time we are given to enjoy the blessing of life. Basically I feel like a prisoner who is getting raped. You can just get raped or you can fight back and you will also get your teeth knocked out too :(

u/Dennis_Langley · 1 pointr/Ask_Politics

> Clearly not, [the Democratic Party] exist[s] so the "right" (read corporate sponsored) dem wins.

This is abundantly false.

> They paid her, she did favors for and supports them in return.

You have no evidence to claim that she updated her stances specifically because of those donations and not that she was given those donations by people who already agreed with her.

u/SuburbanDinosaur · 8 pointsr/Negareddit

A book wholly worth checking out is The Price of Admission, which uses Jared Kushner as a case study of how the wealthy can subvert all types of academic rigor in order to get the correct looking resume.

I just hope that this whole process with Trump and Kavanaugh can snap people out of the whole meritocracy ideal once and for all, because god knows it's gotten us into a lot of trouble.

u/bukvich · 1 pointr/conspiracy

There is a terrific section on Obama in Domhoff's hard copy version of Who Rules America. I tried to find the story on his website but failed. When Obama was a local politician he was identified by the Pritzker family as a young man on the rise and one of the Pritzker matriarchs groomed him carefully. Unfortunately for the Pritzkers their family blew up before Obama made it to the White House and they could really make the huge haul. The story about the young Pritzker suing her uncle for trust fund mismanagement is a classic how to blow a fortune story.

Put the bulk into one "non-profit" trust is definitely the way to go.

u/MetaMemeticMagician · 1 pointr/TheNewRight

Well anyways, here's a NRx reading list I'm slowly making my way through...

​



Introduction

The Dark Enlightenment Defined*
The Dark Enlightenment Explained*
The Path to the Dark Enlightenment*
The Essence of the Dark Enlightenment*
An Introduction to Neoreaction*
Neoreaction for Dummies*

Reactionary Philosophy in a Nutshell*
The Dark Enlightenment – Nick Land*

The Neoreactionary Canon

The Cathedral Explained*

When Wish Replaces Thought Steven Goldberg *

Three Years of Hate – In Mala Fide***

****

The Decline

We are Doomed – John Derbyshire*
America Alone – Mark Steyn*
After America – Mark Steyn*
Death of the West – Pat Buchanan***
The Abolition of Britain – Peter Hitchens

****

Civil Society and Culture

Coming Apart – Charles Murray
Disuniting of America – Arthur Schlesinger
The Quest for Community – Robert Nisbet
Bowling Alone – Robert Putnam
Life at the Bottom – Theodore Dalrymple
Intellectuals and society – Thomas Sowell

****

Western Civilization

Civilization: The West and the Rest – Niall Ferguson
Culture Matters – Samuel Huntington
The Uniqueness of Western Civilization – Ricardo Duchesne

****

Moldbuggery

Mencius Moldbug is one of the more influential neoreactionaries. His blog, Unqualified Reservations, is required reading; if you have not read Moldbug, you do not understand modern politics or modern history. Start here for an overview of major concepts: Moldbuggery Condensed. Introduction to Moldbuggery has the Moldbug reading list. Start with Open Letter series, then simply go from the beginning.*

****

​

u/Suddenly_Elmo · 2 pointsr/politics

>ever increasing wealth disparity is to an extent normal and a sign of a healthy society. A rising tide really does raise all ships

These are both empirically untrue statements. As demonstrated pretty conclusively by The Spirit Level, the more unequal a society becomes, the less healthy it becomes in almost every measurable way (crime levels, life expectancy, health outcomes etc). Equally, despite huge economic growth and productivity increases, real wages have remained stagnant since the 60s.

u/kodheaven · 1 pointr/IntellectualDarkWeb

Submission Statement: How Universities have been part of the problem and how they can be part of the solution to America's Civic Crises.

​

>The United States has seen great increases in how many of us take part in higher education. The percent of Americans who’ve completed four years or more of college has grown nearly sevenfold  just since 1940. Illiteracy rates have plummeted. We have even seen consistent growth in Americans’ average IQ, the so-called “Flynn Effect” from the 1930s through the early 21st century. In addition, people have access to information on a scale hitherto unknown in human history, available in the palm of their hand, whenever and wherever they’d like.
>
>Yet levels of political and civic ignorance have remained astonishingly stable since the 1930s (when mass survey research really kicked off). We also see increasing governmental dysfunction. Increased political and cultural polarization. A general breakdown in civil society and civil discourse. Growing distrust in major social institutions – with particularly pronounced polarization around universities, expertise, and the media. We see declining trust in one another. People are increasingly reluctant to marry, date, or even befriend or live next to those who hold different socio-political views from themselves.

u/EvanCarroll · 2 pointsr/occupywallstreet

What is the source of this statement? Apparently, it's Who Rules America? The Triumph of the Corporate Rich [Paperback]
.

But, I wonder what Domhoff's source is.

u/Tookoofox · 9 pointsr/politics

That's a lot of metaphor and hyperbole. Keep in mind, we still need to win the election first, before we can start crushing anyone. And running against gerrymandering might be a good way to do that.

And believe me, I read the book.

https://www.amazon.com/Its-Time-Fight-Dirty-Democrats/dp/1612196950

But I honestly don't think gerrymandering is the answer for dems.

u/Paxalot · 1 pointr/todayilearned

They get plenty of B12 from the insect/insect debris on their food. Fruitarianism can only properly be conducted in the tropics where the food is much better and the tropic, sun-filled lifestyle can be participated in. Also Northern fruit is too clean. Northern fruitarians are a sickly bunch. Fruitarians believe that you must eat grains if you live in the North to protect your body from pollution. See Surviving into the 21st century" by Victor Kulvinstas for hardcore literature on the subject.

u/as_a_black_woman · 12 pointsr/blackladies

>Dude, when I worked at Barnes and Noble, a ton of old white dudes (always Republican/tea party types) would practically burst at the rim when coming up to the counter to buy Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter books to talk about any and all racial issues.

Omg, when I worked there, this one guy asked if we had this book in stock, which we didn't. I kept my facial expressions as flat as possible to dissuade him from trying to engage, because he was trying.

u/jcm267 · 1 pointr/AnythingGoesNews

93% of blacks vote Democrat. 7% of a small minority of the total US population vote either Republican or 3rd party, mostly Republican. Blacks are well represented in the GOP all things considered.

Here are a few others.

Michael Steele, the first black leader of the RNC.

Jason Reilly, Wall Street Journal editorial board member and author of Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed

Allen West was a one term Congressman from Florida and the first black Republican Congressman from FL since Reconstruction. This man is hugely popular with the supposedly racist "tea party" wing of the party. For the record, I am not a tea partier.

u/Blahmeh666 · 5 pointsr/CoonTown

I haven't read this book but it has been getting praise, "White Girl Bleed A Lot". I've also been seeing this too but I haven't read it either, "Please Stop Helping Us".

Can anyone here who has read these books give a quick review for these books?

u/Gizortnik · 105 pointsr/kotakuinaction2

>Who is deeming it unacceptable?

The Anointed Ones. Your personal betters. Your minders. Your racial superiors. The elites. The morally sound. The pure. The pious. The Intellectuals. Every single person that deems to be better than you in some way, and has the ability to use enough force to do it. The narcissists. The sociopaths.

u/aeisenst · 7 pointsr/ELATeachers

Check out Excellent Sheep. It's a great examination of the college admissions system. Hopefully, it will shake some of the high performing students out of their assumptions.

u/Markinlv · 4 pointsr/Teachers

No articles, but For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood by Christopher Emdin is a great read.

u/dmiff · 1 pointr/Economics

Isn't it strange how the credit card companies still want to make money? I guess good intentions do not always lead to good policies.

u/trias_e · 6 pointsr/TheRedPill

It's hard to get proof of this because of causation / correlation issues.

Check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Premarital-Sex-America-Americans-Marrying/dp/0199743282

Some very interesting research done on young adults in this book. While it can't prove the hypothesis, the data is in line with it. Some findings (which I'm stealing from an amazon review since I don't currently have the book):

"Rather surprisingly, research shows those marrying between "ages 20-27 report higher levels of marital success" (p 181) than those who marry later. And "those who marry between 22 and 25" (p 181) have an even higher rate of marital happiness."

"Study after study has shown that women with higher numbers of sexual partners, or those who began having sex at an earlier age, frequently suffer from depression or other emotional problems. In fact, after the sexual revolution and the feminist tidal wave of the seventies, increasing numbers of women are looking back on what's happened with regret, not happiness."

And perhaps a positive one for people who still want to get married:

"One very interesting fact: one of the most influential statistics about marriage in the US, the one mentioned many times by young adults, is wrong--or at least misunderstood. That would be the old chestnut that 50% of all marriages here end in divorce.

In truth, some people marry and divorce again and again. But those who marry for the first time have a much, much greater chance of remaining married."

Anecdotally, I know a few 28 year old women that have basically said exactly what Demonspawn said to me. Basically, "I don't know if I can love anyone anymore." Quite interesting coming from two different women at similar points in their lives, similar backgrounds, and saying the same thing. They both aren't sluts, but they've had around 8 LTRs each at this point, and have certainly gotten into the double digit dick mark.

u/SuccessfulOperation · 1 pointr/neoliberal

Tom Nichols (GOP ALERT 🚨) wrote a book on this. Its pretty decent and he's given some good interviews about it:

https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-Established-Knowledge/dp/0190469412

u/willebrord_snellius · 1 pointr/Economics

Your question refers specifically to income equality, but regarding equality more generally I think you might find The Spirit Level an interesting read.

u/sungod23 · 3 pointsr/history

https://www.amazon.com/Story-Civilization-11-Set/dp/1567310230

The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant - you can find used sets cheaper. It focuses more on western civilization, but I think of it as the gold standard for engaging, comprehensive history.

u/Enosspick · 1 pointr/neoliberal

So I’m guessing you’re not actually a Neoliberal, because you must of missed Sowells, Friedman, and others view on the subject.

>entirely natural that white males dominate leadership positions

Well it might have something to do with being a white majority country? Especially the UK, and that said the white males in question usually come from upper middle class/upper class backgrounds it perfectly makes sense.

Why? I’d take a guess you could do an analysIs of any top private firm leadership positions and you’ll find the majority of those people come from upper middle class to upper class backgrounds. The reason is simple their parents afford them a superior education, and thus have better qualifications.

Why are the majority of people in said positions also taller than average?

Again your making arguments based on equity not equality. also you have not a single data point that supports your claims. Your looking for problems where their are none; all there are, are differences in individual choices between me and women.

And again you completely ignore blind recruitment which controls for subconscious bias and eliminates sexism/racism in hiring.


It’s funny because your beliefs are almost religious in nature, but here this might help you out. It’s a book by a black male.

https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Anointed-Self-Congratulation-Social-Policy/dp/046508995X

u/TomRoberts2016 · 1 pointr/Jokes

Ok. There's various degrees too. You got the weebo nerd/blerd or whatevs who's still awkward and weird. Then you have the type that doesn't mind being "white washed" or not having to appeal to black stereotypes, doesn't mind having republican/conservative values (think Thomas Howell) or guys like Jason Riley or Tommy Sotomayor.

u/bionicbooblady · 2 pointsr/AskSocialScience

Sociology by Anthony Giddens is a great place to start for an introduction

u/Smashtronic · 1 pointr/news

It's funny that this is a Harvard study because their (and other Ivy League schools) less than fair admissions practices heavily contribute to aristocracies, which contribute to the rise of oligarchies.

Check out this book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1400097975?pc_redir=1410065014&robot_redir=1

u/blalien · 0 pointsr/news

This book just released in April. I haven't read it yet, but it's getting good reviews.

u/alexjerez · 1 pointr/CompoundMedia

Another book mentioned in this episode: 'Please Stop Helping Us' by Jason L. Riley http://www.amazon.com/Please-Stop-Helping-Us-Liberals/dp/1594037256

u/Hamilcar218bc · 0 pointsr/politics

https://youtu.be/sg6lk6RYuEU?t=1m2s

I encourage you to read his book, it's made just for you.

u/shambibble · 39 pointsr/slatestarcodex

Charles Murray, 2018:

> But the fact is that in my own life, the federal government plays hardly any negative role at all. Neither Donald Trump nor Barack Obama has done anything that has gotten in my way. De facto, life is still pretty good for a lot of Americans. We still have the freedom to live life as we see fit.

Charles Murray, 2015:

> American freedom is being gutted. Whether we are trying to run a business, practice a vocation, raise our families, cooperate with our neighbors, or follow our religious beliefs, we run afoul of the government—not because we are doing anything wrong but because the government has decided it knows better. When we object, that government can and does tell us, “Try to fight this, and we’ll ruin you.”

I am curious if Charles Murray expressed these blasé sentiments about the federal government even once during the span of 2008-2016. (Please do not rush to inform me Charles Murray is a NeverTrump. I'm aware. That doesn't make him non-partisan.)

u/PDXTony · 3 pointsr/Portland

the key isnt that the normal folk like you and me should pay more.

The top 1-2% pay jackshit compared to the rest of us.

have stocks? they pay even less.

> Traditional classroom Education is meaningless for these people. Teach them a TRADE, something worth while.

100% totally agree! https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-Established-Knowledge/dp/0190469412

this is a great read. he actually talks about how college has become a money making scheme more than a concerned about education.

u/LetsStayCivilized · 3 pointsr/slatestarcodex

> I don't read enough conservative media to get a sense as to whether pessimism still reigns there

Well, in some places it does.

Also, on the topic of "how will all this immigration work out?", optimism/pessimism maps pretty clearly to liberalism/conservatism.

u/swingnblues · 14 pointsr/USMC

Congrats on being a big part of the reason why this book was published.

u/apMinus · 5 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

I love the guy praising Riley's book to defend the "It's actually the government damaging the black community". Dismissing the system's endemic problems that disproportionately target black people — largely lead by motherfuckers saying the same thing as the OP — is more lazy libertarian reasoning; at any point, any societal problem can be solved by this mythical hands-off approach that just happens to favor maintaining the status quo.

u/dsmith422 · 118 pointsr/politics

An administration employee of Kushner's prep school was shocked when he got into Harvard.

​



My book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their under-achieving children’s way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations. It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998, not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school. At the time, Harvard accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of twenty.)

I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision.

“There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,” a former official at The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, told me. “His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.”

​

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-kushners-curious-acceptance-into-harvard

u/selfhatingyank · 6 pointsr/badpolitics

R2: True politics is angsty. [Tropes warning] There are plenty of conservative pessimists and progressive optimists, and the diagonal "axis" seems to be pure shade-throwing, not actual criticism.

u/Ramongsh · 1 pointr/Denmark

>Sikkert. Det sker i hundrede gange større størrelsesforhold at det at være en kvinde er en ulempe, og de konsekvenser, det har er meget mere dybdegående, idet kvindekønnet arbejder imod dig, hvis du f.eks. vil have adgang til magtfulde positioner. Mandekønnet arbejder imod dig, hvis du gerne vil opgive en magtfuld position, i grove træk.

Du bliver ved med at sige det er så stort et problem for kvinder. 100 gange mere end for mænd. Hvor man kan dokumenterer at mænd har deres køn imod sig, så må man jo også kunne det med kvinder, hvis det du siger da er sandt. Hvor er den dokumentation? Hvor er de artikler hvor en kvinde ikke måtte noget KUN pga hendes køn?

>Ej sorry, det er altså ikke til at tage seriøst, det der. Kvinderne kæmpede for stemmeret — hvor er mændendes protestmarch for at få lov til at skifte ble? Det er altså svært at finde det i historiebøgerne.
Jeg siger ikke, at mænd i dag ikke har et oprigtigt ønske om at tage del i deres børns opvækst. Det har de. Men det er sateme godt nok ikke på mænds foranledning, at den ændring er sket.

At mænd har mere ret til deres børn i dag end for 50 år siden for du lige lavet om til en sejr for kvinder ved at blande stemmeret ind i det?!? Flot.

Tror ikke der er nogen der er uenig i at kvinder havde ulemper ved deres køn for 100 år siden, men de fik stemmeret, lige så langsomt fik de de samme lovstedte rettigeder som mænd. Idag er der INGEN love imod kvinder, KUN mænd.

>Okay, nu ved jeg, at du troller. Jeg ville sende dig mit CV, hvis det ikke var at doxxe mig selv. Trust me, jeg har godt styr på, hvad feminisme er.

Flot. Tillykke. Fantastisk. 1 diskution for et par måneder siden siger du at du er programør. En anden at du studerer kultur. Og nu har du så et arbejde som gør dig ekspert i feminisme.

>Nej, det er alle feminister, der kæmper den kamp, for det er selve definitionen på at være feminist. Patriarkatet er et system som alle, der deltager i vores kultur, mænd som kvinder, bidrager til at opretholde. Det undertrykker primært kvinder, og bøsser, og transkønnede, men også lesbiske, og en masse andre. Og også heteroseksuelle ciskønnede mænd, især dem, der ikke har lyst til at opføre sig i overensstemmelse med kønslige stereotypier. Det er ikke en bevidst sammensværgelse, og det har ingen nogensinde påstået, at det var.

Igen ved du ikke hvad du snakker om. Prøv at læse hvad jeg skriver. Ikke alle feminister tror overhovedet på mænds privilegier eller patriarkatets stuktuealle undertrykkelse af kvinder. De vil bare have lig mulighed. Hvilket i vidt muligt omfang er nået.
Så vi sider med folk som dig tilbage som råber op om statistiker som viser at ikke 50% af alle direktører er kvinder og i bruger det til at retfærdiggøre jeres hetz imod maskulinitet.

>Disse kaldes for neo-feminister eller radikale feminister.

http://www.amazon.com/Sociology-Anthony-Giddens/dp/0745643582
og
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Stole_Feminism%3F

begge 2 gode bøger du burde læse.

Hvis du ikke gider bøger så er her nogle link jeg lige kunne finde såen hurtigt:
I dag er feminismen og dermed kvindekampen splittet imellem en række modsætninger. Blandt andet er der en konflikt om moderskabet, men også om i hvor høj grad kvinder skal privilegeres for at blive ligestillet med mænd.



  • [Feminismen kan opdeles i to hovedretninger: Liberal feminisme og radikal feminisme.

    Liberal feminisme: ligestilling mellem kønnene, dog skal forskellen mellem kvinder og mænd anerkendes, men de samme rettigheder skal gælde for både mænd og kvinder. Den liberale feminisme forstår ligestilling mellem mand og kvinde som opnået, når disse har lige muligheder. Den liberale feminisme anerkender dog, at sociale og kulturelle holdninger og mønstre kan begrænse ligestilling, og således menes der med lige muligheder ikke blot formel ligestilling. Særegent for ideologen er, at den ikke anser kvinders underordnede position i samfundet som et resultat af en større struktur, som radikal og marxistisk feminisme gør det. Derfor kæmper den liberalistiske feminisme heller ikke for et konkret opgør med den nuværende samfundsorden og benytter sig i stedet af det eksisterende system i sin kamp for ligestilling. Gennem retsinstanser og demokratiske processer forsøges der at opnå og beskytte juridiske rettigheder for kvinder. Derfor kaldes ideologien ”moderat”, og den kritiseres ofte for udelukkende at beskæftige sig med de konkrete samfundsmæssige uligheder, i stedet for at undersøge de dybtliggende årsager til, hvorfor ulighed mellem kønnene finder sted.

    Radikal feminisme: troen på, at kønslig undertrykkelse ses i samfundet. Patriarkatet menes at være skyld i denne undertrykkelse, måden at stoppe denne undertrykkelse må ske via revolution, da mænd er socialiseret til at være dominerende. Den radikale feminisme centrerer omkring forestillingen om, at mænd som gruppe opretholder og drager fordele af undertrykkelsen af kvinder. I denne ideologi anses patriarkatsteorien altså som den væsentlige forklaring på kvindeundertrykkelse, og alle aspekter af denne i samfundet, som f.eks. vold eller chikane mod kvinder, anses som en systematisk opretholdelse af patriarkatet, da den blandt andet næsten udelukkende begås af mænd. Patriarkatets opståen begrundes ofte med, at denne samfundsstruktur gør det nemmere for manden at tilegne sig og beherske kvindens krop og seksualitet, men da patriarkatet er så gammelt, så er der ingen 100% klar fakta omkring præcist hvordan den kan være opstået.(http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminisme)





u/spiralxuk · 1 pointr/Economics

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Everyone/dp/0241954290

A summary of research done by epidemiologists about the effects of income inequality on societies. There's a good body of research on the subject.

u/argash · 1 pointr/politics

Try "Why Government Doesn't Work" By Harry Browne. That's the book that finally cured me of my ties to the republican party.

u/islamchump · 2 pointsr/MuslimMarriage

Part 2:


People often read Horkheimer and think, do these imbeciles think some group of evil people is controlling society (in a conspiracy type of manner)? how idiotic of them.

actually, individuals in the collective are the cause of this,

parents push engineering on to you because it will lead to a good life

people choose majors for extrinsic reasons now

men view themselves in monetary value because they need to be providers (this is true, howev,er the happy normal life exacerbates this)

as a student success is by grades not by what you learned

the moment you ask a kid, what do you want to be when you grow up?

these are all examples of how we, the collective of individuals, cause it

More:

Impact of Colonial Rule on Todays Educational System of Pakistan

>The British ruledIndia for more than 150 years. They came as a separate entity with a different religion, language, culture, style of politics and economic system. They colonize India for financial benefits. They institutionalized the systems more efficiently. Their focus was more on to facilitate their own rule than to work for the social welfare of the natives. They came to India as traders, however within short span of time they realized the weaknesses in then system of governance and planned to capture India. Local segments joined them to weakening the cohesive forces and asthey succeeded in capturing Indian lands bit by bit and weakening the existingsystem, ultimately capturing Indian sub content in 1857. They built their own kind of education system. The aim was to produce work force which follow the mindset of the rulers without causing any problems. They philosophy behind the system was to educate the people in such a way to think like rulers and oppress their own countrymen. In the beginning they adopted the language and culture of India and their tone was liberal and neutral but as they got dominating force they became harder in promulgating their systems. In 1835 English was made the mediumof instruction and whole of the education system was handed over to the missionaries. It is a general perception that educational system of Pakistan is still under the influence the colonial mind set.This system does not give the sense of independence as the educated people try to enslave their own countrymen. This system teaches to hate fellow beings. This study aims at to see the impact of colonial rule on today’s educational system of Pakistan.

The Lingering Impact of Colonization on Pakistan: Negative or
Positive?


>The British rule had a lasting Impact on the lives of the Indian people. They exploited the
Indian territory for their own interests and left the land in more disorder and confusion than
they found it in as (1) their attitude of superiority shattered the confidence of the people, (2)
their agrarian revolution did not help improve yield and caused landholdings to become
more fragmented, (3) the Indian industry was not protected and many traditional ones were
ruined , (4) education was not made easily accessible , (5) construction of railways although
improved transportation however was not done keeping the Indian interests but the British
interests in mind and (6) the new political system which lacked personal element was not
more effective than the old one.


also to relate the objective mind to colonialism,

the quote "The British rule had a lasting Impact on the lives of the Indian people. They exploited the
Indian territory for their own interests and left the land in more disorder and confusion" is the product of thinking with an objective mind

basically okay how can we the brits make hella alot of money in India


the root cause of the objective mind is from enlightenment style thinking which is why Frankfurt school is also called critical theory.

i gave a mini khutba about this how we cannot understand the Quran because of the underlying assumptions that are in a society that are the byproducts of enlightenment style thinking (NOT THAT WAY SPECIFICALLY). Like today in in my religious class, i went toe to toe with stark atheist on the meaning of "evidence"

because Horkheimer says "Our minds are closed to a different world, we will get upset of people to violate the rules of the game, but we do not question those rules"

basically we don't question the rules, for example, what is and is not evidence and why is it that way, instead we are on the defensive with the Quran like omg we're nice people stop hating on us, look Scientific miracles, we're rationally scientific people like you!

edit:

Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life

>A groundbreaking manifesto about what our nation’s top schools should be—but aren’t—providing: “The ex-Yale professor effectively skewers elite colleges, their brainy but soulless students (those ‘sheep’), pushy parents, and admissions mayhem” (People).

>As a professor at Yale, William Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively and how to find a sense of purpose. Now he argues that elite colleges are turning out conformists without a compass.

>Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to “practical” subjects like economics, students are losing the ability to think independently. It is essential, says Deresiewicz, that college be a time for self-discovery, when students can establish their own values and measures of success in order to forge their own paths. He features quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and offering clear solutions on how to fix it.


Edit

read the articles/studies/journal entries for sure, then pick a book that interests you the most and run with it and have fun!


edit:

related kinda but in a different way,

Inglorious Empire: what the British did to India

>In the eighteenth century, India’s share of the world economy was as large as Europe’s. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannon, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalized racism, and caused millions to die from starvation.

>British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial “gift”―from the railways to the rule of law―was designed in Britain’s interests alone. He goes on to show how Britain’s Industrial Revolution was founded on India’s deindustrialization and the destruction of its textile industry. In this bold and incisive reassessment of colonialism, Tharoor exposes to devastating effect the inglorious reality of Britain’s stained Indian legacy.

This dude did something amazing (i can go into detail why it was amazing given the ethnocentrism, academic, power, and cultural structure present and just uh it makes me drool in awe) but basically he questioned what people view as a genocide and said mister Winston Churchill, the one who helped stopped the genocidal Nazis promoting freedom and democracy committed a genocide himself in continental India

relevant article https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/winston-churchill-genocide-dictator-shashi-tharoor-melbourne-writers-festival-a7936141.html

because other people came out and rebuked him which shows he challenged a pharaoh

edit:


sorry but here's an interview of the Indian historian and the lady who supports him says about the Britain education about their vicious imperial past till 6:11

u/NeverHadTheLatin · 1 pointr/ukpolitics

I'd recommend reading The Spirit Level and The Price of Inequality.

There appears to be a correlation between inequality and rising crime rates, ill-health, and social deprivation.

Part of this comes from the choices people can and do make when they live in a society where there is a wide gulf between the top and the bottom. It helps to reinforce class distinctions which creates a barrier around social mobility.

Inequality isn't bad in-of-itself, but that's like saying having a McDonalds in every major town isn't bad in-of-itself - the issue is that it almost always exasberates existing social problems.

u/Yaquina_Dick_Head · 49 pointsr/politics

>And we don't have an equal and opposite force exerted by a liberal propaganda machine.

Michelle Obama is one of the smartest and classiest people ever, but sometimes I think she gave bad advice when she said "when they go low we go high." It only works, in a political environment like the USA is dealing with right now, if people care about someone going low. Not enough people do. The book It's time to Fight Dirty is awesome in how it lays out solutions like giving DC and Puerto Rico statehood, expanding the SC and so on. I don't know how realistic it is but it's a good blueprint. I'm fucking sick and tired of the Dems trying to play by the book and the fact they still respect traditional norms. Fuck that. It's time to go Moscow Mitch on their asses.

https://www.amazon.com/Its-Time-Fight-Dirty-Democrats/dp/1612196950

u/mtutiger12 · 11 pointsr/theticket

The degree thing is interesting... I just recently read a book (The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols; https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-Established-Knowledge/dp/0190469412) which, among many topics, touches on the subject of how with the massive explosion of degrees and the fact that as college degrees have become more and more widespread, the value of the degrees diminishes. The author postulates that college was not necessarily meant to be the egalitarian thing that it has become and... honestly, I can't disagree with him.

And the downside of it all is that you have many who enter degree programs that are not well positioned to the modern workforce or (worse) folks who enter college when perhaps college was not the best course of action for them. We need to start encouraging more younger folks to look at the trades and other forms of employment... I think they often get overlooked and I know they were even 10 or so years ago go when I graduated high school.

u/railfananime · 0 pointsr/changemyview

O.K. Fair point? But then you make that situation as rare as possible, not your priority. Tell you what read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges-Outside/dp/1400097975. Or let me point you tothis article: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-kushners-curious-acceptance-into-harvard Δ

u/kethinov · 64 pointsr/politics

What's your take on David Faris' new book It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics?

His arguments strike me as broadly compatible with yours, but he argues for a platter of considerably more ambitious things.

In short, he argues that once Democrats run the table again (like in 2009), they should ram a bunch of reforms through that are explicitly designed to undo unfair Republican advantages. Such reforms include:

  • Packing the court so that we don't have such a large percentage of justices nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote.
  • Term limits for Supreme Court justices structured in such a way that guarantees every president at least one nomination.
  • Admit Puerto Rico and DC to the union.
  • Break California into several states to get it more senators.
  • National early voting.
  • Pre-voter registration of 17-year-olds nationwide.
  • Making Election Day a national holiday.
  • Other voting rights reforms as well (e.g. bans on disenfranchising ex-cons, making it a federal crime to intimidate voters, etc).
  • Fighting gerrymandering by doubling the size of the House and having multimember districts with proportional representation.
  • Abolishing the filibuster so all those things can be enacted with a simple majority.

    These things seem philosophically in line with your proposal to fix the Electoral College, so I was wondering what you thought of each of those ideas.

    Also, if you could amend the Constitution with whatever changes you like, would you simply abolish the Electoral College? Would you abolish the Senate too? (I would.)
u/Melack70 · 2 pointsr/WritingPrompts

Read 'The Spirit Level', it's basically this question!

u/parchmune · 7 pointsr/GamerGhazi

No offense, but Churba is misremembering. The idea that miners should learn to code was endorsed by journalists from all over the ideological spectrum.
Just off the top of this search results page:
Forbes,
NPR,
Bloomberg News,
PBS,
CBS,
the CBC,
and Wired. It also had the support of the IEEE and, at least obliquely, the Obama White House. You could find plenty more examples with only very limited digging.

There was some criticism from the political right, as e.g. the Wired article points out, but certainly not from any Vicesters.

In any case, it's not just miners, or just journalists, or even just coding. Blue collar workers have been told to quit whining and learn to tech by politicians and the media since at least the early 1990s. Bill Clinton famously expressed support for the drive in his original primary campaign. His early speeches on the subject were widely hailed as one of the reasons his campaign took off.

Nobody complained as long as the advice was directed at unfashionable people with dirty hands, but the intellectuals got pretty angry pretty quickly when they later found themselves at the receiving end. William Deresiewicz wrote an entire book about his unhappiness with "the empirical kids" and the whole HURR DURR JUST BECOME A STEMLORD YOU LOSER theme. The book was widely reviewed, sold approximately 80 billion copies, and is considered fairly influential in the humanities, liberal arts, and J school crowds. In theory, most journalists should have heard of it.

u/Dailey247 · 3 pointsr/NoStupidQuestions

Check out this book: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-Established-Knowledge/dp/0190469412
Society is quickly evolving to not trust real information, but somehow we feel like crowd sourcing some randos killing time on reddit is trustworthy. /shrug/

u/Muskaos · 33 pointsr/KotakuInAction

But of course, it is part of the SJW ethos that the think they are smarter and morally superior to you. Their entire world view depends on this. They are the Anointed, you are the masses, and if you do not accept the pronouncements the Anointed make, this makes you evil by definition.

Thomas Sowell lays it all out in his book Visions of the Anointed. This really should be required reading for anyone who opposes SJW idiocy, because it makes it so clear why SJWs do what they do.

u/peter_lorres_lorry · 2 pointsr/relationships

>I'm very liberal minded.

You mean modern American liberalism (which isn't liberal in the slightest), or do you mean Classical Liberalism (ie, modern day Libertarianism)?

Perhaps you're the one who needs to read up on the roots of your political philosophy.

http://www.amazon.com/Vision-Anointed-Self-Congratulation-Social-Policy/dp/046508995X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318974177&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0385511841

u/Morfolk · 8 pointsr/MurderedByWords

I'm not aware of any documentaries but there was a book published based on the research: Affluence and Influence

u/ineedsomewhiskey · 1 pointr/Austin

Here are some I suggest for you!

1

2

3

4

u/CMarlowe · 1 pointr/history

Have you read Will Durant's The Renaissance?

Durant wrote an entire series on Western Civilization.

You can see included here: http://www.amazon.com/Story-Civilization-11-Set/dp/1567310230/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419794343&sr=8-1&keywords=will+durant+story+of+civilization+set

u/StormieDaniels · -4 pointsr/politics

What about Congress people who's districts include a lot of people who work in financial services? What about taking into account the views of people who have more than a cursory and often times incorrect understanding of corporate finance and government regulations? This book I picked up is becoming more relevant with each passing month: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-Established-Knowledge/dp/0190469412

u/mightcommentsometime · 2 pointsr/politics

That is exactly how this book explains it.

u/dp25x · 1 pointr/Libertarian

Harry Browne's 1996 campaign book, "Why Government Does Not Work" has a lot of material covering how government programs typically do the opposite of what they are intended to do.

u/TheseModsAreCray · 12 pointsr/news

Ridiculous? It's a ban based on sound science and statistics. Isaac Asimov died of HIV from a tainted blood transfusion—and now we're going to put more people at risk, just for the sake of being politically correct.

AIDS carriers have been a favored protected victim class of liberals since the 1980s when the courts found it to be a "handicap" entitling its carriers to special privileges and anonymity to the detriment of public health.

From Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed:

>As late as 1983, people were being reassured that their chances of catching AIDS from transfusions of untested blood were 'extremely remote.' Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler went on nationwide television on July 3, 1983, to 'assure the American people that the blood supply is 100 per cent safe.'

>But just one year later, the Centers for Disease Control began reporting dozens of cases of people who caught AIDS from blood transfusions; just two years after that [1986], the AIDS deaths from blood transfusions were in the thousands."

>The problem was not simply with what medical authorities did not know at the time but with what they presumed to know and to proclaim to the benighted–to those who, in Secretary Heckler’s words, had ‘irrational fears’ and ‘unwarranted panic.’ [According to U.S. News and World Report, it turns out that whereas the Red Cross and others] ‘put the risk of getting AIDS from a transfusion at about 1 in a million. In fact, it was at least 1 in 660–and up to 1 in 25 in high-exposure cities like San Francisco.’]

>It was at one time triumphantly proclaimed that no health-care worker had ever contracted AIDS from patients, but by September 1985 there were the first of many cases of nurses, lab workers, and others who caught the disease from AIDS patients and by 1991 there were cases of patients who caught AIDS from a dentist . . . .

>Precautions to protect the public from AIDS carriers have repeatedly been backed into only after new revelations devastated previous reassurances . . . . Instead of erring on the side of caution in defense of the public, as with previous deadly and infectious diseases, ‘responsible’ officials approached the spread of AIDS by making the protection of the AIDS carrier from the public paramount.

>One political reason has been fear of offending the organized, zealous, single issue homosexual organizations and their allies in the media, in the American Civil Liberties Union, and in other liberal bastions. But this only raises the further question as to why the interest of carriers of a deadly, incurable, and contagious disease should be regarded in such circles as preemptive over the rights of hundreds of millions of other people . . . .


http://www.amazon.com/The-Vision-Anointed-Self-Congratulation-Social/dp/046508995X

u/valier_l · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

Not sure this is really an ELI5 question, but.... check this book out.

u/dpeters11 · 1 pointr/FCCincinnati

Though that's not necessarily true. There's even a book on it.
https://www.amazon.com/Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges-Outside/dp/1400097975

However, while we do know there is wiggle room in the SSS requirement, we also know that we don't meet the requirements for that exception.

u/wonder_er · 23 pointsr/Parenting

This needs more upvotes. If your son makes education a priority, he'll be fine. If he doesn't, there's nothing OP can do to change it.

The son models the behavior of the parents. Sounds like the parents think college is the end goal, which it must. not. be. College is a shitty end goal.

A life well lived is the end goal. And that can be done with or without college.

I highly recommend Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life

The author talks about just this thing. OP, read the book, then give it to your wife. Might save the three of you hundreds of hours of fighting, tears, heartache, wasted time and money.

u/DooDooDoodle · 6 pointsr/tucker_carlson

You are all idiots because you disagree with meeeeee reeeeeeeee! The self Annointed at it again...


The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy Thomas Sowell

https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Anointed-Self-Congratulation-Social-Policy/dp/046508995X

u/alanquinne · 1 pointr/unpopularopinion

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading

Scroll down to the regional rankings: Shanghai was #1, followed by South Korea.

> How would they be out studying someone who attends the same university? Wouldn't that mean they were equal, educationally?

I was referring to OP's stupid claim that 'Chinese cheat their way into Western universities'. No, they out-study their way into Western universities, because of the premium Chinese society places on education, and the way in which children spend their whole lives studying for super-competitive entrance exams which determine their entire futures.


>Where are you getting these numbers for your so-called "legacy" students? You do realize that even these students must have an education in the first place to attend these universities?

No. They literally buy their way into universities like Harvard, or are granted admission despite lacking the competitive requirements because their parents went there.

Sources:

CNBC: Harvard's incoming freshman class is one-third legacy—here's why that's a problem

The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges--and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates

The Story Behind Jared Kushner’s Curious Acceptance Into Harvard

u/jeanvaljean_24601 · 11 pointsr/WaltDisneyWorld

If I may make a recommendation, read The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols. It explains why a yahoo with a computer who’s been in Florida a few days thinks he knows better than a multi billion dollar company, its suppliers and a veritable army of engineers and (actual) experts.

u/Hemingwavy · 2 pointsr/politics

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1612196950/?tag=slatmaga-20

Twelve ways for Democrats to defeat the biased political system.

You uncap the HoR to ensure you never lose the presidency and from there pack the courts and make PR and DC states, split California into multiple states.

u/fantomsource · 0 pointsr/pcmasterrace

Government is not magic, government is people who use force to offer substandard services and economically decimate whole populations.

There is nothing that government can offer that can't be more cheaply and efficiently offered on the free market. All without the unaccountable tax inertia for wars, police thuggery, torture, spying, corporate monopolies, etc..

u/DrunkHacker · 1 pointr/askphilosophy

Jason Stanley, a Philosophy professor at Yale, has two recent books that might be of interest: How Propaganda Works, and How Fascism Works. Depending on how broadly you want to define "philosophy", US Naval War College professor Tom Nichols's book, The Death of Expertise, would also be fit the bill. The ideas in The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by NYU ethics/business professor Jonathan Haidt also come up frequently in conversation.

If you're willing to look further back (and perhaps define philosophy even more broadly), the late NYU education professor Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business might be of interest.

u/cassius1213 · 16 pointsr/politics

A book was literally written about how poor a candidate for admission to Harvard Kushner fils was, how much Kushner père had to pay that university to buy the former entrance, and how that process writ large contributes to structural inequalities throughout America.

Cf., The Price of Admission

u/Duck_Puncher · 3 pointsr/CFBOffTopic

You might enjoy The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols. He goes over that exact same issue. Check out his AMA. Follow him on twitter if you want the perspective of a sane, snarky, conservative.

u/mnemosyne-0002 · 2 pointsr/KotakuInAction

Archives for the links in comments:

u/TheDrMonocles · 1 pointr/instantkarma

You absolutely need to read "The Death of Expertise" by Thomas Nicols. You are a big bright shiny example of all of his arguments.

https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-Established-Knowledge/dp/0190469412/

u/Aghast_Cornichon · 5 pointsr/legaladvice

An excellent primer on the topic: The Price of Admission, by Daniel Golden (2007).

It's an interesting question of whether the admissions administrator accepting a direct bribe would be a crime; it probably would be if this is a public institution, while it would merely be unethical privately.

But just pulling strings ? Hell, that's called Tuesday.

u/YourLizardOverlord · 5 pointsr/ukpolitics

If inequality means that my neighbour has a Porsche Carrera GT in the driveway and I've just got a 10 year old Mondeo, big deal.

But that's not what it means in the UK.

  • People in the top income decile have a lot more political influence. So much for democracy.

  • People in the bottom income decile often have to live in shitty substandard housing.

  • So their kids have to go to the sort of school you tend to find in areas with shitty substandard housing, and they get an inferior education.

  • They can't afford stuff for their kids which give useful formative experiences, such as holidays and school trips.

  • So their kids are likely to end up being in a similar position when they grow up. This limits their opportunities.

  • And if they have any skills, it limits their usefulness to the rest of us. Instead of becoming useful contributing members of society, they end up competing for the dwindling pool of unskilled labour.

  • If you like capitalism, inequality is bad when it means that not enough people can afford to buy your products.

  • If you believe The Spirit Level then inequality also leads to a nastier, unhappier, more unpleasant society.

u/RebootRevival · -1 pointsr/gamecollecting

you are confusing correlation and causation. There are such things as low-e windows which block heat transfer. You are also ignoring the inconsistent yellowing patterns. If it was strictly heat then the picture I showed you would make no sense. You are basing your entire premise on anecdotal first hand accounts, not evidence or science. You need to read how BFR's work, what Bromine is reactive with and what redox reactions are. You should also read this

u/TheNaud · 1 pointr/todayilearned

And that is the erroneous argument that I am referring to. Have you ever listened to a black republican? Have you ever listened to a conservative explain their position? I'm not talking about who the liberal leaders, the so-called "main stream" media, and the typical black community want to point to. In all honesty, they are pointing you to the 1 to 2% fringe or twisting what people say. And don't get me started on when empirical facts are used and the person using it gets called racist.

Do yourself a favor. Look up Alfonzo Rachel. Look up the book "Please Stop Helping Us" and give it a read. With your argument, you honestly need your eyes opened to who you're labeling racist. If you actually listen to just the two men I just pointed you to have to say, it will start you on a journey that will tear down this facade that you have had built around you.

u/Chisesi · 2 pointsr/KotakuInAction

Have you ever read The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy?

>Book Description
Publication Date: June 28, 1996
Sowell presents a devastating critique of the mind-set behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years. Sowell sees what has happened during that time not as a series of isolated mistakes but as a logical consequence of a tainted vision whose defects have led to crises in education, crime, and family dynamics, and to other social pathologies. In this book, he describes how elites—the anointed—have replaced facts and rational thinking with rhetorical assertions, thereby altering the course of our social policy.

u/Froolow · 28 pointsr/changemyview

The gap between rich and poor in developed countries (GDP > $4000/capita) is one of the best predictors - if not the best predictor - of violent crime, drug abuse, mental health problems, short life expectancy, depressed innovation, political non-participation, teenage birth rates, lower levels of trust and incarceration rates.

Not only that, but we're pretty sure that inequality actually causes these things, rather than simply being linked to them because we have very good data on the EU countries (which are all quite similar) and the American states (which are all very similar). We can trace the rise of these problems alongside the rise of inequality and link inequality-generating policies or price shocks to negative effects further along in time.

We can link this to a biological explanation in laboratory experiments; if chimps (or humans) are put in a situation where they are of 'low status' compared to everyone else in the room, they start to produce stress hormones which cause, for example, violence, overeating and stress-related mental health problems.

There is still some debate among proper academic sociologists whether there might be a third factor which causes both inequality and all the negative things stemming from inequality, and its not clear to me that the issue will ever be resolved beyond reasonable doubt (although the lab tests on hormone profiles are pretty convincing to me). It is also true inequality does not matter very much when overall income is very low, which is to say <$4000/capita. But there is certainly a correlation between stuff that 'matters' and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, and very good evidence that this correlation is causal.

The Spirit Level is a good introductory book on the matter, being neither too technical nor too simplistic. Here is a quick summary by BBC news and here is a website where you can verify all the claims I have made, if you are so inclined.

u/GrandmaCrickity · 16 pointsr/KotakuInAction

The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy by Thomas Sowell

>The Vision of the Anointed is a devastating critique of the mind-set behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years. Thomas Sowell sees what has happened not as a series of isolated mistakes but as a logical consequence of a vision whose defects have led to disasters in education, crime, family disintegration, and other social pathology. In this book, "politically correct" theory is repeatedly confronted with facts -- and sharp contradictions between the two are explained in terms of a whole set of self-congratulatory assumptions held by political and intellectual elites. These elites -- the anointed -- often consider themselves "thinking people," but much of what they call thinking turns out, on examination, to be rhetorical assertion, followed by evasions of mounting evidence against those assertions.

u/TheFactedOne · -2 pointsr/nutrition

I don't know of any books, but there must be some out there. The book I read, that changed my life, and the way I look at studies today was this one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/046508995X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It is called the "Vision of the Anointed". I can give you the synopsis if you want.

Basically, it comes down to, the plan is good, the people are to stupid to follow it. Ever get skin cancer? Blame it on yourself for not using sunscreen.

​

Are you to fat? Move more eat less, because it is your own fault that you are fat.

All of these things scream to me, the plan is good, the people are to stupid to follow it.

u/HarshLogic · 25 pointsr/KotakuInAction

Ill be honest, none of the whole "gaming journalism" thing is why Im a KiA supporter. Ive always been a gamer, but Ive never followed any sort of gaming media or journalism aside from Thoorin's videos in League of Legends.

I dont buy triple-A titles outside of Blizzard games. I dont own a PS3, PS4, XBox 360, or Xbox One. I have a Wii because of Xenoblade (and I think I bought one of the Zeldas), Ill get a Wii U for the next Xeno game. None of the journalist shit affects me much because I already dont use their sites.

Its the censorship, the SJW post-modernist bullshit, the lying, the professional victims, the way it spills over into Wikipedia lacking neutrality. Its the way that I, just some random guy who goes to work, goes running, and plays video games, am blamed as a misogynist shitlord just for being a white cis male who is willing to discuss both sides of an issue. Its the way that white upper class people dictate to women and minorities about how they are doing all this FOR THEM, unless those women and minorities disagree in which case they are internalized misogynists (Please Stop helping Us). Its the way that being an egalitarian makes me a misogynist in their eyes, and a racist, and probably other things as well.

THATS the shit that pushes me to this "side".

u/youareanidiothahaha · 1 pointr/gue

Thomas Sowell and others debunk the claims that women and blacks earn less in the marketplace due to discrimination. When they are compared on equal footing, it is found they are not discriminated against, and in some cases even earn slightly more. For example, unmarried women without children tend to earn a bit more than their male counterparts. What is affecting the average woman? Having children, obviously. If you thought that women, on average, should be earning equal wages, you were clearly not using your brain effectively, as bearing children is such an obvious and enormous cost.

There is a cost to conducting irrational practices in the marketplace (racism, sexism in hiring and in customer discrimination are the examples we are concerned with in this discussion). For example, bus companies wanted to give equal treatment to Blacks during the era of segregation in the U.S., as Black Americans were their biggest customers. They were forced to conduct costly (in opportunity), racist practices in order to comply with government segregation laws. Most people simply are not willing to pay the cost if they are racist, but I also think that most people aren't racist.

If we look at Asian Americans and Irish Americans who's ancestors also experienced severe discrimination, as well as Irish in the UK who's ancestors experienced slavery, we find they don't have the same problems Black Americans face. Blacks immigrants do better on average than their American counterparts. It is clear it is not discrimination at the employer which is the problem. It is a culture of victimization that has been built around them by liberals attempting to "help" them through horrendous government policies--most notably education that amounts to nothing and subsidies of bad behavior--which has lead to alarming rates of single parenthood (usually mothers) which has destroyed the future of these young children. It really needs to stop.

u/LiberalAuthoritarian · 2 pointsr/Austin

This got a bit long, but I'm a bit passionate about the issue and it frustrates me that the very people who lament a problem are enabling it because they think they are being "good" and "nice" even though it causes more problems than it could fix.

Sorry, that's simply wrong. You should try to read the FBI's uniform crime statistics. You have no idea just how wrong you are. Just take a look, you'll find out that you have been made a fool all this time and have been eating that propaganda up hook, line, and sinker. All you have to do is look at the stats for things you really can't honestly believe can contain any real discrimination like violent assaults, murders, rape, robbery, burglary, etc. It's not like cops are going to say "oh, he's one of those white males we like to treat better. Carry on with your raping and robbing, white male. We don't see any problems here."

Don't worry. I don't judge you. Just have an open mind and be willing to accept reality. As someone who used to be on the center left and was part of both the '08 Clinton and Obama campaigns, I can tell you shit is really not what you've been led to believe even if it is done with good intent. But you know what is said about good intent, right? It paves the bleeding heart soaked path to hell.

You have to also try to remove that chip on your shoulder you were given to immediately knee-jerk to an assumption that reality will be used to justify racism. It's really the left that assumes racism that is making these topics racist and about race and perpetuating the racial divide that does not need to exist if we just solve the problems. It is actually quite thoroughly paternalistically racist to, e.g., say that we need different usually lower standards for blacks than other "races". Why don't blacks deserve to be measured by the same standards that are then not subject to diminishing their achievement? Why do we need to have lower standards for blacks that then leads to lower outcomes that then only contributes to negative and poor perceptions of blacks? It's the deepest kind of racism that really even still exists and liberals don't even know how to realize it, let alone comprehend it.

My perspective is that people on the left are doing exponentially more harm acting and lying to themselves and the world by ignoring, covering up, and just plain lying about reality. You simply cannot fix or change something you aren't even willing to be honest or truthful about acknowledging. It's like I'm dealing with a world or hoarders. Have you ever seen that show? Where the hoarder is like "What, I'm collecting take out food containers with samples of their fine cuisine in its natural setting and really really really like a lot of cats. This is perfectly fine!" and you are just watching it like. O__O

As long as the left wants to coddle, make excuses, and enable nothing will ever get solved just the way it has not been solved over decades now. But I guess when you just want a subset of dependent blacks you really don't have an interest in providing them the dignity of equal standards and expectations. Because just as the benevolent racists of yesteryear, blacks need to be helped, right? It causes so much damage and across generations.

Many problems in our country that liberals lament could have been solved if self-righteous, selfish liberals would simply stop trying to help all just so they can feel good about themselves. The black community has every right to be held to the same standards and expectations that you are held to, those include not ignoring or rationalizing away the reality that the black community has a crime problem that can only be solved if responsibility is accepted ... and not just blame some bullshit about cops arresting more blacks ... PRECISELY because the black community has a crime and violence problem you simply want to ignore and sweep under the rug.