The Gaming Den

Crissa wrote:It's irrelevant to the topic, though. Even if conditions were better, you'd need to have more jobs than people to have a relevant choice for workers.

However, Capitalism crashes if that happens. Just like it crashes when there isn't a healthy middle class to consume its creations.

-Crissa

Ignoring for a moment your bile-filled, if nonsensical and completely false, dig on capitalism, your comment about jobs is literally incoherent. You're starting by only recognizing as jobs those which people currently are performing, and then you're surprised that there are fewer jobs by your definition than people. There are more jobs than there are people. You just don't know about them because they pay less and so people choose not to do them.

Gelare wrote:You're starting by only recognizing as jobs those which people currently are performing, and then you're surprised that there are fewer jobs by your definition than people. There are more jobs than there are people. You just don't know about them because they pay less and so people choose not to do them.

That' bullshit. We're in a liquidity trap. Paradox of Thrift and all that. There really are not as many jobs a people. Because people would rather save money than hire people to make thing they couldn't sell anyway.

The analysis that it is somehow the fault of the unemployed that they do not have jobs because their standards are too high is, in addition to being monstrous, also wrong. Unemployment happens because investors are whiny little bitches and the government is too nutless to take up the investment slack.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:That' bullshit. We're in a liquidity trap. Paradox of Thrift and all that. There really are not as many jobs a people. Because people would rather save money than hire people to make thing they couldn't sell anyway.

Um, okay, well, you're wrong for all the same reasons Crissa is (and some bonus ones), but just playing along for the moment, if you're identifying what is a job based on the fact that someone is actually doing it, in what circumstances would you be able to identify that there are more jobs than people, such that Crissa can have her all-important "relevant choice for workers"?

(Note: Answering that everyone can work two jobs is trivial, but wrong, insofar as it doesn't provide any more "relevant choice" for Crissa's purposes than mushing any given person's two jobs together and calling them one. Try again.)

At the point where there is labor market competition for jobs and capital competition for labor the economy is an equilibrium of "full employment." The US is at full employment at about an Unemployment Rate of 4%. We haven't been there since the late nineties. When the unemployment rate is substantially higher than that, people have the "take it or leave it" choice (if they even have that), and that's not a free market - that's coercive labor.

Capitalism is capable of creating full employment. It's just not capable of sustaining that for very long without substantial socialist intervention. And while lowering wages in one area is capable of - to a limited extent - inciting investors to leave other areas to go to that area; it's blatantly obvious that other cost barriers and even simple uncertainty can have a larger effect. That's why people in Somalia or Alaskan islands don't have jobs no matter how much or little they are willing to work for.

So when you have a period of economic uncertainty, investors don't want to go invest anywhere. And as such, removing minimum wage protections would not lure in investment. Pessimism about whether produced widgets can be sold has exactly the same effect as pessimism about whether Somali pirates will ransack the factory. In either case, people can be willing to work for a dollar a day and the factory will not get built for them to work at.

-Username17

TavishArtair wrote:I really, really can't give a damn about whether Michael Moore was called "Master." I will grant that the culture is misogynistic, however, Exceeding Ridiculous Politeness To The Point Of Subservience to customers is pretty much par for the course in Japan. "Honorable person" is a pretty typical thing to call a customer, though it is admittedly not ご主人さま.

Tavish--

You can't arbitrarily separate problems of retail and corporate culture from problems of gender role. In point of fact, if we had a gender-egalitarian society I would not really even give much of a crap about the politeness issue, because it really would be just a role like an acting job you could take off at the end of the day with no worries. There were a lot of things I hated about working at the pizza joint, but being deferential to customers wasn't one of them. I like entertaining/pleasing people, I enjoy acting, and I'm pretty secure in my high status in the rest of my life.

However, gender is unavoidably entangled in the retail issue. Many customer service jobs, and especially the akihabara positions we're talking about, are gendered "feminine." Take a look at the checkout girls at your local supermarket, department store, or whatever and you'll notice... that they're girls. Overwhelmingly. It's not just a matter of self-selection, either. Believe me, I've applied for cashier positions in the states and been met with sheer disbelief.

That's because having a woman, preferably young, pretty one, make a show of her subservience to you is actually part of what you're paying for when you make a run to your drugstore, supermarket, or hardware store. Even in the states.

I went shopping for Toys For Tots at a local Toys R' Us a few days ago, and I found the girl's toys section utterly horrifying. Nothing but baby dolls, fake kitchens, and freakish Barbie dolls. Disgusting.

Ganbare Gincun wrote:I went shopping for Toys For Tots at a local Toys R' Us a few days ago, and I found the girl's toys section utterly horrifying. Nothing but baby dolls, fake kitchens, and freakish Barbie dolls. Disgusting.

And the boy's section is nothing but violent action figures, fake construction equipment/guns and cars.

Your point?

Prak_Anima wrote:

Ganbare Gincun wrote:I went shopping for Toys For Tots at a local Toys R' Us a few days ago, and I found the girl's toys section utterly horrifying. Nothing but baby dolls, fake kitchens, and freakish Barbie dolls. Disgusting.

And the boy's section is nothing but violent action figures, fake construction equipment/guns and cars.

Your point?

My point is: we give really screwed up toys to our kids that tend to reinforce very negative ideas about gender roles to children here in America. And for a country that has supposedly been all but completely overrun by "the evil elitist intellectual libruls", I was expecting to see some toys for girls (and boys) that didn't reinforce these ideas. But alas, I was wrong.

Hey guys, sorry I missed the global warming boat, but I have a question:

I hear all these statistics and targets from scientists that say things like we'll have to reduce worldwide carbon emissions by 90% by 2012 and even then temperatures will still rise enough that Antarctica will vanish and the world will resemble the biblical flood. Now, I'm gonna tell you, we are not going to achieve that kind of reduction in that time scale. It's not that we couldn't, it's that we won't. Fact. So assuming I don't want to have to swim around the streets of Manhattan, what things can we actually do to make the situation better?

Yeah, here in Australia it's the same: Barbies (and Bratz and similar), baby dolls and "Learn your role as a woman!" stuff for girls, cars/trucks and violent stuff for boys.

Though they do have some gender-neutral stuff in the creative section, like those bead things that synthesised into Roofies if eaten, and similar stuff. Both varieties of child tend to like them. Though I suppose it depends on how creative they are - my youngest sister loves all creative stuff.

Thing is, it's not like there's a Gender Role police that guards the boundry between dolls and guns. If a little girl wants to play with trucks and nerf guns, there's nothing stopping her* from picking up a nerf gun and shooting pricks in the head with plastic and foam darts. If a boy wants to play with dolls, there's nothing stopping him* from picking up a barbie



*aside from society, of course, but we're not talking about society, we're talking about toy store segregation. Obviously the little girl is going to be ostracized by kindergarten bitches who are all hyper obsessed with fashion and barbie, and the little boy is going to get the shit kicked out of him.

But that's a problem with society, not toy store organization.

Prak_Anima wrote:But that's a problem with society, not toy store organization.

You say that as though they don't feed off eachother.

IGTN wrote:

Prak_Anima wrote:But that's a problem with society, not toy store organization.

You say that as though they don't feed off eachother.

Ok, good point.

My son loves silky fabric (he has a "scarf" that's a piece of black satin with a metallic oil-slick looking finish that he wears around all the time), wearing my lipstick, and adorning himself with my jewelry.

I understand why - he likes imitating his parents, and I spend a lot of time sewing, making cosmetics, and designing jewelry - and I certainly don't intend to tell him that it's not something little boys "are supposed to" do.

Gelare wrote:Hey guys, sorry I missed the global warming boat, but I have a question:

I hear all these statistics and targets from scientists that say things like we'll have to reduce worldwide carbon emissions by 90% by 2012 and even then temperatures will still rise enough that Antarctica will vanish and the world will resemble the biblical flood. Now, I'm gonna tell you, we are not going to achieve that kind of reduction in that time scale. It's not that we couldn't, it's that we won't. Fact. So assuming I don't want to have to swim around the streets of Manhattan, what things can we actually do to make the situation better?

There is probably nothing we can do to keep the waters from rising, Florida from shrinking to a tiny stub, and much of the world's farmland from turning into desert. The question is the timescale involved.

Every reduction in emissions that we make extends the time frame that those changes ill take place in. If we extend it long enough, new generations of plants will extend themselves into newly thawed and moistened areas and we can have some topsoil in newly arable land. We can possibly have the more acid resistant plankton grow out to replace the less acid resistant plankton that will die off. And so on.

In the fullness of time, Antarctica will melt and its mountains will revert once again to bare rock. The question is whether this will take long enough for the planet and us to adapt.

That's why I get so frustrated when people say "Don't bother with emissions, just adapt to the new temperatures!" Because reducing emissions is a necessary portion of adapting. If the arming took a million years, it wouldn't be a problem. If it took 20,000 years it would cause huge dieoffs but be basically OK. But if it goes down in a hundred years? We might lose "trees" or something equally stupid.

-Username17

Prak_Anima wrote:Thing is, it's not like there's a Gender Role police that guards the boundry between dolls and guns. If a little girl wants to play with trucks and nerf guns, there's nothing stopping her* from picking up a nerf gun and shooting pricks in the head with plastic and foam darts. If a boy wants to play with dolls, there's nothing stopping him* from picking up a barbie

Dude, the fact that the "boy's" toys are separate from the "girl's" toys is stopping them. If a girl sees something labeled as "for boys" she'll think she's not supposed to play with it, even if she wants to.

I mean seriously, you might as well have said "aside from everything stopping her, there's nothing stopping her" with that post.

FrankTrollman wrote: There is probably nothing we can do to keep the waters from rising, Florida from shrinking to a tiny stub,

At least there's an upside then.

Cielingcat wrote:

Prak_Anima wrote:Thing is, it's not like there's a Gender Role police that guards the boundry between dolls and guns. If a little girl wants to play with trucks and nerf guns, there's nothing stopping her* from picking up a nerf gun and shooting pricks in the head with plastic and foam darts. If a boy wants to play with dolls, there's nothing stopping him* from picking up a barbie

Dude, the fact that the "boy's" toys are separate from the "girl's" toys is stopping them. If a girl sees something labeled as "for boys" she'll think she's not supposed to play with it, even if she wants to.

I mean seriously, you might as well have said "aside from everything stopping her, there's nothing stopping her" with that post.

which is still a societal thing. Putting dolls in one section, toy cars in another, and toy weapons in a third is a logical organization scheme (though in a non-gender role view, action figures would likely be put with dolls.)

Prak_Anima wrote:Thing is, it's not like there's a Gender Role police that guards the boundry between dolls and guns.

There really fucking is, and it pissed me the hell off. They may not have an official badge, but you'll find them walking every street. And their toughest enforcers aren't men, yet they all work for the patriarchy.

Especially since the Walmartization of the US has reduced the number of breadth of toy stores to a small fraction of what it was twenty years ago, so there are very few people invested in making toys accessible to both boys and girls.

-Crissa

Excuse the double post...

...But there's some awesome technology for carbon-sequestering which will really push what we can do for the atmosphere. So in a hundred years, we may be able to reverse the CO2 rise in the atmosphere and change the sea levels.

Some of it is pretty hokey, but it's really plausible (not to mention possible) to just take carbon out of the atmosphere and stick it into the ground (artificial trees) or make new goods with it (algal farms).

They're doing it now. We just need to get off our butts and put more money down on fixing the planet than we are at telling children not to have sex or to kill each other.

-Crissa

Prak_Anima wrote:
which is still a societal thing. Putting dolls in one section, toy cars in another, and toy weapons in a third is a logical organization scheme (though in a non-gender role view, action figures would likely be put with dolls.)

What's... what's your point? That society and culture are the ones to blame here, not... society and culture? Seriously wtf are you even trying to say?

Cielingcat wrote:

Prak_Anima wrote:
which is still a societal thing. Putting dolls in one section, toy cars in another, and toy weapons in a third is a logical organization scheme (though in a non-gender role view, action figures would likely be put with dolls.)

What's... what's your point? That society and culture are the ones to blame here, not... society and culture? Seriously wtf are you even trying to say?

honestly I'm not even sure anymore...

On the whole boys vs girls scheme here: What is anyone trying to say exactly other than "gender roles exist and we tend to promote them"?

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what we're trying to say, because Prak didn't seem to get that.

Koumei wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote: There is probably nothing we can do to keep the waters from rising, Florida from shrinking to a tiny stub,

At least there's an upside then.

Fuck you, kangaroo.