I haven't watched that video yet. I might not agree with everything he says, but he definitely makes more sense than some of the far-left radicals. Matt Walsh is another person on the right who talks a lot of sense.
This Matt Walsh..?
https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1549713211188027394The person X is bad, so all of what they say is wrong, mob mentality of many people nowadays is grating. You do know it's possible to agree with someone on one thing, even if you strongly disagree or even despise some of their other views. I think many people forget that.
Not repeating the other thread here, but expanding on some related thoughts.
Sure, they could be forgiven, if these were one-off cases. Everyone has days when their communication just doesn't land. That happens.
Like, I don't know if the above is a one-off. But a glance at what's on top of the account looks pretty par-for-the-course among right-wingers.
It's when they double and triple down on it, dig in deeper, and associate with other groups of negative impact -- and at an age well past obvious ability/intent to better themselves? Nah, it's intentional, willful, and evil. At best it's ignorance, but again given the age, there's no evidence it can be fixed; the next best then is stupidity. (And for those clever enough -- like Peterson or Shapiro -- I doubt it's stupidity.)
And what we're really missing, then, is why.
Evil almost never exists for its own sake.
Almost always, it's money. If we saw who's giving these people money for speaking engagements, interviews, books... and we saw what else they're financing, and who's financing them, and how that fits into the overall picture -- *gestures vaguely at all the stupid and criminal shit happening at high ranks everywhere* -- a very different picture would be painted about them, and their position on, and role in, all these bad things happening. Of course, most of these flows are, very intently, kept quiet, whether by lobbied-for laws (e.g. PACs), or through private persons/groups (including laundering thereof, e.g.
Political Donor Sentenced to 12 Years ...). Whether or not individual actors in these webs realize it -- or if you choose to accept this as motivation for disregarding those individuals -- they have a hand in the decline of democracy. Which is after all, the right's preferred modus operandi -- ignorance at all levels, plausible deniability, keep the money flowing, don't ask questions (or ""do your own research"").
A better framing of your point might go something more like: "not everything that's touched by evil money, is evil in turn". I certainly agree with that: "evil" (and here I'm using "evil" in a broad, informal sense, as relates to the previous paragraphs) needs many goods and services that everyone else needs; indeed, those expenditures are arguably a moral good (if very mildly so), as they are direct costs, without specifically advancing any goals. It's the web of relationships, and finances, that does advance their goals, that is problematic.
Which is also the fundamental reason corruption must be entrenched to survive -- it must also be inseparable. You can't just cut it out, without killing off much more of the economy. US defense spending, for example -- even by fairly right-wing standards, I think? -- is notoriously bloated. It's intentionally divvied up into as many contractors and districts as possible, to make it benefit the most local economies. Whether or not the incremental value of that budget is justified (which, when even the Pentagon itself says
it wastes that money -- most right-libertarians I think might agree that it isn't justified), let alone if you want to include any other related, secondary, knock-on/extenuating, or left-leaning costs (like the continued destabilization of the middle-east (and various other countries around the world); or the military's vast consumption of fossil fuels; or the abuse, destruction and death of civilians in affected areas, let alone combatants, let alone in their own ranks, e.g. see rates of female suicide, and probable rape/murder in the military) -- it's a terribly expensive converter of money into human misery, for a minor gain at home. Yet we allow it to continue, because it gives us token jobs making humvees and missiles, etc.
Just to emphasize, I mean the budget being far in excess of what an efficient, responsible,
auditable military service would be, of essentially identical international impact. So, completely aside from any knock-on costs, like whether that impact is really something we want to have.
We could get rid of that waste, but it would require airing out a tremendously deep and tangled web of corruption, and that just isn't going to happen at this time. (It must happen. We need to push for change. But it's not going to happen just sitting around, I mean.)
And that's just one, more prominent example; the same repeats all over. Any project big enough to be of notional public good, is going to have enough graft attached to it to make it worthwhile for all the politicians, investors, contractors, etc. who have a stake in keeping things the way they are: they have a vested interest keeping things expensive for the average person. Keeping housing scarce. Keeping automobiles mandatory to get to work, the store, the doctor. Keeping work mandatory to survive.
Even on the smallest level, you have your bills with all the hidden costs. Sure there's the service, oh but there's a wiring fee, and a service fee, and a utility tax, and a sales tax. Your bill is now twice what we sold you, how would you like to pay, thank you and have a nice day!
We can't even put taxes on our grocery store labels, for god's sake.
And it's the little things that we accept, that condition us to also accept the big ones.
Anyway, in summary -- all these tangled webs of corruption, the major political pundits are very much active participants of that web, and we can hold them accountable as such.
I can't expect you to be aware of how much history I have seen, with respect to a given person [who you may complain I'm being unfair with], nor of how I've seen traits, they're exhibiting, that very much justify disregarding them.
Likewise, you shouldn't expect that I'm disregarding the majority of points [among some, or many, of which, you may still agree! so it looks very unfair indeed to you!], that someone makes, when I do not, in fact, blanket disregard them -- more that they are wrong far more often than they are right, and therefore
it is of negative value to me to sift through their points, critique and debunk their claims, let alone, say, categorize and summarize all of these in a neat format for anyone else to review.
Would you employ someone who votes for a politician or disagrees with you on something, even though they might be the best person for the role? If not, why not?
Going from our discussions on other threads, it appears you disagree with me on many things, yet I thing you're one of the best engineers here. The fact you might be on a different part of the political spectrum than me wouldn't put me off working with you, just as long as we can agree to disagree and keep politics out of work.
It must sound utterly bizarre to you,
![Tongue :P](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xtongue.gif.pagespeed.ic.J5mTe0A2NA.png)
but some believe there are other costs to be considered, besides the most direct and visible flows.
First, let's be careful -- "best", I'm going to assume this means purely in technical terms? As opposed to an overall business decision, on hiring that individual (or plural, as the case may be -- one person might even be substituted with several)?
- Do I need the absolute best person for the role? Will they demand a higher salary than the business can handle? -- or more to the point, will that maximize my profit?
Since we are ultimately working within a capitalist system here, I must disregard, to some extent, the conditions of my workers: negotiating against them for least salary/benefits, force them to work unpaid overtime away from their personal time, or families, etc. If I don't, someone else will, they'll secure a profitability edge, gain more capital, and out-compete me. It's not my choice, it's the system we operate in. Stick a point in this, but take it for granted at the moment.
Or, flip it around: I'm certainly among the technically-best for a lot of EE jobs. I've also priced myself out of many bids. That has many explanations of course; not least of which, maybe I'd just not explained myself well enough to convince them. But it's happened more than often enough to expect that many of those were simply declined by budget.
And my not being tied to cheaper, more common tasks (which, presumably, I could do more of / faster than others -- granted, whether or not I can convince clients of such, and actually pull that off in practice, are other matters!), means I have time to commit to more advanced and lucrative tasks -- like, instead of those bids I missed, I won a niche induction heating project earlier this year -- which has been profitable for me, and the client says they were "lucky to find [someone with induction heating experience]". There you go.
So, cost serves here as a sorting mechanism, for instance. A price is crude, and depends on many other variables still (not least of which, regional differences for example), but generally a "good enough" employee will be more practical for a given task.
So, there's reason to choose less technically competent individual(s). Business doesn't need "the best", it needs "good enough". Mediocrity is the norm (as you have no doubt noticed!!).
So that defeats the "[technical] best" point. But maybe that was a straw-man and this was redundant (which is fine, again, communication is hard).
Second: how might I handle the described situation (hiring someone politically highly divergent)?
There are many:
- I could reject for the above reasons, certainly. That's explained, so, aside.
- Perhaps they themselves decline after the in-person interview. Say I have a lot of visibly LGBTQ+ employees, and visible postings of colorful banners, and they "didn't feel comfortable" in such a space (not that most would say so out loud, but that might be their internal reason).
- What if I'm a PoC, or woman, or trans, and I see them drive up in a truck with a confederate flag, or "lets go brandon" or "fuck your feelings" or "life begins at conception" sticker, or something else similarly problematic? Or they have problematic tattoos (e.g. swastika) [and don't immediately make light of having changed their ways, just not having had time/budget to cover or remove them*]?
*Which, that's lit AF. Expensing that shit right away. Improve yourself, disregard hate, embrace love. Easiest non-strictly-business-related cost I'd approve.
If they get hired, but later show various kinds of warning signs, what then?
- I could choose to post banners such as above (if not already present). Is that a bad idea, does it constitute escalation, would it make things worse before they get better? (I, personally, probably wouldn't. I'm a coward, honestly. I don't like in-person confrontation. Sucks, but I'm honest enough with myself to know this. I also don't particularly feel a need to control employees -- but also don't have a business need to hire any -- so I don't have any besides myself right now. So, this is all hypothetical, and best-intent.)
- I could make it clear that some fraction of our profits is donated to beneficial causes (ACLU, women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, progressive PACs, etc.). Emphasizing how each employee's value-creation is distributed accordingly ("$X of profits you generated, were distributed to these helpful causes:"), so it doesn't just feel like a slush fund. (Perception is everything.) Mind, they can fight back in kind, if they like -- donating some of their income to counter causes -- but that also reduces their income, and presumably, my share of their value (profit) is larger than their discretionary budget -- another strong reason why capital must keep worker incomes down: to further their own goals (industry reps / lobbying, etc.).
Indeed, this happens at some corps with donation-matching policies; it's still not much (it's at the employee's expense), but with the match, it's that little bit more effective, and anything to help dilute the influence of megacorps and etc.
Anyway, if such an employee is okay with helping, well, they must not actually be all that concerned about it. Or they're rather ignorant about how their personal alignments ultimately, if ever so incrementally, affect the people around them. Which, see earlier point: mediocrity. I've met plenty of engineers/technicians who, I assume (or know, in a few cases), made more annual income than I typically do, but who aren't particularly good at their jobs. Again---price is only a crude indicator of quality. And then, consider that there are plenty of other things to be ignorant about, besides ones' direct profession. I've seen little evidence that cleverness in one area, automatically generalizes to cleverness in other areas.
I mean FFS, there's plenty of things I've been ignorant about throughout my life, and if I think a bit, I can probably pull up a few more that I still am. But you'll understand, I'm not going to list examples here...
Never underestimate a human's ability to compartmentalize thoughts, whether by natural process (or lack thereof, as the case may be), or willful action (i.e., paid to)!
Anyway [again], maybe such a situation would resolve with positive change; maybe with construction of an HR file, and eventual dismissal for-cause. Hopefully it wouldn't escalate to harassment or other such traumatic events, but that is unfortunately the system we work in (reactionary).
And like, there's plenty of examples of, say, Jan. 6 rioters getting identified, and fired. And also prosecuted. That's a very right-wing-relevant example, and a good enough cause for business reasons. (You'll notice the lack of rainbow flags at that particular event...)
And, I personally, can also make conscious decisions about what employers I choose to work for, or suppliers I do business with. I could probably have doubled (or more?) my net worth if I went to work for Raytheon, for example. I got... so many recruiter messages about them (at least, hmm when was it, maybe 2018ish? they've mostly stopped nowadays, it seems). I have no doubt the pay would've been excellent, and the work interesting (in and of itself, mind; the office politics, probably shite, par for the course?). But then I'd have to know the designs I'm making are used to oppress or kill people I don't even know, let alone that have done anything against the country, or me personally. Fuck that.
Tim