Non-news roundup

[livingbyfiction]

News is boring.  Here are some think-y pieces.

1. An atheist proposes that what Africa needs is Christianity.

2. Someone has written down what I think of Malcolm Gladwell.

3. Some idiot has tallied up the dollars and cents of the lives of the elite and entitled and asserted without a shred of irony that $500,000 isn't much to live on in New York.

4.

Comments

[barilosopher]

I think you're wrong about the NYT Style piece. I think it's written with a healthy dose of irony.

[livingbyfiction]

Perhaps you read it as ironic because, being a normal person, you can't imagine people who think that way, and thus this article must be ironic.

I, however, spend 8-16 hours a day with people who actually do spend those sums of money (and think Candace Bushnell is a realistic spokesperson about NYC life, too). Right now about 90% of the people I know who have children have a live-in nanny. There's been an active argument in the legal blogosphere about whether $1000/month is a reasonable food budget for a single person in New York, and whether a salary cut from $210,000 to $185,000 is going to make people unable to repay their student loans.

So I can see how this might be a journalist exposing executive lifestyles with ironic distance, but my first thought was that it was another idiot from the legal blog.

Some comments

[kevito666]

2. The critique of Gladwell is quite scathing and difficult to refute. Isaac makes many good points against him. I'll admit I don't know too much about him myself, although I've been recommended to read one of his books. After browsing just a few pages (including the back cover and chapter titles) I lost interest very quick. The review confirmed my suspicions. He's just clearly a guy who loves to have people read what he writes, as non-insightful and illogical as it may be. Aren't we all born inherently flawlessly rational? Clearly every person should buy his books and benefit from his theories since we all have the innate ability to appreciate how great they are

Re: Some comments

[livingbyfiction]

I've actually never opened a Malcolm Gladwell book. The synopses from the reviews (including the laudatory reviews) indicate Yet Another New Yorker Fathead. I'm grateful to Isaac for trudging through the book so I can shoot people down at cocktail parties.

Re: Some comments

[kevito666]

I found his book to be garbage from the start. Getting through less than a dozen pages is pretty bad, because I tend to look very hard for any possible hint that it might get better. It is nice that someone has gone ahead and put together a solid argument that confirms it. It's a bonus that so many of Isaac's points could be worked into cocktail discussions. For some reason he seems like a guy who would use a Macintosh computer.

Re: Some comments

[livingbyfiction]

Also, on #3, I think it's a false assumption that CEOs have to be paid massive amounts of money. Japanese CEOs, for example, are paid in massive amounts of respect. They only make about 10x the company average, while American CEOs are somewhere in the 300x neighborhood. But when a Japanese head honcho walks into a room, the tide of people leaping to their feet creates a gust of wind.

This may be Japanese exceptionalism. Japanese culture is quite unique. However, since mega-money is really about status, and status is what every alpha-male craves, I suspect that the multi-millions are not strictly necessary.

Look at what we pay Congressmen, for example.

Plus, maybe we want people who work just because they enjoy the challenge and satisfaction of a job well done. The best people often do that. We aren't all rational choice theorists.

[froggandie]

Re: #4, this is my constant argument, but everytime I rant about the fact that there are about 6 women in my Investments class, I get (from smart women), "It's not b/c I'm a woman . . . I just don't care about money" or similar related nonsense.

It's not about loving $. It's about managing risk, and every study ever has shown women can do this quite well.

[livingbyfiction]

I'll say it again, women are the biggest obstacle to feminism.

#4 is also interesting because the argument is that we should promote women for the collective good of the firm, not for the individual good of the woman executive. This was the crux of the affirmative action argument that won. Basically, "We are not acting on this person's skin color as an apology for slavery or racism. We want black people in our classrooms because a diverse classroom has more interesting discussion. Very selfishly for the good of our law school, we want black people." On an individual basis, race-based affirmative action fails because an economic test would clearly be more fair. On a collective basis, however, it maximizes utility.

There's a massive amount of opposition to affirmative action because Americans are trained to see the world in terms of individuals. What an American will see if preferences are given to women is that unfairness has occurred on an individual level. The accompanying collective good of improved risk management just

[froggandie]

I think I found the article you referenced @ the bottom of your entry . . . linked in on Facebook. Interesting--I hadn't seen it before. The usual argument is that the religious and stupid will inherit the earth, but I like the extension of that to patriarchy

[froggandie]

P.S. I forwarded #1 to my friend from Mozambique, and he's still ranting about it . . .

But, he consults for a Methodist charity that does work there, so not sure how he'd reconcile that as being more sympathetic . . .