Just curious to see what everyone's position is on Affirmative Action. As of now I'm for it, partly because I have to participate in a debate on the very topic for my "Critical Thinking" class, and my "team" is on the pro side.

Discuss.

Oh, side note; I'm just trying to get you folks to do my work for me, I'm genuneinly curious what you think.

Oh, this just came to me. I can actually use your responses as something to consider that the other side might say during the debate. So with that in mind, yes I am using you to do part of my work. But that task cannot accomplished any other way. Maybe it can, who cares, The End.

affirmative action and quotas are racist. Thats all I will say as I do not wish to help prepare you for your counter point.

Theoretically I think it's not crap, in the sense that I hate the fact that certain classes get opportunities that other classes don't get.

Practically, I recognize that "affirmative action" programs are generally like medications for the common cold in that they might help make the illness a little bit less noticeable, but they do nothing to solve the problem that begets the need for affirmative action. I see the problem as an economic one: it isn't difficult to figure out that those with the economic resources are gonna tend to get the good educations and job opportunities and public services, regarldess of how many government programs are mandated to ensure that everybody gets a "fair" shot.

As a perfect example of this, I just read in th L.A. Times today that a professor at UCLA Law School has just published a study whose results indicate that law school affirmative action programs tend to hurt minority students, by encouraging those students to go to more prestigious (i.e. harder) schools, where they almost inevitably fall behind and then drop out, most of them having at least $10,000 of debt with nothing to show for it at that point. I read this and thought, "Well, duh." Most of those people got nothing but the most crap education from kindergarten on up, going to schools like Crenshaw High, where the dropout rate hovers somewhere around 0% (or at least it did a few years ago when I paid attention to such things). There classmates at law schools like UCLA, Boalt Hall, and Stanford, mostly went to private schools throughout, had access to tutors and all that good stuff. Oh, and many of those upper crust classmates had two parents. Big surprise that affirmative action at the law school level doesn't work...

Of course, the "busing" type of primary school affirmative action historically had poor results as well, and understandably so. Just think how disorienting it must have been to be a lower middle class black kid bused across town to some upper middle class white school. And imagine how nice you, some white kid at that school, probably knowing no better, would be to that girl. Not a good environment to get educated.

And affirmativ action has been problematic in the professional world, for much the same reasons. I think that the subtext of all of this, though, is that we are all taught early on that we are in competition, and we tend to compete more fiercely with those for whom we have less affinity. Since people tend not to cross class lines, they tend to compete more fiercely across class lines. And since the basic tool for competition in America is the dollar, those who start out the game with more dollars are going to have a significant edge in the competition. This is "theory" only insofar as one doesn't open one's eyes, as far as I'm concerned.

So the real affirmative action would level the playing field. For what it's worth, I think the five best forms of "affirmative action" that could be introduced into the United States are:

1. 100% estate tax and elimination of legal protection for trusts.
2. Elimination of protection for trademarks (before all of you "intellectual property" people get on my case, notice that I just said trademarks, not patents and copyrights).
3. Elimination of barriers against personal liability for shareholders of corporations that commit torts (for all of you capitalists, note that I'm only talking about tort claims, not contractual claims).
4. A true progressive income tax.
5. A ban on inherently regressive sales taxes.

joshsolberg wrote:1. 100% estate tax and elimination of legal protection for trusts.
2. Elimination of protection for trademarks (before all of you "intellectual property" people get on my case, notice that I just said trademarks, not patents and copyrights).
3. Elimination of barriers against personal liability for shareholders of corporations that commit torts (for all of you capitalists, note that I'm only talking about tort claims -- not contractual claims).
4. A true progressive income tax.
5. A ban on inherently regressive sales taxes.

Hey! I'm on board with all of these ideas!

Except number 2! This is a crazy and dangerous idea! To eliminate the trademark? This is a crazy thing! Josh Solberg, my internet acquaintance of Los Angeles lawyering, you are A VERY CRAZY MAN!!!

The trademark is the sole source identifier of goods and services! This is how you know that the thing is the thing! Do you say that any guy can now make the Coca-Cola soda pop? The Honda automobile? The Slint record?

Or, to make it more fungible, any guy can make the Morton salt, the Bayer aspirin, the Robitussin coughing medicines or the Gillette razor blades?

Any guy can make the crazy bad razor blade and call her the Gillette razor blade? Any guy can make the crazy bad rifle and call her the Remington? This is so crazy! There will be no "quality standard"! So many people will be "fooled" by the mislabled goods! And the market will be filled with so much extra waste!

And the people, they will be hurt by the defective goods!

This is SO CRAZY! This is like for you to say, "Hey, to look at me, for I will flap my man arms and fly to the moon today!" So crazy.

Hey, recent legal scholoarship, she suggests maybe to eliminate the copyright. Maybe this argument, she has some merit! I think not, but I can follow the logic of the crazy guy who said this thing! Plus, "Steamboat Willie", he does not need 1000 years of the copyright protections!

And maybe patents are so crazy nowadays, they are only accumulated by major corporations to provide for "mutually assured destruction"! This is a phrase! I hear it! I hear it across the hall! The other guy will not sue you if you have large patent portfolio! Because you will sue him! Because every company in an industry, they infringe each other's patents EVERYDAY! So, the patent lawsuit, she is no good! And is expensive to sue and be sued! And no fun!

But to eliminate the trademark? It would be safer to eliminate hospitals!

I am not kidding!

joshsolberg wrote:1. 100% estate tax and elimination of legal protection for trusts.

So, that means that if my dad were to die and leave me $500 worth of fishing gear, my taxable income would go up $500? If so, what the hell is the point of that? If not, how is that a 100% tax?

joshsolberg wrote:4. A true progressive income tax.
5. A ban on inherently regressive sales taxes.

I think both of these ideas are inherently unfair just as I feel affirmative action is unfair. In their attempts to create fairness (well, impose socialism) to remedy a perceived unfairness in society, they swing the pendulum the other way - almost always too far. I have yet to hear a compelling justification for a "progressive" (i.e. "soak the rich") income tax system. I can only assume that a "truly progressive" income tax system is a "further soak the rich" venture. I'm not rich, but I like to think that I might be one day and that I wouldn't be penalized by having to give up a greater percentage of my income. [NOTE: For those of you penning angry responses to this post, let me get you started by offering that you could liken that last statement to white Southerners in the Civil War who were pro-slavery not because they actually owned slaves, but that they aspired to one day.]

I'd like to see no income tax, a bigger sales tax (with some classes of goods - groceries and medicine come to mind - exempted), and a fat capital gains tax. I think that would encourage hard work (no income tax) in addition to reapgin bigger tax rewards from the one class of people that everyone assailing "the rich" is usually talking about - the people whose only job seems to be flying around the world spending insane amounts of money and sitting on huge investment portfolios. And I guess if you wanted to have an estate tax on estates over $1 million, that's probably a good idea, too, but normal people should be able to pass down some money/property/toys to their kids without penalty.

And, granted, this system may suck just as hard as the current one, but I'd at least like to see it tried during my lifetime. Failing that, a nice computer model on the Discovery Channel might suffice.

Dan

Hey! I'm on board with all of these ideas!

Except number 2! This is a crazy and dangerous idea! To eliminate the trademark? This is a crazy thing! Josh Solberg, my internet acquaintance of Los Angeles lawyering, you are A VERY CRAZY MAN!!!

The trademark is the sole source identifier of goods and services! This is how you know that the thing is the thing! Do you say that any guy can now make the Coca-Cola soda pop? The Honda automobile? The Slint record?

Or, to make it more fungible, any guy can make the Morton salt, the Bayer aspirin, the Robitussin coughing medicines or the Gillette razor blades?

Any guy can make the crazy bad razor blade and call her the Gillette razor blade? Any guy can make the crazy bad rifle and call her the Remington? This is so crazy! There will be no "quality standard"! So many people will be "fooled" by the mislabled goods! And the market will be filled with so much extra waste!

And the people, they will be hurt by the defective goods!

This is SO CRAZY! This is like for you to say, "Hey, to look at me, for I will flap my man arms and fly to the moon today!" So crazy.

Hey, recent legal scholoarship, she suggests maybe to eliminate the copyright. Maybe this argument, she has some merit! I think not, but I can follow the logic of the crazy guy who said this thing! Plus, "Steamboat Willie", he does not need 1000 years of the copyright protections!

And maybe patents are so crazy nowadays, they are only accumulated by major corporations to provide for "mutually assured destruction"! This is a phrase! I hear it! I hear it across the hall! The other guy will not sue you if you have large patent portfolio! Because you will sue him! Because every company in an industry, they infringe each other's patents EVERYDAY! So, the patent lawsuit, she is no good! And is expensive to sue and be sued! And no fun!

But to eliminate the trademark? It would be safer to eliminate hospitals!

I am not kidding!

Here's the idea in a nutshell:

The market economy is s'posed to function so that profits made on the sales of products are used to make subsequent versions of the products better and cheaper (so that more units of the product can be sold). Trademark protection short-circuited this system, by allowing companies to create "brands" so that they could focus resources not on making the products more competitive by decreasing their prices and increasing their quality, but by increasing peoples' desire for the product, as product. Remove trademark protection, then, and the only characteristics remaining by which a consumer can decide whether to purchase a product or not are quality (higher is better) and price (lower is better). So we're back to the way the free market is supposed to function.

So you're right, remove trademark protection, and you allow any yahoo to sell "Coca Cola". For sure, this would create a drastic change in the way products are bought and sold, and, indeed, in the kinds of products bought and sold. For one thing, quite a few products of relatively low value whose appeal depends almost entirely on marketing would disappear. Also, large corporations would need to substantially reorganize. The advertising industry would disappear (as a person who used to work in the industry, I can't think that this is a bad thing).

One of the seemingly most disruptive changes is that consumers would demand that they be able to test or sample the product before purchasing it, every time. But is this really that disruptive? Think of your purchase of music equipment. Do you ever purchase anything, eve something whose brand is known as one of quality, without testing it? Of course you don't: you know that, in the world of music performance and recording, something that might be "good" may not be good for you, regardless (Fender guitars come to mind). When you go to the grocery store, and purchase meat to cook for dinner, do you buy based on the brand of meat, or an inspection of the actual cut? If you buy based on the brand, I'd say you're crazy. There are lots of products that we already purchase based on inspection and testing.

Certainly, there are products for which it seems that we would want to be able to rely on a brand that we've associated with quality. "What if it breaks?" Well, consumer protection laws and the threat of suit would take care of that. "If there are fourteen different manufacturers of cars all called "Ford", how will we know which manufacturer to sue?" Easy, liability extends to the retailer who sold you the product, so sue the retailer, and if the liability is due to a manufacturing defect, the retailer will then implead the manufacturer for contribution of the liability award. Also, if the retailer keeps getting sued because of bunk products from one manufacturer, it will stop purchasing products from that manufacturer. Thus, quality levels are maintained. Also, since consumers will necessarily need to become more savvy about checking for quality, they will, and since they will be purchasing based not on brand, but on quality of manufacture, the overall quality levels will increase.

So that's a nutshell of my great idea. As far as I know, nobody else has proposed it. At least, that's what the intellectual property law professor to whom I first mentioned the idea said (by the way, she initially thought I was crazy, too, but I got her to recognize that she only thought that because the idea was so basic, but also so contrary to our preconceived notions about the world in which we live. As far as I know, my idea is now a topic of discussion in all of her intellectual property law classes). So I may be crazy, or it may be that the world we've created is...
Josh

danmohr wrote:And I guess if you wanted to have an estate tax on estates over $1 million, that's probably a good idea, too, but normal people should be able to pass down some money/property/toys to their kids without penalty.

Dan

Well, "personal items" are exempted from any estate tax anyway, so you would never have to worry about not being able to give your kids your family heirloom-type crap, but otherwise, why should "normal" people be able to give their kids a headstart, when you seem to be in favor of limiting the headstart available to kids of the abnormally wealthy? There's certainly no qualitative difference between the gift of $50,000 worth of savings from a person who made $50,000 / year and the gift of $5,000,000 of estate from the person who made $5,000,000 / year. So what the fuck? Are you just a classist? Seems like it.

As far as your proposal for a higher sales tax that exempts "necessity" items, well, dude, that's just a sloppy way of making a progressive tax: you assume that the poor will spend a higher percentage of their income on necessities, so you exempt the items that would make up most of the tax base of those poor folks. It's sloppy because it's an ass-backwards way of just saying: "Poor folks are exempt. Folks that make from x to 2x give 20%. Those that make above 2x give 40%" Or however you want to nreak it up.

As far as your ability to get rich, you are on the nose when you admit that it is like the po' white trash in the old South arguing in favor of slaves. What you didn't mention is that the slave system, more than anything else, created the situation in which poor white folks in the South could do nothing but get poorer, because they just couldn't get ahead. Same thing here: you keep reaching for that money rainbow, dreaming that once you get that big hit, you're gonna want a nice, light tax load. Meanwhile, you, as a person who is not rich, are subsidizing those who are, thus keeping you from advancing. Good going.

joshsolberg wrote:

danmohr wrote:And I guess if you wanted to have an estate tax on estates over $1 million, that's probably a good idea, too, but normal people should be able to pass down some money/property/toys to their kids without penalty.

Dan

Well, "personal items" are exempted from any estate tax anyway, so you would never have to worry about not being able to give your kids your family heirloom-type crap, but otherwise, why should "normal" people be able to give their kids a headstart, when you seem to be in favor of limiting the headstart available to kids of the abnormally wealthy? There's certainly no qualitative difference between the gift of $50,000 worth of savings from a person who made $50,000 / year and the gift of $5,000,000 of estate from the person who made $5,000,000 / year. So what the fuck? Are you just a classist? Seems like it.

What would be better about preventing a child from inheriting his parents' house? Or his parents' trillion-dollar savings? Is there sarcasm here? Please be more clear.

-Noah

joshsolberg wrote:So that's a nutshell of my great idea.

You are one crazy son of a bitch, Mr. Josh Solberg.

But I like your brand of craziness. I like your detailed discussion of a completely unworkable idea. It is a very, very crazy idea. I like crazy ideas. However, this one is based on some HUGE and incorrect assumptions, including:

(i) that the market can support the enormous inefficiencies created by your "check the meat" approach;
(ii) that litigation is an effective remedy for victims of misidentified defective products, and that all people have meaningful access to such litigation -- or that such litigation would have a corrective effect upon the market;
(iii) that the inability to identify one's quality wares and services (so as to distinguish them from pirated versions thereof) would not create massive disincentives in product development and services offerings improvements; and
(iv) the entire American consuming public wouldn't be completely out of sorts and pissed off within three days after getting repeatedly ripped off by vendors of misidentified goods and services.

Hey, I'm all for pissing off the American consumer, but not by artificially creating mass anarchy in the marketplace. As my friend Mr. Tim has so beautifully stated: "Anarchy is the deli from which cold lentil soup is served." The only counter that you propose to this anarchy is substantial sampling and research on the part of the consumer. I don't believe that such sampling and research is necessary or appropriate whether one is shopping for toothpaste, telephones or tires. It's just a waste of time and money.

But! Your idea is crazy in the right direction! The world can use more smart and crazy guys with smart and crazy ideas! Perhaps maybe next time you will argue that brands are artificial sources of value (e.g., "Hey, the Morton Salt! Why so much more expensive than the store brand salt! IS SAME SALT!"). Or maybe you will argue that trademarks are potentially perpetual estates and therefore inherently anti-competitive (or at least not in keeping with American legal ideals of non-perpetual grants of right in the intellectual property law arena).

Salut, Mr. Josh Solberg! You are absolutely batshit crazy lawyer guy!

joshsolberg wrote:Easy, liability extends to the retailer who sold you the product, so sue the retailer, and if the liability is due to a manufacturing defect, the retailer will then implead the manufacturer for contribution of the liability award. Also, if the retailer keeps getting sued because of bunk products from one manufacturer, it will stop purchasing products from that manufacturer. Thus, quality levels are maintained. Also, since consumers will necessarily need to become more savvy about checking for quality, they will, and since they will be purchasing based not on brand, but on quality of manufacture, the overall quality levels will increase.

This is so crazy idea, to change entire economy and hundreds-of-years-old behaviors of entire population with law. And bad one.

I like is brands! I know I no need to buy any amplificatore di Crate! I know I can buy these magnetofonico de Studer! Is good thing brands. Maybe no for some toilet paper is important, so I ignore him. But in generali, si, is good to have it.

So many merchant is not so wealthy. Product liability on them is impossible to enforce in any way real. Is to suggest whole world should change for one little thing, developed over long time. Is crazy.