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RE: Divisive ignorance
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Piwin
Posts: 3559
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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 RE: Divisive ignorance (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
It is indeed, but probably no more so than any other country with an ethnic and racial mix
Towards the beginning of this year, the "Asian community" in Paris organized a march to demand more safety in their neighborhoods. More specifically, they wanted more cops and, contrary to what the majority opinion in France wants, they wanted more CCTV in the street. They felt there were increasing safety concerns for them, as some stereotype would have it that Asians walk around with a lot of cash. Muggings and assaults of Asian people by primarly Blacks and Arabs had been on the rise for quite a while. It came as a surprise since anti-Asian racism had barely been taken seriously before and they had not been the most vocal community in complaining about it, to say the least. The didn't call on any civil rights or anti-racism organizations as they felt those had never represented them, and organized everything themselves.
I once spent the entire month of Ramadan in Casablanca. In the few places that do sell alcohol, they stop selling it about a week before Ramadan begins. The local Acima (chain of grocery stores) locked down the alcohol aisle with heavy metal gates. If you were white, however, they'd pull the gate up just enough so you could crawl under it, take whatever alcohol you wanted and bring it back to the register. My local friends sent me a few times to run those errands, since they would never have let them buy alcohol during Ramadan. In other words, Moroccan society as a whole seems to consider that Islam is a race, that if you are Arab, you must be Muslim and if you are white, you must not be.
I think the US has good reasons to be proud of what they have achieved in terms of rolling back racism. That is not to say, of course, that isn't still a lot to be done to improve even further.
@estabanana Thanks for sharing that. Seems like he was a hell of a man. I can help but feel that we're not all equal in terms of resolve, be it because of genetics or otherwise. And I'm not sure one can or should expect people to be that strong. The way I see it, is that liberal democracies exist precisely for that reason, to make sure that it's not just survival of the fittest and those who for whatever reason can't do it still have a chance. That doesn't preclude there being a number of people who could do it but are just too lazy and find it easier to sit on their asses. I guess a lot of the Conservative/Liberal divide surrounding the issue of poverty is pretty much based on whether you consider people can do it on their own or can't. I think some can, and some can't and I honestly have no idea how to tell the difference. Reading through his story, I honestly think I would have dropped the ball at some point. I'd like to think I wouldn't have, but if I'm honest with myself I probably would have. I've gone through more hardship than most people in my surrounding but it's hard to gauge how much one could fight through unless you're actually put in that situation. Another issue could be simply that of the narrative or sense of purpose that people have (or don't have). I suspect there are more and more people in the US for whom the American dream is unattainable, and even more for whom the American dream simply isn't a dream at all, as people struggle to make sense of the rampant materialistic values in society. A Cameroonian friend of mine, who fought as a teenager during the Biafra wars, once asked me about the mass shootings in schools in the US. I forget which one it was at the time, but one had just gone down a few days earlier. I remember telling him that, aside from sheer mental illness, I thought that people in the US increasingly felt a lack of purpose, that that was a least part of it. He looked at me and said "I don't understand. They have everything."
As for "helicopter journalism", not to defend the man in question but I will say this.
I've been fortunate to know quite a few journalists and especially photojournalists, but mainly those who specialize in war and conflict. They all complain about helicopter journalism, about those who get dropped in a nice hotel in the green zone and barely come out. But they're not so much complaining about their colleagues that do it than they are about the economic reasons that have led to this. There simply isn't money anymore in their industry to finance long duration work. The days when they could be sent by a major newspaper for months or a full year to cover a given topic in a given location are over. Those who do so do it on their own dime and they rely heavily on the good will of a few patrons and on the odd journalism or photography prize they might win here or there. I remember one panel session during a festival where one photographer talked about how he had covered the war in Afghanistan. He said that he knew it was helicopter journalism, but he didn't know how to do otherwise, that he also had a life at home and couldn't just abandon everything to cover the news so he accepted that the work he was doing was partial at best, that in that setting he had also stopped caring, that he looked at the world through his camera as if it were a movie and then just forgot about it once he got home. Some people in the audience started to boo him. His colleague, a reknown war photographer who has invested his whole life in his trade and has lost almost everything else because of it, family (his wife told him that if he couldn't leave "his camera" at the door when he came back home, then he shouldn't even bother walking in), health (malaria, hep C and several types of heavy metal poisining all due to his work) and money (I've heard of some cases where they would just sleep in the news offices between assignments because they had no money for anything else), got angry at the audience. He said that he bet there were maybe 10 people in the entire room who had a paid subscription to a newspaper. He said that if we expected them to sacrifice their lives and all of their own money to report the news and in no way supported them, then we we're just bunch oh a**holes. He said that he had done just that and that he despised people who saw him as a hero for it, because he shouldn't have had to do it, that his colleague had it right. If the readers don't care enough to pay so that they could cover the news properly, then why should they care about going the extra mile. I don't know how that maps on to domestic journalism but I do believe that behind this phenomenon of helicopter journalism there is more than just "bad journalists". There is the systemic issue of a dying industry that has failed to find new sources of funding when the readership decided that the news wasn't important enough to pay for. Younger generations are now praising the merits on the new online media, which is "free". Of what I've seen of it, online media is just commentary, and derivative commentary at that since a lot of it his based on what the traditional media are saying. Nobody seems to care anymore about the validity of the facts they are commenting on. Apparently commenting is enough.
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
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Date Nov. 13 2016 13:35:40
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Divisive ignorance (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
Thanks for the story of your step father, the Dutchman, Stephen. He was certainly a man of character and it obviously rubbed off on you.
I could not agree more with your disgust at those who whine about not having a "decent" job but won't get off their butts to do menial work until something better comes along. And that cuts across the board, Whites, Blacks, Iraqi refugees who were professionals in Iraq, you name it. There is a lot of talk in the U.S. about the use of opioids and heroin out of "despair" among the working class. My advice would be to get off the god-damned drugs, quit whining, and straighten yourself out.
Bill
I can go on for about 5 hours in the topic of opiates, opioids, speedballs, morphine....but never done it once, my biological father was a heroin addict his entire adult life and he lived until 2015- he died Oct. 13 he was 72 and two days later the Dutchman died, he was 82. That was a fun week.
He was ok for a junky, most of the time, but there were bad times. One of the more lighthearted things, I once took him to see Pharoah Sanders the tenor sax player, I had to drive him to Watsonville on the way to the concert in Santa Cruz so he could score. Later he was happily listening to Sanders and I saw Sanders checking him out, small audience. I said whats going with Sanders and my dad said - Oh he sees things for what they are.
A woman I used to live with a thousand years ago who was a model in NY got addicted to an opioid prescription drug and it crashed her life. She got clean last year after five six years of using. She's 9 years older than me still model beautiful. Naughty girl picked up young guy in her thirties, her mother said I was too young for her and well... Kicking is not as easy as it sounds and one more thing that horrifies me about Republican hard core politicians like Mike Pence is that these guys have no understanding of this stuff, or if they do they don't reflect it in their policy. They veer toward further criminalizing addicts and these people are more often victims of something they did not know would control their lives. Dealing with an opiate addiction or relative or friend that is addicted is a trench warfare on your mental health. I digress, but of that body of knowledge and world I've seen it all. Anders too. Some of us, like me, have some bodhisattva just walking between us and the bad stuff and we don't delve in it.
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https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Nov. 13 2016 14:33:52
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Mark2
Posts: 1871
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
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RE: Divisive ignorance (in reply to estebanana)
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I never said I want the workers deported. I think they should be legalized so they have comp and ss benefits. The criminals-deport them. And I agree they aren't taking jobs-unless they are low level jobs that many Americans wouldn't do anyway. I know what you are talking about because I built my company from the ground up-I started out selling one room carpet jobs and after a few years got the contractors license. I'd go to pre bid meeting as a 25 year old with a huge afro and see the competition-forty year old men in suits and knew I had no chance. Now I'm the old guy and I get the job. Now it's office buildings, universities, and airports. I don't have to compete with the unlicensed or those who use illegal labor. But it wasn't always so. I've built the reputation and have the experience, but it sure didn't come easy.
quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
quote:
I grew up in San Francisco, the most liberal of cities, but it's not because of the people who were born here. The folks I grew up with are a lot more conservative than the average person who lives here. In fact, many natives are very conservative, perhaps because we have seen first hand what extreme liberalism has done to the city.
Just move to Marin over the GG bridge and problem solved. ICE is busy there scaring the **** out of everyone over there.
CA has a liberal stance on migrant workers because white people won't work the fields. If you want to pay the real price for an apple, which is about 1.80 each, well then deport everyone. The trade off is you have the cheapest food on the planet. And unlike the Japanese who grow and harvest their food by and large without an immigrant labor force, Americans have been inured to migrant and forced labor since the 17th and 18th centuries. There is still slave labor in America.
The immigrant in part makes the San Francisco style of life possible. Every time someone in SF puts a leaf of lettuce in their mouth, well.... I agree the Army Street should never have been renamed Cesar Chavez, I liked Army St. and it kept a sense of history about the city. However what Cesar Chavez did is correct.
I've heard all this stuff before and how Mexicans take jobs, I just don't buy it. While I was in school and before I was full time making guitar I worked as carpenter in the SF area for 24 years, and perhaps there are some soreheads that are white, but in my professional life as carpenter and interfacing with all the other trades and gardeners etc. I'm here to say the narrative of immigrants stealing white jobs is horse manure.
First of all, most of the illegals don't have the connections or the contractors license to do big jobs, or jobs much harder than handyman jobs. The labor force they provide to hard dirt digging, hauling, demolition work etc. makes the total price of a remodel job much cheaper that if all white journeyman level folks did it. For that reason the local economy benefits because more people can afford to conduct remodel work and more skilled workers overall can be employed.
The other thing about SF is the Chinese work force, I worked for two plumbers who complained about Chinese plumbers who do work out in the Avenues and they don't follow code and use plastic parts. SF is one of the last places that requires copper work for plumbing and it keeps skilled trade workers employed because it is a high level skill. One of the SF plumbers union members is an old friend of mine and I studied karate with him for years and years. He was the first Chinese guy to be inducted into the plumbers union. He was always saying damn Chinese plumbers out there in the Richmond using ABS pipe. They took more high skilled jobs away from skilled trades than illegal immigrants.
I got a ton of stories from inside the trade why it's not illegal immigrants taking skilled jobs or unlicensed handyman work for that matter. Those guys standing on the corner are all going get behind a shovel for the day, while some unemployed white guy is going to go to the unemployment dept. and turn in a sheet of paper that said he applied for five jobs that three month term of unemployment and then go out and do under the table work for cash, or sit on his keyster and drink beer.
The other thing that happens is some Mexican kids get really good at carpentry, some are hot shots- here's the deal, get your skills up or get off the job. Some young Mexican guy who is not illegal might have better chops, if you can chalk line off a sheet of plywood and cut it with a skill saw on a dime and then toss it up to the guy on the roof who is nailing off with an air gun, boy you better be able to do it too. The older guys learn to do more refined work and today a lot of rough framing is done by Mexican guys. So the thing is get your skills up as you get older and then move into admin work. Or go get the job at the lumber yard and sell products. My garden design friends say the same thing.
And you know what, sometimes if I needed work I would work for any wage the customer was willing to pay to stay in the game. You have to do the bad jobs for people who do not value your work as much as you have to seek the opportunity to work for the best people who hold you in high regard. Construction work is not easy and just because a guy is white does not mean he has a right to a certain level of pay. If he does not have enough hustle to get in and do what ever it requires, then he has no right to scape goat immigrants. There is enough work for everyone if you go out and get it. I've been there and done it
Before I left CA I was still getting calls to come work for a few customers I kept on as a safety margin because guitar making is risky. They said man am I sorry you are leaving because I don't know how I will replace you, nobody wants to work anymore and you are so good.
So I gave them the number of a guy I know who does bang up work, he returns phone calls, he shows up, he is highly skilled and has and an electricians license. His name is Jose, for real. we worked on many jobs together for a dozen years and traded referrals, I gave all my remaining customers his number.
My vetted customers used to say you are great because you'll make a quick side trip to look at job or give advice or talk through problems over the phone. I made myself important to them, and I could name my price within reason. Illegal immigrants are not taking that skill away from me because I am a native speaker and I put the time in to cultivate long term relationships with clients. Hell I had some clients longer than I had a girlfriend. I also did that tree cutting for $50.00 and not $200.00 to get that money. And that person might have passed my name to a friend who was not a frugal jerk off. Then that guy says to me "Yeah Moe is a dick and he's a cheap dick." and then he says I can't pay the moon but I'll pay more than Tom because I'm not a frugal jerk, but you better do an excellent job.
There's old fashioned saying for doing those crap jobs and building your name. Paying your dues.
I paid them so well that last week I got an email from a referral from a former customer that I kept on my short list. A woman in Oakland wanted me to spruce up a rental unit in East Oakland. People hired me because they could hand me a set of keys and they knew I did not have be babysat and the job would get done. They would only have to go have a quick look before writing me a check. I wrote her back and said thank you very much for contacting me, at this time I'm not available to work and am out of the country. If there comes a time that I return and seek work please let me contact you to let you know I am available. She wrote back and said thank you, I am having a hard time getting responses to my ads and please let me know when you are in the Bay Area.
I've been in Japan for 3.5 years now and every other month I get a work inquiry for carpentry or help with a household matter of construction. I built a good small vetted list of customers for art installation, carpentry and had a skylight fabrication shop that referred me exclusively to install skylights for residential customers in the Berkeley Hills. I could get more work than I needed and they asked me to come work for them, but I said no I am going to make guitars. In retrospect it might not have been a bad idea. The idea that a guy with a reasonable skill set and some humility in the Bay Area can't make in the handyman small remodel niche is a non starter for me. There is so much work I could step off an airliner tomorrow and make two calls and be busy for two months. Customers are looking for quality people.
The first year I was here in Japan I received two or three emails a month for juicy meaty guitar repair jobs. I referred them to Stewart Port or a guy in SF who taught me. I got an email for a restoration job last summer. And folks who used to bring instrument to me still email for advice. Which I give for free.
I was so worried I created two businesses, guitar and carpentry, I thinned out the customers in both places and still they kept on coming. Now as an immigrant I have a hell of a time because the dealers here are not very helpful. They have a different system here and you can't just leave a guitar in a shop on consignment, you have to be invited in as if it were an art gallery. I don't speak like a native, look like one or act like one. I'm here without home court advantage, yet somehow I manage.
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Date Nov. 14 2016 15:41:24
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Piwin
Posts: 3559
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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RE: Divisive ignorance (in reply to Mark2)
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quote:
If what I did was illegal in hiring them oh well. You better have at least a little larceny in your heart if you expect to survive in business in this society.
In France they have set-up a state-sanctionned racketeering business on companies, which is especially harmful for the small businesses. Basically you have to pay into this organization, which is in charge of collecting vocational training funds and of providing a basic level of control on your accounting. In actual fact, your accountant is doing all the work, and at this organization they hardly look at it and just put a stamp on it. It is not considered a tax or anything and it is fully optional. Well, optional... Here's the kicker: if you don't pay the several 100s or even 1000s if your a large business to join this "optional" organization, the IRS automatically assumes you are "cheating" and they automatically increase by 25% the revenu base they use to calculate your corporate taxes (and income tax if you're a small business). So if I earn 10,000, I will be paying as much taxes as if I had earned 12,500. I started out as a extremely honest business owner. Then I realized that no matter what I did, the state considered any entrepreneur as inherently dishonest.
And this is just one example. There are many others and when everything is said and done, the message they're sending to businesses is: we punish honesty. As a result, businesses make light of the rules, because they know that they are considered guilty from the gitgo, no matter if they follow the rules or not. That is in part why I moved to Spain because. Even if the system here has its own problems, it comes nowhere close to how it is back in France. When I think about it, the competition was never the problem for me. There were a few cases of unfair competition, of colleagues "stealing" clients in less than honorable ways, but on the whole it was manageable, possibly in part because when you're niche is "high quality services", the competition that cuts prices tends to not hurt you as much as if you're not in that nice. In any event, the biggest threat by far, the biggest impediment to running my business, was the state. As a result, I think the only consideration I would have if I was faced with the option of hiring illegals would be whether it is fair to the people I'm hiring and whether it is fair to the others who are doing the same job but are legal. And I suppose the fairness of it would depend on a lot of different factors but I would try to make sure that whatever I did was fair to competition, like Lenador said. But the legality of it would be the least of my concerns. I'm back to playing by the rules here in Spain, as I did when I first started in France, but I'm watching very carefully how the state manages its relationship to my business and at the first sign of racketeering I'll be the first out the door and onto the black market.
_____________________________
"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Nov. 14 2016 22:00:59
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Mark2
Posts: 1871
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
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RE: Divisive ignorance (in reply to Piwin)
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I've heard it is much the same in Italy. My friend there told me that you pay your taxes, then months later their version of the IRS shows up to collect the "real" taxes. Don't know if that is the fact.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Piwin
quote:
If what I did was illegal in hiring them oh well. You better have at least a little larceny in your heart if you expect to survive in business in this society.
In France they have set-up a state-sanctionned racketeering business on companies, which is especially harmful for the small businesses. Basically you have to pay into this organization, which is in charge of collecting vocational training funds and of providing a basic level of control on your accounting. In actual fact, your accountant is doing all the work, and at this organization they hardly look at it and just put a stamp on it. It is not considered a tax or anything and it is fully optional. Well, optional... Here's the kicker: if you don't pay the several 100s or even 1000s if your a large business to join this "optional" organization, the IRS automatically assumes you are "cheating" and they automatically increase by 25% the revenu base they use to calculate your corporate taxes (and income tax if you're a small business). So if I earn 10,000, I will be paying as much taxes as if I had earned 12,500. I started out as a extremely honest business owner. Then I realized that no matter what I did, the state considered any entrepreneur as inherently dishonest.
And this is just one example. There are many others and when everything is said and done, the message they're sending to businesses is: we punish honesty. As a result, businesses make light of the rules, because they know that they are considered guilty from the gitgo, no matter if they follow the rules or not. That is in part why I moved to Spain because. Even if the system here has its own problems, it comes nowhere close to how it is back in France. When I think about it, the competition was never the problem for me. There were a few cases of unfair competition, of colleagues "stealing" clients in less than honorable ways, but on the whole it was manageable, possibly in part because when you're niche is "high quality services", the competition that cuts prices tends to not hurt you as much as if you're not in that nice. In any event, the biggest threat by far, the biggest impediment to running my business, was the state. As a result, I think the only consideration I would have if I was faced with the option of hiring illegals would be whether it is fair to the people I'm hiring and whether it is fair to the others who are doing the same job but are legal. And I suppose the fairness of it would depend on a lot of different factors but I would try to make sure that whatever I did was fair to competition, like Lenador said. But the legality of it would be the least of my concerns. I'm back to playing by the rules here in Spain, as I did when I first started in France, but I'm watching very carefully how the state manages its relationship to my business and at the first sign of racketeering I'll be the first out the door and onto the black market.
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Date Nov. 15 2016 16:12:09
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