So as a taxi driver with asthma and horrific allergies, I’ve found dog owners are not typically terribly understanding when I tell them we’re going to have another cab come pick them up. I’ve had several people insist that their animal is a service dog as if this somehow changes my own health condition.
I’ve often found that my own access to public spaces is limited by the use of service animals and straight up pets in public places. I don’t even try to go to breweries anymore. I wouldn’t bother trying to get on a plane. Even hotels are basically a no go for me unless i want to get sick more often than not.
I don’t pretend to have a solution to this, but access to public spaces for animals and for some allergy sufferers is mutually exclusive. It makes it a lot more complicated than ‘service animals should be everywhere’ or ‘allergy sufferers should have access to public spaces’. The two are kind of in conflict. It sucks.
Nobody pays any mind to air quality and it’s made my life a whole lot more difficult than it needs to be.
Anyway, i feel for her, but i think the service animal stuff is way over simplified and people forget that other people with disabilities also pay a cost.
Your disability is legitimate too, and should definitely be considered in any solution. I'm sorry to hear that your mobility is also affected by medical circumstances people don't understand, I know it sucks hard.
The fact that this blind lady needs to have both her guide dog and a taxi/rideshare to get around anywhere sucks for both her and the driver - the former for obvious reasons, and the latter for the reasons you listed out. It’s a sort-of perfect microcosm of the major issue a lot of modern cities seem to have: poor public transit and heavy car-centric infrastructure.
The unfortunate reality that she absolutely needs a car to seemingly get anywhere is the problem here. People - and not just people with disabilities, but in general - should have (and deserve) different viable options to get around. The whole idea of a person becoming stuck at their house because of not being able to get the transport they need to get around the place is fuckin atrocious and should be what’s actually talked about here, not “jUsT lEt ThE aNiMaL oN!” or “MaKe An UbEr ApP fOr PeOpLe LiKe ThIs!”
Just to add to the controversy, in a perfect world with good public transportation, how do you still accommodate both? On a train you could have an animal-free car but what about buses? You can’t have a separate bus for every single accommodation.
Where I live busses are often marked in the timetable as to whether they are wheelchair accessible. So there's precedent already for mixed accomodation transport and informing customers in advance, it might be possible to extend that system further.
These days in most regions that would be illegal and the only leniency is for existing infrastructure where upgrades are challenging - but even then you need a transition plan in place… even if it is one that will take decades. Eventually, every bus needs to be accessible.
It’s just not good enough for people who cannot drive to also have limited access to public transport.
For the person who can’t share a vehicle with an assistance dog… really the only possible answer is public transport isn’t really accessible to them. That’s unfortunate but I don’t really see a solution other than travelling by car.
Discrimination legislation doesn’t require services be available for ever person, they just require taking reasonable steps to be available to as many people as practically possible.
I have severe allergies and on public transport I wear N95 mask. It effectively filters out everything that might be a problem for me, and as a bonus have avoided getting sick even when everyone around me seems to be catching things. If everyone did this we could eliminate airborne viruses and many other conditions, but I’m not holding out hope for that.
The increased air resistance of a mask is often a deal breaker for people with breathing issues.
During covid-19 the best advice for those people is you just need to deal with it, but only because your breathing issues make covid-19 especially high risk for those people. But it was very uncomfortable.
in a perfect world with good public transportation, how do you still accommodate both
A) You have excellent public transport suitable for service animals, wheelchairs, blind people, etc
B) People who can’t take it for whatever reason travel by car. If you can get one (you won’t get one for asthma…) a disability parking permit is a huge help. They’re recognised globally and make it a lot easier to park in metropolitan areas. Those permits are valid whether you’re driving or a passenger. With one of those permits even car-hostile places like the Netherlands become practical.
Well, if we properly defined 'dog allergy' as a disability, maybe the accessibility tool that we could use to accommodate it might be like... a gas mask or something like that?
It'd be strange at first, but eventually we'd treat them no differently than a cane or wheelchair.
So the thing to understand is that while well designed cities have good public transit, what they actually have better is walkability. You should be able to do most of your business without taking any transit options. This saves the disabled woman from needing to use transit and helps reduce the amount of service animals in transit.
There still needs to be some degree of mixing but there's limitations as to how protected we can make things for everyone. Some people have an airborne allergy to peanuts but we aren't going to ban peanuts everywhere to accommodate. People with severe animal allergies will have up continue finding ways to cope since we aren't going to ban people from having pets. The best we can do is what's reasonable.
You hit a nerve. I’m not blind, but my crazy glaucoma prevents me from safely operating a vehicle, so I voluntarily gave up driving years ago.
I live outside a village with no buses, taxis, trains, or ride shares, so when I go to my quarterly opthamologist visit, I have to arrange for someone to take me on the 4 hours round trip drive. (There’s no closer office.) I had to cancel tomorrow’s appointment when my arrangement fell through. I’m housebound and it’s fucking madness.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean that every single taxi needs to be the taxi that picks up dogs.
I feel like the general approach taken by society when it comes to air quality, from strangers to my own family, is that air quality doesn’t really matter, and that no accommodations should ever be made to improve it.
Which is part of the reason I don’t really leave the house unless I have to. We’re both stuck at home, but the situations look a lot different, and in my case people almost never see the result.
A bit of maths for those who aren’t aware. 5 sigma means 5 standard deviations away from the norm. It means the chance of an event like this happening and climate change not being responsible for it is 1 in 3.5 million. It’s the same level of confidence physicists used to confirm that they have indeed discovered the Higgs Boson, among other things.
The truth is that it’s probably even worse that this looks.
If this were the only low-probability datapoint, then the fossil fuel fossils would actually have a point. 5 sigma is worth a huge amount when there’s one very specific thing you’re looking for, but with climate we’re not only looking at one thing, we’re looking at average temperature, highest temperature, highest winter temperature, number of cyclones, severity of cyclones, extent of rainfall, extent of droughts, and many, many more specific datapoints. Even those datapoints I mentioned there can be measured in a bunch of subtly different ways. So any one of those reaching a rare event on its own is not necessarily as unlikely as one specific event taking place.
With 10,000 possible datapoints, the probability at least one reaches 5 sigma is only 1 in 350.
Basically, the probability of A or B or C is much higher than the probability of A.
But then there’s the fact that we’re seeing low-probability events not just in any one thing, but in multiple ones. This article is about winter Antarctic ice levels. But this year we’ve also had record high temperatures multiple successive days in a row, in addition to all the other stuff. And when that happens, the odds become even worse.
With just three datapoints, the probability that one is 5 sigma and 2 others are 3 sigma is 1 in 250 billion. (Remembering that this 5 sigma event on its own was 1 in 3.5 million.) Add more and more events on, as we’re seeing more and more low-probability events take place, and the odds start blowing out beyond all possible recognition.
Because the probability of A and B and C is much lower than the probability of A.
Yeah, 5 sigma is the standard most often used in fields like particle physics. Other fields are usually happy with probabilities much higher than that.
Here’s an article about Israel’s policy of “administrative detention” by which large numbers of Palestinians are held without trial or even charges for an AVERAGE of a year. “Before October 7, the number of Palestinians held by Israel under administrative detention was already at a 20-year high. According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, there were 1,310 Palestinians imprisoned without charge or trial at the end of September, including at least 146 minors. Since then, Israel has dramatically increased its use of administrative detention, pushing the number of detainees to over 2,000 within the first four weeks of the war. (That’s out of a total of roughly 7,000 Palestinian prisoners.)” It’s just taking hostages with a less offensive name.
Yesterday Israeli national security minister Ben Gvir made a social media post with a last line that translates to: “The death penalty for terrorists is the right solution to the incarceration problem, until then - glad that the government approved the proposal I brought.” The incarceration problem he’s referring to is a lack of space to hold all the prisoners/hostages Israel is taking, and he’s advocating for executions until more prison cells are built.
These motherfuckers took all the suffering people went through in WW2 and understood it as a how to manual instead of something horrific never to be repeated. What in the fuck.
What does it take for this orange ape to finally go down into the darkest hell hole of oblivion? God knows what other highly sensitive information this senile blabbermouth has shared with far more dangerous people. To me it is absolutely unfathomable that this man is still walking around, free as a bird, with millions of people still rooting for him.
I have kids. I am fucking livid that the assholes who pretend climate change isn’t happening have decided to sacrifice their kids and mine on the altar of making a quick buck.
You can’t eat money, assholes. And you can’t bring it with you when you die. If the future is nothing but more and more severe weather to the point that civilization collapses under the strain, then I hope you live long enough to see it and are unable to hide from reality anymore.
No… its simply not. Maybe Jimmy John and Mary sue having a dozen offspring in missouri are a slight part of the problem but your average person have one or two is not the problem.
As with everything in this world: Its the corporations. They are the problem. No amount of reuse, reduction, or recycling by any individual would even register on the graph of emissions/carbon footprint when compared to even a tiny company
I do agree that its irresponsible to subject yet another human being to the future we are careening towards
I mean, I get what you are saying, but if for a few generations only every 10th family would have only 1 child, GHG emissions would fall drastically. Having a kid basically more than doubles ‘your’ own carbon footprint.
Is this the only, the necessary, or the preferred way? Ofc not. Is it the biggest impact I can personally have on global warming? It is (voting, protesting, buying local & sustainable helps, but whatever you are doing the kids are doing it too).
It’s sad bcs there are so many ways we could solve this (at least achieve carbon neutrality, tho we need more than that now), but short-term profits of the current elite would suffer a little tiny bit so we can’t do it.
But additionally now we do need to prep to mitigate consequences and damage control (on top of green/ESG investments) … I wonder if all those profits will be used to finance this …
117.7 tonnes of Co2e per kid per parent per year in the USA (58.6 tonnes average when including all the poorer countries).Wynes et al. 2017
A conservative estimate is that we need to emit less than 2.1 tonnes in total per person per year to try to prevent catastrophic Anthropogenic climate change. Girod et al. 2013 (life expectancy/2050).
117.7 > 2.1
We need a fertility rate of about 0.01 for several decades.
Human overpopulation is not only the biggest contributor to push us into a climate-change tipping-points cascade, it’s also the root cause of almost all its other causes. It’s also the root cause of unsustainable habitat loss and pollution. It’s also the root cause of factory farming and industrial fishing, which causes more pain and suffering every year than all other atrocities ever committed combined.
As for corporations, they’re not burning the planet for shits and giggles - they’re psychopaths doing it because billions of people are choosing to buy their goods and services, which they want but don’t actually need.
Don’t worry about climate change, the US is hell bent on starting global thermonuclear war very soon. We can go fast and crispy instead of slowly choking.
It’s just announced plans to get rid of Mutually Assured Destruction and install nukes in Finland. Then they said they don’t care if their latest weapon ATACMS is used to attack civilians in Russia. This has been a red line for a long time, they just pushed it.
We’re closer to nuclear armoggedon now than ever in your lifetime before.
They think they do. No amount of money will protect a person from the collapse of a civilization. Never has, never will. Their plans are very much predicated on the assumption that markets will somehow magically continue to function after the general populace has lost all faith in them
The ultra-rich will still be dependent on their retinues of loyal followers, whose loyalties will of course be tested by the collapse of civilization. Unless their retinues are robots, of course.
These billionaires imagine they’re rich because they’re brilliant, not because they’re the biggest assholes and lucky (and born rich). They overestimate their independence from all the people and other creatures that actually make the planet and human society work. Once they get to their bunkers or their Mars outpost, perhaps reality will gradually get through to them. They can’t escape this using bunkers, rockets and weapons.
I think the reference to collars was more a hypothetical in the article as the author was challenging the bunker dudes how would they ensure the people keeping them safe remained loyal, and that none of them considered anything like “treat them like people before the cataclism”, it didn’t even occur to them at all, instead they proposed a bunch of more controlling measures, which included “disciplinary collars”
You’ve never talked to a single socialist, anarchist, leftist, etc. about civilian firearm ownership before? It’s very commonly thought of as a necessary evil to prevent systemic oppression. Maybe don’t spend so much of your time talking to trumpers and neoconservatives?
To wit: there is no “right people” to want to shoot, and anyone who thinks there is probably has their own tribalism issue to work out. Community defense specifically does not have a target right up until the point someone else is an aggressor, and ends when violence is no longer needed. This is why you never saw “antifa burns down trump supporter’s house” or whatever in the news.
Yea fortunately im not a redneck. I totally understand how that line if thinking can make people uneasy. I think 2A is more useful in an “arm the workers” type of way
Why did you choose to have kids knowing what kind of future they would have? This is the reason I didn’t, and also to reduce my footprint in the world. I mean even 20 years ago, it was obvious nothing was going to change. So I don’t know why somebody would willingly have children these days.
Well the guy acts surprised, like nobody has seen this coming for 50+ years and especially the last 20 years. Put some thought into having children before you do. If more people did, we wouldn’t be as deep in the shit as we are today. And people are allowed to criticise other poeple for having kids when they shouldn’t.
The world has always been a mess. What’s your solution, wait until the world has solved every problem before anyone has kids? Humans would never have even evolved if that’s the plan.
I don’t have a solution. You don’t either. And those that can do anything about this shit, won’t, because it’d cost them some of their precious precious money hoard.
Climate change is basically teetering at the feedback loop point, if it’s not already there. Inflation is out of control. Corporate profits across the board are at an alltime high. Shit’s only going to keep getting worse from here.
Ah yes. Let’s blame men for men’s problems. That should fix everything.
This shit is the major contributor to the problem. A woman expresses and embraces femininity? “You go girl!”. A man expresses and embraces masculinity? “You are broken and you are the problem of our society, and everything bad that happens to you is also your fault”.
And don’t give me this “Toxic masculinity is totally not just masculinity”. Almost every masculine trait has been called “toxic masculinity”. You might have your specific definition for what it means, but so does everyone else and together you all cover pretty much every facet of masculinity.
Ah yes, let’s use a gendered term to refer to behavior that’s not ok in either gender, because calling the general term for male attributes toxic will make young men feel welcome. Yes, I’m aware what “toxic masculinity” refers to.
Not sure what you’re trying to say. That the word hysteria exists is bad… because it assigned a certain behavior/emotion to women? And because of that assigning a certain behavior/emotion to men is something we should welcome?
Ah yes, jump to ad hominem immediately when you don’t have anything productive to say. Hysteria, can you do something constructing and give me a meaning that contradicts wikipedia?
I don’t see how what I wrote contradicts the first paragraph, I paraphrased the first sentence. Anyway, so your point really is “a word exists that shows women had it bad, so it’s ok if I use a word now that treats boys and young men badly”
No, people get bent out of shape because it’s a gendered, sexist term. End of story. Just like man-splaining. You can discuss male specific toxicity and men being condescending without using terms that very clearly are divisive and prejudicial.
If you use the terms while pretending to be progressive or for equality then you’re a liar and a hypocrite. Hope that helps.
to be fair, the article specifically references “toxic males” and is focused on the challenges for young men in particular. What seems obviously lacking in the story is any reference to the diminished economic potential that all young people face. 30 years ago education and housing were somewhat reasonably priced and and generally available to all. Economic stress is a huge factor and immediate source of stress and anxiety that is completely ignored in the article. How is one supposed to feel ‘cocky’ while struggling to keep their head above water financially?
If you know what it refers to then why complain? Why pretend this is some big attack on masculinity as a whole when it’s obviously not? Toxic is an adjective, it is used to separate the bad stereotypical attributes of masculinity from the good. No one is suggesting these behaviours can only exist in men and I don’t know why you’re so offended by the use of gendered words when we are specifically talking about problems associated with one gender. Enough with the manufactured outrage, engage in good faith for once.
Rather than make snarky, half-arsed replies why not take the time to articulate why you think “toxic masculinity” is such a problematic term? Why not engage in good faith with other people instead of instantly trying to turn this into yet another polarised yawnfest argument?
Look I get the knee jerk on hearing male. "Oh we're talking about masculinity, that's an attack on me." But the topic at hand is masculinity.
Why are so many boys and men feeling alone and in the cold?
Yes, toxic behaviors exists in both mainstream genders. Shallow ass women who play on male insecurities is a thing. BUT that's not the topic here. Like, you shoving the whole "but the other side" thing really comes like someone walking into a hospital being outraged they aren't going to do a quick dental clean while you're there. You're in the wrong place. There is such a place to go to, but it ain't here.
I mean nothing but love for ya, but the knee jerk comes off a bit hard. Like we can have that discussion, but honest, I don't think this is the thread for it. It feels like it detracts from introspecting by way of blaming the other team. I'm not downvoting you, I get where you're coming from. But I just feel it's distraction.
And that is my opinion on the matter and nothing more.
You entirely miss the important point here. It’s not about “muh other side”. It’s about sending young boys the message “toxic masculinity” over and over while they grow up and are trying to explore what masculinity means to them. Sure, if you give them a seminar on what “toxic masculinity” is supposed to mean every time you use the term, some of them might understand what you’re trying to say, but that’s not what’s happening. And every time a young boy questions the term in confusion he will be attacked “but the other side” yadda is not valid like you just did to me.
It’s about sending young boys the message “toxic masculinity” over and over while they grow up and are trying to explore what masculinity means to them
Is that what you think the point of the discussion here is? What you're saying is valid but that's not this setting. I think that's the aspect that might be getting lost with what I'm saying. I'm not discounting what your saying, what I'm indicating is that "your argument, completely valid in general. But are we not speaking specifically of this thread?"
It's one of those things of, do you want to speak in general or in specific terms? In general yeah, we cannot just toss the term toxic masculinity all over the place with zero context. That's just going to confuse people. BUT…
Men need feminism too. Patriarchy and toxic masculinity harm both men and women in different ways
The starting of this thread is examining a specific topic among the many and it feels like you want to interject a side topic for fear that someone here might get confused about the specifics of "toxic masculinity" and what the background of that is. We're adults here and I think it's safe to look at what the original comment was getting at without diving head first into what (to me and that may be different for you so I acknowledge that) feels like splitting hairs.
And every time a young boy questions the term in confusion he will be attacked “but the other side” yadda is not valid like you just did to me
Well. Are you a young boy? Are you confused about the term? And that's the crux of what I am putting forward. And it isn't in honesty an attack on you or at least wasn't meant to be. We can talk "in general" about a hypothetical young boy, or we can be "specific" and address what you are and are not confused by. But we ought to avoid strafing between the two loosely because that's going to be distracting in best light.
So I hope you understand when you have:
And every time a young boy questions the term in confusion he will be attacked “but the other side” yadda
and:
is not valid like you just did to me
Is taking the context of that first statement and attempting to apply it to the context of the second statement where the context of these two things are different altogether. "But the other side" yadda is dismissive in the first context and pointing out distraction in the second. We can use similar sounding statements in varied context to convey different ideas. Just like the statement "we need to go deeper" can have various meaning between the background of being on an oil derrick and being a gynecologist. Context really matters.
You just wrote a wall of text to justify when and why it’s ok for you to use language you apparently agree can be imprecise, hurtful and discriminatory. How about, you know, just find a better word?
Why are so many boys and men feeling alone and in the cold?
TOXIC MASCULINITY TOXIC MASCULINITY TOXIC MASCULINITY TOXIC MASCULINITY TOXIC MASCULINITY plastered all over the internet and toxic people like you defending why they should use toxic language that harms boys and young men. If you want to behave like a sociopath fuck off.
Well let's look at what you've brought to the table. Dismissiveness of folks who want to keep on topic and balme games for when your feeling get hurt by pointing out you're hijacking the thread.
So yeah, you're absoultely wanting to fix things here. You've done a banged up job thus far. You've acted like a child this conversation to everyone. You want an adult conversation but fuck you've acting in no matter of sorts. So, cool I think the convseration here is done. I've got better things to do than to speak with someone acting like a six year old who cannot even stay on topic.
Like how did you expect to debate things when you just wanted to keep changing the topic? Do you not know that? Everyone knows that's just a tactic people wanting to NOT HAVE a conversation do, to prevent the conversation. And then get upset and emotional when they get called out on it. That's what small children do. I was nice, I was giving you benefit of the doubt, and you just were like fuck it. So I'm calling it like I see it, you're acting immature and outrage that everyone is treating you as such. How SHOULD we treat you when you will not treat anyone else here in like manner? Hmmm?
So yeah, this talk is over. You have you and perhaps that'll be enough for you to figure out how to actually talk to people like an adult.
I've seen this from men recently here. They are attacking words like "feminism" and "toxic masculinity" with crap like this. It's because they know they have no real arguments against them that they go for ad hominem attacks. They hate the word "feminism" because they'd rather have equality for "all" and imply feminism is equality for women only. Now this dude is attacking "toxic masculinity" because "women can be toxic, too" apparently. As if it wasn't coined because the predominance was found in men and was trying to call attention to issues men face. It's just a new tact in misogyny.
You’re right, it is a common tactic from the right to just immediately present any given social issue as an “attack on X”. But I also think instantly lumping people into that group isn’t always helpful either, which is why I asked for that person to chill with the hysteria and actually elaborate on their point. Unfortunately they are clearly intent on divisiveness and meaningless point scoring, so at that point you can hardly blame us for assuming the worst of their intentions.
You know the thing that bugs me the most about social patriarchy is the same thing that really gets me about anti-apologetics. There is the notion that there needs to be this unilateral action of sorts and straying from it shows weakness of sorts. It's not uncommon to hear conservative and traditionalist indicate that admitting wrong is a sign of weakness. And the reality is that we learn best from our own mistakes. Trail and error is an incredible teaching tool.
Patriarchy goes against what we actually know about how human beings learn things. It goes against the nothing of taking multiple inputs to come to a conclusion. It goes against the process of being well informed. It's these absolutes within this kind of system that give rise to the various toxic behaviors. I think if men actually sit there and actually listen to women and allow women to participate in decisive action, men will learn infinitely way more.
Men need feminism too
Exactly. Good objective thinking relies on taking all input and being able to share executive action. Humans aren't stronger than a bear, we're not faster than a cheetah, and hell we don't live nearly as long as most trees. The quality that humans have that places them above all else, is thinking and reasoning. And we do better at that quality by broadening our horizons not limiting them. The whole wild arguments of "well male lobsters assert dominance…". Lobsters or whatever animal a particular someone who I won't name tries to parallel us with, they don't reason and think in any remote sense the same way as humans. It's silly to try and take some biological aspect of our species or other species and draw a conclusion about how we should use the thing that makes humans, human.
covid, expensive housing, war, climate change, death, destruction, doom
Honestly, I doubt any of these apart from expensive housing is playing a significant role. I haven’t seen any reliable data on it, but I suspect a vanishingly small number of people genuinely choose not to have kids “because I don’t want to bring kids into this terrible world”. The cost of living thing though? That’s something that affects the parents and their ability to feel like they even can raise a child right now.
I’m literally one of those people who you say is vanishingly small.
It’s not even a “the world is bad and I don’t want to subject my child to that” kind of decision. It’s more like a series of thoughts over the years: “is this the right time to have a kid?” and it’s never a good time.
Left behind because people aren’t carrying cash? They’re homeless, they’ve already been left behind. What an odd article. What I don’t understand is how people like this individual aren’t on Centrelink? Are we as fucked as America in so far as you need an address to get Centrelink?
You ever been on Centrelink? It's heaps fucked aye.
They cancel you all the time and fuck around with your livelyhood while you try waiting on the phone for hours to speak to someone, the 'jobseeker' program is a fleece to put money into the pockets of agencies who never actually help one bit, etc. It's a system designed to not support people long term, or at all really.
And that's with having stable accommodation, imagine how much harder it all is on top of that while being homeless.
The jobseeker program is just like the weight-loss industry. They do just enough to appear to be doing something, but not enough to actually fix the problem. If they did succeed, they’d be out of a job.
Oh but the second you get a job yourself? They ring up asking for details so they can put it down in the system that they helped you and get the cash bonus from the government for doing their bloody job.
Nothing felt better than telling them to get stuffed and not giving them a shred of information.
“ I don’t get it. They say I lost but I won the most states. All the states, 53 in all. The greatest victory ever and they stole it from me, from you. The greatest victory by the greatest president!”
After he says “our army manned the air” it for a second could seem like he realized his mistake, then he doubles down and talks about how “it took over the airports”.
I wonder if that might sound better if he said it as, “I don’t get it. They say I won, but I lost the most states. All the states, 53 in all. The greatest loss ever and they haven’t stole it from me, from you. The greatest loss by the lousiest president!”
It’s not AI, though. They’re just using buzzwords, because what they described is functionally no different from AFIS. It’s just a poorly written algorithm.
I’m aware, but unfortunately I’m not big enough in the tech industry to create differentiating terms. AI is an extremely broad term ranging from literal if-else statements to LLMs and generative AI. Unfortunately the specifics usually get buried in the term
Look at the education graph, it tells the entire story here. The more likely you are to have gone to uni and learned how to effectively source factual information by yourself, learned how to skim read longer and more complex source material, maybe even learned something of Australian history beyond the whitewashed and over-simplified version in high school, the less likely you were to be influenced by a No campaign that was primarily about spreading as much fear and misinformation on social media as possible.
The mobile booth results from remote Indigenous communities in the NT is also really interesting. The yes vote aligns with the inner city seats, which is not something you’d usually expect to see.
I think the interesting bit about that is not the inner city polling, which leaned Yes (relatively speaking) everywhere, but the fact that the Yes campaign seemingly struggled to appeal to remote Indigenous communities (again, relatively speaking) despite putting a lot of effort into reaching those people. Conversely, the No campaign was mostly run online and through the media - they had only a fraction of the volunteer and on-the-ground support - yet they performed above expectations in those areas.
A lot of people are probably going to jump on the bandwagon and say that it’s too much and that they’re out of touch - just remember that the CEOs of big companies get millions of dollars per year for significantly less work and managing less stress. While we may not agree that these particular politicians particularly deserve this pay - I don’t think it is unreasonable
I’m pretty sure the PM is getting about half the amount the VC at my university gets for a more important more stressful job, there’s just the cynicism of people voting to increase their own income (which I’m sure my VC does too). I always feel like politician pay should be based on the median income (like, starting at 80% going up to 250%) adjusted yearly or something. Not much reasoning, just idle thought on that though.
That’s a really good way to look at it, should certainly incentivise them to do better for Australians, but they might just go corrupt or take donations
Well the point of adjusting rates is so people’s salary aggressively goes backwards and realistically the people at the top should sacrifice the most.
CEOs should probably just be banished though, legality has nothing to do with permissibility. Anyone that keeps those ludicrous salaries becomes a monster.
It is unreasonable for anyone to be earning that amount of money and the fact that others earn more should not be used as a justification. Particularly considering how many additional benefits politicians receive alongside their exorbitant salaries.
The number itself isn’t unreasonable. Its the disparity and ‘quality of life’ differences that yeilds, that i think are the key issues. Such as personal agency in life choices.
The worst parts of poverty are often about the choice constraints imposed.
Personally I do want politicians to be earning enough that it stops being super easy to bribe them. If that means giving them a few million a year that's fine, because it's pocket change compared to the cost savings in terms of corruption.
The other side of this is that higher wages increasingly attract people fixated solely on personal wealth accumulation, who themselves are hardly immune to bribery. Are these the personalities we need in positions of power?
In first world countries, wages do not influence susceptibility to bribery.
In high-income countries, petty corruption is less common because wages are above subsistence level. Corruption in these countries, if present, involves more secret deals, brings about larger payoffs, and is more difficult to detect. Government wages will arguably be less effective to combat the latter form of corruption. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/higher-government-wages-may-reduce-corruption
And noting this, if %4 is all it takes to keep you out of the grasp of cronyism and corruption - take it.
But we need national legislated pay rise too because you bet your arse I’ll get 1-2% at best each year for a net -20% in relation to inflation over the last 5-10y.
Your not going to get rid of cronyism and corruption by the carrot alone though. I see that as a red herring to ease the passage of pay rises like these.
If you give a greedy person $100 in the hope they won’t take a $200 bribe, they’ll have $300.
Usually, they’ll then try and manipulate people into giving them even more. “Well of course I took the $200. You guys only offered me $100. What did you expect?”.
So you buckle and offer them $300 to not take the $200 dollars. How much does the greedy person end up with? $500 of course.
What comes next? Manipulating the new lowest bidder of course! “Well of course I took the $300. You guys only offered me $200. What did you expect?”.
If they can take it all, they’ll take it all. If they can squeeze you for more, they’ll squeeze you for more.
There is never a point they will say “no, I already have enough”. The closest they ever come is concluding “If I take the $100 now, I won’t be able to take the $200 later”.
Thats why this stuff needs to be properly regulated and fiercely enforced.
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