For some reason we have this notion that the young man’s “sexual debut,” as the scientific literature about human sexuality calls it, happens as an organic developmental stage in the late teens, with a median age of around 17. If a 17 year old boy picked at random can probably figure out how to close the deal with a girl for the first time, this accomplishment certainly can’t depend on coaching or life experience, because what the hell does a 17 year old boy know?
But apparently a nontrivial number of boys in every generation miss this developmental window, and then they wind up in their 20′s without an adult man’s skill set for dealing with women, like the adult virgins who pay to receive instruction by alleged PUA’s. If you have a teenage son, and you can see that girls don’t find this boy sexually attractive, that has to affect how you view your son, and in a bad way. Perhaps we should consider earlier and more radical interventions into these boys’ lives to help them to develop the adult man’s skill set for relationships with women, instead of leaving this to the haphazard because of romantic nonsense that “the right girl will come along some day.”
BTW, in case someone brings up the P-word, I’d like to know how seeing a prostitute will help a young man develop the skills he needs to get into sexual relationships through dating—because I just don’t see the connection.
I’d like to know how seeing a prostitute will help a young man develop the skills he needs to get into sexual relationships through dating
Seeing sex as less “magical” could help reduce tension with trying to get sex.
(By the way, the whole article seems to me like: “Look, some people have less social skills—let’s make fun of them! Oh, they are trying to overcome their weakness—wow, that’s even funnier!” The elephant in the room is that in our culture it is taboo to express empathy towards men and boys.)
FWIW, there are contexts in which I’ve seen this criticized.
Usually, the context is that someone has started a discussion about some situation in which men or boys have caused suffering or otherwise behaved badly, and someone else has responded by expressing empathy towards the men or boys in question, and the person who started the discussion has criticized the attempt to switch the conversation focus from empathy towards the objects of the behavior, to empathy for the agents of it. (The jargon term for this is “derailing” in many contexts.)
Of course, this is only a subset of the general category of expressing empathy towards men and boys, but it’s one that gets a lot of attention.
This is hardly unique to situations involving gender.
For instance, sometimes this sort of thing happens —
Person A makes a decision or takes an action that hurts Person B — perhaps accidentally; perhaps out of negligence or bias.
Person B makes a demand — such as restitution for the harm done; or that the situation be corrected so that people like A won’t hurt people any more.
A or A’s supporters ignore or deflect B’s demand, saying things such as that A’s decision-making role is difficult; that A’s guilt over hurting B is unpleasant to A; or that continuing to discuss A’s mistake (and not “moving on”) is a sign of malice, unfairness, or mental imbalance on B’s part.
That’s derailing: Person A changing the subject from “A hurt B, and B wants it fixed” to “A’s life is so hard and people are being so harsh to A” in order to avoid talking about fixing the situation for B, the injured party.
That’s derailing: Person A changing the subject from “A hurt B, and B wants it fixed” to “A’s life is so hard and people are being so harsh to A” in order to avoid talking about fixing the situation for B, the injured party.
Let’s pick an example to make things more concrete. Person B owns a field, and Person A runs trains on a nearby railroad that throw dangerous sparks onto the field. Person B demands that Person A either stop the trains from passing near his property, or else fit them with a mechanism that will prevent sparks. Now Person A complains that the trains are used by low-income commuters who will be forced to pay unreasonably high prices in order to cover these additional costs. Is Person A “derailing the conversation”, or is this a valid point? Extra credit: What might influence your answer to this question?
“Derailing” is a very broad term actually, as is the synonimous term “manscaping”. It just means “I-DIDN’T-HEAR-THAT’ and you can use it in all sorts of contexts.
Yes, like many terms it has a lot of meanings in different contexts. But I’m operating here within the context that Viliam_Bur and chaosmage established.
I’d like to know how seeing a prostitute will help a young man develop the skills he needs to get into sexual relationships through dating—because I just don’t see the connection.
Dating and sex are related skills. I assume we agree a prostitute could give a good intro to sex. So why shouldn’t she be a good dating coach too? The young man won’t need to fear rejection from her, nor fear being talked about later, so they can role-play in emotional safety. She can still tell him what’s going to cause rejection when he’s not a customer, and what’s going to work better. Best of all, she can lead all the way, past exchanging numbers and kissing all the way to sex etiquette.
Of course there’s the drawback of possible shame over having visited a prostitute—but virginity can be a source of shame too. So I figure that for the median male adult virgin, seeing a prostitute would be net plus, especially if he manages to specifically ask for dating and first time sex roleplay.
(Posted using the anonymous community account; username and password are Username and password)
Dating and sex are related skills. I assume we agree a prostitute could give a good intro to sex. So why shouldn’t she be a good dating coach too? The young man won’t need to fear rejection from her, nor fear being talked about later, so they can role-play in emotional safety. She can still tell him what’s going to cause rejection when he’s not a customer, and what’s going to work better. Best of all, she can lead all the way, past exchanging numbers and kissing all the way to sex etiquette.
I hear that prostitutes who do that charge a lot—more than typical 17-year-olds can easily afford, and low-end prostitutes basically just let you masturbate with their bodies.
Prostutites don’t need a statutory rape charge any more than anybody else, so obviously I’m not talking about 17-year-olds. I mean guys of legal age.
Concerning economics, it’s hard to compare. Here in Germany, prostitution is legal, the market is efficient, and there are lots of sex workers competent and professional enough to pull off what I described, available for 100-200 euros per hour. I imagine that in places where prostitution is illegal, the situation would be very different—especially if due to the threat of prosecution, potential customers can’t simply email their needs and budget to a couple of providers to get a good offer...
I’m not sure whether this is really a neutral coaching situation. For really independent sex-workers maybe. But I hear that many still work for a pimp, are highly motivated the extract high amounts from the yongster and wouldn’t necessarily provide a neutral emotionally safe environment. This is from the source with significant (but possibly somewhat out-dated) work-experience in this field.
I wouldn’t be too much concerned. The article is a lot less dismissive of PUA than what is usually put forward, even on this site. Plus, it’s not that La Ruina isn’t another little Mystery clone.
If a 17 year old boy picked at random can probably figure out how to close the deal with a girl for the first time
Based on what I know of my culture (US or other European countries might differ), not even 17 yo boys who do get girls know better. They usually get them because of a combination of some better looks, wider social circle, inferior opinions on women. Those who apply for a PUA seminar are the ones who are trying to optimize their understanding of females, letting aside the fact that you cannot will yourself into being non-anxious. My opinion is that if they could be at ease around the opposite sex, they would wind up with a better sexual life than their “natural” peers.
I can see why progressives want to discredit PUA coaches and belittle the men who seek their help, setting aside the question of these coaches’ competence at doing what they advertise about themselves.
One, the PUA subculture promotes a politically incorrect view of women which sounds like the world view of traditional, conservative patriarchy, only read in reverse, so to speak: PUA coaches endorse the patriarchal view of women’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and they teach men how to exploit these for sex by adopting the strategies of old-school cads. And I feel some sympathy for this view of women because to me women seem to have defective agency relative to men. If PUA coaches and writers can make a living with this message, perhaps their advice to men based on this traditional understanding of women has some validity after all.
And two, these men seek to improve themselves in an era of “You didn’t build that” and the denigration of the self-made man. They’ve sought help in civil society and in the market instead of turning to the collectivist institutions created, maintained and thought-policed by progressives. They’ve rejected the progressive ethic of helplessness, dependency and victimization, in other words, in favor of the conservative ethic of self-reliance.
PUA coaches endorse the patriarchal view of women’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and they teach men how to exploit these for sex by adopting the strategies of old-school cads.
I think most pickup coaches would object to this point of view, and it might make some of them quite unhappy. PUAs teach strategies that they believe will increase your attractiveness to the opposite sex. But it’s silly to see attraction as a “weakness” or “vulnerability”. Many people (women included, of course) want to feel attracted in the first place, especially to someone with other good qualities—they just don’t get to make that choice most of the time! That’s the one sense in which ‘reduced agency’ could be said to be relevant—but it doesn’t negate the fact that agency really is quite heavily involved in any kind of pickup.
If PUA coaches and writers can make a living with this message, perhaps their advice to men based on this traditional understanding of women has some validity after all.
There are a lot of quick success schemes sold with the same marketing that PUA products are sold. The fact that people are willing to pay money for a dream of quick success doesn’t mean that they can deliver on the promise.
PUA is a quite complex topic.
Male anxiety is an issue, and I don’t think that an expensive 3 to 4 day bootcamp normally fixes it. Neither does watching a 24 DVD set sold for 499$.
If I could either send a 18 year old to a tantra seminar or to a PUA seminar, I’m not sure that the PUA seminar is the one that gives the higher return as far as improving his success with the opposite sex.
And I feel some sympathy for this view of women because to me women seem to have defective agency relative to men.
The fact that you believe that might be the problem and illustrate lack of ability of dealing with women.
Male anxiety is an issue, and I don’t think that an expensive 3 to 4 day bootcamp normally fixes it. Neither does watching a 24 DVD set sold for 499$.
Irrationality is an issue, and I don’t think that reading the Sequences normally fixes it. Neither does a 3-day rationality seminar for $3900.
Still, for some people it’s a good option.
If I could either send a 18 year old to a tantra seminar or to a PUA seminar, I’m not sure that the PUA seminar is the one that gives the higher return as far as improving his success with the opposite sex.
I would expect different things working for different people.
The interesting thing is that the tantra seminar would not motivate people to write similar articles. Even if there is also no guarantee that it is something more than just someone’s strategy to make money quickly.
Wikipedia has little influence on what’s practiced in a seminar with the headline tantra. At the same time of course it’s not simply about the stereotype it has.
One element of tantra is for example strong eye contact.
You can go to a PUA seminar and hear a lecture by a guy about holding eye contact. That often leads to guys going out and being uncalibrated.
If you on the other hand learn eye contact in a tantra seminar the resulting behavior is likely much better calibrated.
I speak about the kind of event that’s titled a tantra seminar and take my knowledge of what happens there from people I meet in meatspace who took part in such events.
That’s a fair demand, but I don’t want to go in too much detail on that point. There a lot of inferential distance in talking about New Age practices on LW and Tantra isn’t a subject I studied deeply enough to be confident that I fully understand it’s theory base.
Yeah, that article has a weirdly dismissive tone. It reads like pickup is all about helping these ‘painfully shy’, inexperienced guys boost their self-confidence, and there’s nothing more to it than that. But ISTM that folks who sign up for a random intro bootcamp are quite likely to be a lot shier and more intraverted than average. There’s quite a bit of innovative stuff in pickup, but people probably come across it on internet forums, or perhaps through proprietary guides/videos or in the most ‘elite’, costly workshops/bootcamps.
I’ve noticed a similar lack of understanding in other men who had their sexual debuts at developmentally appropriate ages. It becomes a kind of cognitive barrier separating sexually experienced men from the inexperienced ones.
I also notice a lack of curiosity about this phenomenon in professional sex researchers. I have three different college textbooks of the Human Sexuality 101 sort, and none of them has a section on adult virgins, much less adult male virgins.
She references Vox Day’s observations about how many young men these days find themselves alienated from young women, hence their willingness not to pull their punches when female social justice warriors start to mess with their gaming activities. What can these young women really do to these guys to punish them—withhold sex? They’ve already done that. Rejections have consequences.
I believe that it is a factor, it is far from being the only factor, probably not even the most important one. But it points in an interesting direction.
Okay, some political stuff here, because the topic is inherently political, and I even want to go one step more meta, which is deeper in politics:
Feminists have been complaining for a long time about traditional power structures in our society. Which is a legitimate complaint in my opinion, but I disagree with their choice of the word “patriarchy”, because it has the unfortunate connotation that the traditional power structures are merely about something that (all? most? some?) men do to women, and so it makes us blind about things that some women do to men to maintain the traditional power structures. Suggesting that women as a group even have some kind of social power probably already is a heresy.
The list of the techniques women are traditionally allowed to use against men is here. They are mostly ad-homined arguments that a woman (for more powerful impact: a group of young women; but also their male defenders) can use against a man who tries to step out of the line.
“You are bitter!” “You hate women!” Because everyone is already primed to see men as dangerous and hateful. “You are afraid!” “Man up!” When convenient, the stereotypes of masculinity become a useful tool to shame men. “You are immature!” Grow up!” Again a reminder of failing the traditional role. “Stop whining!” “Your fragile male ego!” People have less empathy towards men, so remind them to not expect any. “You just can’t get laid!” “You probably have a small penis!” Even this kind of argument is relatively accepted against men. It doesn’t prove anything, it just suggests that the man is somehow defective, therefore low-status, therefore his opinions don’t matter.
Each of these critiques makes more or less sense separately, but when we take them together, it becomes apparent that as a set they can be used in any situation. A man can be shamed for following his traditional gender role and for deviating from it. Maybe even both at the same time. Neither power nor weakness is acceptable. Perhaps, as a rule of thumb, a man should follow all his traditional obligations (get a job, make a lot of money, move all the heavy objects) but should not expect any traditional advantages (because that would be sexist). Even having a hobby is suspicious, unless the man can explain how the hobby will help him make more money in the future. In our culture, men have instrumental value; only women have terminal value. (Unless the man is really high-status, in which case different rules apply.)
So, in a way, if feminists complain about the traditional gender roles, they should celebrate gamers as allies, because those break the male stereotypes, and they do it on their own, no education or propaganda or change of laws necessary. But of course there is a difference between being a feminist in a sense “trying to change the traditional power structures (patriarchy)” and in a sense “cheering for the ‘team women’”. It’s situations like this when the difference becomes visible; when weakening “patriarchy” also removes some systemic power from the “team women”.
Equality comes at a price. The price is that you don’t have servants anymore. If you complain about it, you probably didn’t want equality in the near mode, only as a far-mode slogan.
From a proper point of view, gamers’ resistance towards patriarchal shaming technuiques is an important victory of feminism. However, I would not be surprised if most self-identified feminists don’t get it.
What can these young women really do to these guys to punish them—withhold sex?
And what about women in gaming? Or gays, or asexuals? (Or course the official party line is that they don’t exist.) All these people are now considered equal and respected members of the society… which includes the right to not give a fuck about what some young ladies are telling them to do.
Feminists do have a long history of doxing. My impression is that they don’t make the same level of violent threats, but they certainly aren’t rare. For example, Chloe Madeley.
Yeah, and you could throw in Erin Pizzey having been threatened for saying that a bit more than half the women in her domestic violence shelter were violent themselves.
Still, the list so far isn’t comparable to the number of women who’ve been threatened just over GamerGate.
I’m at a huge risk of motivated thinking here, but I want to make a few points:
1) Not all forms of “threatening” are equal. For example killing someone’s dog is much worse than sending someone a tweet “i hope you die”. If we put these things in the same category, by such metric the latest tumblr debate may seem more violent than WW2. Also, the threats of blacklisting in an industry seem to me less serious, but also more credible than the threats of physical violence.
2) We have selective reporting here, often without verification. Journalists have a natural advantage at presenting their points of view in journals. Also, one side makes harrassment their central topic (and sometimes a source of income), while for the other side complaining about being harrassed is tangential to their goals. I haven’t examimed the evidence, but seems to me there are almost no cases, on either side, where the threat is (a) documented, and (b) credibly linked to the opposing side, as opposed to a random troll, or some other unrelated conflict.
3) Lest we forget the parallel NotYourShield campaign, threats against gamers and game developers are technically also threats against women, and there are quite possibly more women in gamergate than in gaming journalism. Women are women even when they are not marching under the banner of feminism.
Not all forms of threatening are equal, but “I’m having extremely violent fantasies about you and I know where you (and your children) live” isn’t a tiny thing, and it goes rather beyond “I hope you die”. (Is there a name for the rhetorical trick of choosing, not just a non-central example, but a minimized non-central example?)
Part of the point is that women are sometimes the target of harassment campaigns online. Some of the attackers may have an interest in the ostensible issue, some may be pure trolls. It seems as though a lot of the attackers are male.
I doubt that there are a number of women who left their homes because of nothing in particular.
When I mentioned above that people underestimate the effect of the worst people on their own side, I meant that just as I tend to underestimate the way feminism can add up, I think you’re underestimating the number and forcefulness of the vicious people on your side.
I’m still incredibly angry at the way Kathy Sierra was driven out of public life.
I’m curious about why this comment got so many downvotes, if anyone would care to try explaining. I’m saying “try explaining” because any one person can only know the reason for at most one downvote.
The problem is that no matter your intentions the phrase reads as a complete dismissal of Viliam_Bur’s argument. That is how these discussions turn ugly.
Would this qualify as a sufficiently scary threat? Both men and women receive various kinds of abuse online. I would guess that most of the aggressors are men, but victims are of both genders. Being a victim of online harrassment is not a uniquely female experience, although some specific forms of harrassment may be, mostly of sexual kind. I would also guess that victims of “swatting” are typically men, but I have no data about it.
Now I feel it would be good to split the debate into two completely separated topics: feminism and GamerGate. Debating them as if they are the same thing would make this all extremely confusing. Framing GamerGate as “angry white men against feminists” is merely a propaganda of one side; in reality, both sides include angry white men, and both sides include feminists.
1) I believe I have read a few stories about violent behavior of feminists, but I usually don’t keep records of things I read online. If my memory is reliable, the complaints about abuse from feminists usually came from LGBT people, although officially the feminists are supposed to be on their side. Googling for “violent feminists” mostly brings false positives, but also this.
I admit I am confused about the phenomenon of online SJWs. Are they supposed to be a part of feminism, or is that a separate thing? Because their opinions seem similar to some extreme feminist opinions. Seems to me these people do a lot of online harrassment, although on internet it is difficult to prove something isn’t merely trolling. And generally, even if someone is a feminist, that doesn’t mean that everything they do is done in the name of feminism.
2) Here is a collection of abuse towards pro-Gamergate people. Again, it’s difficult to prove who did that. We would have to debate each piece of evidence individually, but I’d rather avoid that.
That first link strikes me as not extremely scary, and it seems to be a rant rather than a threat which was sent to someone in particular. Furthermore, it doesn’t have specific details about injuries and degradation. It isn’t a photoshopped image of the person being threatened, either.
Gamergate is hopelessly weird—as you may know, the initial post was basically a man talking about having been emotionally abused by a woman, with only a minor mention of games and journalism, and it morphed into something completely different.
As far as I can tell, SJWs consider themselves to be part of feminism and/or the one true feminism. I haven’t seen a claim anywhere that they aren’t feminists, and at least one suggestion that there’s no point is saying that they aren’t feminists, even if they’re wrong-headed.
It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of moderate feminists (like most people) aren’t engaging with SJs because that looks like a lot of work and no fun.
Is it just me or is this a proxy bravery debate? Are we collectively committed to getting to the bottom of who / which tribe is the true victim of those mean people on the internet? I’m not entirely sure why this has been promoted to the level of “have two extremely smart LW posters discuss”. You both are quite keen thinkers, and I imagine the topics this funges against for your attention will delight yourselves and the wider LW community even more.
Still, the list so far isn’t comparable to the number of women who’ve been threatened just over GamerGate.
Well, since the number of women who appear to have been threatened over GamerGate (as opposed to the number of women who claim to have been threatened, but the evidence vanishes whenever these allegations are investigated) appears to be 0. Furthermore, given your recent demonstrated lack of ability to detrmene whether something is a thread (hint: someone saying something that might imply he believes something you find threatening is not a threat), you probably shouldn’t be making judgements on these issues.
I could be wrong, but I thought the consensus was that your recent event example was not a dox of A by B (or only linking to a public dox by third party).
That said, it’s very clear that A and B don’t like each other and spin the facts unfavorably about each other.
It’s easy to hate the NRA if you come from certain parts. But the NRA is not very unusual in this respect. Interest groups, by their nature are unable to have the overview to know when to throw their cause under the bus for the “greater good.” This is a general problem for all interest groups, regardless of whether their cause is noble or not.
The real question is how do we fight Moloch by a different method than competing interest groups (which will follow the usual “behavior physics” of interest groups, which feminism is not exempt from, regardless of how noble its goal is).
Like Lumifer, I think the NRA is doing the right thing here—even strictly from a conservationist perspective. If we all stopped eating eggs, would there be more chickens? Of course not. When I mentioned similar logic here at least the vegetarians were honest that they wanted to drastically reduce the chicken population. But if using fewer chicken products leads to fewer chickens, how will using fewer elephant products lead to more elephants? And note that these two contradictory answers are frequently pushed by the very same people.
If you really wanted to preserve elephant populations, you’d make it easier for people to farm them for their ivory, which would go, in part, into making gun handles. But because the NRA are culturally alien to you, you’d like to throw their cause under the bus “for the greater good,” for the very slightest reason.
So yeah, we all want causes we don’t care about to shut up and get out of our way. It’s a good thing that we can’t make them. After all, NRA members aren’t just gun enthusiasts, they are also citizens in every other way. If NRA policy interferes too much with (say) economic wellbeing in the eyes of its members, then the NRA will lose force as an interest group.
I think the NRA is doing the right thing here—even strictly from a conservationist perspective
I think maybe you do not realize how poor the institutions are here. There isn’t some actor with long term overview maximizing ivory profits (and incidentally ensuring elephants continue as a species). Commercial overexploitation of resources in the biosphere is extremely common, and requires coordination to solve properly (see for example cod stocks collapse in the Atlantic for one example historically important for Europe). Collapse (the book) gave some examples where coordinating a long term exploitation of the environment was solved properly and examples where it wasn’t.
But my point isn’t about the NRA, or environmentalists specifically, I just used them as an example. My point is about a general problem with interest group ecosystems. If an interest group advocates a bridge to nowhere it is not going to lose force, it is doing precisely what it is meant to do.
But because the NRA are culturally alien to you
I would like to add here that I have been very very careful not to discuss my actual politics. Most of your assumptions about my culture or my politics are false. (So I guess I passed the ideological Turing test?)
Back when I had long hair, I was once accosted by a dude trolling for Obama votes who said: “you have long hair, you must be an Obama supporter!” What you are doing is basically this. Filling a hole with a pigeon is going to be very frustrating for you in this case.
Not necessarily. An effective solution to the tragedy of the commons is property rights. While at the moment there may not be an actor with a long-term commercial interest in elephants, this kind of legislation is making sure that there never will be one.
Property rights do not magically enforce themselves, you need a government to enforce it for you. Everyone agreeing to a government’s monopoly on force is yet another coordination problem. This is not so easy in places where elephant poaching happens. That aside, Collapse had examples where property rights were not sufficient in themselves. You should read it, I enjoyed it a lot!
Property rights do not magically enforce themselves, you need a government to enforce it for you.
Again, not necessarily. A private security force works fine—especially in places where the government isn’t… particularly effective. Such governments aren’t all that good at coordination, either, by the way.
But the argument boiled down to its core is just incentives. It’s much better to have incentives for private people to have herds of elephants roam on their ranches than depend on government bureaucrats who, frankly, don’t care that much.
An international ban on ivory trading by itself wont’ save the elephants—the locals will just hunt them down for meat and because they destroy crops.
I think you just chose a bad example. Your underlying point that special-interest groups have tunnel vision and are constitutionally incapable of deviating from their charter is certainly valid.
I don’t understand what this is about anymore (I think you just like to argue?)
(a) There aren’t “private security forces” replacing governments making Africa a kind of modern day Snowcrash universe. Governments are mostly weak and corrupt, and there are warlords running around killing folks and each other, and taking their loot.
(b) The way the NRA makes its decisions has nothing to do with the political situation in Africa, the state of elephant herds in Africa, the long term fate of the African elephant species, or anything like that. They consult relevant gun makers, and decide based on that. This is contrary to the original claim that the NRA was making the correct decision even from a conservational point of view. They aren’t in this case, but if we did the math and found out they did, it would certainly be by accident, because they surely didn’t do the math.
(c) Do you actually know how many elephants are killed in Africa for non-ivory reasons?
The way the NRA makes its decisions has nothing to do with the political situation in Africa, the state of elephant herds in Africa, the long term fate of the African elephant species, or anything like that… This is contrary to the original claim the NRA was making the correct decision even from a conservational point of view. They aren’t in this case, but if we did the math and found out they did, it would certainly be by accident, because they surely didn’t do the math.
I didn’t claim that they made the correct decision for the right reasons. Of course it’s (in a sense) a felicitous coincidence that the NRA is in the right here from a conservationist point of view. But if environmental groups are helping the environment, I’d view that as even more of a felicitous coincidence, given their methods of making decisions.
It’s remarkable, but not hugely so, that the policies of a group who care about the property rights of American gun owners should align with strong property rights worldwide, and hence a flourishing environment. It would be far more remarkable if the policies of a group who care about purity rituals should lead to a flourishing environment.
Only as long as interesting things are being said :-)
There aren’t “private security forces” replacing governments
And nobody said that. But hiring guards for your farm/ranch/pasture is quite common and does happen to be private enforcement of property rights.
They consult relevant gun makers
I can’t imagine why contemporary gun makers would care about decades-old ivory. If anything, they’d prefer more constraints on sales of old guns as that enlarges the market for new guns.
And I don’t think anyone made a claim that NRA’s decision was correct from a conservationist point of view. The claim is that the law fails the cost-benefit analysis for certain (implied widespread) sets of values. I am sure ardent environmentalists are happy with it, but not everyone is an ardent environmentalist.
Do you actually know how many elephants are killed in Africa for non-ivory reasons?
Ah, good question. My pre-Google answer would be “some” and if pressed for numbers I’d say 10-20% at the moment, but with not much conviction. Accio Google!
Hmm… Lots of data but all of it is on “illegally killed” elephants which isn’t particularly useful in this context, as killing elephants is mostly illegal everywhere and so the meaning is just “human-killed”. My impression is that in areas with LOTS of poaching the great majority of elephants are killed for the ivory, but in areas with few “illegal kills” situation may differ. No data to support this impression, though. It also seems that there is a lot variability in the numbers killed year-to-year.
Do you see a problem with the dwindling elephant population too? If so, are you able to judge which is the greater problem? If so, what is your judgement?
Lots of existing ivory becomes illegal, leading to a local drop in value, leading to lots of US ivory being traded to countries where it isn’t illegal. Right?
So that first of all that sets up excellent opportunities for police sting operations. But it also drives down prices (at least for a few years), making elephant poaching less lucrative.
In parallel to that, the US is setting an example. A lot of countries copy US criminal laws rather than thinking them up from scratch (the War on Drugs being the textbook example), and since almost everyone loves elephants and the ivory trade is a huge and growing threat to them, there’ll be a particularly low threshold to copying this one.
Lots of existing ivory becomes illegal, leading to a local drop in value, leading to lots of US ivory being traded to countries where it isn’t illegal. Right?
Sigh. Wrong. Why don’t you at least look at the original link to the article about the ban? Notably, it says (emphasis mine):
Last month, the White House announced a ban on the commercial trade of elephant ivory, placing a total embargo on the new import of items containing elephant ivory, prohibiting its export except in the case of bona fide antiques, and clarified that “antiques” only refers to items more than 100 years old when it comes to ivory.
I neither said nor meant it was going to be exported legally. It’ll be black market trade, but it’ll still respond to market forces, just like drug trafficking does.
Hold on. No new ivory products can (legally) be imported or exported from the US, but ivory products already in the US can still be bought and sold, albeit subject to restrictions. Providing demand for ivory remains roughly constant, and the US continues not to be an ivory producer, we would expect that to lead to a rise in ivory prices in the US market, and almost no ivory being exported (but some being imported on the black market).
So how much ivory do you expect to be illegally exported out of the US as a result of that law?
And if you don’t care about legality, why would you export ivory, anyway? The prohibition destroys legal markets, but tends to raise prices in the black markets.
The prohibition destroys legal markets, but tends to raise prices in the black markets.
False. Scarcity raises prices, and black market goods are often scarce, but where illegal goods are not scarce (say street quality heroin) the profit margins are fairly low because illegality makes it hard to compete on brand so everyone competes on price.
So how much ivory do you expect to be illegally exported out of the US as a result of that law?
I don’t see how my estimate would matter in the slightest.
I don’t see how my estimate would matter in the slightest.
It would because your argument is that US exports will depress prices in the rest of the world. If the US exports amount to half a tusk, it’s not going to depress world prices much :-/
In any case, this seems to be descending into bickering. Agree to disagree?
No, I’m saying this law makes it less scarce, because it makes buyers leave the market.
I can’t make an informed prediction of how much ivory is going to leave the US because I know nothing about future rates of persecution or the effectiveness of the ivory trade. I imagine that a few people will “help” ivory owners avoid law enforcement by buying their illegal ivory at a sharp discount, then trading them for drugs and letting the drug traffickers get the stuff out of the country. Other, still legal ivory is going to be traded off too, since it is obvious the legal trend is going only one way. The economic incentives are pretty obvious, it’d be really weird if this didn’t happen at least a little. But I can’t know how much. If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say 15% of ivory inside US borders is leaving it in the next ten years.
Agree to disagree?
No. On what do we still disagree? Much of my argument on the likely effect on the ivory market is prediction descending into outright speculation—but this is all a sub-point answering your refusal to judge whether this or the survival of the elephant species is more important. You disputed neither of my other points on why these are causally linked (ease of sting operations and the prediction other countries would copy this law). So this does not appear to be a false dilemma. Which is why I’d like to return to my main point: Isn’t helping the elephant species worth this law?
Even ignoring the common good: Why do interest groups so often impede the long-term progress of their own goals?
Why, when X is simple, strong, and sufficient to advance the group purpose, will a group instead focus on advancing some complicated and contentious Y?
Many groups, (including some I support), appear genuinely unable to do any long-term strategic thinking at all, or powerless to control their internal social forces.
At least some of the attacks you describe are used against women as well—in particular the “grow up” or “be tougher because our project is more important than your emotions” range. I’m not sure it’s all as gendered as you think.
This being said, there are gendered insults (notably small penis,neckbeard, and sausage fest) that are common among feminists. I’ve seen some feminists argue against the first two, but not the third.
I’m wondering whether it makes sense to try to keep your opponents’ identity small, and not modelling a large number of people as one big person with a unified agenda.
Gamers aren’t “pulling their punches” online because SJW don’t pull their punches either. It’s all random Internet fun anyway until people actually get doxxed (or ‘swatted’, or worse).
I thought this article about coaching in pickup techniques kind of misses the point:
I Took A Class on How to Pick Up Women—But I Learned More About Male Anxiety
http://www.alternet.org/culture/i-took-class-how-pick-women-i-learned-more-about-male-anxiety
I posted in response:
BTW, in case someone brings up the P-word, I’d like to know how seeing a prostitute will help a young man develop the skills he needs to get into sexual relationships through dating—because I just don’t see the connection.
Seeing sex as less “magical” could help reduce tension with trying to get sex.
(By the way, the whole article seems to me like: “Look, some people have less social skills—let’s make fun of them! Oh, they are trying to overcome their weakness—wow, that’s even funnier!” The elephant in the room is that in our culture it is taboo to express empathy towards men and boys.)
Really? I do that all the time and literally nobody has ever tried to stop me or punish me for it. Do your actual personal experiences differ?
FWIW, there are contexts in which I’ve seen this criticized.
Usually, the context is that someone has started a discussion about some situation in which men or boys have caused suffering or otherwise behaved badly, and someone else has responded by expressing empathy towards the men or boys in question, and the person who started the discussion has criticized the attempt to switch the conversation focus from empathy towards the objects of the behavior, to empathy for the agents of it. (The jargon term for this is “derailing” in many contexts.)
Of course, this is only a subset of the general category of expressing empathy towards men and boys, but it’s one that gets a lot of attention.
This is hardly unique to situations involving gender.
For instance, sometimes this sort of thing happens —
Person A makes a decision or takes an action that hurts Person B — perhaps accidentally; perhaps out of negligence or bias.
Person B makes a demand — such as restitution for the harm done; or that the situation be corrected so that people like A won’t hurt people any more.
A or A’s supporters ignore or deflect B’s demand, saying things such as that A’s decision-making role is difficult; that A’s guilt over hurting B is unpleasant to A; or that continuing to discuss A’s mistake (and not “moving on”) is a sign of malice, unfairness, or mental imbalance on B’s part.
That’s derailing: Person A changing the subject from “A hurt B, and B wants it fixed” to “A’s life is so hard and people are being so harsh to A” in order to avoid talking about fixing the situation for B, the injured party.
Yes, I agree that it’s not unique to situations involving gender.
Let’s pick an example to make things more concrete. Person B owns a field, and Person A runs trains on a nearby railroad that throw dangerous sparks onto the field. Person B demands that Person A either stop the trains from passing near his property, or else fit them with a mechanism that will prevent sparks. Now Person A complains that the trains are used by low-income commuters who will be forced to pay unreasonably high prices in order to cover these additional costs. Is Person A “derailing the conversation”, or is this a valid point? Extra credit: What might influence your answer to this question?
“Derailing” is a very broad term actually, as is the synonimous term “manscaping”. It just means “I-DIDN’T-HEAR-THAT’ and you can use it in all sorts of contexts.
I think you mean “mansplaining”. “Manscaping” means, er, something different.
Whoops, you’re right. This stuff gets quite confusing!
Yes, like many terms it has a lot of meanings in different contexts. But I’m operating here within the context that Viliam_Bur and chaosmage established.
Dating and sex are related skills. I assume we agree a prostitute could give a good intro to sex. So why shouldn’t she be a good dating coach too? The young man won’t need to fear rejection from her, nor fear being talked about later, so they can role-play in emotional safety. She can still tell him what’s going to cause rejection when he’s not a customer, and what’s going to work better. Best of all, she can lead all the way, past exchanging numbers and kissing all the way to sex etiquette.
Of course there’s the drawback of possible shame over having visited a prostitute—but virginity can be a source of shame too. So I figure that for the median male adult virgin, seeing a prostitute would be net plus, especially if he manages to specifically ask for dating and first time sex roleplay.
(Posted using the anonymous community account; username and password are
Usernameandpassword)I hear that prostitutes who do that charge a lot—more than typical 17-year-olds can easily afford, and low-end prostitutes basically just let you masturbate with their bodies.
Prostutites don’t need a statutory rape charge any more than anybody else, so obviously I’m not talking about 17-year-olds. I mean guys of legal age.
Concerning economics, it’s hard to compare. Here in Germany, prostitution is legal, the market is efficient, and there are lots of sex workers competent and professional enough to pull off what I described, available for 100-200 euros per hour. I imagine that in places where prostitution is illegal, the situation would be very different—especially if due to the threat of prosecution, potential customers can’t simply email their needs and budget to a couple of providers to get a good offer...
(posted by another user using this account)
I’m not sure whether this is really a neutral coaching situation. For really independent sex-workers maybe. But I hear that many still work for a pimp, are highly motivated the extract high amounts from the yongster and wouldn’t necessarily provide a neutral emotionally safe environment. This is from the source with significant (but possibly somewhat out-dated) work-experience in this field.
I wouldn’t be too much concerned. The article is a lot less dismissive of PUA than what is usually put forward, even on this site. Plus, it’s not that La Ruina isn’t another little Mystery clone.
Based on what I know of my culture (US or other European countries might differ), not even 17 yo boys who do get girls know better. They usually get them because of a combination of some better looks, wider social circle, inferior opinions on women.
Those who apply for a PUA seminar are the ones who are trying to optimize their understanding of females, letting aside the fact that you cannot will yourself into being non-anxious. My opinion is that if they could be at ease around the opposite sex, they would wind up with a better sexual life than their “natural” peers.
Another post I made to this AlterNet piece:
I think most pickup coaches would object to this point of view, and it might make some of them quite unhappy. PUAs teach strategies that they believe will increase your attractiveness to the opposite sex. But it’s silly to see attraction as a “weakness” or “vulnerability”. Many people (women included, of course) want to feel attracted in the first place, especially to someone with other good qualities—they just don’t get to make that choice most of the time! That’s the one sense in which ‘reduced agency’ could be said to be relevant—but it doesn’t negate the fact that agency really is quite heavily involved in any kind of pickup.
There are a lot of quick success schemes sold with the same marketing that PUA products are sold. The fact that people are willing to pay money for a dream of quick success doesn’t mean that they can deliver on the promise.
PUA is a quite complex topic.
Male anxiety is an issue, and I don’t think that an expensive 3 to 4 day bootcamp normally fixes it. Neither does watching a 24 DVD set sold for 499$.
If I could either send a 18 year old to a tantra seminar or to a PUA seminar, I’m not sure that the PUA seminar is the one that gives the higher return as far as improving his success with the opposite sex.
The fact that you believe that might be the problem and illustrate lack of ability of dealing with women.
Irrationality is an issue, and I don’t think that reading the Sequences normally fixes it. Neither does a 3-day rationality seminar for $3900.
Still, for some people it’s a good option.
I would expect different things working for different people.
The interesting thing is that the tantra seminar would not motivate people to write similar articles. Even if there is also no guarantee that it is something more than just someone’s strategy to make money quickly.
Tantra isn’t really new-age exotic sex practices.
Wikipedia has little influence on what’s practiced in a seminar with the headline tantra. At the same time of course it’s not simply about the stereotype it has.
One element of tantra is for example strong eye contact. You can go to a PUA seminar and hear a lecture by a guy about holding eye contact. That often leads to guys going out and being uncalibrated. If you on the other hand learn eye contact in a tantra seminar the resulting behavior is likely much better calibrated.
I feel we are using the word “tantra” in entirely different meanings.
I speak about the kind of event that’s titled a tantra seminar and take my knowledge of what happens there from people I meet in meatspace who took part in such events.
Well, what happens there?
That’s a fair demand, but I don’t want to go in too much detail on that point. There a lot of inferential distance in talking about New Age practices on LW and Tantra isn’t a subject I studied deeply enough to be confident that I fully understand it’s theory base.
Yeah, that article has a weirdly dismissive tone. It reads like pickup is all about helping these ‘painfully shy’, inexperienced guys boost their self-confidence, and there’s nothing more to it than that. But ISTM that folks who sign up for a random intro bootcamp are quite likely to be a lot shier and more intraverted than average. There’s quite a bit of innovative stuff in pickup, but people probably come across it on internet forums, or perhaps through proprietary guides/videos or in the most ‘elite’, costly workshops/bootcamps.
I’ve noticed a similar lack of understanding in other men who had their sexual debuts at developmentally appropriate ages. It becomes a kind of cognitive barrier separating sexually experienced men from the inexperienced ones.
I also notice a lack of curiosity about this phenomenon in professional sex researchers. I have three different college textbooks of the Human Sexuality 101 sort, and none of them has a section on adult virgins, much less adult male virgins.
That’s the thing that bugs me the most. Why can’t we just have quality research on the subject?
More along these lines by Dr. Helen Smith, the wife of blogger Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit:
Geeks on Strike?
http://pjmedia.com/drhelen/2014/11/20/geeks-on-strike/
She references Vox Day’s observations about how many young men these days find themselves alienated from young women, hence their willingness not to pull their punches when female social justice warriors start to mess with their gaming activities. What can these young women really do to these guys to punish them—withhold sex? They’ve already done that. Rejections have consequences.
I believe that it is a factor, it is far from being the only factor, probably not even the most important one. But it points in an interesting direction.
Okay, some political stuff here, because the topic is inherently political, and I even want to go one step more meta, which is deeper in politics:
Feminists have been complaining for a long time about traditional power structures in our society. Which is a legitimate complaint in my opinion, but I disagree with their choice of the word “patriarchy”, because it has the unfortunate connotation that the traditional power structures are merely about something that (all? most? some?) men do to women, and so it makes us blind about things that some women do to men to maintain the traditional power structures. Suggesting that women as a group even have some kind of social power probably already is a heresy.
The list of the techniques women are traditionally allowed to use against men is here. They are mostly ad-homined arguments that a woman (for more powerful impact: a group of young women; but also their male defenders) can use against a man who tries to step out of the line.
“You are bitter!” “You hate women!” Because everyone is already primed to see men as dangerous and hateful. “You are afraid!” “Man up!” When convenient, the stereotypes of masculinity become a useful tool to shame men. “You are immature!” Grow up!” Again a reminder of failing the traditional role. “Stop whining!” “Your fragile male ego!” People have less empathy towards men, so remind them to not expect any. “You just can’t get laid!” “You probably have a small penis!” Even this kind of argument is relatively accepted against men. It doesn’t prove anything, it just suggests that the man is somehow defective, therefore low-status, therefore his opinions don’t matter.
Each of these critiques makes more or less sense separately, but when we take them together, it becomes apparent that as a set they can be used in any situation. A man can be shamed for following his traditional gender role and for deviating from it. Maybe even both at the same time. Neither power nor weakness is acceptable. Perhaps, as a rule of thumb, a man should follow all his traditional obligations (get a job, make a lot of money, move all the heavy objects) but should not expect any traditional advantages (because that would be sexist). Even having a hobby is suspicious, unless the man can explain how the hobby will help him make more money in the future. In our culture, men have instrumental value; only women have terminal value. (Unless the man is really high-status, in which case different rules apply.)
So, in a way, if feminists complain about the traditional gender roles, they should celebrate gamers as allies, because those break the male stereotypes, and they do it on their own, no education or propaganda or change of laws necessary. But of course there is a difference between being a feminist in a sense “trying to change the traditional power structures (patriarchy)” and in a sense “cheering for the ‘team women’”. It’s situations like this when the difference becomes visible; when weakening “patriarchy” also removes some systemic power from the “team women”.
Equality comes at a price. The price is that you don’t have servants anymore. If you complain about it, you probably didn’t want equality in the near mode, only as a far-mode slogan.
From a proper point of view, gamers’ resistance towards patriarchal shaming technuiques is an important victory of feminism. However, I would not be surprised if most self-identified feminists don’t get it.
And what about women in gaming? Or gays, or asexuals? (Or course the official party line is that they don’t exist.) All these people are now considered equal and respected members of the society… which includes the right to not give a fuck about what some young ladies are telling them to do.
Again, the true equality works both ways.
People underestimate the effect of the worst behaved people on their own side.
This being said, unless I’ve missed something (quite possible), feminists don’t have a comparable history of doxing and violent threats.
Feminists do have a long history of doxing. My impression is that they don’t make the same level of violent threats, but they certainly aren’t rare. For example, Chloe Madeley.
Details about the history of doxxing?
You mean feminists in general, or just recent events?
EDIT: By the way, in the second link, the victim is a feminist, too.
Yeah, and you could throw in Erin Pizzey having been threatened for saying that a bit more than half the women in her domestic violence shelter were violent themselves.
Still, the list so far isn’t comparable to the number of women who’ve been threatened just over GamerGate.
I’m at a huge risk of motivated thinking here, but I want to make a few points:
1) Not all forms of “threatening” are equal. For example killing someone’s dog is much worse than sending someone a tweet “i hope you die”. If we put these things in the same category, by such metric the latest tumblr debate may seem more violent than WW2. Also, the threats of blacklisting in an industry seem to me less serious, but also more credible than the threats of physical violence.
2) We have selective reporting here, often without verification. Journalists have a natural advantage at presenting their points of view in journals. Also, one side makes harrassment their central topic (and sometimes a source of income), while for the other side complaining about being harrassed is tangential to their goals. I haven’t examimed the evidence, but seems to me there are almost no cases, on either side, where the threat is (a) documented, and (b) credibly linked to the opposing side, as opposed to a random troll, or some other unrelated conflict.
3) Lest we forget the parallel NotYourShield campaign, threats against gamers and game developers are technically also threats against women, and there are quite possibly more women in gamergate than in gaming journalism. Women are women even when they are not marching under the banner of feminism.
Yeah, I’d say motivated thinking.
Not all forms of threatening are equal, but “I’m having extremely violent fantasies about you and I know where you (and your children) live” isn’t a tiny thing, and it goes rather beyond “I hope you die”. (Is there a name for the rhetorical trick of choosing, not just a non-central example, but a minimized non-central example?)
Part of the point is that women are sometimes the target of harassment campaigns online. Some of the attackers may have an interest in the ostensible issue, some may be pure trolls. It seems as though a lot of the attackers are male.
I doubt that there are a number of women who left their homes because of nothing in particular.
When I mentioned above that people underestimate the effect of the worst people on their own side, I meant that just as I tend to underestimate the way feminism can add up, I think you’re underestimating the number and forcefulness of the vicious people on your side.
I’m still incredibly angry at the way Kathy Sierra was driven out of public life.
I’m curious about why this comment got so many downvotes, if anyone would care to try explaining. I’m saying “try explaining” because any one person can only know the reason for at most one downvote.
Comments like these are not helpful. Especially not on a highly politicized topic such as the one the two of you are discussing.
I don’t know if it’s enough to matter, but I only mentioned motivated thinking because Villiam brought up the possibility.
The problem is that no matter your intentions the phrase reads as a complete dismissal of Viliam_Bur’s argument. That is how these discussions turn ugly.
Would this qualify as a sufficiently scary threat? Both men and women receive various kinds of abuse online. I would guess that most of the aggressors are men, but victims are of both genders. Being a victim of online harrassment is not a uniquely female experience, although some specific forms of harrassment may be, mostly of sexual kind. I would also guess that victims of “swatting” are typically men, but I have no data about it.
Now I feel it would be good to split the debate into two completely separated topics: feminism and GamerGate. Debating them as if they are the same thing would make this all extremely confusing. Framing GamerGate as “angry white men against feminists” is merely a propaganda of one side; in reality, both sides include angry white men, and both sides include feminists.
1) I believe I have read a few stories about violent behavior of feminists, but I usually don’t keep records of things I read online. If my memory is reliable, the complaints about abuse from feminists usually came from LGBT people, although officially the feminists are supposed to be on their side. Googling for “violent feminists” mostly brings false positives, but also this.
I admit I am confused about the phenomenon of online SJWs. Are they supposed to be a part of feminism, or is that a separate thing? Because their opinions seem similar to some extreme feminist opinions. Seems to me these people do a lot of online harrassment, although on internet it is difficult to prove something isn’t merely trolling. And generally, even if someone is a feminist, that doesn’t mean that everything they do is done in the name of feminism.
2) Here is a collection of abuse towards pro-Gamergate people. Again, it’s difficult to prove who did that. We would have to debate each piece of evidence individually, but I’d rather avoid that.
That first link strikes me as not extremely scary, and it seems to be a rant rather than a threat which was sent to someone in particular. Furthermore, it doesn’t have specific details about injuries and degradation. It isn’t a photoshopped image of the person being threatened, either.
Gamergate is hopelessly weird—as you may know, the initial post was basically a man talking about having been emotionally abused by a woman, with only a minor mention of games and journalism, and it morphed into something completely different.
As far as I can tell, SJWs consider themselves to be part of feminism and/or the one true feminism. I haven’t seen a claim anywhere that they aren’t feminists, and at least one suggestion that there’s no point is saying that they aren’t feminists, even if they’re wrong-headed.
It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of moderate feminists (like most people) aren’t engaging with SJs because that looks like a lot of work and no fun.
Is it just me or is this a proxy bravery debate? Are we collectively committed to getting to the bottom of who / which tribe is the true victim of those mean people on the internet? I’m not entirely sure why this has been promoted to the level of “have two extremely smart LW posters discuss”. You both are quite keen thinkers, and I imagine the topics this funges against for your attention will delight yourselves and the wider LW community even more.
Well, since the number of women who appear to have been threatened over GamerGate (as opposed to the number of women who claim to have been threatened, but the evidence vanishes whenever these allegations are investigated) appears to be 0. Furthermore, given your recent demonstrated lack of ability to detrmene whether something is a thread (hint: someone saying something that might imply he believes something you find threatening is not a threat), you probably shouldn’t be making judgements on these issues.
I could be wrong, but I thought the consensus was that your recent event example was not a dox of A by B (or only linking to a public dox by third party).
That said, it’s very clear that A and B don’t like each other and spin the facts unfavorably about each other.
Here is a problem with an interest group:
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/03/05/3362801/nra-ivory-elephants-guns/
It’s easy to hate the NRA if you come from certain parts. But the NRA is not very unusual in this respect. Interest groups, by their nature are unable to have the overview to know when to throw their cause under the bus for the “greater good.” This is a general problem for all interest groups, regardless of whether their cause is noble or not.
The real question is how do we fight Moloch by a different method than competing interest groups (which will follow the usual “behavior physics” of interest groups, which feminism is not exempt from, regardless of how noble its goal is).
Like Lumifer, I think the NRA is doing the right thing here—even strictly from a conservationist perspective. If we all stopped eating eggs, would there be more chickens? Of course not. When I mentioned similar logic here at least the vegetarians were honest that they wanted to drastically reduce the chicken population. But if using fewer chicken products leads to fewer chickens, how will using fewer elephant products lead to more elephants? And note that these two contradictory answers are frequently pushed by the very same people.
If you really wanted to preserve elephant populations, you’d make it easier for people to farm them for their ivory, which would go, in part, into making gun handles. But because the NRA are culturally alien to you, you’d like to throw their cause under the bus “for the greater good,” for the very slightest reason.
So yeah, we all want causes we don’t care about to shut up and get out of our way. It’s a good thing that we can’t make them. After all, NRA members aren’t just gun enthusiasts, they are also citizens in every other way. If NRA policy interferes too much with (say) economic wellbeing in the eyes of its members, then the NRA will lose force as an interest group.
I think maybe you do not realize how poor the institutions are here. There isn’t some actor with long term overview maximizing ivory profits (and incidentally ensuring elephants continue as a species). Commercial overexploitation of resources in the biosphere is extremely common, and requires coordination to solve properly (see for example cod stocks collapse in the Atlantic for one example historically important for Europe). Collapse (the book) gave some examples where coordinating a long term exploitation of the environment was solved properly and examples where it wasn’t.
But my point isn’t about the NRA, or environmentalists specifically, I just used them as an example. My point is about a general problem with interest group ecosystems. If an interest group advocates a bridge to nowhere it is not going to lose force, it is doing precisely what it is meant to do.
I would like to add here that I have been very very careful not to discuss my actual politics. Most of your assumptions about my culture or my politics are false. (So I guess I passed the ideological Turing test?)
Back when I had long hair, I was once accosted by a dude trolling for Obama votes who said: “you have long hair, you must be an Obama supporter!” What you are doing is basically this. Filling a hole with a pigeon is going to be very frustrating for you in this case.
Not necessarily. An effective solution to the tragedy of the commons is property rights. While at the moment there may not be an actor with a long-term commercial interest in elephants, this kind of legislation is making sure that there never will be one.
Property rights do not magically enforce themselves, you need a government to enforce it for you. Everyone agreeing to a government’s monopoly on force is yet another coordination problem. This is not so easy in places where elephant poaching happens. That aside, Collapse had examples where property rights were not sufficient in themselves. You should read it, I enjoyed it a lot!
Again, not necessarily. A private security force works fine—especially in places where the government isn’t… particularly effective. Such governments aren’t all that good at coordination, either, by the way.
But the argument boiled down to its core is just incentives. It’s much better to have incentives for private people to have herds of elephants roam on their ranches than depend on government bureaucrats who, frankly, don’t care that much.
An international ban on ivory trading by itself wont’ save the elephants—the locals will just hunt them down for meat and because they destroy crops.
I think you just chose a bad example. Your underlying point that special-interest groups have tunnel vision and are constitutionally incapable of deviating from their charter is certainly valid.
I don’t understand what this is about anymore (I think you just like to argue?)
(a) There aren’t “private security forces” replacing governments making Africa a kind of modern day Snowcrash universe. Governments are mostly weak and corrupt, and there are warlords running around killing folks and each other, and taking their loot.
(b) The way the NRA makes its decisions has nothing to do with the political situation in Africa, the state of elephant herds in Africa, the long term fate of the African elephant species, or anything like that. They consult relevant gun makers, and decide based on that. This is contrary to the original claim that the NRA was making the correct decision even from a conservational point of view. They aren’t in this case, but if we did the math and found out they did, it would certainly be by accident, because they surely didn’t do the math.
(c) Do you actually know how many elephants are killed in Africa for non-ivory reasons?
I didn’t claim that they made the correct decision for the right reasons. Of course it’s (in a sense) a felicitous coincidence that the NRA is in the right here from a conservationist point of view. But if environmental groups are helping the environment, I’d view that as even more of a felicitous coincidence, given their methods of making decisions.
It’s remarkable, but not hugely so, that the policies of a group who care about the property rights of American gun owners should align with strong property rights worldwide, and hence a flourishing environment. It would be far more remarkable if the policies of a group who care about purity rituals should lead to a flourishing environment.
Only as long as interesting things are being said :-)
And nobody said that. But hiring guards for your farm/ranch/pasture is quite common and does happen to be private enforcement of property rights.
I can’t imagine why contemporary gun makers would care about decades-old ivory. If anything, they’d prefer more constraints on sales of old guns as that enlarges the market for new guns.
And I don’t think anyone made a claim that NRA’s decision was correct from a conservationist point of view. The claim is that the law fails the cost-benefit analysis for certain (implied widespread) sets of values. I am sure ardent environmentalists are happy with it, but not everyone is an ardent environmentalist.
Ah, good question. My pre-Google answer would be “some” and if pressed for numbers I’d say 10-20% at the moment, but with not much conviction. Accio Google!
Hmm… Lots of data but all of it is on “illegally killed” elephants which isn’t particularly useful in this context, as killing elephants is mostly illegal everywhere and so the meaning is just “human-killed”. My impression is that in areas with LOTS of poaching the great majority of elephants are killed for the ivory, but in areas with few “illegal kills” situation may differ. No data to support this impression, though. It also seems that there is a lot variability in the numbers killed year-to-year.
I don’t see a problem. Or, rather, I see a problem with the blanket prohibition on the sale of <100-year-old ivory as it looks unreasonable to me.
Do you see a problem with the dwindling elephant population too? If so, are you able to judge which is the greater problem? If so, what is your judgement?
Yes, of course.
You are engaging in a classic false dilemma fallacy.
Do tell, how the prohibition on selling 50-year-old ivory helps the dwindling elephant population?
Lots of existing ivory becomes illegal, leading to a local drop in value, leading to lots of US ivory being traded to countries where it isn’t illegal. Right?
So that first of all that sets up excellent opportunities for police sting operations. But it also drives down prices (at least for a few years), making elephant poaching less lucrative.
In parallel to that, the US is setting an example. A lot of countries copy US criminal laws rather than thinking them up from scratch (the War on Drugs being the textbook example), and since almost everyone loves elephants and the ivory trade is a huge and growing threat to them, there’ll be a particularly low threshold to copying this one.
Sigh. Wrong. Why don’t you at least look at the original link to the article about the ban? Notably, it says (emphasis mine):
I neither said nor meant it was going to be exported legally. It’ll be black market trade, but it’ll still respond to market forces, just like drug trafficking does.
Hold on. No new ivory products can (legally) be imported or exported from the US, but ivory products already in the US can still be bought and sold, albeit subject to restrictions. Providing demand for ivory remains roughly constant, and the US continues not to be an ivory producer, we would expect that to lead to a rise in ivory prices in the US market, and almost no ivory being exported (but some being imported on the black market).
So how much ivory do you expect to be illegally exported out of the US as a result of that law?
And if you don’t care about legality, why would you export ivory, anyway? The prohibition destroys legal markets, but tends to raise prices in the black markets.
False. Scarcity raises prices, and black market goods are often scarce, but where illegal goods are not scarce (say street quality heroin) the profit margins are fairly low because illegality makes it hard to compete on brand so everyone competes on price.
I don’t see how my estimate would matter in the slightest.
And you don’t think ivory is scarce in the US..?
It would because your argument is that US exports will depress prices in the rest of the world. If the US exports amount to half a tusk, it’s not going to depress world prices much :-/
In any case, this seems to be descending into bickering. Agree to disagree?
No, I’m saying this law makes it less scarce, because it makes buyers leave the market.
I can’t make an informed prediction of how much ivory is going to leave the US because I know nothing about future rates of persecution or the effectiveness of the ivory trade. I imagine that a few people will “help” ivory owners avoid law enforcement by buying their illegal ivory at a sharp discount, then trading them for drugs and letting the drug traffickers get the stuff out of the country. Other, still legal ivory is going to be traded off too, since it is obvious the legal trend is going only one way. The economic incentives are pretty obvious, it’d be really weird if this didn’t happen at least a little. But I can’t know how much. If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say 15% of ivory inside US borders is leaving it in the next ten years.
No. On what do we still disagree? Much of my argument on the likely effect on the ivory market is prediction descending into outright speculation—but this is all a sub-point answering your refusal to judge whether this or the survival of the elephant species is more important. You disputed neither of my other points on why these are causally linked (ease of sting operations and the prediction other countries would copy this law). So this does not appear to be a false dilemma. Which is why I’d like to return to my main point: Isn’t helping the elephant species worth this law?
Suit yourself.
Even ignoring the common good: Why do interest groups so often impede the long-term progress of their own goals?
Why, when X is simple, strong, and sufficient to advance the group purpose, will a group instead focus on advancing some complicated and contentious Y?
Many groups, (including some I support), appear genuinely unable to do any long-term strategic thinking at all, or powerless to control their internal social forces.
At least some of the attacks you describe are used against women as well—in particular the “grow up” or “be tougher because our project is more important than your emotions” range. I’m not sure it’s all as gendered as you think.
This being said, there are gendered insults (notably small penis,neckbeard, and sausage fest) that are common among feminists. I’ve seen some feminists argue against the first two, but not the third.
I’m wondering whether it makes sense to try to keep your opponents’ identity small, and not modelling a large number of people as one big person with a unified agenda.
Gamers aren’t “pulling their punches” online because SJW don’t pull their punches either. It’s all random Internet fun anyway until people actually get doxxed (or ‘swatted’, or worse).