Political egalitarianism tends to be concerned with socially contestible dimensions of power, rather than just the unequal distribution of anything that might make someone happy.
Can you expand on this? I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Why should height not fall into a socially contestible form of power?
Why should height not fall into a socially contestible form of power?
Well, there haven’t been many situations where one’s height was used as a basis for oppression. There may be some positive discrimination around height, inasmuch as height often correlates with other benefits—but it’s difficult to separate out all the confounds, and the biggest negative factor influencing it is simply health and adequate nutrition during childhood, which is so important that average adult height is used to calibrate standard-of-living and quality-of-life estimates. (While genetics can have major influence on height for individuals, it’s also subject to regression toward the mean, resulting in it being a minor influence when taken statistically—hormones are the other major, contributing biological factor). Basically, things have to be pretty bad somewhere, for populations to get strongly sorted out from each other by height. If you’re on the negative end of an ingroup/outgroup height gap, you probably have bigger problems.
Put another way: nobody decided your name sounded too tall and refused to call you back for an interview, or invaded your country intending to civilize the shorties, because the variance on height is pretty continuous in most populations and the positive discrimination associated it does not form a clear signal disentangled from other life factors.
Put another way: nobody decided your name sounded too tall and refused to call you back for an interview,
Yes, but how often does a short person once they get to an interview get less likely to be hired than a tall person? This is pretty hard to test, but the difficulty in detecting a form of discrimination doesn’t make it not present.
Most of your reply doesn’t seem to address whether this is really a socially contestible form of power, and in so far as these are valid questions, it looks like there are signs of discrimination. For example, there are scholarships that specifically are for tall people. Source. But there is no equivalent for short people.
Maybe I should start a short persons rights movements. Best way to measure success is how many discussions about correlated biological variables we render as completely mindkilling topics. The continuous nature of the distribution is a definite problem though.
Can you expand on this? I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Why should height not fall into a socially contestible form of power?
Well, there haven’t been many situations where one’s height was used as a basis for oppression. There may be some positive discrimination around height, inasmuch as height often correlates with other benefits—but it’s difficult to separate out all the confounds, and the biggest negative factor influencing it is simply health and adequate nutrition during childhood, which is so important that average adult height is used to calibrate standard-of-living and quality-of-life estimates. (While genetics can have major influence on height for individuals, it’s also subject to regression toward the mean, resulting in it being a minor influence when taken statistically—hormones are the other major, contributing biological factor). Basically, things have to be pretty bad somewhere, for populations to get strongly sorted out from each other by height. If you’re on the negative end of an ingroup/outgroup height gap, you probably have bigger problems.
Put another way: nobody decided your name sounded too tall and refused to call you back for an interview, or invaded your country intending to civilize the shorties, because the variance on height is pretty continuous in most populations and the positive discrimination associated it does not form a clear signal disentangled from other life factors.
Yes, but how often does a short person once they get to an interview get less likely to be hired than a tall person? This is pretty hard to test, but the difficulty in detecting a form of discrimination doesn’t make it not present.
Most of your reply doesn’t seem to address whether this is really a socially contestible form of power, and in so far as these are valid questions, it looks like there are signs of discrimination. For example, there are scholarships that specifically are for tall people. Source. But there is no equivalent for short people.
Maybe I should start a short persons rights movements. Best way to measure success is how many discussions about correlated biological variables we render as completely mindkilling topics. The continuous nature of the distribution is a definite problem though.
Hm.