Friday, May 17, 2013

Diversity to Fair, Access and Affordable

Harriet (1,760) Says: 

If there is ever a contest for words that substitute for thought, “diversity” should be recognized as the undisputed world champion.
How does a racially homogeneous country like Japan manage to have high quality education, without the essential ingredient of diversity, for which there is supposedly a “compelling” need?
Conversely, why does India, one of the most diverse nations on Earth, have a record of intergroup intolerance and lethal violence today that is worse than that in the days of Jim Crow?
Even to ask such questions is to provoke charges of unworthy tactics, and motives too low to be dignified with an answer. Not that the true believers in diversity could answer anyway.
Among the candidates for runner-up to “diversity” as the top word for making thought obsolete is “fair.”
Apparently everyone is entitled to a “fair share” of a society’s prosperity, whether they worked 16-hour days to help create that prosperity or did nothing more than live off the taxpayers, or depend on crime to bring in some money.
Apparently we owe them all something just for gracing us with their presence, even if we feel that we could do quite well
without them.
At the other end of the income scale, the rich are supposed to pay their “fair share” of taxes. But at neither end of the income scale is a “fair share” defined as a particular number or proportion, or in any other concrete way. It is just a political synonym for “more,” dressed up in moralistic-sounding rhetoric.
What “fair” really means is more arbitrary power for government.
Another word that shuts down thought is “access.” People who fail to meet the standards for a job or a mortgage are often said to have been denied “access” or “opportunity”.
But equal ‘access’ or equal ‘opportunity’ is not the same as equal probability of success.
Affordable” is another popular word that serves as a substitute for thought. To say that everyone is entitled to “affordable housing” is very different from saying that everyone should decide what kind of housing he or she CAN afford.
Government programs to promote “affordable housing” are programs to allow some people to decide what housing they want and force other people — taxpayers, landlords, or whatever — to absorb a share of the cost of a decision that they had no voice in making.
More generally, making various things “affordable” in no way increases the amount of wealth in a society above what it would be when prices are “prohibitively expensive.” On the contrary, price controls reduce incentives to produce.
None of this is rocket science. But if you don’t stop and think, it doesn’t matter whether you are a genius or a moron.
Words that stop people from thinking reduce even smart (watch out how the word smart is used) people to the same level as morons.
And that’s why socialists in..... ("opposing parties")... use them – they think you’re a moron! (or is it "smart")   :cool:

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