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Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

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Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#301

Post by tn13 »

refurb wrote: post #116
neilk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? What caste did your family belong to? I'm allowed to ask these questions; the Indian side of my family are Brahmins, and boy does it show! Most of us walked straight from the lawyer/doctor/accountant/businessperson class in India into the lawyer/doctor/accountant/businessperson class in the USA and Canada. Sure things were difficult, but most of us had huge advantages.

I'm curious, why would your caste matter in the US?

Not sure about the above comment but here are my 2c. I belong to Brahmin caste. I always thought caste did not matter in USA until I recently attended a seminar by a self proclaimed India expert Christian priest. The Christian missionaries are trying to convince various governments across the world to recognize "caste" as serious discrimination probably to malign Hinduism to further their conversion business in India. I brushed it off thinking it must be some fringe group. After few days a lady showed up at my place asking my wife to narrate the horrors she had to face back in India because of her lower caste (my wife happens to have a lastname generally associated to lowest of low castes in India). It took us a while to understand what was happening.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#302

Post by tn13 »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #75
tn13 wrote: post #47

As an Indian immigrant when I see people complaining about Privilege and Inequality in SV (and in America) I feel like laughing. I lived in a society where everyone was almost the same, similar economic status, similar privilege etc. etc. Life sucked. I decided to move out to be among the top 10% instead of one of the 100%. I eventually ended up in SV. This place is awesome and the very reason I am here is because I…

> As an Indian immigrant ...I lived in a society where everyone was almost the same, similar economic status, similar privilege etc. etc. Life sucked. That is certainly not a truth universally acknowledged ( http://idsn.org/caste-discrimination/ http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/varanasi/Dalit-tonsu... )

Political propaganda must be taken with a boatload of salt. A Dalit organization's claims is something like KKK's claim. People of all castes and religion get lynched and burned and maimed all the time in the lawless parts of India for all reasons.

However if we look at impartial research such as by James Tooley who was studying history of Education system in India, he points out that literacy and education levels in even the tribals and so called "low castes" in India was reasonably close to "so called higher castes" and most certainly higher than the peasants in United Kingdom. It is a fascinating book in itself and borrows heavily from another book of same title written by Gandhiji's disciple Dharampaal.

Beside the third book is a comprehensive survey of all caste related laws, judgements and British Census reports in India and shows pretty big holes in "discrimination" and "privilege" arguments.

Here is the essay by Dharampal who notes the British Census in one of the provinces (Madras). It compares schools, school going people in England and Madras which were of comparable size. Turns out that enrollment in Madras is actually higher than that of England and lower castes dominated the students.

http://www.esamskriti.com/essay-chapters/Indigeneous-Educati...

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ELPRLC0/ref=dp-kindle-re... [2] http://www.amazon.com/The-beautiful-tree-indigenous-eighteen... [3] http://www.amazon.com/Falling-Over-Backwards-Arun-Shourie/dp...

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#303

Post by tn13 »

walshemj wrote: post #243
kelukelugames wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because classism is a thing. So is legacy of privilege. Literally all of my Indian co workers have been Brahmin.

Agree I know one of the MPs in the UK who help get caste discrimination added to the discrimination laws.

This is mostly a Christian missionary driven attempts to marginalize Hindus even further by painting them as evil. From the sense I get it wont go anywhere.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#304

Post by nickbauman »

gozur88 wrote: post #129
nickbauman wrote: post #71

There's a strong thread of meritocracy in the tech community, but there is no such thing. When you choose the clearly better developer over the other, you're often choosing the one who had better resources growing up, not just natural ability. The poorer developer may have had a natural advantage over the other one, but didn't have the money to develop it as much. So you're really just selecting for wealth all over a…

>There's a strong thread of meritocracy in the tech community, but there is no such thing. When you choose the clearly better developer over the other, you're often choosing the one who had better resources growing up, not just natural ability. You're using an overly restrictive definition of "merit". When you hire the best person for the job you're hiring based on merit. How they got there isn't really that importan…

What I said is if you define merit as merely "the best person for the job" you are only really selecting for wealth in the end. Let me direct you to a little cartoon that explains it very succinctly.

http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#305

Post by dennisgorelik »

jtolmar wrote: post #48
ryanwitt112 wrote: post #2

interesting take. I'd like to hear what PG and others think. Coming from a middle class background, I can relate a bit and see-observationally-the other components to what Ricky's calling "mindset inequality". It's almost like "new money" vs folks that have bigger dollars to spend growing up. I know a lot of friends that have deeply entrenched psychological elements they need to overcome before reaching that "next le…

My parents started out very poor and climbed into the middle class by the time I got to high school. The extended family is still poor, so I'm still exposed to how they think about money. I think the mindsets can break down into three levels, but not cleanly. Poor: You may have to make decisions about which bills to pay or which needs to meet, and being able to pay all your bills and eat is considered a moral virtue.…

This is good description of how different classes of people think. "If your account's trajectory is positive, your natural instinct is to spend it" - that pretty much explains why most of middle class people do not move up into capital class.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#306

Post by nickbauman »

throwaway999888 wrote: post #106
nickbauman wrote: post #71

There's a strong thread of meritocracy in the tech community, but there is no such thing. When you choose the clearly better developer over the other, you're often choosing the one who had better resources growing up, not just natural ability. The poorer developer may have had a natural advantage over the other one, but didn't have the money to develop it as much. So you're really just selecting for wealth all over a…

> When you choose the clearly better developer over the other, you're often choosing the one who had better resources growing up, not just natural ability. Ahh, but natural ability is just as much of a privilege as having a fortunate upbringing! Both are essentially unchosen, born-with things; you can't choose your inborn talents, and you can't choose your parent's resources. Really, what you're scoffing at is learne…

Not really. Learned skill and natural ability are not mutually exclusive. Being a great developer still means you have to learn a lot of things. Consider someone with a mere 1% better "natural" ability to write code but never had the chance to develop it into a viable "learned" ability versus someone who was merely "average" but had the wealth to develop the skill, the latter will get the job in a "meritocracy". So you're selecting for wealth mostly.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#307

Post by gozur88 »

nickbauman wrote: post #304
gozur88 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's a strong thread of meritocracy in the tech community, but there is no such thing. When you choose the clearly better developer over the other, you're often choosing the one who had better resources growing up, not just natural ability. You're using an overly restrictive definition of "merit". When you hire the best person for the job you're hiring based on merit. How they got there isn't really that importan…

What I said is if you define merit as merely "the best person for the job" you are only really selecting for wealth in the end. Let me direct you to a little cartoon that explains it very succinctly. http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate

No, I don't think so. Wealth is part of it, sure. But so is intelligence. So is looks. So is ambition. You're focusing on wealth because it's the easiest thing to measure, but wealth, especially wealth alone, isn't destiny.

Everybody knows people who grew up poor and "made it", and also people who had all the advantages but can't seem to make anything of themselves.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#308

Post by walshemj »

tn13 wrote: post #303
walshemj wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree I know one of the MPs in the UK who help get caste discrimination added to the discrimination laws.

This is mostly a Christian missionary driven attempts to marginalize Hindus even further by painting them as evil. From the sense I get it wont go anywhere.

Err what re you smoking? it was Asian MP's that piloted the bill through parliament.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#309

Post by nickbauman »

gozur88 wrote: post #307
nickbauman wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I said is if you define merit as merely "the best person for the job" you are only really selecting for wealth in the end. Let me direct you to a little cartoon that explains it very succinctly. http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate

No, I don't think so. Wealth is part of it, sure. But so is intelligence. So is looks. So is ambition. You're focusing on wealth because it's the easiest thing to measure, but wealth, especially wealth alone, isn't destiny. Everybody knows people who grew up poor and "made it", and also people who had all the advantages but can't seem to make anything of themselves.

I never meant to convey a polemic about wealth alone. What I'm saying is wealth is the strongest correlation to a "meritocracy", not the only one. There are always examples of outliers in both rich and poor camps.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#310

Post by sandstrom »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #184
refurb wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's moving from the bottom to the top. How about from the bottom to the middle? What percentage never leave their quartile?

On its own, leaving a quartile doesn't say anything about the magnitude of the change, so it's not a very useful measure of anything. Another problem is that because the distribution is so heavily skewed toward the top (for both income and wealth, but more heavily for wealth), dividing the population into equal groups creates a somewhat misleading picture of mobility. A nonlinear breakdown of classes is more reflecti…

This is a very good point, I totally agree!

Although for some questions, e.g. "Can you escape poverty in the US today?" (which could be specified as moving from 1st -> 3rd quartile) this data works.

But, for other types of questions, e.g. "Is extreme wealth mostly hereditary?" you'd need a non-linear breakdown of classes.

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