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Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

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Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#121

Post by nyanpasu64 »

TerryGrampl wrote: post #119

This reminds me of an interesting piece I read last month, which looks at one particular luxury belief that is especially divisive right now, and criticizes it with regards to class: https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/09/25/trans-the-new-ideol... Like those described in the article above, this is very much a middle-class movement whose proponents have seized the opportunity to sneer at working-class people as bigoted…

Tell that to the trans people I've met who were physically beaten and mentally abused by authoritarian parents, unable to move out or find secure housing due to burnout, mental health disabilities, and a lack of aid or sustainable jobs, in both Western and third-world countries.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#122

Post by [deleted] »

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #121
TerryGrampl wrote: post #119

This reminds me of an interesting piece I read last month, which looks at one particular luxury belief that is especially divisive right now, and criticizes it with regards to class: https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/09/25/trans-the-new-ideol... Like those described in the article above, this is very much a middle-class movement whose proponents have seized the opportunity to sneer at working-class people as bigoted…

Tell that to the trans people I've met who were physically beaten and mentally abused by authoritarian parents, unable to move out or find secure housing due to burnout, mental health disabilities, and a lack of aid or sustainable jobs, in both Western and third-world countries.

[deleted]

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#123

Post by seydor »

too many words to say something obvious. rich people have always had the luxury of time to think novel things. That's what gave us most of science, philosophy, politics, liberalism, socialism, the democracy of today and the freedoms to make powerpoint presentations about it. history decides which of them go to the garbage bin

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#124

Post by cmcaleer »

neilk wrote: post #106

Let’s consider the contrary. Do poor people sometimes hold highly questionable beliefs, promulgated by institutions, and does professing these beliefs in expensive and flamboyant ways confer status? Religion ticks all these boxes. In some contexts, so does patriotism, racism, worship of the military, publicly dumping cases of Bud Light, etc etc etc. In some ways, even disdain for education is a sort of expensive stat…

Defund the police was an inherently absurd idea. It especially bothers me that proponents gave no reasonable explanation for what happens next after defunding[1] and many seemed to have no appetite for reform. Portland was kind of a poster child for this. Just look at how things have changed after their budget slash.

- Police staffing levels are at critical levels [2]

- Violent crime has shot way up in 2021 (along with the rest of the country) [3]

- Things got so bad so quickly that in just a year millions of dollars were added back to the budget [4]

- Things have continued to get worse relative to the rest of the country (which has seen crime drop back down) [5]

When someone believes that there's semen in a beer, or they go to church, or they reply 'thank you for your service' to someone on the internet, that doesn't have real consequences for people. It might get spoken about in the media sometimes, but it's more just a side-show.

When a stupid slogan ruined the best chance America had for wide police reform in decades, that does have consequences. Even more now, nobody (who should be a cop) in Portland wants to be a cop. Lower class communities that need more patrols don't have them. People don't feel safe in their houses. Who do you think took the brunt of this: those who chanted the slogan, or those in the huge minority ethnic groups in East Portland?

And the most critical part about this: defund the police was treated with some amount of legitimacy by the media because it was their in group saying it. It should have been treated as the fringe belief it really was. Imagine if that airtime was used to campaign for reform. The real frustration of it all is that it was a zeitgeist that could have been an opportunity for real reform, and really making people want to be cops. Instead the moment was pissed away by a dumb slogan, rather than constructive debate.

[1] Besides at best a hand-wavy 'community policing', which conjures up memories of that one Simpsons episode.

[2] https://manhattan.institute/article/portlands-police-staffin...

[3] https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/fi...

[4] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/portland-among-u-s-citie...

[5] https://www.axios.com/local/portland/2023/10/30/oregon-crime...

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#125

Post by noch »

thisgoesnowhere wrote: post #120

> A survey from YouGov found that Americans in the highest income category were by far the most supportive of defunding the police. > They can afford to hold this position, because they already live in safe, often gated communities. And they can afford to hire private security. This isn't what defund the police was about at all and is just a strawman to stop inquisitions into the actual point of the defund the police…

> Defund the police was never a anarcho communist feel good movement despite what articles like this will guide you believe.

In this article titled, "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police":

"Enough. We can’t reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol... (https://archive.is/H293i)

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#126

Post by hbossy »

j7ake wrote: post #96

The fraction of people with luxury beliefs that also have to request vacation days to a manager is too high to be an exclusive upper class signal. Private jets, yachts, personal cooks and butlers are truer symbols of the upper class.

Yes, but these people don't really interact with lower classes. I think what author wanted to describe is signaling in situations where people just a few social ladder steps apart meet each other. Like gathering in local church or family reunion. Everyone dress basically the same, everyone eat the same grandmas cake but one cousin is MIT-educated engineer, one owns a car dealership and one stack shelves in Walmart.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#127

Post by ZeroGravitas »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #66
leereeves wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're talking about an aristocracy, and the quote even uses that word, so I wonder: do you think the aristocracy is responsible for most of the progress in the world? I'd argue rather that, historically, progress has generally involved removing or disempowering the aristocracy.

In Huxley's day, that was more true[1] than it is today. Look at someone like Lord Kelvin, for instance. State-sponsored science wasn't really a thing yet; most of it was done by people who had the time and money to pursue it. [1] That is, it was true of scientific progress. As you say, social progress often involved finding a way to destroy the aristocracy's stranglehold on money and power.

Baron Kelvin of Largs became that because of his work, not the other way round.

His father was a University Professor.

Having said that, in the history of science there's a surprising number of people who got to focus on their hobby due to family wealth, and access to all the best toys allowed them to claim a lot of firsts.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#128

Post by littlestymaar »

indigo945 wrote: post #101

> When I was growing up in foster homes, or making minimum wage as a > dishwasher, or serving in the military, I never heard words like “cultural > appropriation” or “gendered” or “heteronormative.” > > Working class people could not tell you what these terms mean. But if you > visit an elite university, you’ll find plenty of affluent people who will > eagerly explain them to you. I figured out as soon as I saw the l…

Yeah, it's also really funny because the data that the author uses about police reform also show the conservative luxury beliefs that is “police department don't need to be reformed”. (And the same data also shows that for every income class, the police is largely seen as dysfunctional needing either serious reform or complete defunding).

This post is basically conservative rambling disguised as sociology.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#129

Post by gizmo »

cmcaleer wrote: post #124
neilk wrote: post #106

Let’s consider the contrary. Do poor people sometimes hold highly questionable beliefs, promulgated by institutions, and does professing these beliefs in expensive and flamboyant ways confer status? Religion ticks all these boxes. In some contexts, so does patriotism, racism, worship of the military, publicly dumping cases of Bud Light, etc etc etc. In some ways, even disdain for education is a sort of expensive stat…

Defund the police was an inherently absurd idea. It especially bothers me that proponents gave no reasonable explanation for what happens next after defunding[1] and many seemed to have no appetite for reform. Portland was kind of a poster child for this. Just look at how things have changed after their budget slash. - Police staffing levels are at critical levels [2] - Violent crime has shot way up in 2021 (along wi…

Your comment is pretty incendiary so I won't go through it point by point, but I'd like to emphasize the distinction between defunding (i.e. demilitarizing) and abolishing the police. Abolishing the police altogether is more of a utopian goal and very few people think society can function today without some kind of police. That said, the typical day-to-day work for a police officer doesn't require violence or the threat of violence, and the police force shouldn't behave like some kind of paramilitary unit.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#130

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

boxed wrote: post #113
indigo945 wrote: post #101

> When I was growing up in foster homes, or making minimum wage as a > dishwasher, or serving in the military, I never heard words like “cultural > appropriation” or “gendered” or “heteronormative.” > > Working class people could not tell you what these terms mean. But if you > visit an elite university, you’ll find plenty of affluent people who will > eagerly explain them to you. I figured out as soon as I saw the l…

> be associated with a feminist and anti-racist outlook. Well.. it's not at all clear that those things he mention has anything to do with anti-racism and feminism. In fact, it seems quite clear they are the opposite of that.

The implication is clearly that "woke" is an effete privileged liberal attack on the poor and oppressed.

It's ridiculously transparent libertarian/conservative PR.

As others have said - far more directly abusive and entitled privileged beliefs are endemic among the very rich.

If they weren't they wouldn't spend so much time strike-breaking, stealing pay, flouting laws and regulations, buying politicians, and proselytising their messaging through think tanks, PR firms and captured media.

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