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$200M market for a product catering to prejudice. If you had a similar product idea or implementation that could make you rich; would you still execute?

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Re: $200M market for a product catering to prejudice. If you had a similar product idea or implementation that could make you rich; would you still execute?

#41

Post by ajju »

rms wrote: post #26
juwo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) I hate to say it but often lower castes have dark skin and african features. You will also find most of the brightest students in a University are brahmins - the highest caste - just ask your friends their caste and correlate with their intelligence. The caste system is racist. You cannot change your caste. Period. You were born with it. It is interesting but sad. Forced hereditary occupations lead to differences…

This is because the higher castes are wealthier! Wow. With what I know about the Indian education system, it is impossible to make it into the best schools without a great deal of personal wealth.

The thing about wealth is patently untrue. 25 - 50% of the seats in ALL schools (yes, even private colleges, at least in the state I am from) are reserved for poor people from lower castes and their ANNUAL fees are less USD 200. I know first hand that this is true in Maharashtra (the state that Bombay belongs to).

Re: $200M market for a product catering to prejudice. If you had a similar product idea or implementation that could make you rich; would you still execute?

#42

Post by ajju »

axiom wrote: post #28
juwo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) I hate to say it but often lower castes have dark skin and african features. You will also find most of the brightest students in a University are brahmins - the highest caste - just ask your friends their caste and correlate with their intelligence. The caste system is racist. You cannot change your caste. Period. You were born with it. It is interesting but sad. Forced hereditary occupations lead to differences…

This is interesting. What stops people from just lying about their caste? or is it something that's actually recorded right on their birth certificate? Also, I wonder what it is that makes black-white marriages taboo, while asian-white marriages are almost becoming the norm in some places.

Well their last name is what would prevent them from lying. They can change the last name though.

The irony is that there has been reservation for people from lower castes in government jobs and schools across the country and they pay much lower fees and get in with fewer marks. So you now have people from higher castes changing their names to lower castes to cheat and get into schools easily and also pay less.

Re: $200M market for a product catering to prejudice. If you had a similar product idea or implementation that could make you rich; would you still execute?

#43

Post by ajju »

axiom wrote: post #24
ajju wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) It is pure aesthetics, but the bias against darker skin, while not based on race, is deep rooted and does result in people with darker skin being discriminated against. It is not to the degree of dark skinned people not being allowed in X places, but it is bad enough that a groom would very often choose a fairer bride to a darker one. 2) It is very wide spread. 3) Not really. It has been around for thousands of ye…

Thank you for your response. One more question, is there a movement in India to counter this trend? kind of like the civil-rights movement in the US 50 years ago? Also, a related question, how prevalent is the caste system? are people discriminated against based on their caste? I hear it's not a significant factor anymore, but what's your experience been?

Yes. Google Babasaheb Ambedkar. He led such a movement 50 years ago. This movement is now very politicized though and not very true to it's roots I am afraid.

Re: $200M market for a product catering to prejudice. If you had a similar product idea or implementation that could make you rich; would you still execute?

#44

Post by ajju »

juwo wrote: post #25
axiom wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your response. One more question, is there a movement in India to counter this trend? kind of like the civil-rights movement in the US 50 years ago? Also, a related question, how prevalent is the caste system? are people discriminated against based on their caste? I hear it's not a significant factor anymore, but what's your experience been?

1) I hate to say it but often lower castes have dark skin and african features. You will also find most of the brightest students in a University are brahmins - the highest caste - just ask your friends their caste and correlate with their intelligence. The caste system is racist. You cannot change your caste. Period. You were born with it. It is interesting but sad. Forced hereditary occupations lead to differences…

What the hell is "african features"? You say the caste system is racist and then yourself say the most intelligent people are from higher castes. Don't you think that is a racist claim?

By the way I know several people from lower castes who are super intelligent. And forced hereditary occupations are a thing of the past EVERYWHERE. Even in Bihar, our most backward state, you can't FORCE someone from the lower cast to stick to a profession (which is why Lalu Prasad Yadav, our railway minister and his party came to power, by fighting for Dalits, or at least claiming to).

Make no mistake, the caste system is very prevalent but you don't need to exaggerate to make your point.

Re: $200M market for a product catering to prejudice. If you had a similar product idea or implementation that could make you rich; would you still execute?

#45

Post by ajju »

nailer wrote: post #32
juwo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) I hate to say it but often lower castes have dark skin and african features. You will also find most of the brightest students in a University are brahmins - the highest caste - just ask your friends their caste and correlate with their intelligence. The caste system is racist. You cannot change your caste. Period. You were born with it. It is interesting but sad. Forced hereditary occupations lead to differences…

I think you've been modded down as noting the differences between races is seen to be discriminating against them in the US. There could be a number of factors that determine the difference between university entrance scores for different racial groups. While those places are free, lower caste groups may be too worried about feeding themselves, or trying to protect themselves in rough environments, to worry about stu…

No, he is modded down because he is making factually inaccurate statements (which are also racist). Where is the data backing up his claim that the most intelligent students in colleges across India come from the highest caste?

Re: $200M market for a product catering to prejudice. If you had a similar product idea or implementation that could make you rich; would you still execute?

#46

Post by ajju »

ingenium wrote: post #29
juwo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it is impossible to make it into the best schools without a great deal of personal wealth" you are mistaken. The best Universities are almost free - subsidized by the government. (However in high schools, those that are English speaking Western schools do require wealth). Only brains counts. The IIT Math entrance exam is said to be the toughest in the world (google for past qs papers).

Yes, but you can't get into the universities without a good education before that. I work with many people from India from all age ranges, from 22 to their 50s who are all MDs or PhDs, and they all tell me that before a child is even born they have to begin bribing school officials to get them into one of the better schools. This continues every time the child/student goes to a different school until the university l…

Quite to the contrary, you will find that Gujarat, perhaps the richest state in the country, is least represented in the IITs and the IIMs (including IIM Ahmedabad which is ironically in Gujarat).

Yes K to 12 level education needs money but University admissions do not depend at all on what school you attended, only on your score in the Std 12 exam held by the state or an entrance exam. Further there are 25 - 50% reservations for poor people from lower castes in most Universities. So yes bribing is a big problem and so is casteism but one place where the problem is close to non existent is higher education.

Re: $200M market for a product catering to prejudice. If you had a similar product idea or implementation that could make you rich; would you still execute?

#47

Post by ajju »

rms wrote: post #34
juwo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the people you met were simply making excuses and misleading you. (there is always scope for corruption in school admissions everywhere). It is like saying, if you studied in public school in small town america, you cannot get into Harvard.

But it's pretty much impossible. I went to a very good public school in a wealthy suburb and the valedictorian didn't get into Duke, let alone Harvard/Yale/Princeton/MIT/Stanford.

Yes except the only metric that Universities in India can use to give you admission is your score on a centralized public examination. No essays, no discretion what soever. They have to publish a huge list of everyone's scores and the top n people get in.

Further, there is actually reservation for poor people from lower castes (25 - 50% of the seats). So it's not the same thing. I don't disagree with ingenium that better socio-economic opportunities help richer people do better, but the discrimination against lower caste people is not systemic in higher education.

Re: $200M market for a product catering to prejudice. If you had a similar product idea or implementation that could make you rich; would you still execute?

#48

Post by bosshog »

juwo wrote: post #31
axiom wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting. What stops people from just lying about their caste? or is it something that's actually recorded right on their birth certificate? Also, I wonder what it is that makes black-white marriages taboo, while asian-white marriages are almost becoming the norm in some places.

many Asian/Indian men find white women more attractive - that is why models in these countries tend to look caucasian. It works the other way, too. My wife said that she observed in Africa, that white women only married Africans if they were highly educated, handsome and wealthy. "what it is that makes black-white marriages taboo" Black Americans are a lower caste - Unfortunately. How many wealthy intellectual white-…

------- I personally find it offensive that you even put that line in there, juwo.

Re: $200M market for a product catering to prejudice. If you had a similar product idea or implementation that could make you rich; would you still execute?

#49

Post by brlewis »

byrneseyeview wrote: post #6
brlewis wrote: post #2

I would not be willing to spend years getting inside the heads of customers whose mindset I oppose. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet lose his soul?

I find it interesting that you're okay with opposing someone but not understanding why they think the way they do. Isn't that a bad sign?

I don't mind spending an hour or a day understanding why they think the way they do. What I would mind is spending years at it, coupled with selling them something they think they need when what they really need is a change of mind.

Re: $200M market for a product catering to prejudice. If you had a similar product idea or implementation that could make you rich; would you still execute?

#50

Post by DanielBMarkham »

"catering to prejudice" brings to mind setting up sites for the KKK or something. This is more like girls wanting to look like Britney, or kids dancing like Michael Jackson, or yuppies competing for the best BMW, or strippers getting boob-jobs. It's a social-fashion issue. Yes, perhaps there is prejudice involved, but it sounds more like garden-variety fashion and competition based on looks than deep-seated racism.

The better question to me is where do you draw the line. What's a business model that you wouldn't execute? I draw the line at companies who do not treat people in a way that they themselves would want to be treated and that causes direct bodily harm. For example, if you've got a web site selling drugs to kids over the internet, that's obviously not something you would want sold to your kid.

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