visiblenoise said:
Revnak said:
visiblenoise said:
Revnak said:
And girls that are interested in Star Wars? Should they not be able to play with toys depicting their favorite female characters from the series? And who gives a fuck about what started it. That kind of nonsense is irrelevant. Regardless of whether Hasbro helped create the problem (which they almost certainly did by the way), they are still cowards for not aiming to fix it.
Not many people share your opinion that people have an obligation to improve the world. I certainly don't believe that anybody who doesn't want to do good should be forced to do good. It would be nice, but I feel like I'd be overstepping some boundaries if I said "they should."
Doing nothing is no different than doing wrong. Letting problems persist is no different than making them. All this is especially true when you have the power to work towards a solution. The king who looks at the plight of his subjects and does nothing is no better than the king who inflicts plight upon his subjects.
A king's inherent responsibility is to see to a country's people. By comparison, Hasbro has no responsibilities whatsoever. And in my opinion, all the good that any entity that isn't in the public's direct employ might do should be viewed as a pleasant surprise.
Historically, a king had responsibility to no one, and was restrained by fear of revolt alone. While our capitalist overlords may not possess that restraint, they likewise have little responsibility, regardless of appeals to stockholders or government oversight. Ultimately, their responsibility is based solely on their ability to act, not some agreement that they will do so on their part.
I can respect a pessimistic outlook like that, but I don't agree. If we view all good actions as simply a pleasant surprise, certainly, our own lives will be easier, but the lives of the whole will be worse, and progress will be strained. As a compromise, I would argue that while we should demand better, we should expect little. People will fail, and do not hold it against them, but still push them to succeed.
voleary said:
Revnak said:
If no one person's opinion is valuable regarding the choices of corporations, then how can the sum of them be valuable? If no criticism is worthwhile, then how is the sum worthwhile? I am in no way a friend of free market economics, but I can clearly see why it is still important to listen to the consumer's demands, even on the individual level. These criticisms must have some degree of value for their whole to be valuable, so to dismiss them out of hand is foolhardy. Thee is no capitalism without consumers, each one is valuable to this mechanism to some extent, and therefore so too are their complaints. So, when a company decides to ignore any and all complaints, or to not address some in a reasonable manner out of fear or shallow mindedness, it makes capitalism even worse.
Methodologically speaking, you can't prove a trend if you can't show that your examples are representative. No single dot in a graph is viable evidence of the whole. Think of geometry: you need at least two dots to make a line, three to make a plane and so forth. That's a basic principle of empirical quantitative research. The reason for that is because, unless you have a sufficient data, you can't be sure whether that case is a deviation (either a natural one or one caused by faulty research parameters).
True, but the sum of nothings remains nothing, even an infinite one (I think. Listen, I haven't taken any classes regarding imaginary numbers yet, so I can't be certain. Or any much of an stuff related to Euler. Also, infinitely small does not necessarily mean nonexistent. I'm not falling for a xeno's paradox here.). If no opinion has worth, then no sum of opinions has worth. If any opinion has worth, then why dismiss all individual opinions, as some among them may have worth?
As for whether or not such input is 'valuable', well, it depends on the end goal. An individual has limited information on things outside his/her close environment. Sure, his opinion is useful for determining what is best for him, but to generalize his opinion to the whole of society you need proof that his views are indeed the mainstream. Not because they are "false", mind you, but because, without knowing the whole beforehand, you need to double check to see if you got it right. And the more examples you raise, the more robust your results.
In short: a single-person's opinion can be useful. But you need the whole to know that.
Certainly, an individual's input may be seen as more important when viewed in light of the whole, but that is all the more reason to listen to every voice, rather than simply ignore individuals and wait until you get polls. After all, there is a significant value in letters to congressmen, and this is because it allows them to see why people want things, rather than simply whether or not they do, or how much they are wanted. Also, I would argue that the ideas of the individual can still be valuable, not as a measure of their representativeness, but as a measure of their righteousness.
Small business tend to do this informally: if one person asks for something they mark it up. If dozens of people come with the same demand, then they know there's public for that product. Bigger corporations generally run the numbers before hand. If they produce X products at Y cost and at Z price, then they need to sell at least W/month to pay the costs and keep a profit margin. If preliminary market research shows that a given demographic has W people and another has 100W, the second one is a much safer bet for that specific product. By choosing the first they risk operating on a loss in case of fluctuations, economic recession, etc. From then on, future adjustments tend to come with equal foresight. (I know that reality is actually much more complex, but I'm unfortunately no economist. Ask one if you need more details.)
Ideally, yes, that would work, but in practice they just look at the numbers they already got from last week, or the numbers their competition is getting, and they base their evaluations on that. This is why we get millions of Ubisoft-esque open world games, or all the CoD-likes.
As for your remarks about capitalism: actually, it is precisely because of free market defenders' apologia of individual agency that they resort to quantitative empirical analysis. This goes from Adam Smith all the way to Milton Friedman. The rationale is that, given that no ready-made formula is believed to exist that synthetize the behaviours of all human beings a priori, there's no way other than to survey the population in search of likely (if circumstantial) consensi. On the contrary, opposite views (which include anticapitalist ones but also people like Ayn Rand) believe in general theories that universally explain human society, and allegedly allow decision makers to make accurate predictions based on theory alone. A personal anedocte: I once had an economist tell to my face that the only reason we historians have Marxists in our ranks is because we don't know math.
I'm simplifying for brevity's sake, but if you want to delve deeper, see Thomas Sowell's (himself a pro-free market economist) A Conflict of Visions. He discusses the main ideologues on each side.
The problem is that such surveys and empirical analysis ultimately relies on a stationary society, given the way they are actually carried out. And sometimes, relying on rationally and empirically justifiable theory to make a projection is the only way to actually make things better for the common man.
Also, given the number of far left mathematicians I am familiar with (one day including myself), I definitely disagree with that economist. Especially considering the faulty mathematics that one would have to employ to justify much of modern economic conditions.
