(January 12, 2014 at 1:26 pm)Minimalist Wrote: I know, Tibby. You are a libertarian who only pretends to love the Ayn Rand crowd. Seriously, man. I do read your stuff. You are very consistent.

You linked to an article which claimed that George W Bush got into college because of affirmative action based on his wealth and family ties, and you claimed that I was "defending the rich".

Yet my only post in this thread was agreeing with the OP, which stated "There is nothing Positive about 'affirmative action'".

So no, you don't read my stuff, because I cannot fathom how you can read a statement of agreement from me that there is "nothing Positive about affirmative action" and think it means the complete opposite...

Quote:I simply cannot recall the last time you sided with the downtrodden against your billionaire heroes.

What billionaire heroes would they be?

I donate to charity to help those less fortunate. Heck, I even donated to your charity and received a lovely letter from you in the mail today thanking me for my donation!

On top of that, I've spoken out against corruption on these forums, and I've spoken out against the war on drugs (which is the main reason why so many poor people are in jail and have their lives ruined). Affirmative action is about hiring someone based not on their ability to do the job, but on some completely unrelated feature. I'll speak out against it because it's inherently unfair to the people who have worked hard to get where they are.

It's divisive and racist.

I have a billionaire hero as it happens and that would be Sergei Brin who has pledged half a BILLION dollars to Parkinsons research and has already spent over 150,000,000 dollars.

Yeah, and Bill Gates has done a lot to fight Malaria.

I have a feeling Minimalist meant a certain pair of brothers named Koch, but I'm sorry to inform him that I despise them as much as they abuse the Libertarian label.

Affirmative Action doesn't work.

Pure meritocracy is too easily rigged and isn't real.

I agree with Unz:

"But if our elite colleges were to select only a portion of their students based on purest academic merit, how should they pick the remainder, merely by flipping a coin? Actually, that might not be such a terrible idea, at least compared with the current system, in which these decisions are often seemingly based on massive biases and sometimes even outright corruption. After all, if we are seeking a student body which is at least somewhat diverse and reasonably representative of the American population, random selection is hardly the least effective means of ensuring that outcome. And the result would be true diversity, rather than the dishonest and ridiculous pseudo-diversity of our existing system."

IMO, elite colleges should select their entire student body based on academic merit. Heck, most colleges should do this.

(January 12, 2014 at 2:38 pm)Tiberius Wrote: IMO, elite colleges should select their entire student body based on academic merit. Heck, most colleges should do this.

Yes but how do you get that merit and avoid corrupt admissions policies as seen in the the current system. And do we really want to have drone test takers like in China. I've worked with some brilliant minds from there -- no soft skills to interpret their raw data at all.

And sorry to keep quoting from Unz but his suggestion is to get the tippedy top of academic achievers -- and then randomly select from the rest of the qualified applicants who meet requirements. "Let us explore the likely social implications of such an admissions policy, focusing solely on Harvard and following a very simple model, in which (say) 300 slots or around 20 percent of each entering class are allocated based on pure academic merit (the “Inner Ring”), with the remaining 1300 slots being randomly selected from the 30,000 or so American applicants considered able to reasonably perform at the school’s required academic level and thereby benefit from a Harvard education (the “Outer Ring”)."

Quote:I donate to charity to help those less fortunate. Heck, I even donated to your charity and received a lovely letter from you in the mail today thanking me for my donation!

YOU are not the problem and frankly much of the time I do not understand your defense of the 1% and their corporate structure which is running the US into the ground.

Consider this, though.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/m...s_are.html

Quote:Over the past 30 years, corporate contributions to charities in the U.S., as measured by percentage of pretax profits, have fallen precipitously, from a high of 2.1 percent at its peak in 1986 to just around 0.8 percent in 2012. There is some year-to-year variability to this measure, because ironically enough, contribution percentages tend to rise in periods of poor corporate earnings. But the long-term curve is consistently down.

Gee...now what could have happened in the past 30 years? Oh, yeah...

Quote:With the Tax Reform Act of 1986, Reagan and Congress sought to raise taxes on lower incomes, eliminate many deductions, and reduce tax rates on the wealthy.

So, as their taxable income declined the need to reduce it by making charitable contributions evaporated. Americans have terribly short attention spans...we tend to look at 4 year election cycles but sometimes things take much longer to manifest themselves.

Income disparity in this country has been steadily rising since the Reagan administration.



We are fast becoming a "golden rule" society. As in "them that has the gold makes the rules" and yes, the fucking Koch brothers are the most extreme example. But far too many people fall for their bullshit despite the fact that they are living marginal existences with little hope of future improvement by letting these corporate pricks run rampant.

BTW, the dog on our website with the broken leg has survived his surgery and been adopted. The vets are very happy with his progress. He is going to make it.

In America I believe they use a Grade Point Average system. In the UK we use the grades from A Levels. Those systems seem to work pretty well for determining academic merit.

So the only thing you need to do is prevent corrupt admissions policies. That can be pretty easily prevented by anonymizing the grades. Have a system where the colleges get a list of grades / GPAs alongside a unique ID for each student. The college makes a decision based on the grades, and then after the decision has been made, a computer links the unique ID back to the student's name / address and sends the letter of acceptance.