(March 8, 2011 at 3:36 am)Aerzia Saerules Arktuos Wrote: It matters because of a key word: efficiency. It is morbidly inefficient to analyze every tree in the forest when deciding what will make good firewood and not. Where I live there is a predominance of three species, and while every tree that comes in is different, there is a set of standard things that I can judge of each species and be right about most of the time. The alders do not make good firewood, and are not even worth the time of cutting down. The spruce will catch faster and burn faster, and so is a poor choice to stick in over the night. The birch will catch slower but will burn longer and is therefore a poor firestarter.
This is a simple view? Yes. But the view is efficient and it gets the job done well. And variants of this view apply to people.
Sorry, no. The tree analogy doesn't apply. In terms of firewood, there is no significant difference between individuals of different species. We seem to agree that there are significant differences between individual people within the various groups. As a contractor, if I had disregarded female applicants on the basis of gender I would have missed out on some damn good employees.
Quote:Equal rights should not exist between all of men or all of women, let alone the two together. Treating people equally is to say that all of their differences, wether they be in achievement/talent/usefulness matters not in the eyes of the law. I disagree, if we are lacking something, the law needs to recognize this. The community is lacking teachers at the moment, and you are considering locking a teacher up as if they were anyone else? That is to ignore the problems faced by the state in favor of a blanket statement.
I'm not sure that the inherent equality of all human beings is something that can be explained. Your argument is basically the one that was used to justify the subjugation of people for thousands of years. Slavery is economically advantageous, but it is morally wrong. I'm not sure I understand your example of locking up teachers. If you are suggesting they get a 'get out of jail free' card you wouldn't have a shortage of teachers for long, you would every manner of criminal teaching your kids.
