# Rand Rover's a non-tipping, SUV-driving, Republican, picky-eater fatty who hovers over toilet seats **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 12, 2010, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259 "2010-03-12T17:06:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/141 "2010-03-16T18:01:16Z")
> [@](#): > > It is hard to imagine such things coming from someone with your handle, but I’m trying! It varies. In her case, an expression of humor, in mine, a bald statement of fact. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/142 "2010-03-16T18:03:01Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Yeah, I know, it’s sad. Here I am, working hard due to my belief that hard work leads to prosperity, when it turns out that my success is just due to pure dumb look. Wish I would have known when I was 18 that I’d be making what I am now due to pure dumb luck–I could have saved all that time in school. And give up being a smug, self-satisfied asshole? Perish the thought! ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/143 "2010-03-16T18:10:04Z")
Right, I’m the one that’s smug. You think you have the answer for how to make everyone’s lives better, and you want society to institute your policies by force. I want the government only to make sure everyone has equal opportunity and to let the chips fall where they may. Yet somehow I’m the smug one. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/144 "2010-03-16T18:18:22Z")
> [@Kearsen](#): > > It is hard to imagine such things coming from someone with your handle, but I’m trying! I’m not that mean, if it helps. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/145 "2010-03-16T19:25:52Z")
> [@Kearsen](#): > > It is hard to imagine such things coming from someone with your handle, but I’m trying! \*\* MeanOldLady\*\* is neither mean, nor old, nor can I remember whether “neither/nor” is limited to two items. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/146 "2010-03-16T19:25:57Z")
You ain’t no “lady” either, lady. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Call\_Me\_Shirley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Don\_t\_Call\_Me\_Shirley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Call_Me_Shirley)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/147 "2010-03-16T19:51:16Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Yeah, I know, it’s sad. Here I am, working hard due to my belief that hard work leads to prosperity, when it turns out that my success is just due to pure dumb look. Wish I would have known when I was 18 that I’d be making what I am now due to pure dumb luck–I could have saved all that time in school. **Rand Rover** , imagine for a moment that you were born in Somalia. Imagine further that you worked exactly as hard in that life as you have in your real life. What do you think your salary would be in Somalia, given the exact same amount of work? The difference between what your salary would be in Somalia and what your salary is now is the amount of your salary that is due to luck, namely the luck of being born in a country with an expensive-to-run government. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/148 "2010-03-16T19:56:51Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > You ain’t no “lady” either, lady. Blow me. > [@Don\_t\_Call\_Me\_Shirley](#): > > **Rand Rover** , imagine for a moment that you were born in Somalia. Imagine further that you worked exactly as hard in that life as you have in your real life. What do you think your salary would be in Somalia, given the exact same amount of work? One _meeellion_ dollars! ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/149 "2010-03-16T20:16:55Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > 1. An enchilada can be covered with sausces other than a tomato chili sauce (cheese sauce and sour cream sause and green tomatillo sauces come to mind). Bullshit. [Per Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enchilada) (because my Spanish is pretty much limited to “Cuidado! Piso mojado!”), “Enchilada is the past participle of Spanish enchilar, ‘to add chile pepper to.’” If the sauce doesn’t involve \*some \*kind of chile peppers, it’s _not a fucking enchilada_, anymore than you could serve someone pan-seared salmon when they’d ordered a dish that called it “blackened.” ---
**Author:** ![tacoloco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tacoloco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tacoloco)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/150 "2010-03-16T20:29:33Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Right, I’m the one that’s smug. You think you have the answer for how to make everyone’s lives better, and you want society to institute your policies by force. I want the government only to make sure everyone has equal opportunity and to let the chips fall where they may. Yet somehow I’m the smug one. You emit beams of smug asshole with every word you write. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/151 "2010-03-16T20:37:37Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > …"Cuidado! Piso mojado… “Be cautious! The waiter has peed in your drink!” ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/152 "2010-03-16T21:02:30Z")
> [@Don\_t\_Call\_Me\_Shirley](#): > > **Rand Rover** , imagine for a moment that you were born in Somalia. Imagine further that you worked exactly as hard in that life as you have in your real life. What do you think your salary would be in Somalia, given the exact same amount of work? > > The difference between what your salary would be in Somalia and what your salary is now is the amount of your salary that is due to luck, namely the luck of being born in a country with an expensive-to-run government. I will withhold my devastating attack on this “argument” for the time being and ask you this: what are the implications IYHO of the fact that everything I have is due to pure dumb luck? ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Call\_Me\_Shirley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Don\_t\_Call\_Me\_Shirley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Call_Me_Shirley)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/153 "2010-03-16T21:10:44Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > I will withhold my devastating attack on this “argument” for the time being and ask you this: what are the implications IYHO of the fact that everything I have is due to pure dumb luck? The implication is that your hard work would be meaningless without government intervention. It seemed like that was pretty clear from my post. ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/154 "2010-03-16T21:11:11Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > … what are the implications IYHO of the fact that everything I have is due to pure dumb luck? Cogency is not a matter of luck? ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/155 "2010-03-16T21:37:08Z")
> [@Don\_t\_Call\_Me\_Shirley](#): > > The implication is that your hard work would be meaningless without government intervention. It seemed like that was pretty clear from my post. There’s simply no way around that for Rand Rover, no matter how much hand waving he does. His job requires there to be a government with a labyrinthine tax code. He hasn’t invented anything, or produced anything useful with his mind. He just knows how to game the system so that certain people get favors (“tax write offs”) from the government. He’s more like Jim Taggart than John Galt. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/156 "2010-03-16T21:37:55Z")
> [@Don\_t\_Call\_Me\_Shirley](#): > > The implication is that your hard work would be meaningless without government intervention. It seemed like that was pretty clear from my post. I understand that. Now: what is the real-world implication of this? Ie, here we are, having a discussion. I will take it as a given that you are correct, that everything I own is due to pure dumb luck. What changes in the real world, outside of our discussion, do you think should now obtain? ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/157 "2010-03-16T21:41:03Z")
Come now, young **Rand**. If you’re going to be a fatty, non-tipping ass, can you at least be honest about it? She’s not suggesting that “everything [you] own is due to pure dumb luck.” ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Smashy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2bfe46/32.png) [@Mr\_Smashy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Smashy)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/158 "2010-03-16T21:59:35Z")
The fact that **Rand** was ‘lucky’ to be born in the Western world does not obviate the fact that hard work was still required to attain his station in life. It enables the success, but definitely does not guarantee it. The mere fact that the USA has such high poverty (and after 45 years of a ‘war’ on it, kicked off by [LBJ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty) in his state of the union speech) shows that success is never guaranteed by virtue of citizenship. And please don’t chalk that up entirely to racism; **Sho** is mostly right in my opinion; unmarried births have a lot to do with it. 11 percept of unmarried Hispanics had babies in [2006](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/health/13mothers.html), the latest year I could find data for. That compares to 7 percent of unmarried black women, and 3 percent of unmarried white women. Of course, there’s also a confounding factor > [@](#): > > Children born out of wedlock in the United States tend to have poorer health and educational outcomes than those born to married women, but that may be because unmarried mothers tend to share those problems. But racism probably accounts for [some](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122416323) of the economic disadvantage as well. And some of it is [culture](http://www.cramton.umd.edu/workshop/papers/fryer-levitt-distinctively-black-names.pdf) (ie, “acting white”). And in some cases, it’s a consequence > [@](#): > > Understanding whether cultural differences are a cause of continued economic disparity > between races is a question of great social importance. Cultural differences may be a cause of > Black economic struggle if Black culture interferes with the acquisition of human capital or > otherwise lowers the labor market productivity of Blacks (as argued in the culture of poverty > paradigm in sociology, see Hannerz 1969, Lewis 1966, Riessman 1962, and implicitly, Anderson > 1990). For instance, high-achieving Black children may be ostracized by their peers for “acting > white,” potentially leading to lower investment in human capital (Fordham and Ogbu 1986, > Austen-Smith and Fryer 2003). Speaking “Ebonics” may interfere with the ability to interact > with White co-workers and customers, or disrupt human capital acquisition more directly.1 On > the other hand, the presence of a Black culture may simply be the consequence of past and > current segregation and economic inequality, but play no role in perpetuating economic disparity. ---
**Author:** ![leander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bcef8e/32.png) [@leander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leander)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/159 "2010-03-16T22:01:12Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > It isn’t a question of belief - these are established facts. > > Keeping in mind that what I have stated are facts - not what the various idiots are pretending I said, what I actually said. > > Idiots spout idiocy; there’s nothing that can be done about that. Except to ridicule their idiocy. > > Regards, > Shodan A racist and a coward. What a surprise! ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259/160 "2010-03-16T22:04:16Z")
> [@Blalron](#): > > There’s simply no way around that for Rand Rover, no matter how much hand waving he does. His job requires there to be a government with a labyrinthine tax code. He hasn’t invented anything, or produced anything useful with his mind. He just knows how to game the system so that certain people get favors (“tax write offs”) from the government. He’s more like Jim Taggart than John Galt. I help people invest in the most tax-efficient way. So, I’m like Eddie Willers or the wet blanket after he dries up and helps Hank. Jim Taggart got rich (or “attempted to get more rich” is probably the better way to put it) by using influence to get government handouts. That’s not anything like what I do. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rand-rovers-a-non-tipping-suv-driving-republican-picky-eater-fatty-who-hovers-over-toilet-seats/532259.md?page=9)