Thanks for the tip!
I don’t even think of him as human. “Rand Rover;” it’s as if a computer was given all of her ideas, and set loose to post on the board. I like to read his posts because it reminds me of how heartless libertarianism can be (but usually isn’t because it is practiced by empathetic humans and not heartless machines).
I’m not sure how much litigation or criminal work you might be familiar with, but high standards of rationality was by no means a guarantee when I faced a prosecutor.
OK, fair enough. Although I will note in passing that I don’t remember any thread in which you offered sympathy for any event at all, I readily concede I’m no expert on your posting history. But let’s forget the personal events and toss out some business-related ones. I assume you have no sympathy for the Enron employee whose retirement stock became worthless because the management of the company falsified earnings reports. I assume you’ll chide the victim of identity theft who has just lost thousands of dollars because, after all, they could have chosen a bank with a more robust security department.
My point doesn’t suffer, Rand, if we limit ourselves to business-related tragedies. It remains precisely the same: you have set the sympathy bar far too high; you require not that the victim act reasonably, but that she act with near-perfect foresight.
Well, what I said was, “…if we take this logic you’ve outlined and run with it…” If we cannot apply your reasoning and reach the results I’ve suggested, then it seems it’s up to you to distinguish the cases. You can’t just dismiss them with, “No, I don’t believe that one.” I contend your explanations about the things you DO believe lets us reasonably infer that you believe my examples as well, and if you don’t, you need to explain where I’ve missed the boat. In what way have I failed to correctly apply the lessons you’ve offered?
In what way are those factors relevant to this discussion?
If I could speak up for Rand Rover in this situation? First of all, the woman was clearly wronged, in the landlord not returning her security deposit, if nothing else. Also, if she had a lease, she’s lost the security that having that lease has, and in addition, she now has that comes with finding a new place to live.
That being said, I don’t particularly understand why I should feel particularly bad about what happened to this woman. I don’t know her, and as far as I know, she doesn’t have any ties to me whatsoever…at least no more than all the other people who suffer in this world. And my feelings for her won’t help her situation.
So that’s why I don’t particularly see the point of threads like that…the so called “recreational outrage” threads. They seem to be a kind of, I don’t know, emotional masturbation. A person can read the thread, and then feel good and self righteous about being morally outraged on a stranger’s behalf. It’s sort of like a sermon where the preacher denounces Satan. The congregation can all join in with their amens, because they all know that Old Scratch won’t have anybody coming in on his side.
I may not speak for everyone here, but I certainly don’t feel good after reading an RO thread. Most of the time I feel angry. I suppose there is a sort of catharsis in being able to denounce someone and knowing that 90% of people will agree with your denunciation, when most things in life are in shades of grey rather than black and white- especially here- but I don’t enjoy it.
Then why do you read them if you know they’ll make you feel angry? Do you enjoy being angry?
Please explain how I am being a racist. I am saying that other people are all weepy in that thread because of their belief that black women shouldn’t be held responsible for their decisions. They are the ones being racist.
Nobody says that you need to feel bad, or even that you need to feel anything at all. Not feeling emotion over a particular person’s misfortune is entirely different than taking the time to say the situation is “no big deal” and that the victim brought the misfortune upon themselves by not having an appropriate level of foresight.
Perhaps. Why do people pick at scabs?
There are non-RO reasons to indulge in RO too. It’s usually current news stories, so it’s useful to read them in a “be informed” sense; they’re usually in the
US, so it’s useful to read them in order to determine whether Weird Law X might affect me, and so on.
Hey Vulcans come off as good natured, if brutally logical.
Rover is just brutally illogical.
What evidence supports your conclusion that the reason people are “all weepy” after that story relates to the woman’s race?
Bricker, if not as many people respond to this as the previous threads on the guy, don’t be disappointed. Well written as this OP was I think a lot of folks have simply written off that butt nugget as being beyond redemption and no longer worth their time or effort.
As far as I can tell, you’re the only one who brought up race in the thread. I’m fairly certain that everyone who posted to the thread would have felt exactly the same way if the tenant was any other race. At least two posters (Lightnin’ and I) didn’t even read the news story; we simply responded to the OP.
Anyway, your claim that she could have “bargained” for anything is stupid. Residential leases are almost invariably unilateral contracts. The landlord would have told her to stuff it if she’d made demands as you so “helpfully” opined she ought.
However, since you feel people should be held wholly responsible for failing to understand their legal rights in every situation, perhaps you could start teaching a seminar or something.
I just wanted to wander in and say…catchy thread title! I really don’t have an opinion on the Pitting one way or the other to be honest, but just had to see what it was all about with a title like that.
Carry on…
-XT
Not one person in that thread, save you, mentioned her race at all.
It’s generally not considered kosher on these boards to just make up shit out of whole cloth and post it as fact. Especially when it is so effortlessly disproven.
Is that what passes for rationality in your world? Blatent lying?
Let’s take a look back at the thread in question and see precisely who floated the notion that we believe that black women shouldn’t be held responsible for their decisions.
Hey … whattayaknow … it was you … the asshole.
Nobody said dick about race until you felt the need to lob that grenade.
And … we have a consensus in this thread.
We win, 1 - 0.
And he’s married to. . .Morgan Fairchild! Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Rand Rover makes even your garden-variety Ayn Rand arse-licker look human. I don’t doubt that he or she is what he or she claims to be – a tax lawyer. I’ve known plenty of lawyers who have nothing but contempt for those who did not choose to become highly-paid professionals, or for those who simply didn’t have the choice to become highly-paid professionals, but RR takes the cake.
There is a possibility that RR is somewhere on the autism spectrum. It may be that he or she simply cannot comprehend that others are as fully human as he is. But it’s more likely that RR is simply an ignorant sociopath.
Also, not to get all weepy or anything, but the thread is topical: many irresponsible renters who don’t exercise their precognitive abilities are being evicted these days, and that’s a change from the past, wherein they were shielded from their irresponsibility by haivng their landlords use their rent money to pay the mortgage. As an irresponsible renter myself, I like to know that the chances are increasing that I might, someday, find myself evicted with zero notice. Should that happen, I’ll likely post a message to this board whining about how “paying my rent should have resulted in my having a place to live,” and I assume I’ll be verbally garrotted for my silliness.
Yes, I know I’m making my bed, and will have to lie in it, but us irresponsible types live in our own dreamworld.