One of the most highly valued thing in nowaday society seems to be so-called "human rights". Basically, no matter what those activists do, claiming that they are defending human rights alone can bring them huge support (and of course the funds). For instance, gay activists constantly claim that being accepted as normal citizens is basic human rights, and therefore demand "equal" rights.
This is not going to do us any good.
One of the very first assumptions of "goodness" of absolute freedom is that humans are rational creatures. This statement is obviously flawed. More importantly, making choices can be costly. Imagine the following scenario:
A person is choosing which subjects as his major. He is given a variety of choices, but he has no idea what subjects is going to be suitable for him, so he randomly picks one at first, then keep switching majors until he finds one that he seems to like.
University Education requires government funding. So imagine what would happen if thousands of people are doing the same thing, and we all know that our resources are limited. If we waste so much money on these people, the old and the sick is going to receive less funding to help them. That's the key of my problem with those so-callled "freedom": In real world, letting people make choices freely is going to cost us resources, and the amount is far from negligible.
Therefore, it follows that there should be a point at which freedom and restriction are well balanced such that human happiness is going to be maximized. It is obvious that limitlessly raise freedom people have will definitely not bring us to this point.
Conclusion
I don't think endlessly demand freedom is going to do us any good. Instead, it is probably not going to creating anything but misery and misallocation of resources. One of the greatest reasons people seem to mindlessly support the so-called "human rights" is that it appears to induce intense emotions in us such that people in general stop doubting if what they do is correct.
I am really beginning to wonder why being emotional seems to be associated so strongly with poor decision making.
2011年6月4日 星期六
2011年6月1日 星期三
Feminization of Poverty?
Recently, I have heard of a fancy term called "feminization of poverty", which is defined as the so-called fact that women are disproportionately likely to become impoverished. For example, feminists claimed that women around the world are about twice as likely to be of low income than are men.
Does this indicate some forms of "oppression"?
I doubt it.
First of all, I am wondering how many men are maltreated so seriously that they don't show up in the statistics. For instance, they are probably killed or migrated (usually to act as slaves), and we all know that men have higher mortality rate in the workplace. Indeed, the following article reports that women's higher "incidence" of poverty concentrates in older age groups, to a certain extent supporting this hypothesis.
http://www.fao.org/sd/wpdirect/WPan0015.htm
This article also indicates that there are very little direct scientific evidence supporting the so-called "feminization of poverty".
A more interesting fact is that I have noticed two features of article talking about "feminization of poverty": emotional-ness and lack of objectivity. All of them (as far as I have read) use a lot of emotional words that tend to arouse sympathy to the "victims" and very few of them actually cite any objective statistics to support their points. If they are telling the truth, why are they so reluctant to give us statistics, which, would support their positions if what they say are true?
Even more curiously, none of these articles have told me how did they obtain their "statistics". This along with the fact that feminists have a habit of distorting the truth have made me become very suspicious of the so-called "feminization of poverty".
Conclusion
The summary is as usual: I am quite sceptical of feminists claiming that they are addressing inequalities. In fact, the converse may be true. Of course I am not saying that the feminization of poverty is definitely false, but with the current lack of "evidence" in hand, I am rather reluctant to support their positions, nor am I ready to join those campaigns.
Does this indicate some forms of "oppression"?
I doubt it.
First of all, I am wondering how many men are maltreated so seriously that they don't show up in the statistics. For instance, they are probably killed or migrated (usually to act as slaves), and we all know that men have higher mortality rate in the workplace. Indeed, the following article reports that women's higher "incidence" of poverty concentrates in older age groups, to a certain extent supporting this hypothesis.
http://www.fao.org/sd/wpdirect/WPan0015.htm
This article also indicates that there are very little direct scientific evidence supporting the so-called "feminization of poverty".
A more interesting fact is that I have noticed two features of article talking about "feminization of poverty": emotional-ness and lack of objectivity. All of them (as far as I have read) use a lot of emotional words that tend to arouse sympathy to the "victims" and very few of them actually cite any objective statistics to support their points. If they are telling the truth, why are they so reluctant to give us statistics, which, would support their positions if what they say are true?
Even more curiously, none of these articles have told me how did they obtain their "statistics". This along with the fact that feminists have a habit of distorting the truth have made me become very suspicious of the so-called "feminization of poverty".
Conclusion
The summary is as usual: I am quite sceptical of feminists claiming that they are addressing inequalities. In fact, the converse may be true. Of course I am not saying that the feminization of poverty is definitely false, but with the current lack of "evidence" in hand, I am rather reluctant to support their positions, nor am I ready to join those campaigns.
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