Precisely. The whole notion that everyone is a rational actor when it comes to money is just silly on it’s face. The reality of life just doesn’t bear that out in the least.
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Oh and I’m the one yelled at for bringing up capitalism.
No one is yelling at you. They are disagreeing with you.
My point was that the notion that everyone is a rational actor within the capitalist system doesn’t hold water. People act irrationally in all kinds of ways, especially around the issues of race and gender. Just look historically, and you’ll be able to see people acting against what an economist might call their rational self-interest, because it somehow involves women or people of color. If the rational thing to do is to hire the best man for the job, then why do so many talented people who happen to be of a specific gender or race get passed over? Why do bankable actresses, in this case, get paid less then their male counterparts, even if they are more famous and are bigger box office draws?
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Presumably they aren’t?
The one thing capitalism is pretty good at is exploiting resources. If bankable actresses are being underpaid, one would expect someone to poach them. That it hasn’t happened implies no one is willing to make that bet. There’s plenty of irrationality in the markets, but they don’t tend to leave money on the table.
It seems far more likely to me that the general public is a bit racist and sexist than some Hollywood accountant doesn’t want our money. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d expect their greed to take priority over any other vice.
You’re assuming rational actors, again. [quote=“namenotreserved, post:84, topic:98466”]
but they don’t tend to leave money on the table.
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But they do, again and again, with bankable actresses. [quote=“namenotreserved, post:84, topic:98466”]
It seems far more likely to me that the general public is a bit racist and sexist than some Hollywood accountant doesn’t want our money.
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Explain to me how some hollywood accountant is immune from sexism and racism, just because they’re an accountant? Because $$$? Maybe sometimes. But you’re assuming that they are somehow outside of the culture in which they live, and immune to a variety of concepts and ideas, just because they work with money. It just absolutely ignores the reality of things. Again, ask @Donald_Petersen, who actually works in the industry and might, just possibly, know something about how these things shape the industry in ways that might not seem obvious to those of us who don’t. Keep in mind that the industry we’re talking about functions on mythmaking at its heart and that there is all sorts of things going on behind the scenes that we the consuming public isn’t privy to. I’d have thought that massive email leak a few years ago would have showed that.
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Stop with the presuming already. The pure abstraction of how the market supposedly “works” is not backed by the evidence of actual pay rates, and what people experience in the real world.
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They also don’t tend to pay any more than they have to. As long as studios can get away with paying female actors less than their male counterparts then they will continue to do so. They can get away with it because the practice is industry-wide; it’s difficult for someone like Natalie Portman to negotiate more money from Dreamworks if she’s just as likely to get shafted by any other major studio.
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I’m all for loyalty but won’t an attitude of compromise on moving to greener pastures, however functionally preferable for the company, reflect monetarily poorly on the person who chooses to remain rather than up-sell themselves?
Surely loyalty to corporations over increasing your value in the market they operate in is not a characteristic that would help individuals pursue their true value in the market they work in?
We’ve surely already established that corporations are not good faith actors, employers… hell, entities. And especially not the American ones which lag far behind on basic protections like maternity leave (which I regret to inform you I was not at all surprised to learn were very poor in the states).
Corporations will use any positive aspect, whether they are individual characteristics or particular to to one group or another, not as proof of value but as a green light to devalue.
You mentioned earlier that you thought a quicker, stronger introduction to negotiation with more constructive, positive feedback early on would benefit women. That seems like a very good idea.
Promoting characteristics which evil corporations will use to undervalue the women that more commonly posses that wanted characteristic seems like not a very good idea.
That’s not to say “don’t demonstrate value”, just, “fuck corporations”.
ETA:
But probably, you are damned if you do and more damned if you don’t… I just want the corporations to bend a teeny, tiny bit over to your side rather than women feel like it’s on them to demonstrate ‘additional’ qualities…
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At that moment, I wasn’t arguing for women, I was arguing that from a company’s financial point of view (and continuity) it is better to keep employees long term rather than have to find and then train new employees.
That wasn’t me. Maybe @anon61221983?
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@Missy_Pants, I think… I’ve been more snark and fury here! But all us ladies look alike, right? 
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I’m a red six-pointed star with a pussy hat and you’re the mother of dragons…so yeah, totally!
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It’s like a mirror in here!
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Oop! Sorry. All you damnable, upstart women seem the same to me! 
*sigh
I’d love it if we could assume companies, or really any group that benefits from distributed responsibility, were good faith actors. And I guess it is especially ironic that merely demonstrating a valuable characteristic more common to women would be something I saw as a potential negative… but only because bad faith actors, which any entity partaking in wage gouging or other unfair treatment can certainly be counted among, will abuse any leeway given them by anybody.
I can certainly see that it is better for companies to keep experienced, trusted people who have proven themselves good at their jobs but it’s also in the companies (short term) interest to abuse all of its wage slaves as much as it possibly can whilst also lobbying for the right to treat them even worse.
No one accused the free market of having a conscience… or really any kind of human-centric focus.
I think I’m trying to say that good arguments will fall on deaf ears because the established system is so fucked that dealing with it in a good faith fashion is practically impossible. They must be bent to the will of the people, not encouraged to do the right thing by cogent arguments. They eat cogent arguments for breakfast with a little laugh.
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We certainly try to blend into a single, feminine matriarchal entity! ;-)[quote=“miasm, post:93, topic:98466”]
I’d love it if we could assume companies, or really any group that benefits from distributed responsibility, were good faith actors.
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Indeed! We can’t, though.[quote=“miasm, post:93, topic:98466”]
I think I’m trying to say that good arguments will fall on deaf ears because the established system is so fucked that dealing with it in a good faith fashion is practically impossible.
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That’s true enough. I’d also argue that things that from a “market-based” stand point, seem rational, are undercut by other various forms of prejudice that permeates our society. Hence (and to bring it on back to the topic of this thread) women of color often have many more barriers than white women. They experience a double helping of discrimination, because of their gender and race/ethnicity. I’m not sure how well it’s known, but affirmative actions programs and equal employment policies have general benefited white women the most. That also doesn’t mean that white women still don’t face hurdles, but that we face less hurdles than our sisters of color.
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Yes. The avenue of attack is not through the streets of disenfranchisement. Those gold-paved streets were fenced in long ago and are guarded by innate programmed prejudice.
Organised, socially-democratic, representative resistance, forcing the companies to bend to the will of the people, seems like not only the method most likely to work, it’s the only societal space left which can be fashioned to have significant strength that can also be made equal.
Being able to work within the system for positive change is not impossible and I sure don’t want to give the impression I think it’s unwanted, I just think that trying to effect change from within the system (working with the system), whilst potentially possible, is not the most effective means of bringing about that change.
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No, you can’t presume that. That might make sense if Hollywood Accounting weren’t infamously irrational in all ways that it budgets and (especially) reports profits and losses with an eye toward minimizing residual payments and net profit shares. Your argument presumes that Hollywood pays actresses less than actors because the value added to any given movie’s bottom line by a given actress must be inherently less than that added by a comparable male actor because why would liberal Hollywood manifest such inequities simply because of long-established sexist precedent? That sexist precedent is indeed long-established and deeply entrenched, and a lot of attention is finally being paid to it because it’s not imaginary.
It’s founded on the same principle that gives rise to the ridiculous surprise that so many express in the industry media every time a movie with a mostly female cast does “unexpectedly well” in the box office, like Bridesmaids. Even people who know better still unconsciously undervalue women in movies. And that isn’t based on rational market analysis, which doesn’t really exist in an industry that keeps backing up the Brinks truck to Adam Sandler’s driveway. Rather, it is based on our long-established societal and cultural sexism that undervalues women in every corner of society.
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I do agree with this to a certain extent. But it also assumes that the people acting on them are themselves, free of these prejudices. Unfortunately, they often themselves have their own ingrained beliefs, which too many people are unwilling to examine in themselves. All I can say is that we need to be able to point out blindspots when we see it, and not be attacked or dismissed when we see it and call it out, which that defensive posture can often happen, even among generally enlightened people.
I do struggle with this and it’s never been satisfactorily answered which solution is the best. On the one hand, it would be foolish to say things aren’t materially better for women or people of color than it was in the 1950s. But plenty of oppressive structures still exist, even as people come in to make the system more representative of our cultural diversity. And too often, outside activism gets splintered and has it’s own problems. [quote=“Donald_Petersen, post:96, topic:98466”]
Rather, it is based on our long-established societal and cultural sexism that undervalues women in every corner of society.
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I know I can always count on you, dude! Thanks!
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I consider a major part of my having grown up to be a series of realisations that my expectations of normality had been conditioned in such a way as to make me de-facto prejudiced.
That little burn of umbrage when someone does or says something outside of your expectations of normalcy is the insidious cancer all privileged people are infected with. Admitting that you are infected, and are behaving unfairly and that it is your fault if you don’t change was always obvious to me when I was confronted with my prejudice.
I don’t believe any rational or semi-rational person escapes this realisation, but some are far more ready than others to bury those perceptions deep and then blame everyone else for the unease they feel.
I don’t often take part in these discussions because I usually feel like I don’t have anything to add, but recently I’ve been wondering if that isn’t the exact reason I should be in them, taking part. I might not add anything to the discussion but I want to sharpen my ideas and my rhetoric and, well, this is the best place on the planet for that.
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Truth! I do think most people never really come to terms with that or they reject it out of hand. [quote=“miasm, post:98, topic:98466”]
some are far more ready than others to bury those perceptions deep and then blame everyone else for the unease they feel.
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Again, truth. I think we probably all do this to some extent and some of us do it more than others. None of us escape the constructed reality that exists outside of the inside of our own heads. It’s the trying to square the two that’s often painful and is the hard work too many people just aren’t willing to do in order to improve things for everyone.
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The reasons people have issues with the way you have been bringing up the death of capitalism is that you seem to be presenting it as the only option other than just shrugging our collective shoulders.
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