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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday October 20 2016, @02:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the should-really-be-in-space-or-undersea dept.

When Apple finishes its new $5 billion headquarters in Cupertino, California, the technorati will ooh and ahh over its otherworldly architecture, patting themselves on the back for yet another example of "innovation." Countless employees, tech bloggers, and design fanatics are already lauding the "futuristic" building and its many "groundbreaking" features. But few are aware that Apple's monumental project is already outdated, mimicking a half-century of stagnant suburban corporate campuses that isolated themselves—by design—from the communities their products were supposed to impact.

In the 1940s and '50s, when American corporations first flirted with a move to the 'burbs, CEOs realized that horizontal architecture immersed in a park-like buffer lent big business a sheen of wholesome goodness. The exodus was triggered, in part, by inroads the labor movement was making among blue-collar employees in cities. At the same time, the increasing diversity of urban populations meant it was getting harder and harder to maintain an all-white workforce. One by one, major companies headed out of town for greener pastures, luring desired employees into their gilded cages with the types of office perks familiar to any Googler.

Rockstar coders don't do suburbs?


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  • (Score: 2) by KiloByte on Friday October 21 2016, @05:30AM

    by KiloByte (375) on Friday October 21 2016, @05:30AM (#417120)

    I obviously meant it relatively. Asian crime is a tiny sliver of white crime, and white crime in turn is a tiny fraction of black crime.

    So here's another example: Roma (gypsies) are genetically identical with Indian people, having emigrated from there several hundred years ago. In some parts of Europe, Roma have ~95% percent unemployment that's still underestimated as the statistics go by ethnicity rather than culture, so those who don't follow their ideology ("Romanipen") and have assimilated are still counted. Reason? Romanipen strictly forbids any cooperation with non-Romas, so despite getting affirmative action up the wazoo they keep subsisting on benefits and crime. Ie, in this case it's 100% cultural not racial.

    And as for blaming hatred from European neighbours and intense discrimination for causing such a culture, go ask the Jews. Least criminality, high productivity, insanely high scientific output per unit of population.

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  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday October 21 2016, @07:40AM

    by butthurt (6141) on Friday October 21 2016, @07:40AM (#417152) Journal

    I obviously meant it relatively.

    Because gangs are insignificant in Asian-American cultures, you seemed to be saying. Yet the U.S. government had enough to say about them to fill three days of instruction.

    In Japan, Korea and China, and among people who emigrated from there, gangs and organised crime are part of the culture:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triad_%28organized_crime%29 [wikipedia.org]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tong_%28organization%29 [wikipedia.org]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kkangpae [wikipedia.org]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza [wikipedia.org]

    Asian crime is a tiny sliver of white crime, and white crime in turn is a tiny fraction of black crime.

    If Asian-Americans tend to be wealthier than whites, who in turn tend to be wealthier than blacks, then the supposition that wealth is a major factor would seem plausible. The well-to-do and wealthy have out-sized influence on the legislative processes that define what's deemed a crime; there are class and racial biases in enforcement; when someone is charged, proper legal representation is costly.

    • (Score: 2) by KiloByte on Friday October 21 2016, @08:23AM

      by KiloByte (375) on Friday October 21 2016, @08:23AM (#417159)

      No, take a look at the study I linked to: the correlation between wealth and criminality is low (0.17) compared to that between race and criminality (0.55). Ie, wealth is specifically not a major factor here.

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      Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
      • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday October 21 2016, @04:19PM

        by butthurt (6141) on Friday October 21 2016, @04:19PM (#417300) Journal

        The authors averaged the wealth of everyone in each state. "If Bill Gates walks into a bar, on average, everybody in the bar is a millionaire. [wordpress.com]" They use skin colour as a proxy for race and, judging by the column heading in their table, "% black" as the measure of skin colour. So for their purposes, there are two races, black and non-black.

        They write (emphasis added):

        The present study supports Templer and Arikawa's (2006) finding that skin color is a human life history variable. In The global bell curve, Lynn (2008) showed that in many countries around the world, skin color is the basis of social stratification. In the US there is a racial hierarchy in which Europeans have the highest IQ and earnings and socio-economic status, Hispanics come next, while Blacks do least well. Lynn found similar racial hierarchies in Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Color stratified societies are sometimes referred to as “pigmentocracies” by anthropologists and sociologists and are explained mainly by the structural consequences of colonialism, discrimination, and prejudice. [...]

        Millions of Africans were of course brought to America as slaves (after the natives proved unsuitable); then slavery was outlawed--except as punishment for a crime. The so-called "prison-industrial complex" is seen by some observers as the successor to more overt slavery.