david.molyneux

I would suggest that voting has merit among small groups of people, wherein everyone can be heard, provided that all have agreed to comply with a majority decision. In a larger "group", i.e. a voting populace as we think of it today, that's not possible, and I would refer you to shirgall's answer above.

I'm not really clear on your point, would you mind clarifying? I'm genuinely interested in what you mean by that.

This is really stretching the concept of "value". Suicide bombing also wouldn't be possible without the motivation to perform the action. By your logic, the suicide bomber values that which he fights against, because without it he would not have any reason to blow himself up. The affront to his ideology is every bit as much a critical part of his suicide.

This is literally an example of "the exception proves the rule": her specific case is so extraordinary as to be worthy of note. Women are not "better suited" to be fighters, clearly, but she stands out and is popular by virtue of a combination of skill, charisma, etc. (largely diminished since her defeat). Using her as an example of how the larger premise is invalid makes no sense to me. It would be like me saying that Neil Degrasse Tyson disproves the differences in average IQ disparity among races. I'm simply trying to point out a logical explanation for differences in the amount of money men and women earn, and to predict why that will always be the case. It sounds to me as though this upsets an ideology you ascribe to.

"A wage is monetary compensation (or remuneration, personnel expenses, labor) paid by an employer to an employee in exchange for work done. Payment may be calculated as a fixed amount for each task completed (a task wage or piece rate), or at an hourly or daily rate, or based on an easily measured quantity of work done." On a "task completed" and/or "quantity" basis, men would earn more as they would be able to complete more physically demanding tasks in less time. This seems fairly obvious. Fixed amount (say yearly) wages for a man and woman of average competence and physical size and strength (for their respective sex), both working construction or another equally physically demanding job, would not be "just", since the man will undoubtedly be capable of moving more material, operating hammers, shovels, picks, sledgehammers, etc. more effectively, maintaining a high level of effort for longer periods of time, and so on. Paying them both based on "hours worked" would also favor the women unfairly, for the same reasons already outlined. Therefore "wage equality" is a valid way to phrase this, outside of an office setting. Among those that are working in offices, the only factors resulting in "unfair" wages would be personal (e.g. laziness, work ethic, etc.) not systemic. This is without even factoring in the overall effect of the bell curve of intelligence for men and women: do men earn more or less by virtue of dominating the extremes of intelligence (positive and negative); do women benefit overall by dominating the "average" and being under-represented on the extreme ends themselves? I'm not sure, but it would interesting to find out.

That has everything to do with how much of a "draw" a fighter is, and therefore how much revenue they generate. R.R. being popular and generating interest (and by extension revenue) is not an argument against the idea that men earn more even without factoring in choice.

This is exactly what my article said, that equal pay should be given for equal work. And that given the disparity between the physical ability of men and women, women will never be able to have the same NET output as a sex as men, and by extension will never earn as much. And yes, there is; beyond the world of professional sports, you can find that physically fit, strong men are going to make more on a construction site, farm, factory floor, etc. than weak, older men. The top 25% of women, in terms of strength, overlap with the bottom 25% of men. Also, the lung capacity of women in their physical prime is roughly the same as that of an average man in his 50's, meaning that they are typically unable to keep up with their male peers in back-breaking conditions. There are weaker men that would not do as well as those in the more physically demanding fields, just as there are those that are less intelligent that are able to make up for it by using strength and stamina to work those same jobs (I've known many myself, having worked in construction for years, on and off). Women who lack the intelligence or acumen for mentally rigorous work are generally also unsuited to do the same as unintelligent men (speaking in general terms here). I'll use myself as an example of the broad spectrum of jobs that a young man might take on. Currently, I work as an anaylst for a large company and am responsible for designing and configuring upgrades for our software. It's entirely information-based, and ranges from complex tasks to simple data entry. A few short years ago, I worked the same type of hours carrying two 70-lb. bundles of shingles up ladders for roofers, carrying and mixing 80-lb. bags of cement, unloading and stacking concrete block, and setting up and taking down scaffolding for masons, etc. I'm 6' tall and probably in the top 25% of untrained men (meaning I am not a bodybuilder or pro-athlete) in terms of strengh. If I were to trade places with a woman of the exact same percentiles for intelligence and strength, she would doubtless be able to do the job now. She may even be able to earn a respectable living doing the same construction work that I did. However, as we were paid based on the job being completed and not the hours spent working, she would not be able to generate the same income for the company, or help them get as many jobs done. In all the years I did that type of work, I can only recall on woman, out of dozens, that was able to carry even one 70-lb. bundle of shingles up a 20-ft. ladder, and even she was unable to do so for more than a few trips. I'm sure there are women out there who could, and probably even a few that could outwork me (most of them on a cocktail of steroids, but a few that weren't perhaps). My point is that far more men have this latitude to work within than do women. This, combined with the choices men and women make, based in part on their biology, means that they will never reach wage-parity as a whole. Stefan has done a podcast or two on this topic; my (hopefully) helpful addition to the conversation is that outside of making sure no one is being discriminated against, we ought to stop worrying about whether men and women are making the same amount, or imagining that they ever could (outside of 100% automation of all physically demanding jobs).

I mean in this context that the average man and average woman are roughly equals in terms of intelligence and that the difference between their ability to perform everyday office tasks is not sufficienty disparate to explain the difference in the wages earned by men and women. There are other, physical and choice-based factors and work, and even if you were to seperate the choice factor completely from the equation it still wouldn't balance. Therefor clamoring for "eqaul pay" when such a thing is already legally enforced is a fool's errand and not productive. Investigate cases where women (or men) are being unfairly paid less, or being given poor treatment, etc. but working for a tomorrow that cannot possibly come is pointless. Yes, I aware of that, hence I made the statement "women as a sex will never earn the same amount of money as men" as well as explaining why the "earning" portion was key. I also linked to an article debunking the idea that men make more than women for the exact same output.

I did not add a personal perspective because I personally do not have a dog in the fight, so to speak. I was presenting this as a logical answer to the "wage gap" so frequently cited. I don't think women "should" earn less, I am simply claiming that without total automation such a thing as "equal earnings" isn't even possible.

This call was difficult to listen to, especially the argument used regarding the need to value life/means more than death/goals up until the moment of death, e.g. the suicide bomber valuing his own life more than anything else, including his ideology, up until the moment he detonates, and particularily the illustration of the latte and the $5.00. You don't value the $5.00 more than the latte the moment you make the decision to go GET the latte. At that point in time you are looking at the money in your hand and thinking, "Yes, I am willing to give this up to get what I want" and then taking the steps necessary to retrieve it. To think that only at the MOMENT of the transaction you value the latte more is mind-bogglingly stupid, in my opinion. By this same logic a mother values her unborn fetus right up until the instant she aborts it, or hunter values a bullet more than he does his prey right up until the MOMENT he pulls the trigger. When a suicide bomber makes the decision to die it is their BELIEFS that they value more than their own life. The temptation of 72 virgins cannot be the ONLY thing that every one of them wants. An asexual, ascetic terrorist may hate the West so much that he is willing to give his life, with no expectation or hope of an afterlife; he values his ideology and his intense hatred more than the prospect of continuing to live, or enact change through living.

The Wage Gap as a societal "issue" has been thoroughly debunked for some time now*, and while it is still trotted out regularly by "activists", male and female, no honest examination of the facts allows for it to be swallowed by any intelligent person. Most people who intelligently refute the Wage Gap do so by drawing attention to the many differences in the choices that men and women make; ultimately these choices do lead to a significant disparity in wages, yearly and over the course of a career. However, there is more to it than choice; to say that the only reason men and women earn differing amounts boils down to nothing more than choices tacitly implies that if only women made different (or, through a feminist lens, "better") choices, that gap would disappear. However, this is false supposition; regardless of what choices they make, women as a sex will never earn the same amount of money as men. It is this point that I intend to prove by means of this post. Let's set the stage and imagine that we could do away with the choice factor entirely. This could only be accomplished via Orwellian interference on a scale never before seen. First**, men and women would need to be forced to populate each job sector and every role within it in equal numbers (those already in the workforce would either need to be forcibly retired or reallocated as needed). Second, they would then need to be paid the same wages on an hourly basis (while also being forced to work the exact same number of hours, thereby eliminating the predominantly male advantage of being willing to work inhumane amounts of overtime). Why hourly? Well, that brings me to the crux of my argument, so let's see what conclusion we come to when we approach the matter as we might if discussing it in conversation. Ask any honest person, male or female, this question: Is either sex superior to the other, in terms of basic, average intellectual capacity? In the vast majority of the cases, they will answer in the negative, and quickly assert that men and women are equals. Some might sight evidence that backs one sex or the other in a given profession, but by and large people believe in male/female equality (bear in mind that we are talking about your average worker, not physicists or chess grandmasters). Follow that question up with this one: Is either sex superior to the other, in terms of basic, average physical strength and endurance? This question is an easy one to give an honest answer to; only someone that is hopelessly deluded would ever assert that women are more capable of hard, physical labor over any period of time. So to what conclusion do these answers lead us? The job market includes both labor-intensive and sedentary positions. It's obvious that the sex which has a clear and quantifiable advantage in any physically demanding field will ALWAYS outperform the other when calculating the sum of their efforts. The desk jobs may have perfectly equal outcomes; men and women working the same number of hours at a keyboard will most likely show little or no difference in productivity (for the purpose of this argument, we are ignoring psychological, emotional or societal factors; they will prove to be irrelevant to the greater point). On the other hand, those jobs that require manual labor give a natural edge to men, and they always will; therefore it would be entirely unjust to pay Bob the same amount of money as Barb when he carried 60% more shingles from point A to point B, or unloaded 200% more boxes on the loading dock that day. Of course, there are already many hourly positions wherein this is exactly the case. The beauty of this argument, in my opinion, is that not one controversial or contentious thing needs to be said in order for the point to be made. Short version would be as simple as this: "Do you believe men and women are intellectually equal, by and large?" - Yes. "Okay, do you also believe that most men are larger and stronger than most women?" - Yes. "Okay, will there always be physically demanding jobs that favor larger, stronger people?" - Yes, until the robots take over anyhow. "Right then, there will always be an overall Wage Gap so long as people are paid a fair share for their work." You might ask: What is the value of examining this, or even bothering to come to such a conclusion? Simply put, so that we can worry about more important things, and not quibble over percieved injustices. Hopefully, this reasoning will also assist anyone that does end up in a debate about this issue. *http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/01/no-women-don-t-make-less-money-than-men.html **Obviously, there is the alternate route of simply paying women whatever men make, without any attempt at creating a system which at least outwardly justifies it. However, the point of this post is to illustrate to a sane and reasonable person why even perfectly equal conditions will not result in perfectly equal or just results. Key word: just.