Lawrence Taylor goes on Foxnews and brings the lulz.

[takeitdown]

(03-25-2011 10:44 PM)Beef Wrote:  I don't have a "naive view of the sex trade". You have just pigeon-holed yourself into one view because of YOUR experiences.

Not every prostitute was sexually abused by their father. They're simply not all victims. Some of them chose to or made choices that lead them to become one all on their own. You & Coop are asserting that this girl had no choices in this when neither of you have a clue if that's the truth. You're just spouting statistics & assumptions & ignorantly placing here where YOU want. And even though you don't know, you're insisting, as if it's a fact, that this is what must have happened so therefore she is not responsible for anything that's happened to her.

Now if you don't understand how obtuse & foolish that is, you're hopeless & I'll think very little of you. Not that you care.

In the end, I'll stick to my gut, you stick to yours. I'll think you're gullible & you'll think I'm naive. So be it, we'll agree to disagree & be done with it.


Edit: And I thought more about the other stuff you said & I can't disagree more about people not really having choices. I know you've lived it & seen it, but there have been many many people in the worst of the worst conditions persevere & become successful. Have you ever heard of people like Chris Gardner & Rosa Parks? This PROVES it's possible. It may be the most difficult thing in the universe to do, but it's possible if you choose to face the challenge & not let it beat you. It's only an excuse to act like there's absolutely no choice for people at the bottom. There is, it's just incredibly, incredibly hard.

I got out. I've run multiple successful businesses. I'm held out as one of those who "made it." I know it can be done...it's just that I understand more than most how hard it can be. And how much luck plays in. And you're right, it's possible...it just sucks for someone (like Rosa, like Chris) to have to be exceptional just to get to ok.

Mainly, it's a matter of odds. If only one of a thousand are making it out of a certain area, there's always a chance...but they don't have the same choices. I tried to give you a concrete one from my experience, of a 14 yr old boy, who had to choose between providing for his family, or continuing his education. He already was working full time and going to school...but that wasn't enough. I think he made the right choice in dropping out to work two jobs, so his little sisters would have food on the table. I also know that people who haven't "been there" will say he's poor because he made bad choices. I like to let people know sometimes there aren't great choices...or more to the point....you have to be so extraordinary to move past those choices...he would have had to work 15 hrs per day, pursue his GED, get into a JUCO and hope his sisters are old enough to help out working, etc. Most things are possible, I just like for people to understand that out of some circumstances, people have to be extraordinary just to get to ok. Whereas with a middle class upbringing, if yu're just ordinary, you're fine. You have to make bad decision after bad decision to really be down a bad path.

The classic case is a DUI. When I was growing up, about 80% of people were below the poverty level, and that's just what I knew. But it also meant something like getting pulled over after drinking 4 beers set off a domino effect. Your license may get suspended, you owe a 2k fine, etc...and to these people just barely scraping by, they can't drive, they lose their job, can't pay the fine, and it all goes downhill. Now, when I started being middle class elsewhere, I was amazed to see tons of people got DUIs, they just paid it, they had many alternatives to get to work, etc. They both made bad choices, but the same bad choice was catastrophic to one set of people, and not a big deal at all to the other.

This is not to say that people have no chances, it's to say we shouldn't expect that people have to be extraordinary just to get a fair shake.

I'm held out as one of those examples you used, and I've never liked it. They used the fact I did well to claim they didn't need to improve the schools (though I had to learn everything on the side, and most of the teachers were actually incorrect in their teachings), and things of that nature. I didn't like being held as an example of why it's ok to keep things as they are because takeitdown made it.

I went straight from that to kids that had everything and had gone to Harvard, etc., and was amazed at how much they thought they had made it there on their own, and everyone started out equal. I've been very grateful for getting out, and know a couple of pieces of bad luck could have left me astray.

I'm a weird mix, I guess, because I'm very pro personal responsibility, and I'm pro business/markets, I just think most people don't recognize how easy they've had it, and how hard it is for some just to stay afloat. The people I worked with often couldn't hold a candle in native intelligence and gumption to some I grew up with, but these middle classers were living the good life, and my friends were in factories and prison.

So, I hold people responsible, but I also have little respect for the people who think we all start on anywhere near equal footing...and who simply don't realize just how easy it is to not make it if you start off badly. It's too easy to say "anyone can make it out with work." We need to acknowledge that some people need a better start, and that you shouldn't have to be an extraordinary 1/1000 person just to make it to an ok life if you grow up in certain places. I don't care for me, because I got lucky, and was lucky to have been born where tests and things were very easy for me. I care for the smart people who couldn't make it out, despite hard work, and the dullards who had well off parents slightly dismissing them as "people who made bad choices."

I'm not trying to pigeon hole you as the latter, because I don't know you. I just know a lot of those people. Of course they don't know how much they take for granted, because they've never had to live the other way.

Clarification: I'm in no way calling myself any of the 1/1000, extraordinary, etc. things. I was lucky. Shit made sense to me. But kids with 130 IQs and good work ethics were falling by the wayside, and that shouldn't be how it is.

Back to the girl...we don't know if she was in the 75 or the 25...but it helps to know that that's how a lot of this gets started. There are the occasional stupid suburban girls who start heroin and go down a bad slope, but mostly, these trades are made of people who've had a damn bad shake.

Sorry for the novella. People just expect that since I made it out, I'm in the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" class, but I realize how lucky I was, and most of the people saying pull yourself up by the bootstraps never had to. Ultimately, that's what you gotta try, because no one's going to do it for you, but often it just won't work.