Some bad habits deserve to die but anyone wanting to snuff this is bonkers - this is legit, creative, authentic culture. It's the most rare and valuable thing. They should be encouraging it.
They're not racist - they're books with caricatures of any number of cultures, including Western cultures. It's possible people could be offended, but they're not any more offensive than any creative depiction of anything (Edit: poor choice of words there - they are more offensive than 'anything' but not more so than many things). All of Disney's films, even the most modern one's are caricatured articulations of cultures. If Alladin is not racist, neither is Dr. Seuss.
Edit: Go anywhere in the Middle East, stay there for two weeks. Then have a look at the 'Alladin' Disney cartoon and you will see, undoubtedly that it's buffoonishly caricatured, Orientalist pastiche of ME culture. I don't think most people in the ME are going to be straight up offended, but it's undoubtedly a clownish and reductive depiction. Not racist ... but definitely stereotypically caricatured.
I agree they're probably not perfectly suitable for kids, that's fine, and publishers have to make decisions based on fear as much as anything, but the EBay ban is ridiculous, and a sign of American cultural decline consistent with the rise of Trumpism. It's not progress.
We are adults, we know roughly what's nice and not, and within the margins we can make up our own minds. A sticker on the book indicating that some might be offended would be appropriate, just as they do for a lot of pop music (incidentally targeted at young teens) which contains brutally misogynist and violent content.
Self awareness, which is the 'real' topic of this post is a challenging thing.
Growing up, I was naturally humble, and I knew I didn't know much and was amazed to find some confidence after ostensibly earning it to some degree.
What I found was a world of BS-ers so many people convincingly telling others they are the best, and having others believe that.
Then I found that many of these BS-ers believe their own drama - that's scary.
It's doubly scary when these people are in fact, talented, but they project it 10x further with their egos. (Think: Kanye West etc.)
I use the term 'I' here but I think this is at least a common path.
But something I struggle with is just how many regular people are like this? Is tech full of 22-year holds who think they are really that smart? It's one thing to try to change the world, fine, but another to think that you know better or are entitled to that. Or is it a generational issue?
I think we all have sparks of genius, and it takes a lot of hustle to communicate even basic ideas. We need to reinforce ourselves to keep it up. But on some level, we have to try to be objective as well. That's really, really hard, especially if you know something that others might not know, or at least feel that you do.
It's interesting because McK is a club, not a company. They are a relatively disparate group of people operating on the basis of culture, it's not top down.
Some partners can go way off the reservation compared to others, and they may have little to do with one another.
When there are 100 'large firms' calling, it's the 'friends' calls the get answered first, if at all, because hey, we're all busy.
When Masayoshi got 45 minutes in Trump Tower to convince Trump to push forward the Sprint/TMobile merger, do you think that Trump just handed out that favour for free? Because it was 'Good For American Business'? Or maybe at some later date, Trump might find himself in need of investors for his Trump Tower Tokyo, or some help in getting regulators to approve it?
Yes, but also, when the next business cycle market crash happens, and the plebes are screaming about hedge funds, Citadel can also pick up the phone and call their 'friend' Janet Yellen, to introduce them to the Sec. Treasury, and that Senator who's putting putting up a huff about some new legislation.
If you hire U2 to do a a private show for your staff, you don't get those kinds of added bonuses.
It's a material amount that can only be spent in the context of 'getting something for it'. What that is is nebulous, and it could be something as simple as an introduction to someone as of yet unknown at a future date. But it's something worth $700K, not a 'speech'.
This is a very fair question and shouldn't be down-voted.
It's a way for powerful people to pay other powerful people for arbitrary things like 'speeches' so that they can exchange favours off the books in a very indirect way.
It doesn't have to be illegal or even nefarious, but it should raise eyebrows as a possible conflict of interest.
'Speaking Fees' are absolutely the new form of fraud/bribery/kickback.
It's the most arbitrarily thing imaginable, and you can just throw up any number for 'services performed'.
After Obama completed his term, he was immediately on the 'Speaking Fee' tour, including several million paid by a group of Italian banks in desperation [1], totally insolvent - for a a 45 minute speech (!). I wonder if what they needed was a 'Pep Talk' from a 'Former President' ... or perhaps someone influential to put in a good word with the ECB to push for loser monetary policy that might help save failing Italian banks?
I don't think speaking fees imply some kind of bad behaviour, but they are definitely smoke and often represent a conflict of interest.
It's a little bit funny that people don't recognize this: $700K (or whatever large amount), this is a material amount of money, you don't just spend this for no reason, you 'get something' for it.
As Hillary Clinton was about to win the 2016 presidency, masses of cash flowed into the Clinton Foundation (Norway and Australia were pumping in 10's of millions) but just as she lost - 'charitable donations' dried up. Have a look at this chart [2].
Just stare at this chart for a minute: massive cash flows to the charity someone expecting to be the most powerful person in the world, and then those cash flows completely evaporate as soon as we found it she wasn't going to have that power?
So, did Norway, Australia and all these international agencies and governments magically decided to be 'less charitable' in 2016?
Or was it that they were 'expecting to get something in return' for their massive charitable donations?
Let's not be naive.
It doesn't mean there is criminality or even excessive payments, but it's obviously a conflict of interest. If may be something as simple as 'The Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund wants 10 Minutes with the President, to get an introduction to some agency' - and that's it. A very expensive call, but possibly worth it.
And this is not 'political' and certainly not 'one side of the aisle' it's just business.
You folks may want to reconsider having photos in CVs.
Not only are people going to be very strongly biased by race, ethnicity etc., but also by the trivialities of presentation: dress, apparent attitude, choice of background. All of those things signal 'personal brand'.
These things are becoming 'far too important' in terms of how we evaluate each other and this development is really lacking in self awareness for a generation of folks who are supposed to be against this kind of stuff.
Secondarily, I'm wary that overall, this is just contributes to the 'life resume BS' competition of filling up your professional profile with rubbish to make you seem engaged - much like 'GitHub commits' as some kind of signal of validity.
At least with LinkedIn it's considered to be 'professional' i.e. this is your 'work presentation' - the casual nature of these new CVs tries to blend some personal and aspiration aspects so as to make the individual seem more 'authentic'. This is a creeping cultural problem and might be the source of a lot of baseline social conflict in the office. It's a 'place of work' - your hobbies are nice, but not relevant.
"instead for being part of some deeply troubling subculture where passionately debating about very expensive cables and gadgets without ever being able to pass a blind test on the claims is the norm, almost like cargo cult."
That sounds like Apple though ...'I pay for fewer ports!'
There just aren't a ton of Texans looking to buy up property in SF because 1) inequality, much as we may not think it's good in the US, is actually not that extreme and 2) places with extreme inequality and hyper concentrations of wealth tend to also be very corrupt places where private capital is likely to take flight.
The 'non resident buyers' in SF/Van/Toronto are going to be from China, India, Russia, some other places like that, not Texas.
Obviously, it takes on different characteristics, depending on.
Florida is a domestic getaway and retirement spot for Americans, so it's a different kind of place.
Non high-growth places like Van and Toronto have large foreign populations which act as points of entry. Chicago, Montreal, Portland ... do not.
SF/Valley has a very unique characteristic of IPO Winners and 'local super high net worth' individuals that's hard to factor - and of course, it's not NY with the possibility of rapid expansion.
People come from different parts of the world, different things are happening in different places, it means Americans may be more likely to be out and about doing one thing, the French another, the Chinese another.
That there are 'differences' in are world is the uniquely qualifying aspect of diversity itself. 'Diversity' is not 'racist'.
1) 'Occupation' less of an issue, it's 'Ownership'. Foreign owners can rent homes out. Though it's such a problem in Vancouver, they are now taxing empty homes for precisely this reason [1]. Maybe SF should follow suit.
2) That foreign ownership is a primary factor in the rise of home prices in SF, Van, Toronto is completely unambiguous. There's plenty of evidence. The degree of impact is still debatable, but not that it's a major influence. [2]
From those articles you can see the type of demand is 'inelastic' - this is key to understand because it's not just 'a few more buyers'. 2-8% foreign ownership wouldn't mean much at all if they represented the 'same type of buyer' as local buyers. It would be just a small nudge in demand. But the terms they are seeking are completely different and the inelasticity is what makes their kind of demand potent.
3) 'Yellow Peril' (?!?) holy camole. There are foreign buyers from all over the world, it's a big place.
4) This is not just an SF phenom. New Zealand has banned foreign ownership [3]
1) 'Marginal buyers' could explain it - but it might be something else.
There is a smaller group of buyers, investors, of the inelastic type - who if they run away, will cause a market to plummet. They are the opposite of price sensitive, they're maybe from overseas snapping up property at 'above asking' because they need to get $1M out of their countries and they're looking for any kind of return that's reasonable.
Consider 1% interest rates in a foreign country (or region within the country) and possibly a government who may come and confiscate wealth? This is a risky proposition for the burgeoning international middle class.
And of course, the cohort of 'IPO winners' who are less elastic in their acquisitions as well.
These 'inelastic buyers' (local, regional, foreign) are important because they are 'strong signals' to the market for price validation. Consider that nobody knows objectively how much a home should be valued at. Everyone is 'looking down the street' to see how some other property sold which is used as a primary reference. In a 'sea of ambiguity' then the 'inelastic/confident' buyers will anchor the prices. And if they don't care (i.e. inelastic), then then prices go up, way up.
The confluence of:
a) Low interest rates
b) Globalism
c) The 'belief' that real estate will never go down
d) Lack of capital controls and tons of corruption in one regime exporting to another with a different set of rules which creates huge asymmetries (really part of #2)
e) Expanding local economy.
Means real estate will go insane.
The numbers for SF are 4-6% [1] which is actually quite high, similar numbers for Vancouver and Toronto - and this only includes international buyers, whereas in the Valley there is obviously a cohort of IPO Winners.
It also means: there will be no local culture. Almost all citizens who were born and raised in an area will be pushed out over the course of their lives so local ideas, customs, language, norms etc. go away. This is not accounted for in our economic models. Edit: FYI the newcomers in the expanding economy won't be these 'inelastic buyers' who are
a small cohort and may not be residents anyhow - newcomers will be regional/national/international workers, but the side effect is the same. The Silicon Valley is not a normal community, it's more like a 'workplace residence'.
2)The issue with the traffic analogy - is that some drivers are considerably more likely to cause problems than others.
2-3 break-heavy drivers who are slow to catch up can cause a backlog.
Are you really comparing the 'power of someone to say something at work in 2020' with things like 'Black people were not allowed to have mortgages until one generation ago'?
Choosing coffee is not child labour, bad jokes can happen anywhere, Huawei/Not Huawei is a security choice not a political one ... and for god's sakes we're picking our caprenters based in their bumpers stickers? No. I don't care what bumper stickers my carpenter has, and although I personally hate Trump, I don't care one bit that he has such a bumper sticker, and nobody else should either.
99.99% of Google content is mundane and not political.
They're not banning a lot from Google search other than really illegal stuff.
'Choosing the SaaS vendor based on price' is not just 'going with the status quo.
I get what you are trying to say, I just don't agree.
I don't even think that workplaces embracing popular social issues directly that much, what matters is addressing the social issues directly, not as a matter of populism.
Saying "our company doesn't hire black people, that doesn't seem fair, can we think about that" is 100% reasonable, but making public statements about BLM etc. is more political, less pragmatic.
"Abortion is about a woman's right to chose, who's against that?"
"Abortion is about killing children, who supports killing children?"
Everyone generally supports equality, and something like 95% of Americans including huge majorities of Republicans etc. accept that racism exists and is a problem.
Almost universally Americans want 'equal pay for equal work'.
... the question is the means, the underlying issues, social conditions, solutions, lack of recognition for other groups, the 'racial lens' that we now seem to use for everything, the double-edges sword of affirmative action, double-standards and of course accepting bad behaviour as part of the cause (i.e. riots) etc..