This is a clever hack, but I question the motives of both the father and Ars Technica. Must we erase—or invert—all aspects of yin and yang, simply to appease the gods of equality?
You may have heard the French phrase vive la différence, which translates as "long live the difference", but do you know what it refers to? It means "let's celebrate the differences between the sexes." Nowadays it seems we are only allowed to celebrate their sameness, or their inversion. This makes me sad.
There are only 18 female CEOs within the fortune 500. The number for the Russell 3000, is a bit better, at about 10 percent. Why are there so few women in senior leadership positions?
A deviation from a 50/50 gender split is not by itself evidence of unjustified gender discrimination. For example, there are about as many current NBA players as there are Fortune 500 CEOs. Since virtually every top university has a women's basketball team, approximately half of NCAA Division I-A basketball players are female. Why then are there so few women (none!) in the NBA?
Of course, the lack of women in the NBA is principally due to gender differences in the aptitude and inclination needed to play basketball. Based on these differences, the natural split between between men and women in the NBA isn't 50/50—it's 100/0. In particular, if (say) 10% of NBA players were female, women would be over-represented in the NBA.
It's entirely possible that, based on the aptitude and inclination needed to be a Fortune 500 CEO, the natural gender split is the same as the split in the NBA. In other words, women may very well be over-represented among Fortune 500 CEOs. Indeed, given the current official policy of the United States Government for gender-based (pro-female) affirmative action, this would even appear to be the null hypothesis. One might just as reasonably ask, "Why are there so many women in senior leadership positions?"
Given the dominant ideology and his political incentives, I would no more trust an undercover journalist's report about Foxconn than I would an undercover 17th-century Protestant's report about the Vatican.
Exploitation is not a neutral term in this context. By using it, you implied that there is something unfair, unjust even, about Foxconn's (and, by implication, Apple's) treatment of its workers.
It's not necessarily ridiculous. Unless you are very unusual and have sought out independent primary sources (i.e., not sources assigned by a professor), everything, and I mean everything, you think you know about slavery in the American South has been filtered through the minds and pens of abolitionists and their intellectual descendants. You convict slaveholders based on the prosecution's arguments alone, not only without hearing from the defense, but without being aware that there's even a trial.
None of this is a defense of slavery. It is a defense of careful, rational, deliberative thought—no matter the subject.
Egads, what a mess. You can't think rationally without fearing being labeled a monster. OK, here goes. Here are three separate strategies to avoid this situation:
Strategy 1: "Help thousands" in a way that allows you to capture some of the value yourself. Use some of the proceeds to buy health insurance.
Strategy 2: "Help thousands" in a way that allows you to capture much of the value yourself. Be rich enough to pay for your own health care.
Strategy 3: Do whatever. Buy catastrophic health insurance with a high deductible. It's not that expensive.
The sob-story blog post linked in the article even says This man doesn't know how to be selfish. The result of this lack of selfishness is having both a friend and a "life-partner" panhandle for him on the internet.
I'm no fan of the U.S. healthcare system, but framing this as an indictment of that system is absurd.
I admire Dave McClure for being willing to comment on this subject. No matter what you say on a gender-sensitive issue, someone is bound to accuse you of sexism. (It helps, of course, that he makes some good points along the way.)
In addition to the disingenuous origins of the story told in this article (ably covered by other commenters), we also have here the usual implicit assumption that anthropogenic global warming == impending disaster. But the "evidence" for this is hopelessly tainted by politics. Indeed, suppose you were an up-and-coming young climate scientist angling for tenure at your university of choice. How best would you advance your career: by investigating the benefits of global warming, or by examining its costs? Alas, alarmism has long been adaptive in the race for status among climate researchers. The result is that, even though many of them are both smart and sincere, their conclusions are essentially useless.
You may have heard the French phrase vive la différence, which translates as "long live the difference", but do you know what it refers to? It means "let's celebrate the differences between the sexes." Nowadays it seems we are only allowed to celebrate their sameness, or their inversion. This makes me sad.
Vive la différence!