Participants: Amy, Anita, Doris, Ramona, Mary, Clark aka Superman, Maggie, Willie, Fanny, Lynn, Angela
I want team d and team f, just like team d said, there may have been problems in the past, but now everyone has the same opportunities. So I want to combine the two.
I choose team b. In my opinion, it’s not just in Taiwan, it’s around the world. And I think the Taiwanese people they all think racism exist in Taiwan, every time we have an election, politicians use the issue to, like, if we are the same race, we need to get together, we need to fight the other politician, because we are the same race. So it does exist in Taiwan.
I am team h, because racism exists in Taiwan, and also other countries. Sometimes I meet person who discriminate towards others, who discriminate against me.
I choose team h. I think racism exists in Taiwan. It also exists all over the world. Just as Mary says, sometimes discriminate towards others, and others discriminate against us.
Sometimes I think that yeah racism does exist in Taiwan, but here we do have equal chances for jobs. Because racism does exist, because people have racist impressions of other people, but people here are generally kind, we think it, but we don’t necessarily act it.
I do believe it exists in Taiwan, and it’s also a phenomena worldwide, especially in the neighbors with similar culture background, but still have racism, like Taiwan and China, Turkey and Greece, Malaysia etc.
So you’re team H?
Yes, team H.
I’m also in team H, I agree with Mary’s opinion, that racism exists not only in Taiwan, but also in other countries. Actually, people in Taiwan are kind to foreigners and all people like Hakka people or aboriginal people, and all Taiwanese people have the same opportunities for works, for jobs, however, sometimes we have different attitude impression on different races. Even for foreigners, we have different treatment for white people and black people.
I’m in team f. I believe that it exists in Taiwan, but I don’t think it’s important anymore. I think that the bigger problem is that people will discriminate by people’s economic difference, instead of their ethnic difference. So that’s my point. I really that racism is a political issue, it will be picked up jut for political purposes.
I like a, b, d, e and f.
So you think all the positions are true.
Yes. I think for my opinion, the racism not exist in Taiwan, compared with south Africa, we are much more better. We don’t have, we don’t have white people against black people, we don’t have much fighting, only for political reasons. But I also agree that the m shaped economy is gradually changing our thought level. You would think people are rich they have higher standards compared with other people, so it’s hard for me to choose one side to stand for that.
I choose team d. I think everyone got a standard chance. So I don’t think racism exists in Taiwan right now.
Can I just mention? I think one reason it seems that everyone has a standard chance in Taiwan is that most people look very similar, it's hard to tell if you're Minnan or Hakka by looking at anyone. So, unless anyone here identifies as Hakka, for example,
I'm Hakka.
Okay, thanks for saying so. My point was that, if most people here are Minnan, and I'm white, well, most of us have the privilege of being the dominant race, and so from this perspective, it's really easy to think that we all have the same opportunities. But I think if you were to ask an Aboriginal person from Pingdong, you would have maybe a different answer to that question. For example, a friend of mine was born in Pingdong, but when she was very young she was adopted out to a British couple because her family had 10 children and couldn't raise them, so she was raised totally British, she can't speak Mandarin or Taiwanese or anything, and she came back here to meet her birth family. When she was there, she asked them which Aboriginal tribe they belonged to, because she had done research, and found pictures of I think the Amis tribe, and found that her own face, especially her nose, looked just like them. Like a really uncanny resemblance. And her family were like, "No, no way, we're Minnan, we're not Aboriginals!!" But everyone knows that there was intermarriage and other things, so the chances are actually really good that they were partly Aboriginal, but they didn't want to think that at all. It affects their social standing too much.
I want to ask a question, for those who think racism really important in Taiwan, I want to ask, who ever had an experience to be treat by racism. Do you have any experience in Taiwan, because you are Hakka, you are Minnan, or you are Waisheng, do you have different treatment?
I have no experience to be discriminated against. However I once discriminated towards others. Once I met a black person on the subway. They talked to me, and then I left my ms address to him, and we talked a lot on line. One day he invited me to have a coffee with me, but I just think why was he not a white guy, and so I think for some people like me, racism exists.
If he is Obama or Tiger Woods? Or handsome?
But if Obama and another black person I would choose Obama, but if Obama and a white person, I would choose the white person.
Okay, let me choose the handsome guy to compare…
I think people Taiwan look down on people come from India or Indonesia. So we call them Thailau [=Thai laborer]. Why don’t we call white people Bailau [=White laborer]? And I think the white people aren’t that useful! But Chinese people think white people are better.
But they’re laborers, so we’re just calling them what they are.
But the white guys, what they do is like labor work [=teaching kindergarten, it's basically child care], but we don’t call them that.
The point is, if you saw someone who is darker, from south Asia, you’ll call them a Wailau [=outside/foreign laborer], but maybe they’re not doing that work. Some Indians come to Taiwan, they’re managers of IT company, but we don’t treat them well, because they’re darker than us.
So we treat them different because of the color of their skin?
Yes, we are racist.
Yes, but in Taiwan, it’s just that we call the dark people whatever-lau, if it is a racism, it’s just a small one, we didn’t treat them very bad.
No, we treat them very bad! For example my brother’s daughter has a Filipina maid, but she treats her like animal, she says, "Come, come!"
It’s an education problem. [=they’re ignorant/poor/unsophisticated people]
No! They’re not!
That’s an isolated case.
But I have a lot of anecdotal evidence to the contrary. It’s not isolated. I’ve personally known four people with maids, all of them treat them with serious disrespect. Also, my god, all you have to do is read the Sunday section of the English newspaper Taiwan News, on the page for the Filipinas, and you’ll hear stories that’ll make your hair stand on end. Even the less shocking stories, they’re just so common! Especially the CLA [=Council of Labor Affairs], they way they treat Filipinas is a national disgrace. In the 11 years I’ve lived in Taiwan, I would say I only know of one case where they treated the maid who worked for them with the dignity one accords to an equal.
I’m going to move to Team H!
But it’s a hierarchy problem. It doesn’t matter what the color of your skin is. It’s a question, that people think, we are the employer, we are the employee, so this kind of abuse happens frequently. It doesn’t matter the color of the skin.
But how about the foreign wives? Some type of people, they buy a wife from the Philippines or Vietnam, and their family treat them badly.
Well, that’s not a marriage, it’s more like a contract.
Yeah, you get a maid and you can have sex with them and legally it's not rape. Ugh.
Well…
So it’s more an economic difference than a racial difference. You know, lots of people from India, they are getting richer and richer. So they can buy Land Rover, the British company. Once they are the boss, we are not say they are ugly or they are whatever.
I think we won’t say they are ugly in front of them.
But we will say they don’t smell good when they can’t hear.
This is still kind of discrimination. So it’s not just only economic situation.
Well, my ex-boss is Indian, he doesn’t smell, and he’s handsome, so I don’t think I would say that we discriminated. Also I worked for a French person, he said he was discriminated against by British, so it’s not just race.
And race is not the only factor. If I richer than you I can make a lot of money, but you have to use your body to make money, so I can say my level is higher than you.
So Angela, the news you saw in the newspaper, the husband they say they have the money, then they can abuse them. But if they met each other and fell in love, then it’s fine.
Sure, but if you pick up someone from a lineup in a dirty bar in Vietnam, that’s hardly meeting and falling in love, is it?
No, I’m talking about two people from different cultures who met and fell in love.
Then you’re not talking about buying a wife, are you?
What I’m saying is, it’s an economic issue.
But will people who come from Iraq or Iran have higher status than US people? Not really. So that’s still a racial issue, I think.
Middle east people…
But how much do you know them, are there middle east people in Taiwan? And we only know they are rich because we read in an article or whatever, hey go invest there, so we don’t know that much about them. And India, too. But they have a huge racism problem. If you are a laborer, after 12, you can’t get much of an education. But here in Taiwan… if I was educated in US, probably I want to choose someone white from America to teach my kids, not a black person. So you don’t see a lot of black people, it’s hard for them to get a job. So I’m saying that there’s a lot of racism here.
So I’m arguing against that--it’s not just an economic issue.
But I think that the different part is that the maids are discriminated because of the economic issues, but lots of Taiwanese have an impression like people with black skins are dirty or dumb. Or those who are south Asian look dirty or dumb, or they have tendency to sexual harass other people. But it’s just kind of impression, because it really didn’t prevent them from treating us equally. We treat them like that, because we don’t want to get close to them. So we don’t treat them that badly in public. But in private, it’s hard to say, especially that a lot of maids or foreign wives are not treated well. So it’s our impression of them that matters. So it’s racism plus economic issues. For maids, maybe economic issues become more important a factor.
Do you think that mainland Chinese wives are treated better than Vietnamese wives?
Are you asking us to make a scale of racism?
I don’t think a scale is a good idea…
Yes, but I want to ask this.
I think so, because wives from china cost more than Vietnamese wives. I think there really is a scale.
So you pay more to get the same language.
It’s like a kind of merchandising. Cut rate wife.
Still produces babies but doesn’t speak the language so well.
Because I think wives from china get better treatment than Taiwanese wives.
Why do you say so?
Because I hear them talking at California Fitness.
But if they’re there, then they’re definitely on the higher end of the economic scale. So they could be treated better because they’re upper class.
I just think of a situation.
In the city, we can meet a lot of foreigner, they come from other country. And maybe we can change the situation of race discrimination. Like in HK, you can meet a lot of people, and so maybe they are less discriminatory because they meet people. Then you won’t think people smell different.
Actually we smell different because we eat different things. It affects our body odor. When I first got to Taiwan I realized this, because I started to smell different, eating the food here.
Yes, like a friend of mine, she won’t rent her house to Koreans, because they have kimchi, and she doesn’t like this smell.
So if Taiwan becomes an international city, then this will help the problem.
But HK has Filipina maids, and they still treat them like shit.
But when I travel in Philippines, they think I’m Filipina, and in Thailand they think I’m Thai, and at first this was a problem, but now I accept that. And now I have a Filipina friend, I think he’s so nice, he’s so smart, it really changed my mind. I think the more you travel, you get less and less racist.
So if we accept Clark’s suggestion to have the gvt make the city more international, it’ll help racism?
I think maybe, but I think we have to do it from our education, since the kids. We have to tell them that everyone is equal.
When I was a child, my parents always scare me, they say, if you don’t study hard, maybe you will have to go to the Philippines and clean houses, and become Taiwanese-lau.
Fanny just raise a—you mention about middle east people. I just think about another issue, maybe not the racism, I think it’s interesting, I want to share, I think that most people think that middle easterners are terrorists. We were affected by American movies, or American culture a lot, so we will be biased.
We have to blame our own news reporters, too.
In movies, the Russian men, or the middle easterner are always the bad guys, so they are the terrorists. You are right, we should be educated better, and more global-minded, instead of just taking images from the media. Because the media is from America, from CNN, whatever. We should think more about what is shown to us.
I agree with you, I think because our media is, it influence a lot of our thought, especially for kids, and our medias only translate news from CNN most of the time. We don’t have much news from France, not much from middle east, probably because we cannot translate.
Because we are America’s friend.
Are we?
Well our government wants to be. And the middle east is the enemies of the US, so it’s impossible to hear news from middle east in Taiwan, except for economy issues.
There’s one thing I want to share. A friend of mine from the US, he said Americans hate so-called terrorists, but he said that Bush has a strong relationship with the Saudis, in the middle east.
I have a question: I’ll go to Paris in December. Does France discriminate against Asian people? Because I’m going to travel alone. Does anyone have any experience?
How long are you going for?
Two weeks.
If you are in a big city, its probably fine, but if you are going to the country side, be patient, and be careful.
Be careful?
You know as a woman traveling alone, you have to be careful?
I have a personal question, you mentioned south Africa, are you from there?
No, I have friends from there, and they’re white, and they really hate black people. They say that the problems in the city are caused by black people. They have five layers of doors.
Well, women have trouble there, rape in your own bed is very common there, it’s why I’m never going.
Also men have problems.
So when I’m in Taiwan, and we’re out dancing, if a black guy wants to hang out with me, they’ll line up and force them to back off.
So these friends of yours are men?
Why do you ask?
Because that seems a very male thing to do, you know, males are trained to power, that was a power-assuming kind of move.
Hsinchu Discussion Transcript: Racism
Participants: Peter, Kevin, Angela
Wait, before we start this discussion, are you waisheng ren? [=Chinese who emigrated to Taiwan in 1940s when the KMT lost the civil war in China] I just wanna make sure we’re all, y’know, the same…
Well, actually, yes, my father escaped from mainland china after the war.
Oh!
Don’t you mean ‘retreat’? Escape sounds a little…, don’t you think?
Well, escape, retreat, these are different things, maybe he meant escape!
But retreat means you will go back, escape means you don’t want to, right?
Well...
Well, I’m the 9th generation in Taiwan, my family came 300 years ago.
But from where?
Hokkien province.
Well, Angela, what do you think is the difference, in your definition, between Taiwanese, and Chinese, because your question one is Taiwanese people, and question two is Chinese people.
So, she’s saying the people who live here and the people live in china.
So what is the difference, is it just geological, in your opinion?
Well, I think that culture is based on history, and Taiwan has had a very different history from China, you know, it was only populated by Aborigines till about 300 years ago, when people started coming over from China, fleeing the end of the Ming Dynasty and all the upset there, and then it was basically self governing, till the Ching took it over for about 50 years, and then they handed it to the Japanese somewhere in the 1800s, and it became a Japanese colony, and then during the Chinese civil war and the Japanese invasion of china, Taiwanese soldiers were made to fight and help the Japanese side. There was no strong communist party here, the communist party was never in power here, and you never had the Cultural Revolution here. So historically, it’s very different than China. But also, Chinese people have a different idea of race than, say, white people. White people think more along national lines, like you’re German, or you’re French, we don’t think of the white race as a cohesive whole, whereas I think Chinese think of everybody as one group, don’t you say ‘hua ren’? So what I wonder, when you say Chinese, are you saying, culturally? Or nationally?
In my opinion, Chinese are educated to say that all Chinese are one nation, we don’t make exception for cultural or racial. You’re Chinese. Period. Even the Singapore people, they’re Chinese, no exception. So that’s why we’re always arguing about it. They accept this way, you’re original from china, so you’re Chinese. So last time I told the funny story, that actually, china is a part of Mongolia, because the Ching dynasty came from Mongolia. So china is really a part of Mongolia, if you think about it. As history goes by so everything will change. And people can choose what they want, but this is difficult to accept for Chinese, even highly educated people, to ask them to accept this idea. Maybe as child they’re taught this way, so they cannot change.
For the Chinese people in Indonesia, it’s not really about skin color is it? Even if your family has lived in Indonesia for 100 years, they still think you are Chinese.
Another funny story, in Indonesia, you cannot keep your Chinese surname. You must change the surname.
Yeah, but even you, okay, even you remove your last name, but you cannot change the truth that your ancestor is coming from mainland china?
But the people in Indonesia, there’s a kind of racism, they want to block out anything related to your origin, it’s too much. But it’s maybe because the Chinese people they occupy the economic resource, and maybe they’re afraid they will try to take away political power, so they want to overthrow the Chinese race, that thing comes up.
I think the situation you mention about the Chinese people in Indonesia, I think, I think the major cause think is related to preservation for insure their native people, have to share the economic growth outcome result, and because the Chinese people make too much fortune, and most the property and the resources are controlled by the Chinese people. So I think the, I think it’s not because the racism.
That’s why I call this kind of thing racism. I’ll give another example, Malaysia is getting better, in the past they were really against Chinese race, but now they accept the people have their own Chinese surname, it’s okay, but they say the Malay people want to control their political power, but they say the Chinese can keep their economic power. Its true, you ask the Chinese people the Malay people really enjoy some privilege in education, in civil service, there’s really some quota for Malay people. In Thailand, the tour guide told me, actually, they say the fifth generation of the Thailand king, you know that movie, The Annan King, they say the king is the most famous in Thailand, he modernized the Thai, and he really accept Chinese, he said Chinese could immigrate into Thailand, so I say he really make a change in Thai. So now they are really a lot of Chinese in Thailand, and they are accepted, that’s because of the king. But I say, right now, the past percentage of the Chinese race, and the native, I don’t know, but I think they keep balance, in Thailand, that’s my observation.
If we call somebody you’re racist, it means you, how to define, you are a racist or not?
My issue is different, I say racist could be more, maybe aggressive, or say maybe you don’t really like black guy, but I don’t say that’s really racist, if you say you don’t like the other race, and you try to kill them, then that’s racist. But if you don’t like them and just keep away from them, then that’s not rally racist. It depends how aggressive you are.
But somehow, just like we discussed earlier, about the beauty definition, we’re influenced by the media, and the environment, okay. So unconsciously, our concept, or our attitude, okay, be distorted to the so-called racist concept. Just the difference of the degree, or the what action we need to take. Because extreme the racist you just say, you’re not the same, the race, just WWII the Hitler, he want to kill the Jews, because he think the Germany is the okay one, the best in the world. But I think the most people is not the extreme racist. But somehow the racism is very universal, every people in the world somehow has some racist feelings.
Okay, I agree with this thing. I have this kind of ideology, that white people, and Japanese, are the best one, I think most people think this way, or the people from southeast Asia, these ones are lower class, but what we think this way, from influence of media, sometime they present this way, if you want the other people to respect you, you got to respect first. But they show up this way, how can you respect them? You see what I mean? I have a teacher, its hard to translate to English, but he says something like, the poor must have something slimy.
Slimy? Like something wrong with them maybe?
Right, they don’t prepare in advance, they don’t wash themselves. But this don’t apply to the handicapped people, but these poor people, they don’t wash off themselves, so they become that way.
That’s a really strong thing to say…
Just like you talk to aboriginal people, well, t his is difficult to say, but we talk about Hakka and Minnan people, but you know, do you see this kind of thing, Hakka people normally stay in the hilly country area, not the plains or cities, do you know why? And the aboriginal group, they stay in the high mountain area, you know why? Some people say different people immigrate to Taiwan at different times, but most people prefer to stay in plains area. So why do they separate? Because Minnan and Hakka fight, and Hakka lose, so the Hakka moved to the hilly area, and they fought with aboriginal people, and aboriginals lost, so they have to go to mountain area. Now that’s so long ago, no on really care about that, but at that time, if a Hakka came to the city, then they will be killed.
So it was like ‘sundown towns’ for Hakka.
Right, so in the past, the Hakka all stay in Miaoli area, and the city of Hsinchu is Minnan people. But that was a long time ago.
So that’s the same in Taidong. A friend of mine is a haircutter, and she likes to help people, so every once in awhile she goes to Taidong to cut hair for poor kids there, as a way of giving back. Well, she realied, all these kids are poor and negelected, they’re aboriginal kids, mainly. And she found out their parents are fruit farmers. And you’d think, well fruit sells for a lot in Taipei, its expenseive, so fruit farmers should be making some good money, but actually, the mafia who live in Taidong, they only let these farmers sell to them, and they only buy it for 2-3NT a kilo. And you can’t live on that, so they’re depressed and angry and they neglect their kids…there’s just no money. So when you’re buying this fruit in Taipei at 50 or 70 a kilo, it’s all going to the mafia in Taidong, not the Aboriginal fruit farmers. So this stuff isn’t really in the past, it’s alive and well, now.
See, actually, I would say, the gvt really give aboriginal people a lot of chance. They have this kind of thing, they get a salary, and then they spend all their money, and then don’t go back to work
Is this something you’ve observed, or a story you’ve heard.
Well everybody knows this, it’s a general concept. It’s really true.
So, okay, then I really think that story is just straight-up racism. Have you observed that? Do you know a specific instance? Otherwise, I really doubt that.
But Taiwan is so small, it’s easy to move around, so the opportunities are there.
Well, I can’t trust this ‘story’ you’ve just told me, I’m sorry, it sounds like smear tactics. It sounds like something the gangsters in Taidong would say to explain why the Aboriginal fruit farmers are so desperately poor, and to cover up what they’re doing to keep them so poor.
I agree that there’s stories come from news reports or books we read before, but currently, I think in Taiwan, the gvt offer some affirmative actions for like the original people, or some handicap, or even some female, rescue these people, I think the key point is, still they’re, in current Taiwan, the achievement or the contribution you can make for the society is not depends on your original race, okay, I think most of the, I cannot say the current in Taiwan, the gvt provide the fair opportunity for all the races, for example education, but I think it is much better, I think, the society is more open, so if you want to work hard, no matter you are Taiwanese, or Minnan, or Hakka, just like our current president, he says he is Hakka, and also he is waisheng [= Mainland Chinese, not Minnan or Taiwanese], the second generation, so currently he can be elected as Taiwan’s president, so it means racism is not, you know the, concept, generally accepted by most people in Taiwan. I heard that in US, if you are not born in US, you cannot be elected president of the US.
It’s true.
So on this point, Taiwan is more open.
Where was Ma Yingjieu born?
Hong Kong.
So some people in the party once proposed to, like the US, to exclude those people not born in Taiwan, but it was not accepted. So I don’t know, the private business company have many things to provide the opportunity for minority, like handicapped.
Well, Taiwan seems to do a lot for disabled access, I think.
Right, but honestly, when I want to employ a new engineer, honestly, I will choose someone from a background, like if some candidate is handicapped, I would prefer to choose the normal guy become my employee. So I think the racism is for some party or some situation, okay, for example, like the sports game, okay, we all say like Dr. Jones, the basketball game, I don’t know if you remember, we don’t like the Korean judge, because he always misjudged the game, I think most people, most judges in the sports game, somehow will be influenced by his race. So that’s why, in the international baseball game, all the umpires, you need to have a 3rd party. It’s a rule, they cant be one of the two teams, so I think it’s a general principle, so it reflect the truth of that racism exists for all the races, all the people. So what we can do is, um, to find some, to offer some affirmative action, to keep the different minorities can contribute their wisdom.
Wait, before we start this discussion, are you waisheng ren? [=Chinese who emigrated to Taiwan in 1940s when the KMT lost the civil war in China] I just wanna make sure we’re all, y’know, the same…
Well, actually, yes, my father escaped from mainland china after the war.
Oh!
Don’t you mean ‘retreat’? Escape sounds a little…, don’t you think?
Well, escape, retreat, these are different things, maybe he meant escape!
But retreat means you will go back, escape means you don’t want to, right?
Well...
Well, I’m the 9th generation in Taiwan, my family came 300 years ago.
But from where?
Hokkien province.
Well, Angela, what do you think is the difference, in your definition, between Taiwanese, and Chinese, because your question one is Taiwanese people, and question two is Chinese people.
So, she’s saying the people who live here and the people live in china.
So what is the difference, is it just geological, in your opinion?
Well, I think that culture is based on history, and Taiwan has had a very different history from China, you know, it was only populated by Aborigines till about 300 years ago, when people started coming over from China, fleeing the end of the Ming Dynasty and all the upset there, and then it was basically self governing, till the Ching took it over for about 50 years, and then they handed it to the Japanese somewhere in the 1800s, and it became a Japanese colony, and then during the Chinese civil war and the Japanese invasion of china, Taiwanese soldiers were made to fight and help the Japanese side. There was no strong communist party here, the communist party was never in power here, and you never had the Cultural Revolution here. So historically, it’s very different than China. But also, Chinese people have a different idea of race than, say, white people. White people think more along national lines, like you’re German, or you’re French, we don’t think of the white race as a cohesive whole, whereas I think Chinese think of everybody as one group, don’t you say ‘hua ren’? So what I wonder, when you say Chinese, are you saying, culturally? Or nationally?
In my opinion, Chinese are educated to say that all Chinese are one nation, we don’t make exception for cultural or racial. You’re Chinese. Period. Even the Singapore people, they’re Chinese, no exception. So that’s why we’re always arguing about it. They accept this way, you’re original from china, so you’re Chinese. So last time I told the funny story, that actually, china is a part of Mongolia, because the Ching dynasty came from Mongolia. So china is really a part of Mongolia, if you think about it. As history goes by so everything will change. And people can choose what they want, but this is difficult to accept for Chinese, even highly educated people, to ask them to accept this idea. Maybe as child they’re taught this way, so they cannot change.
For the Chinese people in Indonesia, it’s not really about skin color is it? Even if your family has lived in Indonesia for 100 years, they still think you are Chinese.
Another funny story, in Indonesia, you cannot keep your Chinese surname. You must change the surname.
Yeah, but even you, okay, even you remove your last name, but you cannot change the truth that your ancestor is coming from mainland china?
But the people in Indonesia, there’s a kind of racism, they want to block out anything related to your origin, it’s too much. But it’s maybe because the Chinese people they occupy the economic resource, and maybe they’re afraid they will try to take away political power, so they want to overthrow the Chinese race, that thing comes up.
I think the situation you mention about the Chinese people in Indonesia, I think, I think the major cause think is related to preservation for insure their native people, have to share the economic growth outcome result, and because the Chinese people make too much fortune, and most the property and the resources are controlled by the Chinese people. So I think the, I think it’s not because the racism.
That’s why I call this kind of thing racism. I’ll give another example, Malaysia is getting better, in the past they were really against Chinese race, but now they accept the people have their own Chinese surname, it’s okay, but they say the Malay people want to control their political power, but they say the Chinese can keep their economic power. Its true, you ask the Chinese people the Malay people really enjoy some privilege in education, in civil service, there’s really some quota for Malay people. In Thailand, the tour guide told me, actually, they say the fifth generation of the Thailand king, you know that movie, The Annan King, they say the king is the most famous in Thailand, he modernized the Thai, and he really accept Chinese, he said Chinese could immigrate into Thailand, so I say he really make a change in Thai. So now they are really a lot of Chinese in Thailand, and they are accepted, that’s because of the king. But I say, right now, the past percentage of the Chinese race, and the native, I don’t know, but I think they keep balance, in Thailand, that’s my observation.
If we call somebody you’re racist, it means you, how to define, you are a racist or not?
My issue is different, I say racist could be more, maybe aggressive, or say maybe you don’t really like black guy, but I don’t say that’s really racist, if you say you don’t like the other race, and you try to kill them, then that’s racist. But if you don’t like them and just keep away from them, then that’s not rally racist. It depends how aggressive you are.
But somehow, just like we discussed earlier, about the beauty definition, we’re influenced by the media, and the environment, okay. So unconsciously, our concept, or our attitude, okay, be distorted to the so-called racist concept. Just the difference of the degree, or the what action we need to take. Because extreme the racist you just say, you’re not the same, the race, just WWII the Hitler, he want to kill the Jews, because he think the Germany is the okay one, the best in the world. But I think the most people is not the extreme racist. But somehow the racism is very universal, every people in the world somehow has some racist feelings.
Okay, I agree with this thing. I have this kind of ideology, that white people, and Japanese, are the best one, I think most people think this way, or the people from southeast Asia, these ones are lower class, but what we think this way, from influence of media, sometime they present this way, if you want the other people to respect you, you got to respect first. But they show up this way, how can you respect them? You see what I mean? I have a teacher, its hard to translate to English, but he says something like, the poor must have something slimy.
Slimy? Like something wrong with them maybe?
Right, they don’t prepare in advance, they don’t wash themselves. But this don’t apply to the handicapped people, but these poor people, they don’t wash off themselves, so they become that way.
That’s a really strong thing to say…
Just like you talk to aboriginal people, well, t his is difficult to say, but we talk about Hakka and Minnan people, but you know, do you see this kind of thing, Hakka people normally stay in the hilly country area, not the plains or cities, do you know why? And the aboriginal group, they stay in the high mountain area, you know why? Some people say different people immigrate to Taiwan at different times, but most people prefer to stay in plains area. So why do they separate? Because Minnan and Hakka fight, and Hakka lose, so the Hakka moved to the hilly area, and they fought with aboriginal people, and aboriginals lost, so they have to go to mountain area. Now that’s so long ago, no on really care about that, but at that time, if a Hakka came to the city, then they will be killed.
So it was like ‘sundown towns’ for Hakka.
Right, so in the past, the Hakka all stay in Miaoli area, and the city of Hsinchu is Minnan people. But that was a long time ago.
So that’s the same in Taidong. A friend of mine is a haircutter, and she likes to help people, so every once in awhile she goes to Taidong to cut hair for poor kids there, as a way of giving back. Well, she realied, all these kids are poor and negelected, they’re aboriginal kids, mainly. And she found out their parents are fruit farmers. And you’d think, well fruit sells for a lot in Taipei, its expenseive, so fruit farmers should be making some good money, but actually, the mafia who live in Taidong, they only let these farmers sell to them, and they only buy it for 2-3NT a kilo. And you can’t live on that, so they’re depressed and angry and they neglect their kids…there’s just no money. So when you’re buying this fruit in Taipei at 50 or 70 a kilo, it’s all going to the mafia in Taidong, not the Aboriginal fruit farmers. So this stuff isn’t really in the past, it’s alive and well, now.
See, actually, I would say, the gvt really give aboriginal people a lot of chance. They have this kind of thing, they get a salary, and then they spend all their money, and then don’t go back to work
Is this something you’ve observed, or a story you’ve heard.
Well everybody knows this, it’s a general concept. It’s really true.
So, okay, then I really think that story is just straight-up racism. Have you observed that? Do you know a specific instance? Otherwise, I really doubt that.
But Taiwan is so small, it’s easy to move around, so the opportunities are there.
Well, I can’t trust this ‘story’ you’ve just told me, I’m sorry, it sounds like smear tactics. It sounds like something the gangsters in Taidong would say to explain why the Aboriginal fruit farmers are so desperately poor, and to cover up what they’re doing to keep them so poor.
I agree that there’s stories come from news reports or books we read before, but currently, I think in Taiwan, the gvt offer some affirmative actions for like the original people, or some handicap, or even some female, rescue these people, I think the key point is, still they’re, in current Taiwan, the achievement or the contribution you can make for the society is not depends on your original race, okay, I think most of the, I cannot say the current in Taiwan, the gvt provide the fair opportunity for all the races, for example education, but I think it is much better, I think, the society is more open, so if you want to work hard, no matter you are Taiwanese, or Minnan, or Hakka, just like our current president, he says he is Hakka, and also he is waisheng [= Mainland Chinese, not Minnan or Taiwanese], the second generation, so currently he can be elected as Taiwan’s president, so it means racism is not, you know the, concept, generally accepted by most people in Taiwan. I heard that in US, if you are not born in US, you cannot be elected president of the US.
It’s true.
So on this point, Taiwan is more open.
Where was Ma Yingjieu born?
Hong Kong.
So some people in the party once proposed to, like the US, to exclude those people not born in Taiwan, but it was not accepted. So I don’t know, the private business company have many things to provide the opportunity for minority, like handicapped.
Well, Taiwan seems to do a lot for disabled access, I think.
Right, but honestly, when I want to employ a new engineer, honestly, I will choose someone from a background, like if some candidate is handicapped, I would prefer to choose the normal guy become my employee. So I think the racism is for some party or some situation, okay, for example, like the sports game, okay, we all say like Dr. Jones, the basketball game, I don’t know if you remember, we don’t like the Korean judge, because he always misjudged the game, I think most people, most judges in the sports game, somehow will be influenced by his race. So that’s why, in the international baseball game, all the umpires, you need to have a 3rd party. It’s a rule, they cant be one of the two teams, so I think it’s a general principle, so it reflect the truth of that racism exists for all the races, all the people. So what we can do is, um, to find some, to offer some affirmative action, to keep the different minorities can contribute their wisdom.
Competition
1. Why is our entire financial and economic system predicated on competition?
2. Why is competition an assumed good for improving the economy?
3. Does competition really ensure good quality and low prices?
4. Is competition really the only thing that can ensure good quality and low prices?
5. Isn’t the price exacted, in terms of our social relationships, quality of life, and other intangible indicators, too high, just to have some mythical product quality?
6. Isn’t the price exacted, in terms of our social relationships, quality of life, and other intangible indicators, too high, just to have an economy that keeps producing too much so that some people can be really rich, and the rest just sort of get by?
7. Hi, sorry, I’m really having trouble being even somewhat impartial this week. Do bear with me. :)
8. Also, for the record, I’m not really 100% down with the second article, it’s just the only one I could find on the internet on this theme. I’m still trying to articulate why I find this article somewhat troublesome, hopefully by the time we get to the discussion I’ll be a bit clearer.
Discussion Question:
Is competition inhumane?
Choose a side:
Team A) No. Competition is necessary to help people improve their world. If you don’t have to make sure you’re better than someone else, you have no incentive to improve.
Team B) Yes. In a sane world where people were given enough time to truly develop their interests, and where they really enjoyed their work, people would naturally try to improve themselves because that’s actually the most interesting thing to do.
Team C) Moderator.
Team D) ______. ____________________________________________.
Articles
LLLI Alumni Association: MEET LORELEI DE LA REZA, Senior Olympian, Embracer of Life
Competition -- An Inhuman Activity
Working Mother: The Case Against Competition
Taipei Discussion Transcript: Competition
I’m team a, because inhumane is not good for people who do the competition. But I think it’s not a bad thing, when you compete in a fair way, or in the right way, it helps you get the motivation to do something. Ike when you play basketball with your friends, if you get points it makes you more devoted to this game.
I choose team D. Actually, I disagree with both team a ad team b. I think the competition tend to be inhumane, just like Mary said, in competition is human nature, is not a bad thing, but through in the process of our competition, human tend to hurt others, and behave in a bad way, such as treat other people, so…and I think competition is not the only way to improve the world, and the main incentive to improve ourself is not because we want to outdo others, I think it should be just because we want to make yourself better.
So you sound like you’re team b
Yeah, a little like, but, I think in the real world, actually we have no time to truly develop each one’s interests. In the real world it’s a fierce competitive game. But if we can develop an appropriate attitude, maybe everyone play fairly, maybe competition can be a good thing.
Discussion
But I think that competition makes the gamer more interesting, or more fun to do, like in the Olympics, they are competing for the top three, you can’t keep your eyes away from the screen.
But you need people to play fairly, not cheating and fighting with each other. For example, if a game, everyone play the game just want to win the prize, and by any means you can, it’s easy to cheat others, and then the game just lose its fun.
But I think that competition doesn’t bring up those cheating issues. Because the point is why people compete, is because they want to be satisfied with themselves, and the people they’re concerned with. And I think everyone has their own measurement in their mind, so I winning so I feel happy, but on the other hand if I cheat I probably won’t be happy if I simply work hard. Competition is natural. I don’t think that if there is no competition there would be…I mean, … just don’t think that cheating or other kind of morality issues are secondary, because the point is that they want to be satisfied. So winning is plus, and cheating and winning is minus, so if minus is bigger than plus, so I wouldn’t be worried, because if people just want to enjoy something that other people cannot get, but I think the process is another question. So I think I tend to be a, but not totally a, because I don’t think competition is necessary to improve the world, because it’s just the process by which they can be satisfied with themselves.
I think I’m team d too, because I agree with team a and b but not completely. I agree that competition brings progress, but it also brings aggression. So I think competition is necessary, but not…it depends on its, how to../it’s hard to describe, but I think in some cases, we need competition, just like the commercial, business world, it needs competition, but, I think benign competition is necessary. But the other malignant competition is not necessary for human nature.
What exactly is team d’s position?
Competition is necessary, but we should consider the scale of competition. If the competition have scale from 0 to 10, and the business case must about 7, but in human and human interaction, must be lower to scale 2, I think. It’s an intangible indicator. It’s hard to describe. I want to say competition is necessary, I should say, not based on competition, not human nature.
For example?
Interaction, or…
\
you mean like a conversation? But how about now we are classmates, but one day we talk about business…
business is business but in daily life I think if in daily life conversation if we talk too much competition….
But how about in office and schools, how do you avoid competition.
I think it’s about education.
I think its about attitude. If everyone treat themselves not based on others’ view…
I have no special attitude toward competition. It’s necessary, but too much leads to aggression and not evil, but war? I think Iraq is about competition. So I’m neutral.
You think maybe 0 to 10, you’re…
5. I’m five.
I don’t know, from Maggie’s point I think that people who, in our daily life, we can see some people who love to compete so much.
[general agreement]
people who love to compete have some kind of personality which make you hard to get along with. It usually happens! Those people who love to compete force themselves and force others a lot, so that’s a problem.
But I think it’s a different definition of compete. For myself, I agree with competition, because I define the competition is to, uh, to do something better than others, but not to beat others, just like the definition in this article. So if in this definition a competitive person not always force others, they will only force themselves. So that’s why I emphasize the attitude towards the competition. Because in this article, this article denied the competition because he thinks people who compete always hurt others and lose, do not well in their performance. But I think that’s because they focus to much on how to beat others, how to hurt others, not on how to improve themselves.
That’s right, because I think fanny just reminds me of something, like table tennis training in my high school days, that playing well is different than playing for in. playing well is doing our fundamentals like pull, push, everyone has those standard movements, but some people just like to touch the ball, they just want to win, and the ball just drops in front of the net, and it’s hard to hit, and you lost, finally, so it’s depends on your attitude, you want to get something out of it, or you just want to play for winning.
Just like in tuisho. I found that if you play to push people over, you can’t develop your skill to the highest level.
Some people don’t like to play to win, because of the pressure, they get stomach problems before the competition. But I think, even though I don’t like competition, but I should have the attitude that I’m ready for the competition. Because I think playing well and playing to win are different.
They why do you ready yourself for a competition?
If I’m going to join a competition, and it’s a completely different story, even though I don’t like it, I have to prepare myself, because others don’t have the same mindset as you. So you have to get ready or you’ll lose. Some people will be satisfied, if they go out and play well, but I won’t be satisfied, I don’t like competition, but I don’t like losing.
So if you don’t like competing and don’t like losing, why compete?
I think it’s inevitable. I won’t initiate a competition for myself. I won’t actively win something, I won’t overtake someone in a field, but sometimes, your boss, or your parent want you to win it for them.
Okay, but why do you want to do it for them.
Well, basically I don’t want to win it for them, I want to win for myself, but the point is there’s always some outside pressure, someone who’s a very important in your life wants you to win it.
So isn’t that the problem?
I think that’s the basic situation here. There’s two kinds of competition. There’s the artificial competition, and there’s the one from inside yourself, you want to do it better than others, on your own, for your own satisfaction, and the artificial competition, you do it for others, the others want you do it, but actually they wont say it, but in reality they’ll be more satisfied.
So, isn’t that the bullshit part? you become their proxy!
But they won’t say that.
Of course, but then why do you do it.
Because you want more salary, so you must compete for your boss.
Also the limited opportunity in your world. Just like there are only two apples, and we have fie people, and we all of us need apples to survive, to live better, but there’s only two apples, so we need to compete with the peer to gain the apple.
Why don’t we just use Mary’s fruit knife and cut them up?
But if one person want to gain all of the apples
That’s capitalism
Okay but if we want to share the apple, we need to all have the concepts to sharing. But if only one want to gain all the apples, it push others to join the game.
But there’s five of you if four people want to share, then the other guy has not choice.
But the point is that there’s a hierarchy structure, and the boss has the authority to order you to fight for the apple. To divide the resource, because if you look like…if it seems that you fight hard, you get more apples from him, and you want more. Maybe a whole apple is two large, and you only want .28 of an apple. Actually I don’t like the winner takes all. I’m not pretty sure because I’ve never actually worked at a company. I know that my parents, your parents want you to win, because a lot of parents know…they want you to start well, because it’s their pride so they can talk to their neighbors
Yes, I hate this so much!!
[general agreement]
but we say that you studied for yourself because you can earn money, and get credit
but now I have learned how to ignore their voice to help me to do something for them. because I realize one day, no matter what I done, oh no, no…even though I done the most for them, to satisfy their goals, they have more and more things they expect I to achieve, so then I told myself, just ignore their voice, I just do myself. And I found that because I am their child, no matter what I do, they finally support my decision. So for our parents, I think we can try to change their mind. but for others, like a boss, I think it’s hard not to follow their order.
Yeah, so if, well basically I don’t think competition itself is inhuman, but what we’ve just mention is the inhumane part in competition.
But how do we have competition without all this other bullshit?
What do you mean?
Like without being your parent’s gladiator?
Well, most people can order you around.
But I think, you can choose to be not ordered around. I think freedom is choosing not to listen to people who restrict you.
Okay, with parents, it might be okay, but it’s not okay with other things.
But ultimately you’re the one who’s responsible for your decisions. Sure, it might have bad consequences for you, but ultimately it’s you who chose. So the soldier who’s told to kill a little girl, he ultimately chose to pull the trigger. Sure, if he didn’t, he’d be thrown in jail and lose his job and lose the respect of his buddies, but he can also choose to kill the girl and save himself from all that. Either one, it’s his responsibility.
hmmmm
But I don’t want to hurt my parents, that’s why I listen to them.
You know, it took me a long time to decide not to listen to my parents, but I agree with Angela, it’s your choice, and it’s okay, but remember, that’s your choice, not your parents choice. It’s your choice to follow your parents’ decision. Everyone has to take responsibility for their own life.
I want to go back to the original debate. I think this must be one way to create a game with less bullshit things, but maybe for company, we need to, why those workers like to compete, because the measure to decide how much bonus they get is wrong, is based on their performance, but nowadays more companies change the measure. They measure the work employee can get bonus based on the whole company, not based on individual performance this way people still need to do their best work.
But I have an example that not competition leads to progress. Just like some scientists found some phenomenon, but they don’t want to compete to anyone, they just want to find the true principle of this world. So competition is necessary, but not absolutely be-all and end-all.
I choose team D. Actually, I disagree with both team a ad team b. I think the competition tend to be inhumane, just like Mary said, in competition is human nature, is not a bad thing, but through in the process of our competition, human tend to hurt others, and behave in a bad way, such as treat other people, so…and I think competition is not the only way to improve the world, and the main incentive to improve ourself is not because we want to outdo others, I think it should be just because we want to make yourself better.
So you sound like you’re team b
Yeah, a little like, but, I think in the real world, actually we have no time to truly develop each one’s interests. In the real world it’s a fierce competitive game. But if we can develop an appropriate attitude, maybe everyone play fairly, maybe competition can be a good thing.
Discussion
But I think that competition makes the gamer more interesting, or more fun to do, like in the Olympics, they are competing for the top three, you can’t keep your eyes away from the screen.
But you need people to play fairly, not cheating and fighting with each other. For example, if a game, everyone play the game just want to win the prize, and by any means you can, it’s easy to cheat others, and then the game just lose its fun.
But I think that competition doesn’t bring up those cheating issues. Because the point is why people compete, is because they want to be satisfied with themselves, and the people they’re concerned with. And I think everyone has their own measurement in their mind, so I winning so I feel happy, but on the other hand if I cheat I probably won’t be happy if I simply work hard. Competition is natural. I don’t think that if there is no competition there would be…I mean, … just don’t think that cheating or other kind of morality issues are secondary, because the point is that they want to be satisfied. So winning is plus, and cheating and winning is minus, so if minus is bigger than plus, so I wouldn’t be worried, because if people just want to enjoy something that other people cannot get, but I think the process is another question. So I think I tend to be a, but not totally a, because I don’t think competition is necessary to improve the world, because it’s just the process by which they can be satisfied with themselves.
I think I’m team d too, because I agree with team a and b but not completely. I agree that competition brings progress, but it also brings aggression. So I think competition is necessary, but not…it depends on its, how to../it’s hard to describe, but I think in some cases, we need competition, just like the commercial, business world, it needs competition, but, I think benign competition is necessary. But the other malignant competition is not necessary for human nature.
What exactly is team d’s position?
Competition is necessary, but we should consider the scale of competition. If the competition have scale from 0 to 10, and the business case must about 7, but in human and human interaction, must be lower to scale 2, I think. It’s an intangible indicator. It’s hard to describe. I want to say competition is necessary, I should say, not based on competition, not human nature.
For example?
Interaction, or…
\
you mean like a conversation? But how about now we are classmates, but one day we talk about business…
business is business but in daily life I think if in daily life conversation if we talk too much competition….
But how about in office and schools, how do you avoid competition.
I think it’s about education.
I think its about attitude. If everyone treat themselves not based on others’ view…
I have no special attitude toward competition. It’s necessary, but too much leads to aggression and not evil, but war? I think Iraq is about competition. So I’m neutral.
You think maybe 0 to 10, you’re…
5. I’m five.
I don’t know, from Maggie’s point I think that people who, in our daily life, we can see some people who love to compete so much.
[general agreement]
people who love to compete have some kind of personality which make you hard to get along with. It usually happens! Those people who love to compete force themselves and force others a lot, so that’s a problem.
But I think it’s a different definition of compete. For myself, I agree with competition, because I define the competition is to, uh, to do something better than others, but not to beat others, just like the definition in this article. So if in this definition a competitive person not always force others, they will only force themselves. So that’s why I emphasize the attitude towards the competition. Because in this article, this article denied the competition because he thinks people who compete always hurt others and lose, do not well in their performance. But I think that’s because they focus to much on how to beat others, how to hurt others, not on how to improve themselves.
That’s right, because I think fanny just reminds me of something, like table tennis training in my high school days, that playing well is different than playing for in. playing well is doing our fundamentals like pull, push, everyone has those standard movements, but some people just like to touch the ball, they just want to win, and the ball just drops in front of the net, and it’s hard to hit, and you lost, finally, so it’s depends on your attitude, you want to get something out of it, or you just want to play for winning.
Just like in tuisho. I found that if you play to push people over, you can’t develop your skill to the highest level.
Some people don’t like to play to win, because of the pressure, they get stomach problems before the competition. But I think, even though I don’t like competition, but I should have the attitude that I’m ready for the competition. Because I think playing well and playing to win are different.
They why do you ready yourself for a competition?
If I’m going to join a competition, and it’s a completely different story, even though I don’t like it, I have to prepare myself, because others don’t have the same mindset as you. So you have to get ready or you’ll lose. Some people will be satisfied, if they go out and play well, but I won’t be satisfied, I don’t like competition, but I don’t like losing.
So if you don’t like competing and don’t like losing, why compete?
I think it’s inevitable. I won’t initiate a competition for myself. I won’t actively win something, I won’t overtake someone in a field, but sometimes, your boss, or your parent want you to win it for them.
Okay, but why do you want to do it for them.
Well, basically I don’t want to win it for them, I want to win for myself, but the point is there’s always some outside pressure, someone who’s a very important in your life wants you to win it.
So isn’t that the problem?
I think that’s the basic situation here. There’s two kinds of competition. There’s the artificial competition, and there’s the one from inside yourself, you want to do it better than others, on your own, for your own satisfaction, and the artificial competition, you do it for others, the others want you do it, but actually they wont say it, but in reality they’ll be more satisfied.
So, isn’t that the bullshit part? you become their proxy!
But they won’t say that.
Of course, but then why do you do it.
Because you want more salary, so you must compete for your boss.
Also the limited opportunity in your world. Just like there are only two apples, and we have fie people, and we all of us need apples to survive, to live better, but there’s only two apples, so we need to compete with the peer to gain the apple.
Why don’t we just use Mary’s fruit knife and cut them up?
But if one person want to gain all of the apples
That’s capitalism
Okay but if we want to share the apple, we need to all have the concepts to sharing. But if only one want to gain all the apples, it push others to join the game.
But there’s five of you if four people want to share, then the other guy has not choice.
But the point is that there’s a hierarchy structure, and the boss has the authority to order you to fight for the apple. To divide the resource, because if you look like…if it seems that you fight hard, you get more apples from him, and you want more. Maybe a whole apple is two large, and you only want .28 of an apple. Actually I don’t like the winner takes all. I’m not pretty sure because I’ve never actually worked at a company. I know that my parents, your parents want you to win, because a lot of parents know…they want you to start well, because it’s their pride so they can talk to their neighbors
Yes, I hate this so much!!
[general agreement]
but we say that you studied for yourself because you can earn money, and get credit
but now I have learned how to ignore their voice to help me to do something for them. because I realize one day, no matter what I done, oh no, no…even though I done the most for them, to satisfy their goals, they have more and more things they expect I to achieve, so then I told myself, just ignore their voice, I just do myself. And I found that because I am their child, no matter what I do, they finally support my decision. So for our parents, I think we can try to change their mind. but for others, like a boss, I think it’s hard not to follow their order.
Yeah, so if, well basically I don’t think competition itself is inhuman, but what we’ve just mention is the inhumane part in competition.
But how do we have competition without all this other bullshit?
What do you mean?
Like without being your parent’s gladiator?
Well, most people can order you around.
But I think, you can choose to be not ordered around. I think freedom is choosing not to listen to people who restrict you.
Okay, with parents, it might be okay, but it’s not okay with other things.
But ultimately you’re the one who’s responsible for your decisions. Sure, it might have bad consequences for you, but ultimately it’s you who chose. So the soldier who’s told to kill a little girl, he ultimately chose to pull the trigger. Sure, if he didn’t, he’d be thrown in jail and lose his job and lose the respect of his buddies, but he can also choose to kill the girl and save himself from all that. Either one, it’s his responsibility.
hmmmm
But I don’t want to hurt my parents, that’s why I listen to them.
You know, it took me a long time to decide not to listen to my parents, but I agree with Angela, it’s your choice, and it’s okay, but remember, that’s your choice, not your parents choice. It’s your choice to follow your parents’ decision. Everyone has to take responsibility for their own life.
I want to go back to the original debate. I think this must be one way to create a game with less bullshit things, but maybe for company, we need to, why those workers like to compete, because the measure to decide how much bonus they get is wrong, is based on their performance, but nowadays more companies change the measure. They measure the work employee can get bonus based on the whole company, not based on individual performance this way people still need to do their best work.
But I have an example that not competition leads to progress. Just like some scientists found some phenomenon, but they don’t want to compete to anyone, they just want to find the true principle of this world. So competition is necessary, but not absolutely be-all and end-all.
Hsinchu Discussion Transcript: Competition
The result of the competition, there’s only two results, to win the competition or to lose the competition
That’s the author’s opinion, there’s nothing good about it.
I’m just asking about the working definition.
That’s his opinion, he can bite, we can bite back.
So Americans are really this competitive?
Yes, I think we are all deeply competitive.
So why is this so?
A combination of ‘rugged individualism’ and a school system that trains us all to competition and comparison. (Against School, The Story of Stuff)
I’ll try to define my definition of competition. It’s an alternative to drive people to improve their capability to live, and of course, the outcome of the competition is depends on the rule, just like all the sports game, so if we can define the clear rule, and the role of each members in the team, we can avoid the effects of some, how to say, some behaviors to break the teamwork. So also, it seems it makes it doing to think some like, the topics we have, we discussed like anarchy, in the pirate ship, if we can set up a fair rule, to encourage every member in the team to do their best to cooperate with others, to achieve the goal, and they will, everybody will get benefits from the outcome of their teamwork, so, I think the, we still need to set some rule to encourage everybody to contribute his idea. So I think the competition itself, we cannot say is good or bad, it’s just the working rule.
My opinion is, I will say, the question is, is competition is inhumane, I will say yes, but I don’t agree team b’s opinion. It’s inhumane, because the result is only win or lose, and the reward is based on taking from others, so it’s inhuman. But I’m against the statement in team b, I would say competition is always existed, no matter what your interested, to involved in compete with other people. Competition needs game rules, and you need better rules or to follow the rule to play the game. So I support that competition is inhumane, but I will say that healthy competition does exist. So we need to create healthy competition in our society.
Regarding this topic, I wont say it’s inhumane, so I choose team a, no, but I don’t really agree with the following statement. I would say that the problem doesn’t lie in competition or cooperation, but in the background. So we have competition, so what? Competition is kind of a good thing to drive your momentum to become better. After there’s some ranking, but so what? After the test, the ranking doesn’t really matter. We try to classify in different level, that’s where the problem comes up. Just like the entrance exam for university. Say you need some certain score to get in this department. So the top students will go to medical school, and so doctors have high social rank now. And the second best people were made to study engineering, and the third best were made to study law.
So it was not logical, but it was fair. But that’s what I’m talking about.
Let me give another story. A fisherman, got a fish, but he death rate in a certain location, so he found the enemy fish, or his counterpart. So it’s better than before, the landscape changed, because another counterpart, so the fish, they’ve got to survive, so after some time, they find the death rate decrease. So the competition is not really the bad thing. So competition or cooperation is a kind of skill or tool you choose. So people choose you based on you are counterpart. If I think you can’t compete, I won’t even try to compete with you.
So it’s a kind of tool, you choose the one that benefit you the most, based on what you are looking for.
So competition is a means to help you evaluate something.
So, you could ask, is cooperation inhumane? It’s just a tool. It’s just nature, it’s just a part of life. You could either choose cooperation or competition.
I want to raise a question; for the competition, the outcome of competition is the reward?
Not really, it’s because we define it this way.
That is my question, as you say, competition and cooperation are tools, so the standard you want for evaluation is what goal you want to achieve. So what is the reward you get for competition or coop.
So I’ll give you another story. My kid is in a baby yoga class, for physical training. Some kids perform better, some not so good. So the kids that perform better get a sticker.
So that’s an incentive.
So that’s where the problem comes in, they get home and they are discouraged if they don't get a sticker, so the parents say that the teachers have to give the child the same thing, so they don’t get discouraged. So the problem is not competition, but the rewarding system. So you’re good, you deserve something, or you’re bad, so you don’t get something. So the reward system is where the problems come in.
So you don’t support forming an incentive system, or before you do something, to have incentives is not important?
My point is if you can’t propose a better way, then you shut up. So I don’t have a better idea, I really can’t say. So I can accept incentives, but only because I don’t know a better way. But you can’t design the value of competition.
So you agree that competition is a good way to do thing. You mean the problem is in the incentive system.
The thing is, what are we looking for. The problem is that resources very limited. If we were all in heaven, everything is unlimited, you don’t have to worry about money, anything, so there’s no problem there, you have everything, so you don’t need to compete. And you’re in heaven now, you’re not in hell any more, so then you can compete for fun, because you can have anything, anyway. But in the real world, nothing could be equally distributed, so of course then people will compete for it.
For technical training, you say, just give us the idea, under some constraints you have to find the optimum solution, so you have to prioritize … our thinking is you have to prioritize what you have to develop, and the sequence, and the higher priority, you have to put more effort, and more resources to support to do it, so you give more motivation or more incentive to choose some goal.
I don’t think cooperation and competition are in competition, they can work together. Incentive works for cooperation too. So you choose which tool based on what you want to choose. So I wont say it’s inhumane. But the incentive system is another thing, but I don’t have a better system, so I don’t say anything. if we were in heaven, we all could have a million dollars. But in real life, it’s different. So you select the appropriate strategy. You said that incentive could also go to cooperation, so it’s used for either thing.
The author really thinks it’s evil, but without competition, life would be too easy.
That’s an interesting thing to say.
I would say cooperation is the union of competition and healthy competition.
Demonstrate, man! I want to know what this means.
Cooperation means you allow some competition, but the cooperation involves some positive conflict. The healthy competition is the positive side of comp. so cooperation is the union of competition and healthy comp. negative competition is just conflict and just trying to be the winner, and not the loser. But healthy competition is everyone want to achieve the group goal, so the group is the only winner, so everyone is winner. As you say, competition and cooperation are tools.
Actually I’m thinking if there’s any bad thing about cooperation.
If some lazy worker in your office, so just rides on everyone else’s coattails, so that’s bad cooperation.
So, I think we cannot, after so much discussion--competition and cooperation also lend themselves to be pos or neg. The key point should be what’s the goal or purpose we hope to achieve. So we can use competition to achieve bad things, like military condition, or some kind of condition, its purpose is not to save people, is to kill people. If we use competition in the military game, so it’s a bad way. Of course for the cooperation, not all cooperation is positive. If there’s a team of thieves, then their work is bad.
That’s not the fault of cooperation, but the purpose they’ve put it to!
Exactly, so it’s not good or bad. We can use either one to contribute to human welfare, or we can use it to ruin the earth. If the goal is to improve the people’s life, not only for the small group’s benefits, so we can say the competition is a good way to encourage people or countries to take more investment, for example, in technical development, or current the oil price is very high. If most countries can cooperate to make some alternative energy, so all the people benefit from this competition, no matter if between us and Russia, all kind of countries.
Another issue is, I think the sports game. All the game, I think, you have to define some reward system. So of course, we have winner, and loser, in each game. But I think the key point is what kind of a game, the purpose to pursue. Some we see a lot of baseball game, so two leagues, one is professional, it itself is a commercial activity, people buy tickets to watch your game. So of course they want to enjoy, they enjoy seeing competition. Nobody can endure always the game is 0 to 0 so most people would find that boring. But for not the professional game, it’s purpose is to arrange more the corporation, like the Olympics, it’s purpose is not to encourage every country to get the golden prize by any means, even the illegal way, that’s not the purpose. So like Wilson said, that’s a healthy competition.
In this article, he had some negative description of competition, like negative, conflict.
I want to raise the question again: is the outcome of competition only winner or loser?
Yes.
Really?
Come again?
Who is the winner, who is the loser, is the only components?
Yes, it’s very important. Sometime, you can learn more.
You say who wins, who loses is not important.
Yes.
If you say that, why do we need competition?
As a means of inspiring progress. Competing for upgrading.
Like playing against your own score on a video game.
I mean, just developing yourself.
So you support competition is a part of human nature?
It’s nothing really bad. If you are always winner, I would say you won’t learn much from the competition. But if you are the loser, you’ll learn a lot, so that’ s good.
So you say there’s progress, think about the goal. How do you guarantee to achieve the goal?
It’s a kind of continuous improvement, so you can live up to that goal step by step. If you don’t get it the first time, it’s okay, you try again. You don’t say you finish the goal, but you try it in stages. If I fail, I can take the lesson, and I can do the next goal more easily.
So there’s no reward or punishment.
Punishment is you lose! But next time you come back. But it could be the reward system, or your feeling that drives you. What’s important is what you are looking for. Maybe this time you lose 10 percent on the stock market, but maybe next time you get it back!
So the important thing is we have the same goal or objective. If it’s different, then we belong to different groups, so it’s not apply to your rule.
What do you mean?
As you said, it’s a progress. So the progress is we want to achieve the goal.
Y-y-yes...
So if we have different goals, we can’t apply your rule.
Well-l-l...
So competition is only under the same goal.
That’s the game rule, right? If we have different goals, then what are we competing for? The goal is the outcome that everyone’s interested in. Only the number one, or the top three, has the right to share the result. So I think about the point is the competition, just like Kevin said, you lose once doesn’t mean you lose forever. And important is who judges who is the winner and the loser.
I can judge myself, I’ll give an example: I don’t want to achieve the goal, so I volunteer to lose. And therefore I’m the winner, because I don’t join the competition.
Well, everybody is free!
So I can judge myself.
Actually, my main point is, if our same objective is making money, then we have different ways, maybe sometimes we’re in direct competition, but probably not. We have the same objective, but it doesn’t mean we have direct competition.
Direct, but how about indirect?
But you’re talking about a very specific, say baseball, maybe you have a different specialty, but in business, I can make money, in this respect, so it’s not really competition.
Because Angela mentioned the direct competition. How about implicit competition?
Can you define?
It’s under the fence, it’s not direct, but it will cause competition. For example, I‘m not competing with you, but because we want to achieve our respective goals, so we might have some competition.
**********
What do you mean by question five?
"5. Isn’t the price exacted, in terms of our social relationships, quality of life, and other intangible indicators, too high, just to have some mythical product quality?"
Well, we get something but we lose even more than what we get.
So we put our resources into the physical, into the products, at the cost of ignoring the intangible.
Like, whether or not you see your family more than once a week.
So some people say the invention of the walkman, somehow is separate the communication channel between people.
Yeah, we’re not even listening to these same music anymore.
That’s the side effect of the internet.
Yes, you could say that it helps people communicate better, but you could also say it only helps you communicate with people you agree with.
At least, from the apprentice tv show, it seems that trump encourages people to cooperate.
Yeah? I’ve never seen it.
Yes, because everyone on the show has expertise, so why every time the one team lose and one team win, has nothing to do with their individual capability, because everyone could be chosen to join, they all have qualification. I think the key issue is leadership. Every time the competition, they will select the one team leader to guide the team for every mission. After watching the tv show, I think the trump’s final decision to who gets fired, I saw most of the survivors...(General laughter)...the final survivor is actually not the most excellent in leadership. I think the key point is communication with other team member.
I agree with you.
It’s a group competition, because in the end of each mission, someone gets the boot. So I don’t know, this article is about 15 years old, maybe something has changed.
Well, according to some articles I've read, the new generation in the US has to work together, they’re insecure to not work together, and they need constant feedback. And I think this comes from a new kind of schooling, where they used behavior models to get people to work. Like the ones where, as the animal moves closer and closer to the behavior you want, you encourage it step by step with little food rewards. It's how you get a fish to swim in a circle around something on command.
I think the mission impossible model is the better model.
Each team member has complete responsibility for the whole thing going wrong, you mean.
Yes.
But the apprentice model, there’s no organizer, no one trusts each other, and in the end, nobody can control. But in mission impossible, they work well together.
But you’ve just proved his point, cooperation = mission impossible. Competition = the apprentice.
But mission impossible, you choose your companions, but in the apprentice, you're just thrown together. I think they design the team in the wrong way. Trump says, I assign you as the team host, and so you have some degree of responsibility, because you’re the organizer, but maybe not 100%, but it’s better than no leader. But then you try to finish the goal, it’s really complicated. So the whole show is in chaos.
It’s chaos because they can’t work together.
Right, and they can’t work together because they know that sooner or later these people will be their competition, so they don’t dare trust too much.
That’s the author’s opinion, there’s nothing good about it.
I’m just asking about the working definition.
That’s his opinion, he can bite, we can bite back.
So Americans are really this competitive?
Yes, I think we are all deeply competitive.
So why is this so?
A combination of ‘rugged individualism’ and a school system that trains us all to competition and comparison. (Against School, The Story of Stuff)
I’ll try to define my definition of competition. It’s an alternative to drive people to improve their capability to live, and of course, the outcome of the competition is depends on the rule, just like all the sports game, so if we can define the clear rule, and the role of each members in the team, we can avoid the effects of some, how to say, some behaviors to break the teamwork. So also, it seems it makes it doing to think some like, the topics we have, we discussed like anarchy, in the pirate ship, if we can set up a fair rule, to encourage every member in the team to do their best to cooperate with others, to achieve the goal, and they will, everybody will get benefits from the outcome of their teamwork, so, I think the, we still need to set some rule to encourage everybody to contribute his idea. So I think the competition itself, we cannot say is good or bad, it’s just the working rule.
My opinion is, I will say, the question is, is competition is inhumane, I will say yes, but I don’t agree team b’s opinion. It’s inhumane, because the result is only win or lose, and the reward is based on taking from others, so it’s inhuman. But I’m against the statement in team b, I would say competition is always existed, no matter what your interested, to involved in compete with other people. Competition needs game rules, and you need better rules or to follow the rule to play the game. So I support that competition is inhumane, but I will say that healthy competition does exist. So we need to create healthy competition in our society.
Regarding this topic, I wont say it’s inhumane, so I choose team a, no, but I don’t really agree with the following statement. I would say that the problem doesn’t lie in competition or cooperation, but in the background. So we have competition, so what? Competition is kind of a good thing to drive your momentum to become better. After there’s some ranking, but so what? After the test, the ranking doesn’t really matter. We try to classify in different level, that’s where the problem comes up. Just like the entrance exam for university. Say you need some certain score to get in this department. So the top students will go to medical school, and so doctors have high social rank now. And the second best people were made to study engineering, and the third best were made to study law.
So it was not logical, but it was fair. But that’s what I’m talking about.
Let me give another story. A fisherman, got a fish, but he death rate in a certain location, so he found the enemy fish, or his counterpart. So it’s better than before, the landscape changed, because another counterpart, so the fish, they’ve got to survive, so after some time, they find the death rate decrease. So the competition is not really the bad thing. So competition or cooperation is a kind of skill or tool you choose. So people choose you based on you are counterpart. If I think you can’t compete, I won’t even try to compete with you.
So it’s a kind of tool, you choose the one that benefit you the most, based on what you are looking for.
So competition is a means to help you evaluate something.
So, you could ask, is cooperation inhumane? It’s just a tool. It’s just nature, it’s just a part of life. You could either choose cooperation or competition.
I want to raise a question; for the competition, the outcome of competition is the reward?
Not really, it’s because we define it this way.
That is my question, as you say, competition and cooperation are tools, so the standard you want for evaluation is what goal you want to achieve. So what is the reward you get for competition or coop.
So I’ll give you another story. My kid is in a baby yoga class, for physical training. Some kids perform better, some not so good. So the kids that perform better get a sticker.
So that’s an incentive.
So that’s where the problem comes in, they get home and they are discouraged if they don't get a sticker, so the parents say that the teachers have to give the child the same thing, so they don’t get discouraged. So the problem is not competition, but the rewarding system. So you’re good, you deserve something, or you’re bad, so you don’t get something. So the reward system is where the problems come in.
So you don’t support forming an incentive system, or before you do something, to have incentives is not important?
My point is if you can’t propose a better way, then you shut up. So I don’t have a better idea, I really can’t say. So I can accept incentives, but only because I don’t know a better way. But you can’t design the value of competition.
So you agree that competition is a good way to do thing. You mean the problem is in the incentive system.
The thing is, what are we looking for. The problem is that resources very limited. If we were all in heaven, everything is unlimited, you don’t have to worry about money, anything, so there’s no problem there, you have everything, so you don’t need to compete. And you’re in heaven now, you’re not in hell any more, so then you can compete for fun, because you can have anything, anyway. But in the real world, nothing could be equally distributed, so of course then people will compete for it.
For technical training, you say, just give us the idea, under some constraints you have to find the optimum solution, so you have to prioritize … our thinking is you have to prioritize what you have to develop, and the sequence, and the higher priority, you have to put more effort, and more resources to support to do it, so you give more motivation or more incentive to choose some goal.
I don’t think cooperation and competition are in competition, they can work together. Incentive works for cooperation too. So you choose which tool based on what you want to choose. So I wont say it’s inhumane. But the incentive system is another thing, but I don’t have a better system, so I don’t say anything. if we were in heaven, we all could have a million dollars. But in real life, it’s different. So you select the appropriate strategy. You said that incentive could also go to cooperation, so it’s used for either thing.
The author really thinks it’s evil, but without competition, life would be too easy.
That’s an interesting thing to say.
I would say cooperation is the union of competition and healthy competition.
Demonstrate, man! I want to know what this means.
Cooperation means you allow some competition, but the cooperation involves some positive conflict. The healthy competition is the positive side of comp. so cooperation is the union of competition and healthy comp. negative competition is just conflict and just trying to be the winner, and not the loser. But healthy competition is everyone want to achieve the group goal, so the group is the only winner, so everyone is winner. As you say, competition and cooperation are tools.
Actually I’m thinking if there’s any bad thing about cooperation.
If some lazy worker in your office, so just rides on everyone else’s coattails, so that’s bad cooperation.
So, I think we cannot, after so much discussion--competition and cooperation also lend themselves to be pos or neg. The key point should be what’s the goal or purpose we hope to achieve. So we can use competition to achieve bad things, like military condition, or some kind of condition, its purpose is not to save people, is to kill people. If we use competition in the military game, so it’s a bad way. Of course for the cooperation, not all cooperation is positive. If there’s a team of thieves, then their work is bad.
That’s not the fault of cooperation, but the purpose they’ve put it to!
Exactly, so it’s not good or bad. We can use either one to contribute to human welfare, or we can use it to ruin the earth. If the goal is to improve the people’s life, not only for the small group’s benefits, so we can say the competition is a good way to encourage people or countries to take more investment, for example, in technical development, or current the oil price is very high. If most countries can cooperate to make some alternative energy, so all the people benefit from this competition, no matter if between us and Russia, all kind of countries.
Another issue is, I think the sports game. All the game, I think, you have to define some reward system. So of course, we have winner, and loser, in each game. But I think the key point is what kind of a game, the purpose to pursue. Some we see a lot of baseball game, so two leagues, one is professional, it itself is a commercial activity, people buy tickets to watch your game. So of course they want to enjoy, they enjoy seeing competition. Nobody can endure always the game is 0 to 0 so most people would find that boring. But for not the professional game, it’s purpose is to arrange more the corporation, like the Olympics, it’s purpose is not to encourage every country to get the golden prize by any means, even the illegal way, that’s not the purpose. So like Wilson said, that’s a healthy competition.
In this article, he had some negative description of competition, like negative, conflict.
I want to raise the question again: is the outcome of competition only winner or loser?
Yes.
Really?
Come again?
Who is the winner, who is the loser, is the only components?
Yes, it’s very important. Sometime, you can learn more.
You say who wins, who loses is not important.
Yes.
If you say that, why do we need competition?
As a means of inspiring progress. Competing for upgrading.
Like playing against your own score on a video game.
I mean, just developing yourself.
So you support competition is a part of human nature?
It’s nothing really bad. If you are always winner, I would say you won’t learn much from the competition. But if you are the loser, you’ll learn a lot, so that’ s good.
So you say there’s progress, think about the goal. How do you guarantee to achieve the goal?
It’s a kind of continuous improvement, so you can live up to that goal step by step. If you don’t get it the first time, it’s okay, you try again. You don’t say you finish the goal, but you try it in stages. If I fail, I can take the lesson, and I can do the next goal more easily.
So there’s no reward or punishment.
Punishment is you lose! But next time you come back. But it could be the reward system, or your feeling that drives you. What’s important is what you are looking for. Maybe this time you lose 10 percent on the stock market, but maybe next time you get it back!
So the important thing is we have the same goal or objective. If it’s different, then we belong to different groups, so it’s not apply to your rule.
What do you mean?
As you said, it’s a progress. So the progress is we want to achieve the goal.
Y-y-yes...
So if we have different goals, we can’t apply your rule.
Well-l-l...
So competition is only under the same goal.
That’s the game rule, right? If we have different goals, then what are we competing for? The goal is the outcome that everyone’s interested in. Only the number one, or the top three, has the right to share the result. So I think about the point is the competition, just like Kevin said, you lose once doesn’t mean you lose forever. And important is who judges who is the winner and the loser.
I can judge myself, I’ll give an example: I don’t want to achieve the goal, so I volunteer to lose. And therefore I’m the winner, because I don’t join the competition.
Well, everybody is free!
So I can judge myself.
Actually, my main point is, if our same objective is making money, then we have different ways, maybe sometimes we’re in direct competition, but probably not. We have the same objective, but it doesn’t mean we have direct competition.
Direct, but how about indirect?
But you’re talking about a very specific, say baseball, maybe you have a different specialty, but in business, I can make money, in this respect, so it’s not really competition.
Because Angela mentioned the direct competition. How about implicit competition?
Can you define?
It’s under the fence, it’s not direct, but it will cause competition. For example, I‘m not competing with you, but because we want to achieve our respective goals, so we might have some competition.
**********
What do you mean by question five?
"5. Isn’t the price exacted, in terms of our social relationships, quality of life, and other intangible indicators, too high, just to have some mythical product quality?"
Well, we get something but we lose even more than what we get.
So we put our resources into the physical, into the products, at the cost of ignoring the intangible.
Like, whether or not you see your family more than once a week.
So some people say the invention of the walkman, somehow is separate the communication channel between people.
Yeah, we’re not even listening to these same music anymore.
That’s the side effect of the internet.
Yes, you could say that it helps people communicate better, but you could also say it only helps you communicate with people you agree with.
At least, from the apprentice tv show, it seems that trump encourages people to cooperate.
Yeah? I’ve never seen it.
Yes, because everyone on the show has expertise, so why every time the one team lose and one team win, has nothing to do with their individual capability, because everyone could be chosen to join, they all have qualification. I think the key issue is leadership. Every time the competition, they will select the one team leader to guide the team for every mission. After watching the tv show, I think the trump’s final decision to who gets fired, I saw most of the survivors...(General laughter)...the final survivor is actually not the most excellent in leadership. I think the key point is communication with other team member.
I agree with you.
It’s a group competition, because in the end of each mission, someone gets the boot. So I don’t know, this article is about 15 years old, maybe something has changed.
Well, according to some articles I've read, the new generation in the US has to work together, they’re insecure to not work together, and they need constant feedback. And I think this comes from a new kind of schooling, where they used behavior models to get people to work. Like the ones where, as the animal moves closer and closer to the behavior you want, you encourage it step by step with little food rewards. It's how you get a fish to swim in a circle around something on command.
I think the mission impossible model is the better model.
Each team member has complete responsibility for the whole thing going wrong, you mean.
Yes.
But the apprentice model, there’s no organizer, no one trusts each other, and in the end, nobody can control. But in mission impossible, they work well together.
But you’ve just proved his point, cooperation = mission impossible. Competition = the apprentice.
But mission impossible, you choose your companions, but in the apprentice, you're just thrown together. I think they design the team in the wrong way. Trump says, I assign you as the team host, and so you have some degree of responsibility, because you’re the organizer, but maybe not 100%, but it’s better than no leader. But then you try to finish the goal, it’s really complicated. So the whole show is in chaos.
It’s chaos because they can’t work together.
Right, and they can’t work together because they know that sooner or later these people will be their competition, so they don’t dare trust too much.
Making Group Decisions
If war is the violent resolution of conflict, then peace is not the absence of conflict,
but rather, the ability to resolve conflict without violence.
C.T. Butler
Debate Question:
How do you resolve group conflict without violence?
Choose a side:Team A) A strong dictatorship leads to a peaceful, unified society, so if a group has a strong leader, then everybody just follows them, and things are easily resolved.
Team B) If there are fair rules made, and everyone knows what the rules are, then you just need a leader to be an arbitrator, and find out who was within the rules, and who wasn’t. This is fair because everyone knows what the rules are, and knows they have to follow them.
Team C) Moderator
Team D) Whoever makes a decision, the decision still has to be accepted by the rest of the group [society, citizens, etc.] So it would work a lot better if everybody participated in making the decision, because then they’d all be satisfied with the resulting decision.
Article:
On Conflict and Consensus: a handbook on Formal Consensus decisionmaking
Taipei Discussion of Making Group Decisions
Participants: Jeff, Mary, Clark aka Superman, Maggie, Willie, Fanny, Lynn, Angela
I will pick team d. actually, when I read the teams, I think team a, if the leader makes a wrong decision, it’s bad for everybody. I don’t think team b is good, because I don’t think that the world can be really fair. I think that whoever makes the decision, the more people make the decision, people might accept the decision, so I will stand for team d
I want to choose team d, and I can’t agree with lynn more. I think in this society, we should negotiate something with others. So I think team d is the suitable idea for group decisions.
I think I’m team b. because some decision, if everyone vote, maybe there are too many. If there are a lot of people, millions of them, its hard to ask all of them for simple things. You don't need everyone. So maybe it’s better to have rules, and they ask a leader to form a consensus, and then they have different leaders they vote for. Whoever got the most votes, they will be the one selected , the majority rules.
I also choose team b. if there are some fair rules made, it’s okay. If there’s some unfair rules, then I don’t want team b. we can make everyone satisfied, and we can’t have everyone participate the decision, it will take a lot of time and money.
It’s a time-consuming thing to do.
But we can make the rules, and maybe we can choose one leader to make everyone accept the result.
I choose team b and d, it depends on what kind of issue we concern, and the size of the groups. So for private issues, for when a group people to decide traveling or something else, it’s better to make decision follow the opinion of team b. for the public policies and some strategies in companies, I think it is very hard to make a formal consensus. First one is the definition of the whole people, and the second one is, it is hard to make a solution that satisfies all the people. Because people tend to take their own side. So for public policies and companies, the person who take responsibility make the final decision. Part of important people in this group can make the rule of decision making. So I choose both b and d.
Since we’re talking about formal consensus, I don’t want to talk about team a. it needs lots of discussion, go through some kind of process. So I think team b is better. We’re trying to reach a consensus, in the end we have a solution, but when we coming up this kind of solution, if you follow fair rules, the decision is more strong.
I don’t know which team I will be on, but I just think that if there’s only one person that’s responsible for making decisions, then they might overlook something. also, for team b, there’s no way for everything to be really fair. Sometimes the rule is unfair, or people don’t obey the rules. So I think, everyone has the right to make the proposal, but for the decision making process, like representative democracy, there’s specific people for making the decision. But anyone can propose something. it’s not possible to make a decision which everyone will be satisfied with, and usually people will have their own point of view. So even though there’d be something that would be important to only one person. The pint is not making everyone satisfied, but finding out what’s the best available decision.
Discussion
So most of you are for representative democracy.
You’re not against it?
We’re not truly in one, though. There’s always these lobby groups, special interest groups who get things done. I think we’re more of an autocracy, but that’s not a good way. It’s hard to find something that’s a good way. I also think a formal consensus is very hard to reach. After all, every person is selfish. We only think from our point of view. Will we think of our next generation. We always think of short-term decision, what saves time, save money. I think I’m always the person who’s skeptical.
Are you against or for representative democracy? I think it’s more efficient. They do the research…
Do they really?
Well, their assistants are. So they just read the materials that their assistants give them. so that’s why they ask dumb questions. But at least there are some people that can do research for them. I think in reality, we just don’t have enough information. But I think the size of the group matters for the
But if everyone who was interested in the process was there, then like 90 percent of your information is there. And if even part of the people come to the process with extra information, then your research is there.
In order to get Taipei people in the process, you’d have to make some sort of rule, that would get people to come in, like 50 percent.
But if people knew that what they decided on would be implemented, that it would be a binding decision, they’d definitely show, and defiantly try to get something done.
What if we made some sort of system where people can vote on what they think is important for the gvt to work on. And the gvt would then make an announcement as to what people were interested in implementing.
That’s an interesting idea, because it’s amore direct link to the gvt, and you wouldn’t have to belong to a political party to get your views heard.
But I think voting for gvt policy issue, not everyone are, they have to have some basic knowledge about it, maybe some people would never know, or never pay attention to it. Or maybe they belong to different social classes, maybe they feel alienated, like they couldn’t vote.
Well, what is our school system for? We need to use it to educate people as to how our society works.
We also have to do something about our legislators. 4 years, make your dreams come true. There’s something wrong with this system.
I agree with Jeff. In our company, in our society, ,everyone has their own interests. For example, what if Angela was the chairman of this company, but doesn’t make good decision, because she only cares about the stock price. So that’s why mentioned the person who takes responsibility is very important. In our society, some people represent citizens, but they don’t take responsibility. So they vote the decision, not for the whole society, but for the certain people. I think that’s the main problem. Because people who make the decision.
If CEO’s were forced to live downstream of their factories, then the world would be a lot less polluted.
Another think, I attended a conference on the issue of how to make a company runs with less risk. And somebody said, all of us, have responsibility of a company. Even though we are not their employee, we are not their managers, but today if we invest this company, we should use our power to put in more money, or draw back money to do the best decision. So I think maybe nowadays, only I can use is our voting power to push our gvt.
See, I don’t think voting is effective. Because once the guy is in, we have no control over them. That’s why I like Clark’s idea better, where we influence what the gvt does directly, provide them direct input on where to go.
What if we used a prediction market to do what Clark’s proposing? What if people could submit ideas and gamble real money, with the gvt bound to implement the decision with the most bets.
So if you can get a group of people to communicate, then they can make a good decision.
But when ever you make a decision, there’s a price. Decision = cost. When you buy something you have to pay money.
I think maybe, if everyone in a group have a consensus to gain the formal consensus, it’s very important. Then everyone will make an effort to improve the communication system. Then the formal consensus may make the dream come true. That’s right, everything is a trade off. There is still need somebody to be an arbitrator. To negotiate each other. Maybe you said this is more expensive, but I will ask others how to solve the problem, how to reduce the cost. But it need a very good, well performed communication system.
Decision comes with price tag.
But I think what’s kind of decision, or what kind of group .. I think that sometimes situations have to respond very quickly.
Well, like the pirates and the captains.
So, right, the person who makes the decision takes the responsibility. So the group makes the long-term decision. But how do you make the leaders of the department follow?
If they could be removed from power by the collective at the next group meeting, then they’ll be motivated to make the best decisions for the group.
But it depends on the culture of the company.
In the business world, people make suggestions, but the boss make the final decision.
But does the boss always make the right decision? I’ve been in four companies now where the boss has made really bad decisions, even though all the employees were like NOoooooo!
It’s his company, so he can ruin it, it’s his money!
But what about the employees livelihood, and their personal investment and their blood and sweat.
I will pick team d. actually, when I read the teams, I think team a, if the leader makes a wrong decision, it’s bad for everybody. I don’t think team b is good, because I don’t think that the world can be really fair. I think that whoever makes the decision, the more people make the decision, people might accept the decision, so I will stand for team d
I want to choose team d, and I can’t agree with lynn more. I think in this society, we should negotiate something with others. So I think team d is the suitable idea for group decisions.
I think I’m team b. because some decision, if everyone vote, maybe there are too many. If there are a lot of people, millions of them, its hard to ask all of them for simple things. You don't need everyone. So maybe it’s better to have rules, and they ask a leader to form a consensus, and then they have different leaders they vote for. Whoever got the most votes, they will be the one selected , the majority rules.
I also choose team b. if there are some fair rules made, it’s okay. If there’s some unfair rules, then I don’t want team b. we can make everyone satisfied, and we can’t have everyone participate the decision, it will take a lot of time and money.
It’s a time-consuming thing to do.
But we can make the rules, and maybe we can choose one leader to make everyone accept the result.
I choose team b and d, it depends on what kind of issue we concern, and the size of the groups. So for private issues, for when a group people to decide traveling or something else, it’s better to make decision follow the opinion of team b. for the public policies and some strategies in companies, I think it is very hard to make a formal consensus. First one is the definition of the whole people, and the second one is, it is hard to make a solution that satisfies all the people. Because people tend to take their own side. So for public policies and companies, the person who take responsibility make the final decision. Part of important people in this group can make the rule of decision making. So I choose both b and d.
Since we’re talking about formal consensus, I don’t want to talk about team a. it needs lots of discussion, go through some kind of process. So I think team b is better. We’re trying to reach a consensus, in the end we have a solution, but when we coming up this kind of solution, if you follow fair rules, the decision is more strong.
I don’t know which team I will be on, but I just think that if there’s only one person that’s responsible for making decisions, then they might overlook something. also, for team b, there’s no way for everything to be really fair. Sometimes the rule is unfair, or people don’t obey the rules. So I think, everyone has the right to make the proposal, but for the decision making process, like representative democracy, there’s specific people for making the decision. But anyone can propose something. it’s not possible to make a decision which everyone will be satisfied with, and usually people will have their own point of view. So even though there’d be something that would be important to only one person. The pint is not making everyone satisfied, but finding out what’s the best available decision.
Discussion
So most of you are for representative democracy.
You’re not against it?
We’re not truly in one, though. There’s always these lobby groups, special interest groups who get things done. I think we’re more of an autocracy, but that’s not a good way. It’s hard to find something that’s a good way. I also think a formal consensus is very hard to reach. After all, every person is selfish. We only think from our point of view. Will we think of our next generation. We always think of short-term decision, what saves time, save money. I think I’m always the person who’s skeptical.
Are you against or for representative democracy? I think it’s more efficient. They do the research…
Do they really?
Well, their assistants are. So they just read the materials that their assistants give them. so that’s why they ask dumb questions. But at least there are some people that can do research for them. I think in reality, we just don’t have enough information. But I think the size of the group matters for the
But if everyone who was interested in the process was there, then like 90 percent of your information is there. And if even part of the people come to the process with extra information, then your research is there.
In order to get Taipei people in the process, you’d have to make some sort of rule, that would get people to come in, like 50 percent.
But if people knew that what they decided on would be implemented, that it would be a binding decision, they’d definitely show, and defiantly try to get something done.
What if we made some sort of system where people can vote on what they think is important for the gvt to work on. And the gvt would then make an announcement as to what people were interested in implementing.
That’s an interesting idea, because it’s amore direct link to the gvt, and you wouldn’t have to belong to a political party to get your views heard.
But I think voting for gvt policy issue, not everyone are, they have to have some basic knowledge about it, maybe some people would never know, or never pay attention to it. Or maybe they belong to different social classes, maybe they feel alienated, like they couldn’t vote.
Well, what is our school system for? We need to use it to educate people as to how our society works.
We also have to do something about our legislators. 4 years, make your dreams come true. There’s something wrong with this system.
I agree with Jeff. In our company, in our society, ,everyone has their own interests. For example, what if Angela was the chairman of this company, but doesn’t make good decision, because she only cares about the stock price. So that’s why mentioned the person who takes responsibility is very important. In our society, some people represent citizens, but they don’t take responsibility. So they vote the decision, not for the whole society, but for the certain people. I think that’s the main problem. Because people who make the decision.
If CEO’s were forced to live downstream of their factories, then the world would be a lot less polluted.
Another think, I attended a conference on the issue of how to make a company runs with less risk. And somebody said, all of us, have responsibility of a company. Even though we are not their employee, we are not their managers, but today if we invest this company, we should use our power to put in more money, or draw back money to do the best decision. So I think maybe nowadays, only I can use is our voting power to push our gvt.
See, I don’t think voting is effective. Because once the guy is in, we have no control over them. That’s why I like Clark’s idea better, where we influence what the gvt does directly, provide them direct input on where to go.
What if we used a prediction market to do what Clark’s proposing? What if people could submit ideas and gamble real money, with the gvt bound to implement the decision with the most bets.
So if you can get a group of people to communicate, then they can make a good decision.
But when ever you make a decision, there’s a price. Decision = cost. When you buy something you have to pay money.
I think maybe, if everyone in a group have a consensus to gain the formal consensus, it’s very important. Then everyone will make an effort to improve the communication system. Then the formal consensus may make the dream come true. That’s right, everything is a trade off. There is still need somebody to be an arbitrator. To negotiate each other. Maybe you said this is more expensive, but I will ask others how to solve the problem, how to reduce the cost. But it need a very good, well performed communication system.
Decision comes with price tag.
But I think what’s kind of decision, or what kind of group .. I think that sometimes situations have to respond very quickly.
Well, like the pirates and the captains.
So, right, the person who makes the decision takes the responsibility. So the group makes the long-term decision. But how do you make the leaders of the department follow?
If they could be removed from power by the collective at the next group meeting, then they’ll be motivated to make the best decisions for the group.
But it depends on the culture of the company.
In the business world, people make suggestions, but the boss make the final decision.
But does the boss always make the right decision? I’ve been in four companies now where the boss has made really bad decisions, even though all the employees were like NOoooooo!
It’s his company, so he can ruin it, it’s his money!
But what about the employees livelihood, and their personal investment and their blood and sweat.
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