Well, this is part of the trap the world is caught in now, innit? I'm fairly frequently accused by one side or the other across the political divide of being on the other side, just because I don't fully subscribe to the political theology of EITHER side. We've become a dualistic, black and white culture, in which you're either 100% one thing or you're 100% the other. Leaving the vast majority of us caught in the middle, and most people afraid to say what they really think for fear of being exiled from their tribe. This is the problem with that kind of extreme hyper-pattern recognition (rather than more reasoned pattern recognition). It leads to fallacy more often than not.
PS I'm not at all sure why a bank teller would be assumed to be a feminist, but I expect that's because it's an old model...
I don't think the bank teller was assumed to be a feminist at all, Faith! I think that was the point: the bank teller thing is the one and only thing we know for sure, but all of the other descriptive terms do fit into the stereotypical concept of a "feminist", silly as it is to try to pigeonhole hundreds of millions of us.
For banks, or for everyone? As a small business owner, I'd like to retain the right to purchase any available shares from other partners if they leave our business, if possible.
I think we have to be careful not to lump every type of business in together.
How about taxing buybacks in some manner? Maybe there's a way to make it less disruptive, so companies are encouraged to put their cash toward more productive uses (that's the real goal, right?).
Do you think all share repurchases are manipulative? I'm not so sure, but hey, I don't know everything.
Imagine Berkshire Hathaway, which is around half businesses they run, and half investments they own. Within the investment portfolio is stuff like Apple, American Express, etc. If those go on sale, Berkshire might buy shares in one of those companies, and that's normal stuff. But what about if Berkshire shares go on sale, and say Buffett thinks it's a better investment than in those other companies. He reckons the average shareholder of Berkshire feels similarly, and would prefer to own a slightly higher portion of their company, so he acts in their best interest.
I have a hard time understanding why this shouldn't be allowed. I certainly get that doing this with the sole motivation to drive prices higher is a completely different can of worms, and that can may be more prevalent than the scenario I describe.
I'm also plenty humble to understand that I have a view, but there could be a lot I don't understand.
Where do you draw the line for open market share repurchase transactions by the company? Are Buffet’s, or the board’s, true intentions in the best interests of all shareholders? Or merely in the interests of a narrow self interested plan, say one that is related to the CEO increasing share values in a defined time frame by any possible means? How do the other shareholders know those things, or can they when the board members are also self interestedly greedy and uncaring about anything that is unrelated to the manipulation of financial matters for short term gain. (The Boeing vs. McDonnell Douglas management argument.)
Is a better way to say no to unregulated share buybacks because of the potential for self interested price manipulation, even fraud, and force anyone wanting to do that to make a formal regulated tender offer subject to public scrutiny and a shareholder vote?
No matter how public company share repurchases are viewed, there are many very slippery slopes.
In a society with rules and laws against perpetuities, public corporations seem to have escaped by being allowed to accumulate wealth and power unabated, and now as “citizens” with a “voice.”
I tend to agree with everything here, and I'm not sure we actually disagree now that we have a few qualifiers. What would a regulated share buyback look like?
This post presents a narrative about what is happening now and a history of what happens after oligarchs and authoritarians assume power in democracies.
Used car salespeople use this tactic to help you feel confident that the car they're encouraging you to buy is a well-maintained vehicle that was driven in a moderate fashion, a "cream puff". You're looking at a V6 VW Golf. The salesperson tells you that it was previously owned by a grandmother. Then they embellish the story with some "tells"; they tell you she was a retired librarian who used the vehicle for regular long trips on the highway.
As a buyer, you start to create a stereotype of a retired librarian grandmother: cautious, careful and diligent. Those long highway trips were likely to go to book fairs. As a librarian, she valued order and systems, so she likely took the car in for regular maintenance. You convince yourself that the qualities you imagine about the car's previous owner make the car likely to be a well-maintained, carefully-driven "cream puff", and you buy the car.
It turns out to be a "lemon", and it needs costly repairs. The transmission and brake systems are in terrible condition. A friend recognizes the acronyms on the bumper stickers on the car as an interstate rally racing association. It turns out the grandmother's retirement hobby was rally racing the car, pushing the RPMs into the red line for hours, accelerating hard, and braking hard.
As you sell the car to the scrap yard for the value of its metal, you realize how you used the thread of the car salesperson's embellished story to weave a stereotype.
We may need to rename the problem. "The Emily Problem" or "The Jessica Problem" doesn't have quite the same ring, but it's probably going to appeal more to "the kids."
I do think this makes sense in the way the brain can conserve energy from a historical perspective as well as make quick decisions to assess risk, which is most likely why we evolved to have such shortcut. Of course, it comes with faults and I agree, that it will do us good to be able to recognise it as it comes.
The same guy who plans his shopping to make sure no one ever finds out this burger composition uses this "logic" by buying good stuff so the staff would think he eats healthy lol.
The Linda problem shows up all over the political discourse these days. Steretypical assumptions are made by both sides. What I find interesting is when wedge issues arise. One example is the gender wars. For instance there is a split amongst feminists on transgender issues including the very definition of a woman. There's also a generational divide. And it gets even more divisive as you get into all the policy implications.
Another stark example is Israel's assault on Gaza. There are huge schisms amongst Jewish people as well as within conservative and liberal camps. There you will find a generational divide as well.
Regarding both these topics, you literally have no idea what any given person might think based upon their identity or other views they may hold. It gets very thorny very quickly and I'm sure is leading to high levels of cognitive dissonance.
Yeah, everyone is very quick to assume. Human brains are incredibly complex - literally the most advanced computing machines in the universe (that we know of, at least). We have very little idea how they really work, but we are quick to assume we have someone figured out. I hate it.
Human brains are delusion machines - you can watch it unfold in action, and you can literally notify the human when they are experiencing delusion, point it out in excruciating detail, and they are almost always completely unable to recover. Very strange.
“In fact, you don’t have to be a racist at all to be influenced by it. Implicit bias is a kind of distorting lens that’s a product of both the architecture of our brain and the disparities in our society.”
Here is the conversation from the book:
“I explained that some years ago my son Everett and I were on a plane. He was five years old, wide-eyed, and trying to take it all in. He looked around and saw a black passenger. He said, “Hey, that guy looks like Daddy.” I looked at the man, and truth be told, he did not look anything like Daddy—not in any way. I looked around for anyone else Everett might be referring to. But there was only one black man on the plane. I couldn’t help but be struck by the irony: the race researcher having to explain to her own black child that not all black people look alike. But then I paused and thought about the fact that kids see the world differently from adults. Maybe Everett was seeing something that I missed. I decided to take another look. I checked the guy’s height. No resemblance there. He was several inches shorter than my husband. I studied his face. There was nothing in his features that looked familiar. I looked at his skin color. No similarity there either. Then I took a look at his hair. This man had dreadlocks flowing down his back. Everett’s father is bald. I gathered my thoughts and turned to my son, prepared to lecture him in the way that I might inform an unobservant student in my class. But before I could begin, he looked up at me and said, “I hope that man doesn’t rob the plane.” Maybe I didn’t get that right. “What did you say?” I asked him, wishing I had not heard what I heard. And he said it again, as innocently and as sweetly as you can imagine from a bright-eyed boy trying to understand the world: “I hope he doesn’t rob the plane.” I was on the brink of being upset. “Why would you say that?” I asked as gently as I could. “You know Daddy wouldn’t rob a plane.” “Yes,” he said. “I know.” “Well, why did you say that?” This time my voice dropped an octave and turned sharp. Everett looked up at me with a really sad face and said very solemnly, “I don’t know why I said that. I don’t know why I was thinking that.”
With a heavy heart, I continued with my point: “We are living with such severe racial stratification that even a five-year-old can tell us what’s supposed to happen next. Even with no malice—even with no hatred—the black-crime association made its way into the mind of my five-year-old son, into all of our children, into all of us.””
I definitely agree, stereotypes are double edge swords. To mitigate their leaps of logic, slowing things down is key (as you mentioned.) That is what worries me--our world is speeding up. We have so many things flash before us, things our mind tries to classify. Its easier for our minds to leap to stereotypes and move on to the next thing.
I agree, Will. I wrote a little bit about this concern today, actually. Things are speeding up so much that it's tough to even keep up with the changes in technology themselves, never mind the social changes.
Here’s an example: A person is somewhat heavier than what some government chart recommends. Therefore, that person is fat, lazy, and a drag on society.
I certainly have. When you study animation, you will often reportage that will attempt to reduce it to the concept of "cartoons" based on misunderstanding of the desires of children (who, erroneously, have long been considered the "target" audience) and stereotypical ideas, plots and characters that are several decades old and rarely connected to contemporary animation. The same way Linda is deprived of a lot of agency by being thought of as a "mere" bank teller, an entire artistic production form is demeaned without apology or informed opinion.
Odds are, Linda, who graduated with a major in philosophy and has outspoken views on discrimination and issues of SJ, is actually not a bank teller. She's a 30-year-old woman with fading blue hair who hangs around protests, reliving her younger years while watching other women love on their children.
She's broke, dejected, dependent upon government handouts, and sees no future.
Stereotypes are very useful heuristic shortcuts. We apply them to ourselves as much as others. Tattoos, piercings, hairstyles, clothing, etc.
True. They are a double edged sword, and like such a sword, you need to be aware of the dangers on both sides, not just on one.
Massively used in political ads to associate onself or the opposition into their respective extreme ideological stereotypes
Someone should start a website that compiles and deconstructs political/governmental/ideological propaganda, that would be hilarious.
This post was weird for me because I have a little sister named Linda who is 31. Lol
If you tell me she's a bank teller, I am going to need something stronger than coffee.
No. She's the manager at a pizza place.
Whew!
Wait, NY style pizza, right?
I don't know. She's on the other end of the UP so we tend to meet in the middle at our parents' so I've never had pizza from her job.
What's the UP? Something peninsula?
Yeah. Upper peninsula of michigan. Da UP, eh der bud. Lol
Well, this is part of the trap the world is caught in now, innit? I'm fairly frequently accused by one side or the other across the political divide of being on the other side, just because I don't fully subscribe to the political theology of EITHER side. We've become a dualistic, black and white culture, in which you're either 100% one thing or you're 100% the other. Leaving the vast majority of us caught in the middle, and most people afraid to say what they really think for fear of being exiled from their tribe. This is the problem with that kind of extreme hyper-pattern recognition (rather than more reasoned pattern recognition). It leads to fallacy more often than not.
PS I'm not at all sure why a bank teller would be assumed to be a feminist, but I expect that's because it's an old model...
I don't think the bank teller was assumed to be a feminist at all, Faith! I think that was the point: the bank teller thing is the one and only thing we know for sure, but all of the other descriptive terms do fit into the stereotypical concept of a "feminist", silly as it is to try to pigeonhole hundreds of millions of us.
Well the thing about cliches is that I have found they are often true, which makes it all the more complicated.
In an unexpected twist, the Linda Problem was actually a ploy by a bank-bankrolled advertising agency to promote bank services.
Big Bank, have you no shame?!?
Big Bank, Big Bank,
What you gonna do?
Whatcha gonna do when they pass Glass-Steagall 2?
And ban share repurchases.
For banks, or for everyone? As a small business owner, I'd like to retain the right to purchase any available shares from other partners if they leave our business, if possible.
I think we have to be careful not to lump every type of business in together.
Public companies.
How about taxing buybacks in some manner? Maybe there's a way to make it less disruptive, so companies are encouraged to put their cash toward more productive uses (that's the real goal, right?).
Linda problem logic? Share repurchases are manipulative. Share repurchases are manipulative and taxation encourages good behavior.
Do you think all share repurchases are manipulative? I'm not so sure, but hey, I don't know everything.
Imagine Berkshire Hathaway, which is around half businesses they run, and half investments they own. Within the investment portfolio is stuff like Apple, American Express, etc. If those go on sale, Berkshire might buy shares in one of those companies, and that's normal stuff. But what about if Berkshire shares go on sale, and say Buffett thinks it's a better investment than in those other companies. He reckons the average shareholder of Berkshire feels similarly, and would prefer to own a slightly higher portion of their company, so he acts in their best interest.
I have a hard time understanding why this shouldn't be allowed. I certainly get that doing this with the sole motivation to drive prices higher is a completely different can of worms, and that can may be more prevalent than the scenario I describe.
I'm also plenty humble to understand that I have a view, but there could be a lot I don't understand.
Where do you draw the line for open market share repurchase transactions by the company? Are Buffet’s, or the board’s, true intentions in the best interests of all shareholders? Or merely in the interests of a narrow self interested plan, say one that is related to the CEO increasing share values in a defined time frame by any possible means? How do the other shareholders know those things, or can they when the board members are also self interestedly greedy and uncaring about anything that is unrelated to the manipulation of financial matters for short term gain. (The Boeing vs. McDonnell Douglas management argument.)
Is a better way to say no to unregulated share buybacks because of the potential for self interested price manipulation, even fraud, and force anyone wanting to do that to make a formal regulated tender offer subject to public scrutiny and a shareholder vote?
No matter how public company share repurchases are viewed, there are many very slippery slopes.
In a society with rules and laws against perpetuities, public corporations seem to have escaped by being allowed to accumulate wealth and power unabated, and now as “citizens” with a “voice.”
I tend to agree with everything here, and I'm not sure we actually disagree now that we have a few qualifiers. What would a regulated share buyback look like?
Share repurchase bans are not limited to business types. The objective is eliminate a fraudulent way to manipulate share values.
Andrew,
This post presents a narrative about what is happening now and a history of what happens after oligarchs and authoritarians assume power in democracies.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thenewrepublic/p/right-wing-ceos-and-billionaires?r=1dkp2g&utm_medium=ios
Used car salespeople use this tactic to help you feel confident that the car they're encouraging you to buy is a well-maintained vehicle that was driven in a moderate fashion, a "cream puff". You're looking at a V6 VW Golf. The salesperson tells you that it was previously owned by a grandmother. Then they embellish the story with some "tells"; they tell you she was a retired librarian who used the vehicle for regular long trips on the highway.
As a buyer, you start to create a stereotype of a retired librarian grandmother: cautious, careful and diligent. Those long highway trips were likely to go to book fairs. As a librarian, she valued order and systems, so she likely took the car in for regular maintenance. You convince yourself that the qualities you imagine about the car's previous owner make the car likely to be a well-maintained, carefully-driven "cream puff", and you buy the car.
It turns out to be a "lemon", and it needs costly repairs. The transmission and brake systems are in terrible condition. A friend recognizes the acronyms on the bumper stickers on the car as an interstate rally racing association. It turns out the grandmother's retirement hobby was rally racing the car, pushing the RPMs into the red line for hours, accelerating hard, and braking hard.
As you sell the car to the scrap yard for the value of its metal, you realize how you used the thread of the car salesperson's embellished story to weave a stereotype.
"That grandmother ruined my LIFE!!!"
If you're looking at stereotypes, it would be unlikely that a 31 year old woman would have the name Linda! She'd likely be a Jessica or an Ashley.
We may need to rename the problem. "The Emily Problem" or "The Jessica Problem" doesn't have quite the same ring, but it's probably going to appeal more to "the kids."
I do think this makes sense in the way the brain can conserve energy from a historical perspective as well as make quick decisions to assess risk, which is most likely why we evolved to have such shortcut. Of course, it comes with faults and I agree, that it will do us good to be able to recognise it as it comes.
The same guy who plans his shopping to make sure no one ever finds out this burger composition uses this "logic" by buying good stuff so the staff would think he eats healthy lol.
Oh yeah, Secret Burger Recipe Man! Sounds like a superhero.
😂
The Linda problem shows up all over the political discourse these days. Steretypical assumptions are made by both sides. What I find interesting is when wedge issues arise. One example is the gender wars. For instance there is a split amongst feminists on transgender issues including the very definition of a woman. There's also a generational divide. And it gets even more divisive as you get into all the policy implications.
Another stark example is Israel's assault on Gaza. There are huge schisms amongst Jewish people as well as within conservative and liberal camps. There you will find a generational divide as well.
Regarding both these topics, you literally have no idea what any given person might think based upon their identity or other views they may hold. It gets very thorny very quickly and I'm sure is leading to high levels of cognitive dissonance.
Yeah, everyone is very quick to assume. Human brains are incredibly complex - literally the most advanced computing machines in the universe (that we know of, at least). We have very little idea how they really work, but we are quick to assume we have someone figured out. I hate it.
Human brains are delusion machines - you can watch it unfold in action, and you can literally notify the human when they are experiencing delusion, point it out in excruciating detail, and they are almost always completely unable to recover. Very strange.
This post reminded me of a real-life example from the book Biased (https://www.amazon.com/Biased-Uncovering-Hidden-Prejudice-Shapes/dp/0735224951/ref=sr_1_1?crid=25NUFG8DUE5ZI&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.LB88GLRwrm0qR9__IEn29V2aQhXd6zvlwDjqOuLJm4RnpCFpkpcN3zXqCUKsvgpmr0aqDT5tTkoT-IQ3_vCcgcTOqboFgN5W1W96Kdowqe6rDCnbUpMtedRQqKRtsyP6hjW0m5c7Tpu9yFfdGvnAOvdaNSrZ1MdvDtEwj6GkY3OgdEJI_I74iaDcfjwRpNv6.qy1ir9CN0RyOwSiC5lC8sJRT4uXFwEkP4t76vPk31Hs&dib_tag=se&keywords=biased+jennifer+eberhardt&qid=1715139895&sprefix=Biased%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-1)and where the author described a conversation with her 5-year old son. It always made me think about how early we start building biases and how these biases/stereotyping impact our ability to make good decisions or make us unknowingly act in a certain way even when we may not be a biased person, and the author called this kind of a bias an implicit bias.
As the book states:
“In fact, you don’t have to be a racist at all to be influenced by it. Implicit bias is a kind of distorting lens that’s a product of both the architecture of our brain and the disparities in our society.”
Here is the conversation from the book:
“I explained that some years ago my son Everett and I were on a plane. He was five years old, wide-eyed, and trying to take it all in. He looked around and saw a black passenger. He said, “Hey, that guy looks like Daddy.” I looked at the man, and truth be told, he did not look anything like Daddy—not in any way. I looked around for anyone else Everett might be referring to. But there was only one black man on the plane. I couldn’t help but be struck by the irony: the race researcher having to explain to her own black child that not all black people look alike. But then I paused and thought about the fact that kids see the world differently from adults. Maybe Everett was seeing something that I missed. I decided to take another look. I checked the guy’s height. No resemblance there. He was several inches shorter than my husband. I studied his face. There was nothing in his features that looked familiar. I looked at his skin color. No similarity there either. Then I took a look at his hair. This man had dreadlocks flowing down his back. Everett’s father is bald. I gathered my thoughts and turned to my son, prepared to lecture him in the way that I might inform an unobservant student in my class. But before I could begin, he looked up at me and said, “I hope that man doesn’t rob the plane.” Maybe I didn’t get that right. “What did you say?” I asked him, wishing I had not heard what I heard. And he said it again, as innocently and as sweetly as you can imagine from a bright-eyed boy trying to understand the world: “I hope he doesn’t rob the plane.” I was on the brink of being upset. “Why would you say that?” I asked as gently as I could. “You know Daddy wouldn’t rob a plane.” “Yes,” he said. “I know.” “Well, why did you say that?” This time my voice dropped an octave and turned sharp. Everett looked up at me with a really sad face and said very solemnly, “I don’t know why I said that. I don’t know why I was thinking that.”
With a heavy heart, I continued with my point: “We are living with such severe racial stratification that even a five-year-old can tell us what’s supposed to happen next. Even with no malice—even with no hatred—the black-crime association made its way into the mind of my five-year-old son, into all of our children, into all of us.””
I definitely agree, stereotypes are double edge swords. To mitigate their leaps of logic, slowing things down is key (as you mentioned.) That is what worries me--our world is speeding up. We have so many things flash before us, things our mind tries to classify. Its easier for our minds to leap to stereotypes and move on to the next thing.
I agree, Will. I wrote a little bit about this concern today, actually. Things are speeding up so much that it's tough to even keep up with the changes in technology themselves, never mind the social changes.
Looking forward to reading!
Ah, I get it now. On a different topic: do you take requests? Write about why we say “face the music” to mean “face the consequences of our actions.”
Not only do I take requests; I steal them sometimes. Yoink! That's a great question begging for me to find an answer.
Here’s an example: A person is somewhat heavier than what some government chart recommends. Therefore, that person is fat, lazy, and a drag on society.
Kinda sorta. I think this is a different logical fallacy than conjunctive. I think we can make it work like this:
Is someone more likely to be:
1. somewhat heavier than a government chart recommends
or
2. fat, lazy, and a drag on society because they are somewhat heavier than what a government chart recommends
If the person picks #2, we have a Linda Problem.
I certainly have. When you study animation, you will often reportage that will attempt to reduce it to the concept of "cartoons" based on misunderstanding of the desires of children (who, erroneously, have long been considered the "target" audience) and stereotypical ideas, plots and characters that are several decades old and rarely connected to contemporary animation. The same way Linda is deprived of a lot of agency by being thought of as a "mere" bank teller, an entire artistic production form is demeaned without apology or informed opinion.
Odds are, Linda, who graduated with a major in philosophy and has outspoken views on discrimination and issues of SJ, is actually not a bank teller. She's a 30-year-old woman with fading blue hair who hangs around protests, reliving her younger years while watching other women love on their children.
She's broke, dejected, dependent upon government handouts, and sees no future.
Oh Linda!