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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Silicon Death Valley Days

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John and Steve are off galavanting in Florida, up to all kinds of mischief and boozy dinners, so this episode was recorded sans whisky but after a lot of fine wines. So this episode really could have been called "the three Bordeaux happy hour," plus steak.

We picked up where we left off last week, with some follow up thoughts on the defects of the criminal justice system especially when it comes to "political" offenses like protesting at the Capitol on that faraway winter day. The argument quickly degenerated into another session of beating up on John for his legal positivism. To be continued, probably, ad infinitum. . .

Then we get to the main event: who had the worst week in Silicon Valley: Stanford University, or Silicon Valley Bank, and all of its tech bro clients? More to the point, what is the role of the new Nicene Creed of "diversity, equity, and inclusion" in the whole scene? Our detours take us to the controversy over Amy Wax at Penn, the San Francisco proposal for $5 million reparation payments, and lots of other related matters that summon forth our best rants ever.

Host:
Steve Hayward
Guests:
JYJohn Yoo"Lucretia"

Discussion (9)

  • Al Sparks@AlSparks

    Lucretia wasn't as ranty as she has been. Nice to see.

    On reparations in San Francisco, one thing that hasn't been discussed is who pays?

    So far, it's everyone. Including racial groups who weren't slaveholders in the United States. The racial makeup of San Francisco, according to Wikipedia includes 41% whites and 5% blacks.

    Shouldn't the reparations be paid wholly by whites in San Francisco? If they are going to target who gets paid by these reparations, shouldn't they also target who pays?

  • WilliamWarford@WilliamWarford

    I think the most egregious aspect of the Stanford Law debacle wasn't even the shutting down of the speaker, as bad as that was. Worse was the second-year Stanford Law Student who emailed the Washington Free Beacon to demand they not run photos of the students because California is a two-party consent state and they didn't have legal permission to run the photos. The reporter explained that that pertains only to oral communication, and you have no right of privacy at a public newsworthy event. I am not a lawyer, but I cannot remember ever not knowing that basic concept. How in God's name could anyone make it through almost two years at ANY law school and not know that? Or, before sending a "lawyerly" threatening letter to a media outlet, at least take 30 seconds to Google and see what the law actually says.

    I would expect the students to be self-righteous and boorish; wouldn't expect them to be stupid.

  • Leslie Watkins@LeslieWatkins

    Extremely interesting episode! It seems that, absent mutual agreement on the meaning of terms (an ever worsening state of affairs these days), the Founders’ framework is not so much failing as being relegated to the storage closet by the ever increasing number of elite young attorneys who seek to impose their own meanings and call it justice.

    (Slightly edited after initially posted.)

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