Now that another Democrat hate charade is behind us, it is incumbent upon Republicans to do what they find difficult:
a) Be courageous, fight Democrats and demand the cleanup of voting roles and the return to voting as in the past.
b) Represent their constituents and not the monied interests..
+++
Long, insightful, provocative:
Equity:
When the Left Goes Too Far
DIE
It seems to me that
the identifying factors of the radical left types that dominate the humanities
and social sciences (and, increasingly, the HR departments of corporations)
most particularly constitute the mantra of Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity
(DIE). Of these three, equity is the most egregious, self-righteous,
historically-ignorant and dangerous. Equity means “equality,” in some manner,
and is a term designed to appeal to the natural human tendency toward fairness,
but it does not mean the classic equality of the West, which is (1) equality
before the law and (2) equality of opportunity.
Equality Before the
Law
Some definitions:
equality before the law means that each citizen will be treated fairly by the
criminal justice and judicial systems regardless of their status—and, as well,
that the state recognizes that each individual has an intrinsic value which the
polity must respect, and treat as a limiting factor to state power. In my
estimation, that doctrine is grounded in the very deep and ancient
Judeo-Christian proposition that man and women alike are made in the image of
God, the very Creator of Being, and that each of participate in that creation
in an ongoing process through the decisions we make (directing that
participation with our ethical choices). There is likely no more fundamental
presumption grounding our culture. So that kind of equality is to be
celebrated.
Equality of
Opportunity
Then there is equality
of opportunity. That idea is predicated on the idea—to speak somewhat
cynically, and to therefore not tell the whole story—that talent is widely
distributed although comparative rare. This should come as no surprise to
anyone, given that some people are much better at doing a given task, no matter
what it is, than others and, because of that, it is in everyone’s selfish
interest, in the narrowest sense, to allow such talent to come to the forefront
so that we can all benefit. Now, that also happens to be good for each
individual, as he or she struggles forward, but an equally powerful case can be
made that it is a true public good. This means that no person should ever be
denied an opportunity for progress in a productive direction for reasons that
are unrelated to their competence or, to put it another way, that movement
forward towards production of individual and social utility should never be
interfered with by arbitrary prejudice (which is discrimination that has
nothing to do with the task at hand). This is also a fundamental principle of
Western culture, to the degree that it manages to be meritocratic—which it
tends strongly towards, driven by the desire for profitably productivity, if
for no other reason (and there are plenty of other reasons, as most people,
even evil capitalists, are also motivated by the desire to mentor promising
young people and help develop their careers, and to participate in something
truly useful so that their lives are meaningful, and to participate in
processes that have clearly positive social outcomes—this all despite the
cynicism of the anti-capitalists on the radical left).
Equity: “Equality” of
Outcome
Equity is a whole
different ballgame. It is predicated on the idea that the only certain measure
of “equality” is outcome, educational, social, and occupational. The
equity-pushers assume axiomatically that if all positions at every level of
hierarchy in ever organization are not occupied by a proportion of the
population that is precisely equivalent to that proportion in the general
population that systemic prejudice (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) is
definitely at play, and that there are perpetrators who should be limited or
punished that have or are currently producing that prejudice. There is simply
no excuse for this doctrine. First, it suffers from the oversimplification
typical of ideological thinkers: that one cause (prejudice) is sufficient
explanation for a very complex phenomenon (differential representation of
individuals in various organizational positions). Second, it is impossible to
implement, as there are simply too many organizations, strata of positions, and
identities of the identity group sort to possibly treat in the “equitable”
manner demanded by the ideologues. This is true not least because most people
have multiple group identities, each of which has their own unique combination
of historical oppression, let’s say, as well as privilege, and sorting that out
is technically impossible, without the introduction of an authoritarian
overseer whose power and terror would produce problems that would instantly
make the hypothetical problem of inequity look trivial by comparison. Third, it
is being pushed by individuals who have made the hypothesis that the West is a
singularly oppressive patriarchy an unshakeable axiom, and who will fight tooth
and nail any idea that threatens that absolute article of faith, no matter how
absurd the arguments that constitute that fight are destined to become. It is
my fervent hope, and optimistic belief, that the doctrine of equity contains
within it so many intrinsic contradictions that it will actually be the death
of the radical left. A typical example?
Diversity and Equity:
An Irreconcilable Paradox
The emphasis on
“diversity,” for example, is in direct logical contradiction to the dogma of
“equity.” The two simply cannot co-exist. If people are in fact “diverse,” for
whatever reasons (and, according to the collectivists, primarily for reasons of
race, ethnicity, sexuality and sex) then they bring distinctly and important
different talents and abilities to the table, in precise proportion to their
diversity. The inevitable consequence of encouraging that diversity and giving
it free play in the world will thus be an exacerbation of inequality, rather
than its elimination. If equity were the goal, then diversity would have to be
done away with. There are hints of such thinking, already, which we will return
to, such as calls for the eradication of any differences in the socialization
of boys and girls (based on the assumption that their basic differences are all
a consequence of learning). But such elimination of differences is by
definition an elimination of diversity, although the latter is apparently
laudable (as it is, when the diversity is based on difference of opinion rather
than difference of immutable physical characteristics) and vital to the proper
functioning of social and political organizations at all levels. Forget that
logical paradox for now (although I can’t see that it is truly forgettable).
Practical Reality
Imagine, for a moment,
instead, what would have to be done in a practical sense for true equity across
identity groups to manifest itself. Let’s start, first, with the most egregious
offenders: the most clearly sex-typed jobs. We’ll do that because there are
many sorts of oppression, but the type with the longest continuous history, is
the oppression of women by men, insofar as such oppression genuinely exists,
since that has lasted even longer, biologically speaking, than the racial
differentiation of human beings. What we see from the stats is exactly what
would be predicted from reasonable knowledge of the psychological differences
between men and women: the former are more likely to be interested in and to
gravitate toward occupations that involve things, and the latter people.
Occupational
Sex-Typing
The first thing we
need to do to begin such a task is to rank-order the offenders by degree of
systemic oppression. I was using the US Department of Labor stats for that, but
they have strangely to have disappeared since February 2019, so I used the
Internet Archive Wayback Machine at this address (http://bit.ly/2LJxGmQ).
CareerSmart, a UK organization, also lists them (http://bit.ly/2Hl7uur).
We could do this for each occupation separately, although that might lead to
needless complications (and could be left, hypothetically, for future work).
Best, perhaps, to group roughly, for ease of implementation. We could do the gender
disequity analysis for both genders, but we were all compelled to admit on pain
of mobbing that the oppression has flowed one way, historically (that is, from
men to women) so in the beginning we could ignore those disciplines where women
have a clear advantage. According to the ruling doctrine, that merely
constitutes something akin to reparations for the historical reality of
oppression. We can therefore concentrate work primarily on the employment
categories that favor men.
These aren’t the prime
C-Suite positions (CEOs, COOs, CFOs, etc.) that make up the bulk of the
complaints of male domination (and we should point out that it is a very small
proportion indeed of men who occupy such positions so that, at least in
principle, the non-C-Suite majority of men are just as oppressed as the
majority of women, even though there is a slightly smaller proportion of them).
They are in fact jobs such as (above 99%) vehicle technicians, mechanics and
electricians; (above 95%) carpenters and joiners; electricians and electrical
fitters; metal working production and maintenance fitters; plumbers and heating
and ventilating engineers; mobile machine, forklift and large goods vehicle
drivers; those in the electrical and electronic trades; glaziers, window
fabricators and fitters; telecommunication engineers, metal, electrical and
electronic trades supervisors; construction workers; painters; and IT and
design and development engineers (this is a partial list). The highest
proportion of females (97.5%)—just as a single point of contrast—are to be
found among nursery nurses and assistants. It is also the case that, just as in
the 1950s, the most common female occupation is something roughly equivalent to
what was once known as secretary, but may now go by the name of executive
assistant or something similar. We also see (https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-databook/2018/home.htm)
that women are about twice as likely to work part-time than men (24% to 12%).
This is primarily because women are much more interested in part-time work once
they have children, particularly when those children are young, and it is not
at all obvious that there is any tenable policy solution that can or indeed
should change that.
Now it doesn’t seem
like mere imagination on my part that all the noise about “patriarchal
domination” is not directed at the fact that far more men than women occupy the
trade positions I described above. Nor does it seem unreasonable to point out
that these are not particularly high-status jobs, although they may pay
comparative well, nor that it is a ridiculous idea that any one of them (let’s
say “metal working production and maintenance fitters”) genuinely constitutes
some kind of oppressive patriarchy aimed at the domination and exclusion of
women. By contrast, instead, these are working men who keep the staggeringly
complex, reliable and essentially miraculous infrastructure of our society
functioning, and who should be credited with exactly that (despite, say, the
odd old Playboy pinup their construction offices might be decorated with). It
is, instead, the 95% percent of men who dominate the highest executive
positions in very large corporations, or who sit on the boards of such
organizations, who are paraded as the very proof of patriarchal domination
itself, despite (as I said) their comparative rarity. The problem with this is
that the fact that some men dominate some powerful positions is no proof that
all men dominate all powerful positions, as well as all the indication coming
from the Scandinavian states, in particular, that increasing the number of
female executives and board members by quota has essentially zero impact on
improvement for female representation or upward mobility farther down the food
chain.
A Never-Ending
Plethora of Legislation and Policy: Adulthood
But let’s ignore all
that, and assume for a moment that we should aim at equity, and then actually
think through what policies would inevitably have to be put in place to
establish such a goal. Let’s also assume that a combination of such policies
would be necessary to accomplish a task of such complexity (and also ignore the
fact that major, multidisciplinary social interventions inevitably produce
unintended counterproductive large-scale consequences). We might begin by work
at eliminating pay scales that differ (hypothetically) by gender. This would
mean that we would introduce legislation requiring companies to rank-order
their sex representation at each level of the company hierarchy (let’s assume a
5% pay differential, on average, defines a rank) and then adjust the pay
differential by gender at every rank. If there are ten per cent fewer women, or
men, perhaps a ten percent adjustment might be good start. If there are 100%
more men, then a 100% adjustment could be in order. Companies could be monitored
over a five year period for improvement (say, recruitment of 10% more of the
misrepresented gender per year). We would then have to establish targets for
improvement: perhaps a five-year implementation period might be acceptable or,
alternative, one year per ten per cent of gender disequilibrium. Failure to
meet the appropriate targets would be obviously and necessarily met with fines
for discrimination, scrutiny of relevant company policies regarding diversity,
inclusivity and equity, and suggested increases in differential pay scales. In
the extreme, it might be necessary to introduce staggered layoffs of men
(perhaps, once again, ten per cent a year) so that the gender equity
requirements could be met. This would certainly speed up the process, so might well
be advisable.
Then there are the
much broader social policy implications. We could start with the hypothetical
problems with college, university and trade school training. Many companies,
compelled to move rapidly toward gender equilibria, will object (and validly)
that there are simply not enough qualified female candidates to go around. This
is generally viewed as simply another excuse by the patriarchy to justify its
prejudice, but if it isn’t the case for the C-suite types (and it probably is)
it is absolutely and certainly the case for the mechanical/machine
operating/construction types that I described earlier, where the sex ratio
difference is particularly marked. This would mean radical changes in the
post-secondary education system, and they would have to be implemented in a
manner both immediate and draconian—justified, let’s say, by the obvious “fact”
that the reason the pipeline problem exists is the absolutely pervasive sexism
that characterizes all the programs that train such workers (and the failure o
the education system thereby implied).
The most likely
solution—and the one most likely to be attractive to those who believe in such
sexism—would be to establish strict quota systems in the relevant institutions
to invite and incentivize more female participants, once again in proportion to
the disequlibria in enrollment rates. If quotas are not enough, and they may
not be (given the degree to which women have (1) been discriminated against in
the past and (2) have internalized the misogynistic attitudes stemming from
that discrimination) then a system of scholarship or, more radically (and
perhaps more fairly) women could be simply paid to enroll in education systems
where their sex is badly under-represented. The necessary bureaucracies within
the relevant educational institutions could be set up to ensure improvement in
the female/male representation ratio, and those bureaucracies made responsible
to the appropriate government ministries. The same combination of fines, etc.,
might be applied to institutions where compliance is not forthcoming.
A Never-Ending
Plethora of Legislation and Policy: Childhood and Adolescence
That’s not going to be
good enough, however. The sex differences that result in gender-disequilbrated
later occupational representation clearly manifest themselves early in life.
Toy preference, for example (a reflection of the comparative male preoccupation
with things and female with people) appear very early in life, are associated
with difference in testosterone exposure in utero, and even characterize
non-human primates. These differences reflect or shape the later outcomes we
are describing. And other factors matter, as well. There is some evidence that
the same proportion of boys and girls excel, for example, at math in junior
high school (although there is some evidence that at the highest levels boys
may outperform girls). However, the high math-skills girls also tend to be
verbally gifted, and that is not equally true for the boys. This means that
high math-skills girls have a wider range of occupational choice, given their
broader range of abilities, and that comparatively fewer of them therefore
enter the STEM fields. It is also very much worth noting here, just so we’re
all on the same page, that countries that have pushed the laudable doctrines of
equality of opportunity most assiduously (so that would be the Scandinavian
countries) have the lowest rates of STEM enrolment among females in the world,
as it turns out that freed females, so to speak, given free choice, do not
often voluntarily become engineers and mathematicians and physicists. To call
this a major problem for those who insist (1) that all sex differences are
socially constructed and (2) that equality of opportunity doctrines will
necessarily equalize outcomes is to say almost nothing at all.
We’ll ignore all that,
as the doctrine of social constructionism (that is, the insistence that all sex
differences are a consequence of socialization) insists. Then it becomes clear
that educational practices in the K-12 system must be radically restructured.
This is a process that is already well underway, much to the well-justified
dismay of awake parents. At the Kindergarten and early elementary school level,
the government might fund the production of books of fiction at the appropriate
level of sophistication featuring characterizes defined by their sex pursuing
nonstandard occupations, insuring that the more sex-typed occupations get the
least coverage. This would mean, practically, something akin to a ban on fiction
representing women as nurses, secretaries, etc. (perhaps even stay-at-home
mothers) or at least a reduction of that representation in inverse proportion
to the degree of systemic oppression indicated. That would mean a preponderance
of fictional works portraying women as front line soldiers, heavy equipment
operators, bricklayers, etc., while males should be portrayed pursuing
currently-female dominated pursuits such as nursing. This suggestions runs
slightly at odds with the early policy introduced suggesting that the
female-dominated occupations be left in their current skewed positions, for
reasons of historical reparation, but it is simply not realistic to suggest
that male characters (and their inevitable career trajectories) be left out of
fiction provided to young readers entirely, which seems to be the only option
other than presenting them as pursuing and enjoying non-sex-typed occupations.
At the later grades,
that should continue, but it might be useful to introduce mandatory life plans,
with each female student required by their guidance counsellors to outline an
education or career plan that features an under-represented occupation as their
goal. The relevant psychological literature indicates that encouraging students
to develop a detailed strategy for the pursuit of such goals does increase the
likelihood that the plans will be implemented. Strong encouragement for the
implementation of these plans, once developed, should be provided. The sort of
interest that might tempt a given boy or girl toward a particular career has
been engendered, so to speak, purely as a consequence of socialization
pressure, so that whatever individual desire expressed by a given student that
might run contrary to the new equity doctrines (such as claims for strong proclivity
toward traditionally gendered roles) should be strongly discouraged, first to
combat the internalized misogyny already discussed and second to disavow
students, their parents, and society at the larger level from the notion than
any truly individual desire exists (independent of social construction). It
would be best, perhaps, if this was allied with sex-typed differences in
physical training. As the average woman has 30% of the upper and 55% of the
lower-body strength of the average man, this would mean comprehensive and
continual and thorough and mandatory strength and endurance training programs
for girls, beginning at puberty, when the sex differences in power start to
manifest themselves. It’s not clear how to deal with the temperamental variability
that also kicks in at the same time. Assertiveness training would be required
on the female front, empathy training on the male (while the differences in
negative emotion would also have to be dealt with, in some manner that has not
yet been established).
If we regard
differential sexual representation as proof of systemic oppression, as the
theory of social construction demands, then we are failing in our social and
individual responsibility to social justice to delay implementing such policies
immediately, and with full force. Every year that passes with little to no
movement on the front of sexual equity is indicative of a serious moral failure
(and there has been remarkably little change in many occupations over periods
of multiple decades with regard to representation by sex). Thus, if we’re
serious about equity, as we seem to be required to be, since objecting to it
instantly brings about accusations of misogyny and sexism (and alt-right
sympathies, if not outright fascism) then there is simply no excuse not to
implement these draconian but morally necessary policies as soon as possible.
And we can’t end there. Sexual inequality is only one small part of the
problem.
After Sex: Race,
Ethnicity, Gender, Class…
After, say, a five or
ten-year period, concentrating on sexual equity, it might be time to consider
the same set of actions implemented for equity by race and ethnicity (if we
assume that these are the next most important forms of oppression). It is
highly likely that the women who will benefit from the sex equity requirements
outlined in this document will be those who have benefited in the past from
their race. This means white women (and perhaps even more particularly those
who are white and Jewish, if we have decided to include Jewish people in the
category of “white”). Thus, it will be necessary and appropriate to produce a
set of standards (including the rewriting of the fictional accounts described
previously) to highlight women of color, and to promote their movement forward
in precisely the same manner as was implement for women, per se. And then we
will have to concentrate a bit later on the other places where systemic
prejudice is apparently self-evident: social class, age, attractiveness,
disability, temperament—even perhaps education and intelligence).
It is also possible
that some of these policies should be implemented simultaneously, with each job
category favoring men also analyzed and assessed by race. We could start with
the three main races: Caucasian, Asian and Black (recognizing as we do so that
these are merely social constructions, but must be treated now as realities
because they have been treated as such in the past). The dual implementation
would be more costly and complex, and place a heavier administrative load on
the companies and organizations affected, but would have the major advantage of
redressing a number of historical injustices simultaneously. Perhaps we could
be optimistic about the possibility of success in pursuing such a comprehensive
plan, and dare both.
Is This Truly What We
Want?
But perhaps we could
also sit back and think a bit. Are we really up for these large-scale
interventions? Do we really believe that they are necessary and, even more
naively, that they would solve more problems than they would cause? And what
are we to make of the fact that women granted equality of opportunity appear to
choose, freely (assuming such free choice exists) to work part-time more
frequently, to move for career purposes less often, to work inside rather than
outside, to pick safer occupations, and to choose education pathways, often
dealing with people, that are associated with less lucrative careers? Are we to
assume that they aren’t making the “right” choices, because they are fouling up
the equity doctrine, and to apply the substantive force that would be necessary
to correct them?
Or would it just be
simpler to note the insane complexity and internal contradictions and
impossibility and danger of the pursuit of this appallingly simple-minded dual
insistence (1) that the West is a hotbed of patriarchal oppression
(particularly compared to every other society that currently exists or has
existed in the past, instead of contrasted with some hypothetical ideological
utopia) and (2) that all indications of inequality of outcome are proof
positive of the oppression so claimed? The truth of the matter is that there is
no excuse for the equity doctrine. Its proponents don’t even concentrate on the
areas where the largest sex differences exist. They don’t care at all that
there are multiple well-documented reasons for unequal outcomes in occupational
choice and pay. They don’t think through the policy implications or, if they
do, are nonetheless willing to grant to themselves the bureaucratic power to
implement by force the changes that would be theoretically necessary to balance
the scales (and that would produce kick-backs of a magnitude that the
yellow-jacket protests, for example, should make us leary of invoking). They
haven’t contended at all with the data suggesting that free women make
different occupational choices than free men, and that there are economic
consequences to those choices that may be regarded as perfectly acceptable by
the women, who could well be choosing time over money (a not-unreasonable
trade-off).
They also do not
consider that we currently do not know how to formulate a complex economy that
does not produce inequality of outcome in general (as the
non-free-market/non-Western states that still comprise the majority of the
world are certainly less egalitarian in opportunity and outcome than the
oppressive, patriarchal West—see data from The World Inequality Report
2018: https://wir2018.wid.world/), and they
certainly don’t consider the fact that radically unequal distributions are a
somewhat ill-explained fact of life, governing phenomena as diverse as the size
of cities, the numbers of species in a given genus, the comparative mass of
stars (and of planets), the frequency of word use in given language, the number
of creative endeavours characterizing individuals, the scoring success of
professional athletes, hard disk drive error rates, the size of oil reserves in
oil fields, the standardized price return on stocks, the size of sand particles
(and of meteorites), the magnitude of casualty counts for many lines of
business, and the volume of river discharges and annual maximum one-day
rainfalls. All this (plus the fact that inequality was a fact of life long
before the modern industrial period) indicates that all attempts to attribute
inequity to the particular pathologies of the oppressive patriarchy are not
only incorrect, but wildly optimistic, as the problem that is posed by the
universality of unequal distribution is apparently far deeper and far more
intractable than anything that can be explained by or altered by simple
economics.
Equity Doctrine As A
Moral Weapon
None of this stops the
pushers of the DIE triad from using the doctrine of equity as a moral weapon,
in service of their fundamental claim: white men historically and currently and
unjustly and cruelly dominate, historically and currently (this despite the
fact that American Asians, for example, make 30% more at the median than
Caucasians in the US—a difference that is almost exactly the same as the gap
between Caucasians and Latinos). In consequence, all inequalities of outcome
must be regarded as unjust, and used as proof of the central contention—that
is, the idea of patriarchal Western oppression that is the central dogma of the
radical left. This is a terrible thing: not only because it identifies
perpetrators who must be punished, and victims who must be coddled and
protected (both equally dangerous consequences) but because it risks
interfering with the progress that is actually being made to bring the world’s
poorest people up to a standard of living that is vastly improved over what was
typical even twenty years ago, even in the poorest of countries. Free
democracies, with market economies (or even just the market economies themselves,
with the freedom they inevitably bring) certainly produce inequality, just like
every other economic and political system ever devised. But they also produce
wealth, and enough of that is distributed to those at the bottom of the
hierarchy to life them out of the abject poverty that constitutes the utter
misery of, say, excess child mortality, lack of access to any education
whatsoever, and outright starvation. Thus, there is no excuse for the radical
leftists to claim virtue on behalf of their care for the poor, given that their
entire doctrine is likely to (and has been indisputably shown to) make
everything worse for precisely those upon whom their attention is so
empathically lavished.
Conclusion: A Doctrine
Too Far
We know the left can
go too far. The Soviets taught us that. The Maoists and the Khmer Rouge taught
us that. The North Koreans, and the Cubans, and the Venezuelans continue to
teach us in the same manner. We don’t know exactly when and where the “going
too far” begins. But I’m willing to stake my claim on the equity doctrine. In a
word, it’s inexcusable, both morally and practically, and should be regarded,
in my estimation, as an ideological position that should be roundly rejected by
anyone who wishes to be taken seriously in any reasonable political discussion.
And we should well remember that “reasonable political discussion” is the only
alternative we have to outright strife and the kind of conflict that tends to
degenerate rapidly and dangerously.
+++
Epstein's warden rewarded:
Jeffrey Epstein Warden Now Running A New Prison Despite Probe
No comments:
Post a Comment