This, incidentally, is the actual reason we need to decentralize the payments infrastructure. Because they can do this to not just porn -- something they're formally not allowed to prohibit -- but to anything else, behind closed doors, by leaning on the centralized payment intermediaries to censor whatever they don't like.
Internet payments infrastructure provides more than cash can provide. It's also more than Bitcoin alone can provide. I'm talking about having at least some recourse against fraud and at least some attempt at resolving disputes.
Without chargeback or a similar mechanism it's "pay and pray".
Chargebacks don't really do anything to prevent fraud, all they do is convert it into a fraud against the merchant. And the only reason there is so much credit card fraud is that the banks have a poor incentive to improve their security (e.g. include some cryptography that lets internet purchasers prove to the merchant that they have physical possession of the card), because the banks are foisting the cost of fraud into the merchants.
They also have no real way to resolve disputes. The merchant says they delivered the goods and the cardholder says they received an empty box, how is a bank supposed to know who is lying?
The way you actually do this is that you don't make any of that part of the payments system. If someone commits fraud, have the police arrest them.
I ordered a used playstation 4 from amazon or eBay, irrelevant which. The UPS (parcel carrier) driver said hey this box doesn't look right, it's been retaped, do you want to open it? I'm not supposed to let you open it to reject it, but go ahead. "
It was a bucket of tile mud and an ornamental brick. Someone at the local UPS hub had stolen my PS4 and put the label on a shipment originally going to Lowe's.
Now, say the UPS driver and I didn't have that conversation. How do I get my money back? How do I prove the box had a brick and a bucket of tile mud? This isn't rhetorical. Keep in mind, the seller shipped me a PS4. The theft occurred at the carrier.
I find it laughable that any law enforcement would entertain anything other than "filling out a complaint", but the seller shipped a ps4. I paid for a ps4. How do I get a ps4 or my money back in your system?
In this case UPS is much more likely to be interested in this than the police. They will go after the employee who did this aggressively. And when UPS makes the report to law enforcement they will be much more likely to listen.
> Without chargeback or a similar mechanism it's "pay and pray".
No true. You think if you get fed poison at a cafe you have no recourse if you pay cash, like you somehow waive all your rights as customer?)
What you are talking about is not "some recourse". You have legal recourse. But you mean specifically "get my money back". In many ways it is good for the actually shady dealer because being sued is worse than one chargeback from one wise guy & getting to keep swindling all the others.
> I'm talking about having at least some recourse against fraud and at least some attempt at resolving disputes.
And making it decentralized would kill exactly this among other things. Should I explain how?
> People will understand, after great suffering, that destroying stuff is much easier than building it.
"It is easier to destroy than to create" doesn't tell you when something should be torn down.
You can have a house that provided shelter for your family for generations, but if it's water damaged, the floors are rotting and it's full of toxic mold, the person who shows up with a bulldozer isn't necessarily wrong.
> Freedom of speech doesn't require privacy in most constructions as it typically concerns, first and foremost, publicly-made political speech.
Suppose you're Thomas Paine and you want to advocate for the independence of America from Britain, and that Britain doesn't allow the government to punish anyone for what they say, but does prohibit anyone from publishing their writings anonymously.
Then everyone knows exactly who Thomas Paine is, and even if there is no law against writing those things, there is now a constable poking into his business looking for some other pretext to arrest him, several legislators drafting bills that would negatively impact his livelihood and which will quietly be withdrawn if he would simply stop publishing such things, and a variety of private enterprises who now refuse to have anything to do with him in any capacity because they have business before the crown and fear any public association with their critic.
How is it free speech if you're still getting punished for it?
The overall problem is nepotism, or even more generally, a lack of upward mobility. If you're poor it's a long road to the top. Most of the slots are filled by nepotism or otherwise having rich parents and only a minority are filled through merit.
The ideal solution here is to improve upward mobility, but neither party really does that, because to do that you have to fight entrenched incumbents. To lower poverty you need to lower the cost of living and therefore housing and healthcare costs, but the existing property owners and healthcare companies will fight you. To create opportunities you need to reduce regulatory capture so that small businesses can better compete with larger ones, but the existing incumbents will fight you. So these problems persist because neither party solves them.
Then, because more black people are poor and the bipartisan consensus is that if you're poor you're screwed, there are proportionally fewer black people at the top. Now consider what happens if you propose DEI as a solution to this. All of the nepotism still happens, but now the merit slots get converted into satisfying the race quota. Now if you're poor and white you're completely locked out, because the "white people" slots are all filled by nepotism and the remaining slots are used to satisfy the race quota.
The result is that poor white people are completely screwed by DEI, they understand this, and because the proponents of DEI are Democrats they then vote for Republicans. Then the Republicans oppose DEI because they're actually representing their constituents who at least want their chance at the limited number of merit slots instead of being completely locked out.
If the Republican elites then engage in nepotism and fail to improve upward mobility, that isn't good, but it's only a distinction between the parties if the Democrats would have done better in that regard, which they haven't, and they're plausibly even worse in terms of increasing regulatory burdens that prevent people with limited means from starting a small business.
This is presented as an argument against objective metrics, but a) the alternative is subjective metrics, which is even worse, b) "disparate impact" is just another metric subject to Goodhart's law, and c) resources aren't the only thing that determines test scores.
If you're poor but determined, you can't afford a high cost test prep course, but you can go to the library. The rich kid has their private tutor come to their house and then saves time that allowed them to be chauffeured to tennis lessons. The poor kid has to take the bus to the library and spend twice as long with the study books and then doesn't get any tennis lessons, but it's possible for someone to do that if they actually care about it. Whereas, how is a low-income white kid supposed to overcome a race quota where every slot for their race was already filled by nepotism?
> This is presented as an argument against objective metrics
No, it's not. It's presented as an argument that measuring objective metrics doesn't mean you're measuring merit.
> If you're poor but determined, you can't afford a high cost test prep course, but you can go to the library.
The library most likely doesn't have the same specialized learning materials that rich kids can afford, so this doesn't mean the poor kid has equal opportunity.
> The rich kid has their private tutor come to their house and then saves time that allowed them to be chauffeured to tennis lessons. The poor kid has to take the bus to the library and spend twice as long with the study books and then doesn't get any tennis lessons, but it's possible for someone to do that if they actually care about it.
You're presenting this like it's purely an issue of free time, which is obviously not the case. The poor kid possibly can't reach the library without their guardian, who may or may not have time to drive them there. The poor kid possibly doesn't have anyone to teach them using the learning material there, while the rich kid likely has either their guardians or even specialized tutors for this purpose.
Your comment is a wonderful example of how people arguing for meritocracy can ignore reality - the bare minimum is supposed to be enough for the disadvantaged, even though there's a massive difference in effectiveness.
> No, it's not. It's presented as an argument that measuring objective metrics doesn't mean you're measuring merit.
The goal is to measure merit. Objective metrics are the nearest thing we have to achieving that goal. If there is a better metric, you use that instead. But if the best metric we have isn't perfect, that's no argument for doing something even worse.
> The library most likely doesn't have the same specialized learning materials that rich kids can afford, so this doesn't mean the poor kid has equal opportunity.
And yet this is still more of an opportunity than being locked out by race quotas.
> The poor kid possibly can't reach the library without their guardian, who may or may not have time to drive them there.
Libraries are generally in higher density areas with mass transit, and in the worst case you can walk there. Moreover, primary schools generally have libraries and then the kid is already there for school.
> The poor kid possibly doesn't have anyone to teach them using the learning material there, while the rich kid likely has either their guardians or even specialized tutors for this purpose.
Which is why it takes longer. But the point is that determination has an effect. It's something you can choose rather than something you can't control. Whereas telling people that it's not a level playing field so therefore they shouldn't even try is how you perpetuate the problem forever, if not actively make it worse.
> The goal is to measure merit. Objective metrics are the nearest thing we have to achieving that goal. If there is a better metric, you use that instead. But if the best metric we have isn't perfect, that's no argument for doing something even worse.
You may notice that I didn't argue against objective metrics at all? All I've said is that objective metrics don't mean you're directly measuring merit. It's important to keep this in mind, for example by ensuring equal access to specialized training materials.
> And yet this is still more of an opportunity than being locked out by race quotas.
DEI doesn't necessarily mean race quotas - it's telling that you think it does.
> Libraries are generally in higher density areas with mass transit, and in the worst case you can walk there. Moreover, primary schools generally have libraries and then the kid is already there for school.
But the kids don't necessarily live in higher density areas! So not only do the kids get worse material and less help, they also have a much harder time accessing those worse materials. And again, a library usually doesn't have the same specialized materials that rich kids can afford. I've been trying to show that this should be kept in mind and remedied, but you're arguing against me by arguing against things I haven't said. This is usually what happens.
> Which is why it takes longer. But the point is that determination has an effect.
But kids don't have infinite time! So the rich kids still have unfair advantages, so the tests aren't directly measuring merit. And again, you're arguing that the bare minimum should be enough for the disadvantaged. You seem to effectively be arguing that meritocracy is either impossible, or should not be the goal.
> You may notice that I didn't argue against objective metrics at all? All I've said is that objective metrics don't mean you're directly measuring merit. It's important to keep this in mind, for example by ensuring equal access to specialized training materials.
But then who are you arguing against? Is there someone strongly opposed to providing equal access to training materials, e.g. by making them available in school libraries?
> DEI doesn't necessarily mean race quotas - it's telling that you think it does.
That's how it's most commonly implemented in practice whether de jure or de facto and that's its opponents' primary objection to it.
> But the kids don't necessarily live in higher density areas!
In general the poor kids live in higher density areas and the affluent kids live in the suburbs.
> You seem to effectively be arguing that meritocracy is either impossible, or should not be the goal.
Actual perfect meritocracy is impossible because actual perfect anything is impossible. But meritocracy is the goal and what you want is to get closer to it. Which providing better study materials in school libraries can do, but that isn't what anybody is complaining about when they're complaining about DEI.
> In general the poor kids live in higher density areas and the affluent kids live in the suburbs.
The poor kids also live rural.
Remind me again, where there are lower costs, but also lower income, less opportunity, harder to get anywhere, less education? And also, who did most of rural vote for?
In most situations, rural = poverty = trap. Our society is nowhere near prepared in addressing the rurality and poverty trap.
But really, this whole dei being a proxy for this gender or that race issue is looking around the real problem. In the end, its all about access to 2 resources: money and time. The bourgeoisie have it, the proletariat do not. As long as there is a massive gulf between the 2, we'll argue this in different names and forms (civil rights, affirmative action, political correctness, DEI)
> But then who are you arguing against? Is there someone strongly opposed to providing equal access to training materials, e.g. by making them available in school libraries?
The materials aren't available. Why do you think that is?
> In general the poor kids live in higher density areas and the affluent kids live in the suburbs.
Ah, and that means we can ignore poor kids who don't fall into this pattern, as well as poor kids who live too far away from libraries?
> Actual perfect meritocracy is impossible because actual perfect anything is impossible. But meritocracy is the goal and what you want is to get closer to it. Which providing better study materials in school libraries can do, but that isn't what anybody is complaining about when they're complaining about DEI.
You're ignoring that this is only part of the equation, as the tutoring etc. is also missing. There must be special programs for the disadvantaged to level the playing field here, but that's what anti-DEI advocates also complain about!
Actual meritocracy isn't the goal when you argue that the disadvantaged should be fine with far worse resources and opportunities, as you've done in this thread. You've repeatedly argued that it's fine if they have far higher time investments and far worse materials, as long as they theoretically could achieve similar things as the rich. That's simply not meritocracy.
> The materials aren't available. Why do you think that is?
To begin with, they often are. A lot of school libraries actually have test prep materials available. They don't all have them because libraries are locally administered and each locality gets to make its own choices, but if that's the case in your locality then you can direct your complaints to the town council rather than the federal government.
> Ah, and that means we can ignore poor kids who don't fall into this pattern, as well as poor kids who live too far away from libraries?
This is the thing where perfect is impossible. If you live in an urban area, having a library within walking distance is feasible because there are enough people there to justify it. If you live in a rural area, it isn't. What do you propose to do about it?
> You're ignoring that this is only part of the equation, as the tutoring etc. is also missing. There must be special programs for the disadvantaged to level the playing field here, but that's what anti-DEI advocates also complain about!
Rich people will pay for things that aren't scalable. If your parents make $20M/year, they can spend $1M/year on their kid. If you spent $1M/year on each of the 74M kids in the US, the cost would be $74 Trillion, which exceeds the US GDP. And there is a threshold past which additional spending has diminishing returns. Again, the goal is to get as close to measuring merit as feasible; "closer than now" is possible but perfection isn't.
> To begin with, they often are. A lot of school libraries actually have test prep materials available.
They have some materials available, but often older or less specialized ones. That's my whole point: rich people have access to better materials. This is simply a fact.
> This is the thing where perfect is impossible. If you live in an urban area, having a library within walking distance is feasible because there are enough people there to justify it. If you live in a rural area, it isn't. What do you propose to do about it?
How about introducing DEI programs that help these disadvantaged people access the same materials? Again, you're basically saying that they have to suck it up and accept their position. That's not meritocracy.
> Rich people will pay for things that aren't scalable. If your parents make $20M/year, they can spend $1M/year on their kid. If you spent $1M/year on each of the 74M kids in the US, the cost would be $74 Trillion, which exceeds the US GDP. And there is a threshold past which additional spending has diminishing returns.
There's obviously an incredibly large gap between "spend $1M/year on each of the 74M kids in the US" and "poor kids should either have no access at all, or have to walk large distances to public libraries, only have access to worse materials and have no tutoring available". The latter simply isn't meritocracy, yet you keep arguing that it is, and keep arguing against DEI programs.
> That's my whole point: rich people have access to better materials. This is simply a fact.
"Rich people have more money" isn't an interesting fact, it's just the definition of rich people.
> How about introducing DEI programs that help these disadvantaged people access the same materials?
The term "DEI" has been applied to disparate impact rules and other policies that amount to race quotas and correspondingly garner strong opposition. If you want to advance good policies, you should stop using the same term to apply to them as is used to apply to bad policies with strong opposition.
> There's obviously an incredibly large gap between "spend $1M/year on each of the 74M kids in the US" and "poor kids should walk large distances to public libraries, have access to worse materials and have no tutoring available".
There is equally obviously a point at which the threshold of diminishing returns is met, and high-quality individualized private tutoring is plausibly beyond that threshold because it is very expensive. It's also still not clear how you expect to feasibly provide a high density of libraries in an area with a low density of people.
> "Rich people have more money" isn't an interesting fact, it's just the definition of rich people.
That's not what I said. This is bordering on bad faith, please don't do that.
> The term "DEI" has been applied to disparate impact rules and other policies that amount to race quotas and correspondingly garner strong opposition. If you want to advance good policies, you should stop using the same term to apply to them as is used to apply to bad policies with strong opposition.
First, what term would you have me use instead? Second, I don't believe it matters what term I choose, because it will get demonized just like DEI did.
> There is equally obviously a point at which the threshold of diminishing returns is met, and high-quality individualized private tutoring is plausibly beyond that threshold because it is very expensive.
There is still a large gap between "high-quality individualized private tutoring" and "poor kids should walk large distances to public libraries, have access to worse materials and have no tutoring available".
But that's besides the point, which was: objective metrics don't mean you're measuring merit. You've shown wonderfully how those advocating for "meritocracy" often don't care about actual merit. Thank you for the discussion, but I don't think it makes sense to continue, as you seem to simply not care about the issues with your position.
Personally I appreciate your merit. Starting the race 100 meters ahead of the other runners probably doesn't get you a very accurate measure of who is the fastest.
The issue is that it's not an athletic competition. If someone is better at heart surgery, it doesn't matter if it's because their parents could afford books and someone else's couldn't, that's still the person you want doing heart surgery.
If you then want to buy books for people who can't afford them, that's an entirely different proposal than giving the job to someone who isn't as qualified.
> The issue is that it's not an athletic competition. If someone is better at heart surgery, it doesn't matter if it's because their parents could afford books and someone else's couldn't, that's still the person you want doing heart surgery.
Well, an athletic competition would make more sense because that actually determines whose the best. We don't test heart surgeons to see who the best is, we test to see if they can do the job.
That's what people tend to... conveniently overlook... in these conversations. No one is hiring "the best" or only accepting "the best" into their college or whatever else. They pick a good one from the pool of candidates they have available.
Trying to pretend that "using race to pick between two equally qualified candidates" is the same thing as "picking unqualified candidates" is, well, damn close to a lie.
> Trying to pretend that "using race to pick between two equally qualified candidates" is the same thing as "picking unqualified candidates" is, well, damn close to a lie.
When you have a competitive major university that gets thousands of applicants and you base admission strictly on test scores, you'll end up accepting only 1% black applicants because their test scores are lower for various reasons. If you wanted to accept 14% black applicants as reflects their proportion of the US population, you would have to be turning down other applicants with significantly higher test scores. It's not just about accepting someone who got a 1520 instead of a 1530, the difference is hundreds of points.
> For the 2015-2016 academic year, the average GPA of all students applying to medical schools was 3.55 and the average MCAT score was 28.3 according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).
> The middle set of bars in the top chart above show that for applicants to US medical schools between 2013-2016 with average GPAs (3.40 to 3.59) and average MCAT scores (27 to 29), black applicants were almost 4 times more likely to be accepted to US medical schools than Asians in that applicant pool (81.2% vs. 20.6%), and 2.8 times more likely than white applicants (81.2% vs. 29.0%).
That link shows that (presumably in order to meet diversity targets) black applicants with a GPA of 3.2-3.39 had nearly the same acceptance rate as Asian applicants with a 3.6-3.79 GPA. 0.4 points is an entire standard deviation for GPA.
> The goal of this process isn't to find the "best" people to admit
That is exactly the goal of this process. Otherwise why does someone with a 4.0 GPA have any better chance than someone with a 3.2 GPA? If all you cared about was "qualified" then there would be some minimum threshold and candidates above that threshold would be chosen at random.
> there's always going to be an imperfect system doing the picking.
"Perfection is impossible" doesn't mean that every imperfect alternative is equally bad.
> That's not what I said. This is bordering on bad faith, please don't do that.
The premise of a meritocracy isn't that everyone is the same, it's that everyone is subject to the same standard. The alternatives are things like racism or nepotism where someone gets the position even if they're not expected to do a better job, because of their race or because their father owns the company.
But merit isn't a fixed property. If you spend your time studying physics, you'll make yourself qualified to do certain types of engineering when spending that time playing football wouldn't.
Money, then, can be used to improve merit. You can e.g. pay for tuition at a better school that someone else couldn't afford. If that school actually imparts higher quality skills than a less expensive school (or no school), a meritocratic hiring practice will favor the graduates of that school, because they're actually better at doing the job.
You can then argue that this isn't fair because rich people can afford better schools etc., but a) that will always be the case because the ability to use money to improve yourself will always exist, and b) if you would like to lessen its effect, the correct solution is not to abandon meritocracy in hiring decisions, it's to increase opportunities for the poor to achieve school admissions consistent with their innate ability etc.
> First, what term would you have me use instead? Second, I don't believe it matters what term I choose, because it will get demonized just like DEI did.
The demonization comes from rooting the concern in race rather than economic opportunity, because the people obsessed with race are interested in dividing the poor and pitting them against each other in tribal warfare, and then any term you use for that will be demonized because it will become infected with tribal signaling associations.
> There is still a large gap between "high-quality individualized private tutoring" and "poor kids should walk large distances to public libraries, have access to worse materials and have no tutoring available".
And then we're back to, what is even the dispute? You can't close the entire gap because part of the gap is a result of things that are infeasibly expensive at scale and no one disputes that. There are cost effective and reasonable policies that could close some of the gap, but many of those have already been implemented or could be adopted with minimal opposition if they were simply proposed in the places not already doing them, because they're cost effective and reasonable. It's literally only a matter of going to your town council meeting and convincing them that it's a good idea.
People don't strongly oppose libraries that stock study books. They oppose race quotas.
> People don't strongly oppose libraries that stock study books. They oppose race quotas.
People absolutely do oppose libraries. They also oppose programs that pay for tutors for poor kids, programs that allocate more money to schools in poorer neighborhoods and basically anything else you can think of.
But I do admit it must make your life incredibly simple to just pretend racism doesn't exist and everyone ends up in the exact position they deserve.
> People absolutely do oppose libraries. They also oppose programs that pay for tutors for poor kids, programs that allocate more money to schools in poorer neighborhoods and basically anything else you can think of.
Opposition to spending in general is distinct from opposition to a specific policy because the policy has a deleterious effect, and is much easier to overcome if you would e.g. source the money from a constituency that supports the policy, or offer to cut something else to make room in the budget.
> But I do admit it must make your life incredibly simple to just pretend racism doesn't exist and everyone ends up in the exact position they deserve.
That would need some inclusion laws that enforce preferred hires from lower financial backgrounds instead of better prepared candidates with more resources.
Poor have less chances?
Enforce hiring of the poor.
Non-white habe less chances?
Enforce hiring of non-whites.
Non-male have less chances?
Enforce hiring of non-males.
Disabled have less chances?
Enforce hiring of disabled.
If you have less chances because of a attribute you aren’t responsible for, enforce hiring of people with such an attribute to normalize the attribute in the workspace is DEI.
The premise of that proposal is that the test scores are inaccurate as a result of the economic disparity, because people with less income have less resources to prepare for the test. That would apply in the case of an economic disparity because having more resources allows you to artificially receive a higher score. It's not about accepting someone with less merit out of charity but rather about adjusting for a measurement error.
But the economic disparity is the reason for the racial disparity, because otherwise we expect people of different races are equally intelligent, right? So the economic disparity is the real one and accounting for that inherently accounts for the racial disparity as well, and you don't need both.
Which is the reason doing the latter is controversial.
> But the economic disparity is the reason for the racial disparity, because otherwise we expect people of different races are equally intelligent, right? So the economic disparity is the real one and accounting for that inherently accounts for the racial disparity as well, and you don't need both.
That's only true if you assume prejudices like racism and sexism don't exist anymore, but they do. Even today, these are the lived experiences of many people in society. As examples, there are black people who don't get jobs because they are just assumed to be worse candidates, even when they are more qualified and put in more work. There are women who don't get jobs because they are just assumed to be worse candidates, and so on.
These are real implicit biases, and they don't go away by just ignoring them.
> That's only true if you assume prejudices like racism and sexism don't exist anymore, but they do.
These are test scores. They're graded by people -- if not machines -- that don't know the race of the person taking the test. Anyone of any race can get a better score in one way: By getting more of the answers right.
Yes but what prejudices we accept and which we do not is arbitrary. You have no choice over your height. Taller people can have more promotions and more dating opportunities, but we don't have affirmative action for short people, and we don't treat women who say they don't date short guys like we treat women who say they won't date black guys. There's always going to be discrimination, what form of discrimination is acceptable or unacceptable is still arbitrary.
First, let's not talk about dating and work in the same argument - they are fundamentally different in many important ways, and it's not conductive to the conversation.
Second, at least call a spade a spade - according to you, when people say meritocracy they actually mean "meritocracy with handicaps for non-whites and non-males". Let's not call that "meritocracy", okay?
The anti-DEI argument is that modern racial disparities are predominantly caused by economic circumstances, e.g. black people are more likely to be poor and then less likely to have to startup capital to start their own business or be able to afford to attend a high status university. The same applies to white people who don't have affluent parents. "White people who grew up poor" are under-represented at the top of society.
So the underlying problem here is economic opportunity, not race. To fix it you need to e.g. make it easier for someone without rich parents to start a business by lowering barriers to entry and regulatory overhead on small entities. That allows both poor black people and poor white people to get ahead without discriminating against anyone, but still reduces the racial disparity because black people are disproportionately poor.
It's basically Goodhart's law. Because of the existing correlation between race and poverty, continuing racial disparities are a strong proxy for insufficient upward mobility, but you want to solve the actual problem and not just fudge the metric through race quotas etc.
> and not just fudge the metric through race quotas etc.
It goes further than just fudging the metrics: By relying on quotas you have to dig deeper into the minority pool of candidates, and are more likely to get someone less skilled than if you hadn't used quotas. This combined with the overall focus on DEI just ends up reinforcing racism/sexism when the quota-hires are more inept than the non-quota hires.
I don't think that necessarily follows. For example, if 20% of some minority are qualified and without quotas only 5% would be hired, then a quota requiring hiring 10% wouldn't result in unqualified candidates.
That being said, I haven't heard virtually any advocates of DEI calling for quotas and they don't seem to be common at all.
We can use an actual example. Joe Biden going into the 2020 election pledged that he would choose a black woman as his running mate. This pledge excluded half the population on gender grounds, and 87% of the population on racial grounds. When you are only looking at half of 13% of the population you're going to be turning away a lot of qualified people. And we saw the consequences of Joe Bidens 2020 election pledge in the 2024 election
I never said unqualified. I used relative terms like less skilled, for example the 5% in your example that wouldn't have been hired without quotas.
The non-quota'd hires in that example, that the additional 5% displaced, are now also more likely to be of higher average skill (since you need less of them and can drop the bottom of the candidates), making a bigger disparity between the quota'd group and the non-quota'd group. Which, as I said, just reinforces any racism/sexism such quotas attempted to offset.
I don't think that actually changes anything. Lets suppose that we can measure qualification on a 100 point scale.
Lets say that there are 5 people in a minority group with a qualification of 100 and 9 people in the non-minority group with a qualification of 100. If 1 person from the minority group gets hired and 13 people from the non-minority group get hired, then a 5 person minority group quota would result in an increase in the qualifications of the people hired.
Of course in reality is more complicated since companies don't always hire only the absolutely most qualified people in a given group and it's not easy to even define objectively who is the most qualified. However, that doesn't matter to the point that I'm making which is that even a quota (which again most proponents of DEI don't want) doesn't necessarily result in hiring less qualified candidates.
In your example, no quotas would result in all 14 hires being those with a qualification of 100. Congrats, got all 5 minorities without quotas!
Now for some thing more realistic: Instead of making those 14 candidates all perfect, distribute them a bit more randomly and only hire the top 10. Without quotas you'll end up with around 4 from the minority group and 6 from the majority group. But if for example your quotas are for 50/50, you have to exclude 1 person from the majority group who is more qualified than the 5th person from the minority group to reach it.
> By relying on quotas you have to dig deeper into the minority pool of candidates, and are more likely to get someone less skilled than if you hadn't used quotas.
What? By pulling from a larger pool of candidates, you’re more likely to get someone more skilled.
That’s fair—I’m closer to the east coast, so around me it is mostly white dudes, but that might not be true elsewhere. But it is mostly men, at any rate.
The question was if you believe the hiring process is excluding the other groups. Another way of asking that is, are similarly qualified people from the other groups applying in sufficient number? Would they have been hired if they had?
Earlier you stated that you don't see them represented in the workforce but that doesn't necessarily imply exclusion by the party doing the hiring. Given what the labor market for dev is like I feel that attributing observations to blatant discrimination should require extensive direct evidence.
Say you’re looking to hire 20 people. So you pick the 20 best, and you end up with the 17 best men and the 3 best women. Of course you claim to be gender-blind and it just happens that you got 17 men and only 3 women, these things happen, it’s nobody’s fault.
Now imagine if you were required to hire 50% men and 50% women. So you’d end up with the top 10 men, and the top 10 women. What that means is, you didn’t hire the 11th - 17th rated men, and instead did hire the 4th - 10th rated women.
Now: maybe you think that’s not a fair system, and you’re probably right. But it would mean you’re hiring better candidates. You pass on some lower rated candidates that only made it through because they were guys, and instead got some higher rated candidates that you had passed on previously because they were women.
You're assuming the men and women being judged on a different scale is the only way you can get a disparity to begin with.
Suppose to be qualified for the job you need a particular degree and 85% of the people who hold the degree are men. Then you'd expect 85% of the people you hire to be men, and what happens if you require 50% of them to be women?
I don't think it necessarily has to be all one thing or the other. For example, most proponents of DEI would advocate that they be used both for university recruitment and for hiring. Most would also advocate the society avoid messaging that certain degrees/careers are only for a given gender in order to avoid biasing who is interested in a certain degree/career.
> For example, most proponents of DEI would advocate that they be used both for university recruitment and for hiring.
That doesn't justify setting the current target at 50% for employers whose current candidate pool is at 85%.
> Most would also advocate the society avoid messaging that certain degrees/careers are only for a given gender in order to avoid biasing who is interested in a certain degree/career.
How are you intending to control what the population believes? A lot of parents will tell their daughters not to be oil workers or truck drivers and a lot of the daughters will listen to them.
And if you’ve ever been or been adjacent to oil workers or truck drivers - those daughters would be well served by listening, assuming they have any other options.
They are brutal occupations that chew up and spit out the typically more physically robust men who make up the majority of those occupations on the regular.
Unless the top 20 people only had 3 women, which is totally possible if there were 200 men and 30 women in the total applicants. In this case, you just discarded 7 more qualified men to get 7 less qualified women. Now in terms of average skill across your hires, it looks like men in general are more qualified than women and you're reinforcing the sexism, not fighting it.
This is a simplistic view. E.g. how does this argument account for the data we have that someone with black sounding name will get less opportunity than someone with a white sounding name and an identical resume? In this case the lower chances to get ahead have nothing to do with economic circumstance.
> E.g. how does this argument account for the data we have that someone with black sounding name will get less opportunity than someone with a white sounding name and an identical resume?
You're referring to a decades-old study that failed to replicate:
It still has to do with economic circumstance, but here, according to Sowell it's about the cost of employing empirical discrimination (judging each specific case through complete knowledge of the individual) instead of a proxy for empirical discrimination (like likelihoods based on a non-arbitrary characteristic such as income or neighborhood).
The solutions that follow from that conclusion are to find ways to make empiricism less costly, or to change the stereotype (such as people from a poor neighborhood are likely to be a bad risk for a loan).
Systemic racism tends to apply so much economic drag to the system that any form of capitalism won't allow it to stand. Apartheid in South Africa was systemic racism, and businesses were violating those laws long before they were abolished just out of profit-motive. It became obvious and common-sense for the system to be ended. Thomas Sowell, in that same work, points out that Type II discrimination (discrimination based on arbitrary characteristics like race, ethnicity, belief... etc.) always ends up being economically unfeasible.
You raise an interesting point but I think that's an overly broad claim. Groups with strong internal adhesion and sufficiently high trust can remain xenophobic indefinitely.
It's also wrong on some level to refer to these things as arbitrary characteristics. They might be seemingly unrelated, but in a broader social context they are often far from arbitrary. Particularly when it comes to belief systems they can have direct and tangible impacts.
I think it's probably some of both. Certainly a lot of inequality is economic in a way that is independent of race. However, I think that there's also a degree to which people in power are naturally going to favor people like them. I don't think it's even necessarily a matter of discrimination. If I'm interviewing, for example, it's going to naturally be easier for me to recognize indicators of merit associated with my own culture. Therefore, I think that DEI is an important part of making our society more of a meritocracy.
In terms of your second paragraph. I think that the problem is that those regulations are often put in place to protect people in a way that doesn't depend on company size. For example, in many cases workers usually don't need any less protection just because the company that they are working for is small.
> However, I think that there's also a degree to which people in power are naturally going to favor people like them. I don't think it's even necessarily a matter of discrimination. If I'm interviewing, for example, it's going to naturally be easier for me to recognize indicators of merit associated with my own culture.
For this to be a major factor you'd need some explanation for the over-representation of Asian Americans in many lucrative fields in the US. Shouldn't they otherwise be seeing a significant negative impact from this?
> I think that the problem is that those regulations are often put in place to protect people in a way that doesn't depend on company size. For example, in many cases workers usually don't need any less protection just because the company that they are working for is small.
The issue is that the rules are often created without respect to how they impact smaller entities, or are purposely designed to impair them at the behest of larger ones.
A lot of regulatory overhead is reporting requirements. Reports from small entities are typically going into a database never to be read by anyone ever. But you still have to spend time filing them, and then they'll stick you for filing fees even though you're just uploading 2kB of text to a website, and the filing fees are the same whether you're a sole proprietorship or Walmart.
The rules are often completely nuts, e.g. you can be ineligible to collect unemployment if you were self-employed but you're still legally required to pay for the unemployment insurance coverage. Some states have paid leave policies that assume every employer is a bureaucracy large enough to absorb the cost of hiring a temporary employee while concurrently paying the one on leave.
There are also tons of rules that are simple enough to comply with if you know about them, but with no reason to expect them to exist and a book of regulations which is thousands of pages long and full of rules that don't apply to you, the first time you find out can be when you get a fine or somebody files a lawsuit. In many cases these will be some kind of reporting or registration requirement that exists for no good reason, but exists nevertheless, e.g. did you remember to register a DMCA agent, or list your physical mailing address when you sent that email? These things aren't actually protecting anybody, they're just a trap for the unwary.
So you said "make it easier for someone without rich parents to start a business by lowering barriers to entry and regulatory overhead on small entities"
This is a supposition: the cure "lowering barriers, regulatory overhead" may not cause the intended outcome "make it easier for someone without rich parents to start a business".
Given the primary reason why it's hard to start a business is access to capital, I'm not really sure what "lowering barriers" (which barriers exactly? how?) and "regulatory overhead" (which ones specifically?) will meaningfully do to improve the outcomes of black people.
And this is before we even talk about the well documented facts of biases, outright racism, and uneven application of laws.
So, how do we get to the outcome we all want: your talent drives your success?
One way you could do this is to have government programs to provide startup capital to certain groups. You know, like we already had, but are attempted to being erased under the "anti-DEI" crusaders.
In reality a lot of the anti-DEI rhetoric is based on disinformation, misinformation, and honestly just good old fashioned racism.
Access to capital is hardly the reason why it's hard to start a business. I know two first-generation immigrants who started a landscaping business with a used pickup truck and a few tools. They reinvested their earnings in the business and now run multiple crews servicing properties all over the area. So it's not a unicorn tech startup but they seem to be doing pretty well. Anyone willing to work hard can accomplish something like this, no talent required.
I don't think it is necessarily that simple. A pickup truck, a few tools, and enough time or savings to spend starting a business is a lot more than many people have. Then there's survivor bias; while it may have worked out for them, how many people did it not work out for. Finally, there's the issue that not everyone can be an entrepreneur. Someone has to actually work at the various businesses that exist and are being created.
> If you try hard enough you can always find plausible excuses for failure.
That is true but it does not imply that success is possible for all people in all cases.
I can always blame some external factor for my loss in a competition but it is not necessarily within the realm of (realistic) possibility for me to win every possible matchup.
> Given the primary reason why it's hard to start a business is access to capital, I'm not really sure what "lowering barriers" (which barriers exactly? how?) and "regulatory overhead" (which ones specifically?) will meaningfully do to improve the outcomes of black people.
Suppose you want to start a restaurant. You already have a kitchen at home, so can you put a sign out front and start serving customers without having to pay a ton for commercial real estate (i.e. capital)? Nope, zoning violation. But surely if you rent a commercial shop for your restaurant then you can then live there instead of having to maintain two separate pieces of property and a car to commute between them? Nope, sorry, the commercial unit isn't zoned for residential. Also, you'll have to outbid Starbucks and McDonalds for the site because there is only a small area of land zoned for commercial use and it's already full with nowhere empty zoned to add more.
Now that you've put yourself in debt for real estate you're not allowed to live at and opened a business with ~4% net margins, your customers expect to pay with credit cards and the law allows that racket to take ~3% of your total revenue.
To make this work at all you're going to have to do enough volume that you'll end up hiring people. Congrats, you now get to do Business Taxes. This isn't the thing where you file a 1040 which is just copying some numbers from a sheet you got from your employer, it's the thing where you have to calculate those numbers for other people and also keep track of every dollar you spend on every chair, kilowatt hour and jar of tomato sauce so the government can take half your earnings instead of the three quarters or more you lose if you're bad at math or forget to deduct something big. But don't be bad at math the other way either or then you go to jail.
Now that you're almost making enough money to be able to eat at your own restaurant, the power to your stove goes out and shuts down your whole operation. You track it down to a defective splice put in by the licensed electrician who wired the place before you bought it. You're not allowed to fix this because you're not licensed as an electrician. You're also not able to get licensed because it's both prohibitively expensive for someone who only does occasional electrical work and requires you to do a multi-year apprenticeship even if you could pass every test to get the license. So you either have to wait a week for someone with a license to have time for you even though the actual fix is only going to take five minutes, or pay through the nose for emergency service, or break the law and do it yourself.
I could go on. The reason "access to capital" is such a problem is that the regulations make everything so expensive, and most of the regulations are a result of regulators being captured by the incumbents.
> And this is before we even talk about the well documented facts of biases, outright racism, and uneven application of laws.
Racial discrimination has been illegal for quite some time. When these things are so well documented you can sue the perpetrators in those cases. That doesn't necessitate casting aspersions in cases where there isn't any evidence of that, just because the economic disparity tends to create an outcome disparity even when the entity isn't doing anything racist.
> One way you could do this is to have government programs to provide startup capital to certain groups. You know, like we already had, but are attempted to being erased under the "anti-DEI" crusaders.
Why is this "certain groups" instead of providing the same access to everyone trying to start a business?
> In reality a lot of the anti-DEI rhetoric is based on disinformation, misinformation, and honestly just good old fashioned racism.
"My opponents are lying racists" would be the ad hominem fallacy even if it was true.
> "My opponents are lying racists" would be the ad hominem fallacy even if it was true.
No, if it were true, standing on its own, it would be an accurate statement of fact. It is only be the ad hominem fallacy if it forms part of an argument with this logical structure:
While many regulations exist due to regulatory capture, many also exist for good reasons. Notably, with the possible exception of the complicated taxes, the examples you give all have pretty obvious health and safety reasons why they exist.
I agree that we should be careful to avoid overregulation in general and regulatory capture in particular. However, even without that access to capital is likely to be a major barrier to entry to many people starting a business.
> Notably, with the possible exception of the complicated taxes, the examples you give all have pretty obvious health and safety reasons why they exist.
What health and safety reason requires a 3% processing fee for credit card payments? Why is it unsafe for the proprietor to live in a room in the same structure as a restaurant in some areas, but not in other places that have different zoning?
The only thing that comes close to a health and safety issue is requiring a licensed electrician, and that's still a racket because they make it infeasible for you to get the license yourself even if you're willing to learn the material.
> I agree that we should be careful to avoid overregulation in general and regulatory capture in particular. However, even without that access to capital is likely to be a major barrier to entry to many people starting a business.
In the absence of these rules, you start a restaurant out of your home and do the work yourself and the capital you need to start out is predominantly the things you already need in order to have food and shelter. These regulations add hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional capital costs for the purpose of constraining supply so landlords and contractors and banks can extract more money.
A restaurant out of your home presents a public health risk sadly. Foodborne illnesses are rare, because of the regulations placed on commercial food sellers.
There are likely ways we can give more latitude, but home kitchens often cannot be cleaned to the same standard as commercial kitchens just due to how they have been built.
Unfortunately in terms of "overreaching" regulations, this is the worst example: food borne illneses are very real killers, and a major risk.
Also regarding a licensed electrician, while the regulatory requirements for one may seem high - I'm not 100% sure if they are or not - electrical fires are one of the major ways structures catch fire and kill people.
Really in terms of overbearing regulations, these two actually protect lives every single day. Remember the "Ghost Ship" fire? Caused by electrical fire. Norovirus on cruise ships? Cause hospitalization and evacuation.
I'm all for minimizing regulations, but many many of them are literally written in blood, and the notion that we can wholesale relax them with no ill consequence is just not true.
> A restaurant out of your home presents a public health risk sadly. Foodborne illnesses are rare, because of the regulations placed on commercial food sellers.
> home kitchens often cannot be cleaned to the same standard as commercial kitchens just due to how they have been built.
This has nothing to do with zoning rules. You're not allowed to operate a restaurant on that piece of land regardless of what kind of kitchen you have. Requiring specific materials or equipment is not the same thing as "doing this is banned here but allowed somewhere you can't afford".
> Also regarding a licensed electrician, while the regulatory requirements for one may seem high - I'm not 100% sure if they are or not - electrical fires are one of the major ways structures catch fire and kill people.
Your assumption is that the rules improve safety when it's quite the opposite. A license should be something you get by passing a licensing exam, and taking the licensing exam should be free. Anyone who knows the material gets the license, immediately, at no cost.
Instead we have apprenticeship requirements whose purpose is to constrain the supply of people who hold the license. That increases the cost of hiring a professional, which causes more work to be done by amateurs even if it's illegal, or to ignore problems because they can't afford to pay someone to fix them. Which is how you get electrical fires.
Don't confuse actual safety rules with regulatory capture protectionism that compromises safety to pad the coffers of the incumbents.
The electrical example is particularly interesting because it's generally legal to DIY things on a house that you simultaneously own and live in. Many (not sure if all) US states even have laws preventing insurance from forbidding such (although they can generally deny coverage after the fact if the incident can be shown to stem from your DIY work).
There also exist mixed zoning areas where you can run a business that hosts customers on site out of your house.
Presumably the big differences are incentives and scale. Scale wise, more building occupants justifies more regulation. In terms of incentives, there's probably less inclination to cut corners and be reckless with a structure that your entire family lives in.
I think I'm going to blame zoning on this one long before I take issue with electrician apprenticeships.
> Presumably the big differences are incentives and scale. Scale wise, more building occupants justifies more regulation.
This is the ex post facto rationalization of the rules, not the actual reason. The actual reason is that businesses are more likely to have contracted it out regardless so are less likely to oppose, and are the more lucrative customers for the license holders lobbying for the rules, whereas homeowners object more and have a larger voting block.
Notice that the rules are based on use and not occupancy. A residential multi-unit condo will have more occupants than a small business that only serves five customers at once.
Meanwhile nobody actually wants an electrical fire. The primary thing leading to shoddy workmanship is artificial supply constraints on professional work, which creates financial pressure for amateurs to covertly perform work they're not qualified to do because there aren't enough professionals and puts the professionals under time pressure because there is too much work for them to complete with that number of workers.
> When these things are so well documented you can sue the perpetrators in those cases.
To be fair oftentimes that documentation is due to the regulations you're speaking against here. I'm not necessarily taking a side. It just seemed relevant to point out.
> Why is this "certain groups" instead of providing the same access to everyone trying to start a business?
Because conservatives won't let us. Literally the most famous slogan associated with leftists is wanting regular people to "own the means of production." Most leftists would be THRILLED by programs to help anyone get access to capital.
The single largest capital requirement for most new small businesses is real estate, and is real estate because mixed use zoning is prohibited in the vast majority of areas in the US, requiring the proprietor to separately pay for somewhere to put the business and somewhere to live. Zoning is a local regulation and there are very many localities completely controlled by Democrats, so why does this continue to be the case?
The notion that "many localities completely controlled by Democrats" is just not really true. The idea that zoning reform is a no-brainer and easy is also clearly not true: it's been a major teeth pull in SF and California, and many different people are pushing back.
Additionally somewhere like SF isn't a monolith, and despite voting heavily for federal democrats, the local elections aren't so clear cut.
Also we need to consider how and if development is truly good for existing residents. Many of them do not think so. The appropriate response here is to develop a sense of curiosity: why is that? What do people believe, and why?
I would say this: modern development doesn't always make the kinds of mixed used neighborhoods that people truly want and love. The cost of development often results in street level vacant commercial space, and that is not good for neighborhoods. Yes a complete revamp of zoning could change this - but would it? How do you build a compelling future that brings people along?
> The notion that "many localities completely controlled by Democrats" is just not really true.
There are in actual fact many cities where Democrats control every branch of local government.
> The idea that zoning reform is a no-brainer and easy is also clearly not true: it's been a major teeth pull in SF and California, and many different people are pushing back.
That's the point. Democrats, despite having majority control in such areas, don't actually do it.
> Also we need to consider how and if development is truly good for existing residents. Many of them do not think so. The appropriate response here is to develop a sense of curiosity: why is that? What do people believe, and why?
If you're an incumbent property owner then you want the value of your existing property to go up. If you want to move into an area you don't already live or build something there, you want property to be affordable. Since only the first group gets a vote in local elections, there is a perverse incentive to maintain artificial scarcity.
> How do you build a compelling future that brings people along?
It's a structural failure that comes from doing zoning at the local level. Alice owns a house in San Francisco and intends sell it and buy one in LA. Bob owns a house in LA and intends to sell it and buy one in San Francisco. Therefore Alice currently wants housing to be expensive in San Francisco and cheap in LA and Bob wants the opposite. But Alice only gets a vote in San Francisco and Bob only gets a vote in LA, so they each vote for housing to be expensive there and then it ends up expensive everywhere. As soon as Bob buys the house in San Francisco and consequently a vote there, he wants that house to cost more rather than less.
If you prohibit scarcity-inducing zoning practices at the state or federal level then Alice and Bob no longer have a strong preference since the rule now affects them both when they sell and when they buy instead of only one of those, but all of the people who don't already own property can now vote in an election for someone that has jurisdiction.
> So the underlying problem here is economic opportunity
Very much agree with this. Economic inequality is the root of the problem. But it's also one that very few people are willing to actually address because that sounds like "socialism" (how un-American!). It's the biggest problem facing this country, but the kind of social changes that are needed to solve that problem are anathema to Americans. (Certainly Trump doesn't give F about poor people, and the Democrats mostly pay lip service to it.)
But here's why I'm in favor of DEI initiatives, generally speaking (though certainly not all of them or even most of them):
DEI doesn't directly address economic inequality the way it should, but it does get is part of the way. Certainly it's better than nothing, which is what those who are anti-DEI are mostly proposing.
We also have to take into consideration that certain groups of people, specifically African Americans and Native Americans, are _not_ on a level playing ground, even today, because they were deliberately suppressed for centuries. Just because the Civil Rights Act finally got signed 50 years ago means that all of a sudden they have equal opportunity.
If companies and universities, and society as a whole, makes no effort to level the playing field, it won't just level on its own, especially in today's society (which does not offer the wide-open opportunities that America 100 or 200 years offered to anyone landing on its shores with $5 in their pocket).
If you don't make an effort to recruit from low-income black neighborhoods for example, you're not likely to get many takers because of the amount of effort that it takes to climb out of such deep social holes--only the very best and most determined will. But if you can deliberately offer opportunity to more people who have been suppressed, more of them will be in a position to provide their children with an environment where they can have better opportunities, and over generations society changes for the better (and everyone benefits).
So that's why I'm generally in favor of DEI type initiatives. Not what companies did or do -- which was mostly greenwashing PR based on either public opinion (last administration) or government pressure (this administration). But genuine efforts to level the playing field in terms of economic opportunity, including a boost to those who were deliberately disadvantaged for so long.
You can argue that it's unfair to white poor people. I agree, it is somewhat unfair. Economic opportunity should have nothing to do with race, and we should be making every effort to raise the economic standard of poor whites too. But we also need to recognize that poor whites are starting at a different baseline, one of poverty, yes, but not slavery and targeted suppression. So while there might be economic similarities (poor whites, poor blacks) they're not necessarily on the same level.
I don't think I've ever heard someone who opposes DEI say "we should fix our broken economy instead". But it's not wrong - the problems of racism and classism are uniquely intertwined and need to be fixed together.
The way DEI is usually framed by opponents is less "companies are using DEI to buy woke points so they don't fix the real economic issues" and more "companies deliberately hired unqualified black lesbians to tick a checkbox". These are very different critiques in terms of who they're aimed at. The latter makes it sound like we just need "more meritocracy" - i.e. to fix the problem by firing all black and poor people. The former makes it clear the problem is the people running the economy who are pitting different groups of people against one another to keep labor down.
It's rather ironic since we know that women, poc, and more often face a lot of professional resistance, and therefore have to be better than average to succeed.
Which means when you come across a black or female professional who has risen, it means they actually are much more likely to be MORE talented than the average white man.
In other words, this notion of "diversity hires" is not logical. It barely makes sense.
That's exactly the criticism of Apple. Apple is giving them a method to do so, when that should not be provided because it causes this kind of problem and is otherwise a betrayal of the user.
Apple should not be the arbiter of whether a business model you want to engage in is legal or not. That's what courts of law are for. I would strongly oppose Apple unilaterally deciding which apps can-, and which cannot-, use the geofencing feature.
Go to the government, and have the government compel Apple to restrict certain apps if that is your desire, but for them to do that on their own is completely out of line.
> Go to the government, and have the government compel Apple to restrict certain apps if that is your desire, but for them to do that on their own is completely out of line.
This is exactly the argument against what Apple is doing. They're compelling the user's device to enforce geo-restrictions against the user's wishes. They're acting as a government when there is no law requiring the user to respect arbitrary -- and inaccurate -- geofencing restrictions.
What should happen is the user gets to do whatever they want with their device and the developers get to suck it up if they don't like it. Developers should have zero power over users.
Our computers are meant to empower us, not to enforce idiotic developer policies that nobody cares about.
> Apple should not be the arbiter...I would strongly oppose Apple unilaterally deciding which apps can-, and which cannot-, use the geofencing feature... Apple to restrict certain apps...but for them to do that on their own is completely out of line.
As opposed to all the other Apple decisions?
By the way, which law requires Apple to provide geofencing to a health insurance app such it can't even be installed outside a particular country, and ties its hands completely on the matter?
The other side of this coin is cost of living. If housing costs more in the US, so does everything else. If everything costs more, people have to be paid more in order to make a living, and that makes the US less competitive in the global labor market.
To get employers to invest in employees, they'd need more of a stake in it. Right now if you invest $200,000 to train someone, they can immediately quit and go work somewhere else and you're out $200k, so they don't do that.
A way to fix that would be to e.g. issue student loans for the training and then forgive them over time if the employee continues working there. But that's rather disfavored by the tax code when forgiving the loans is considered taxable income, and you would have people screaming about "abusive" companies sticking you with $200k in debt if you quit right after they give you $200k worth of training.
> you would have people screaming about "abusive" companies sticking you with $200k in debt if you quit right after they give you $200k worth of training.
Because it would be very easy to abuse. It would be oh-so-easy to give an employee training worth $200k - in the company's estimate - and then force them to stick around for years.
"But nobody made them agree to that!"
Sure, and nobody makes anyone take on a bad loan from a shady car dealership, or a bad mortgage sold by the same people who tanked the economy, etc., etc.
And to amplify your point just a bit, if the alternative is losing your healthcare and possibly going homeless, what does "agreeing" even mean anymore?
What you’re describing already exists and are aptly named TRAPs (Training Repayment Agreement Provisions). Companies already abuse these and in fact are illegal in California. Here’s an article covering it from a few years ago:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/more-us-companies-charging-...
> Right now if you invest $200,000 to train someone, they can immediately quit and go work somewhere else and you're out $200k, so they don't do that.
And...why are people immediately quitting to work somewhere else? Your idea of addressing the problem is by saddling employees with debt and forcing them into literal wage slavery rather than fixing the problem of companies not paying people enough to stay.
Nobody is talking about handing out 200k of training upfront. Individual 1-8 week training courses don’t actually cost that much to operate internally and generally allow someone to do something very specific and useful. There’s plenty of ways to boost short term retention like a bonus after 1 year of service.
50+k of training over a 40 year career requires salary bumps for retention, but the first set of training should have paid for itself before you’re offering the next.
> Nobody is talking about handing out 200k of training upfront.
Why not?
> 50k of training over a 40 year career requires salary bumps for retention, but is hardly a major risk.
"Pay 50k for training and then pay a salary bump" is more expensive than "just pay a salary bump to the person the competitor was a sucker enough to pay 50k to train", so how does that work?
Nope. Keeping the same person for 40 years saves far more than 50k of onboarding costs over that timeframe. Employee churn is really expensive but if it’s not coming out of your budget middle management doesn’t care.
Companies do all kinds of objectively dumb things due to poor incentives.
> Keeping the same person for 40 years saves far more than 50k of onboarding costs over that timeframe. Employee churn is really expensive but if it’s not coming out of your budget middle management doesn’t care.
How does that change the number from the perspective of the employee?
The problem is not how to get an employee to stay for 40 years. The problem is, the employee who has just received $50k in training will take whichever job pays more, so the employer who paid the $50k has to offer the same salary as the one who didn't. And then who is going to pay the $50k when they could get the employee that someone else paid the money to train, for the same salary?
> The problem is not how to get an employee to stay for 40 years.
No, you generally need more than 1 set of training over 40 years.
Bob’s been with you for 6 years but you’re about to make him redundant and pay unemployment insurance. Meanwhile you’re looking at 10k of onboarding costs for a new role. Suddenly 10k or possibly significantly more worth of training is saving you money and getting you an employee who is dependable and already knows the business. Yet you almost never see this happening because it’s just got to be cheaper to get someone else to pay for training.
As to stealing employees from companies that just did 5-15k or whatever worth of training, they have onboarding costs and on top of that need to offer more money to get someone to swap jobs. Convincing people to swap jobs is really expensive unless the other company is paying significantly under market rates so don’t do that after you just trained someone.
Isn’t that simply the inherent risk associated with business ventures? Not every investment will yield a profit. I recall reading about Ward Parkinson, one of the founders of Micron Technology. During his tenure at Fairchild Semiconductor, the company paid for his Master’s degree at Stanford. However, upon graduating, he promptly left to work for Reticon.
If more employers gave raises such that an existing employee in a given role was paid the same or more as what they would pay a new hire to fill the same role, I don't think we'd see the level of job hopping that we currently do.
This! My company is mid size and we can’t hire junior people for fear they’ll jump to FANG right when they’re starting to become productive for us. And we can’t afford FANG compensation for senior people.
If you are willing to have a remote team then this is not a problem - lots of great (senior) developers in EU, Asia,... No need to pay FAANG level compensations either. Curiously enough not many US companies do that, or those that do, put rounds and rounds of interviews in front of each candidate. Which is OK I guess - if you pay FAANG salaries. But if not, maybe just limit to 3 interviews, one hour each? If that's not enough to judge a potential hire then I don't know what is. Once the hiring is fixed you should have lots of great candidates available.
You don't even need to go out of the US. Plenty of good US people are down to live in non-FAANG COL areas and thus can have more take-home for less upfront pay.
There is no "other countries", it's a global economy. Mexico exports $450B worth of stuff to the US every year. When their fertility rate was 6 and then one or two of those kids immigrate to the US, that's fine for them. Now that their fertility rate is below the population replacement rate too, if their kids emigrate their country is screwed. Then there's nobody to make that $450B worth of stuff, because the kids who migrated are busy filling the existing jobs in the US.
Meanwhile what do you expect to happen in countries with fertility rates below population replacement and net out-migration of the youth? Is it morally reasonable to willingly cause that to happen, even without considering the consequences to the US of that level of desperation spreading through the rest of the world?
The alternative would be to get the fertility rate back to the population replacement rate.
Assuming current trends are unchanged we’re still talking about having billions of humans for hundreds of years. On that kind of timescale we might see significant life extension, artificial wombs, and hard core genetic engineering.
Some countries like South Korea are going to face major challenges far sooner, but frankly having the most extreme examples collapse means the average stays higher.
> Assuming current trends are unchanged we’re still talking about having billions of humans for hundreds of years. On that kind of timescale we might see significant life extension, artificial wombs, and hard core genetic engineering.
The absolute number of humans isn't the issue. It's that people expect to retire at 65, but are now living into their 80s and 90s. Retirees have to be supported by working people, i.e. younger people. If the ratio of younger people to older people gets out of kilter, there's huge problems. Life extension makes this worse rather than better.
The ratio of younger vs older people is also a function of biological aging which might look very different in 500 years. I don’t think we can reasonably expect to retire at 65 if healthy lifespan hits 200+.
If 150 year olds are as healthy as current 50 year olds they may very well be expected to work. And personally I’d happily extend how long people are expected to work in exchange for significantly longer lifespans.
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