A Downside of Diversity

Sen. James G. Blaine once said, that the U.S. was long “the only country with a known birthday. All the rest began they know not when, and grew into power, they knew not how.”

***

President Biden repeated a claim about turning down an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy, where he purportedly wanted to play football, during his commencement address at West Point on Saturday.
Biden told West Point graduates that Republican Sen. J. Caleb Boggs, whom he defeated to become a U.S. senator, had "appointed" him to the Naval Academy years before they ran against each other in 1972.
The president recounted that before his interview, "I found out two days earlier they had a quarterback named Roger Staubach, and a halfback named Joe Bellino. And I said, I'm not going there. I went to Delaware. Not a joke."

***

A Downside of Diversity

For the first time, the number of Americans who use marijuana just about every day has surpassed the number who drink alcohol that often, a shift some 40 years in the making as recreational pot use became more mainstream and legal in nearly half of U.S. states.

In 2022, an estimated 17.7 million people reported using marijuana daily or near-daily compared to 14.7 million daily or near-daily drinkers, according to an analysis of national survey data. In 1992, when daily pot use hit a low point, less than 1 million people said they used marijuana nearly every day.

On the regulatory side, the U.S. is about to downgrade the medical concerns for the drug from Schedule One to Three, based on the available research.

So, a question. 

The major problem holding back the successful commercialization of marijuana is its inconsistency. The industry is fragmented in almost every way. The product has no standardization, with different plants grown in different sites with different characteristics and chemical concentrations, some of which have never been examined. There are different preparations, packaging, and shipping processes. Consequently, the product is unreliable as a brand and major efforts are underway to standardize them. 

That said, how can the safety experiments on the drug be relied upon?

Diversity as 'Conditional'

 Trump has floated creating “a ring around the U.S. economy” by imposing a blanket 10 percent tariff on all imports to the U.S. This would directly raise the prices of trillions of dollars of imports, eroding the purchasing power of consumers’ wages and incomes. It would raise the prices of intermediate goods for U.S.-based firms, which would lead to further price increases for American consumers. And it would lead to retaliatory tariffs from other nations, causing further price hikes.--Strain

***

On the website of the American Sociological Association describing its 2024 annual meeting, we have the official "theme" of the meeting:

"..sociology as a form of liberatory praxis: an effort to not only understand structural inequities, but to intervene in socio-political struggles."

"To intervene." "Political struggles." Your idea of academic study?

***

Diversity as 'Conditional'

Harvard history professor James Hankins, writing at Law & Liberty, offers a diversity statement to Harvard:

"Since, however, you require me, as a condition of further employment, to state my attitude to these “values” that the university is said to share (though I don’t remember a faculty vote endorsing them), let me say that, in general, the statement of EDIB beliefs offered on your website is too vapid to offer any purchase for serious ethical analysis. The university, according to you, espouses an absolute commitment to a set of words that seems to generate positive feelings in your office, and perhaps among administrators generally, but it is not my practice to make judgments based on feelings. In fact, my training as a historian leads me to distrust such feelings as a potential obstacle to clear thinking. I don’t think it’s useful to describe the feelings I experience when particular words and slogans are invoked and how they affect my professional motivations. It might be useful on a psychoanalyst’s couch or in a religious cult, but not in a university.

Let me take, as an example, the popular DEI slogan “Diversity is our strength.” This states as an absolute truth a belief that, at best, can only be conditional. When George Washington decided not to require, as part of the military oath of the Continental Army, a disavowal of transubstantiation (as had been previous practice), he was able to enlist Catholic soldiers from Maryland to fight the British. Diversity was our strength. On the other hand, when the combined forces of Islam, under the command of Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik, besieged Constantinople in 717, diversity was not their strength. At the crisis of the siege, the Christian sailors rowing in the Muslim navy rose in revolt and the amphibious assault broke down."

Simple scrutiny can be withering when applied to philosophical pablum and bumper sticker slogans. That probably explains why scrutiny is so discouraged.

Diversity: True Only to Itself

The growth in American productivity was sufficient to produce real hourly earnings for high school dropouts in 2017 that were higher than those earned by high school graduates with some college or technical training in 1967. High school graduates in 2017 had higher real hourly earnings than college graduates in 1967, and high school graduates with some college in 2017 earned about as much as people with advanced degrees earned in 1967.--Myth of American Inequality

***

World Bank president David Malpas is stepping down.

Mr. Malpass was under particular pressure to turn the bank into another slush fund for financing green-energy boondoggles. Some in the media are crowing, without evidence, that he’s been pushed out after Al Gore and the media climate conformity caucus raked him for comments last year they misconstrued as climate “denialism.”

The critics prefer to ignore the evidence that developing countries have figured out that Western-imposed carbon policies will trap their people in poverty. The danger is that the global climate clique will take the opportunity of Mr. Malpass’s retirement to remake the bank in their image.

***

Social Security and Medicare.

Spending on these two programs alone consumes 45 percent of the federal budget. Along with Medicaid, these programs are the drivers of our current and future debt. And to drive home the seriousness of our predicament, note that Medicare and Social Security together face a shortfall of $116 trillion over the next 30 years.

This is not a situation created by serious people.




***

Diversity: True Only to Itself

Originally diversity meant exotic, interesting. Nobody hoped for diversity that was, for example, criminal or perverse or insane or degrading. Diversity always had an underlying assumption, that of quality. Diversity always implied an enhancement of one's life or circumstance with "the different," the hard personal view fleshed out. At the worst, it would be spice.

That very element, the element of specialness, was its undoing. Specialness opposes sameness and, while we encourage elitism in our political and thought leaders, we hunt it to ground in us. Diversity changed and became egalitarian in its most destructive way. One could no longer pick and choose diversity, find one edifying or expansive and reject one less so. Diversity became un-judged. Random. When we encounter a community that practices mutilation, we open our hearts and turn our minds away. Like art, the diverse was true only to itself. Everything is of equal value. Equality became sameness. The very lack of judgment.

Diversity is no longer a celebration of human breadth and scope. It is a weapon against quality.

The Mother of All Graphs

                       The Mother of All Graphs

This graph looks more interesting the more you look at it. It is almost a micro- course in economics. Costs of domestic origin are rising, those of importation are falling. So, globalization is protecting us from inflation--or allowing us to tolerate new inflationary sources like medical care and education. And diversions are becoming more and more affordable while necessities are less so. Tradable commodities are sensitive, non-tradables are not. The greater the degree of government involvement in the provision of a good or service the greater the price increases over time. And what does it say about the "demand" component?

A few other observations/speculations:

We can expect future declines in the prices of college textbooks, as the traditional textbook market faces increasingly tough competition from alternative options including hundreds of “open textbooks” that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. The University of Minnesota’s Center for Open Education maintains an “Open Textbook Library” website that lists hundreds of textbooks in more than 20 academic subjects that are available for free online or as a PDF file, or as a print copy at a low-cost ($33.50 for print copies from OpenStax). Just in the field of economics, there are more than 20 free open textbooks for Economics courses including Principles of Microeconomics, Principles of Macroeconomics, International Economics, Money and Banking, Economic Analysis and Principles of Political Economy.

The annual increase in college tuition and fees of only 1.7% through December of last year was the smallest yearly increase in the history of the CPI for college tuition and fees for any month going all the way back to 1978. And the year-over-increase of 1.7% for college tuition through December was less than annual CPI inflation of 2.3% over that same period, indicating the real cost of college tuition and fees actually decreased in 2019. So perhaps the “higher education bubble” is finally starting to show signs of deflating?

Process of Diversity

                            Process of Diversity

Does diversity have value in itself? Or, when we speak of diversity, do we assume a certain level of quality? We usually don't include stone-age cultures or cultures rich in human sacrifice when we consider diversity. What is it about diversity we like?

It certainly isn't difference alone. No one wants to spice the college scene with a few affable Nazis. Nor would we advocate diversity for entertainment value alone; there must be something else, something more.

I think most likely the possibility of "contribution," the bringing of a new, perhaps oblique view to the table where the condition of man is being discussed. It implies quality and interest in human advancement, not simple difference. It is a distinction in perspective. A unique vision of value. Diversity is part of the creative direction, not the outcome; it is the interface, not the result.

Here is Sowell on diversity, assuming some basic agreements:

“If there is any place in the Guinness Book of World Records for words repeated the most often, over the most years, without one speck of evidence, “diversity” should be a prime candidate. Is diversity our strength? Or anybody’s strength, anywhere in the world? Does Japan’s homogeneous population cause the Japanese to suffer? Have the Balkans been blessed by their heterogeneity — or does the very word “Balkanization” remind us of centuries of strife, bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities, extending into our own times? Has Europe become a safer place after importing vast numbers of people from the Middle East, with cultures hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization?

“When in Rome do as the Romans do” was once a common saying. Today, after generations in the West have been indoctrinated with the rhetoric of multiculturalism, the borders of Western nations on both sides of the Atlantic have been thrown open to people who think it is their prerogative to come as refugees and tell the Romans what to do — and to assault those who don’t knuckle under to foreign religious standards.

It has not been our diversity, but our ability to overcome the problems inherent in diversity, and to act together as Americans, that has been our strength.”

Diversity is a part of a process, not the endpoint.

Thomas Nast

Politics is not the art of the possible. It is choosing between the unpalatable and the disastrous.--Gailbreth
  
Terrific dinner last night.

"The Crown" is very good. Even Charles has come off well so far.

Stossel has a little article on the early Pilgrims' try at collective farming that preceded Thanksgiving. Collective farming — the whole community deciding when and how much to plant, when to harvest, who would do the work — was an inefficient disaster.

"By the spring," Pilgrim leader William Bradford wrote in his diary, "our food stores were used up and people grew weak and thin. Some swelled with hunger... So they began to think how ... they might not still thus languish in misery."
His answer: divide the commune into parcels and assign each Pilgrim family its own property. As Bradford put it, they "set corn every man for his own particular. ... Assigned every family a parcel of land."

Private property protects us from what economists call the tragedy of the commons. The "commons" is a shared resource. That means it's really owned by no one, and no one person has much incentive to protect it or develop it.

The Pilgrims' simple change to private ownership, wrote Bradford, "made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been." Soon they had so much plenty that they could share food with the natives.

When you consider what an enormous windfall gain it is to be born in America, it is painful to hear some people complain bitterly that someone else got a bigger windfall gain than they did.--Sowell

Climate scientists claim that rising sea levels are caused by man-made global warming. Historical data from the tide gauge in Lower Manhattan shows that sea levels have been rising from about the time when Abraham Lincoln was president to now. Sea levels have been rising for about 20,000 years.  Anthropologists believe that when the sea level was very low people were able to walk from Siberia to North America.

On this day in 1947, despite strong Arab opposition, the United Nations voted for the partition of Palestine and the creation of an independent Jewish state. The modern conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine dates back to the 1910s, when both groups laid claim to the British-controlled territory. The Jews were Zionists, recent emigrants from Europe and Russia who came to the ancient homeland of the Jews to establish a Jewish national state. The native Palestinian Arabs sought to stem Jewish immigration and set up a secular Palestinian state. Beginning in 1929, Arabs and Jews openly fought in Palestine, and Britain attempted to limit Jewish immigration as a means of appeasing the Arabs. As a result of the Holocaust in Europe, many Jews illegally entered Palestine during World War II. Radical Jewish groups employed terrorism against British forces in Palestine, which they thought had betrayed the Zionist cause. At the end of World War II, in 1945, the United States took up the Zionist cause. Britain, unable to find a practical solution, referred the problem to the United Nations, which on November 29, 1947, voted to partition Palestine.

                             Thomas Nast
Thomas Nast was a Bavarian immigrant credited with developing the American cartoon. He arrived in the 1840s as a child and became the illustrator for Harper's Weekly. He developed the modern version of Santa Claus and the elephant as the Republican Party symbol. As such, this is a provocative drawing, from the Nineteenth Century.

Melanie Kirkpatrick’s 2016 book, Thanksgiving: The Holiday and the Heart of the American Experience (link added):

[Thomas] Nast was an immigrant, having arrived in America from Germany when he was six years old, and “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner” reflected what Nast saw as the immigrant’s passionate affection for his new country and commitment to its democratic values….
At the head of the table stands Uncle Sam, who is carving a turkey. Around the table are seated Americans representing an array of races and religions, identified in many cases by their national dress. Among the guests are an African American family, a Native American, a Chinese man with a long queue, an Irish American couple, a Spanish woman wearing a mantilla and holding a fan, a bearded Muslim with a fez on his head. Nast presents the people in this portrait respectfully, not as caricatures. His message is that every American has an equal right to sit at the Thanksgiving table.

Western Civ

 “At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.”--Nietzsche

Walked in to dinner last night at Lucca. Amazing.
It took me about ninety minutes to confirm my flights last night. It took me 20 minutes to sign on this morning.
Watched the impeachment shoy yesterday. Another long labor; another mouse delivered.

The working age population, those 18 to 64, is only going to grow 17%. Seniors will grow 102% during that time. Right now, there are 4.8 workers supporting each retiree. By 2030, that number will be 2.9 and by 2050 it will be 2.4.
But what is this "support" thing? Didn't these seniors all put in their own money--by law--to be withdrawn later? Why do they need "supported?" Or are there separate, non-contributing, groups that need 'supported?" And if the latter is true, whose fault is that?

There is an article by a guy who makes a living evaluating the price of sex. It is a lot superficial but these are two interesting observations. The latest generation of dating apps produce data that reveals the extent of difference between male and female courtship behaviors. A study on Tinder, for example, found that men have to swipe right about 15 times more than women to get a similar level of response. These are not marginal differences, and they shine a light on an old reality: that female sex is vastly more valuable than male.
It is no coincidence that marijuana farmers destroy male plants, and retain the females for their big, resin-heavy flowers.
Females are more valuable, almost everywhere.

 
                     Western Civ

In 2010, psychologists Joe Henrich, Steven J. Heine and Ara Norenzayan at the University of British Columbia pointed out that virtually all research psychology studies were performed only in the countries they dubbed WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic. Their point was that these are not people who are necessarily representative of mankind.

(This, of course, is dangerous territory. We insist now that, despite our faith in the value of diversity, we are all alike. The balance between equality and diversity makes for interesting calculus.)

Henrich (now at Harvard University), in a paper published in the journal "Science," tried to explain the bases for the difference he saw in the west: Western Christianity. He offers a number of unprovable, fun theories--particularly how incest taboos influences social and political outlook--but it got me thinking.

I recently saw a local discussion at the university about the direction of education in the Classics. There is a big problem fitting Classics into the current social fads. Particularly, Classics departments are notoriously "non-diverse." Which is to say, "white." And the departments have been historically narrowly selective; they have demanded a strong understanding of classical language. This has narrowed research papers and the like further: One can not hold an academic position, can not make a living as a classicist, without translating skills.

What has happened, apparently, is a gradual thinning of the traditional classicist herd. Not only is it whiter, it is smaller and smaller. Students no longer take classics courses, survey course attendance is down and the departments are lucky to get an occasional guest lecture in a literature course. And the lack of diversity in these departments was felt by many to raise at least a social--if not moral--question.

The solution? Dilute and expand. The proposition was to eliminate the language requirements of the Classics Departments and develop a more casual, sociological approach to research, papers, and scholarship.

There was some disruption in the response. Several older teachers, committed to a classical education, politely lost their minds. One middle-aged woman with long gray hair and trembling voice pleaded for standards that most of the room thought were dead and buried, practically if not officially. In a last, desperate act she cried, "We are talking about the basis of Western Civilization."

It was time for the diversity champion to lose her mind, less politely. She implied that the gray-haired woman was a racist and then pronounced angrily, "Western Civilization is a construct!"

"A construct?!" 

All narratives are "constructs." Few social observations are perfect and writ in stone. That is just a fact. But it is a poor criticism. States and language are constructs, does that diminish them? What about religion? 

Or by "construct" does she just mean "artificially divisive?" Does "Western Civ" threaten her vision of a homogeneous world community? 
The problem of equality and diversity again. 
  

Kronman on Diversity

"Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women."--from Middle Passage by Charles Johnson


I must be the only person in America who doesn't know a white supremacist.

Three hospital bomb threats today in Pittsburgh.
Peggy Noonan has an editorial in the WSJ this weekend on the song "Moon River." A news commentator read it on air and started to cry. 

Joe Murphy, selected by the Detroit Red Wings with the No. 1 overall pick in 1986, earned more than $13 million while playing 15 seasons in the NHL,  is homeless in Onterio. earned more than $13 million while playing 15 seasons in the NHL, but he is homeless
Personalizing horrific events somehow in our culture makes them more understandable. So Trump is the real villain at El Paso. And volume and narrative are a lot more important than content. 
Here is an exchange initiated by Trump's daughter trying to change the focus from Ohio and Texas to Chicago: "With 7 dead and 52 wounded near a playground in the Windy City- and little national outrage or media coverage- we mustn't become numb to the violence faced by inner-city communities every day." Chicago mayor Lightfoot responded Trump didn't get the basic facts of the shootings correct, saying: "It wasn't a playground, it was a park. It wasn't seven dead. It wasn't 52 wounded in one incident, which is what this suggests. It's misleading."
The Tribune said it had counted 55 people shot, seven fatally, in Chicago over the weekend.
So it was 55 shot. And it was a park, not a playground. Good points.

There are such things as organic pesticides. Sulfur, copper, pyrethroids, are all organic pesticides because they are not manufactured, but obtained directly from nature. As such, they are authorized for use in organic farming. But they can still poison you if not used correctly, just as a synthetic pesticide would. 
But it would be a lot better to be poisoned organically.

The Note 10 phone will start at $949, the Note 10+ model will start at $1099, and Verizon says the Note 10+ 5G will start at $1299.

Numeracy reminds us that “what we see on television” is utterly unrepresentative. Every day, the media show us the ugliest stories they can find on a planet with 7.5 billion people! No matter how wondrous our world becomes, the news will always horrify us.--Caplan

After the $15 NYC minimum wage law, roughly 77 percent of NYC restaurants have slashed employee hours. Thirty-six percent said they had to layoff employees and 90 percent had to increase prices following the minimum wage hike, according to a NYC Hospitality Alliance survey taken just one month after the bill took effect.

According to Politico, the Trump administration is in the process of drafting an executive order that will “tackle Silicon Valley’s alleged anti-conservative bias”.

The essence of America’s aspiration, however imperfectly realized, is that no one should be “fatally fixed for life.” Hence the constant need to refresh the nation’s commitment to a life of constant social churning by forces beyond the control of politics and of government with its bias toward the status quo.
People often lament the “impersonal” economic forces that shape the lives of individuals and communities. But personal forces, meaning political forces, are rarely preferable. Often they are more bitterly resented, because they are seen and felt to be personal.--Will
A good point. People demand that justice be blind. They think of this in terms of criminal justice but tweaking the legal system to benefit a few people close to politicians for economic reasons is no less offensive.

Wow! Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) criticized her former chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, on Wednesday for using “divisive” language to “target” the more moderate members of the Democratic caucus. Pinocchio bites Geppetto! Film at 11!

At the broadest level, peer-reviewed research has shown that individuals with major mental disorders (those that substantially interfere with life activities) are more likely to commit violent acts, especially if they abuse drugs. When we focus more narrowly on mass public shootings — an extreme and, fortunately, rare form of violence — we see a relatively high rate of mental illness.

According to recent research, at least 59% of the 185 public mass shootings that took place in the United States from 1900 through 2017 were carried out by people who had either been diagnosed with a mental disorder or demonstrated signs of serious mental illness prior to the attack, defining mass shooting as events in which four or more victims are killed with a gun within a 24-hour period at a public location in the absence of military conflict, collective violence or other criminal activity, such as robberies, drug deals or gang turf wars. Yet somehow this view is controversial.

On this day in 1969, members of Charles Manson’s cult killed five people in movie director Roman Polanski’s Beverly Hills, California, home, including Polanski’s pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate. Less than two days later, the group killed again, murdering supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary in their home. 

                Kronman on Diversity

This is  from Anthony Kronman, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale University and a former dean of Yale Law School from 1994 to 2004, author of a Saturday Essay in the Wall Street Journal “The Downside of Diversity.” Prof. Kronman’s essay is adapted from his new book, “The Assault on American Excellence:” 

“Diversity” is the most powerful word in higher education today. No other has so much authority. Older words, like “excellence” and “originality,” remain in circulation, but even they have been redefined in terms of diversity.

At Yale, where I have taught for 40 years, a large bureaucracy exists to ensure that the university’s commitment to diversity is rigorously enforced—in student admissions, faculty hiring and curricular design. Yale has an Office of Diversity and Inclusion, a Dean of Diversity and Faculty Development, an Office of Gender and Campus Culture and a dizzying array of similar positions and programs. At present, more than 150 full-time staff and student representatives serve in some pro-diversity role

Yale’s situation is far from exceptional. “Diversity and inclusion” is a dogma repeated with uniform piety in the official pronouncements of nearly every college and university. At Dartmouth, the Office of Pluralism and Leadership “engages students in identity, community and leadership development, advancing Dartmouth’s commitment to academic success, diversity, inclusion and wellness.” The University of Michigan proclaims that “diversity is key to individual flourishing, educational excellence and the advancement of knowledge” (see the list and salaries above of the more than 80 “diversicrats” at the University of Michigan). At the University of Oklahoma, students are required to complete a mandatory “Freshman Diversity Experience” by the end of their first semester.

That diversity should be a value seems beyond dispute. The existence on campus of a range of beliefs, values and experiences is essential to the spirit of inquiry and debate that lies at the heart of academic life. Who wants to go to a school where everyone thinks alike? But diversity, as it is understood today, means something different. It means diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. Diversity in this sense is not an academic value. Its origin and aspiration are political. The demand for ever-greater diversity in higher education is a political campaign masquerading as an educational ideal.

….

The politically motivated and group-based form of diversity that dominates campus life today discourages students from breaking away, in thought or action, from the groups to which they belong. It invites them to think of themselves as representatives first and free agents second. And it makes heroes of those who put their individual interests aside for the sake of a larger cause. That is admirable in politics. It is antithetical to one of the signal goods of higher education.

……

Motivated by politics but forced to disguise itself as an academic value, the demand for diversity has steadily weakened the norms of objectivity and truth and substituted for them a culture of grievance and group loyalty. Rather than bringing faculty and students together on the common ground of reason, it has pushed them farther apart into separate silos of guilt and complaint.

Equity vs. Equality

A religious person who says the world is coming to an end is a crank. A secular person who says the world is coming to an end is an eco-warrior. A religious organization that says the end times are nigh is an apocalyptic cult for suicidal weirdos like the Branch Davidians of Waco, Texas. A secular body counting down to the apocalypse is an environmental organization worthy of millions of dollars of government funding.--Gomes

Went to the writing course. It's been a long time since I've been in an environment like this. Mostly older amateurs; some professional technical writers. It was fun being off on a working day. Long and productive taught by an emotional guy who would periodically weep during readings. The people I talked to said the whole weekend was really worth the time and money. (I'm way too early for that.)
22 people in the class, 6 were males.
The criteria for quality is vague, but most critics have a template for it.
The teacher said he thought that Frodo and Sam in LOTR were the best protagonists in English fiction.
Raymond Chandler is the most imitated writer in English.

The WSJ just gave John Wick 3 a good review.

Intelligence collected by the U.S. government shows Iran’s leaders believe the U.S. planned to attack them, prompting preparation by Tehran for possible counterstrikes, according to one interpretation of the information. Gee, that's never happened before.

Is economizing of value? Is it necessary? Is economizing possible in socialism?

Much of the high-growth 19^th century the U.S. had high tariffs. But back then the U.S. also had either no or low taxes on other economic activities, little regulation by government, secure private property and contract rights, a culture of entrepreneurship, and open immigration.
So, pick your correlation.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled sweeping new legislation on Thursday that would impose a federal cap of 15% on credit-card interest rates. And ceilings create shortages. But their motives are good.

Americans lose five times more money gambling each year than they spend on Amazon Prime and Netflix combined.

In reviewing the poor performance of black kids on the selective school entrance exams, the New York Times summed up that either “1) the test is flawed and not accurately capturing the best and brightest students, or 2) the test is fair, and the schools that are preparing these children are bad.”
This is simplistic thinking. It is reminiscent of the old joke where a man is searching in the dark for his lost car keys under the light of a street lamp. His friend asks, "Did you drop the keys here?" and he answers, "I don't think so but the light is better."

From a WSJ op-ed: The U.S. imposes higher anti-dumping duties on China than on any other country, and these duties have increased over time, particularly as they have been imposed together with duties countering Chinese subsidies. Relief from the burden of this recent surge of trade remedies is at the top of China’s agenda. Some of these U.S. trade remedies are legitimate under the rules of the World Trade Organization. Others, however, reflect the considerable influence on American administrative outcomes of trade-challenged U.S. industries—an egregious example of American crony capitalism.

On the foreign side of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, Ex-Im’s beneficiaries were similarly well-funded. A vast majority of these companies had ready access to capital, and were as large as the domestic beneficiaries. These clients belonged to the Who’s Who of the airline industry, with names like Emirates Airline, Lion Air, and Ryan Air. Also among the foreign beneficiaries was Pemex, the Mexican state-owned oil and gas company.


                                Equity vs. Equality

Peterson has a nice evaluation of the gender/equality lever that has been recently inserted into social and political discussion. Buried in the equity/equality confusion is, I think, the denial of diversity. A part:

The mantra of Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity (DIE) perhaps constitutes the primary identifying factor of the tiny minority of radical collectivist ideologues that nonetheless have come to dominate the humanities and social sciences in Western universities (and, increasingly, the HR departments of corporations). Of these three, equity is the most egregious, self-righteous, historically-ignorant and dangerous. “Equity” is a term designed to signal “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 equality before the law and equality of opportunity.

Equality before the law means that each citizen will be treated fairly by the criminal justice and judicial systems regardless of their status — and that the state recognizes that each individual has an intrinsic value which serves as a limit to state power, and which the polity must respect. There is likely no more fundamental presumption grounding our culture.

Equity is a whole different ballgame. It is based on the idea that the only certain measure of “equality” is outcome—educational, social, and occupational. The equity-pushers axiomatically assume that if all positions at every level of hierarchy in every organization are not occupied by a proportion of the population that is precisely equivalent to that proportion in the general population that systematic prejudice (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) must be at play. This assumption has as its corollary the idea that there are perpetrators (the “privileged,” for current or historical reasons) who are unfair beneficiaries of the system or outright perpetrators of prejudice and who must be identified, limited and punished.

…..

The truth of the matter is that there is no excuse for the equity doctrine. Its proponents virtually never attend to or discuss the occupational 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 in addition to whatever role counterproductive and genuine prejudice still plays. They don’t think through the policy implications or, if they do, are still apparently willing to grant to themselves the bureaucratic power to implement by force the changes theoretically necessary to balance the scales, despite being aware of the magnitude of such actions. They haven’t contended at all (to note this vitally important point once again) with the data indicating 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 far-from-unreasonable trade-off).

....

Instead they use the doctrine of equity as a moral weapon, in service of their fundamental claim: men—particularly Western men—unjustly and cruelly dominate, historically and currently (ignoring all the biological reasons for sexual differences in outcome; ignoring the reality of fundamental cooperation that most truly characterizes healthy male-female relations now and in the past). 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.

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 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. It should be roundly rejected (at whatever reasonable personal cost that might be incurred) by anyone who takes the idea of the excessive left seriously, who is concerned in any genuine sense with the increasingly destructive polarization of our political discourse, and who wants to stand up and be counted when the radicals come knocking—or pounding—at the door.

Inequality: Cause and Effect

The inequality of income and fortunes is essential to capitalism; it is its source and its outcome. Diversity --variety--provides the impetus for competition. And some sorting out of value results. So inequality is both the unperceived cause the perceived effect of competition.
So competition reveals the truth.
Remember the observation by deTocqueville: I know of no other country where love of money has such a grip on men's hearts or where stronger scorn is expressed for the theory of permanent equality of property.

The effect in the U.S. is curious:

Equality/Diversity

I've always thought skepticism and belief were two sides of the same coin. So it is with diversity and equality.

Inequality is a lot more than a pejorative toward a culture, it is the opposite side of the diversity coin. Diversity is a challenge to the status quo, a threat to the mundane. Perhaps that is why it upsets people, because it is culturally jarring. But it, like its fraternal twin inequality, is the engine of growth, of change. Variety give the culture an option. Sameness is static.

Americans believe in the consent of the governed. You are not just equal before the law, you are equal to cast a vote on those who would lead. A new citizen is exactly like an old and your cultural value is a given and is shared. Conformity is not a prerequisite. That is a profound equality. But for many--especially the Europeans--that is not enough. There is an element in the West that sees diversity and inequality not as part of the process in a culture but as a result of the decision, the judgment of history. Those that are unequal are not participants but, instead, have been defeated and are in need of rescue.

So the real question in the drive for equality is which distinctions--and freedoms-- to suppress.

Equality/Diversity

Equality or diversity


James Damore, formerly of Google, has opened a can of worms.


Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller writes the following:

The human sexes and races have exactly the same minds, with precisely identical distributions of traits, aptitudes, interests, and motivations; therefore, any inequalities of outcome in hiring and promotion must be due to systemic sexism and racism;

The human sexes and races have such radically different minds, backgrounds, perspectives, and insights, that companies must increase their demographic diversity in order to be competitive; any lack of demographic diversity must be due to short-sighted management that favors groupthink.

Regrettably the basic proposition in these two arguments are diametrically opposed.


If the sexes and races don’t differ at all, and if psychological interchangeability is true, then there’s no practical business case for diversity. If there are no differences then it does not matter who you hire.


On the other hand, if demographic diversity gives a company any competitive advantages, it must be because there are important sex differences and race differences in how human minds work and interact. For example, psychological variety must promote better decision-making within teams, projects, and divisions. Yet if minds differ across sexes and races enough to justify diversity as an instrumental business goal, then they must differ enough in some specific skills, interests, and motivations that hiring and promotion will sometimes produce unequal outcomes in some company roles. That is to say, if diversity offers differences in outcomes then those diversities should be exploited. So, if demographic diversity yields any competitive advantages due to psychological differences between groups, then demographic equality of outcome cannot be achieved in all jobs and all levels within a company.


So, psychological interchangeability makes diversity meaningless. But psychological differences make equal outcomes impossible. Equality or diversity. You can’t have both.
Weirdly, the same people who advocate for equality of outcome in every aspect of corporate life, also tend to advocate for diversity in every aspect of corporate life. They don’t even see the fundamentally irreconcilable assumptions behind this ‘equality and diversity’ dogma. (some from Rod Dreher)

True Only to Itself

Diversity: True Only to Itself

Originally diversity meant exotic, interesting. Nobody hoped for diversity that was, for example, criminal or perverse or insane or degrading. Diversity always had an underlying assumption, that of quality. Diversity always implied an enhancement of one's life or circumstance with "the different," the hard personal view fleshed out. At the worst, it would be spice.

That very element, the element of specialness, was its undoing. Specialness opposes sameness and, while we encourage elitism in our political and thought leaders, we hunt it to ground in us. Diversity changed and became egalitarian in its most destructive way. One could no longer pick and choose diversity, find one edifying or expansive and reject one less so. Diversity became un-judged. Random. When we encounter a community that practices mutilation, we open our hearts and turn our minds away. Like art, the diverse was true only to itself. Everything is of equal value. Equality became sameness.

 Diversity is no longer a celebration of human breadth and scope. It is a weapon against quality.