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Comment by tudorconstantin | Hacker News Reader

If for the same amount and quality of work the law firms has to pay 40% more for men, shouldn't they hire women exclusively?

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Or why don't the women band together and setup their own firm? They can charge 20% less and still earn double.

Discrimination exists, but markets are usually pretty good at squeezing it out and punishing it.

The entirety of human history puts lie to this false assertion, and the continued necessity of laws to prohibit such behavior shows that nothing has changed. The market is more than willing to put up with a gross inefficiency if it reinforces the dominant narrative and market participants have shown themselves ready to collectively make less if it means that members of disfavored groups make much, much less.

>The market is more than willing to put up with a gross inefficiency if it reinforces the dominant narrative and market participants have shown themselves ready to collectively make less if it means that members of disfavored groups make much, much less.

I read your post as pinning it on the selling-side, but I'm not sure thats true; it seems more reasonable to me that the market would naturally stamp out discrimination on the seller-side unless its being enforced by consumers; ie if the population in general distrusts women leading a firm, and thus gives them less business as a result, then their market value is actually lower, because they can't fairly compete. So the market is being efficient given the nature of the environment. It might be better off in a different environment.

The free market usually fails to discriminate, because people are more greedy than they are bigots. This is why government help is enlisted to enforce bigotry - often in the form of required licensing, limiting the number of people entering a career, etc.

The free market discriminated against black people in the US very effectively, even after the government attempted to enforce non-discrimination (see redlining).

Jim Crow made discrimination legally mandatory, because greed kept undermining voluntary discrimination.

See "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" by Woodward.

If discrimination exists in firms hiring policies, it also likely exists with clients hiring policies.

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