Corporations and the Culture Wars
corpgov.law.harvard.edu
corpgov.law.harvard.edu
[citation needed]
As far as I know, the studies show a correlation, but no one has been able to show there's causation. Is anyone aware of a study that shows causation?
Also, what kind of diversity? It would make the most sense that diversity by social class and diversity by subcultural group would make much more sense than, say, having approximately equally privileged people with different skin colors all coming from the same schools.
Magically attributing significant qualities to people because of their race is racism. Magically attributing significant qualities to people because of highly salient surface characteristics is bigotry.
The significant differences between people are primarily cultural. The most powerful generator of value is the mind. There is usually more diversity within most such easily defined groups than there is between groups. Most such divisions result in greatly overlapping normal distributions. This is precisely why we should strive to see the "content of character" within each other.
> Magically attributing significant qualities to people because of their race is racism.
Oh, please.
No. What you described right there is authoritarianism. Is that really how you think it should work? Let me tell you: I've seen people overcoming their toxic "isms" firsthand. It's not done through authoritarianism. It's not done by telling people that they're "morons." Such facile reduction and out-grouping and denigration is precisely the toxicity you're supposedly fighting. People overcome their bigotry by bonding. (I've seen the worst backwoods homophobe become best friends with a gay activist.)
You have it exactly "bass-ackwards" here:
"I know, right, alternatively, maybe diversity forces people to share and empathize other perspectives in order to accomplish a shared goal."
It's the shared goal that compels people to see the basic humanity of other people. If you put the force first, then you 1) reveal something about your internal character and your respect for the self determination of others 2) risk causing counter-productive backlash.
"Political tags -- such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth -- are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."
-- Robert A. Heinlein
Is a Corporation a democracy?
Shared goal in this case is maximizing profit. Did Steve Jobs carry himself like a President of a democratic nation or a benevelent dictator?
Don't lose sight of the context of this article.
Corporations competing in a democratic framework are, to date, the best way of promoting human welfare by producing wealth and distributing power. While corporations themselves are, in the words of Frank Herbert, basically feudal hierarchies, they exist within a framework of (somewhat) meritocratic competition.
Did Steve Jobs carry himself like a President of a democratic nation or a benevelent dictator?
He succeeded through discernment, and a willingness to cannibalize existing business to find the next big thing. Sometimes the way he carried himself and conducted himself was a detriment.
Don't lose sight of the context of this article.
Are you still trying to cling to authoritarianism? Do you think Steve Jobs would have succeeded in an authoritarian society? He credits cultural freedom in his biography for his success. Corporations succeed where they support people's self determination. The true progress of Social Justice has largely been through the removal of undue influences of government and organizations over people due to race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. It's the people who would increase undue influences of government and organizations who are engaging in self serving hucksterism.
Oh, please.
Listen and believe. I've been racially bashed, to the extent that police investigators got involved. I've literally been told that I am a less real and inferior order of human, with less real feelings. I've been in times and places where I could reliably predict what people would be saying to me in the near future, because so many of them would jump to conclusions about me due to race. I literally broke down sobbing in the shower just before I graduated high school, so convinced I was of my inner lesser-humanity -- and all of it was based on things directly said to me.
Racism is reducing someone to their race. To be Liberal is to honor the value of people and to attempt to see a person for their character.
This is why the recent trend of attributing racism and other guilt to people on the basis of their racial characteristics is just about the most racist thing I've ever seen. The fact that such ideas can propagate is another stark indictment of the failure of the education system to get people to actually think.
Another perspective is that race is obvious, and racism is a particular view of race that is passed down through family and culture--so therefore we can only fight racism by consciously acknowledging and addressing it.
No. What I'm actually saying is that it's acerbic groupthink that engenders more acerbic groupthink. It's blame and acrimony that engenders more blame and acrimony. It's an eye for an eye making the whole world blind, as Ben Kingsley's character said in the movie. If it happens to be about race, then it's racism.
so therefore we can only fight racism by consciously acknowledging and addressing it.
We can only fight toxic group-think by acknowledging it. It's hard to acknowledge and easy to fall into. The danger that the struggle against racism would itself fall to such group think is something that both MLK and Gandhi were keenly aware of; a level of self awareness which is starkly lacking today. Ascribing guilt to people on the basis of their skin color, eye shape, nose shape, or any other indelible characteristics is obnoxious and wrong. It's bigotry. People should be judged on the content of their character, not on their characteristics.
That's not what racism and bigotry mean.
Really, not age or gender?
Really. What you think and what you do, how you were raised and how you were educated -- these often matter far more than age and gender -- though not always. Age and gender do also matter a bit. The consequence of being a naturally evolved being, is that such beings are inherently messy. Natural selection isn't fettered by dealing with too many details. The full parallel processing bandwidth of reality itself is the engine that runs the natural fitness function. It's certainly not limited by the particular moral/political wishes of Homo sapiens. (Also, our particular moral/political wishes, while they arose from evolution, should not be modeled on something so inhumanly amoral as evolution.)
But as far as being generators of value, it's mental factors which matter the most by far. This is why people should be judged by the content of their character.
But age and gender have huge effects on what you think and what you do, how you were raised and how you were educated.
To name just one example: because of Title IX, women who went to school in the U.S. prior to 1972 (tens of millions of people) had fewer opportunities in various sports, clubs, committees, activities, and even academic programs, than women to attended school in, say, the 1990s. These differences during childhood have produced differences in the careers, personalities, mindsets, and expectations of women of different generations.
This is just one specific difference in childhood that plausibly leads to different adult outcomes based on age and gender.
I haven't seen you provide any specifics. Instead what I see is vague pablum that reduces to "all people are different and each individual is unique." While that is true to some extent, by itself, that sentiment does not acknowledge or engage with the very real differences that people alive today experienced during their lives, based on their age, gender, race, ethnic background, nationality, etc.
> This is why people should be judged by the content of their character.
See, the problem is that you come out of a particular narrow formative experience too, which has affected your ability to neutrally judge the content of a person's character. You're not alone; it's true of everyone.
That's why looking at measurable diversity is important. The accusation that it's racist is beside the point; everything about human society in 2018 is affected by age, gender, race, etc. Intentionally and consistently considering diversity is how we consciously address and compensate for what would otherwise be hidden or unconscious bias and rejection.
You are right that mental factors matter most. But different mentalities are impossible to measure directly, and impossible to intuitively understand, because we are each limited by our circumstances. We know that different mentalities arise from different circumstances, so we must consciously consider a diversity of circumstances.
On a side note I want to say thank you for keeping this discussion open, honest, and civil -- conversations on this subject rarely are.
I think that's a fantastic starting point!
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." -- Thomas Jefferson
Reworded for the 21st century: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all are created equal; that they are endowed from their being with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
We know that different mentalities arise from different circumstances, so we must consciously consider a diversity of circumstances.
So why not just directly measure viewpoint diversity and strive for that, then? Also, a diversity of circumstances is not absolutely equivalent to a diversity of race. To pretend otherwise is also racist.
What you take as a starting point, I see as a distant goal that will take a lot of hard and uncomfortable work to reach.
> So why not just directly measure viewpoint diversity and strive for that, then?
By all means, go for it. If you can figure out how to do that you will become a very successful person.
> Also, a diversity of circumstances is not absolutely equivalent to a diversity of race.
Of course not, but in 2018, without any diversity of race in a collection of people, you will not achieve a diversity of circumstances that is representative of America.
Why does the population of every organization need to be a precise statistical match based solely on the average racial and sexual makeup of a country?
It's not perfect, but it's a heck of a lot closer than it used to be. That quip from Blazing Saddles isn't a lie, you know. People used to want to work with Black people before they'd work with the Irish. Irish peasants were even poorer than contemporaneous American slaves! Now where has that attitude gone?
What you take as a starting point, I see as a distant goal that will take a lot of hard and uncomfortable work to reach.
By "starting point" I mean as a foundational principle. I certainly wouldn't disagree that humanity has far to go. We're not going to get there with an authoritarian attitude like, "The beatings will continue, until morale improves." The 21st century version is, "The toxic groupthink and mass-guilt by race will continue until attitudes around race improve!"
By all means, go for it. If you can figure out how to do that you will become a very successful person.
How about through a calm human analysis of internal message boards, accompanied by a policy of not firing people for reasonable opinions?
Woo, totally agreed.
>Magically attributing significant qualities to people because of their race is racism. Magically attributing significant qualities to people because of highly salient surface characteristics is bigotry.
Now come on...
>There is usually more diversity within most such easily defined groups than there is between groups.
Your comment leads me to believe that you think this is true of groupings like race but not of groupings like social class, why?
Read carefully please. This is precisely why I made pains to mention that it's the mind which is the most powerful generator of value. Cultural influences are powerful and malleable all at the same time. How is it that Chinese immigrants on almost every continent, across hundreds of years of history, can arrive on new shores in the middle of the "poor" class, but have their grandchildren succeed? Why is it that Jewish and Italian migrants moving to almost the same parts of different cities all around the world achieve success, but in completely different industries from each other, but the same corresponding industries by ethnic group?
Culture is stronger than Livelihood.
Both culture and livelihood are far more significant than the amount of melanin in your skin and the shape of your eyes and nose.
It's the mind that generates value and makes us human!
Overall, we can probably safely say that
1. Too little diversity can be bad. For example, if you are making a product or a TV show that wants to reach as many people as possible, you should be aware of what those people would most want, and having your designers encompass those groups can help there.
2. Too much diversity can be bad. If your team all have different native languages then communication can be slower; if your team has extremely varied opinions on what you should be doing, you'll have many arguments; etc. Overall, an effective team needs focus and unity, and shared backgrounds can help there.
3. For political reasons, studies supporting 1 are far more likely to be conducted and published than 2. But that doesn't mean either that 2 is not true (which might seem the case because no studies support it) nor that 1 is not true (which might seem the case because of the political publication bias).
It's the kind of diversity which is the most critical. It's mental diversity -- point of view diversity -- which should be the important factor.
Mirta Galesic and others at the Santa Fe Institute have done a lot of work on this topic: https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/mirta-galesic
It seems this type of racism and bigotry is quite fashionable in the media, because it has the veneer of beneficence, when in reality it is patronizing.
Moreover it appears that many who espouse this viewpoint are also the loudest critics of racism. It reminds me of how sometimes the biggest homophobe is actually a closet homosexual.
This may be true, but I suspect that the reason for the "diversity effect", if any, is simply that it creates diversity of ideas. Whether that arises from cultural differences, biological differences, or some other source is likely immaterial.
There is some evidence that novelty-searching is more productive overall than goal-searching, at least in some contexts (video of a talk on the subject by its principal researcher, Ken Stanley, PhD: https://youtu.be/dXQPL9GooyI). Perhaps diversity contributes simply by increasing novelty within the organization---it's not that people are doing things better, but that they are doing them differently.
I would expect that it makes more sense the other way 'round if the correlation has reversed causation. Bigger companies that do better can afford to move past having boards that are as effective as possible, to boards that also optimize for other factors like virtue-signalling "diversity" to shareholders.
They do this by bringing on "diverse" board members. But, since they are still also optimizing for the particular mindset that executes the company's existing strategy well, those board-members' diversity is as skin-deep as possible, because they don't actually want to change any of the board's dynamics.
By analogy: a board is a very naive hill-climbing algorithm. It really doesn't want (and its shareholders don't want!) it to climb down from a local maxima in search of a global maxima. The local maxima is achieved by everyone on the board being a certain way, thinking a certain way. So, despite whatever pandering they might give to "diversity", true diversity of viewpoint won't happen as long as the company is still beholden to short-term profit optimization.
This is one of the things that always struck me as odd in my undergrad economics classes. That somehow we can realistically de-couple our actions in one domain (work) from those of another (politics) when in fact they all lie in the space of human action. This is where I found myself in agreement with Mises - in that all actions have impact socially and thus all economic activity has a social impact.
Thinking or behaving otherwise is a cop-out and a way to try and mentally compartmentalize behavior - it's cognitive dissonance and I see it all the time when people try and "separate" their work life from their personal life. It's a synthetic distinction.
So for example if you do something you don't truly believe in or morally support for your work, then having psychological distance between your work and personal life makes more sense because you aren't staking "who you are" in your work. So you decide to define "who you are" in the other portions of your life.
Again, this seems to be cognitive dissonance at it's finest.
>Those of us who came from a business background remember our business ethics in university well. The running joke, from start to finish, is a thank you for compiling together the things we should walk carefully and carry a big stick while doing.
People have much more control over their actions outside of work though. Not to describe a strict compartmentalization but a diminishment towards your actions at work makes sense. I define "who I am" much more by what it is I do outside of work because I have actually have control over what it is that I do once I walk out of the office.
My question is, does making that distinction benefit or damage information about networks/markets?
Marx and Engels would have called this, "alienation." I think that they are onto something in this dimension of their critique. Isn't a part of the startup ethos a rebellion against this?
My understanding is that with a startup you eliminate the distinction between work-mode and personal-fulfillment mode, thus making yourself 100% productive/engaged and 0% alienated.
Agreed it's somewhat arbitrary and rigid but pretty necessary for making economic decisions and yeah, a division that is hard to cultivate at the personal level - the hours you spend "working" are also shaping you as a person.
Whenever I see these sorts of controversies blowing up, I always wonder if it wouldn't have been better for the company to just play deaf and not acknowledge the controversy to begin with.
This is common sense. Persons are best judged by their actions. As Shakespeare once wrote, you can tell where people are truly crazy by how they spend their money.
Google can not monetize Alex Jones on YouTube yet they allow the content to still exist and Google pays the bills in supporting through infrastructure cost.
They should just remove when no advertisers.
Why on earth would someone buy a subscription for content that has NO ads?
Can you explain?
Are you being satirical? Because ads are terribly annoying, a waste of my time, and I prefer not to be manipulated into buying things I don't need.
Why your comment on buying a subscription for something without ads does NOT make any sense?
You can have a left and liberal party, but when cooperations support you- all that will be left is a liberal party.
You can have a right-wing and conservative party, but when cooperations support you- all that will be left is a big interst- conservation party.
Cooperations with a surplus of influence, will use that influence to corrode away the containment system of the state. Thats why they are taxed. If they are not taxed, the contained usefull accid eats through the stomache and kills societys stability. And in a wicked, twist, as there is always a biggest fish- something like amazon, can burst free- and become state instead of the state.
Unfortunatly, people trading on non-amazon plattforms, have to pay a little extra, for the disruption they cause to the logistic masterpiece.
Its not a tax. Its your ticket to a priviliged life style.
Have you paid your prime today?