Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

Personally, besides a lot of this being self-inflicted, can we just mention how predatory colleges are?

You're a young 17 year old. You can sign on to owe up to over a hundred thousand dollars, if you choose to go to a private college, even though you can't smoke or drink until you're 21 (and, if you live in Mississippi, you aren't legally at the age of majority until you are 21!). Not only that, but it's a really hard debt to get out of and they will strongly pressure your family to cosign, which (should you fail) is a great way to wreck a relationship.

In fact, the 21 thing is pretty dumb anyway. You can get married, enter a lottery, take out over $100K in debt, or join the army and get killed, or gamble away your life savings, or buy gun ammunition, or sue people or get sued, but heaven forbid you buy a beer.

Next, schoolbooks. Ludicrously overpriced, to try to convince you to "sell back" your books at the end of the semester for a pittance. Colleges claim to love diversity - if so, you might consider not price gouging books to oblivion and making it harder for lower classes to afford college, perhaps?

I grew up in Mississippi, and I had never heard of this! I can say that practically it doesn’t make much of a difference: once eighteen, you can still enter into binding contracts, execute estates, sue people, and buy cigarettes[0]. It seems to still mostly apply to drinking, but you’re right. Technically you’re a minor until you’re 21!

[0]: https://minors.uslegal.com/age-of-majority/mississippi-age-o...

Textbooks now just equate to software for homework that happens to include a basically worthless 'ebook'.

When I was getting my bachelors I had a history professor REQUIRE 6 textbooks 5 of which he was author or co-author. I read a lot as it is but reading 5/6 books for 1 class in 1 semester is crazy.

Stop thinking so much. They just want you to pay them. They want your money. Even if you figure it out somehow before you sign in blood, society damn near forces the median human being to go to college as a pre-requisite to survival :)

Actual parasites.

Diversity is mostly a corporate "ideology"

No, corporate adopted it because it’s profitable right now.

Just curious about this: What makes diversity profitable?

When I worked at a Fortune 500 company, their position was that you can't adequately understand and serve your market if you don't hire a variety of people. If everyone at your company is the same culture, ethnicity, etc, there will be quite large gaps in their knowledge for potential market segments.

They had a saying along the lines of "We hire everyone because we sell to everyone."

If everyone at your company is the same culture, ethnicity, etc, there will be quite large gaps in their knowledge for potential market segments.

That is true but it is also true that if everyone is 20-something graduate of the same handful of colleges then a group that looks very diverse isn’t diverse at all in any meaningful sense. This should be called “the Google paradox”.

If they sell products to high school dropouts, do they also hire high school dropouts?

Because the lens of American society has moved beyond the acceptance of overt discriminatory practices in many areas, and business moves with societal expectations to capture money.

Now, go tell a realtor you want a house in a low crime, quiet neighborhood with highly rated schools and they'll know exactly what you are looking for. Or tell the hiring manager that the candidate you interviewed may not "fit well with the team" and that they should keep looking - they'll get it too.

You seem to point to hidden racism, but that doesn't answer the question. I see no discussion of profitability in your examples.

Take the contraposition: being overtly racist or segregationist is not profitable.

How many whites only lunch counters exist today?

I get your point, but I feel that’s a bit off topic. You can definitely lose money by being overtly discriminatory, that doesn’t imply that diversity is a lucrative thing. Not being discriminatory doesn’t imply that you’re promoting/focusing on diversity.

* It resonates with the current socio-political zietgiest, aka the company sounds hip and in-tune with the times. This improves the brand image, and allows the brand to connect more directly with those who share similar views.

* To further the above point, it allows you to position yourself and your brand on the correct side of moral issues. This allows your company to look like it's doing something positive when most companies exist, in a Milton Friedman sense, as soulless money making machines with little regard for anything else. This also allows employees to feel as though they're good/smug/working for a positive organization.

* Floating sensitive soicio-political topics leads to great clickbate, and gets lots of eyes on articles and ads.

* It allows you to sell to larger demographic. This makes you more money via sales.

* It allows you to recruit from larger pools of labor, or at least attempt to appeal to larger numbers of applicants. This allows you to keep labor costs down and/or to find solid candidates from alternative sources.

* There is no serious rebuttal to pushing that agenda. If you push back you're a fascist/ageist/racist/ableist/misogynist etc., and this makes the individual, and/or the brand, look bad.

As a soulless capitalist I'd be hammering those concepts CONSTANTLY in order to expand the bottom line. Actual adoption, like many boilerplate talks about workplace safety, compliance, and sexual harassment, would be as pro forma as possible, so long as the perceptions were met.

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