As much as I support equality and diversity, I'm even more strongly opposed government over-reach. The state shouldn't have a say in who gets a job at a private (non owned by state) company.
As the article state, I hope this will get over-turned by the courts.
This would set a bad precedent. If the state can dictate the kind of person gets a highly coveted job, what else can state dictate?
They aren't saying, "you have to hire this person". They're saying you can't hire exclusively this type of person that currently dominates the top of society.
Given that these boardrooms don't diversify themselves, what is the actual problem with it?
No one was fired.
I understand the appeals to equity vs equality. I'm saying this is a subtle distinction hinging on who is making choices and how. I don't want the government deciding who is diverse enough or historically oppressed enough or underrepresented enough. It will get it wrong far too often.
Plus, by making this a factor, you're just kindling actual racism by pitting white males against everyone else. The resentment created by rejecting someone for their gender or color of skin does not subside just because the attributes happen to be white and male.
I get the intention, but fighting racism with racism just doesn't work.
No, that's not what Federal anti-discrimination law says. It only says you can't refuse to hire certain people on the basis of a protected characteristic (of which race is one, but not the only one). It says nothing about refusing to hire certain people for other reasons that don't have to do with a protected characteristic.
(Btw, corporate boards of directors aren't even "hired"; they aren't employees. So it's not even clear what, if any, Federal anti-discrimination laws about hiring and employment would apply to them.)
> Given that these boardrooms don't diversify themselves, what is the actual problem with it?
There are two actual problems. One is that you can't have a government that only exercises its power wisely. For every mandate the government makes that happens to move things in the right direction, there will be many more that move things in the wrong direction. The people who are attracted to government jobs where they get to tell other people what to do aren't benevolent helpers; they're people who like power. All history shows that such people are precisely the people you don't want telling other people what to do.
The second problem is that dictating that people of certain races must belong to corporate boards is just as wrong as dictating that people of certain races can't belong to corporate boards. Both are looking at something that is irrelevant to the actual job, which means they aren't actually improving the corporations; the corporations can still do just as much damage as they did before, just now they'll be doing it with a "diverse" board.
The only real way to fix corporate governance is for people who would do better jobs than the board members of current corporations to form their own corporations and out-compete the current corporations.
I wasn't referring to Fed Discrimination Laws. I was referring to the California law. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
> The people who are attracted to government jobs where they get to tell other people what to do aren't benevolent helpers; they're people who like power. All history shows that such people are precisely the people you don't want telling other people what to do.
Why do you think that's not already the world we live in? Police officers are the epitome of this. I'm just not convinced things get much worse with this.
> The second problem is that dictating that people of certain races must belong to corporate boards is just as wrong as dictating that people of certain races can't belong to corporate boards.
I disagree with this. They are vastly different. One is completely excluding a group from the table. The other is ensuring that a group has a spot at the table. And boards, in particular, are the type of position where there are many qualified people. If we did a controlled study I'd be shocked if there was a negative difference in performance of companies with Black board members.
> The only real way to fix corporate governance is for people who would do better jobs than the board members of current corporations to form their own corporations and out-compete the current corporations.
In order to do that you have to fix a bunch of other stuff in society as well. Companies don't live in a meritocratic bubble.
Umm you can have an all white board with the new law.
In other words, you've just reinvented Plato's Republic. Historically, the closest things to this have been societies like the Puritans or Geneva under John Calvin, or in the 20th century, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. How well did those experiments in "managed care" work out?
The closest thing to it in today's world is probably China or North Korea. If you think that's a good idea, you're welcome to go live in one of those countries.
> Unfortunately short of that we’re likely to never have real equality.
We won't have "real equality" even with such a draconian plan, because the inconvenient truth is that every human being is a unique individual. There is no such thing as "real equality" because human beings are all different. You can't pigeonhole human beings into boxes. You can't "manage" their care so they fit into whatever preconceived utopian fantasy you happen to have. Human beings are free individuals and we all have to figure out for ourselves how best to use whatever we have been given. And since we all get given different things, we are going to end up wanting different things, needing different things, and making different choices. No central planner can possibly comprehend all that. And every time it has been tried, it has ended up costing a lot of lives and a lot of misery even for those who managed not to be killed outright.
I hope you’ll never be in any position of power to realize this “solution”.
It wasn't since you explicitly said "Federal government" in your previous post. I agree that state laws can say different things.
> Why do you think that's not already the world we live in?
I didn't say it wasn't. If you already agree that what I said is the case, then you should be all the more opposed to more of the same.
> I'm just not convinced things get much worse with this.
Any extension of government power makes things worse. If the increment of "worse" seems small with some particular change, well, the phrase "frog-boiling" wasn't coined for nothing.
> One is completely excluding a group from the table. The other is ensuring that a group has a spot at the table.
You are misunderstanding my point. The current state, where many corporate boards are all of one race and one gender, is not a product of government fiat; it's a product of private decisions. But there have been cases in the past where similar states were products of government fiat. Those past government fiats are now pretty much universally agreed to have been very bad things. My point is simply that this is the same kind of thing, and should be considered bad for the same reasons. The issue is not "spots at the table". The issue is government fiat.
> In order to do that you have to fix a bunch of other stuff in society as well.
Like what? If you mean, like certain corporations having huge advantages because they have privileged access to things like loans with government printed money, lobbyists with the ear of government officials, and so on, yes, I agree all those things need to be fixed--and they're all just more examples of government power being misused. As the saying goes, the root problem is not that politicians can be bought but that they have something valuable to sell. That is what needs to be fixed.
> Companies don't live in a meritocratic bubble.
In a free market, where the government did not play favorites at all, they would--they would either have to make and sell something people want to buy, or go out of business. That's the only kind of "merit" that matters to us as consumers. But we can't exercise that ultimate control if the government keeps getting in the way.
I sometimes watch professional sports, in particular basketball. There is very, very little diversity.
My son is in his first year of teaching elementary school. He tells me he is almost alone in the school, gender-wise.
I think this is a very complex topic, with lots of nuances.
https://listingcenter.nasdaq.com/assets/Board%20Diversity%20...
You have to argue that the state shouldn't be able to impose requirements on the situations where it relaxes individual liability, not complain about about the natural rights of corporations (they don't have any).
Yes, exactly. Which is what has happened to women and minorities in this country forever.
What do stocks have to do with it?
I understand the difference between equity and equality, but I don’t know what exactly you mean to imply here, and don’t want to draw any hasty conclusions about this comment.
But as the critical race theory worldview defines it, "equity" involves unequal treatment of people and discrimination (decisions made about how to treat people) on the basis of race.
The idea is to retroactively create equal outcomes, not equal opportunities in the present.
The problem is: a society can't create either equal outcomes or equal opportunities by intentionally discriminating one way or another, since doing so (1) fails to solve problems at their source and (2) creates new problems.
In other words, love is the answer, not hate.
Society can't create equal outcomes, period. People don't want the same things in life. Some want to be of service to other people, some want to be rich so they can buy a yacht. You can't just give yachts to everyone and call that equality.
We do need safety net and equal opportunities
Personally I think the whole idea of equality is stupid because it just makes people compare their life to others instead of thinking about what they want in life. But again if we have to have equality then it's equal opportunities and more importantly, safety net.
Demographics are funny because they're really easy to satisfy. People come from many backgrounds.
This is just one of many restrictions on individual choice we make for the sake of social cohesion. All of us might choose to work for below minimum wage, but there are real risks there, so we ban it. All of understand how one might end up with a board of all white men, but there are risks there as well, so now it's banned. It does not seem like a meaningful restriction for any serious enterprise.
e.g. https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/06/barry-goldwater-decla...
"The two portion so this bill to which I have constantly and consistently voiced objections, and which are of such overriding significance that they are determinative of my vote on the entire measure, are those which would embark the Federal Government on a regulatory course of action in the area of so-called "public accommodations" and in the area of employment--to be precise, Titles II and VII of the bill. I find no constitutional basis for the exercise of Federal regulatory authority in either of these areas; and I believe the attempted usurpation of such power to be a grave threat to the very essence of our basic system of government..."
This law is saying that you must take into account race and gender in your hiring decisions.
> The state shouldn't have a say in who gets a job at a private (non owned by state) company.
that's exactly what the Civil Rights Act does. The state has been telling you how you are allowed to make hiring decisions for a while now.
edit:
And here's Strom Thurmond on the Civil Rights Act:
"This bill would take away the rights of individuals and give to government the power to decide who is to be hired, fired and promoted in private businesses."
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/debate-on-the-c...