A math professor who objects to diversity statements

(What I'm getting at is that the problem's not the voting system, it's something else).

If you figure out how to develop those, please include Britain on your speaking tour.

I particularly rebut any suggestion that the Tories organised the referendum. That's only true at the most superficial reading. The whole farrago (pun intended) was founded by fringe nutters in the party, offered as a sop by the party leadership, and co-opted and orchestrated by interests inimical to the nation. (There is a case to answer for treason.)

Ever since the first referendum to join the EU in 1975, the anti-Europe faction of the Tory party was muttering in dark corners.

They gathered political strength at the fringe, slowly bolstered by drips of propaganda such as Boris Johnson's baseless claim, as a journalist, that the EU regulated the bendiness of bananas. In 2013, a nameless senior Tory in the orthodoxy coined the phrase "swivel-eyed loons".

Boris Johnson, may he swing, is every bit as much a fabricator as Donald Trump. If truth enters his speech, it's because it got lost.

_Aside: English politics has always been a straight left-right axis, with the left split between Labour and Lib Dems but the right united in the Tories. Labour had always had a strong socially-conservative constituency, but social conservatism has never been a campaign theme, AFAICR, beyond "tough on crime", which is a cheap vote-winner for anyone anywhere. The Labour Party is relatively new, but the Tories and Lib Dems trace their ancestry back to the same Tory-Whig axis that America inherited. Brexit turned that axis into a quadrant, with the LDs united but with the Tories and Labour split._

After they dicked over the plebs with austerity in a recession, the nation was angry with neoliberals, and the anti-EU gang fed on that. Not without reason, given how Greece got the shaft to protect German investors.

Campaigning for an outright majority in 2013, Cameron (a widely-used nickname for Pigfucker) offered the loons a referendum to keep them inside the tent; if the right split, it would have been a huge embarrassment for him. At that point, an anti-EU platform would not have taken many votes, but they would mostly have been Tory votes.

The Tories were already a neoliberal govenment, and they were blithely confident that they would win the referendum - it was a free hit for the loons, which was supposed to shut them up for another decade. Cameron had nothing to gain except silencing an annoying sideshow. He was already five years into an aggressive neoliberal strategy.

He shrugged off the power of bullshit stories such as "bendy bananas" and "Romanian squatters", despite the fact that they were in the Sun (proles), the Mail (proles with pretensions of intelligence), the Spectator (unintelligent toffs), and the Telegraph (obedient middle class). My apologies if you take the Spectator for the cartoons.

Despite their swivelly eyes, the Leave campaign acquired a huge war chest - namely, money from forex speculators and from Russia, which tells you exactly who benefits.

_Aside: London has been a haven for Russian money since glasnost. Russian oligarchs had been funding the Tories for years. Russia had total access to English politics up until the 2022 sanctions. The report from the inquiry into Leave campaign irregularities was suppressed._

The Leave backers brought in Steve Bannon, fresh from Trump's campaign. Bannon is not a great talent, but, in the milieu of English political campaigns, he was ahead of the curve. England was unprepared for bare-faced lies being astroturfed on Facebook.

Meanwhile, Cameron burned his war chest on fucking leaflet drops.

Cameron failed to generate any positive talking points, and expected to win by default. He argued that we'd become poor if we left Europe, which did little to sway working-class voters whom he had spent 6 years impoverishing. This arrogance was reflected by Gove's soundbite "people in this country have had enough of experts".

A new constituency emerged: "gammon", named for their ruddy complexions; choleric boomers, typically educated and middle-class but who long ago waved goodbye to curious intelligence, susceptible to and active on Facebook. These people are not as bad as your American fox news zombies, but of the same ilk - spittle-flecked rants at the breakfast table, "simple common sense", highly emotional yet sublimely certain of their own rationality. These chumps did not have a legitimate grievance against the government or the EU; their apoplexy was inchoate; they were merely channeled by the grifters.

Combine the gammon with the uninformed working class plebs, who bought into the threats of waves of gypsies arriving from Romania and mixed it with baseline sentiment against immigrants from all countries, and also the huge constituency that just wanted to give the arrogant neoliberals a black eye, and you have a win against the odds for Leave.

Excuse my rambling. It's hard to be concise when you're incandescent with fury.

What now? Well, economics isn't really that complex.

Rule 1. Don't print money - it distorts the natural flow of information and incentives through the market, leading to misallocations.

Rule 2. Get rid of fractional reserve banking. It's an unnatural privilege that other companies would be forbidden from engaging in (it's considered fraud if you don't have a banking license). This forces all interest bearing investment to take place through funds that expose their actual risks and liquidity constraints to investors.

When it's possible to save money risk free because banks can't loan it out and there's no monetary inflation, the moral hazard evaporates and you can allow funds to collapse if they make persistently bad investments. There is no longer any need for bank bailouts.

Recessions can still happen in such a world, because mass hysteria and utopian thinking is a part of human nature. There's no law you can pass to stop people getting over-excited about dotComs or AI startups. You just have to let people work out the true value of these things themselves.

And this

https://youtu.be/GTQnarzmTOc

:-)

Debt and money printing are intimately linked in our system, to the extent that they're nearly the same thing, which is why I used them interchangeably.

If you go back a few hundred years, money printing was pretty simple: the King wanted more money than he could raise through tax to pay for a war, so he'd debase the currency by reducing the quantity of gold in it. We don't use gold anymore so there's no theoretical limit on how much money can be created.

The creation of central banks introduced an indirection. Nowadays governments pretend to not print money. Instead they always "borrow" it. Sometimes this is actually legitimate borrowing, because the lender is someone domestic or foreign who has some surplus currency and wishes to earn interest on it. But very often the lender is the central bank. The central bank is described as independent, but in fact is just another arm of the government. It is granted special powers by law, and in many countries (e.g. the UK) the head is appointed by the government, answers to government and their salary is paid by taxes. Specifically the Central Bank is allowed to type a higher balance into its own computers, and banks are required to respect that balance. So the Treasury issues bonds, and the CB buys those bonds with newly "typed in" money, and this is just an obfuscated way for the government to print money in the end. They literally borrow from themselves.

You may wonder what happens to the interest payments, if the government is borrowing from itself. The answer is that the Treasury pays the central bank which keeps the interest payments for a while ... and then the Treasury takes them back!

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/nov/09/bank-of-eng...

Repayments meanwhile simply disappear, the money is wired to the central bank and then deleted. This really puts into perspective how meaningless the whole charade really is.

> The former stimulates the economy at the roots, the latter generates immediate employment and long-term wealth.

Well, spending on welfare is an economic depressant, you're paying people to not work. The second part is on firmer ground: Keynesians argue that the government should spend abstractly on "infrastructure" during recessions to stimulate employment (in the construction sectors primarily), and this will create wealth.

But this argument also has great problems. It's not yet as discredited as counter-cyclical monetary policy. You'll see governments refer to this concept routinely. However it doesn't work, conceptually:

1. With only a few exceptions if an infrastructure project was actually worth it the private sector would want to be building it already (because it'd have clearly positive ROI). The exceptions are ones where you need eminent domain to seize large quantities of contiguous land, which pretty much means railways, airports and roads (but usually not roads these days). So either the government can simply take over private sector activity, which doesn't actually improve the economy (same stuff gets built), or it can invest in things with expected negative ROI.

2. Governments have a long track record of being very bad at calculating infrastructure ROI.

The problem is that there are very limited opportunities to build heavy transport projects these days. Look at the difficulties the UK has faced with HS2, Heathrow third runway etc. You have to demolish a lot of homes and people don't like it, and environmental law offers many opportunities for delay, so in practice by the time an infrastructure project gets off the ground the recession was already years in the rear view mirror.

Combine these things and infrastructure spending by governments, counter-cyclical or not, often ends up just being a waste of resources, or very ambiguous at best. The poster child for this problem right now is Belt & Road, although in the past EU spending was also famous (Spain's airports to nowhere, etc). An airport in a place with no demand i.e. not a city, is not literally digging a hole and filling it again, but it's somewhat similar from an economic perspective. You move a lot of earth and in the end it's not useful for much.

> I understand them to say of 2008:

That's not quite what they say about 2008 no lol :)

von Mises would have done nothing in 2008. Just let the recession proceed without interference until it reaches its natural end. Fundamentally those houses just weren't worth much and the debt was bad, no way to go back in time and fix that, so you just have to take the economic hit and let things shake out. It sucks but you can't unspill milk, better to focus on what went wrong and how to avoid a repeat.

The Austrian analysis of 2008 is that it was caused by government interference in the market, specifically, governments became very keen on the idea of everyone being able to own their own home. US law and regulation was changed to strongly incentivize banks to issue mortgages, in particular, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac started buying up pretty much any mortgage going even if it wasn't a good investment, but that didn't matter because the government was always willing to take them. Eventually it all came tumbling down. The fix would therefore be (a) stop government interference in the housing market, (b) forbid fractional reserve banking, which is why banks have to be bailed out when they fail.

COVID certainly saw stimulus be used, but I didn't say that's when Keynesianism was discredited. It's really happened during the post-pandemic recovery period.

The US claims to be experiencing strong growth right now, but there are reasons to be a bit skeptical of that. Opinion polls that have historically always tracked reported economic performance have now diverged significantly, with people telling pollsters that they feel the economy is poor whilst the government announces that it's actually doing great. This leads left wing economists like Noah Smith to claim that there's suddenly a sort of ignorance crisis in which people have suddenly stopped being able to assess their own economic security. I think it's more likely that US data has gone bad, ably assisted by a very pro-Biden civil service. For example one metric they use to measure economic strength is job openings, but read any thread about the job market on HN and you'll see lots of highly skilled people struggling to find work along with many reports of what appear to be fake job openings, held open just to collect CVs.

In Europe what we see is very weak or non-existent growth when controlled for inflation despite truly vast levels of immigration, i.e. real economy is probably shrinking in the UK:

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-constant-pri...

Did shrink in Germany:

https://archive.is/F2IX2

And inflation has reached very high levels.

For an Austrian "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon". The post-COVID inflation is for them entirely a function of stimulus, which you'd expect to have a delayed impact in that case because when the stimulus money landed in people's bank accounts everywhere people might spend it was closed. The economy reopens, travel becomes possible again and that money starts flowing out of the bank. Inflation appears immediately, exactly as expected.

Again it's a clearer picture in Europe. The UK started rapidly raising interest rates at the start of 2022, just as COVID was ending. Two years of lockdowns had left the economy in a terribly weakened state, nobody in the UK would claim the boom times were back, yet the BoE left Keynesianism behind and ramped up interest rates to levels last seen just before the last crisis in 2008. Back then they reacted by dropping rates to zero. This time they reacted by raising them to historical norms. A pretty clear repudiation of Keynes.

Although to be fair, dominance of ideological liberalism is probably ending, but it yet has to manifest in practical policies. In practical terms, value of (2) is the most important for the middle class, in contrast with value (3) which is the most important for the working (bottom) class, and value (4) which is the most important for the ruling (top) class. So the decline in the middle class (being teared apart by social inequality) in the US is changing the ideological dominance of (2). It's really just another way of reframing my point about liberalism causing its own demise.

That's why, when I am talking about importance of (3) compared to (2), I am not talking about just the bottom of social hierarchy, i.e. giving something to poor people to eat so they don't die (this is actually more based on value (1) than (3)). The value of (3) is also about having a political power (and democracy), and as such the top of the social hierarchy (to which liberalism is oblivious to) needs to be addressed as well. Value of (2) cannot do much about abuse of power by billionaires, for instance. It's simply out of the scope - as far as liberals are concerned, their existence and economic influence is fair and square. And that's why it can lead to fascism. (And we can see in practice, US is not very democratic at the moment, the will of majority of people is ignored in actual policy, but the will of the rich people prevails.)

Addendum (rereading my previous comment): Historically, the hubris that lead to suffering you describe under totalitarian communist regimes was ideological ignorance of value (2) (or (4) for that matter) when implementing (3), as in the circumstances of the communist revolutions, the (3) becomes a cultural hegemon. I think the left mostly learned from that, i.e. you can't have (3) without respecting (2), and also revolutions are tricky (meaning attaining anything without respecting (4) can be bloody). Today however, we are in a different situation, (2) has the cultural hegemony, and so the understanding that (3) is important has been lost to some extent, due to the same ideological hubris (but this hubris of liberals also exists towards conservatives, i.e. value (4), showing that it really comes from its ideological hegemony).

Everyone (well at least everyone reasonable) agrees with the former. The latter on the other hand feels like a totally different set of skills than what a professor does, and it feels unfair to expect that out of someone who doesn't have the inclination to do that (or to bring it in terms suitable to the HN crowd, the same way it is toxic when companies push good engineers into management against their will or as a requirement in order to advance)

"one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal."

"But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right."

"The elimination of all social and political inequality,” rather than “the abolition of all class distinctions,” is similarly a most dubious expression."

Lenin also says:

"Even the most dull-witted and ignorant person can grasp the fact that individual members of the nobility are not equal in physical and mental abilities any more than are people belonging to the “tax-paying”, “base”, ‘low-born” or “non-privileged” peasant class. But in rights all nobles are equal, just as all the peasants are equal in their lack of rights."

"It means giving all citizens equal opportunities of working on the publicly-owned means of production, on the publicly-owned land, at the publicly-owned factories, and so forth."

Marx absolutely was opposed to equality of outcome, and had a lot of conflict against other leftists on this point. He was against class as a source of inequality, but he recognized that people have unequal capabilities and unequal needs.

I'm not a Marxist, but I actually read a bit of what he wrote - the difference between the words people typically put in his mouth and what he says is gigantic. This is an example. Marxism was a successful ideology over other leftist ideologies is in a huge part because it did recognize that people aren't equal, and that it based it's critique on capitalism on far more than that.

That isn't what it looks like from the outside. The explanation circulating for how Claudine Gay ended up president of Harvard is that Harvard's DEI office was allowed to veto any candidate who wasn't diverse.

Why? The fact that they are under represented is enough evidence, at least according to the left.

Unfortunately, for a lot of groups, low application rates are part of the problem. Not enough people are encouraging members of these groups to apply and not enough members of these groups figure out on their own that applying to things are worthwhile.

Everyone I met in college applied to college (of course!), but far too many had stories about how their high schools actively discouraged them from applying to fancy colleges.

You're setting up a false dichotomy: people are the same and diversity is neutral or some people are better and diversity is bad.

You seem to be assuming that its perfectly knowable which groups are “best”, and that we should therefore assemble teams strictly out of those people. My contention is that this is hubris and instead we should bring together lots of different types of people, then let them figure it out.

Who is prohibiting who from reading what today? Unless you're going to get pedantic about restricted access to classified or erotic materials, anyone can read anything they want whenever they want.

>Please try to think clearly and critically. You seem angry.

Yes, I am thinking clearly and critically which is why I'm telling you that "diversity" is merely a front to engage in flagrant discrimination.

Yes, I am angry that I am being asked to be racist and sexist after being taught and raised to treat all men equally and fairly.

What the fuck are you even talking about?

Affirmative Action was struck down because it is racist.[1]

[1]: https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-affirmative-action-...

>Making systemic changes hurts and feels unfair, but it's far from the racism that motivated discrimination in our past.

It is unfair when the "answer" is just turning the discrimination gears in reverse. The way to end discrimination is to, unsurprisingly, end discrimination and treat everyone equally and fairly.

You know what I feel if I'm barred from something because I dared to be born to Japanese blood? I feel anger and resentment towards the fools who judged me for the color of my skin rather than the quality of my character, for refusing to see me as just another American.

Sincerely screw discrimination with a rusty spork and may it die in a fire. Absolutely noone deserves to be treated better or worse than another for reasons not concerning their character or capabilities.

>Where does this idea come from? I can recognize the disparities of the present. I can make actions to undo those. This isn't some fault I need to feel guilt for, it's just a reasonable outcome of understanding the past that lead to the current present, and a desire to change that present

Children are born with no crimes or sins to their name. Whatever their ancestors might have done, that is of absolutely no liable consequence to them. If someone seriously tells me to apologize and pay amends for Pearl Harbor or Nanking or whatever else before my time because I'm Japanese, I am going to sincerely tell them to fuck off and pound sand.

I have a JD and passed the bar. I know that a “protected class” is for all people and all manifestations of a trait, not specific identity groups.

It was plain to me that DEI, HR, and Legal teams were not explaining the law, but rather using their position as experts-with power and good intentions-as a pretext to conduct activism through ambiguity and deniability that look virtuous to them and Orwellian to me. And that it was working, because my managers and teammates were positively convinced that “protected class” means exclusively “minority.”

I went through HR training that said “only a manager can discriminate under the law - anyone can engage in harassment.” This is insane as a statement of law, because harassment _is_ discrimination [1]. But it makes sense when they’re trying to get unwilling ICs to endure pervasive “anti-racist” discrimination that isn’t intended as harassment. Flag the misstatement to Legal and it’s “huh, we don’t know how that happened, we’ll look into it.” (Read: we already signed off on the risks of this wording.) Rinse and repeat every training cycle, where it’s a full rewrite of the module with no continuity.

One of my first questions in trying to make sense of seemingly-insane trainings was “wait, is this that ‘CRT’ thing I heard about that everyone says is just a right-wing bogeyman that doesn’t actually exist?”

And it sure is easier to just call it “CRT” and laugh it off than to argue whether it’s even a thing that happened.

If the corporate activists were transparent like Rufo, they’d say “hey, we think discrimination laws are behind the times, and we can’t just wait around for them to change. We need to combat demographic disparities by shifting our culture in hiring and conflict resolution. Here’s how we expect you to promote that, and we’re prepared to indemnify you and defend these values in court.” I expect many people would get behind that, and I would truly respect their honesty in it.

Instead they try to have it both ways, and polarize people with irreconcilable values into each thinking the company has their back.

If you’re on the receiving end of a discrimination suit and try to say you were following company policy, the lawyers will hang you out to dry: “That wasn’t company policy, it was a peer exercise with no managerial oversight or involvement. That wasn’t a required training, it just had an attendance goal (of 90%) and your manager wasn’t authorized in pushing it. As a ‘safe space,’ it wasn’t even recorded for us to know what went on there. It was led by an external contractor who is obviously not an agent of the company. Of course cis white men are a protected class, and anyone who treats them differently is illegally discriminating.”

[1] “Harassment is a form of employment discrimination” https://www.eeoc.gov/harassment