Your faith in the market is somewhat undermined by the fact that, say, private universities refused to admit women for centuries and that banks refused to give women loans unless countersigned by their husbands as late as the 1970s.
Maybe the market understood something about the culture of the time. It's something one should look into before assuming we're right and the people who were risking their own money were wrong.
I'm sure the market was reflecting the culture. Either the culture would punish ostensibly profit maximising behaviour, thereby making it not profit maximising, or the decision makers were too prejudiced to innovate.
Either way, political activism could (and did) promote beneficial cultural change where the market had failed to do so.
Yes, political activism can promote beneficial change, but more often it does the opposite. Markets are far from perfect, but they are a much closer approximation to positive social change than political activism, which has done terrible damage over the last century.
And whatever change that you want to promote via political activism can be undone by political activism from the other side.
The most successful societies seem to be the most economically free, we don't see ones anywhere so extreme that diminishing returns have made them worse off.
Depends on what you mean by economically free and what you mean by successful. All the advanced economies have very substantial levels of regulation.
I'm guessing you think the US is the most successful and the most free. From some points of view China is eating its lunch. From a very different point of view, some consider that the Scandinavian countries are doing better.
Yes, this is the point that seems forever to be the blind spot of market absolutists like Richard. A ‘free’ market has never existed and never could. Markets are human creations and they serve and reflect social mores — just like everything else that permits us to congregate into ‘civilized’ groupings. The whole point of America’s experiment with democracy has been to replace the autocratic values that have for centuries structured the effects of markets with democratic values.
Markets are simply tools that can be used for good or evil and everything in between. And they will always and everywhere reflect the priorities of those with the most information, wealth, and power — in other words, markets serve the privileged above all else.
King Trump wants markets all structured to reward his every whim and so he is restructuring different markets every day. Somehow, conservatives seem to think that the marketplace is self-correcting, the proverbial but illusionary ‘unseen hand.’
There has never been such a thing and never will be. The marketplace is ever and always a contested space where winning and losing are really, really big deals (so to speak). ‘Cornering the market’ is always and everywhere the goal and conservatives seem to think that some people should simply be left to their own devices and without recourse when they end-up being herded into one of those corners. So, the slave markets are an obvious example. The whole point of the Civil War was to destroy that market and the truly evil values that structured it. But what Richard seems to think is that it is wrong and impermissible to bring democratic ideas into a marketplace like this not just to destroy it, but to also pass laws and regiulations that prohibit it from happening ever again.
The Epstein thing is exactly the same type of struggle. Epstein created a really extraordinary and robust market for privileged men to engage in unregulated pedophilia. Not only did this marketplace need to be destroyed, but it and all of its enablers and users need to be brought to justice for having used the marketplace for such odious purposes. The fact that this is so hard to do is an extraordinarily strong example (just like the need for a Civil War to end a horrific marketplace for the exploitation of human beings) of why markets cannot by definition or some sort of inherent ‘next to Godliness’ be left to their own devises in a civilized society.
The point of the USofA is to explore how best to regulate and structure markets to serve not just the privileged but the more general common good. The theory of our founders was that this can best be done by applying what were then being born and first applied as democratic principles. It’s not interference in the sacred marketplace that would doom our society. It’s the failure to interfere appropriately, which means with democratic values.
> The whole point of America’s experiment with democracy has been to replace the autocratic values that have for centuries structured the effects of markets with democratic values.
I don't recall any of the Founders saying the point of the Revolution was to restructure markets, rather than to set their own trade policy and not have the Navigation Acts imposed on them.
You wouldn't be making that argument about Epstein if you knew what Hanania thought of him. I don't know if I'd go as far, but there hasn't been any conviction for him "creating a market" for other men. Rather, he was only convicted of his own consumption from that illicit market.
Not sure what you mean about Epstein. Seems pretty clear that, whether or not Epstein was tried and convicted of creating a market for pedophilia, that’s exactly what he did. And a marketplace like that is inherently evil and must be ‘regulated’ by being outlawed. And once you realize that this is obvious, then one has to admit, I think, that markets cannot be understood a sacrosanct per se. They are simply mechanisms used in the conduct of human affairs. I don’t see any understanding of this from Hanania. And as to the Revolution being as much about restructuring and regulating markets, I do admit to ‘floating’ that idea in part because of the legendary direct-action catalyst The Tea Party. 😅
No, it's not "clear". It's not even "clear" that Epstein himself was a pedophile rather than at most an ephebophile whose "victims" presented themselves as legal adults.
The Boston Tea Party was not carried out to "regulate" trade, it was in protest of taxation without representation.
There was also many private universities that refused to admit men. The most famous group, the Seven Sisters (Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Wellesley, Radcliffe, and Vassar), were designed to be the female equivalents of the Ivy League. There were also dozens more female-only private universities.
So both men and women could go to private universities. They just went to different private universities.
In 1940 40% of university attendees in the USA were women.
Women were gradually admitted to universities in the UK in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Universities in the UK date from the 13th century. They were male only for over 500 years.
I am not actually that interested in the admissions policies of Medieval and Pre-Modern England. The article is obviously about 21st century USA.
And your original comment never made clear that you were talking about England. I thought that you meant the USA.
But even in England over the long run, markets worked.
And they have been working in enabling women to go to university for at least 150 years. This undermines your main point that markets don't work in changing admissions policies in education.
Hilarious. You have a very low bar for markets working.
The admission of women to universities in the UK was heavily influenced by politics, including the suffragette movement at the time which had a big focus on women's education.
It was also pushed along by the 1880 Education Act, which made education compulsory for children of both sexes between the ages of five and ten, with government funding available.
My comments are specifically about the USA where the author and likely most of his readers reside.
Medieval institutions are hardly like economic markets in the 21st century USA. The author was clearly not talking about Medieval times. He was writing about the 21st Century.
The 1880 Education Act did not affect university admissions policies regarding women.
To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a Parliamentary act that required universities to admit women. This clearly undermines your case.
The peak years of women’s first enrollment were between about 1880 and 1900. The suffragette movement came afterwards (1900-1914). Even without a suffragette movement, the outcome and timing would have largely been the same. This also clearly undermines your claim.
Your US-centric bias is a weakness, not a defence. But since you raise the issue, Harvard was established in 1636. The first women students were in 1920 in the Graduate School of Education. Female undergraduates were not admitted until WWII (as a temporary measure). It was 1948 before it had its first tenured female academic and Harvard Law School didn't admit women until 1950.
The 1880 Education Act was part of a general movement for women's rights. The first UK organisation promoting votes for women was the National Society for Women's Suffrage founded in 1867. The admission of women was typically highly political even if no parliamentary legislation was involved (the Sex Discrimination Act was passed in 1975). Cambridge University didn't grant women full equality until 1948, an attempt to do so in 1897 having led to a near riot.
I note that you have made no attempt to address my observation about the requirement for women's husbands to cosign loan agreements as late as the 1970s. That was ended in the US in 1974 by the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.
Finally, I note your propensity to re-write your comments after they have been replied to in order to erase your weak arguments. This self-serving tactic renders the thread incoherent. I won't waste any more time on you.
This is so beyond retarded. This is why libertarians can't be taken seriously. Yes, let's tolerate centuries of discrimination, because the market will eventually save us.
You may think it “beyond retarded,” but it is nevertheless true.
It is impossible to “tolerate” something that disappeared generations ago.
In 1940, women made up 40% of university students in USA. In previous years, it was not much different.
Do you actually not believe that women going to universities is not an accomplishment? And do you have any evidence that government legislation or political activism compelled private universities to allow women to enter private universities in or before 1940?
So, yes, market forces played a major role.
And I am not a libertarian. Nor does acknowledging reality make one a libertarian.
You seem to have a basic reading comprehension issue. The fact that women and minorities were barred from entering universities and other institutions is evidence that markets can't solve these issues. At some point government has to step in, make laws, and then enforce those laws. It's one thing to argue that anti-discrimination laws are poorly designed, another to argue that they're completely unnecessary.
You faith in the state is somewhat undermined by the fact that, say, state universities refused to admit women for centuries and that state agenices refused to insure home loans for people in black neighborhoods as late as the 1960s.
More broadly, markets are composed of individuals, who are certainly capable of unjust discrimination. Governments are also composed of individuals, who are also certainly capable of unjust discrimination. At least the market incentivizes actors to stop discrimination when the economic benefit to doing so is overwhelming. Government actors face no such incentives.
Governments are elected by voters so they must appeal to a broad constituency. Their electability is enhanced by the appearance of fairness. So governments certainly face incentives to prevent discrimination.
Why do you imagine that pretty much every government in the Western world has passed anti-discrimination legislation? Why do you imagine that the government is so full of rules designed to ensure impartial decision making, not just between different groups, but between individuals belonging to the same group? Why, to take the simplest of examples, is the age at which you can drive a car no different depending on whether or not the DMV official likes you? Why do you and your neighbour, if your circumstances are identical, pay the same amount of tax?
I don't have a naive view of government. Government is a contested space and different groups at different times are more influential. Governments also reflect the culture in which they are embedded. That is why politics is interesting. But government plays an essential role in ensuring fair treatment and the broad trend has been for government to become better at it ever since the Magna Carta.
Why do you imagine that governments outside of the Western world have not passed anti-discrimination legislation? And why do you imagine that the governments in the Western world that passed anti-discrimination legislation have repeatedly violated their own laws by actively discriminating and encouraging discrimination on behalf of favored groups?
There is no special force that encourages governments to be fair or impartial. Whether the form of government is democracy, dictatorship, oligarchy, or otherwise, power requires maintaining support from the groups that compose the winning coalition; this requires handing out goodies and special favors to key interests, at the expense of those left out. While the rampant cronyism in developing countries is often the most prominent example of this phenomenon, examples closer to home include: Trump passing tariffs on manufactured goods (White blue-collar workers are key to his winning coalition) with special carveouts for business interests inside his coalition; Harris's "Opportunity Agenda for Black Men," which was nothing more than a shameless 11th-hour promise of goodies for Black men, a key coalition group for her; farm subsidies and other special favors for business interests that can credibly promise support in exchange for goodies.
Even the examples you cited include instances of favoritism. Neighbors do not actually pay the same taxes or even the same tax rates: homeowners pay less, married couples pay less, seniors pay less etc.; all are special favors granted to large (in some cases majority) voting blocs that are considered key to gaining power. Even the example of the DMV is an instance of favoritism; the only people not permitted to drive are those who cannot vote (and if you think the reason is safety, note that 16-year-old girls are probably 100x less likely to cause a fatal accident than 20-year-old men).
And of course, I have neglected to mention the ultimate form of government discrimination; all governments discriminate against non-citizens, which is consistent with the self-interest of the citizens who compose winning coalitions. At least markets create incentives to consider the interests of non-citizens, because there exists an economic benefit available to people willing to engage in exchange with non-citizens.
Many non-Western countries have passed anti-discrimination laws, but of course governments reflect national culture and systems of government.
The "winning coalition" is a nice expression, but in practice there are people in every group who vote for each political party: men, women, blue collar workers, students, farmers, investors, retirees etc. Political parties can't completely ignore anyone.
I referred to neighbours in identical circumstances paying the same tax, so your examples of people in different circumstances are irrelevant.
The fact that people in different circumstances are treated differently doesn't mean there is discrimination. The market pays doctors and janitors different amounts too.
You don't have to persuade me of Trump's corruption and cronyism. The fact that he could get elected, however, has a lot to do with the corruption of the information space, and that is a market failure.
Your apparent internationalism was a surprise, but your position (including on drivers licences) often seems to come down to "government isn't pursuing the policies I like". That is life, rather than a coherent political philosophy.
Government does good stuff and bad stuff. Shrinking government doesn't automatically mean you shrink the bad stuff. You may shrink the good. What is sensible is to support the good and oppose the bad. Of course there will be disagreement on which is which.
There seems to be a growing view among the far-right that, with men falling behind, there needs to be DEI for sensitive white men. It’s honestly pathetic, especially since most of these people (BAP, Spencer, etc.) are white supremacists in some form. While this is unlikely to ever scale to something as large as civil right reforms, I would not be surprised given the trajectory of the right if we got woke for whites.
Never said sensitive white supremacist lmao. I was pointing out a direction in the republican party, which purports a narrative that whites are being oppressed, while simultaneously many of those same people believe they are superior. Not sure what you are getting at. Lol
To be fair to Andrews, I think her conclusion at the end of the feminization piece is basically the same as yours: to let markets decide what the ideal percentage of women in the workforce is, rather than engineering it through the law.
Ok, pretty good on markets, less so on sexual discrimination in the workplace. Some--too many--men in a position of authority will absolutely victimize women sexually. Others will prefer men over women for promotions and raises. Others will do both. You don't get an uptick in meritocracy without a legally enforceable, level playing field.
And The Markets (TM) will determine whether or not this is a good way to run a business. At least, I think this is what the original poster would conclude, though he surely wouldn't have picked an example like this, which would make his ideas look terrible.
I feel like I both agree and disagree with this piece. I certainly wish/hope that conservatives would rediscover their former love of the market in lieu of the current fixation on "based-ness" and vice-signaling. And Andrews piece deserves all the criticism it gets because it is so fundamentally flawed. But I think something that Hanania and the old guard of market-conservatives miss is that there are limits to what the market can be trusted to accomplish.
The same market that gives us innovation and creative destruction also gives us Crypto, probably the biggest pyramid scam in human history. It gives us the financialization of the US economy, where extraction of profit and rents is the ultimate goal. This is why we need a strong regulatory government.
Yes, sometimes the government goes too far. Perhaps as Hanania points out, some of the laws and rules were imperfectly crafted? Perhaps some have outlived their usefulness? But without them my guess is that we'd all be in a poorer and shittier country. The genius of civil rights laws is that they allowed women and minorities to compete - and more people competing is better for the economy overall (even if it was worse for underperforming white men).
Great piece, but I do think you should probably address academia, and its relationship to truth-seeking here.
It’s notably a mostly non-market based guild system, and it’s non-obvious how it would be replaced by an equally effective market system. Truth-seeking/effectiveness here mostly is gatekept by the practitioners in that field choosing whether other practitioners (professors) deserve tenure. Many fields are ideologically captured by one group (or gender), which obviously is a result of skill in many cases.
Still, given that there’s largely no implementable feedback mechanism for correction, top-down intervention might be the only option in those cases. For a specific example, it seems plausible that there are genuinely many women who have the traits/interests for research psychology. But that doesn’t mean advocating new norms/guardrails around “toxic femininity” in academic psychology is a bad idea, despite the fair/meritocratic gender disparity.
I don't think it makes sense to just tell people to suck it up when they are discriminated against. Even if markets typically work out, that doesn't mean individuals lack valid torts. If I get blatantly scammed (pay for services never rendered), I expect to be able to sue, even though the market (edit: often might) favor companies that don't commit fraud.
I think it is entirely possible to fix issues with these rulings, that how employees look when interacting with customers can be part of their business (even if not loudly advertised like hooters), and that social atmospheres X group doesn't like don't necessarily constitute discrimination.
I also have a personal loathing of the "men and women are equal but maybe women are better" type quote from Paul Bloom. We rarely talk this way in reverse about men being better and this isn't really making it less of a contest between men and women, so much as at least coming across as potentially kinda snide.
Paul Bloom might've expressed in a very clumsy way what Bo Winegard said in a more accurate way: men are far less likely to cancel you but when they do it's much worse than when women do. Women send you to the time-out chair. Men send you to the gulag.
All Andrews is saying is that male–female differences in truth-seeking are real and can have negative effects in certain contexts. She does not assert overall male superiority, nor does she advocate coercion to restrict the free market.
Aerodynamics, not thermodynamics, in your context.
But regarding thermodynamics, I think it was Lord Kelvin who said that thermodynamics owes more to the steam engine than the steam engine owes to thermodynamics....
So the point you made about evolution also carries over to invention.
"Instead, it’s a piece with an implicit message of social engineering about the need to remake society, with a predetermined “based” conclusion. This is part of a broader problem of right-wing punditry turning away..." Hmm, Andrews' point, I believe, was to stop with the social engineering, take the finger off the scale, and allow men and women to sort out their interests. I also don't think Andrews took "a human problem and made it into a woman problem," certainly not solely. Crime is a human problem, but we have also come to grips with it being mostly a male problem. There are ramifications for group behaviors and there is a price we pay for ignoring that.
That said, Andrews’ analysis should control for the ideological commitments of feminism, a driver of Wokism. Like most political ideologies, it is predisposed to short-circuiting truths that challenge its assumptions. Controlling for this and the effects of the algorithmic politicization of news and social media might temper her critique.
It is worth noting what a historic slog it was to arrive at that procedures for truth-seeking that undergird modern society from the sciences to the judicial system, read Jonathan Rauch's The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. Arriving at truths, that is propositions that correspond to reality, requires a society that values them and knows how to create/discover them. Wokism still has a grip on our institutions of knowledge and subjugates truth to power. Try getting a paper published in Nature on group differences that doesn’t please the powers that be. The market analogy to truth doesn’t take into account the necessary infrastructure needed to create a truth-appreciating and seeking society.
It seems that markets and companies are great at discovering commercial, strategic, operation truths, etc. Their greatness is a combination of selection, incentivization and the ability to deliberate. The latter is the primary difference with natural selection - it's why it took a decade to build OpenAI and it took Darwinian forces millions of years to build a snail.
Without deliberation, the question if conscious design or random natural selection works better is not decided at all, I would say. Stalinism might beat a capitalism in which all companies are governed by Shamans flipping coins. The (typical) market has not enough iterations to work on just selection, unlike some potential trading algorithm, or ML.
This is why the market has not been exactly great at discovering "moral truths", or truths that are morality adjacent. If you believe in Michael Huemer's account of liberalism and moral progress (the world has become more liberal, because we have discovered moral truths, just like we discovered mathematical truths), than surprisingly few of these discoveries (female equality, the decent treatment of animals, citizen rights) had much of a "market component". I would argue, because companies typically do not participate in moral deliberation. They typically roughly take the morality of their employees as a given.
As a strategy consultant I have been in many boardrooms, with otherwise ruthless CFOs, highly capable CEOs, etc. They would have 0 problem with doing unpopular things if they were considered within the moral reach of their business (e.g., firing people) or even engaging in morally risky behavior as long as the topics of ethics they was "commercial" (e.g., agressive tax planning, noncompliance with privacy law). However, they always faithfully complied with woke/climate mandates and beliefs. No one wanted to be the guy in the room to question these. No deliberation, no cost benefit analysis took place. There might have been selection, but no selection + deliberation, the power of markets.
Behind these are all forms of principal agent problems between shareholders an board members, coordination problems regarding "common knowledge" etc. Most markets are not in a state of perfect competition, so have enough slack to go along with false moral beliefs for a very long time.
Therefore, although you must see corporate norms as very strong evidence that you "don't know beter" when it comes to commercial or operational, commercial, strategic truths, it's only moderate evidence when it comes to moral truths. If you have strong reasons to believe they are wrong, you are not irrational to stick to them.
Since the Andrew speech went viral, so many people, (mainly women!) have said to me that, intuitively, she is right. But here's the thing, as much as I appreciate insights from Richard's ultra rational approach to issues, he doesn't do "intuition". And on the essence of Andrew's theme his mechanical analytic approach to the language used, cuts him off from the underlying wisdom of what she is saying.
Which is not so much that 'boys are better than girls at discerning the 'truth' but rather that the male register is more likely to result in/force a resolution which often reveals it, one way or the other.
"In general, people are happiest when they are outdoors and moving. They are less happy when... working."
Unless you get to work outside, swinging around on a rope wielding a chainsaw. Interesting side note, my groundsperson is a groundswoman. I hired her bc shes smart and we get along really well(shes my ex lol). She outperforms many of the men ive hired(or observed, for that matter)for the same position. I like to say she puts alot of men to shame doing a job that puts alot of men to shame. She might never be as strong as a man could be.. or rather, real, useable strength isnt what most people think. Regardless, ill take smart and congenial over strong any day.
"If residual unfair treatment still exists, that is called life"
Theres the rub. Life is unfair. It insults our sense of decency, so we try to correct it, but weve yet to succeed. As dei has shown, you cant be fair to all the people all the time. I agree that what works is what should be pursued. But some people will always be stuck on "fair". Its a very childish notion, and an illusion to boot
Sandra Day O'Connor graduated in the top 10% of her Stanford Law School class but could only get a job as a legal secretary because no law firm would hire a woman as a lawyer. Was that the wise judgment of the markets? In a (perverse) sense, yes, because many (most?) law firm clients did not want women lawyers, but often not for purely economic reasons.
But by the 60s, our society determined that free markets were failing our country, at least as far as opportunities for women and minorities were concerned. Failing our country morally and economically. Congress held extensive hearings where people testified about talented people being refused opportunities based upon bias. The markets were not going to fix this problem.
And the civil rights laws did law firms, and our economy, a great favor: by mandating the hiring of women and minorities, law firms (and other businesses) no longer had to worry about the reaction of their clients and that opened the door to tens of millions of talented, and previously untapped, people.
And the next generation grew up seeing women and minorities in different jobs, eventually in positions of influence.
> As the number of relevant actors in an institution grows, the number of dyads, and therefore the complexity of the system, increases exponentially.
Quadratically! They increase quadratically! "Exponentially" has become the new "literally". It's a word with a specific meaning that doesn't apply here but everyone just uses it to mean "fast"
Yglesias' response was much better, because it was actually about the long-run trend Andrews was discussing. Paul Bloom is correct that both sexes have their pathologies, the point I've made is that cultural group selection has had a long time to operate on male pathologies in areas like politics.
Your faith in the market is somewhat undermined by the fact that, say, private universities refused to admit women for centuries and that banks refused to give women loans unless countersigned by their husbands as late as the 1970s.
Maybe the market understood something about the culture of the time. It's something one should look into before assuming we're right and the people who were risking their own money were wrong.
I'm sure the market was reflecting the culture. Either the culture would punish ostensibly profit maximising behaviour, thereby making it not profit maximising, or the decision makers were too prejudiced to innovate.
Either way, political activism could (and did) promote beneficial cultural change where the market had failed to do so.
Yes, political activism can promote beneficial change, but more often it does the opposite. Markets are far from perfect, but they are a much closer approximation to positive social change than political activism, which has done terrible damage over the last century.
And whatever change that you want to promote via political activism can be undone by political activism from the other side.
It's not one or the other. Successful societies have both markets and government action.
The most successful societies seem to be the most economically free, we don't see ones anywhere so extreme that diminishing returns have made them worse off.
Depends on what you mean by economically free and what you mean by successful. All the advanced economies have very substantial levels of regulation.
I'm guessing you think the US is the most successful and the most free. From some points of view China is eating its lunch. From a very different point of view, some consider that the Scandinavian countries are doing better.
Agreed, but political activism typically produces the worst public policy. And this is particularly true in the 21st century.
Yes, this is the point that seems forever to be the blind spot of market absolutists like Richard. A ‘free’ market has never existed and never could. Markets are human creations and they serve and reflect social mores — just like everything else that permits us to congregate into ‘civilized’ groupings. The whole point of America’s experiment with democracy has been to replace the autocratic values that have for centuries structured the effects of markets with democratic values.
Markets are simply tools that can be used for good or evil and everything in between. And they will always and everywhere reflect the priorities of those with the most information, wealth, and power — in other words, markets serve the privileged above all else.
King Trump wants markets all structured to reward his every whim and so he is restructuring different markets every day. Somehow, conservatives seem to think that the marketplace is self-correcting, the proverbial but illusionary ‘unseen hand.’
There has never been such a thing and never will be. The marketplace is ever and always a contested space where winning and losing are really, really big deals (so to speak). ‘Cornering the market’ is always and everywhere the goal and conservatives seem to think that some people should simply be left to their own devices and without recourse when they end-up being herded into one of those corners. So, the slave markets are an obvious example. The whole point of the Civil War was to destroy that market and the truly evil values that structured it. But what Richard seems to think is that it is wrong and impermissible to bring democratic ideas into a marketplace like this not just to destroy it, but to also pass laws and regiulations that prohibit it from happening ever again.
The Epstein thing is exactly the same type of struggle. Epstein created a really extraordinary and robust market for privileged men to engage in unregulated pedophilia. Not only did this marketplace need to be destroyed, but it and all of its enablers and users need to be brought to justice for having used the marketplace for such odious purposes. The fact that this is so hard to do is an extraordinarily strong example (just like the need for a Civil War to end a horrific marketplace for the exploitation of human beings) of why markets cannot by definition or some sort of inherent ‘next to Godliness’ be left to their own devises in a civilized society.
The point of the USofA is to explore how best to regulate and structure markets to serve not just the privileged but the more general common good. The theory of our founders was that this can best be done by applying what were then being born and first applied as democratic principles. It’s not interference in the sacred marketplace that would doom our society. It’s the failure to interfere appropriately, which means with democratic values.
> The whole point of America’s experiment with democracy has been to replace the autocratic values that have for centuries structured the effects of markets with democratic values.
I don't recall any of the Founders saying the point of the Revolution was to restructure markets, rather than to set their own trade policy and not have the Navigation Acts imposed on them.
You wouldn't be making that argument about Epstein if you knew what Hanania thought of him. I don't know if I'd go as far, but there hasn't been any conviction for him "creating a market" for other men. Rather, he was only convicted of his own consumption from that illicit market.
Not sure what you mean about Epstein. Seems pretty clear that, whether or not Epstein was tried and convicted of creating a market for pedophilia, that’s exactly what he did. And a marketplace like that is inherently evil and must be ‘regulated’ by being outlawed. And once you realize that this is obvious, then one has to admit, I think, that markets cannot be understood a sacrosanct per se. They are simply mechanisms used in the conduct of human affairs. I don’t see any understanding of this from Hanania. And as to the Revolution being as much about restructuring and regulating markets, I do admit to ‘floating’ that idea in part because of the legendary direct-action catalyst The Tea Party. 😅
No, it's not "clear". It's not even "clear" that Epstein himself was a pedophile rather than at most an ephebophile whose "victims" presented themselves as legal adults.
The Boston Tea Party was not carried out to "regulate" trade, it was in protest of taxation without representation.
You’re not really serious about Epstein, right?
Yes, I'm serious that it's not "clear".
There was also many private universities that refused to admit men. The most famous group, the Seven Sisters (Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Wellesley, Radcliffe, and Vassar), were designed to be the female equivalents of the Ivy League. There were also dozens more female-only private universities.
So both men and women could go to private universities. They just went to different private universities.
In 1940 40% of university attendees in the USA were women.
Women were gradually admitted to universities in the UK in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Universities in the UK date from the 13th century. They were male only for over 500 years.
I am not actually that interested in the admissions policies of Medieval and Pre-Modern England. The article is obviously about 21st century USA.
And your original comment never made clear that you were talking about England. I thought that you meant the USA.
But even in England over the long run, markets worked.
And they have been working in enabling women to go to university for at least 150 years. This undermines your main point that markets don't work in changing admissions policies in education.
Hilarious. You have a very low bar for markets working.
The admission of women to universities in the UK was heavily influenced by politics, including the suffragette movement at the time which had a big focus on women's education.
It was also pushed along by the 1880 Education Act, which made education compulsory for children of both sexes between the ages of five and ten, with government funding available.
My comments are specifically about the USA where the author and likely most of his readers reside.
Medieval institutions are hardly like economic markets in the 21st century USA. The author was clearly not talking about Medieval times. He was writing about the 21st Century.
The 1880 Education Act did not affect university admissions policies regarding women.
To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a Parliamentary act that required universities to admit women. This clearly undermines your case.
The peak years of women’s first enrollment were between about 1880 and 1900. The suffragette movement came afterwards (1900-1914). Even without a suffragette movement, the outcome and timing would have largely been the same. This also clearly undermines your claim.
Your US-centric bias is a weakness, not a defence. But since you raise the issue, Harvard was established in 1636. The first women students were in 1920 in the Graduate School of Education. Female undergraduates were not admitted until WWII (as a temporary measure). It was 1948 before it had its first tenured female academic and Harvard Law School didn't admit women until 1950.
The 1880 Education Act was part of a general movement for women's rights. The first UK organisation promoting votes for women was the National Society for Women's Suffrage founded in 1867. The admission of women was typically highly political even if no parliamentary legislation was involved (the Sex Discrimination Act was passed in 1975). Cambridge University didn't grant women full equality until 1948, an attempt to do so in 1897 having led to a near riot.
I note that you have made no attempt to address my observation about the requirement for women's husbands to cosign loan agreements as late as the 1970s. That was ended in the US in 1974 by the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.
Finally, I note your propensity to re-write your comments after they have been replied to in order to erase your weak arguments. This self-serving tactic renders the thread incoherent. I won't waste any more time on you.
This is so beyond retarded. This is why libertarians can't be taken seriously. Yes, let's tolerate centuries of discrimination, because the market will eventually save us.
You may think it “beyond retarded,” but it is nevertheless true.
It is impossible to “tolerate” something that disappeared generations ago.
In 1940, women made up 40% of university students in USA. In previous years, it was not much different.
Do you actually not believe that women going to universities is not an accomplishment? And do you have any evidence that government legislation or political activism compelled private universities to allow women to enter private universities in or before 1940?
So, yes, market forces played a major role.
And I am not a libertarian. Nor does acknowledging reality make one a libertarian.
You seem to have a basic reading comprehension issue. The fact that women and minorities were barred from entering universities and other institutions is evidence that markets can't solve these issues. At some point government has to step in, make laws, and then enforce those laws. It's one thing to argue that anti-discrimination laws are poorly designed, another to argue that they're completely unnecessary.
You faith in the state is somewhat undermined by the fact that, say, state universities refused to admit women for centuries and that state agenices refused to insure home loans for people in black neighborhoods as late as the 1960s.
More broadly, markets are composed of individuals, who are certainly capable of unjust discrimination. Governments are also composed of individuals, who are also certainly capable of unjust discrimination. At least the market incentivizes actors to stop discrimination when the economic benefit to doing so is overwhelming. Government actors face no such incentives.
Governments are elected by voters so they must appeal to a broad constituency. Their electability is enhanced by the appearance of fairness. So governments certainly face incentives to prevent discrimination.
Why do you imagine that pretty much every government in the Western world has passed anti-discrimination legislation? Why do you imagine that the government is so full of rules designed to ensure impartial decision making, not just between different groups, but between individuals belonging to the same group? Why, to take the simplest of examples, is the age at which you can drive a car no different depending on whether or not the DMV official likes you? Why do you and your neighbour, if your circumstances are identical, pay the same amount of tax?
I don't have a naive view of government. Government is a contested space and different groups at different times are more influential. Governments also reflect the culture in which they are embedded. That is why politics is interesting. But government plays an essential role in ensuring fair treatment and the broad trend has been for government to become better at it ever since the Magna Carta.
Why do you imagine that governments outside of the Western world have not passed anti-discrimination legislation? And why do you imagine that the governments in the Western world that passed anti-discrimination legislation have repeatedly violated their own laws by actively discriminating and encouraging discrimination on behalf of favored groups?
There is no special force that encourages governments to be fair or impartial. Whether the form of government is democracy, dictatorship, oligarchy, or otherwise, power requires maintaining support from the groups that compose the winning coalition; this requires handing out goodies and special favors to key interests, at the expense of those left out. While the rampant cronyism in developing countries is often the most prominent example of this phenomenon, examples closer to home include: Trump passing tariffs on manufactured goods (White blue-collar workers are key to his winning coalition) with special carveouts for business interests inside his coalition; Harris's "Opportunity Agenda for Black Men," which was nothing more than a shameless 11th-hour promise of goodies for Black men, a key coalition group for her; farm subsidies and other special favors for business interests that can credibly promise support in exchange for goodies.
Even the examples you cited include instances of favoritism. Neighbors do not actually pay the same taxes or even the same tax rates: homeowners pay less, married couples pay less, seniors pay less etc.; all are special favors granted to large (in some cases majority) voting blocs that are considered key to gaining power. Even the example of the DMV is an instance of favoritism; the only people not permitted to drive are those who cannot vote (and if you think the reason is safety, note that 16-year-old girls are probably 100x less likely to cause a fatal accident than 20-year-old men).
And of course, I have neglected to mention the ultimate form of government discrimination; all governments discriminate against non-citizens, which is consistent with the self-interest of the citizens who compose winning coalitions. At least markets create incentives to consider the interests of non-citizens, because there exists an economic benefit available to people willing to engage in exchange with non-citizens.
Many non-Western countries have passed anti-discrimination laws, but of course governments reflect national culture and systems of government.
The "winning coalition" is a nice expression, but in practice there are people in every group who vote for each political party: men, women, blue collar workers, students, farmers, investors, retirees etc. Political parties can't completely ignore anyone.
I referred to neighbours in identical circumstances paying the same tax, so your examples of people in different circumstances are irrelevant.
The fact that people in different circumstances are treated differently doesn't mean there is discrimination. The market pays doctors and janitors different amounts too.
You don't have to persuade me of Trump's corruption and cronyism. The fact that he could get elected, however, has a lot to do with the corruption of the information space, and that is a market failure.
Your apparent internationalism was a surprise, but your position (including on drivers licences) often seems to come down to "government isn't pursuing the policies I like". That is life, rather than a coherent political philosophy.
Government does good stuff and bad stuff. Shrinking government doesn't automatically mean you shrink the bad stuff. You may shrink the good. What is sensible is to support the good and oppose the bad. Of course there will be disagreement on which is which.
There seems to be a growing view among the far-right that, with men falling behind, there needs to be DEI for sensitive white men. It’s honestly pathetic, especially since most of these people (BAP, Spencer, etc.) are white supremacists in some form. While this is unlikely to ever scale to something as large as civil right reforms, I would not be surprised given the trajectory of the right if we got woke for whites.
“sensitive white supremacists?”
Pretty confident that will never scale…
Never said sensitive white supremacist lmao. I was pointing out a direction in the republican party, which purports a narrative that whites are being oppressed, while simultaneously many of those same people believe they are superior. Not sure what you are getting at. Lol
To be fair to Andrews, I think her conclusion at the end of the feminization piece is basically the same as yours: to let markets decide what the ideal percentage of women in the workforce is, rather than engineering it through the law.
Ok, pretty good on markets, less so on sexual discrimination in the workplace. Some--too many--men in a position of authority will absolutely victimize women sexually. Others will prefer men over women for promotions and raises. Others will do both. You don't get an uptick in meritocracy without a legally enforceable, level playing field.
And The Markets (TM) will determine whether or not this is a good way to run a business. At least, I think this is what the original poster would conclude, though he surely wouldn't have picked an example like this, which would make his ideas look terrible.
I feel like I both agree and disagree with this piece. I certainly wish/hope that conservatives would rediscover their former love of the market in lieu of the current fixation on "based-ness" and vice-signaling. And Andrews piece deserves all the criticism it gets because it is so fundamentally flawed. But I think something that Hanania and the old guard of market-conservatives miss is that there are limits to what the market can be trusted to accomplish.
The same market that gives us innovation and creative destruction also gives us Crypto, probably the biggest pyramid scam in human history. It gives us the financialization of the US economy, where extraction of profit and rents is the ultimate goal. This is why we need a strong regulatory government.
Yes, sometimes the government goes too far. Perhaps as Hanania points out, some of the laws and rules were imperfectly crafted? Perhaps some have outlived their usefulness? But without them my guess is that we'd all be in a poorer and shittier country. The genius of civil rights laws is that they allowed women and minorities to compete - and more people competing is better for the economy overall (even if it was worse for underperforming white men).
Great piece, but I do think you should probably address academia, and its relationship to truth-seeking here.
It’s notably a mostly non-market based guild system, and it’s non-obvious how it would be replaced by an equally effective market system. Truth-seeking/effectiveness here mostly is gatekept by the practitioners in that field choosing whether other practitioners (professors) deserve tenure. Many fields are ideologically captured by one group (or gender), which obviously is a result of skill in many cases.
Still, given that there’s largely no implementable feedback mechanism for correction, top-down intervention might be the only option in those cases. For a specific example, it seems plausible that there are genuinely many women who have the traits/interests for research psychology. But that doesn’t mean advocating new norms/guardrails around “toxic femininity” in academic psychology is a bad idea, despite the fair/meritocratic gender disparity.
I don't think it makes sense to just tell people to suck it up when they are discriminated against. Even if markets typically work out, that doesn't mean individuals lack valid torts. If I get blatantly scammed (pay for services never rendered), I expect to be able to sue, even though the market (edit: often might) favor companies that don't commit fraud.
I think it is entirely possible to fix issues with these rulings, that how employees look when interacting with customers can be part of their business (even if not loudly advertised like hooters), and that social atmospheres X group doesn't like don't necessarily constitute discrimination.
I also have a personal loathing of the "men and women are equal but maybe women are better" type quote from Paul Bloom. We rarely talk this way in reverse about men being better and this isn't really making it less of a contest between men and women, so much as at least coming across as potentially kinda snide.
Paul Bloom might've expressed in a very clumsy way what Bo Winegard said in a more accurate way: men are far less likely to cancel you but when they do it's much worse than when women do. Women send you to the time-out chair. Men send you to the gulag.
Exactly. Individuals have a right to fair treatment, not just on average but as individuals.
All Andrews is saying is that male–female differences in truth-seeking are real and can have negative effects in certain contexts. She does not assert overall male superiority, nor does she advocate coercion to restrict the free market.
Aerodynamics, not thermodynamics, in your context.
But regarding thermodynamics, I think it was Lord Kelvin who said that thermodynamics owes more to the steam engine than the steam engine owes to thermodynamics....
So the point you made about evolution also carries over to invention.
"Instead, it’s a piece with an implicit message of social engineering about the need to remake society, with a predetermined “based” conclusion. This is part of a broader problem of right-wing punditry turning away..." Hmm, Andrews' point, I believe, was to stop with the social engineering, take the finger off the scale, and allow men and women to sort out their interests. I also don't think Andrews took "a human problem and made it into a woman problem," certainly not solely. Crime is a human problem, but we have also come to grips with it being mostly a male problem. There are ramifications for group behaviors and there is a price we pay for ignoring that.
That said, Andrews’ analysis should control for the ideological commitments of feminism, a driver of Wokism. Like most political ideologies, it is predisposed to short-circuiting truths that challenge its assumptions. Controlling for this and the effects of the algorithmic politicization of news and social media might temper her critique.
It is worth noting what a historic slog it was to arrive at that procedures for truth-seeking that undergird modern society from the sciences to the judicial system, read Jonathan Rauch's The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. Arriving at truths, that is propositions that correspond to reality, requires a society that values them and knows how to create/discover them. Wokism still has a grip on our institutions of knowledge and subjugates truth to power. Try getting a paper published in Nature on group differences that doesn’t please the powers that be. The market analogy to truth doesn’t take into account the necessary infrastructure needed to create a truth-appreciating and seeking society.
Hmm. I doubt the framework a bit.
It seems that markets and companies are great at discovering commercial, strategic, operation truths, etc. Their greatness is a combination of selection, incentivization and the ability to deliberate. The latter is the primary difference with natural selection - it's why it took a decade to build OpenAI and it took Darwinian forces millions of years to build a snail.
Without deliberation, the question if conscious design or random natural selection works better is not decided at all, I would say. Stalinism might beat a capitalism in which all companies are governed by Shamans flipping coins. The (typical) market has not enough iterations to work on just selection, unlike some potential trading algorithm, or ML.
This is why the market has not been exactly great at discovering "moral truths", or truths that are morality adjacent. If you believe in Michael Huemer's account of liberalism and moral progress (the world has become more liberal, because we have discovered moral truths, just like we discovered mathematical truths), than surprisingly few of these discoveries (female equality, the decent treatment of animals, citizen rights) had much of a "market component". I would argue, because companies typically do not participate in moral deliberation. They typically roughly take the morality of their employees as a given.
As a strategy consultant I have been in many boardrooms, with otherwise ruthless CFOs, highly capable CEOs, etc. They would have 0 problem with doing unpopular things if they were considered within the moral reach of their business (e.g., firing people) or even engaging in morally risky behavior as long as the topics of ethics they was "commercial" (e.g., agressive tax planning, noncompliance with privacy law). However, they always faithfully complied with woke/climate mandates and beliefs. No one wanted to be the guy in the room to question these. No deliberation, no cost benefit analysis took place. There might have been selection, but no selection + deliberation, the power of markets.
Behind these are all forms of principal agent problems between shareholders an board members, coordination problems regarding "common knowledge" etc. Most markets are not in a state of perfect competition, so have enough slack to go along with false moral beliefs for a very long time.
Therefore, although you must see corporate norms as very strong evidence that you "don't know beter" when it comes to commercial or operational, commercial, strategic truths, it's only moderate evidence when it comes to moral truths. If you have strong reasons to believe they are wrong, you are not irrational to stick to them.
Since the Andrew speech went viral, so many people, (mainly women!) have said to me that, intuitively, she is right. But here's the thing, as much as I appreciate insights from Richard's ultra rational approach to issues, he doesn't do "intuition". And on the essence of Andrew's theme his mechanical analytic approach to the language used, cuts him off from the underlying wisdom of what she is saying.
Which is not so much that 'boys are better than girls at discerning the 'truth' but rather that the male register is more likely to result in/force a resolution which often reveals it, one way or the other.
"In general, people are happiest when they are outdoors and moving. They are less happy when... working."
Unless you get to work outside, swinging around on a rope wielding a chainsaw. Interesting side note, my groundsperson is a groundswoman. I hired her bc shes smart and we get along really well(shes my ex lol). She outperforms many of the men ive hired(or observed, for that matter)for the same position. I like to say she puts alot of men to shame doing a job that puts alot of men to shame. She might never be as strong as a man could be.. or rather, real, useable strength isnt what most people think. Regardless, ill take smart and congenial over strong any day.
"If residual unfair treatment still exists, that is called life"
Theres the rub. Life is unfair. It insults our sense of decency, so we try to correct it, but weve yet to succeed. As dei has shown, you cant be fair to all the people all the time. I agree that what works is what should be pursued. But some people will always be stuck on "fair". Its a very childish notion, and an illusion to boot
Sandra Day O'Connor graduated in the top 10% of her Stanford Law School class but could only get a job as a legal secretary because no law firm would hire a woman as a lawyer. Was that the wise judgment of the markets? In a (perverse) sense, yes, because many (most?) law firm clients did not want women lawyers, but often not for purely economic reasons.
But by the 60s, our society determined that free markets were failing our country, at least as far as opportunities for women and minorities were concerned. Failing our country morally and economically. Congress held extensive hearings where people testified about talented people being refused opportunities based upon bias. The markets were not going to fix this problem.
And the civil rights laws did law firms, and our economy, a great favor: by mandating the hiring of women and minorities, law firms (and other businesses) no longer had to worry about the reaction of their clients and that opened the door to tens of millions of talented, and previously untapped, people.
And the next generation grew up seeing women and minorities in different jobs, eventually in positions of influence.
> As the number of relevant actors in an institution grows, the number of dyads, and therefore the complexity of the system, increases exponentially.
Quadratically! They increase quadratically! "Exponentially" has become the new "literally". It's a word with a specific meaning that doesn't apply here but everyone just uses it to mean "fast"
Yglesias' response was much better, because it was actually about the long-run trend Andrews was discussing. Paul Bloom is correct that both sexes have their pathologies, the point I've made is that cultural group selection has had a long time to operate on male pathologies in areas like politics.