4 ms·

It's worth pointing out we as a society are allowed to optimize for more than just shareholder value and the growth of our GDP.

chatterbeak 8y ago
Yes, but we're FORCING people to, not ALLOWING them to
a_bonobo 8y ago
It would be interesting to see how this works out over time - perhaps the 'worse' female CEOs bring in their entire networks, which will over time widen the pool of potential candidates, which over time will bring in better candidates, leading to better shareholder values?
- gizmo686 8y ago
  What network? This is a macro scale policy because at the macro level there were far fewer women board members then men. Unless you are suggesting that this will attract significant women from outside of California, this mechanism cannot have a net effect. What will probably happen is that there will be some improvement (possibly crossing into the positive) once the women get more experience. The nature of the problem (and timescale of the solution) demanded an influx of inexperienced board members which should smooth out over time.
  - ramblerouser 8y ago
    If performance worsens over time, would you see it as evidence that women are just less interested in certain jobs?
    - gizmo686 8y ago
      No. The worsening performance suggests that the pool of women large enough to populate the board seats that the law now requires is less good at doing so then the pool of men they are displacing. Given the limited evidence available, even that statement needs qualifications; however the evidence presented says nothing about why those populations differ. My not entirely thought out belief is that if the issue is interest, we would expect to see less of a performance drop than if the interest was ability [0]. Actually, if performance continues to degrade, that would likely just be a sign that whatever negative effect is being observed takes more than ~3 months to fully materialize. [0] Although, even thinking about this for a moment, I can envision a bunch of situations where this would invert.
gizmo686 8y ago
And doing so should still be informed with evidence and knowledge of what trade offs we are making. Having said that, I think the much more informative way of looking at this is as if it was the result of an experiment. If your hypothesis is that the previous inbalance was due to bias in hiring boards of directors, then you would expect shareholder value to increase when that bias is countered (thereby moving towards more optimal behavior). Those of us who have been arguing that that hypothesis would be extraordinary if true are gratified that the evidence does not seem to support it [0]. Now, returning to the original law, what is our justification for it? There seems to be no evidence of an economic justification, and (as I mentioned above) claims that it is to counter a direct bias also appears to be contradicted by the evidence. The only "reasonable" justification I can see is that it is an attempt at social engineering. In my judgement, it is a very crude and ill considered attempt. Additionally, it is an attempt that necessitates dismantlementing many of the legal protections that its proponents [1] fought so hard for. The unreasonable justification (which is the one I actually think to be most accurate), is that law is an attempt to garner support from a political base by politicians who have realized that effective governing is bad politics. [2] [0] Of course, there are still plenty of explanations for that hypothesis which is consistent with the reported data. For instance "shareholder value" is not an entirely objective quantity. "Shareholder value" also does not claim to be a complete measure of economic health. EDIT: Perhaps more damning for looking at this as an experiment is how far beyond the margins it went. Maybe a forced 10% increase in women board members would have been imidietly beneficial and the results we are seeing here are from overcorrecting against the bias. Or maybe the results are from the sudden change in board makeup irrespective of the quality at either end of the change; or from the influx of less experienced board members (if there were enough experienced women, there would have been no need for this law); or from the disproportionate stupidity of applying such a strict quota on groups as small as boards of directors. As it turns out, not only are these bad properties for experiments to have; they are bad properties for public policy as well. [1] Broadly considered as the social movements behind them. At the individual level, many of the individuals in said movements are from a new generation who were not part of the fight for said rights. [2] A more scary variant of this is that that nature of our politics is such that it selects for people who believe this is what good governing looks like. There is probably more truth to this than I would like to admit; but until I am force not to, I am going to keep believing that our lawmakers secretly know what they are doing.

chatterbeak 8y ago

Yes, but we're FORCING people to, not ALLOWING them to

a_bonobo 8y ago

It would be interesting to see how this works out over time - perhaps the 'worse' female CEOs bring in their entire networks, which will over time widen the pool of potential candidates, which over time will bring in better candidates, leading to better shareholder values?

gizmo686 8y ago
What network? This is a macro scale policy because at the macro level there were far fewer women board members then men. Unless you are suggesting that this will attract significant women from outside of California, this mechanism cannot have a net effect. What will probably happen is that there will be some improvement (possibly crossing into the positive) once the women get more experience. The nature of the problem (and timescale of the solution) demanded an influx of inexperienced board members which should smooth out over time.
- ramblerouser 8y ago
  If performance worsens over time, would you see it as evidence that women are just less interested in certain jobs?
  - gizmo686 8y ago
    No. The worsening performance suggests that the pool of women large enough to populate the board seats that the law now requires is less good at doing so then the pool of men they are displacing. Given the limited evidence available, even that statement needs qualifications; however the evidence presented says nothing about why those populations differ. My not entirely thought out belief is that if the issue is interest, we would expect to see less of a performance drop than if the interest was ability [0]. Actually, if performance continues to degrade, that would likely just be a sign that whatever negative effect is being observed takes more than ~3 months to fully materialize. [0] Although, even thinking about this for a moment, I can envision a bunch of situations where this would invert.

gizmo686 8y ago

And doing so should still be informed with evidence and knowledge of what trade offs we are making. Having said that, I think the much more informative way of looking at this is as if it was the result of an experiment. If your hypothesis is that the previous inbalance was due to bias in hiring boards of directors, then you would expect shareholder value to increase when that bias is countered (thereby moving towards more optimal behavior). Those of us who have been arguing that that hypothesis would be extraordinary if true are gratified that the evidence does not seem to support it [0]. Now, returning to the original law, what is our justification for it? There seems to be no evidence of an economic justification, and (as I mentioned above) claims that it is to counter a direct bias also appears to be contradicted by the evidence. The only "reasonable" justification I can see is that it is an attempt at social engineering. In my judgement, it is a very crude and ill considered attempt. Additionally, it is an attempt that necessitates dismantlementing many of the legal protections that its proponents [1] fought so hard for. The unreasonable justification (which is the one I actually think to be most accurate), is that law is an attempt to garner support from a political base by politicians who have realized that effective governing is bad politics. [2] [0] Of course, there are still plenty of explanations for that hypothesis which is consistent with the reported data. For instance "shareholder value" is not an entirely objective quantity. "Shareholder value" also does not claim to be a complete measure of economic health. EDIT: Perhaps more damning for looking at this as an experiment is how far beyond the margins it went. Maybe a forced 10% increase in women board members would have been imidietly beneficial and the results we are seeing here are from overcorrecting against the bias. Or maybe the results are from the sudden change in board makeup irrespective of the quality at either end of the change; or from the influx of less experienced board members (if there were enough experienced women, there would have been no need for this law); or from the disproportionate stupidity of applying such a strict quota on groups as small as boards of directors. As it turns out, not only are these bad properties for experiments to have; they are bad properties for public policy as well. [1] Broadly considered as the social movements behind them. At the individual level, many of the individuals in said movements are from a new generation who were not part of the fight for said rights. [2] A more scary variant of this is that that nature of our politics is such that it selects for people who believe this is what good governing looks like. There is probably more truth to this than I would like to admit; but until I am force not to, I am going to keep believing that our lawmakers secretly know what they are doing.