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Its a shame that people insist on dragging their prejudices halfway across the world instead of leaving them behind - just human nature I guess. Im glad there's

Its a shame that people insist on dragging their prejudices halfway across the world instead of leaving them behind - just human nature I guess. Im glad there's litigation happening now. Drag it to the surface and expose it so we can kill it. Prejudice is bad for society and bad for business. It is making decisions based on inaccurate assumptions, and its failing to value talent appropriately. It's sacrificing competitiveness by allowing for bad decision making. Its also morally wrong, but I think the competitiveness argument is gonna be the more convincing one. Let's leave caste in the last century where it belongs.

ohyes 6y ago
Kinda depressing that marketplace efficiency is more compelling than moral/ethical good, but I guess it is a sign of the times.
- __s 6y ago
  Always has been
- vikramkr 6y ago
  In cases like this where marketplace efficiency is aligned with moral good, I think we should embrace using it as a tool/weapon to accomplish the moral good. You've got to use the tools you got, and I don't see using capitalistic means to argue for ending discrimination as automatically meaning you personally value markets more than morals. Markets are a tool. When I use a power drill to drill a hole - it's not really about the drill - it's about wanting the hole. Same idea.
- pembrook 6y ago
  Marketplace efficiency is a moral good. The more efficiently we allocate resources, the more we lift people out of poverty around the globe. Increasing marketplace efficiency is the headline story of the last 100 years of human history. Billions of people are now living indoors with electricity, have running water, reliable food supply chains, and are killing each other less due to marketplace efficiency. You won’t hear that story on the news of course.
  - abyssin 6y ago
    Is it market efficiency or is it cheap energy?
    - tasuki 6y ago
      Where does cheap energy come from?
      - abyssin 6y ago
        From vast, non renewable natural stocks found in the ground.
  - shi314 6y ago
    What if increasing marketplace efficiency is just a by product instead of cause of great change? I mean main objective of business is wealth maximisation of shareholders and management (in modern times). It has nothing to do with efficient allocation of resources. The country that alleviated most people from poverty is a communist country. Communism uplifted a poor nation Russia to become one of the Superpower in 20th century.
    - pembrook 6y ago
      You may want to check where you got your history information from. You're correct, the country that alleviated the most from poverty is a communist country. But it wasn't Russia. It was China. And China did it by privatizing and opening up its markets to capitalism (and by capturing the subsequent efficiency gains). Not by command-and-control allocation of resources by a central body. China lifted roughly 850 million out of extreme poverty over the past 30 years according to the World Bank...more than the 6X the population of Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China Yes, the main objective of business is wealth maximization. But to create wealth (without stealing it), you must create value for other people. Theft is a zero sum game. Value creation is not. The search to create value by millions of different individual actors is how resources are so much more efficiently allocated in free market economies. Russia has still reduced poverty by roughly 10-20% since the fall of the USSR via more open markets. The reason this number isn't even larger, is because of widespread theft (see the above paragraph) by a corrupt oligarch class. This is super common in any country with lots of oil and no democracy (ask Venezuela for more info).
afandian 6y ago
Speaking about dragging prejudices half way across the world, the British administration seem to be responsible in large part for this legacy. It's not just "an Indian thing". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India#During_British_rule_(1857_to_1947) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India#During_B... (edit: why not read the Wikipedia article, it's a matter of fact)
- vikramkr 6y ago
  Edit: before downvoting the comment I'm replying to - this is actually a pretty well known scholarly thing - not a fringe conspiracy theory. The British created a legal system that crystallized caste into law using their own interpretation of caste and class, and that system did not reflect whatever existed before. That's not to say they invented caste, but the modern form definitely was implemented by them. It definitely is. They made it rigid (and potentially even made up parts of it - it's hard to tell exactly since the brits kept the records...) and enforced it in law as a part of their usual divide and conquer/put a a selected minority on top so they're loyal to you strategy (like [edit: Belgians] likely did in Rwanda). And now you've got a ton of Indians parroting stuff about caste that's not even obviously a an original pre-colonial part of Indian culture in any obvious way. Even the section in the vedas about castes/varnas coming from different parts of the body doesn't have 100% scholarly consensus of being original[0]. It's a mess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_(Hinduism)#The_Vedas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_(Hinduism)#The_Vedas
  - mssundaram 6y ago
    I have argued this same point on HN before and even an Indian didn't believe me. It's very deep rooted misunderstanding
  - iguy 6y ago
    This is indeed a common point of view among some scholars. But scholarship on such things tends to be very politicised. If the essence of caste is about who you marry, then we now have excellent genetic evidence that it was a very big deal long before any Europeans showed up. It's simply not factual to claim that it arrived on a boat. (There are of course regional gradients and class gradients in English patterns of descent over the last millennium, but nothing like the archipelago of India.)

ohyes 6y ago

Kinda depressing that marketplace efficiency is more compelling than moral/ethical good, but I guess it is a sign of the times.

__s 6y ago
Always has been
vikramkr 6y ago
In cases like this where marketplace efficiency is aligned with moral good, I think we should embrace using it as a tool/weapon to accomplish the moral good. You've got to use the tools you got, and I don't see using capitalistic means to argue for ending discrimination as automatically meaning you personally value markets more than morals. Markets are a tool. When I use a power drill to drill a hole - it's not really about the drill - it's about wanting the hole. Same idea.
pembrook 6y ago
Marketplace efficiency is a moral good. The more efficiently we allocate resources, the more we lift people out of poverty around the globe. Increasing marketplace efficiency is the headline story of the last 100 years of human history. Billions of people are now living indoors with electricity, have running water, reliable food supply chains, and are killing each other less due to marketplace efficiency. You won’t hear that story on the news of course.
- abyssin 6y ago
  Is it market efficiency or is it cheap energy?
  - tasuki 6y ago
    Where does cheap energy come from?
    - abyssin 6y ago
      From vast, non renewable natural stocks found in the ground.
- shi314 6y ago
  What if increasing marketplace efficiency is just a by product instead of cause of great change? I mean main objective of business is wealth maximisation of shareholders and management (in modern times). It has nothing to do with efficient allocation of resources. The country that alleviated most people from poverty is a communist country. Communism uplifted a poor nation Russia to become one of the Superpower in 20th century.
  - pembrook 6y ago
    You may want to check where you got your history information from. You're correct, the country that alleviated the most from poverty is a communist country. But it wasn't Russia. It was China. And China did it by privatizing and opening up its markets to capitalism (and by capturing the subsequent efficiency gains). Not by command-and-control allocation of resources by a central body. China lifted roughly 850 million out of extreme poverty over the past 30 years according to the World Bank...more than the 6X the population of Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China Yes, the main objective of business is wealth maximization. But to create wealth (without stealing it), you must create value for other people. Theft is a zero sum game. Value creation is not. The search to create value by millions of different individual actors is how resources are so much more efficiently allocated in free market economies. Russia has still reduced poverty by roughly 10-20% since the fall of the USSR via more open markets. The reason this number isn't even larger, is because of widespread theft (see the above paragraph) by a corrupt oligarch class. This is super common in any country with lots of oil and no democracy (ask Venezuela for more info).

afandian 6y ago

Speaking about dragging prejudices half way across the world, the British administration seem to be responsible in large part for this legacy. It's not just "an Indian thing". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India#During_British_rule_(1857_to_1947) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India#During_B... (edit: why not read the Wikipedia article, it's a matter of fact)

vikramkr 6y ago
Edit: before downvoting the comment I'm replying to - this is actually a pretty well known scholarly thing - not a fringe conspiracy theory. The British created a legal system that crystallized caste into law using their own interpretation of caste and class, and that system did not reflect whatever existed before. That's not to say they invented caste, but the modern form definitely was implemented by them. It definitely is. They made it rigid (and potentially even made up parts of it - it's hard to tell exactly since the brits kept the records...) and enforced it in law as a part of their usual divide and conquer/put a a selected minority on top so they're loyal to you strategy (like [edit: Belgians] likely did in Rwanda). And now you've got a ton of Indians parroting stuff about caste that's not even obviously a an original pre-colonial part of Indian culture in any obvious way. Even the section in the vedas about castes/varnas coming from different parts of the body doesn't have 100% scholarly consensus of being original[0]. It's a mess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_(Hinduism)#The_Vedas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_(Hinduism)#The_Vedas
- mssundaram 6y ago
  I have argued this same point on HN before and even an Indian didn't believe me. It's very deep rooted misunderstanding
- iguy 6y ago
  This is indeed a common point of view among some scholars. But scholarship on such things tends to be very politicised. If the essence of caste is about who you marry, then we now have excellent genetic evidence that it was a very big deal long before any Europeans showed up. It's simply not factual to claim that it arrived on a boat. (There are of course regional gradients and class gradients in English patterns of descent over the last millennium, but nothing like the archipelago of India.)