4 ms·

A lot of people seem to believe that the path to the next generation of American prosperity is playing a series of zero-sum games through demagoguery. I’m not c

A lot of people seem to believe that the path to the next generation of American prosperity is playing a series of zero-sum games through demagoguery. I’m not convinced.

vkou 1y ago
That's not a fair and complete description of their beliefs, they also believe in negative-sum burn-the-furniture-to-stay-warm.
- malfist 1y ago
  Whatever is required to make the next quarter's numbers be higher.
epistasis 1y ago
I'm not even sure that's it's a desire for greater prosperity, honestly. I think it's most about enforcing social hierarchy by race and gender and parentage, though people vary a lot on what they want the hierarchy to be based on. This is a huge change from past visions for America, and will lead to far less prosperity, inevitably. The fight against DEI, policies meant to maximize corporate success by taking the best talent no matter race or gender, is clear indication of that. And there was plenty of indication that companies that used ESG in running their companies overperformed, yet there was a huge revolt against that.
- umvi 1y ago
  > The fight against DEI, policies meant to maximize corporate success by taking the best talent no matter race or gender, is clear indication of that. That's not how DEI looked to me. In the places I've worked, DEI consisted of policies meant to force organizations to hire underqualified applicants so long as they were members of certain demographics, i.e. a variant of affirmative action.
  - vkou 1y ago
    In any place where I worked, all it influenced was where the intake funnel was sourced from. Once someone was in the recruiting funnel, it had exactly zero bearing on interviews and hiring decisions. From observing the public behavior of the current regime and it's war against DEI, it itself seems to be lazer-focused on hiring unqualified morons whose most important quality is loyalty to the supreme leader. Methinks merit was never the goal, and DEI was just a figleaf to get angry culture warriors to turn out and vote for them.
  - pavlov 1y ago
    How does a policy like that look in practice? Presumably it doesn’t read “we want to hire underqualified people.” The DEI policies I’ve seen were careful to emphasize that diversity should be a factor only when several candidates are otherwise competitive, and the focus should be on reducing interviewer bias towards hiring people like themselves so the company can benefit from a wider range of experience among employees.
    - umvi 1y ago
      > How does a policy like that look in practice? Presumably it doesn’t read “we want to hire underqualified people.” For example, HR hands this decree down from on high to hiring managers: "At least X% of your hires need to be women" If you don't get many women candidates applying (as is the case with certain types of STEM roles), you end up hiring candidates you might otherwise consider unqualified in order to try to make the quota.
  - atoav 1y ago
    I work in a european liberal art school. It doesn't get much more left wing than this. So of course we have written policies regarding gender, diversity and inclusion. As part of the staff I was included in various hiring processes. And I can assure you I haven't seen even the slightest sliver of someone being hired based purely on DEI without having the qualifications to back it up. In fact most of the times we had to throw out those candidates, because they lacked in one way or another against non-DEI candidates. Turns out even the most left-leaning people prefer working with competent colleagues, who would have thunk.. I file the whole DEI thing as right wing myths without basis in reality. All we hear is vague stories. You know my dogs aunt knows a guy who said on facebook..
- atoav 1y ago
  This is my current thought as well. The neo-fascist movements throughout the west all do not have a positive vision, beyond it being a narrative vehicle to convince the people who bought into the rethoric. Returning a nation to former greatness is a strong story, especially among those who never benefited from that hypothetical greatness. If you ask those politicans to make their promise of a return to greatness more concrete, they often can't even point at a point in time where the nation was great. And when they do you it usually involves prior atrocities where one class of people was beneath the others. Excuse me for being vague and open here, but I purposely tried to tell it in a way that works for all countries with whose neo-fascists movements I had experiences with, so Geemany, Austria, Italy, Serbia and now unfortunately also the United States of America.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  > DEI, policies meant to maximize corporate success by taking the best talent no matter race or gender You're thinking of equality. The Equity of DEI is different from that.
  - andrekandre 1y ago
    > You're thinking of equality. The Equity of DEI is different from that. in what way is it different?
- femiagbabiaka 1y ago
  Personally I think the DEI push was a mistake, purely because a push for social equity carried out by the private sector was always going to lead to complete disaster. It was another zero sum game, if not in actual application due to legal issues, then in rhetoric. But I think you’re right overall, or to put it differently, certain people want to redefine what it means to be American in a way that funny enough, would have excluded large chunks of the Trump administration if applied out when their ancestors got here.
- like_any_other 1y ago
  > This is a huge change from past visions for America The America that limited citizenship to free White persons, and had an effectively Whites-only immigration policy until 1965 [1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac...
  - epistasis 1y ago
    That was the starting point, but the vision for the future was to break down that hierarchy to lead to a more fair and prosperous society. We are at a point now where passing laws as were passed during the civil rights movement is completely unthinkable. Even laws advancing equality that were passed in the late 20th century are pretty unthinkable in today's environment. There revanchist movement has control of the government, the media, and much of society.
    - like_any_other 1y ago
      It was certainly not the vision of the founders: Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture. - Thomas Jefferson [1] Even the lauded Abraham Lincoln advocated for the removal of freed Blacks, and made several attempts at it [2], and in the Douglas-Lincoln debates said: I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold oﬃce, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. [3] (His opponent, Stephen Douglas, was even more opposed to the idea.) [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h490t.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h490t.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_and_slavery#Colonization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_and_slavery#Co... [3] Basler, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II, pp. 235-236
      - epistasis 1y ago

A lot of people seem to believe that the path to the next generation of American prosperity is playing a series of zero-sum games through demagoguery. I’m not convinced.

vkou 1y ago

That's not a fair and complete description of their beliefs, they also believe in negative-sum burn-the-furniture-to-stay-warm.

malfist 1y ago
Whatever is required to make the next quarter's numbers be higher.

epistasis 1y ago

I'm not even sure that's it's a desire for greater prosperity, honestly. I think it's most about enforcing social hierarchy by race and gender and parentage, though people vary a lot on what they want the hierarchy to be based on. This is a huge change from past visions for America, and will lead to far less prosperity, inevitably. The fight against DEI, policies meant to maximize corporate success by taking the best talent no matter race or gender, is clear indication of that. And there was plenty of indication that companies that used ESG in running their companies overperformed, yet there was a huge revolt against that.

umvi 1y ago
> The fight against DEI, policies meant to maximize corporate success by taking the best talent no matter race or gender, is clear indication of that. That's not how DEI looked to me. In the places I've worked, DEI consisted of policies meant to force organizations to hire underqualified applicants so long as they were members of certain demographics, i.e. a variant of affirmative action.
- vkou 1y ago
  In any place where I worked, all it influenced was where the intake funnel was sourced from. Once someone was in the recruiting funnel, it had exactly zero bearing on interviews and hiring decisions. From observing the public behavior of the current regime and it's war against DEI, it itself seems to be lazer-focused on hiring unqualified morons whose most important quality is loyalty to the supreme leader. Methinks merit was never the goal, and DEI was just a figleaf to get angry culture warriors to turn out and vote for them.
- pavlov 1y ago
  How does a policy like that look in practice? Presumably it doesn’t read “we want to hire underqualified people.” The DEI policies I’ve seen were careful to emphasize that diversity should be a factor only when several candidates are otherwise competitive, and the focus should be on reducing interviewer bias towards hiring people like themselves so the company can benefit from a wider range of experience among employees.
  - umvi 1y ago
    > How does a policy like that look in practice? Presumably it doesn’t read “we want to hire underqualified people.” For example, HR hands this decree down from on high to hiring managers: "At least X% of your hires need to be women" If you don't get many women candidates applying (as is the case with certain types of STEM roles), you end up hiring candidates you might otherwise consider unqualified in order to try to make the quota.
- atoav 1y ago
  I work in a european liberal art school. It doesn't get much more left wing than this. So of course we have written policies regarding gender, diversity and inclusion. As part of the staff I was included in various hiring processes. And I can assure you I haven't seen even the slightest sliver of someone being hired based purely on DEI without having the qualifications to back it up. In fact most of the times we had to throw out those candidates, because they lacked in one way or another against non-DEI candidates. Turns out even the most left-leaning people prefer working with competent colleagues, who would have thunk.. I file the whole DEI thing as right wing myths without basis in reality. All we hear is vague stories. You know my dogs aunt knows a guy who said on facebook..
atoav 1y ago
This is my current thought as well. The neo-fascist movements throughout the west all do not have a positive vision, beyond it being a narrative vehicle to convince the people who bought into the rethoric. Returning a nation to former greatness is a strong story, especially among those who never benefited from that hypothetical greatness. If you ask those politicans to make their promise of a return to greatness more concrete, they often can't even point at a point in time where the nation was great. And when they do you it usually involves prior atrocities where one class of people was beneath the others. Excuse me for being vague and open here, but I purposely tried to tell it in a way that works for all countries with whose neo-fascists movements I had experiences with, so Geemany, Austria, Italy, Serbia and now unfortunately also the United States of America.
zdragnar 1y ago
> DEI, policies meant to maximize corporate success by taking the best talent no matter race or gender You're thinking of equality. The Equity of DEI is different from that.
- andrekandre 1y ago
  > You're thinking of equality. The Equity of DEI is different from that. in what way is it different?
femiagbabiaka 1y ago
Personally I think the DEI push was a mistake, purely because a push for social equity carried out by the private sector was always going to lead to complete disaster. It was another zero sum game, if not in actual application due to legal issues, then in rhetoric. But I think you’re right overall, or to put it differently, certain people want to redefine what it means to be American in a way that funny enough, would have excluded large chunks of the Trump administration if applied out when their ancestors got here.
like_any_other 1y ago
> This is a huge change from past visions for America The America that limited citizenship to free White persons, and had an effectively Whites-only immigration policy until 1965 [1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac...
- epistasis 1y ago
  That was the starting point, but the vision for the future was to break down that hierarchy to lead to a more fair and prosperous society. We are at a point now where passing laws as were passed during the civil rights movement is completely unthinkable. Even laws advancing equality that were passed in the late 20th century are pretty unthinkable in today's environment. There revanchist movement has control of the government, the media, and much of society.
  - like_any_other 1y ago
    It was certainly not the vision of the founders: Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture. - Thomas Jefferson [1] Even the lauded Abraham Lincoln advocated for the removal of freed Blacks, and made several attempts at it [2], and in the Douglas-Lincoln debates said: I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold oﬃce, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. [3] (His opponent, Stephen Douglas, was even more opposed to the idea.) [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h490t.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h490t.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_and_slavery#Colonization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_and_slavery#Co... [3] Basler, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II, pp. 235-236
    - epistasis 1y ago