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That's probably an idea that would resonate with lots of people with strong libertarian leanings here on HN and in Silicon Valley. However, like many libertaria

by IBM 13y ago

That's probably an idea that would resonate with lots of people with strong libertarian leanings here on HN and in Silicon Valley. However, like many libertarian positions, it's out of touch with reality. This isn't an issue that the invisible hand is going to fix.

mistermann 13y ago
I'm curious why you think this....if "bigoted" ideas are delusional, shouldn't the fact that we have far more integration and exposure to different sub-cultures in sufficient time eliminate all bigotry, as it will eventually become self-evident that there are in fact no differences between people? And if not, what might it be about this sub-group of people that will never ever "get it" - what's different about them that they simply can't?
- acadien 13y ago
  Maybe its because you can't simply trust every citizen to make decisions off of what is obvious and rational. If you actually could trust every individual to make rational decisions and self organize, there would be little need for laws in the first place.
- 2muchcoffeeman 13y ago
  Because people are not rational and may never reach that conclusion themselves? I like to think that I am rational, but I still double check myself to make sure I'm not being sexist. Occasionally minor sexist behaviour or thinking still creeps in...
- scarmig 13y ago
  Multiple and perverse equilibria can exist--it was the economically rational thing in 1950's South (at least in some models) for people to discriminate. And even if formal discrimination might have disappeared eventually, it's a bit too easy to condemn in retrospect an entire generation of people to continued oppression just to satisfy some ideological gesture.
- alwaysinshade 13y ago
  "if "bigoted" ideas are delusional, shouldn't the fact that we have far more integration and exposure to different sub-cultures in sufficient time eliminate all bigotry" I'm not sure if delusional is the right term - small minded might fit the bill a little better. So if it's due to mental laziness or an inherent dearth of mental ability, perhaps bigotry is difficult to abate without laws to protect minorities. Nonetheless you ask a good question - with time and exposure can we eliminate bigotry? I hope so. But it's easy to invent new targets for ridicule: Emos, Hipsters, Rockabillies etc. They're not exactly unprivileged minorities, but it shows how easy it is to disparage someone because of their appearance and cultural differences.
  - pdonis 13y ago
    with time and exposure can we eliminate bigotry? I hope so. I think all of human history shows your hope to be misplaced.
- PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  > I'm curious why you think this....if "bigoted" ideas are delusional, shouldn't the fact that we have far more integration and exposure to different sub-cultures in sufficient time eliminate all bigotry, as it will eventually become self-evident that there are in fact no differences between people? "In sufficient time," perhaps. In the meantime, millions of people are marginalized, exploited, abused, and killed. Those are real human beings, not just statistical stairsteps to Utopia, and I'd prefer to let them have freedom and equality now rather than reserving it for their great-great-great-grandchildren.
- dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  This comment and a few others really surprise. This is such a level of naïveté that is really dumbfounding. I want to attempt to be charitable ... What evidence do you have that humans would reach this lollipop level of appreciation and understanding, even in geologic time? Genocides occur even today between peoples for reasons that many even educated people have difficulty deciphering. As well, go look at the comments on YouTube and see if humanity is advanced. I mean really ...
  - mistermann 13y ago
    Agreed, my tongue was firmly in cheek when I asked that question. The reason I asked that particular question (and I guess I didn't do a good job of it), and used the word "delusional", is because I personally think there are in many cases vast differences between sub-groups, and these differences are of varying incompatibility. Many of them are imagined (false stereotypes), but many are not, and I also find it naive, this idea that all we have to do is pass some laws to force integration and then suddenly everyone is going to see the hateful errors of their past ways. As you correctly point out, there is a lot more in history to suggest we cannot "all just get along" than there is to support a unified utopia. Also, in politically correct forums such as these where most participants have a much less diverse background than they'd like to think, there seems to be this pervasive idea that the fault lies all on one side. Listen to some rap music, or go visit one of the more extremist feminist forums, or an atheist forum, where the participants really speak their minds, and you'll see there is plenty of irrational bigoted hatred everywhere, not just from the privileged white male. To me, the idea that you can solve a problem when you insist on being ignorant of many aspects of it is rather foolish.
pdonis 13y ago
This isn't an issue that the invisible hand is going to fix. Then why is the WSJ article titled "Workplace Equality Is Good For Business?" Shouldn't it be titled "Workplace Equality Is Good, But We Need To Force Businesses To Do It By Law"?
- potatolicious 13y ago
  This assumes the invisible hand is fully rational and capable of the optimal decision making - at the very least at an aggregate scale. It is possible for something to be good for business, but for the free market to not choose it. The free market, after all, is simply a collection of human participants, none of whom are perfectly informed nor perfectly rational. There seems to be a weird belief in some circles that the free market tends to arrive naturally upon a globally optimal solution.
  - pdonis 13y ago
    There seems to be a weird belief in some circles that the free market tends to arrive naturally upon a globally optimal solution. There is a much more widespread weird belief that governments can do so, even though the track record of governments is worse than the track record of free markets.
    - potatolicious 13y ago
      Much more widespread? Last I checked nobody is advocating for Soviet-style central planning. In fact by far the most popular notion in the western world is a mostly-free market with some regulation. Which seems to jive with the notion that neither a monolithically planned, nor entirely laissez-faire system, are likely to produce optimal results.
      - pdonis 13y ago
        the most popular notion in the western world is a mostly-free market with some regulation No, the most popular notion in the western world is a nominal "free market" with massive regulation. For example, here are the rules that a "free market" business in the US has to abide by: https://www.federalregister.gov/ https://www.federalregister.gov/ Note that this is a daily journal: in other words, the "current issue" is just the rules that got issued today. Not to mention that we have central control of the financial system (the Fed and other countries' central banks), education (in the US there is at least some control still at the local level, other developed countries control everything at the state or national level), and trade--here, for example, is the current list of US tariffs: http://hts.usitc.gov/ http://hts.usitc.gov/

by IBM 13y ago

mistermann 13y ago

I'm curious why you think this....if "bigoted" ideas are delusional, shouldn't the fact that we have far more integration and exposure to different sub-cultures in sufficient time eliminate all bigotry, as it will eventually become self-evident that there are in fact no differences between people? And if not, what might it be about this sub-group of people that will never ever "get it" - what's different about them that they simply can't?

acadien 13y ago
Maybe its because you can't simply trust every citizen to make decisions off of what is obvious and rational. If you actually could trust every individual to make rational decisions and self organize, there would be little need for laws in the first place.
2muchcoffeeman 13y ago
Because people are not rational and may never reach that conclusion themselves? I like to think that I am rational, but I still double check myself to make sure I'm not being sexist. Occasionally minor sexist behaviour or thinking still creeps in...
scarmig 13y ago
Multiple and perverse equilibria can exist--it was the economically rational thing in 1950's South (at least in some models) for people to discriminate. And even if formal discrimination might have disappeared eventually, it's a bit too easy to condemn in retrospect an entire generation of people to continued oppression just to satisfy some ideological gesture.
alwaysinshade 13y ago
"if "bigoted" ideas are delusional, shouldn't the fact that we have far more integration and exposure to different sub-cultures in sufficient time eliminate all bigotry" I'm not sure if delusional is the right term - small minded might fit the bill a little better. So if it's due to mental laziness or an inherent dearth of mental ability, perhaps bigotry is difficult to abate without laws to protect minorities. Nonetheless you ask a good question - with time and exposure can we eliminate bigotry? I hope so. But it's easy to invent new targets for ridicule: Emos, Hipsters, Rockabillies etc. They're not exactly unprivileged minorities, but it shows how easy it is to disparage someone because of their appearance and cultural differences.
- pdonis 13y ago
  with time and exposure can we eliminate bigotry? I hope so. I think all of human history shows your hope to be misplaced.
PhasmaFelis 13y ago
> I'm curious why you think this....if "bigoted" ideas are delusional, shouldn't the fact that we have far more integration and exposure to different sub-cultures in sufficient time eliminate all bigotry, as it will eventually become self-evident that there are in fact no differences between people? "In sufficient time," perhaps. In the meantime, millions of people are marginalized, exploited, abused, and killed. Those are real human beings, not just statistical stairsteps to Utopia, and I'd prefer to let them have freedom and equality now rather than reserving it for their great-great-great-grandchildren.
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
This comment and a few others really surprise. This is such a level of naïveté that is really dumbfounding. I want to attempt to be charitable ... What evidence do you have that humans would reach this lollipop level of appreciation and understanding, even in geologic time? Genocides occur even today between peoples for reasons that many even educated people have difficulty deciphering. As well, go look at the comments on YouTube and see if humanity is advanced. I mean really ...
- mistermann 13y ago
  Agreed, my tongue was firmly in cheek when I asked that question. The reason I asked that particular question (and I guess I didn't do a good job of it), and used the word "delusional", is because I personally think there are in many cases vast differences between sub-groups, and these differences are of varying incompatibility. Many of them are imagined (false stereotypes), but many are not, and I also find it naive, this idea that all we have to do is pass some laws to force integration and then suddenly everyone is going to see the hateful errors of their past ways. As you correctly point out, there is a lot more in history to suggest we cannot "all just get along" than there is to support a unified utopia. Also, in politically correct forums such as these where most participants have a much less diverse background than they'd like to think, there seems to be this pervasive idea that the fault lies all on one side. Listen to some rap music, or go visit one of the more extremist feminist forums, or an atheist forum, where the participants really speak their minds, and you'll see there is plenty of irrational bigoted hatred everywhere, not just from the privileged white male. To me, the idea that you can solve a problem when you insist on being ignorant of many aspects of it is rather foolish.

pdonis 13y ago

This isn't an issue that the invisible hand is going to fix. Then why is the WSJ article titled "Workplace Equality Is Good For Business?" Shouldn't it be titled "Workplace Equality Is Good, But We Need To Force Businesses To Do It By Law"?

potatolicious 13y ago
This assumes the invisible hand is fully rational and capable of the optimal decision making - at the very least at an aggregate scale. It is possible for something to be good for business, but for the free market to not choose it. The free market, after all, is simply a collection of human participants, none of whom are perfectly informed nor perfectly rational. There seems to be a weird belief in some circles that the free market tends to arrive naturally upon a globally optimal solution.
- pdonis 13y ago
  There seems to be a weird belief in some circles that the free market tends to arrive naturally upon a globally optimal solution. There is a much more widespread weird belief that governments can do so, even though the track record of governments is worse than the track record of free markets.
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    Much more widespread? Last I checked nobody is advocating for Soviet-style central planning. In fact by far the most popular notion in the western world is a mostly-free market with some regulation. Which seems to jive with the notion that neither a monolithically planned, nor entirely laissez-faire system, are likely to produce optimal results.
    - pdonis 13y ago
      the most popular notion in the western world is a mostly-free market with some regulation No, the most popular notion in the western world is a nominal "free market" with massive regulation. For example, here are the rules that a "free market" business in the US has to abide by: https://www.federalregister.gov/ https://www.federalregister.gov/ Note that this is a daily journal: in other words, the "current issue" is just the rules that got issued today. Not to mention that we have central control of the financial system (the Fed and other countries' central banks), education (in the US there is at least some control still at the local level, other developed countries control everything at the state or national level), and trade--here, for example, is the current list of US tariffs: http://hts.usitc.gov/ http://hts.usitc.gov/