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Do you think that discrimination against blacks and women was good for business? I submit that it was not, but companies did it anyway, because they were not ra

Do you think that discrimination against blacks and women was good for business? I submit that it was not, but companies did it anyway, because they were not rational. I'm not sure we should expect them to be now. I also submit that if you think discriminating against blacks and women was good for business (a defensible claim), then you probably ought to be disagreeing with Tim Cook about whether sexual-orientation-based discrimination is good for businesses [1]. In my view, that would make the case for anti-discrimination legislation stronger, not weaker, because if both prevailing biases and good business sense favors discrimination, then we really need to act.[2] [1] Perhaps you could believe the former but not the latter. They seem pretty parallel to me though, so I'd be curious what you thought the differences were. [2] You could disagree with this too and simply be a lassez-faire fundamentalist, but that would render your original question kind of pointless.

verteu 13y ago
Discrimination imposes an extra cost on the discriminator. In a free market, firms that engage in irrational discrimination will be driven out of business. This is a central thesis of "Capitalism and Freedom" by Milton Friedman.
- interg12 13y ago
  It took the government to intervene into a very long running and prosperous "free market" to bring an end to discrimination, and nobody was making a economic case for it.
  - pdonis 13y ago
    There was no such "free market" before the Federal government intervened; there was an entrenched system of state and local governments not providing a level playing field. IMO the biggest mistake the civil rights movement made was to ask the Federal government for affirmative action, instead of asking it to guarantee a level playing field, so that minority-owned businesses could simply out-compete businesses run by bigots.
    - djur 13y ago
      Why do you assume that minority-owned or nondiscriminating businesses would run discriminating businesses out of the market? You're assuming, at the very least, that the competitive benefit of nondiscrimination exceeds the barriers to entry in the market.
      - pdonis 13y ago
        You're assuming, at the very least, that the competitive benefit of nondiscrimination exceeds the barriers to entry in the market. Tim Cook was making the same assumption in the article when he said that workplace equality is good for business. Also, the "barriers to entry" came from those state and local government regulations I referred to; asking the Federal government to provide a level playing field would have meant asking the Federal government to force state and local governments to remove those barriers to entry.
      - djur 13y ago
        The barriers I'm referring to aren't Jim Crow but instead the standard barriers to entry: required initial capital, brand recognition, the economies of scale and existing position of the firm currently in the market, etc. I am suggesting that when entering the market is already difficult (which is true of many American industries where discrimination might be a problem), a new firm being nondiscriminatory is unlikely to be a sufficient competitive advantage to displace existing firms. It is possible for nondiscrimination to be beneficial for already existing firms but not an immediate, substantial, and sure-fire competitive advantage.
        pdonis 13y ago
        How did the already existing firms get into the market and achieve their existing positions? Free market competition, or government regulations that gave them preferential treatment? With a level playing field, I don't think entry into the market is as difficult as you claim for many areas of businesses. The discrimination that the civil rights movement protested against wasn't discrimination about who could build new semiconductor chip fabs: it was about who could ride at the front of the bus, or who could stay at which hotels. In a free market these would be easy businesses to get into; the main barriers to entry are government regulations.
tsotha 13y ago
All I'm saying is his logic isn't, well, logical. On the one hand he says Apple's policy has been great for business, which would imply other companies should be adopting these kinds of policies without any kind of prodding from the government. And yet he supports a law to force everyone to adopt those policies. It's like he doesn't actually believe "workplace equality" is good for business and would like to use the government to level the playing field he tilted against himself. If he really believed the policy was good for the bottom line, from a financial perspective he'd be overjoyed to compete against companies that don't have a similar policy.
- icambron 13y ago
  Let's assume that a) he thinks companies will continue to be systematically discriminatory despite their best interests and b) he cares less about the competitive advantages of Apple and more about the overall health of the economy. He could care about that personally or on behalf of Apple, which also benefits from a larger, faster-growing economy in which to sell its goods. Does that help?
  - tsotha 13y ago
    People on the left can't seem to make up their minds about corporations. On the one hand corporations are amoral profit machines, completely without qualm or consideration for the human element. On the other, they don't care about profit. It just does't work for me as a logical framework. The most likely explanation here, IMO, is Apple's policy actually hurts the bottom line a tiny bit, but the PR value outweighs the problems. But note if this is the case the law he's pushing will be a net (small) negative for other companies.
    - dinkumthinkum 13y ago
      It doesn't work because its a straw man.
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    No, it doesn't help, because it's probably unreasonable to believe that Apple would recoup enough of those gains to counteract the losses they suffer from losing their competitive advantage. It's like telling US Sugar that it'd be a net gain for them to lose their tariff protections.
pdonis 13y ago
I'm not sure we should expect them to be now. If you really believe this, then your response should not be to ask the government to pass laws forcing such companies to be "rational". Your response should be to start a "rational" company that out-competes them, by hiring all the talented people that can't get jobs at the bigoted company, and thereby drive the bigoted company out of business.
- silencio 13y ago
  Tech is full of companies that basically do what Tim Cook and Apple wants everyone else to do. Yet we still have a problem. And no amount of publicity blasting discrimination in any form seems to make a difference - sometimes it even does worse by calling all the trolls and bigots to attack the victim(s) involved. So no, that doesn't really work, does it now. I find it depressing that I have to bundle this industry into the same basket as other companies and industries that other women complain about on the female-dominated forums I frequent. Meritocracy? hahahahahahahaha
  - pdonis 13y ago
    no amount of publicity blasting discrimination in any form seems to make a difference Have you considered not doing business with companies whose hiring or employment practices you don't like? Or forming your own company to out-compete them?
- icambron 13y ago
  Again, do you actually believe that the widespread discrimination against pre-civil rights blacks was rational behavior? If not, why did it persist for so long? Where were all of those entrepreneurs fixing the system through competitive advantage? I think the answer here is that the advantages it confers aren't sufficient to allow an upstart to overcome its disadvantage--namely, market position. Having more rational hiring practices is not a trump card. Lots of poorly run companies beat well-run ones all the time, but it doesn't mean they wouldn't be more successful as better-run companies. I'll also note that there are a number of confounding factors that make non-discrimination more attractive when enforced corrosively. For example, let's say you're an industry with widespread discrimination against gay people. Gay people leave the industry, and are thus not readily available to those willing to hire them. And perhaps they're typically less experienced because of that discrimination, so that makes it less useful to hire them. A sort of tragedy of the commons in the labor market. It's still irrational to discriminate, just less so, and perhaps the disadvantages of doing so fit under the noise floor. But with legislation, the feedback loop works the other way, and it makes a lot more sense to hire from this now larger and more experienced labor pool. Could increase the overall output a lot more than having one company float to the top through marginally better hiring.

verteu 13y ago

Discrimination imposes an extra cost on the discriminator. In a free market, firms that engage in irrational discrimination will be driven out of business. This is a central thesis of "Capitalism and Freedom" by Milton Friedman.

interg12 13y ago
It took the government to intervene into a very long running and prosperous "free market" to bring an end to discrimination, and nobody was making a economic case for it.
- pdonis 13y ago
  There was no such "free market" before the Federal government intervened; there was an entrenched system of state and local governments not providing a level playing field. IMO the biggest mistake the civil rights movement made was to ask the Federal government for affirmative action, instead of asking it to guarantee a level playing field, so that minority-owned businesses could simply out-compete businesses run by bigots.
  - djur 13y ago
    Why do you assume that minority-owned or nondiscriminating businesses would run discriminating businesses out of the market? You're assuming, at the very least, that the competitive benefit of nondiscrimination exceeds the barriers to entry in the market.
    - pdonis 13y ago
      You're assuming, at the very least, that the competitive benefit of nondiscrimination exceeds the barriers to entry in the market. Tim Cook was making the same assumption in the article when he said that workplace equality is good for business. Also, the "barriers to entry" came from those state and local government regulations I referred to; asking the Federal government to provide a level playing field would have meant asking the Federal government to force state and local governments to remove those barriers to entry.
    - djur 13y ago
      The barriers I'm referring to aren't Jim Crow but instead the standard barriers to entry: required initial capital, brand recognition, the economies of scale and existing position of the firm currently in the market, etc. I am suggesting that when entering the market is already difficult (which is true of many American industries where discrimination might be a problem), a new firm being nondiscriminatory is unlikely to be a sufficient competitive advantage to displace existing firms. It is possible for nondiscrimination to be beneficial for already existing firms but not an immediate, substantial, and sure-fire competitive advantage.
      - pdonis 13y ago
        How did the already existing firms get into the market and achieve their existing positions? Free market competition, or government regulations that gave them preferential treatment? With a level playing field, I don't think entry into the market is as difficult as you claim for many areas of businesses. The discrimination that the civil rights movement protested against wasn't discrimination about who could build new semiconductor chip fabs: it was about who could ride at the front of the bus, or who could stay at which hotels. In a free market these would be easy businesses to get into; the main barriers to entry are government regulations.

tsotha 13y ago

All I'm saying is his logic isn't, well, logical. On the one hand he says Apple's policy has been great for business, which would imply other companies should be adopting these kinds of policies without any kind of prodding from the government. And yet he supports a law to force everyone to adopt those policies. It's like he doesn't actually believe "workplace equality" is good for business and would like to use the government to level the playing field he tilted against himself. If he really believed the policy was good for the bottom line, from a financial perspective he'd be overjoyed to compete against companies that don't have a similar policy.

icambron 13y ago
Let's assume that a) he thinks companies will continue to be systematically discriminatory despite their best interests and b) he cares less about the competitive advantages of Apple and more about the overall health of the economy. He could care about that personally or on behalf of Apple, which also benefits from a larger, faster-growing economy in which to sell its goods. Does that help?
- tsotha 13y ago
  People on the left can't seem to make up their minds about corporations. On the one hand corporations are amoral profit machines, completely without qualm or consideration for the human element. On the other, they don't care about profit. It just does't work for me as a logical framework. The most likely explanation here, IMO, is Apple's policy actually hurts the bottom line a tiny bit, but the PR value outweighs the problems. But note if this is the case the law he's pushing will be a net (small) negative for other companies.
  - dinkumthinkum 13y ago
    It doesn't work because its a straw man.
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  No, it doesn't help, because it's probably unreasonable to believe that Apple would recoup enough of those gains to counteract the losses they suffer from losing their competitive advantage. It's like telling US Sugar that it'd be a net gain for them to lose their tariff protections.

pdonis 13y ago

I'm not sure we should expect them to be now. If you really believe this, then your response should not be to ask the government to pass laws forcing such companies to be "rational". Your response should be to start a "rational" company that out-competes them, by hiring all the talented people that can't get jobs at the bigoted company, and thereby drive the bigoted company out of business.

silencio 13y ago
Tech is full of companies that basically do what Tim Cook and Apple wants everyone else to do. Yet we still have a problem. And no amount of publicity blasting discrimination in any form seems to make a difference - sometimes it even does worse by calling all the trolls and bigots to attack the victim(s) involved. So no, that doesn't really work, does it now. I find it depressing that I have to bundle this industry into the same basket as other companies and industries that other women complain about on the female-dominated forums I frequent. Meritocracy? hahahahahahahaha
- pdonis 13y ago
  no amount of publicity blasting discrimination in any form seems to make a difference Have you considered not doing business with companies whose hiring or employment practices you don't like? Or forming your own company to out-compete them?
icambron 13y ago
Again, do you actually believe that the widespread discrimination against pre-civil rights blacks was rational behavior? If not, why did it persist for so long? Where were all of those entrepreneurs fixing the system through competitive advantage? I think the answer here is that the advantages it confers aren't sufficient to allow an upstart to overcome its disadvantage--namely, market position. Having more rational hiring practices is not a trump card. Lots of poorly run companies beat well-run ones all the time, but it doesn't mean they wouldn't be more successful as better-run companies. I'll also note that there are a number of confounding factors that make non-discrimination more attractive when enforced corrosively. For example, let's say you're an industry with widespread discrimination against gay people. Gay people leave the industry, and are thus not readily available to those willing to hire them. And perhaps they're typically less experienced because of that discrimination, so that makes it less useful to hire them. A sort of tragedy of the commons in the labor market. It's still irrational to discriminate, just less so, and perhaps the disadvantages of doing so fit under the noise floor. But with legislation, the feedback loop works the other way, and it makes a lot more sense to hire from this now larger and more experienced labor pool. Could increase the overall output a lot more than having one company float to the top through marginally better hiring.