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> Her story would have played out differently, she said, if she had been living in her native England. Like many European countries, Britain offers a year of ma

> Her story would have played out differently, she said, if she had been living in her native England. Like many European countries, Britain offers a year of maternity leave, much of it paid, and protections for part-time workers, among other policies aimed at keeping women employed. If the US had better policies for maternity leave and part-time workers, then it seems likely to me that we'd have many more women workers because employment would "avoid upending their family life". If the US had better immigration policy, then we wouldn't be turning away thousands (tens of thousands?) of diverse, highly talented, tax paying tech workers from pushing forward innovation in our country. I'm sure you could make similar statements about our healthcare policy, education system, political system, the grand jury system, etc. Why isn't every single police officer wearing a camera while on duty yet? Why does changing (fixing) these things take so damn long? The worst part is that the people who are in control of really fixing these things and the entire system itself don't seem motivated enough to do so (to me at least, please correct me if I'm wrong).

chrishynes 12y ago
Its not an issue of motivation, but one of competing goals and interest groups creating deadlock. Just considering goals, you have listed a lot of (very good) ideas for improvement. But everyone from voter up to politician is going to have their own pet ideas they want to do first and spend the most money on. Everyone gets to arguing and nothing gets done. Not to mention the many interest groups with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Public sector unions represent nearly half of union members nowadays and are very resistant to change. Education reform and police reform are often blocked or made politically unviable by their respective unions. Healthcare reform in a way that would benefit all including young people is overpowered by large groups like the AARP. These groups all have a created interest in maintaining their power and increasing the benefits paid to their members. A politician, however idealistic, usually just ends up running into a wall and giving up.
olefoo 12y ago
> Why does changing (fixing) these things take so damn long? Because: a. Established interests profit from the current arrangement or worry that their interests will be compromised if things chang. b. Our system is set up to resist rapid precipitous radical change. c. Changing institutions takes a long time and requires much political will, or at least alignment with social forces in play. d. Change has costs; even if the existing system is wasteful, dysfunctional and cruelly indifferent to the pain it causes to some subset of the people in contact with an institution. The costs of changing that institution are unknown and unknowable and the argument against from fear of the unknown will always have weight with decisionmakers. e. Institutional change always has winners and losers, and often the ones with the most to lose are close to but not at; the top of the hierarchy. That's the short version. The long version involves quantitative social science and figuring out which nodes of the power network have the capability to drive change and which must be routed around to effect change and which ones are likely to be obstacles to change. Modeling the political economy of even a small institution is a considerable effort; and since it's hard to get people to precisely quantify their biases and predilections even if they are cooperative; a large amount of it is guesswork or inference from extremely thin sources ( like trying to divine someones political allegiances based on the corpus of emails that are sent to internal mailing lists ). And since Psychohistory is bunk, there is no plausible way to predict second or third order effects ( the response to the response to the change you are trying to achieve if it were successful ). There are only a few organizations that have the mathematical ability, computational power and access to significant communications between decision makers to even attempt to do this at scale. In fact I can only think of one that could attempt to do so at a global scale; and it's a TLA whose initials start with N, end with A, and have an S in the middle. But they wouldn't try to manipulate their host society like that; or would they?
trhway 12y ago
>The worst part is that the people who are in control of really fixing these things and the entire system itself don't seem motivated enough to do so they are already in control. Why would they try to change anything?
chongli 12y ago
The relevant stat is right there in the article: A Pew Research Center survey from 2007 reported that 41 percent of adults say it is bad for society when mothers with young children work and just 22 percent say it is good. The US has a significant population of people who are hostile to the women's movement. They want women to move back into the kitchen. They see systems like subsidized child care as an attack on their traditional family values.
equalify 12y ago
>If the US had better policies for maternity leave Why only maternity leave? What happened to equal rights? 1 year maternity + 0 year paternity = should we really hire this female candidate over a man? She might get pregnant. 6mo maternity + 6mo paternity = Who is the better candidate? Not only that, but why should women be the only ones raising the kids? The joys of child rearing should be shared by both parents. Why are things so hard to fix? Because quick fixes everyone suggests are poorly considered.

chrishynes 12y ago

Its not an issue of motivation, but one of competing goals and interest groups creating deadlock. Just considering goals, you have listed a lot of (very good) ideas for improvement. But everyone from voter up to politician is going to have their own pet ideas they want to do first and spend the most money on. Everyone gets to arguing and nothing gets done. Not to mention the many interest groups with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Public sector unions represent nearly half of union members nowadays and are very resistant to change. Education reform and police reform are often blocked or made politically unviable by their respective unions. Healthcare reform in a way that would benefit all including young people is overpowered by large groups like the AARP. These groups all have a created interest in maintaining their power and increasing the benefits paid to their members. A politician, however idealistic, usually just ends up running into a wall and giving up.

olefoo 12y ago

> Why does changing (fixing) these things take so damn long? Because: a. Established interests profit from the current arrangement or worry that their interests will be compromised if things chang. b. Our system is set up to resist rapid precipitous radical change. c. Changing institutions takes a long time and requires much political will, or at least alignment with social forces in play. d. Change has costs; even if the existing system is wasteful, dysfunctional and cruelly indifferent to the pain it causes to some subset of the people in contact with an institution. The costs of changing that institution are unknown and unknowable and the argument against from fear of the unknown will always have weight with decisionmakers. e. Institutional change always has winners and losers, and often the ones with the most to lose are close to but not at; the top of the hierarchy. That's the short version. The long version involves quantitative social science and figuring out which nodes of the power network have the capability to drive change and which must be routed around to effect change and which ones are likely to be obstacles to change. Modeling the political economy of even a small institution is a considerable effort; and since it's hard to get people to precisely quantify their biases and predilections even if they are cooperative; a large amount of it is guesswork or inference from extremely thin sources ( like trying to divine someones political allegiances based on the corpus of emails that are sent to internal mailing lists ). And since Psychohistory is bunk, there is no plausible way to predict second or third order effects ( the response to the response to the change you are trying to achieve if it were successful ). There are only a few organizations that have the mathematical ability, computational power and access to significant communications between decision makers to even attempt to do this at scale. In fact I can only think of one that could attempt to do so at a global scale; and it's a TLA whose initials start with N, end with A, and have an S in the middle. But they wouldn't try to manipulate their host society like that; or would they?

trhway 12y ago

>The worst part is that the people who are in control of really fixing these things and the entire system itself don't seem motivated enough to do so they are already in control. Why would they try to change anything?

chongli 12y ago

The relevant stat is right there in the article: A Pew Research Center survey from 2007 reported that 41 percent of adults say it is bad for society when mothers with young children work and just 22 percent say it is good. The US has a significant population of people who are hostile to the women's movement. They want women to move back into the kitchen. They see systems like subsidized child care as an attack on their traditional family values.

equalify 12y ago

>If the US had better policies for maternity leave Why only maternity leave? What happened to equal rights? 1 year maternity + 0 year paternity = should we really hire this female candidate over a man? She might get pregnant. 6mo maternity + 6mo paternity = Who is the better candidate? Not only that, but why should women be the only ones raising the kids? The joys of child rearing should be shared by both parents. Why are things so hard to fix? Because quick fixes everyone suggests are poorly considered.