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Note: The original version of this post theorized that there was a causal connection from the botched Secret Service protection of Trump to Microsoft's layoff of its DEI team. However, @The_Nybbler then pointed out that the firing happened before the assassination attempt (see below). The post is now about why I think that the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) push within the Secret Service was responsible for their poor performance on July 13.
When I was a university faculty member, I noticed pretty quickly that no matter what issue was being debated in a faculty meeting, it was always the same people in two camps opposing each other. I am reminded of Thomas Sowell's well-put description:
In the case of disputes among college faculty, it took me a while to figure out the underlying variable that basically split the department into two camps -- but once I noticed it, it was consistent and the data grew over time: the basic ideological split in the department was between people who want a culture of meritocracy, and people who don't. So I learned that not everyone wants meritocracy; some people in fact are strongly opposed to it, and that this variable is a major ideological axis in the culture of a university department, and probably of any organization. The degree of meritocracy in an organization correlates with a large number of other variables and determines which direction it goes on a variety of high stakes decisions.
DEI is an assault on meritocracy in a deceptively direct and damaging way, and so it fundamentally changes the organizations it infects. The result of DEI is not just that you hire and promote the best candidates you can under the constraint of identity-group quotas -- because under a DEI push you can't even have an honest discussion about it in case there are better white male candidates. Fundamentally, DEI isn't about quotas; it is about denying facts about group differences, and corresponding individual differences, that underlie the need for quotas. In this way, DEI requires systematically lying about merits of people's credentials and performance, which entails the erosion of the fundamental variable of meritocracy in the organization. This sends the organization into a sick corner of ideological space that results in a pathological inability to perform its mission -- unless its mission is licking the boots of DEI-loving bureaucrats and politicians, which is, without exaggeration, the primary, or at least a primary, mission of a growing number of organizations.
And that, I think, is how an amateur would-be assassin was able to stalk unopposed onto on a rooftop, with a rifle, 130 yards (short rifle range) from a podium where the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee was speaking, with a clear line of site to the podium (every time I re-read that sentence, I think I am in the Twilight Zone). The more information comes out about this event, the more it seems to be a result of institutional incompetence on the part of the Secret Service, and the more egregious the stonewalling is from that agency, and the more baffling the whole situation is -- unless you understand DEI and its consequences.
I mean, there's another pretty huge assault on meritocracy in how hard skilled immigration is---even IMO medalists have a hard time immigrating to the US. Anyone upset about the impacts of DEI on competence should also be upset about this.
Why? Most countries have enough talented people among their citizens to keep the lights on without relying on immigration. The impact of rejecting skilled immigration is nowhere near the same as that of implementing DEI.
There are important things that are much more difficult than just keeping the lights on. For example, there are extremely high skill-ceiling jobs where extreme competence leads to dramatically greater positive impact---the 100x programmer, entrepreneurs, academic research, etc. The top performers are so rare in these fields that no country has enough; every country could benefit by getting more.
If you want to live in a country that just focuses on maintaining its current standard of living without improving, developing new technology, creating anything great at all, then sure. You can just accept all the extreme suffering that happens even among the rich in developed countries.
Finally, how are you making this comparison? Here's a great article on the impact of skilled immigration in the US. You can even see here the impact from rejecting just one single person . There's nothing caused by DEI even close to matching this.
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I think there's a distinction elided by the word "competence" here.
Skilled immigration being hard reduces (average) individual competence. DIE reduces institutional and societal competence, because those institutions and society are using false models of the world. Being upset at one (either one) does not necessarily imply being upset at the other.
I will also note that it is possible to believe that something is important and also believe that it is outweighed by other important things in certain specific cases. The obvious case with regard to skilled immigration is "skilled immigrants from the PRC are considerably less valuable to Western countries than one might expect from their level of skill, because a large chunk of them are sleeper agents either by brainwashing or by having family in the PRC that can be used for extortion".
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It is a common but idiotic refrain uttered by international elites that people are fungible and all desire for fairness must resolve in mass immigration that benefits the aforementioned international elites.
Aliens have a fundamental quality that makes them unable to be directly compared to belongers, and it's that they're aliens.
However qualified aliens are does not invalidate meritocracy in particular, or nationalism in general.
We're not a bunch of individual humans scattered inbetween imaginary lines. We live in societies.
@Felagund @07mk and everyone else arguing with me that anti-meritocratic views are more common on the left than on the right in the US. Here's another very explicitly hereditarian comment. "Aliens have a fundamental quality that makes them unable to be directly compared to belongers, and it's that they're aliens." is pretty damn extreme!
I really want to keep emphasizing how often such points come up when you discuss skilled immigration. Note also the support such views have from vote counts.
What does this have to do with hereditarianism? Are you German or something? Blood is not what sanctifies American nationhood. Let alone all nationhoods. My ancestors have incidentally fought the Germans on this issue and gained citizenship in that manner, so I'm living proof that this assumption is wrong.
Another common idiotic refrain of internationalists is to assimilate any nationalism to racial animus to play up fears of National Socialism against those who would organize against them. You're not trying to do that, are you? You who seems so concerned with vox populi.
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Societies have many dimensions. Being an Alien has many dimensions. Some people can integrate more smoothly than others. Some societies are more compatible than others.
All of this is to say, that you're right that theres more to it than meritocracy youre right that individuals aren't fungible. But you're collapsing the dimentionality of the Alien to 1D
I do no such thing. I establish the existence of a boundary. And its importance to nation as a concept.
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Nice post and it perfectly encapsulates how I feel about DEI for rural whites (the electoral college).
Where are the officers of the EC appointed in every major corporation to enforce ideological compliance with the principles of the Constitution ?
I need you to tell me so I can send them a letter about how they clearly have failed at their job given SCOTUS had made the EC's intent illegal.
Wait until you hear about the even crazier and more consequential things they do, like appoint the president over the wishes of the majority of voters.
That at least is spelled out in the constitution. Unlike sapping their ability to vote their conscience.
But you predictably do not answer my question. Because you don't have a sense of legitimacy, you only have a sense of having or not having power.
You don't care that America is growing a political officer class which is a uniquely totalitarian feature because they're not against you. That's why you can only try to equivocate that with longstanding constitutional mechanisms.
If DEI was made of fascists, who make sure to check the loyalty of everyone in the private sector to a slightly different set of racist ideas you'd be horrified. But you're not. Because they're totalitarian racists in the way you're comfortable with.
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Microsoft's DEI team, according to the linked articles, was laid off as of July 1, before the assassination. Ante hoc, ergo non propter hoc.
oops. Strike that; reverse it
I am tempted to delete the original post, but that would also delete the record of your pointing out the error. The post is now edited to preserve as much of its essential content as is still relevant, pointing out the history of the post and the correction. Thanks for the correction.
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I was genuinely enjoying the argument, and then you had to go be a wrecker and ruin it for everybody.
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln…”
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