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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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I agree with this, but also wish Republicans would just go ahead and wash their hands of the university system. These are Publicly Funded universities. Cut all state funding. Problem solved. Let them go and be as crazy as they want with student/donor money. But I certainly shouldn't be paying taxes to support the craziness.

I does not understand why cutting of public funding should fix the radical left problem in universities. In my country the wokest universities are the private funded ones where rich people go, the same with private media etc.

It depends on what exactly you think the "problem" is. I believe radical leftists are allowed to exist. I do not want to purge or kill them or force them into re-education camps. I simply do not want to pay for them. I ask that they tolerate me in the same way. The "problem" as I see it right now is that I am paying for them, so once I am not paying for them the problem is solved, even if they don't go away at all.

The problem is not just that you’re paying for them; it’s also that it’s impossible to get many jobs without a college diploma, and in a world where almost all of the universities are staffed nearly exclusively with radical leftists, it becomes impossible for conservatives to even think of entering many well-paid, influential, and/or important professions. It would take more than defunding the colleges to solve that problem. At a minimum, you’d also need to remove college degrees from state licensing requirements. If the conservatives cede all the law schools but the state governments maintain the requirement that you must graduate from a law school in order to take the bar exam, the conservatives will have suddenly ceded the entire legal profession, even more than they have already. Ideally, in a world where conservatives give up on the universities, they should also make it illegal to inquire about job candidates’ educational background, just as it is currently illegal to inquire about marital status or religious affiliation.

Yes, get rid of degree requirements. Some states like Virginia don't require them for passing the Bar. It's kind of insane to me that any state gates the Bar in such a way.

You are paying taxes, though. And some of those taxes goes directly to support the craziness.

And they are using all these funds to churn out students who will ensure that the funding continues, either because those students go on to run the bureaucracies which distribute the funding, or at least they will vote for candidates who will continue the funding over your vehement objections.

It is a pretty well-entrenched system, in that regard. You don't want to pay, but they don't care, you will be paying.

So now what?

So now what?

So now I am definitely going to go complain about this on TheMotte and argue with one of the resident liberals about it, and feel a bit better afterwards even if nothing has changed. And I'm gonna dedicate some of my free time and money to making sure TheMotte stays around as a place for me to complain and feel a little better about the things I have no control over.

Probably the best sort of outlook to have, to be honest.

you already have, for decades. Build some other public institution, and they'll use their current position to make a play for that as well. The problem isn't the idea of public institutions; those are both inevitable and necessary. The problem is that it's not possible to share a society with people who don't share some minimum level of values with you.

I believe most people share a value for wealth and money. Or at least it is a fungible thing that can be converted into other values. That is why the stock market works and publicly traded companies exist. Until DEI crap came along most of them have been legally obligated to pursue money and profit as a singular value, because that is one thing everyone can agree on.

Certain values matter way more than others. I think there are only some minimum values of non-interference that I need to live around others, and everything beyond that is just icing on the cake.

Until DEI crap came along most of them have been legally obligated to pursue money and profit as a singular value, because that is one thing everyone can agree on.

...And yet, DEI crap came along. Is your assumption that market forces will make it go away again? Why didn't they prevent it in the first place?

More generally, I think the idea that money is a reliable least-common-denominator fallback value is simply not accurate given what we observe of human nature. I think there was a similar argument in the last belle epoque, that the contentions and resentments couldn't get too far out of hand because it would interfere too much with making money. It didn't work out well in the last century; I don't expect it to go much better in this one.

I think DEI stuff was a bit like peacock feathers in an era of easy money. It was a way to stand out in the market.

Once the easy money ended a lot of places quietly axed their more meaningful DEI initiatives. Or not so quietly did massive layoffs that just disproportionately affected those departments.

I have a cousin and some former co-workers that worked with DEI stuff. They all have expressed frustration that the companies they work for basically only give lip-service to the ideas, and that they actively avoid measuring themselves in any way that might suggest they've failed or could do better.

If DEI stuff was more meaningful and continued to exist in tighter markets, ya I think market forces would destroy it. There has been ongoing interest from investor groups on ant-dei funds. Which make a ton of sense as an investment strategy. If you were going to choose to either invest in a group of companies that pursue profit as a primary objects or pursue anything else as a primary objective, you'd probably expect the profit group to make more money. DEI is a handy categorization in that regard.

I have a cousin and some former co-workers that worked with DEI stuff. They all have expressed frustration that the companies they work for basically only give lip-service to the ideas, and that they actively avoid measuring themselves in any way that might suggest they've failed or could do better.

As a complete aside, this paragraph amused quite a bit for the multiple levels of irony going on here.

First, presuming that these people aren't cynical mercenaries after a paycheck but rather believers who are doing this job because they truly believe that this DEI work makes the world a better place, it's incumbent on them to actually measure how effective their DEI training is and adjust their training to get the positive results they desire. If they keep noticing that companies that take their training decide to keep paying just lip service while actively avoiding meaningful measurement, the frustration should be directed at themselves for failing to measure and adjust the effectiveness of their training to convince these companies to actually take DEI seriously. If they just keep giving their training to companies while complaining that the companies don't take them seriously instead of introspecting on their own failures, then these trainers are clearly just paying lip service to DEI values while not really taking them seriously.

The other layer of irony is also dependent on them being true believers. Because the belief in positive consequences of what DEI is pushing is also largely dependent on actively avoiding taking measurement that could suggest that one might have failed (or perhaps it's more accurate to say actively avoiding making interpretations that could suggest that one might have failed). To get to the very point where one can express this sort of frustration at others refusing to take measurements for fear that the judgment could be negative requires one to have committed the exact same (intellectual) crime!

Its often less of a training thing and more of a hiring thing.

There are two competing ways to view jobs:

  1. A job is a thing that needs to be done. It is not something people normally want to do, so you need to pay someone to do it.
  2. A job is a societal role and measure of social standing. The best people have the best jobs, the pay is part of the package for being such a great person.

The problem as I see it is that both views are correct, but only so long as most employers view jobs in the first way "as a thing that needs to be done".

DEI is specifically trying to push a set of social standings that it wants, by make that part of the company hiring practices. That is a luxury belief for companies to indulge in. At the end of the day labor is one of the most expensive factor inputs for most companies, and being dumb about a huge portion of your costs isn't a way to run a successful company.

The type of complaints I hear from DEI people are along the lines of "you say you want to hire more female or [specifc race] programmers, but the gender/race mix of our employees is unchanged". To which the companies have somewhat hilariously responded by saying "well it was our DEI department's job to get us more female and [specific race] programmers, and they failed so we are going to fire them to show that we take this job seriously". Because the companies still view jobs as a thing that needs to be done, and DEI departments are failing to get the thing done.

If DEI stuff was more meaningful and continued to exist in tighter markets, ya I think market forces would destroy it.

It seems to me that DEI arose as a tribal response to social conditions, and that those social conditions persist, so the drive for something like DEI likewise exists. DEI is a way to focus discontent over social outcomes into fungible money and power for a particular tribe. Why not simply demand DEI through law? Why not simply use social coordination or the powers of the state to squash any actor that attempts to exploit the market forces in question?

Why not simply demand DEI through law?

They've tried, but the opposite has so far been more successful. I.E. banning DEI initiatives.

Why not simply use social coordination or the powers of the state to squash any actor that attempts to exploit the market forces in question?

I don't have tons of faith in the US political system. But it is pretty good at protecting wealth. DEI screws with people's ability to maintain wealth, so its been a losing prospect in US politics.

They've tried, but the opposite has so far been more successful. I.E. banning DEI initiatives.

Affirmative Action seems to have been pretty successful. HR encroachment and enforcement backed by the CRA seems to have been pretty successful. Are you using a definition of DEI that excludes those legal structures? It seems to me that both of those and many similar efforts besides strongly shape the pool of PMC types who are going to be running the relevant industries and drafting, passing, interpreting and complying with the relevant laws.

Where has banning DEI been successful? I'm not aware of any instances that have actually born significant fruit, but am open to the idea that I've missed something.

But it is pretty good at protecting wealth. DEI screws with people's ability to maintain wealth, so its been a losing prospect in US politics.

DEI might screw with society's ability to maintain wealth. I see no reason why a DEI-committed elite could not profit immensely from the practice, at the expense of essentially everyone who isn't them. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water and you can make him drink if you shove a hose down his throat. The idealistic point of DEI is to solve inequity. The practical point is to amass wealth and power, which can be exchanged for power and wealth. When they write the laws, as they have in the distant past, the recent past, the present, and which we should expect them to continue into the future, I do not see a barrier to "correcting" "toxic market forces".

Point 1, only 20% of their budget is state funding. That is still any state funding, true, but I feel like sometimes people act like they're entirely state funded and that's really seriously not the case.

Point 2, I think it's reasonable for the government to subsidize education without dictating what the education entails. You can trust the market to efficiently decide what type of education takes place between students and teachers, while also pumping money into the education sector because you think the economy benefits from more education happening overall.

Point 3, I don't want to pay for many aspects of our military, police, and prison systems, to name just a few. 'I shouldn't have to pay for things I dislike' has never been a cogent argument against government spending; it's a democracy, you can vote for what you want but everyone has to pay for everything that ends up in the budget. You don't get a line-item veto unless I do too, and if everyone gets one then we end up with no government at all, society collapses, and we get invaded by China or w/e.

  • -10

You don't get a line-item veto unless I do too, and if everyone gets one then we end up with no government at all, society collapses, and we get invaded by China or w/e.

To echo FC below, it does indeed feel like lots of people wanted this during the Obama years, when the War on Terror was in its twilight years and "our military budget is obscenely, unnecessarily huge and prevents us from having good healthcare" was a talking point on Tumblr. Lots of people would probably still want this now, even!

And in fairness, why shouldn't they? I figure the easy counterargument is that that's what our politicians are for; that we elect representatives and such precisely so that the demos can evolve its power to people who will handle the responsibility and hard work of haggling and negotiating. In practice, this doesn't satisfy the demos enough, for reasons.

Point 1, only 20% of their budget is state funding. That is still any state funding, true, but I feel like sometimes people act like they're entirely state funded and that's really seriously not the case.

20% is easily the difference between "this is a successful and growing venture" and "we need to do mass layoffs or risk being shut down". I also pointed out in my comment that they can do what they want with student/donor money, so obviously I know there are other funding sources. And if I am wrong and the budget from the state is so small and not worth mentioning, then certainly they won't make a big fuss if they lose that funding. But I think we both know that a very large fuss would be made.

Point 2, I think it's reasonable for the government to subsidize education without dictating what the education entails. You can trust the market to efficiently decide what type of education takes place between students and teachers

Do you want a functioning market, or do you want state funding? The more state funding the worse the market.

pumping money into the education sector because you think the economy benefits from more education happening overall.

And I can want my tax dollars to not be spent for bad reasons. Two different professors at GMU have written books about the subject of rotten academia.

Point 3, I don't want to pay for many aspects of our military, police, and prison systems, to name just a few. 'I shouldn't have to pay for things I dislike' has never been a cogent argument against government spending; it's a democracy, you can vote for what you want but everyone has to pay for everything that ends up in the budget. You don't get a line-item veto unless I do too, and if everyone gets one then we end up with no government at all, society collapses, and we get invaded by China or w/e.

I specifically said "Cut all state funding" and "Republicans [should] wash their hands of the university system". I suppose my last line could be interpreted as wanting a line item veto, and I'm not opposed to that. But its not really the point I was making in this comment. As long as we don't get a line item veto I think its reasonable to say "I hate this thing" as a reason why that thing should receive 0 funding. In fact, if there was line item vetoing by individuals my comment would be dumb and pointless and you could just respond "if you don't like it then just line item veto it, and the rest of us can continue to fund it as we like".

Point 1, only 20% of their budget is state funding.

Counting federal student loans? Where's the other 80% of their budget coming from, specifically?

You can trust the market to efficiently decide what type of education takes place between students and teachers, while also pumping money into the education sector because you think the economy benefits from more education happening overall.

...And then if the teachers defect and focus on indoctrinating instead of actually teaching workable skills, then the argument will be that we need to increase funding to get the economic benefits that aren't actually materializing. I would argue that this has already happened.

Point 3, I don't want to pay for many aspects of our military, police, and prison systems, to name just a few.

"I shouldn't have to pay for partisan political activity" is distinct from "I shouldn't have to pay for things I don't like." I do welcome your commitment to police reform, though.

You don't get a line-item veto unless I do too, and if everyone gets one then we end up with no government at all, society collapses, and we get invaded by China or w/e.

...You phrase this as though it isn't a clear preference for a growing portion of society, and one of the more likely destinations given our current trajectory.

The culture war is not going away. The grievances continue to accumulate. By this time next year, America will enjoy significantly less social cohesion than it has now, and sooner or soonest, the spark shower onto the mound of oily rags that is our society is going to catch.

Counting federal student loans?

On this note, if you didn't see, they just got handed a full $1.2B that was laundered through the label of a "loan".

EDIT: Forgot link.

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