You should have never had them in the first place.
Hire fairly. Avoid [bigoted] bias in your hiring.
That you had to advertise you did that meant you were not doing it in the first place. Meaning you were not treating equally and fairly.
Lots of these corporate efforts, whatever they are, are a money printer for organizations “helping” including those proposing streamlining, time management, equity, X analysis, etc. whether delivered by the big5, individuals or any other entity, they are money pits that make management feel good: they’re doing something.
Did they though? There was a race to declare DEI-friendliness in the wake of Floyd, but I wonder how much was actually done and how impactful it was at most of these companies?
This is precisely the point where the facts no longer matter and it morphs into a faith based initiative:
- not enough blacks at your company? We need to keep running the program and try harder (aka new "programs") to get more diversity.
- Have enough black/women at your company? That's wrongthink, you can never have enough diversity, and don't you dare get rid of the program, only a racist would do such a thing.
I think it was a supreme court judge who said "Where does it end? At what point do you declare victory?". The far left has no answer to that because their political existence depends on being social justice warriors. Either people need to continue suffering, or they need to extend the definition of suffering to make it appear they and their irreversible government programs are the last and only line of defense from a world full of racism.
america is black&white - there is just never gray. affirmative action, dei… all these programs come from “a good place” so-to-speak but america is not capable of making a sensible policy. blame the two-party system who knows nothing more than to kill whatever policies other side puts in place. so each side goes overboard as it knows every policy has a shelf-life. some longer than others but eventually they all die.
and to answer your question, I think these policies were supposed to be impactful for us as society more so than for companies…
>I think these policies were supposed to be impactful for us as society more so than for companies
Well, I believe the idea was two-fold, but it would depend on who you ask. Certainly the societal benefit was a consideration. But there are also those who do genuinely believe that DEI is good for a company.
A third consideration is the PR angle. That is, I don't think it's overly cynical to say that PR was a primary driver for some of these companies, especially given the moment. And that's really what I'm asking: how much actual work was done? How much real change was there versus the headlines?
There is always going to be bias in your hiring, because bias inflects the entirety of a person's life, whether that bias is good (wealthy parents, e.g.) or bad (being born with fetal alcohol syndron, e.g.)
There is no unbiased state.
Being anti-diversity is a bias in favor of existing biases, which in this country tends to mean: white, wealthy, male, able bodied, etc.
Correct, there is no unbiased state. It's also impossible to enforce one. It's impossible to perfectly define the combination of bias wavelengths for an individual or group, so it's impossible to define an inverse wavelength that objectively cancels it out. And in the futile attempt to enforce such a thing, you are going to generate enormous, justified animosity.
Being treated unfairly because of a well-meaning person's unconscious bias (which you can never even know for sure exactly when it's happening to you) is way less hideous than being treated unfairly out in the open by a correcting policy.
Secondarily: It's not a simple concept, and the condescending suggestion is unwelcome.
I see it differently, to wit: being treated unfairly out in the open by a correcting policy is way is wey less heinous than being born--through no fault or one's own--as a member of a historically and currently disadvantaged group, and then being told "nuh uh, get fucked" when someone tries to give you preferential treatment.
To me what is most galling is the way the anti-DEI crowd exudes pure entitlement; sometimes in life things dont go you way. Oh fuckin well. You get up and try again. I taught my kids that lesson when they were like 7 or 8. It's super embarrassing to see grown ass adults be that small and selfish.
What are countries that hire more fairly than the US? I don't think there are many. Not even semi-homogenous countries hire fairly. They'd be biased against age, sex, looks, height, region, accent, baldness, etc.
Japan, China, India, Germany, UK, South Africa? I don't think any of them are better than us at hiring fairly.
What I mean by avoiding bias, is don't use bigoted biases --of course we hire with a bias to further the team or company mission within the bounds of the law. Does that even have to be said?
Brother, you and I must have veey different definitions of bigotry. The bigotry i see is the anti dei folks refusing to address the legacy of historical injustice that they currently benefit from.
These apps are not the police --at the same time they owe their users a responsibility to not expose them to sexual predators, deviants, extortionists, etc.
At the same time, they have to prevent maliciousness/revenge by people who don't handle rejection well.
Unfortunately, a robust system for reporting and assessment is costly, so you should err on the side of caution rather than expose your users to known depraved sexual perverts.
One thing they might do is share a database with other apps (ok, many are under the same parent co) and flag suspicious actors (I'm sure they have plenty of signal to work with to determine who is trying to get around the bans)
Let's be honest, these apps wouldn't exist if there were no real women on them.
Seems to me the absolute bare minimum is to ensure the safety of your most valuable users. Not put your head in the sand. Not hide the facts.
Most women won't go to the police but I expect they will report their victimization to the app which promises them they will take their reports seriously. A 158 years to life sentence seems like they weren't taking any reports seriously.
True, but one difference, is they allowed the culture and population to mature as they transformed from a fishing village to international port and commerce center.
And, while they do bring in foreigners, they tend to be domestic maids or medium to high earning foreigners with a decent education and culture.
It's worth adding, that Singapore being clean is not a magical culture thing, but a deliberate government policy. Lee Kuan Yew writes in his memories that is took a lot of effort to make Chinese drivers stop spitting out of the cars for example and make the river not smell of shit.
This is true, but given 60 years it now has become part of the culture there. Maybe if you go out to the poorer places with SEA laborers, you can find betelnut chewers --but those are imported manual labor immigrants and not natives --though maybe you see them in the small islands.
Sure; Singapore (and Japan) do a lot to actively instill and maintain these conditions, from harsh punishments for drug trafficking, penalties for graffiti, good public education, a social safety net, affordable housing, government jobs programs, and so on. Basically, there's no need to whisper about how you need ethnic homogeneity to have clean streets.
What this thread is about *is* culture, and the USA does not have the culture this way, and apparently Japan and Singapore do. Culture being the unchallenged basic assumptions of how people behave and how society works. It has nothing to do with whether culture changed or not, only how it is now.
You know how there are pictures of certain immigrants to NYC and other places in the early part of the XX century and they would show those people sweeping their stoops and sidewalks and generally keeping their neighborhoods tidy?
Well, in Japan, you still see that. Shop owners will go around their shop with a duster cleaning away any dust or cobwebs that might have sprung overnight. Awnings, signs, etc.
That was a political machine thing. In the days before social security, destitute old people with connections to the local ward leader would be handed a broom and a modest wage.
In my small city (~120k people at the time) they had a few thousand people on the payroll doing stuff like this.
Culture and mentality. They don't have the same urge to vandalize or graffiti. Same as Singapore.
They are much more united and much less diverse in various ways. While they have many subcultures, they mostly adhere to a greater social cohesion.
To make up for that a bit, they do allow people to get plastered and spray vomitus publicly, including public transit and no one bats an eye. That said, you don't get the public defecation that we get.
Even their bums tend to take care of themselves as best they can. They try to maintain a certain decorum despite their dire circumstances.
Americans, in a sense, lost quite a bit of their sense of shame.
The parent was asking about political parties. In Vietnam, the leftist party runs the country. If "in charge of a politically stable, economically growing country for decades" doesn't meet the definitions of "successful or meaningful" in the context of a political party you're going to have to be more specific.
They need periodic retrenchment -in the private sector there are economic pressures to re-organize; in the government the tendency is for greater taxation.
Throwing out the baby along with the bath water is not the answer but neither is the status quo.
You don't get to just pretend these things aren't created and funded by congress, and that their operation hasn't been solidified and formed over decades and decades through interaction with the judicial branch as well.
The executive branch has an obligation to execute the laws - they don't get to arbitrarily pick and choose how to do that without constraint. Period.
If these were somehow created by executive action, it would be a completely different conversation. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous in the extreme.
Apparently Mayorkas didn't have to execute the laws if he didn't want to and moreover got to decide if he wanted to subvert them as well by granting asylum to whomever asked as well as providing transport, guidance, etc., etc.
Democrats make people upset by not applying laws --all the thievery etc that AGs went light on, etc., and the Republicans make people upset by applying laws to a greater extent (being tougher on crime and deportations --though Obama wasn't a laggard in the latter either)
They're not being dismantled. Funding is being paused while they are audited --and the audits are showing very concerning waste, potential fraud and are being reorganized under a different department.
This is a good thing. They should not get to waste our tax dollars without oversight and fraud detection.
O RLY? You might try reading literally anything the people involved are putting out there. They're open about trying to shut down USAID and the department of Education, and interfering so deeply in places like NIH is beyond the plausible legal limit (which is part of the point during an authoritarian takeover).
I know that HN is supposed to be a place of reasoned discourse, but your takes are so removed from reality I can't take you seriously. I hold your authoritarian apologism in utter contempt and disgust. Be better.
I think everyone should be concerned how the government is spending our money and every government administration should have its spending audited and any graft, fraud and waste eliminated with a waste-0 initiative. This should be transparent to the voters. We should know how they are spending our money and where. The purpose of the government agencies isn't to be a jobs program.
> This should be transparent to the voters. We should know how they are spending our money and where.
The fact that you think this is what's happening right now is fucking hilarious. It's also hilarious that you don't seem to know just how much public information IS available from these institutions.
Some random, ketamine addicted, un-elected oligarch with a cadre of teenage lackeys being let loose with unlimited authority over giant institutions in a process with zero accountability or transparency is your fucking idea of an audit? Like the rest of your arguments here, that's either phenomenally stupid or a mediocre astroturfing job.
So you think voters were aware of how USAID moneys were being spent?
Causing instability overseas, paying Reuters, Catholic charities, BBC, NYT, Politico, etc., for disinformation, people smuggling, etc. It's ridiculous. I'm glad it's happening. The corruption is being exposed. It could be Stalin's great-grandkid doing this and I would welcome the exposure of our waste.
Of course Soros junior so mad his manoeuvering isn't as effective no more.
> So you think voters were aware of how USAID moneys were being spent?
What the fuck? We're talking about the availability of information, not what random idiots have bothered to make themselves aware of.
> Causing instability overseas, paying Reuters, Catholic charities, BBC, NYT, Politico, etc., for disinformation, people smuggling, etc. It's ridiculous. I'm glad it's happening. The corruption is being exposed. It could be Stalin's great-grandkid doing this and I would welcome the exposure of our waste.
Nothing is being exposed. There are legal ways to pursue "audits" and "efficiency", but nobody can seriously believe that's what's happening now. USAID could be evil incarnate, and the current power grab would still be illegal and a threat to the very existence of our country (and we're not ONLY talking about USAID, they just started there).
Just admit it - you're an authoritarian at heart and you're happy daddy is going to decide everything now. Real life is too complex to bother trying to understand.
> Trump and Musk are actively destroying the separation of powers of the branches of government.
I'm afraid that's just factually wrong. What Trump and Musk are doing is called impoundment of appropriated funds[1] and it is Constitutional and consistent with the separation of powers, and was in fact considered one of the powers of the President until 1974.
In 1974, Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act, making it illegal (but not unconstitutional), and that will no doubt be fought in the Courts, but it seems likely the the current Supreme Court will overturn the act, making what Trump and Musk are doing legal.
Click through to the Train decision. It has been firmly held that per the Article 1 separation of powers, Congress determines how money is spent. Impoundment is used (and it certainly is used routinely) only when the executive determines that a disbursement will not serve it's intended purpose. Quote from Train, "the president cannot frustrate the will of Congress by killing a program through impoundment". I have no doubt Trump is attempting to trigger a new case in an effort to overturn Train and he may well succeed, but he'll likely end up overturning Article 1 in the process.
This goes right back to his first impeachment where we got a clear lesson on this. Congress authorized money for the defense of Ukraine. It went through multiple mandatory controls with DoD and other agencies to ensure the specific disbursement was likely to reach it's intended target. Those controls could have triggered impoundment if they found any flaws, but they did not. Then it was stopped by the president expressly to extort a political favor from Ukraine. In this case, the House voted to impeach and the Senate refused to convict likely due to political loyalty. Now that he knows Congress likely won't stop him, he can abuse his authority as he pleases.
> I have no doubt Trump is attempting to trigger a new case in an effort to overturn Train and he may well succeed, but he'll likely end up overturning Article 1 in the process.
The Train decision came nearly 200 years after Article 1 was written, and during that time impoundment was practiced by Presidents beginning with Thomas Jefferson. Overturning Train would in fact restore the original meaning of Article 1.
There is no way in hell the founders thought a president could unilaterally disassemble an entire agency that was explicitly empowered by Congress. Thomas Jefferson didn't want to buy ships. He didn't try to disband the Navy. And it's possible the SC would have stopped him if Congress had the will. There is not a long history of impoundment being a major tool of executive authority. When Nixon tried to shut down multiple programs within an agency, he was shot down in court and Congress passed a law delineating exactly what he could and could not do. There is no reason to think that law runs afoul of the Constitution. Article 1 does not grant any right to impoundment. The actions of past presidents aren't precedent or else (in the case of Jefferson) we'd still have slavery.
If you disagree, please type the words: "The President can unilaterally disband a federal agency empowered by Congress whenever he wants for whatever reason he wants and no one can stop him". Because that is what you are implying.
I think it's clear that the founders never considered the possibility of a president disbanding a modern federal agency because they didn't think such large agencies would exist. They tried to reserve most power for the states. And if they had known the modern federal government could become so big, they would support shutting it down. The president is meant to act as a check on Congressional spending too.
They also couldn't envision women voting. The president has veto power over the budget. That is their check on spending. They absolutely positively do not have any authority to cancel a Congressional appropriation and they never have.
You know what else the founders definitely did not envision? A standing federal army. Trump is honor bound to the soul of George Washington to disband the DoD and reclaim $800B. Surely that is 100% his prerogative and nobody has any right to stop him.
So time to retrench and look inwardly instead of projecting power?
Maybe instead of meddling in international affairs via cover NGOs, let those people work out their own problems like we did in our early republic. We don't have to be captain save-a-hoe for the world.
Hire fairly. Avoid [bigoted] bias in your hiring.
That you had to advertise you did that meant you were not doing it in the first place. Meaning you were not treating equally and fairly.
Lots of these corporate efforts, whatever they are, are a money printer for organizations “helping” including those proposing streamlining, time management, equity, X analysis, etc. whether delivered by the big5, individuals or any other entity, they are money pits that make management feel good: they’re doing something.
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