What’s Wrong with the World

It is worth noting, simply to render the point explicitly, that this is the reason larger corporations eventually acquiesced in the various affirmative-action and workplace diversity fetishes that the regnant liberal culture foisted upon the nation. They ran their utility calculus and determined that the medium and long-term benefits far exceeded the marginal costs in terms of productivity and compliance, and so the corporate world is now as much an engine of social re-engineering as any phalanx of leftist sociologists - probably more portent, actually, given the vast powers of wealth.

Great post, BTW.

While an interesting theory, I don't believe it to be true. About the only part I agree with is that it is easier to sustain high prices in a liquid environment.

I confess to having worked in a very small business where huntering was common. While I would agree there was some intangible benefit to the employed, I don't think it extended very far. There was also tangible inefficiency created when half the office took parts of October off. So I guess my objection is that you seem to giving this benefit a breadth I don't see.

The advantages large businesses possess have more to do with barriers to entry and similar things. While there have been some places with defined coporate cultures like IBM, I don't see that same kind of culture being shared between GM plants. In many places the office culture is dominant and not necessarily a corporate culture. Wal-Mart would be a good example of this. Despite efforts to create a unique Wal-Mart culture, the culture difference between urban and rural stores is quite striking.

There was also tangible inefficiency created when half the office took parts of October off. So I guess my objection is that you seem to giving this benefit a breadth I don't see.

A reasonable small businessman might well conclude when starting up his copier business that objectively speaking a vegan culture would be more productive than a hunter culture, it seems to me.

A reasonable businessman may conclude that one's hunting activities or dietary proclivities are a superflous consideration. Upon further reflection, I think you have the relationship backwards.

It is not PC that harms work place culture; PC harms culture though the work place. You and I would both agree that given the choice between hiring a fellow Catholic and hiring a heathen, we should hire the Catholic. We would not agree that this was the better choice because it makes better business sense. The heathen might even be a marginally better employee. We would agree that hiring the Catholic is the best choice because Catholic identity is important. We would argue that there are non-material, i.e. non-business, benefits to hiring the fellow Catholic.

Richard Epstein goes into some of these issues in his book Forbidden Grounds. As I recall, the specifics included differing cultural attitudes toward personal space, noise, degree of formality etc. Like they say, diversity is a challenge. I seem to remember Bill Clinton saying he liked diversity because it made life more interesting. It meant he could sit down at a table with people and talk about lots of real complicated problems. That was the actual example he used.

MZ, I think you might be surprised at how much difference it makes to have people comfortable with each other. I don't speak here from a great deal of experience, but it just seems to make common sense to me. Naturally, that cd. be outweighed by other considerations, even in terms of efficiency. You're not going to feel all that "comfortable" with someone who shares your religion but is a lousy worker. In fact, it might be harder to tell him to shape up if he is going to make you feel guilty for criticizing a fellow Christian. But often these things come into play when there are not other clear reasons to prefer one employee over another.

Such cultural considerations are particularly relevant, of course, when one deals with the public. I know that in the part of the world where I live, saying to somebody, "The people who run that business are Christians" is a real recommendation. If you're going to have workmen in your house from a contractor, it's valuable to be able to think, as a customer, that they are going to have clean language in front of your kids, etc.

I remember that Clinton quote about diversity being more interesting, because it generates all manner of complicated questions that don't admit of easy resolution. It was quite revealing of the fact that liberals would rather engender countless societal problems, being willing to tolerate them, for the sake of "interesting" social environments and the underlying ideology they incarnate. Pathological, though whether of the moral or psychological species, I am uncertain.

"The people who run that business are Christians" is a real recommendation. If you're going to have workmen in your house from a contractor, it's valuable to be able to think, as a customer, that they are going to have clean language in front of your kids, etc.

Just because a business has identified themselves as 'Christian' doesn't necessarily mean they will abide by such etiquette, as in refraining from using vulgar language.

I remember a contractor who advertised in the yellow pages as such, but when we had met that person to perform an estimate, the person could be no different than a drunk cretin spouting expletives in a bar.

I think you might be surprised at how much difference it makes to have people comfortable with each other.

I did not personally fully appreciate this before witnessing firsthand the utter destruction of one corporate culture by another in a merger. Most proposed mergers look good as a matter of rationally putting together different businesses with inherent symmetries. (Successful businesspeople just aren't so stupid as to pursue transactions which are manifest errant nonsense even from their own technocratic perspective). Most actual mergers fail as the different cultures fail to mix in a way which leverages those synergies. Companies which are very successful at acquiring and integrating other companies understand this and try to incorporate cultural synergy into their technocratic process. Pushing legally mandatory cultural uniformity centered around advanced liberal political correctness as far upstream as possible, into as small and local a class of businesses as possible, makes the ongoing process of aggregating everything into a massive uniform bureacracy governed by technical experts - a process which includes the transactions which make wealthy men of the facilitators of the process - that much easier.

I am opposed to all anti-discrimination laws. It seems absurd to me that the government should dictate what characteristics can be taken into consideration and what characteristics cannot. The government is basically saying “you can make the decision, you just cannot factor x, y, and z into that decision.” The problem is that x, y, and z may be important factors. I also think that individuals and businesses should be allowed to make decisions on the things they feel are important.

A business owner should not have to prove to the federal government that a particular job requires a “bona fide occupational qualification”. Also, if an individual decides to rent out his or her house and only wants to rent it to a married Christian couple, that individual should not have to justify this decision under the “fair housing act”.

Most actual mergers fail as the different cultures fail to mix in a way which leverages those synergies.

Good point!

Reminds of of the formal corporate culture of Compaq vs. the laid-back culture of DEC; which many of my colleagues believe then was the reason behind why the merger ultimately failed, amongst many other things.

employees as fungible cogs in the machine

Didn't this corporate culture all come about due to Jack Welch's management style at G.E., which made companies re-tool their respective cultures from that of a 'family' type climate to that of a strictly business climate where employees became nothing more than the 'fungible cogs' you speak of here?

Didn't this corporate culture all come about due to Jack Welch's management style at G.E., ...

Well, I wouldn't blame it all on Jack, but he certainly had a role to play in it.

Just because a business has identified themselves as 'Christian' doesn't necessarily mean they will abide by such etiquette, as in refraining from using vulgar language.

Sure. Caveat emptor, and all that. But it's a place to start. And I wasn't so much thinking of a business that advertises in the yellow pages but of a business where you find out independently and then tell your friends. For example, the contractor I had in mind was still doing most of his own work when I employed him to remodel a bathroom five years ago. He opted to work late one night (to fix a part of the job we had carelessly allowed to get messed up), and I fed him supper. I glanced into the kitchen and "caught" him praying over his food. Well, I suppose he could be a Mormon, but probably not in this region. That seemed to me to explain a lot in terms of his honesty and behavior, and I've mentioned it occasionally in giving referrals for the business when they have people call us. This year we had them do a lot more work for us, and it was all unknown workmen. But even when they were smokers and the like, so probably somewhat different from their boss, they were very gentlemanly and well-behaved, which I gather is not always to be expected from contractors. (It was amusing to see the outside guys stubbing out their cigarettes hastily when I came to speak to them, not to hide it but so they wouldn't be blowing smoke in my face. And they never left a single cigarette end on the property, either.)

I think you extrapolate too much Zippy. Certainly mergers involve clashes in culture. Those clashes involve such things as whose getting fired, for whom will one work, and other interpersonal issues. It is a case where there are real winners and losers. On the micro level, the hiring of Manuel is not seen as a zero sum game. Manuel's hiring is most commonly evaluated under "Does this make my job easier?"

And when we restrospect on the race wars of the 60s, we do not see business suffering because of the war. We witness the racialists being marginalized.

Lydia,

I have limited experience with Christian-based businesses. In consulting friends, we have observed that businesses who advertise themselves as such offer below market wages. That is admittedly anecdotal. I have observed that over the past dozen years that the managerial preferences of salesmen and salemen-now-managers are taken as gospel for other parts of the workforce. So while advertising as a Christian business may bring in a market niche, I haven't observed them to be better run or better for the employees. To provide an example that would be closer at home for you, salemen-managers like really short 1 page resumes whereas in the technical fields, 3 pages plus is the norm. They are just simply different cultures, but don't tell the college career counselor that.

I imagine this is why Zippy and I are having difficulty communicating. I'm looking from below, and he is looking from above.

I think you extrapolate too much Zippy. Certainly mergers involve clashes in culture.

M.Z. Forrest,

I believe there is merit in what Zippy has stated here (i.e., Most actual mergers fail as the different cultures fail to mix in a way which leverages those synergies).

There are several Harvard Business Review cases that center on this premise, which you might very well be interested in reading if you are genuinely interested in the subject.

I get the slightly odd feeling that M.Z. Forrest kind of wants Catholics' hiring fellow Catholics and having a "shared business culture" to be bad for business. I'm tempted to call this "anti-capitalist Kantianism"--it's only good if it's bad for business.

At the risk of thread-jacking, I'm yielding to the temptation to mention here something I've mentioned before: If you are concerned for small and local businesses, you should think long and hard about _many_ types of business regulation. The big businesses can afford them. Whether we're talking about complex environmental regulations that require hiring a team of lawyers to insure compliance, the requirement that you to do expensive remodeling to make your building and bathrooms handicapped accessible, affirmative action laws, or a hefty raise in the minimum wage, these are all easier for big businesses to handle than little ones.

Remember when Wal-Mart supported a raise in the minimum wage? Sounds strange, until you know that Wal-Mart was already paying more than the minimum (so a raise wouldn't affect them so much) and that small competitors actually need to pay less just to compete. It would help crush competitors.

Here is Lew Rockwell's description. Usually he calls Wal-Mart "heroic."

Historians such as Robert Higgs, Butler Shaffer, Dominick Armentano, and Gabriel Kolko have chronicled how the rise of business regulation, including intervention in market wages, was pushed by large companies for one main reason: to impose higher costs on smaller competitors.

This is how child labor legislation, mandated pensions, labor union impositions, health and safety regulations, and the entire panoply of business regimentation came about. It was pushed by big businesses that had already absorbed the costs of these practices into their profit margins so as to burden smaller businesses that did not have these practices. Regulation is thus a violent method of competition.

Disclaimer: there was a small-town business in my family destroyed by Wal-Mart, so I'm cherry-picking Rockwell here; generally I think he's an idealogue and a fanatic.

Employment law may require you to ignore many of these facts and many other true facts about prospective candidates; but nevertheless these attributes have a direct impact not only on the work environment generally, but directly on the profitability of your business.

Other factors may have an impact on the profitability of your business too; for example, your ability to fix prices with a competitor, or the ability to make factually incorrect claims in your advertising to entice customers to buy your product. I bring that up only to illustrate that “having an impact on the profitability of your business” is not the only reasonable consideration in determining whether a business practice ought to be regulated.

This is true despite the fact that uniform PC corporatist culture makes employees on an individual basis miserable and less productive as individuals

That’s a curious statement. Are you contending that having to work alongside the groups you cite (Baptists, vegans, homosexuals, Catholics, divorced persons, Koreans, or females) necessarily makes an individual miserable? I can see how a coworker who is bothersome or annoying might lead to a decrease in job satisfaction, but I have trouble seeing how this follows directly from any of the demographic data that you mention.

On the other hand, being unable to find work is frustrating and can lead to an inability to purchase basic necessities. Being denied work because one is Baptist, vegan, homosexual, Catholic, divorced, Korean, or female is likely to be particularly frustrating, and certainly, being fired for those characteristics is not likely to be any more satisfying. So, an increase in misery seems to follow directly from religion-, diet-, sexual orienation-, marital status-, race-, and sex- based hiring practices.

I bring that up only to illustrate that “having an impact on the profitability of your business” is not the only reasonable consideration in determining whether a business practice ought to be regulated.

I absolutely agree. I merely point out that the mythology that these things make no difference to the performance of the business - that (e.g.) "being vegan" has no impact one's job performace as a bookkeeper for a particular business - is insane.

Are you contending that having to work alongside the groups you cite (Baptists, vegans, homosexuals, Catholics, divorced persons, Koreans, or females) necessarily makes an individual miserable?

Not precisely; though I acknowledge that as one-off propositions it may well do so in particular cases. Rather in the specific sentence you quote I am contending (though I tend to think that what I am doing is simply observing moreso than contending) that the requirement to suppress everything that is important to them in favor of uniform PC liberalism across all social interactions, especially in the workplaces where they spend the bulk of their time, makes people nihilistic and miserable.

I merely point out that the mythology that these things make no difference to the performance of the business - that (e.g.) "being vegan" has no impact one's job performace as a bookkeeper for a particular business - is insane.

It would be nice if you actually argued this point rather than simply assuming it. I have pointed to evidence at the micro level and at the macro level, the latter being 30 years of history since the civil rights movement. We should see some evidence of harm at this point. You and others seem to think this a point is beyond debate however. I will offer another example. In China and other countries, when the government started requiring civil service exams, the governance improved dramatically. This of course significantly impaired the old system of cronyism.

I'm not claiming you have to maintain P.C. and other movements are good. The evidence that they are bad for business however is lacking. I personally wouldn't support the PC and other movements, but I certainly wouldn't do so on materialist grounds.

It would be nice if you actually argued this point rather than simply assuming it.

(1) I've personally seen it and experienced it, in perhaps thousands of ways over a period of quite a number of years. I'm hard pressed to believe that anyone with extensive corporate experience in a variety of disparately sized culturally differentiated organizations can fail to have experienced it, particularly if they have passed through some M&A transactions.

(2) It isn't as if I am simply making it up when I point out that most mergers fail due to cultural factors.

(3) I'm not arguing that PC should be fought against on materialist grounds. I am arguing that the myth that these various PC-anathema attributes have no effect on the material success of the business (let alone on other areas which constitute legitimate reasons why a business owner owns that particular business to begin with) - which is a central rationale behind their legal treatment as irrational stereotyping and thus illegitimate as objects of inquiry in hiring and firing decisions - is false.

And I think everyone basically knows that the myth is false. If there is a particular point to which this leads, it is that regulation of business is in fact done on moral grounds, not on the grounds that the things regulated are irrelevant to the business and thus an irrational basis for making business decisions. I would further contend that any discussion about the regulation of business with positivist pretensions to avoiding substantive moral judgements is obviously false, that appeals to the notion that only well-defined positive and specifiable task-oriented job qualifications are relevant are specious nonsense, and that when regulations are made on this basis - on the basis that the prohibited discrimination doesn't affect the business and is therefore illegitimate because it doesn't affect the business - that putative basis is a bald-faced lie, a lie resting on this obviously false myth.

So we agree that PC should be opposed on moral grounds. But that doesn't make criticism of the obviously false central mythology of PC on its own terms illegitimate or wrong.

Finally, my central argument, which does rest on the falsity of the myth which you deny to be false, is that police-power enforced uniform PC culture eliminates one of the few advantages - in the sense that an advantage maintains independence and flourishing - that small business has over large business.

Some years ago I had a long-running semi-argument with a friend over women in the military. I say "semi-argument," because I could never quite pin down his own position. But he was always telling me what "they" (the liberals) argue on the subject. At one point I was advocating the excellent book _Women in the Military: Flirting with Disaster_, and I was talking about some of its arguments re. preparedness and efficiency and stuff. He stopped me and said, "But you don't understand. Their position is that women must be advanced as much as possible in the military because they ought to have the careers. These arguments you are giving are irrelevant."

Pretty much openly a moral argument for affirmative action, regardless of negative consequences for the actual job being done. And of course if you don't accept this absolute moral imperative to make sure that women have access to these careers, then you're going to try to discuss the thing on more goal-directed rational grounds. But you get nowhere.

(1) I don't claim extensive corporate experience. I've observed two M&As, and in both cases I was brought in shortly after the M&A was effected. I recognize that you and apparently much of your readership has greater experience in this area.
(2) This part I understand and until you brought it up several posts ago, I really didn't see where you were coming from. Culture is greater than race and sex. (I'm not even sure the latter can be properly called a cultural indicator. It seems rather common across all cultures.) Just because a merger fails to cultural factor 'A' does not mean we have established that a merger will fail due to racial disparity. It may even be a coincidental factor.
(3) As for your central argument, it depends on your definition of small business. In the corporate context, I have seen it refer to any business with under $500M in revenues. In that sense these regs have an influence. If we are speaking of firms with fewer than 25 employees, then no, there isn't much influence. I realize that in b-school discussions these are more often refered to as micro-businesses.

Zippy,

I am interested what your thoughts may be regarding the opinion that diversity is an important contributing factor to an organization's success.

That is, if you only had a certain group of individuals working in such an organization, you may hinder its greater probability for success by having essentially biased its 'thinking' via employing only these types of individuals that might be able to see things from only one perspective.

I have always been taught by a contingent of my business professors that, just like data in a study, you should always have an even distribution of individuals employed in your organization or else suffer the aforementioned fate.

I am interested what your thoughts may be regarding the opinion that diversity is an important contributing factor to an organization's success.

It can be, though not without limits. Tunnel vision can kill you, and different perspectives can help avoid that. I think extrapolation to an abstract principle in saying "you should always have an even distribution" is complete nonsense though. What works in a given business in a given environment will vary all over the place: it is not a matter of optimizing for maximum diversity, as if the added perspective of a convicted murderer (for example) would be so valuable that the negatives of hiring one are outweighed by that benefit. My overall thesis doesn't rest on the naive notion "diversity bad, uniformity good", but rather on the straightforward observation that these things matter.

Take a concrete example: suppose the Born Again Baptist Bakery hires only Baptists. Because it is a distinctive Baptist work environment it offers something to employees that they would have a difficult time finding elsewhere. They don't have to work Sundays, there are daily Bible verses on the walls, etc. Employees are more loyal and are probably willing to accept less (but still fair) wages and perhaps less costly benefits compared to working for Coginthemachineco; despite this they are happier and more productive. This gives the Baptist Bakery a competitive advantage (one of few) over Politicallycorrectera Bread, a subsidiary of Global Food Monopoly Inc.

Zippy,

Excellent explanation and example!

Uniformity of this type in such an organization would seem to moreso capitalize on a niche (i.e., 'Born Again Baptist' Bakery) which enables it to distinguish itself from the competition, as you rightfully alluded to above.

Yet, in our EEO environment, can such a measure even be taken for various entreprenuerial endeavors?

For example, say somebody wanted to establish some sort of "Christian Fitness Club".

How would one be able to establish such an authentically Christian environment for its customers (i.e., the selling point of the establishment in the first place) if the laws are such that equal consideration need be given to various persons regardless of creed, etc.; and hired as well?

I mean, it's not as if one could bypass such a law by resorting to certain measures (e.g., specifically citing modeling as part of the job requirements in order to be able to hire and maintain only attractive females as employees of a popular establishment).

Well, sure, the laws do to no small extent preclude any attempt at this sort of niche marketing.

When it comes to whether "diversity" is an advantage in a business, my own opinion is that *what the liberals mean by this* and what they want to tell us is almost certainly false. The sort of story they want us to imagine runs like this: People are sitting around trying to solve some business problem, and all the wooden-minded White Males are helpless because of their linear thinking. Suddenly, Superwoman (or Superminority Member), through being able to think "outside the box" brings her unique "female perspective" or "black perspective" to bear on the problem, and voila, it's solved.

I really doubt that this type of situation is terribly common, particularly if we stipulate that we aren't talking about problems that directly involve female or racial issues. For example, we aren't talking about getting the female employee's perspective on hair coloring or "what you look for in an obstetrician" but rather on, oh I don't know, systems design.

I know *for sure* that talk about a "female perspective" in philosophy is bunk and is really an attempt to create various pseudo-sub-disciplines to justify pro-female affirmative action.

There is no way that the EEOC will get involved in an under 50 person company unless someone is a complete idiot. It is not like our little bread company hires 50 people a quarter pretty much at random knowing that they will only keep 10. Often companies that small won't even advertise opennings or their advertising will be very targeted. I have experience with many places that informally discriminate. Need I add that we live in a fairly segregated society, so it isn't like one has to go to extraordinary lengths to find their Christian, vegan, hunting gal to fill the job if that is what their existing workforce consists of. One doesn't file EEOC reports until one reaches 100 employees. I should also add that companies tend to get into more trouble after they hire a person rather than for failing to hire. If no one from sub group A moves up the corporate track despite 25% of the subgroup being elligible, that is a strong prima facie case. If a person from subgroup A doesn't get hired at Bubba's Executive Consultants with 10 employees, there are other plausible explanations.

There is no way that the EEOC will get involved in an under 50 person company unless someone is a complete idiot.

I'm at something of a loss as to what that one stipulated data point from the bureacracy does to undermine any of my points or to bolster any of yours. There are regulatory cutoffs at 50 and 15 employees for various federal regulations and compliance procedures, yes, which seems to me to support the idea that the mandatory PC culture "cap" keeps the lid on the little guy competing with bigger guys. Plenty of small business owners (machinists and such) intentionally keep the number of employees below 15 in order to stay below the regulatory trigger. You can also be (and likely would be) sued if you expressly refused to hire anyone except (say) confessional Baptists into a four man company, and indeed in many jurisdictions at the individual level if you expressly refused to do business with someone because (say) he is homosexual.

If a person from subgroup A doesn't get hired at Bubba's Executive Consultants with 10 employees, there are other plausible explanations.

Here you pretty much explicitly concede that if Bubba's Executive Consultants doesn't want to hire a homosexual into the ten-man team then Bubba has to lie about it if he wants to get away with it, pretending that his reasons are other than what they in fact are.

Beyond all that, the formal legal/bureacratic aspect is merely the hair on the tip of the nose of the PC shibboleth.