The vast majority of the university’s value is in its scientific output. I dislike weird-woke-nonsense as much as the next guy, but I think you risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater here.
Hillsdale College has no particular reputation for STEM research, but many of the big & crazy-lefty institutions do. When the federal government withholds funding as a bargaining chip, it’s the scientists and technologists that bear a disproportionate amount of the hurt.
My sense is that universities are broadly too stubborn and stupid to respond well to threats like these, and they’ll only end up crippling American innovation. And wokeness is already generally in decline! I think our efforts are probably best spent egging that on via softer social-pressure-type means.
Last reports I saw said 75% of peer-reviewed medical research could not be replicated. I think it was 90% for psychology. Theoretical physics has been stuck on string theory and theories of everything for decades without any progress. Their Large Hadron Collider continues finding mostly nothing and issuing scientific reports with hundreds of authors, and now they want a new one that they project costing €40 billion in 20 years, which means it would more likely cost €100 billion when finished in 50 years.
The economy would not lose much if teaching and research were separated, and if research were privately funded. It would more likely gain.
I agree that private industry can sometimes do research, but the infrastructure simply isn’t there at scale. Industry is super reliant on discoveries coming out of academic labs, and all startups anywhere but Silicon Valley (and even some there) are founded by academic scientists spinning off their government-funded research.
The idea that you can totally destroy this pipeline just to make a point, without facing any serious consequences, is pretty laughable.
You are making a small but important error in your logic when you say "I agree that private industry can sometimes do research, but the infrastructure simply isn’t there at scale." Regardless of whether that is true (a lot more research is done by private companies than people think, and many university research centers are in reality funded by outside private companies) it ignores the economic facts of crowding out and substitution. In other words, universities do a lot of research because they are paid to do a lot of research such that private companies don't need to spend their money on it. To the extent that research is needed or wanted it will be done one way or the other.
An analogy would be saying that if a public bus service closes down no one will be able to get to work because there is not private infrastructure (busses). We wouldn't expect that at all, as either A: a private bus company could take over the line or B: people would drive themselves, walk, ride bikes, etc.
Industry is nowhere near "super reliant" on government-funded research. Research isn't suddenly cheap because government funds it; if history has taught us anything, it's that government involvement jacks up the price. "All startups"? Even I don't throw around hyperbole like that.
That link begins by discussing the claim "90% of medical research is false." The reports I read said 75% is not replicable. There's a difference.
Climate science is supposedly settled; great, they don't need any more funding, do they? If it's settled, it ain't science, and if it's science, it ain't settled. They need to make up their minds.
The idea that making science research depend on private industry and donations is not destroying anything, and government-funded research is not a precious pipeline.
My point is that “75% is not replicable” doesn’t mean “the vast majority of funding is being wasted,” which seems to be your conclusion.
Hard data on this is difficult to come by, but, quite frankly, you’d have to be a real moron not to think that the academia-to-industry pipeline is fairly important! OLED screens come from academic research; so does most of the architecture of the modern internet (ARPA grants!) and synthetic insulin and the mRNA tech behind the Covid vaccine and so on…
Patents are a lousy measure of innovation that only bureaucrats can love. Or a real moron.
You’re the one claiming the right and the necessity to steal my taxes to spend your way. The burden is on you to come up with real answers, not suppositions along with excuses for hard data being difficult to come by.
See? That’s the difference between asking for research money and stealing it. The thief doesn’t care what ancillary damage he does, nor see what his victim would have done with his money if it hadn’t been stolen. When the thief hands it over free to someone else, that third party has no motivation to see he spends it wisely.
Seen and Unseen. What would have been done with the money if the government hadn't spent it on research?
I cannot answer exactly, but I know the way I would bet.
And, yes, there would be some disruption if we cut out government research over night. But the infrastructure wouldn't go away, it would be sold off. In the short run, research advancements might slow way down. In the long run, we would be in a better place.
And government research has its place. From a pure economics standpoint, I think the Manhattan Project was probably a waste. But it was necessary to make sure the Nazis didn't get there first and then to defeat Japan with minimal loss of Allied life. And I am glad the Soviets didnt get there first too.
But those are few and far between (maybe Apollo?).
And yet pharmaceuticals work. What does it even mean by that 75% number anyway? Of course you don’t get the EXACT same result every time you do a trial because there’s internal variation. And most big clinical trials are so expensive that we don’t even really try to replicate them. Sometimes that burns us and we moderate our previously formed conclusions, but not often, more often some rare but serious side effect will happen that cause a drug to be taken off the market
The more STEM focused universities are the least committed to DEI/Woke. MIT for instance responded to the Supreme Court ruling by dramatically lowering its black enrollment, which was already less egregious than other ivies.
DEI/Woke is strongest in the ivies that focus on culture/government. The "paper belt" ivies that churn out lawyers, lobbyists, and (especially soft) finance guys. Shape Rotators vs Wordcels.
Don't cut the rattle off a snake -- his silence is more dangerous to you than him.
I want the bigots to be legal so I know who to avoid. I want them to have to confront the reality of trying to define "black" (or "Irish" or ...) in some objective repeatable manner. I want them to have to decide if banning blacks from their store includes UPS drivers, police responding to shoplifting, and the repair tech when their cash register breaks. I want people to begin phone calls with "Do you refuse to talk to blacks on the phone?" I want them to realize just how much business their bigotry costs them.
I don't want the law to shield these bigots from learning about harsh reality.
People also underestimate markets and always want the government to jump in and fix things, as if (a) government actually could, and (b) they’d be faster than markets. I sometimes wonder how much faster whites and blacks would have integrated on their own after the Civil War without government forcing segregation. Even with Southern intransigence and forced segregation, they were making progress until Plessey screwed the pooch.
It should be noted that the Manhattan Statement gives the president the power to withdraw accreditation, so it would apply to Hillsdale and make it possible to end Hillsdale College as a college. Giving any president dictatorial power to ban any college's "grant, payment, loan, eligibility, and accreditation" without any due process for allegedly failing to meet vague standards is a horrible idea, even if it was a rational president. Giving total authority to ban colleges to Donald Trump is insane.
I think the only part where I disagree with you is the part about publishing data on race. I think it would be better to prohibit universities from even collecting data on race, because:
(1) we don't need it to figure out that universities are discriminating against asians, whites, and men now.
(2) it's not apparent what racial demographics would prove that universities were or were not continuing to discriminate against asians, whites, and men. How many asians would you have in GMU's entering class if the GMU admissions office stopped discriminating? I don't know of a particular number, but the way I'd figure it out would be to watch whether they are discriminating, and when they aren't, whatever number of asians there are in the entering class, that's how many asians you get when you aren't discriminating. And if that's the process, then the racial data is useless.
(3) if you let administrators measure it, they will make choices based on it. And for race data, that is precisely the thing we don't want them to do.
"culminating in the celebration of the Hamas terror campaign"
That is an absolutely false representation of the pro-Palestinian protests against Israel's genocide. Yet you call this "Poetic but nonetheless true." Pretty sad.
The reason you shouldn't have signed it: they're lying. There is no political argument to be made here. It is simply that the people who wrote that document don't act by its principles; and the people who promote that document will not act by its principles.
I’m just so profoundly confused where you got the idea that federal funding of universities has almost any connection whatsoever with anything at all related to undergraduates. Funding is for research, substantially all STEM research. You can’t possibly seriously think that (an action that will not in any way succeed in) stamping out woke undergrads and gender studies professors is worth abandoning substantially all serious scientific research in the world capital of scientific research. Are you intentionally lying or just completely off the handle with fanaticism?
I have added this to my Quote file: "Indeed, though I greatly distrust anyone who wins an American presidential election, I utterly distrust university administrators." I have a relative by marriage who is a tenured professor at a public university. That relative, who is both politically and socially liberal, assures me that no matter what I read about how bad higher eduction is, it is in fact worse. As to the trustworthiness of Presidents, not only do I greatly distrust anyone elected President, I greatly distrust anyone elected by the citizenry to any position.
“First, while discrimination should be legal, it is still a serious evil and should not be subsidized by taxpayers.”
If a Chinese restaurant only hired Chinese people, would you consider this to be evil? I’ll bet this discrimination happens all the time but no one cares because it seems acceptable. Frankly, I have yet to see a non-tautological defense of the view that discrimination is evil. Women discriminate against short men all the time but few regard this as evil. Why is skin color singled out?
If I were to steel-man Caplan's statement, I would say that he means discrimination based on non-merit measures is evil. Clearly he supports discriminating based on merit and ability, and is against discriminating based on race or reproductive plumbing, etc. when those have no impact on the job.
Arguably the biggest evil is taxing people so that the money can be given to other people who discriminate against them, which I find worse than discriminating badly overall. I personally don't find discrimination to be the problem so much as discriminating over stupid categories, similar to your point about Chinese restaurants. I suspect he would agree with that as well, but I don't know from his writing and never spoke with him about it.
Thanks for your comment. How is it evil to discriminate based on non-merit if, say, you prefer to employ whites, your brother-in-law, etc..? You are the one who pays the cost. I think Caplan, who is generally anti-woke, is being woke here. I think he’s afraid that if he concedes that discrimination is just a preference (like women preferring tall men), then it will impact his case for immigration. The reason may be that, as an anarchist, he believes the streets, roads, etc. should be privately owned. If he concedes that discrimination is not evil, then it becomes legitimate for the de facto owners (i.e., the natives) of the streets, roads, etc. to exercise control of their property via the state as opposed to endorsing de facto world ownership of their property.
I don't know, I can't speak for him. I believe he would agree that discrimination is preference, and he might argue that some preferences are morally wrong to have and pursue. All I am certain of is that he would oppose taxing people and then using that money to discriminate against them via government program, and that discrimination per se is not evil. What aspects one discriminates over and their relative moral valence I can't speak to.
Personally, I don't care who people choose to associate with, although I would look down my nose at people who discriminate ineffectively, e.g. promotive inept family members in their company instead of more capable people. I would express that by not working for that company; I discriminate against people who discriminate poorly in my view :D Freedom of association is a good thing!
I agree that Caplan's statement is surprisingly broad.
Why is it then evil to discriminate in the exchange of goods and services?
Would it be evil for a consumer to choose to entirely eschew producers and make all their own goods? If not, how could it be evil for a consumer to eschew only some producers, while patronizing others?
Does the evil only apply to producers not to consumers?
That too is odd. Is it evil for someone to not open a business, thus denying services to everyone? If not, how could it be evil for someone to open a businesses providing goods or services to at least some people, while denying them to others?
The above reasoning (that some business can't be more evil than no businesses) applies regardless of the reason for the discrimination. But it's worth noting that reasons for discrimination can vary from completely arbitrary or hateful to quite reasonable.
You referenced cases where racial selection of employees would have obvious benefits (ethnic restaurants). There are other cases where discrimination can be more than arbitrary. For example, a store might notice that members of certain demographics disproportionately steal merchandise, such that it could make sense to ban them.
In fact, given group differences, demographic information almost always conveys useful information. For example, if someone has the choice of an Asian doctor or a Black one, there's every reason to assume that the former would be superior to the latter. This is particularly the case due to affirmative action for blacks at every level, but it would still be the case even without it. Given group differences, Blacks would be more likely to have just barely cleared a threshold (getting admitted to college, hired as a doctor, etc.) than Asians.
A restaurant that hires only Chinese people probably thinks it enhances both esprit de corp, trust, and the people probably have a cultural and skills background in running a Chinese restaurant. I.E. their race is a pretty important component in assessing merit.
"Diversity is out strength" basically posits something that seems empirically dodgy. Diversity has lots of negatives that can be empirically proven and its positive haven't been proven. Especially when this is in service to anti-merit, it's hard to justify.
I think most universities support affirmative action because they see it as the price of buying minorities votes and those votes grant them power which advances their interests at societies expense. That's hardly something worth supporting.
More a general question that I've always wondered but when people here talk about government funding of private universities, do they specifically mean FAFSA loans and Pell grants or something else? I get research grants exist but that's an extreme minority of universities I assume. Is there another pot of gold I'm missing that significantly contributes somehow?
I say that because I'm confused why there would be strings on FAFSA loans period*, they are loans, it's the students money, not the governments. Likewise the Pell grant, it's the students money, if they want to blow it on cocaine they should be able too.
What am I missing? I just don't think Congress does a bulk grant transfer to Harvard in the annual Federal budget to pay their electricity for the public's benefit.
* Besides the obvious of thou are enrolled in an accredited education program
With regard to GCC, they mean ALL federal funding, including FAFSA loans, Pell grants, research grants, even the "Covid Relief" money. (See Grove City College v. Bell court case). The "strings" exist because our ever so brilliant federal gov't bureaucrats decided this was a great way to enforce their will on the university system. GCC refused to agree to the idea that they would have to follow any and all regulations that would be written in the future if they continued taking the funds in any form. (In the interests of full disclosure, one of my kids just graduated from there - the kid's student loans were by private application to Fannie Mae, cosigned by me, and without ever filling out the FAFSA).
Yeah that's pretty insane they are attaching strings to the students money, it's not even the USGs. When I hear (heard) government funding my brain thinks "direct funding in the form of contracts and grants or even just bulk transfers to accomplish some direct government need / policy goal" like "here is a bucket of gold to blow on whatever you want including lighting it on fire as a reward for following DOE lunch program rules". I.e. bribery
Yea the USG went pretty nuts pushing the logic there, and it would be really interesting to see that relitigated today. Under the original logic, the USG could just about argue that accepting the children of federal employees was the equivalent to accepting government money, as apparently the money itself is marked and how it changes ownership and the decision making processes therein do not matter. Obviously ridiculous, but it did get at the subtle economic point that subsidizing demand is in reality subsidizing the supplier as well.
I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who in his Lyceum address said if not like a bad law you work to change it and in the meantime obey it and not to resort to violence.
"I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “anti-racism” is racism. If you demur, we are at an impasse."
There's a purposeful usage of a different meaning of "anti" on the leftist's part. They want non-leftists to think that "anti-racism" means "against racism". However they use "anti" in the sense of "the opposite of". Since they claim that racism can only be done by whites to non-whites, "anti-racism" can only be done by non-whites to whites.
Just a small point but if your inclusive metrics don't match (roughly) the general population in whatever you are trying to correct, you are being disengious. At GMU Asians are vastly overrepresented and white under, blacks and Hispanics are slightly over but within the realm of reason. I have no idea what "international means", I mean an attending Japanese citizen is still Asian, an attending German citizen is still white, etc.
The vast majority of the university’s value is in its scientific output. I dislike weird-woke-nonsense as much as the next guy, but I think you risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater here.
Hillsdale College has no particular reputation for STEM research, but many of the big & crazy-lefty institutions do. When the federal government withholds funding as a bargaining chip, it’s the scientists and technologists that bear a disproportionate amount of the hurt.
My sense is that universities are broadly too stubborn and stupid to respond well to threats like these, and they’ll only end up crippling American innovation. And wokeness is already generally in decline! I think our efforts are probably best spent egging that on via softer social-pressure-type means.
(Scott Aaronson is great on this: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8717)
Last reports I saw said 75% of peer-reviewed medical research could not be replicated. I think it was 90% for psychology. Theoretical physics has been stuck on string theory and theories of everything for decades without any progress. Their Large Hadron Collider continues finding mostly nothing and issuing scientific reports with hundreds of authors, and now they want a new one that they project costing €40 billion in 20 years, which means it would more likely cost €100 billion when finished in 50 years.
The economy would not lose much if teaching and research were separated, and if research were privately funded. It would more likely gain.
An oldie but a goodie: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/17/90-of-all-claims-about-the-problems-with-medical-studies-are-wrong/
I agree that private industry can sometimes do research, but the infrastructure simply isn’t there at scale. Industry is super reliant on discoveries coming out of academic labs, and all startups anywhere but Silicon Valley (and even some there) are founded by academic scientists spinning off their government-funded research.
The idea that you can totally destroy this pipeline just to make a point, without facing any serious consequences, is pretty laughable.
You are making a small but important error in your logic when you say "I agree that private industry can sometimes do research, but the infrastructure simply isn’t there at scale." Regardless of whether that is true (a lot more research is done by private companies than people think, and many university research centers are in reality funded by outside private companies) it ignores the economic facts of crowding out and substitution. In other words, universities do a lot of research because they are paid to do a lot of research such that private companies don't need to spend their money on it. To the extent that research is needed or wanted it will be done one way or the other.
An analogy would be saying that if a public bus service closes down no one will be able to get to work because there is not private infrastructure (busses). We wouldn't expect that at all, as either A: a private bus company could take over the line or B: people would drive themselves, walk, ride bikes, etc.
Buses charge fares. Researchers cannot sell tickets.
Industry is nowhere near "super reliant" on government-funded research. Research isn't suddenly cheap because government funds it; if history has taught us anything, it's that government involvement jacks up the price. "All startups"? Even I don't throw around hyperbole like that.
That link begins by discussing the claim "90% of medical research is false." The reports I read said 75% is not replicable. There's a difference.
Climate science is supposedly settled; great, they don't need any more funding, do they? If it's settled, it ain't science, and if it's science, it ain't settled. They need to make up their minds.
The idea that making science research depend on private industry and donations is not destroying anything, and government-funded research is not a precious pipeline.
My point is that “75% is not replicable” doesn’t mean “the vast majority of funding is being wasted,” which seems to be your conclusion.
Hard data on this is difficult to come by, but, quite frankly, you’d have to be a real moron not to think that the academia-to-industry pipeline is fairly important! OLED screens come from academic research; so does most of the architecture of the modern internet (ARPA grants!) and synthetic insulin and the mRNA tech behind the Covid vaccine and so on…
Here’s an article claiming around a third of US patents come out of government-funded research, which happens mostly at universities and a little bit at national labs: https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/government-funded-research-is-increasingly-funding-corporate-innovation.
The idea that you can just yank this away without any negative repercussions at all is laughable!
Patents are a lousy measure of innovation that only bureaucrats can love. Or a real moron.
You’re the one claiming the right and the necessity to steal my taxes to spend your way. The burden is on you to come up with real answers, not suppositions along with excuses for hard data being difficult to come by.
See? That’s the difference between asking for research money and stealing it. The thief doesn’t care what ancillary damage he does, nor see what his victim would have done with his money if it hadn’t been stolen. When the thief hands it over free to someone else, that third party has no motivation to see he spends it wisely.
Paging Bastiat.
Seen and Unseen. What would have been done with the money if the government hadn't spent it on research?
I cannot answer exactly, but I know the way I would bet.
And, yes, there would be some disruption if we cut out government research over night. But the infrastructure wouldn't go away, it would be sold off. In the short run, research advancements might slow way down. In the long run, we would be in a better place.
And government research has its place. From a pure economics standpoint, I think the Manhattan Project was probably a waste. But it was necessary to make sure the Nazis didn't get there first and then to defeat Japan with minimal loss of Allied life. And I am glad the Soviets didnt get there first too.
But those are few and far between (maybe Apollo?).
And yet pharmaceuticals work. What does it even mean by that 75% number anyway? Of course you don’t get the EXACT same result every time you do a trial because there’s internal variation. And most big clinical trials are so expensive that we don’t even really try to replicate them. Sometimes that burns us and we moderate our previously formed conclusions, but not often, more often some rare but serious side effect will happen that cause a drug to be taken off the market
You argue about the definition of "replicable" but use "work" in an even looser fashion.
Do you not agree that pharmaceuticals work?
Define “work”. Do you mean all, some, most? Do you not agree that precision helps?
The more STEM focused universities are the least committed to DEI/Woke. MIT for instance responded to the Supreme Court ruling by dramatically lowering its black enrollment, which was already less egregious than other ivies.
DEI/Woke is strongest in the ivies that focus on culture/government. The "paper belt" ivies that churn out lawyers, lobbyists, and (especially soft) finance guys. Shape Rotators vs Wordcels.
Don't cut the rattle off a snake -- his silence is more dangerous to you than him.
I want the bigots to be legal so I know who to avoid. I want them to have to confront the reality of trying to define "black" (or "Irish" or ...) in some objective repeatable manner. I want them to have to decide if banning blacks from their store includes UPS drivers, police responding to shoplifting, and the repair tech when their cash register breaks. I want people to begin phone calls with "Do you refuse to talk to blacks on the phone?" I want them to realize just how much business their bigotry costs them.
I don't want the law to shield these bigots from learning about harsh reality.
That is the really nice thing about free speech: it lets the crazy and evil warn you about themselves. People often undervalue that, I feel.
People also underestimate markets and always want the government to jump in and fix things, as if (a) government actually could, and (b) they’d be faster than markets. I sometimes wonder how much faster whites and blacks would have integrated on their own after the Civil War without government forcing segregation. Even with Southern intransigence and forced segregation, they were making progress until Plessey screwed the pooch.
Jackie Robinson did more to end segregation than the Civil Rights Acts.
Right on the money
It should be noted that the Manhattan Statement gives the president the power to withdraw accreditation, so it would apply to Hillsdale and make it possible to end Hillsdale College as a college. Giving any president dictatorial power to ban any college's "grant, payment, loan, eligibility, and accreditation" without any due process for allegedly failing to meet vague standards is a horrible idea, even if it was a rational president. Giving total authority to ban colleges to Donald Trump is insane.
I think the only part where I disagree with you is the part about publishing data on race. I think it would be better to prohibit universities from even collecting data on race, because:
(1) we don't need it to figure out that universities are discriminating against asians, whites, and men now.
(2) it's not apparent what racial demographics would prove that universities were or were not continuing to discriminate against asians, whites, and men. How many asians would you have in GMU's entering class if the GMU admissions office stopped discriminating? I don't know of a particular number, but the way I'd figure it out would be to watch whether they are discriminating, and when they aren't, whatever number of asians there are in the entering class, that's how many asians you get when you aren't discriminating. And if that's the process, then the racial data is useless.
(3) if you let administrators measure it, they will make choices based on it. And for race data, that is precisely the thing we don't want them to do.
"culminating in the celebration of the Hamas terror campaign"
That is an absolutely false representation of the pro-Palestinian protests against Israel's genocide. Yet you call this "Poetic but nonetheless true." Pretty sad.
I hope Trump cuts all funding to all colleges/universities. Or ANY college/university(ies) (no difference).
Hope on ...
The reason you shouldn't have signed it: they're lying. There is no political argument to be made here. It is simply that the people who wrote that document don't act by its principles; and the people who promote that document will not act by its principles.
I’m just so profoundly confused where you got the idea that federal funding of universities has almost any connection whatsoever with anything at all related to undergraduates. Funding is for research, substantially all STEM research. You can’t possibly seriously think that (an action that will not in any way succeed in) stamping out woke undergrads and gender studies professors is worth abandoning substantially all serious scientific research in the world capital of scientific research. Are you intentionally lying or just completely off the handle with fanaticism?
I have added this to my Quote file: "Indeed, though I greatly distrust anyone who wins an American presidential election, I utterly distrust university administrators." I have a relative by marriage who is a tenured professor at a public university. That relative, who is both politically and socially liberal, assures me that no matter what I read about how bad higher eduction is, it is in fact worse. As to the trustworthiness of Presidents, not only do I greatly distrust anyone elected President, I greatly distrust anyone elected by the citizenry to any position.
“First, while discrimination should be legal, it is still a serious evil and should not be subsidized by taxpayers.”
If a Chinese restaurant only hired Chinese people, would you consider this to be evil? I’ll bet this discrimination happens all the time but no one cares because it seems acceptable. Frankly, I have yet to see a non-tautological defense of the view that discrimination is evil. Women discriminate against short men all the time but few regard this as evil. Why is skin color singled out?
If I were to steel-man Caplan's statement, I would say that he means discrimination based on non-merit measures is evil. Clearly he supports discriminating based on merit and ability, and is against discriminating based on race or reproductive plumbing, etc. when those have no impact on the job.
Arguably the biggest evil is taxing people so that the money can be given to other people who discriminate against them, which I find worse than discriminating badly overall. I personally don't find discrimination to be the problem so much as discriminating over stupid categories, similar to your point about Chinese restaurants. I suspect he would agree with that as well, but I don't know from his writing and never spoke with him about it.
Thanks for your comment. How is it evil to discriminate based on non-merit if, say, you prefer to employ whites, your brother-in-law, etc..? You are the one who pays the cost. I think Caplan, who is generally anti-woke, is being woke here. I think he’s afraid that if he concedes that discrimination is just a preference (like women preferring tall men), then it will impact his case for immigration. The reason may be that, as an anarchist, he believes the streets, roads, etc. should be privately owned. If he concedes that discrimination is not evil, then it becomes legitimate for the de facto owners (i.e., the natives) of the streets, roads, etc. to exercise control of their property via the state as opposed to endorsing de facto world ownership of their property.
I don't know, I can't speak for him. I believe he would agree that discrimination is preference, and he might argue that some preferences are morally wrong to have and pursue. All I am certain of is that he would oppose taxing people and then using that money to discriminate against them via government program, and that discrimination per se is not evil. What aspects one discriminates over and their relative moral valence I can't speak to.
Personally, I don't care who people choose to associate with, although I would look down my nose at people who discriminate ineffectively, e.g. promotive inept family members in their company instead of more capable people. I would express that by not working for that company; I discriminate against people who discriminate poorly in my view :D Freedom of association is a good thing!
I agree that Caplan's statement is surprisingly broad.
Why is it then evil to discriminate in the exchange of goods and services?
Would it be evil for a consumer to choose to entirely eschew producers and make all their own goods? If not, how could it be evil for a consumer to eschew only some producers, while patronizing others?
Does the evil only apply to producers not to consumers?
That too is odd. Is it evil for someone to not open a business, thus denying services to everyone? If not, how could it be evil for someone to open a businesses providing goods or services to at least some people, while denying them to others?
The above reasoning (that some business can't be more evil than no businesses) applies regardless of the reason for the discrimination. But it's worth noting that reasons for discrimination can vary from completely arbitrary or hateful to quite reasonable.
You referenced cases where racial selection of employees would have obvious benefits (ethnic restaurants). There are other cases where discrimination can be more than arbitrary. For example, a store might notice that members of certain demographics disproportionately steal merchandise, such that it could make sense to ban them.
In fact, given group differences, demographic information almost always conveys useful information. For example, if someone has the choice of an Asian doctor or a Black one, there's every reason to assume that the former would be superior to the latter. This is particularly the case due to affirmative action for blacks at every level, but it would still be the case even without it. Given group differences, Blacks would be more likely to have just barely cleared a threshold (getting admitted to college, hired as a doctor, etc.) than Asians.
A restaurant that hires only Chinese people probably thinks it enhances both esprit de corp, trust, and the people probably have a cultural and skills background in running a Chinese restaurant. I.E. their race is a pretty important component in assessing merit.
"Diversity is out strength" basically posits something that seems empirically dodgy. Diversity has lots of negatives that can be empirically proven and its positive haven't been proven. Especially when this is in service to anti-merit, it's hard to justify.
I think most universities support affirmative action because they see it as the price of buying minorities votes and those votes grant them power which advances their interests at societies expense. That's hardly something worth supporting.
I agree with your comments but they seem tangential to refuting Caplan’s claim that discrimination is evil.
More a general question that I've always wondered but when people here talk about government funding of private universities, do they specifically mean FAFSA loans and Pell grants or something else? I get research grants exist but that's an extreme minority of universities I assume. Is there another pot of gold I'm missing that significantly contributes somehow?
I say that because I'm confused why there would be strings on FAFSA loans period*, they are loans, it's the students money, not the governments. Likewise the Pell grant, it's the students money, if they want to blow it on cocaine they should be able too.
What am I missing? I just don't think Congress does a bulk grant transfer to Harvard in the annual Federal budget to pay their electricity for the public's benefit.
* Besides the obvious of thou are enrolled in an accredited education program
With regard to GCC, they mean ALL federal funding, including FAFSA loans, Pell grants, research grants, even the "Covid Relief" money. (See Grove City College v. Bell court case). The "strings" exist because our ever so brilliant federal gov't bureaucrats decided this was a great way to enforce their will on the university system. GCC refused to agree to the idea that they would have to follow any and all regulations that would be written in the future if they continued taking the funds in any form. (In the interests of full disclosure, one of my kids just graduated from there - the kid's student loans were by private application to Fannie Mae, cosigned by me, and without ever filling out the FAFSA).
Yeah that's pretty insane they are attaching strings to the students money, it's not even the USGs. When I hear (heard) government funding my brain thinks "direct funding in the form of contracts and grants or even just bulk transfers to accomplish some direct government need / policy goal" like "here is a bucket of gold to blow on whatever you want including lighting it on fire as a reward for following DOE lunch program rules". I.e. bribery
Yea the USG went pretty nuts pushing the logic there, and it would be really interesting to see that relitigated today. Under the original logic, the USG could just about argue that accepting the children of federal employees was the equivalent to accepting government money, as apparently the money itself is marked and how it changes ownership and the decision making processes therein do not matter. Obviously ridiculous, but it did get at the subtle economic point that subsidizing demand is in reality subsidizing the supplier as well.
Congratulations! Every time I meet a grad from Grove City I am impressed with them. Small sample size, but it really is a good signal to me.
When will affirmative action be killed off? It is ridiculous racial discrimination.
I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who in his Lyceum address said if not like a bad law you work to change it and in the meantime obey it and not to resort to violence.
Lincoln was a fan of slavery when it suit.him hence of course he would tell them not to revolt because they would create work for him.
go read the speech.
have a nice day.
I've read it before, it's called pandering. Of course the authorities are always go to say "accept your beatings".
"I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “anti-racism” is racism. If you demur, we are at an impasse."
There's a purposeful usage of a different meaning of "anti" on the leftist's part. They want non-leftists to think that "anti-racism" means "against racism". However they use "anti" in the sense of "the opposite of". Since they claim that racism can only be done by whites to non-whites, "anti-racism" can only be done by non-whites to whites.
Just a small point but if your inclusive metrics don't match (roughly) the general population in whatever you are trying to correct, you are being disengious. At GMU Asians are vastly overrepresented and white under, blacks and Hispanics are slightly over but within the realm of reason. I have no idea what "international means", I mean an attending Japanese citizen is still Asian, an attending German citizen is still white, etc.