Sorry for all the one line responses. I don't have the time to do these sorts of discussions anymore. I understand that this response is likely not convincing at all
Quote:
Originally Posted by
surviva316
This isn't relevant to the point you quoted. How is the market going to solve the fact that the consumers are racists? So long as there's a prejudice among the consumers, it's going to (in theory) be reflected in the marketplace. The marketplace isn't going to adjust to shit over time except for to the very prejudice that causes the inequality in the first place.
Market history has shown us the opposite. The primary driver of changes in prejudices is subversion by markets.
Quote:
Obviously societies change, and I like to think that they do so for the better, so I'd like to think this means that consumers get to be better over time in my particular example, but it doesn't just happen through some magical capitalist equilibrium. I just happened to use an example of extreme and overt consumer prejudice, but I'm willing to bet that there's a pay gap for ugly people that isn't going anywhere fast.
Maybe in a not so competitive market. But in a competitive one, productivity reigns supreme. Just keep in mind that ugly people are less productive than attractive people
Quote:
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, though, and say that you meant to apply it to the first part of my post. It's more relevant to that point, but still just idealist mumbo jumbo. The fact that the fittest survive means that everything will become perfectly optimized, therefore every single quality that is preferable must needs be true is absolutely absurd logic. To use your evolution analogy, the fact that humans' eyes don't work near as well as anything that could be engineered by the human hand itself and routinely deteriorate over time doesn't mean that there is no survivalist advantage to having eyes that work good. Also, by your theory, nepotism doesn't exist. Hell, by your theory, primogeniture doesn't even exist, which wrinkles my brain just trying to comprehend.
Optimization is not perfection.
Quote:
You don't have to be perfect to be successful; there's a margin of error that can be withstood. I don't know what you do for a living, but I can assure you that there's a lot of fat in the business world; The business world just isn't nearly as attritive as you make it out to be. There's enough money to go around, so the fat can withstand the blow of some inefficiencies, especially when those inefficiencies are systemic across all companies.
That has to be true, otherwise nobody would survive
Quote:
I realize that you're going to try to rebut this by saying that any edge gained in HR can be leveraged by prices on the open market until all the orgs that do it wrong in HR can't keep up and die a slow but certain death, but this just flat out not how it works in the real world. For one, there are sectors that can sustain more than just a fixed number of orgs (which affects the prices for workers in other sectors). And for the sectors where there are only one or two behemoths battling it out, the orgs are sooooooooooo fucking massive that there are a billion facets of their organization, with such massive credits and debits associated with them, doing contributing to and detracting from the bottom line in ways that no human mind can comprehend on a large scale so that it would (mark my words) never reach equilibrium. Not in any number of generations of such businesses. So obviously companies are going to take every edge they can get, but employers would have to be insanely gnostic in order to ever recognize which aspects of theirs and others companies provide those advantages for the evolution process to ever take the next step.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Productivity increases all the time, even in the most regulated markets, where productivity is hindered. It looks like you're taking isolated incidences and calling it a free market
Quote:
Also, you make it sound as though successful companies are the only sector of employment. Even if companies get so good at the hiring process that anyone who is deficient in this area is bound to fail, then there could still be systematic preferences among those doomed-to-fail-but still-for-the-time-being-paying-their-employees, and these organizations would drive up the market price for others. This is less like evolution (where only the living can reproduce) and more like poker (where anyone who thinks they're good enough to invest in themselves contributes to the economy). Just because NLHE is getting closer and closer to solved doesn't mean that the aggregate CBet% on PokerStars is ever ever ever ever going to perfectly reflect GTO.
You're assuming a pretty severe lack of competition, which we only see existing in highly regulated markets
Quote:
Besides--and this is maybe the most damning point--you didn't say, "There won't be a pay gap once we reach that far-off, halcyon day when the markets have resolved all of its own inefficiencies to the point that HR departments operate absolutely without flaw so that all of pay must needs be perfectly meritorious"; you said that the pay gap IS an illusion--that there IS NOT currently any problem that needs to be solved. Even if I were to agree with your premise that if we just let capitalist attrition run its course, then we'll get to a point where it's impossible for women to be paid less than their equally qualified male counterpart, it would still be possible to accelerate the process with a policy that decays over time as we get closer to the magical equilibrium day.
I was speaking in theory, which is that in markets where the price system is allowed to work, the incentives don't produce a pay gap. Keep in mind that the price system is economics
Quote:
So no no no no on a million levels, no. It is very much possible for there to be non-meritorious pay that systemically favors certain groups. Whether it's true or not is a whole other issue, but I feel like your "The Magic of the Unregulated Markets' Assured Equilibrium" rhetoric is more pernicious than anything else in the discussion.
When one argues for regulation, one argues for a monopoly on violence (monopoly on violence is the philosophical foundation of the state). Isn't it ironic that everybody thinks monopolies are terrible unless it's a monopoly on violence?