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forumposter123@protonmail.com's avatar

I work in insurance and I’ve seen DEI brought up in conversations at work, so here’s my take. I think it could apply to many industries.

1) our profitability is based entirely on government largess. Sometimes this is direct, like if you sell Medicare or Medicaid insurance.

Sometimes it’s indirect, even non-governmental insurance is heavily regulated and good luck making a buck if you’re on the wrong side of those regulators.

2) sometimes DEI is directly impactful on policy. Like if CMS demands that you hit some specific DEI target in your outcomes.

This is BTW quietly happening as DEI gets institutionalized, it’s why I don’t believe in “peak woke”. Woke isn’t about struggle sessions, it’s about your insurance coverage changing in a way that hurts you because you’re white even if you don’t know it.

Sometimes it’s more indirect. “We know that if we do xyz it buys goodwill.”

3) companies usually wont purposely do unprofitable things for woke, but they also aren’t perfect at determining what’s going to be profitable. Especially outside of their core business competency.

Lastly, something can be unprofitable but if it comes with a government bailout it’s fine. My industry recently got what amounts to a $10b+ bribe from the government to cover up for the failures in the inflation reduction act.

4) I think going woke is a mistake for companies, but I may be too much of an optimist. Maybe we are far enough down the road to serfdom that it’s all just vibes and connections now.

I do think companies have learned that public in your face wokeism is toxic, but I think that they are also institutionalizing lots of woke policy and assumptions that will be the new normal for the next generation

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Frank's avatar

I like all the points made. In general, we don't need conspiracies to make things happen that look like conspiracies. Discovering conspiracy is something akin to attributing intent to everything, according to Piaget, as Hayek has taught us.

--Birth control was not new with the pill! The pill merely reduced the variance around the desired number of children. All the other stuff associated with the so-called sexual revolution, like women working outside the home, predates the pill. It's machinery and rising productivity that made that possible. We gotta talk more to working stiffs, and read about them!

--The signaling value of PC or DEI is obvious. It's like finding a mate. Not a conspiracy.

--The appeal of Vance & Co, who I just voted for absentee, is merely competition with the other party. It's not about truth value, for the rational voter rationally chooses ignorance. Both parties know this, and act accordingly.

--The March through the Institutions -- you are right to point to Gramsci and Dutschke -- is in the interests of an unproductive intellectual class of individuals, a superstructure if you will, and an absence of resistance on the part of the institutions. That's merely about incentives. As my father used to say: There's too much money around! [I thought he was nuts even before I studied economics. Afterwards, I was sure he was nuts. Like Mark Twain's father, my father grew in intellectual stature over the years.]

There, that's too much. Apologies.

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