Walter Block on the Mythical Pay Gap

Professor Walter Block on the mythical wage gap:

The second nail emerges when we consider the exotic implications of the employer discrimination hypothesis of the pay gap. If this analysis were true, one would expect to find a systematic and positive relationship between profit levels and the number of women in the firm or industry.

It the idea that, all things equal, men and women have a level of parity when compared equally is ine worth considering. If employer discrimination were an issue, any such firm would be driven out of the market by an entrepreneur willing to hire a worker discriminated against. Men and women are equal, but also quite different, in regards to abilities and specialities. If not for those differences, we may see female construction workers and firefighters. In reality, women are better at a great many things, men excellent in a few as well...

From the Mises Institute:

His thesis is that discrimination -- choosing one thing over another -- is an inevitable feature of the material world where scarcity of goods and time is the pervasive feature. There is no getting around it. You must discriminate, and therefore you must have the freedom to discriminate, which only means the freedom to choose. Without discrimination, there is no economizing taking place. It is chaos.

The market embeds institutions that assist people in making the wisest possible choices given the alternatives. In this sense, discrimination is rational and socially optimal. For the state to presume to criminalize it based on social and political priorities amounts to a subversion of the market and of human liberty that leads to social conflict.

More: http://mises.org/document/6078 (don't give me any poor excuse for turning down a free book)

Block reminds us that there was a time when discriminating meant having the desirable ability to make an educated, informed choice.

Nothing more.  

Negative discrimination is purged from the free market, yet promoted by the state. Minorities will prosper by firms willing to hire minorities at lower rates, undercutting gluttonous competitors and driving themfrom the market. If we are to rid the world of it's evils, we must give ourselves the chance to do so. Block's Case reminds us that a better future is worth the fight. Those discriminated against find friend in liberty, not disparity. 

There's no state like no state.

And I feel like a nerd-punk voluntaryist fanboy:

Parents, the State, and Collectivism

Something that has bothered me about involuntary societies since fully understanding the idea has been the inherent lack of choice, and the subsequent lack of learning from the act of making individual choices, be they positive or negative.

Life is an opportunity, not a guarantee, with the opportunity to fail also delivering the potential for cognitive growth. What life gives us in these opportunities is the chance to excel in a higher capacitive reasoning potential. By learning from failure today, we have the chance to succeed tomorrow. As parents, we are charged with raising our children to be the keepers of tomorrow's world, and without our knowledge, experience, and guidance, how can we expect to hold a legitimately optimistic view of what tomorrow's world will hold? 

I say this not only as a parent, but as inequality who teaches his children to respect others by respecting ourselves, but by trying to pass that understanding on to other parents. As George Carlin said, "don't just teach your children, teach them to question everything." How else can we make the future better than the present? 

One of the most malignant features of modernity since the French Revolution has been the attempt by the State—left or right, fascist, nationalist, socialist, or communist—to take over control of children's education from parents and local agencies—such as churches and municipalities—and direct that education in the interest of grandiose, intellectually neat, or more efficient plans and aims. The Philosophes and Jacobins of "Enlightenment" and Revolutionary France were the chief originators and evangelists of this program, but its subsequent development has had left-wing, right-wing, and even innocuous-seeming democratic or patriotic forms.

With the rise of the state in opposition to individuality, along with the learning experience facilitated by the consequences of bad choices, we see an erosion of natural rights, whereby individuals are discouraged from recognizing the failures of collectivism. There is hardly anything democrat about a society without an opt-out policy. Modern governments are more than willing to use violence against the peasants to show that the oligarchy shall not be questioned. By withdrawing consent to be governed, we effectively relegate laws against victims of victimless-crimes to the history books, a distant reminder of a world when common sense was anything but. I may disagree with the faithful on the origin of the effort, but the goals are not entirely dissimilar; an end to violence.

In the aftermath of World War II, after a century and a half of ultimately tragic and destructive attempts by left-wing, right-wing, or simply radically-secular states to wean children from their parents and local and religious loyalties and influences in the interest of state-directed education, many Western European nations and the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights (1948) clearly asserted that "parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children," in the words of the Declaration. With the fall of Communism, after 1990 new national constitutions in eastern Europe affirmed the provision their Western neighbors had made in the preceding decades, a noble story told well by Charles L. Glenn in Educational Freedom in Eastern Europe (1995). This provision included forms of tax relief or support that would enable parents to make such choices.

More: Parents vs the State

I believe that to best serve our children, we need to foster in them a critical view of the world, every aspect, and hope that they can find the best in everything. 

By removing the ability to learn from our experiences (even failure), we are truly being teachers for our children. What happens in a society in which repercussions are suppressed (in both social and economic realms) is that we don't learn from our experiences. 

With problems like drug addiction, where historically abuse of a substance is statistically insignificant until the state see fit to enact regulatory prohibition of some sort, is that we see a spike in instances of such issue. As with a child, telling them not to do something and teaching them about the consequences of the same action have quite varying outcomes. When we tell our children not to smoke or drink alcohol, where teaching about the negative consequences of the same action result in caution and consideration. Historically, issues like drug usage and firearm violence rise with prohibition. 

If we expect our children to succeed, shouldn't we prepare rather than hindering them?

Solving the Black Pete problem

George Ought to Help focuses a critical mind on the idea that anything beyond individuals can be considered discriminatory, something I focus on in arguments against a variety of mainstream ideas in society and economics:

Supporters of the Black Pete tradition say that it does no harm. That it should be maintained as part of Dutch cultural heritage. That their personal attitude towards people with dark skin has not been affected by the tradition. That as children they never even read the blackfaces as representing black people. One of the more naive sounding defences is that the black is actually chimney soot.

In support of the pro-Pete public, I think it’s important to point out that the Black Pete tradition isn’t racist. Black Pete, the tradition, can’t be racist. No image or performance can be inherently racist. Racism is a belief that within humanity certain biological groups are inferior to others. Images or rituals don’t hold beliefs, people do. Images or rituals cannot be racist, only people can be.

Given that Dutch settlers created the state of South Africa and benefited from slavery, and then indentured servitude under Apartheid law, it's hard to understand how anyone engaging in the Black Pate tradition could be doing so sans discriminatory actions.The Dutch were responsible for the oppression of indigenous black populations in South Africa, but even with the end of apartheid there was hardly an end to the practice. It was only when the state was partially dismantled and the oppressed segments of society rose up to take hold of the government that the tide turned on those promoting aggression through the state. Legal slavery is no less immoral.

More: Solving the Black Pete problem

Individualism, Out of Step

People are first and foremost individualistic, no prone to collectivism without force being applied. It can also be called ethical egoism, when the goal of the individual is not to thrive at the expense of others (property, labor, liberty, etc.). Ayn Rand is often criticized for Objectivism for ethical reasons that self-interest is not conducive to Mutualism (the epistemological arguments are a bit beyond me unfortunately at this point), but more than anything these people are recognizing and acting upon the inherently individualistic choices we make in our daily lives through voluntary exchanges. Individuality is what drives progress and innovation, not regulation and collectivism. By homogenizing the population, we cull out those individual traits that drive progress. These positions and arguments are the reason that I have not been keen to allow myself to be labeled since I was a child. I can not associate everything I do with one group or culture, everything I am with a political ideology or religious theology. I'm more inclined to strive to be Out of Step than mold myself to fit a label. One of the failures of individualism within social ideologies (such as liberal or conservative), is that it is based upon the non-consensual submission to authority through the state, which is a form of oppression, and is hardly individualism in application.