China's Social Credit System: Why is it wrong?

Stephen Kershnar

China’s Social Credit System

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

November 29, 2020

 

            The Chinese government is implementing a nationwide social credit system. The system is troubling.

            The social credit system tracks a person and assigns him a score. The score is supposed to measure his trustworthiness. The Chinese government has already implemented this system regionally and will likely implement it nationally in the near future. The Chinese government’s and its companies’ use of mass surveillance technology allows them to collect a lot of information on the Chinese people. The technology includes artificial intelligence, big data, and facial recognition technology.

            The system gives those people who engage in anti-social behavior a low score. Examples include violating laws or rules of etiquette with regard to bills, dogs, garbage, identification cards, mass transportation, reservations, and traffic. Specific examples include eating on mass transit, failing to properly separate one’s garbage, failing to visit one’s elderly parents, jaywalking, making reservations at hotels or restaurants and not showing up, not cleaning up after one’s dog, and running red lights.

The government blacklists those with low scores. It then prevents blacklisted people from buying airline and train tickets and getting fast internet, jobs, loans, and visas. It also prevents children of blacklisted parents from attending various schools and universities. For example, the National Development and Reform Commission of China reports that blacklisting resulted in the denial of 27 million attempts to purchase plane tickets and 6 million attempts to buy train tickets. Buses and movie theaters display the names and faces of blacklisted individuals. This resembles the Two Minutes Hate in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. The government also uses low scores to tighten its repression of various minorities, such as the Muslims Uighurs.

The system gives out high scores for pro-social behavior. People with high scores are more likely to get some jobs. They also get reduced waiting time at hospitals and government agencies.

Russia plans to implement a similar system.

            Among the interesting issues is whether this system is wrong or bad. Peking University’s Kui Shen argues that the policy is wrong because it violates people’s rights, specifically, their rights to dignity, privacy, and reputation. A problem with the Chinese system is that the government assigns scores and determines rewards and punishments. This exceeds a government’s legitimate authority. Still, one can imagine corporations implementing a nearly identical system. On a side note, there was little, if any, pushback when Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders proposed that the government take over credit scores and adjust them for social-justice purposes.    

            The problem with Shen’s argument is that people do not have a right to dignity, privacy, or reputation. The notion that a person has dignity means, roughly, that he merits respect. The problem is that in terms of policy, we respect someone when, and only when, we do not infringe his rights. Hence, respecting someone’s dignity amounts to respecting his rights. As a result, there is no distinct right to dignity and the appeal to it is empty.

The purported right to privacy is no more than a claim that a person’s rights to his body and property be respected. It is disrespected in cases of burglary, trespass, warrantless searches, and so on. Again, it is not a distinct right so much as a label for a grab bag of other rights.

The purported right to a reputation is a right that others not talk or write about a person in an objectionable way. Leaving aside defamation,  there is no right that others talk or write about someone in a particular way. The gossips at church and temple do not trample on anyone’s rights.  

Writing in The Hill, Tyler Grant, argues that the social credit system is wrong because it is totalitarian. He notes that it resembles Orwell’s 1984 dystopian world. This certainly tracks our intuitions. Grant notes that the West has the machinery to implement such a system because corporations already collect a large amount of data on us. They also censor us. Consider that Big Tech recently censored those who sent out disapproved messages about COVID-19, election fraud, and Hunter Biden. 

The problem is that the system can be implemented through methods that individually do not infringe anyone’s right. For example, in the US, a person gets a financial credit score. A person’s debt level and payment history determine his score. A score gets lowered due to bankruptcy, foreclosures, and repossessions. This score affects a person’s access to insurance, jobs, and loans. While it does not currently affect things such as airplane tickets or university admissions, it is hard to see what is wrong with additional companies using these scores. The scoring companies would likely argue that the widespread use of such scores would discourage people from defaulting on their credit-card bills and college loans.

Even more disturbing is that a credit score could be widened to penalize someone for associating with the wrong people or expressing the wrong ideas. Consider bar associations. In 1998, the Illinois bar association prevented Mathew Hale from practicing law in Illinois because he was a member of the Klu Klux Klan. He had already graduated from law school, passed the bar, and agreed to follow the bar association’s rules. In 1961, the Supreme Court in Konigsberg v. State Bar of California (1961) held that state bar associations could refuse to admit a person to the bar because he has a bad moral character. If state bar associations may take a person’s views or character into account, it is unclear why credit-scoring companies may not do so.  

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom fine and imprison people for hate speech. It seems a small step for criminalized speech to also affect people’s credit scores.

While the Chinese social credit system is totalitarian and incredibly troubling, it is difficult to see exactly what is wrong with it. It is worrisome that much of what is going on in the West might serve as a precedent for a social credit system here.

Election Fraud and Government Legitimacy

 

Stephen Kershnar

Election Fraud

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

November 15, 2020

 

There is a significant chance that Democrat Party operatives stole the election from Donald Trump. The implications of such a theft are interesting.

 

The Democratic Party hoped to gain control of the country for a generation by fundamentally changing the American people, Congress, and the Supreme Court. It hoped to change the American people by amnestying tens of millions of illegal aliens and reopening the immigrant spigot. The amnestied aliens would turn Republican strongholds such as Texas and Florida into Democratic states similar to what they did in California. When chain migration is added to the effect – the average immigrant sponsors 3.5 family members – the American people will be irrevocably changed. The Democrat Party hoped to add two states: Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, thereby ensuring their control of the Senate. It hoped to transform the Supreme Court by packing it with new justices. Depending on how the Georgia runoff elections turn out, the Party might still accomplish these goals.

 

On the night of November 3^rd, the American citizens went to bed with Trump ahead in the vote count in the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, election analyst Robert Barnes noted, the vote was halted, and several thousand votes later conveniently found that put Biden ahead.

 

There were troubling vote irregularities in battleground states.

(1) In the major metro areas, Big Data Poll’s Richard Baris reports that Biden got fewer votes than Hillary Clinton did except for the biggest metro areas of the battleground states (Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia).

(2) The Republican Party alleges that in Detroit, Las Vegas, and Philadelphia, Republican, poll watchers were prevented from watching the vote count. In Philadelphia, a Pennsylvania appellate court judge had to order that that watchers not be blocked. It is unclear if the order was too late because contestable ballots were no longer checkable.

(3) The Washington Times’ S. A. Miller and Alex Swoyer report that poll workers, post office employees and certified election observers filed affidavits that state that they observed suspicious-and-illegal conduct in the handling and tabulation of ballots in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

(4) The Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel reports that for Wisconsin not to have a suspiciously large voter turnout nearly 900,000 (30% of Wisconsin’s voters) would have had to registered to vote on election day. This, she claims, is very unlikely.

(5) The Nevada Republican Party sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department regarding 3,062 instances of voter fraud. It predicted the number of instances of fraud will grow.

(6) The Cook Political Report listed 27 House seats in the Toss Up column. So far, the Republicans have won every one in which a call has been made (18 seats). It is odd that Republicans are winning the contested seats but losing the presidency.

 

Adding to the suspicious pattern, some of these cities – for example, Detroit and Philadelphia - have a history of election difficulty and fraud. In 2019, for example, the Public Interest Legal Foundation sued Detroit because among other problems, it had more registered voters than eligible voters. A federal court convicted and sentenced an elections judge, Domenick Demuro, for accepting bribes to cast fraudulent ballots and certifying false voting results in Philadelphia during elections as recent as 2016.

 

All of this was aided and abetted by the rushed attempt to switch to a mail-in ballot system and weaken the deadline, voter-identification, and signature-checking requirements that prevent election fraud. At this point, it appears there was fraud. The issue is whether it was widespread enough to flip the election. As of now, we cannot answer this question.

 

If there were widespread election fraud, this would have been the third coup attempt. The first attempt was the Russia-Hoax criminal conspiracy. At present, not even the FBI leadership who were in the middle of the conspiracy are defending the FISA warrants central to it. The second attempt was the crassly political impeachment attempt that focused on Trump’s stated preference that Ukraine investigate Biden-family influence peddling. Hunter Biden’s computer and the evidence it unlocked make it abundantly clear that such influence peddling occurred. In addition, there was no evidence – zero – that Trump’s preference was anything more than that. Such a request would have been legally and morally permissible. Sadly, it was not made.

 

Stealing an election through widespread fraud is equivalent to a bloodless coup. One problem with such a theft is that it undermines government legitimacy. Government legitimacy concerns the right of the government to coerce the people. It is closely related to the people’s duty to obey the law. The problem is that if the government is legitimate, and not merely an organ of naked force, the people have to validly consent to it. The people have neither consented to a government that took power through fraud nor to a fraudulent electoral procedure.   

 

An illegitimate government is a problem. Similar to the apartheid practices in the American South, the destructive-and-illegal Vietnam War, and weaponization of the government during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations, election theft does and should undermine faith in the American government. We cannot be proud of a county that has dirty elections.

 

A second problem is that the perceived election theft will intensify the politicization of American life. The election fraud, if it occurred, went hand in glove with Big Tech censorship, politicized corporations (especially Silicon Valley and Wall Street), suffocating ideological chokehold in academia, and thuggery (Black Lives Matter and Antifa). The politicization will increasingly force citizens to choose sides. Americans live, play, and work together and no one wants our lives increasingly politicized. Nor should they. No one enjoys yelling at Thanksgiving dinner.

 

A third problem is that the changes that went into this election will haunt the country for years to come. The American people do not want internet censorship, corrupt election practices, and politicized corporations. Americans will rue the day these things became part of American life.

 

In short, election fraud, if it were widespread enough, undermines the legitimacy of the American government. The fraud along with the forces that allowed it will further politicize American life and change the country for the worse. And for what?

Society's Leaders Set Out to Crush Donald Trump

Stephen Kershnar

The Commanding Heights Team Up to Crush Trump

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

November 1, 2020

 

            I write this before the election has been decided. The commanding heights of American society coordinated to decide the election. Never before have academia, Big Tech, Deep State, Hollywood, legacy media, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street teamed up to choose the president.

            Consider Big Tech companies’ dangerous concentration of power. Big Tech includes Amazon, Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. There is the conservative notion that a private media company may print what it wants, subject only to defamation-related restrictions. There is also the liberal notion that private media platforms should censor posts. The two positions are consistent. The first addresses whether the media should be free to print what it wants and the second addresses how the media should exercise this freedom. The problem is that Big Tech and financial companies – for example, PayPal - can and sometimes do shut down any effective outlet for conservative sites and, also, try to financially starve them out.

            The problem resulted because Big Tech got into bed with the Deep State and the Democratic Party. Big Tech censored stories on the strongly evidenced claim that the Biden family, including Joe Biden, illegally peddled influence. Consider Hunter Biden’s emails detailing the influence peddling. We have strong evidence that the emails are from Hunter Biden’s computer and real. The evidence includes (1) on-the-record witnesses, (2) Hunter Biden’s signature, (3) the computer-store owner’s statements, (4) other information on the computer, (5) an FBI investigation using the computer, and (6) in-effect concessions. The in-effect concessions are that Hunter Biden’s attorney asked for the computer back and the Bidens never denied that it was Hunter’s computer. The FBI is investigating Hunter Biden for money laundering and has had the computer files for a year. Yet, Big Tech shut down the New York Post’s Twitter site over the story and other people’s attempts to discuss it.

            Spearheading the effort to bury the influence-peddling scandal, more than 50 former senior intelligence officials signed a ridiculous letter that claimed that the story was likely a Russian disinformation campaign. This included intelligence officials such as John Brennan and James Clapper, both of whom should be in prison for lying to Congress and, perhaps also, Russian Hoax felonies. In their letter, they even conceded that, “[W]e do not have evidence of Russian involvement … .” Since then the DOJ, FBI, and Director of National Intelligence announced that this was not Russian disinformation. Despite these announcements, Big Tech and the legacy media companies, except FOX, used the ridiculous letter along with the notion that the emails were stolen to bury the story.

            The hypocrisy is breathtaking. The emails were legally obtained. In addition, no one would have wanted the media to refuse to print Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing, the Pentagon Papers, or leaked documents about the failed Afghanistan war, despite the fact that they were illegally obtained. In any case, the media trumpeted Russia Hoax stories, transcripts of Michael Flynn’s conversations, and Trump’s tax returns without caring a wit about whether the information was illegally obtained.

A similar pattern occurred with regard to discussion of Joe Biden’s more-likely-than-not sexual assault on Tara Reade. The #MeToo movement, like the pig Napoleon, now thinks that some animals are more equal than others. The pattern also occurred when Google shut down almost all traffic to Breitbart’s influential site.

The Deep State moved as slow as molasses in bringing charges against Russia Hoax criminals such as James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Rob Rosenstein from the DOJ and FBI. This occurred despite the fact that the Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, referred some of them for prosecution and that they clearly committed fraud on a FISA court, a serious felony. At this point, it looks as if the vaunted Bob Barr and his sidekick, John Durham, ran out the clock on prosecuting them. The precedent is now set. The Deep State is above the law. The Republican establishment, especially Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, ran away from these issues. By doing so, they allowed the conspiracy, which likely involved Barack Obama and Joe Biden, to be shoved down the memory hole.

The corporate world and associated elites poured money into the Biden campaign. According to CNBC’s Brian Schwartz, Wall Street gave Joe Biden’s campaign roughly five times as much money as it gave to Donald Trump’s campaign. According to Vox’s Theodore Schliefer and Rani Molla, Silicon Valley gave Biden ten times as much money as it gave Trump. According to Inside Higher Education’s Kery Murakami, professors gave seven times as much money to Biden as Trump. For elite professors – such as those from the Ivy League – the number is likely far higher. Hollywood puts all them to shame. In the 2018 election, The Hollywood Reporter found that Hollywood (specifically,  its top executives and entertainers) gave 99.7 % of its donations to Democrats and Democrat-leaning political action committees. In addition, academia, corporate leaders, and Hollywood have been quiet as church mice on Big Tech censorship, Deep State crimes, and elite groupthink.  

            The elites’ support of Biden is mystifying. I doubt they support Joe Biden’s radical policies, such as adding two states (Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia), amnestying tens of millions of illegal aliens, eliminating the electoral college, moving toward open borders, packing the Supreme Court, raising taxes, and socializing medicine and higher education. I doubt they want more and deeper interventionist wars (for example, Syria). It is equally hard to believe that they support ever more race preferences and quotas. By now, they must surely know that the Russia Hoax was a criminal conspiracy, impeachment was a crass political move, and the Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and Defund-the-Police movements are built on lies and reintroduced political violence on a scale not seen in fifty years. Still, the commanding heights of our society teamed up to try to crush Donald Trump. This will not be the last time they take the field.

Progressive taxation is neither fair nor good

Stephen Kershnar
Progressive Taxation
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
October 19, 2020

             Presidential candidate Joe Biden announced that on day one, he would repeal President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and raise taxes another $500 billion by closing loopholes. He plans to spend some of the money on making college, medical care, and pre-K education cheaper, if not free, for many people. He would also lavish money on schools, paying for new guidance counselors, nurses, and psychologists as well as higher pay for teachers. This proposed spending orgy raises the issue of whether it is fair or prudent to ratchet up taxes on the rich and upper middle class.

A progressive tax is a tax in which the tax rate increases as the taxable amount increases. Using 2017 IRS numbers, the National Taxpayers Union reports that the top 50% of all taxpayers paid 97% of all individual income taxes, while the bottom 50% paid 3%. Making matters worse is the fact that the top 1% paid a greater share of individual income taxes (39%) than did the bottom 90% (30%). The rich also paid a higher percentage of their income (top 1% paid 27% of their income) compared to the middle class (top 10% to top 25% paid 11% of their income). As usual, the poor free rode on the others’ labor (the bottom 50% paid 4% of their income). Corporate taxes follow a similar pattern.

Here is another way to see how incredibly progressive taxes are in the United States. If we split taxpayers up into quintiles by income (0-20%, 21-40%, 41-60%, 61-80%, and 81-100%), a 2016 Congressional Budget Office report found that first three quintiles get more in government transfer payments than they pay in taxes. That is, they make money off of the tax system. The fourth quintile pays only 8% of its income in taxes once government transfers are subtracted from their taxes. It is the fifth quintile, upper middle class and rich, that pays a high rate.

We might evaluate these taxes in terms of fairness or goodness (making the world a better place). First, consider fairness. As University of Colorado philosopher Michael Huemer points out, progressive taxation is unfair. He notes that if five friends go out to dinner and later receive the bill, no one would suggest that the person with the most money should pay for the everyone else’s dinners or even most of the cost of their dinners. Instead, the friends would insist that each person pay the cost of his own dinner. Fairness, then, requires that a person pay for his cost.

If we apply this sense of fairness to taxpayers, Huemer notes, we should eliminate progressive taxation. The poor likely cost more and should thus pay more than the rich. The poor get free or subsidized food, housing, medical care, and schools as well as welfare. They also cost more because there is more crime in poor areas. If taxes cannot be a flat amount (for example, $10,000), then they should be a flat rate (for example, 25% of income).

The rich might benefit more from the government – because they have more valuable property to protect – but this is irrelevant. The restaurant goers would not think one friend should pay for others’ dinners merely because he enjoyed his dinner more. In any case, given the crimes rates in poor areas, it is unclear whether the rich benefit more from the government than do the poor.  

The rich likely deserve their income at least as much as do the poor and working class. On average, rich people contribute more economically to their fellow man than do others, which is why the market pays them more. On average, they had to sacrifice more to develop their skills. They also work noticeably longer hours than do others. Hence, they are therefore at least as deserving of keeping their money as are the poor and middle class.

People sometimes argue that the rich have a greater ability to pay taxes than do other groups and, hence, they should pay more. However, an argument is needed as to why a greater ability to pay should result in a duty to pay more. Huemer notes that because the ability to pay depends on wealth, not income, the ability-to-pay argument would suggest that the US replace the income tax with a wealth tax. Yet, few leftists argue for such a replacement. And, returning to the restaurant analogy, the friends would not think it fair to stick the wealthiest friend with the bill.

Second, progressive taxation likely makes the American people worse off. Progressive taxation transfers money from people who benefit less from a given amount of money (for example, $10,000) to people who benefit more from it. This is diminishing marginal utility. However, progressive taxation also reduces the incentive for the rich to engage in productive activities such as starting new businesses, expanding existing ones, or investing their money in other people’s businesses. The rich invest and save at higher rates than do others. In the long run, productivity is more important than diminishing marginal utility. This is especially true given that government skims off a lot of the money that is being transferred and spends it on itself. Worse, the government often transfers money in ways that make things worse (for example, by subsidizing fatherless households). Because economic freedom correlates with happiness, income, and political freedom, lowering taxes on the most productive citizens would probably make the American people happier, richer, and freer.

In general, then, progressive taxes would be replaced with a flat rate, if not a flat amount. It would also be better to transfer some of the taxes the rich currently pay to the poor and middle class. In a democracy, when some people can vote themselves other people’s money, irresponsible spending is sure to follow. Joe Biden’s fevered spending dreams are a case in point.

COVID Lockdowns Are Unconstitutional

Stephen Kershnar

The COVID Lockdown and the Constitution

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

October 5, 2020

 

            The United States has suffered worse epidemics (for example, smallpox and the Spanish Flu) and emergencies (for example, the Civil War and World War II) than COVID. Yet the government never before locked down the people similar to what just happened. The American people will regret allowing this to occur as the precedent is now set for in effect suspending the Constitution. 

43 states locked down their people in response to the coronavirus. The lockdown ordered people to stay home and backed it up with criminal sanctions. Only essential businesses were allowed to remain open. Schools and universities were closed. The initial reason given for the lockdown was to flatten the curve (protect hospital capacity). This quickly changed to prevent COVID from spreading. The lockdowns often lacked an end date.

In March and April, seven states (Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming) and a number of countries (for example, Iceland, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and Taiwan) did not lock their people down. The data tell us that the lockdown orders did not save lives, although this was not known at the time these decisions were made.  

Pennsylvania governor, Thomas Wolf, ordered Pennsylvania residents to stay at home, banned public gatherings, and closed non-essential businesses. His orders extended for six months with no end in sight. Although Wolf later suspended the orders, he reserved the right to reinstate them at will. The Pennsylvania legislature previously authorized this executive takeover by granting the governor broad emergency powers.

In a September 14^th decision, County of Buter v. Thomas W. Wolf, District Court Judge William Stickman IV, a Trump appointee, found this ravaged the Constitution. Consider the stay-at-home order. Pennsylvania ordered its residents to stay at home except when they needed to get access to or provide life-sustaining goods or services. Stickman noted that the stay-at-home order was unprecedented in American history. He observed that the widespread-and-extended shutdown far exceeded the 1918-1919 short shutdown of businesses during the far deadlier Spanish Flu. He further observed that the shutdown was dissimilar to a person-specific quarantine.

Stickman argued that the stay-at-home order violated the 14^th Amendment’s Due Process Clause. He noted that there are fundamental rights at stake, including, the right to travel. The right to travel is fundamental, Stickman found, because it is essential to ordered liberty and deeply rooted in the nation’s history. In addition, the right is inextricably linked to other fundamental rights, such as the right of association.

Stickman reluctantly followed the Third Circuit in applying intermediate scrutiny to evaluate the stay-at-home order rather than the correct test: strict scrutiny. The intermediate-scrutiny test holds that a law infringing a fundamental right is unconstitutional unless it furthers an important government interest by a means that is substantially related to that interest. It is less demanding than strict scrutiny (the government must have a compelling state interest and the means must be necessary to achieve it), but more demanding than rational review (the government must have a legitimate state interest and the means must be rationally related to achieving it).

Even with intermediate scrutiny, the law still failed miserably. Stickman found that there were far less burdensome means to fight the pandemic than locking down a whole people and, hence, the law was not reasonably necessary to achieve the government’s goal.   

Wolf also banned public gatherings, again with an open-ended order. This applied to church meetings, but not to Black Lives Matter protests. Stickman noted that this ban on gatherings infringed two inextricably linked fundamental rights: right of free speech and right of assembly. The state argued that this was not aimed at speech. Still, Stickman argued, even if this were so, it still failed the test for a time, place, and manner law that governs content-neutral restrictions on speech. Such a law must be narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest and leave alternative channels for communication. The law did not do so. The ban was too haphazard, leaving Home Depots open, but closing down churches. Churches could have taken the same precautions as stores. The state was unable to point to a single case of a public gathering widely spreading the virus.

Stickman found the categorization of some business as essential and others not was so arbitrary (not done according to either a clear criterion or science) and done so poorly (for example, the waiver process was closed early to avoid addressing a backlog of requests) that it violated the Equal Protection Clause. He also found that the closing of businesses violated the Due Process Clause because it infringed the fundamental right to earn a living.

There are several lessons to be learned. First, federal and state legislatures should rescind open-ended grants of emergency powers to the executive. Governors – for example, New York’s Andrew Cuomo - cannot be trusted with this much power. Where the powers have not been rescinded or where a governor ignores the recission, legislatures should rein in the executive. One wonders where the Pennsylvania legislature was during this debacle.

Second, the American people need to support those who prioritize liberty above safety. The American people should have contempt for politicians with a clear track record of trampling on citizens’ rights or who do not appreciate the constitutional limits on government power. Kamala Harris’ disgraceful abuses as California Attorney General make her a paradigm instance of the former. Barack Obama’s weaponization of federal agencies (for example, DOJ, FBI, and IRS) and dragnet searches (for example, NSA’s internet searches) make him a paradigm instance of the latter.

Third, the nation needs judges who will strictly enforce Due Process protected rights to assembly, earn a living, free speech, travel, and so on. Result-oriented embarrassments – see, for example, Ruth Bader Ginsburg – and those who mechanically defer to the government – see, for example, Stephen Breyer – are to be avoided. 

Sadly, the lockdown is now precedent for government action when future epidemics, unrest, and wars occur.

The Democratic Party's Terrible Ideas

Stephen Kershnar

A Radical Agenda

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

September 21, 2020

 

The Democratic Party and its Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, are trying to remake the American government, people, economy, and culture. Their ideas are terrible. Sadly, establishment Republicans share many, if not most, of these ideas.  

First, Democratic Party leaders are pushing ideas that would remake our government. The Democrats would change how we elect the president by eliminating the electoral college and giving statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington, DC. They would change the Supreme Court by packing it with more than the usual nine members. They would increase the power of the government over our lives by socializing medicine (single-payer healthcare), socializing college (making public college free), and giving free medical care to all immigrants, including illegal aliens, and then raising taxes to pay for these things. They would allow 16-year-olds to vote, thereby giving easily manipulated adolescents political power, even though they cannot be trusted to drink, have sex, or marry.

The Democrats and establishment Republicans support an interventionist foreign policy. Consider the establishment’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Serbia, and Syria. The U.S. stations troops in 150 nations (roughly 165,000 personnel) generations after we fought wars in places such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Even after all the blood and treasure we poured into recent wars, the Taliban are poised to take over Afghanistan if we leave, Iran controls Iraq, Libya is a failed state, and the Assad government continues to rule Syria. Consider, also, the roughly 10,000 people the U.S. killed via drones in backwater countries such as Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. No one should want more of this.   

If this were not enough, consider the embarrassing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who died on Friday. She supported restricting business owners’ right of free speech and practice of religion [Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. ___ (2018)], not recognizing an individual’s right to bear arms [District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008)], removing any real constitutional roadblock to the government taking people’s property via eminent domain [Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005)], permitting the government to engage in ever more race and sex discrimination [Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003)], and destroying what little is left of federalism by in effect repealing the Commerce Clause [National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (2012) and Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005)]. She, thus, wanted to restrict or eliminate important constitutional rights found in the First, Second, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments and to gut the central Article I brake on federal power. Now imagine a judiciary packed with Ginsburg-like embarrassments.       

Second, consider how the Democratic Party leaders would remake the American people. The Democrats’ (and establishment Republicans’) love immigration. Roughly, 60 million immigrants and their young children live in the US today (2016 figure). Immigrant households are far more likely to be on some sort of welfare (63% versus 35%) and more than twice as likely to be on Medicaid or get free food. The Democrats (along with a lot of Republicans) want to flood the country with many more low-skilled immigrants and to amnesty the 22 million illegal aliens currently here. The Democrats want to get as close as they can to open borders via attempted amnesties, laws that prevent the building of a wall, catch-and-release policies, a push to eliminate ICE, refusal to enforce crime and welfare requirements, and so on. The Democrats thus want to dilute the historic American people.

Third, consider how the Democrat party would remake the economy. The Green New Deal would involve a radical restructuring of our energy industry, the life blood of our economy. They would try to ban fracking and try to shut down some of the natural-gas and petroleum pipelines. Socialized higher education and medicine would involve a complete takeover of large portions of the economy. The Democrats would regulate business more and put more race-and-sex preferences and quotas in place.

Fourth, the Democrats will also change the country’s zeitgeist through cancel culture, imagined racism (see Black Lives Matter and the diversity-industrial complex), monument removal and name change, political violence (Antifa), and stultifying political correctness. These cultural changes are an abomination.

No adult thinker believes that the package of Democratic changes would make us better off. Right now, the U.S. is one of the richest and freest countries in the world. There is a fairly strong correlation between economic freedom, happiness, and political freedom. An economically free country has a clear-cut rule of law, limited regulation, open markets, and small government. Restricting Bill-of-Rights liberties, diluting the historic American people, and further socializing the economy will not make us freer, happier, or wealthier. Nor will it bring us more peace. Yet as currently constituted, the Democratic Party wants to restrict, dilute, and socialize in precisely this way.   

More directly, who wants to live with the Democratic vision? If the Democrats’ vision is enacted, you won’t be trusted to keep your money, own guns, or say what’s really on your mind. Your country is going to add tens of millions of people over the next decade who don’t share your culture, language, or values and, increasingly, see you as an obstacle to their progress. Things you long took for granted (“I may sell my cakes to whom I choose”) turn out not to be part of American freedom. The icons with whom you grew up (for example, Winston Churchill, Christopher Columbus, and George Washington) get pulled down and shoved down the memory hole. They are replaced with politically correct icons that are not important parts of the American story. Even truth is dumped overboard as the media and elites ignore obvious truths about Biden’s mental ability, race and sex differences, speech being different from violence, and so on.

Americans do not want to live like this. Nor should they.

The American Elites' Terrible Ideas

Stephen Kershnar

The Elites’ Worldview

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

August 10, 2020

 

            The elites in this country are surprisingly unified in accepting and promoting terrible ideas. The mystery is why this is so. The elites are the people who control the commanding heights of academia, business, and government.

First, academia skews hard left. Faculty at 40 leading universities have a Democrat to Republican ratio of 12-to-1. Writing in the Washington Times, James Varney points out that in 2018, and the faculty and staff of Ivy League schools gave money to Democrats over Republicans in battleground races at a ratio of 250-to-1. This far surpassed their 2012 ratio of political spending of 90-to-1. Brooklyn College’s Mitchell Langbert found that in 2017, faculty at elite liberal arts colleges (for example, Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore) have a similar 13-to-1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans as the leading universities. Remarkably, 39% of these liberal arts colleges did not have a single Republican professor.

            The commanding heights of the business world  - Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street - skew hard left. Writing in The Hollywood Reporter, Jeremy Barr, found that the top Hollywood people gave 99.7% of their donations to Democrats or Democrat-leaning political groups. Writing in FiveThirtyEight, Farai Chideya found in that in 2016, employees at tech companies gave 95% of their political donations to Hilary Clinton and 4% to Donald Trump, a 24-to-1 ratio. In 2018, Karl Evers-Hillstrom writing in OpenSecrets.org found that the securities and investment industry gave 62% of its contributions to Democrats. In the most recent cycle, the financial industry has given money to Joe Biden over Donald Trump 5-to-1. Not as far left as Hollywood and Silicon Valley, Wall Street still leans to the left.

            Federal workers follow the same pattern. Writing in the Federal News Network, Mike Causey found that in the 2016 Presidential Election, federal workers gave 95% of their donations to Hillary Clinton. Department of Justice employees gave 99% of their donations to Clinton. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and State Department employees gave similarly.

For context, for Americans in 2020, Democrats and Republicans stand much closer to a 1-to-1 ratio (54% Democrat to 46% Republican for people registered with a major party). In the 2018 election spending, Democrats spent roughly 55% and Republicans 45% of the money. Again, much closer to a 1-to-1 ratio.  

The odd thing is that elites often have terrible ideas. First, consider the elite’s unadulterated love of immigration. 61 million immigrants and their young children live in the US today (2016 figure). Immigrant households are far more likely to be on some sort of welfare (63% versus 35%) and more than twice as likely to be on Medicaid or get free food. Yet, the elites in both parties continue to try to flood the country with more low-skilled immigrants and to amnesty the 22 million illegal aliens currently here. This craziness has been accompanied by a movement toward open borders via attempted amnesties, laws that prevent the building of a wall, catch-and-release policies, a push to eliminate ICE, refusal to enforce crime and welfare requirements, and so on.  Despite near universal support from elites on both the right and left, US citizens neither wanted nor needed the importation of tens of millions of unskilled immigrants, many of whom snuck in illegally.      

Second, consider the elites’ widespread support of foreign wars. Supported by the establishment on both sides of the political spectrum, in the last few decades the country has waged war - sometimes followed by nation building - in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Somalia, and Syria. Trillions of dollars later, the US still needs to prop up Afghanistan, Iran controls Iraq, Libya is a failed state, and our side lost in Syria. Judging from the last couple of presidential primaries, there is little evidence they, unlike Donald Trump, learned anything from the blood and treasure foolishly poured into the sand.

Third, consider the elites’ policies on race relations. Despite national self-flagellation accompanied by affirmative action, quotas, and a cancerous diversity-industrial complex, race relations are a mess. Judging by the looting, protests, rioting, and statue-toppling as well as the rise of hate-filled politicians such as the Squad (specifically, see Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib), things are moving in the wrong direction. Racial grievances have now given rise to a jump-the-shark movement to eliminate the police. Yet companies – including Apple, Amazon, and Walmart - have committed to dumping $450 million into social and racial justice groups (for example, Black Lives Matter) that sew racial division. This is well-illustrated by the kneeling, BLM messages, and related nonsense in professional sports. The elites not only fund racial division, but spend their time reading inane books on how to eliminate their own racism and counter white privilege. 

Fourth, consider the elites’ acceptance of government debt. The federal debt continues to increase at an alarming rate. The debt is roughly 30% larger than the economy (crudely, $27 trillion versus $21 trillion) and will likely go up another trillion before the year ends. There is barely a peep about this unfolding mess in either political races or the establishment media. Politicians fight over whether to spend an additional $1 trillion or $3 trillion on COVID-subsidies without bothering to mention that the country is broke.

Elites have other terrible ideas. Consider, for example, Big Tech censorship, cancel culture, and the continued subsidization of housing- and student-loan bubbles.

One of the reasons elites support these things is ideology. Academia has done its work. A second reason is that the elites have little skin in the game. Their wealth largely insulates them from the effects of these disastrous policies. It also prevents them from having to revisit their ideas when reality crashes into them. A third reason is the way in which the business and political worlds are structured to reward career bureaucrats, judicial scoundrels, and lifetime politicians. Terrible ideas often pay handsomely in money and prestige.   

The one thing that can be done is to recognize that the elites have a hard-left worldview that includes some terrible ideas. Forewarned is forearmed.

Academia Should Learn from the NFL

Stephen Kershnar

Academia Should Learn from the NFL

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

July 27, 2020 

The professional sports leagues are flourishing because they ruthlessly emphasize productivity. Academia should do the same.

 The major sports leagues make a lot of money because they are quite good at identifying and showcasing athletic excellence. Consider, the National Football League (NFL). In 2019, it made roughly $16.5 billion dollars. In 2019, according to CNBC’s Jabari Young, the NFL’s average TV viewership was 16.5 million per game and NFL games finished with 47 of the top 50 telecasts during the season.

The league pays its players well. Action Network’s Darren Rove reports that the players received roughly $8 billion of the $16.5 billion because of the collective bargaining agreement. The NFL’s average salary was $2.7 million, and the minimum salary was $495,000. The other leagues also pay well. The average National Basketball Association (NBA), Major League Baseball (MLB), and National Hockey League (NHL) average salaries are $7.7, $4.4, and $4 million. The minimum salaries are $893,000, $564,000, and $700,000.  

Academia could benefit from the NFL’s emphasis on accountability, information, and merit. Consider accountability. In the NFL, owners, general managers, and head coaches are accountable. Owners bear a financial loss for having a bad team. If the team does not perform, owners fire head coaches, often ignominiously. During the 2013-2016 seasons, Business Insider’s Cork Gaines reports, 19 NFL teams changed head coaches. In 2019, teams fired 25% of the league’s head coaches (8 of 32).   

In contrast, university trustees, presidents, and provosts are less frequently fired. Oftentimes, no one is held accountable when university’s ranking drops compared to its competitors. Rarely are people in these positions fired or paid less when a university gets weaker students, hires worse faculty, or fails to add a reasonable amount to the endowment. Writing in Inside Higher Education, Rick Seltzer points out that in 2011, the average university president had his or her position for 7 years. Background: The average university president is 62 years old. 

In contrast, teams hold NFL players accountable. Their employment, pay, and playing time depend on performance. Players who were the best in the game often fade quickly. For example, in 2015 quarterback Cam Newton was the league’s most valuable player and led his team to the Super Bowl. He now has a one-year deal with the New England Patriots and might not even start. Running back Adrian Peterson won the MVP in 2012 and, although he still starts, is no longer an elite player. Both are paid less than the league average in base salary. 

In contrast to NFL players, professors get iron-clad job security in the form of tenure. This lack of accountability has predictable effects. University of Utah economist Jonathan Brogaard and others found that in the two years after getting tenure, faculty production (publications) fell by 30%. Production fell by an additional 15% through the rest of the decade. The number of important publications they produce fell similarly. Nor does the robust discussion of ideas justify tenure. Cornell psychologist Stephen Cici and others found that tenured professors are risk-averse in that they show little interest in defending controversial ideas. In Cracks in the Academy, Jason Brennan summarizes these and related findings, “once they have tenure, [professors] become lazier, more risk-averse, and more conservative. Giving them a job for life extinguishes the fire under their asses.” From the perspective of performance, it is irrelevant how much of the decline in productivity is due to lack of incentive versus age. The idea of tenure for an NFL player is absurd.  

In the NFL and MLB, teams value players using statistics. MLB Players are ranked in terms of their overall value to the team (wins above replacement or WAR). This allows teams to rank them against other players, whether at their or other positions. Teams also rank players in terms of specific features. Owners and fans rank NFL quarterbacks in terms of rating, yards, touchdown passes, etc. There is no attempt to rank professors in a way analogous to WAR rankings. There is no reason this cannot be done. For example, research productivity could be ranked in how often a professor’s work is cited or the number and quality of publications.  

Even the most obvious test for productivity, value-added to students, is not done. This could be done via by pre- and post-testing students in subjects central to a university education (consider, for example, biology, chemistry, classic literature, history, and math) or their major. It could even be done in terms of students’ future earnings after controlling for ability and demographic factors. Academia rarely, if ever, uses either measure. Instead universities are ranked according to polls that have not been validated. A professor’s teaching performance is not evaluated at all or evaluated via anecdotes, classroom observations, or statistically invalid student evaluations. The Moneyball revolution controls professional sports leagues but has been shut out of the academy.

The difference between sports and academia is most striking with regard to merit. Blacks are 13% of the U.S. population, 70% of the NFL players, and 100% of starting cornerbacks (64 out of 64). The last time a white player started at cornerback was 2002 (Jason Sehorn). Coaches, fans, owners, and players would laugh at the idea of hiring or playing a player because he contributes to diversity. As the Hoover Institution’s Victor Davis Hanson points out, no one wants to see 87% of the starting players be Asian, Hispanic, or white so that the league “looks like America.”

In contrast, in academia, universities frequently hire faculty and administrators on the basis of their ethnicity, gender, or race. Some universities – including the elite University of California universities – have sunk so low as to give significant weight to prospective professors’ diversity statements in deciding to whom to hire. The weight given to diversity increases the more one moves down the university food chain.

In short, the NFL takes productivity far more seriously than does academia. This is unfortunate.

Statues, Names, and Tribal Identity

Stephen Kershnar

Statues and Tribal Identity

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

July 6, 2020

Antifa, Black Lives Matters, George Floyd protesters, and fellow travelers have defaced, destroyed, removed, or sparked plans for the removal of many memorials. The memorials include monuments, plaques, and statues.  

Protesters targeted memorials for confederate leaders such as Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and J. E. B. Stuart. They also went after memorials for union figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, and Ulysses S. Grant. The protesters also targeted historical figures such as Christopher Columbus, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, George Washington, and Woodrow Wilson. In Great Britain, Winston Churchill’s statue would have been torn down were it not encased in a steel cage.  

Names are falling even faster than memorials. Schools removed names from buildings, grandiose rooms, and programs. Names include those of confederates such as P. G. T. Beauregard and John C. Calhoun. Other discarded names include those of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Watson, and Woodrow Wilson. The names of Aunt Jemima breakfast food, Dixie Chicks band, Eskimo pies, and Disneyland’s Splash Mountain have been dumped into the filthy trash bin. The Washington Redskins’ name has joined them. The Cleveland Indians’ name will do so shortly.

The removal of monuments is not wrong. When a monument is on government property, no one has a moral right that a monument be left up or taken down. Ditto for names, Still, these changes are bad in that they make us worse off.   

The University of Minnesota-Morris’ Dan Demetriou gives an interesting argument against these changes. First, he argues, liberty and stability depend on tribal identity. Tribal identity occurs when one person sees another as a member of his group. Consider, for example, the way in which family members think about one another. Other examples include how people think about each another when they are in a sports team, military unit, or country. A good example occurred in the movie Saving Private Ryan. Private Ryan views members of his paratrooper unit as his brothers and is willing to fight and die alongside them.   

Without tribal identity, nations break up or become increasingly unfree. Examples of nations that dissolved because of insufficient tribal identity include the European colonies as well as Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. These countries’ peoples never formed a sufficiently strong tribal identity. Other countries without tribal identity (for example, Iraq) are kept together through force. When trust evaporates, governments protect people’s rights through prodigious amounts of force. Consider, for example, how in the U.S., federal and state governments responded to 1960’s antiwar and racial unrest.    

  

Second, Demetriou argues, a people bring about tribal identity through memorialization. He argues that people make and keep a shared identity by celebrating their past. They celebrate their past by memorializing their art, heroes, tragedies, victories, and so on. This is similar, he argues, to how family members celebrate their tribal identity through memorialization, which they do by putting pictures of their adventures, ancestors, and descendants.

When a family puts a picture of its ancestors on the wall, it is not saying that the ancestors were better than other families’ ancestors or that the ancestors were good people or that they did the right thing. Rather, the family is saying, “This is our past and, thus, who we are.” This binds together those who share this past or see it as their own. Identification with a past need not be genetic. Consider, for example, how an adopted child views his adopted family’s past as his own. Families would react with fury were an outsider to come in and demand that they take down their ancestors’ pictures and throw them in the filthy trash bin, even if their ancestors acted wrongly. They would view this as an attack on them and would be right to do so. 

    

By analogy, when the Chinese wave their country’s flag, they are celebrating the Chinese people and nation. They can do so without approving of the Chinese government’s appalling past. Mao and his enforcers killed 40 to 70 million people. The Chinese people’s past and, thus, identity includes, but is not defined by, Mao’s savagery. Muslims celebrate Mohammed, despite his antisemitism and practice of enslavement, rape, slaughter, etc. because he and the religion to which he gave rise have in part made them who they are.

Southerners’ past includes confederate soldiers. Stories of their beloved leaders, campaigns, and deaths are part of their past. They rightly understand the demand that memorials for their ancestry be thrown into the trash as deeply insulting. There is nothing conceptually problematic about a person celebrating her past, including her ancestors’ bravery, comradery, and sacrifice, without signing onto their cause.  

Americans are not a racial or ethnic people as are the Chinese, (Asian) Indians, Irish, Italians, French, and Japanese. If Americans are to be a people rather than a grab bag of peoples (blacks, gays, Jews, Mexicans, etc.) who share less in common with each passing year, they have to have a shared identity. The identity is tied to the past and maintained through memorialization. There is no evidence that a tribal identity can rest on a value (for example, liberty) and, in any case, the left’s ongoing war on liberty suggests that this would not be a good bet were it possible.

Seton Hall University’s Travis Timmerman argues that confederate monuments should be taken down and put in private museums or historical sites where they can be put in historical context, cease to be held in reverence, and no longer receive state funding. He is right that it would have been better had federal and state governments not gotten into the memorial business. Similarly, it would have been better if federal and state governments had stayed out of broadcasting, museums, schools, welfare, and other areas in which they make a mess. Still, as long as they are in the memorial and naming business, they should give our past its due.

Do we have a clear understanding of what racism is?

Stephen Kershnar

What is Racism?

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

June 29, 2020

Nationwide protests and their opponents are debating how to respond to racism. The problem is that racism is such an unclear notion that the debaters are likely talking past one another.

Recent anti-racism protests involve marches, speeches, arson, kneeling, looting, and pulling down statues. Consider, for example, attacks, destruction, or movement of statues of Christopher Columbus, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and George Washington. The three best-selling non-fiction books are Ibram Kendi’s How to be an Anti-Racist, Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, and Ijeoma Oluo’s So you want to talk about race. At schools and universities, there is a good chance that a student will either read Peggy McIntosh’s essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” or discuss her ideas.

Congressman Al Green (D-TX) recently put forth a resolution that declares unconditional war on racism and invidious discrimination in America and calls for a cabinet-level Department of Reconciliation. This department would seek to eliminate racism and invidious discrimination and have a budget that is 10% of the Defense Department's budget. Our leading political figures (Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Donald Trump) label people and statements racist.

All this talk of racism presupposes we know what racism is. We don’t. Underlying the different theories of racism is the notion that racism is false, bad, and wrong. One theory is that racism is a belief that one race is superior to another. Often the theory requires that basis for the superiority be biological. Superiority might be filled out in terms of importance or consideration/respect people are owed. A second theory is that racism consists of attitudes other than beliefs. Consider, for example, dislike, fear, hatred, preference, and repulsion. A third theory is that racism is a type of action aimed at members of a race rather than a way of thinking about them. Consider, for example, antagonism, avoidance, or discrimination.

None of these theories is correct. Consider the notion that racism is the belief that one race is - on average -  biologically superior to another. If this were correct, then whether racism is true would depend on whether differences in criminality, education, intelligence, out-of-wedlock births, welfare use, etc. are due purely to the environment rather than a mixture of the environment and genetics. If this theory of racism were correct, then the truth of racism would depend on the outcome of contested scientific debates. It does not. Whether racism is true does not depend on whether Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s findings in The Bell Curve hold up. In addition, someone who thinks that one race is superior to another, but attributes it purely to environmental effects, might still seem to be a racist.

More generally, members of races do not have equally valuable lives. The value of an individual’s life depends on how well it goes for him and what effect he has on others. People do not have lives that go equally well for them. Some people have lives that go better because they are longer, happier, and contain more objectively good things (for example, knowledge and love). Some people contribute more to the world than others (for example, by having five children rather than one). It unlikely that on average members of different races have equally valuable lives. On average, whites live longer and are happier than blacks. This makes their lives go better for them.  

Consider next the notion that racism is a difference in attitude toward members of different races. Such a difference does not make one a racist. Consider, for example, someone who prefers one race over another (or, perhaps, dislikes one more than the other) because of perceived differences in criminality, English-speaking ability, insularity, loudness, or obesity. This is not racism. Rather, it is a rational preference based on a perceived difference in features. On a side note, some of these perceived differences are statistically correct generalizations. For example, the rates of obesity and incarceration for racial groups in the US occur in the following order: blacks, Hispanics, whites, and Asians. Nor is it racism to discriminate based on these perceived differences.

If there were such a thing as racism, it would not a behavior. Rather, it would be what motivates the behavior.   

What, then, is racism? I don’t know and neither do you. I doubt that many members of even extreme groups (for example, Aryan Brotherhood, Black Hebrew Israelites, and Nation of Islam) think that every member of their group is better than every member of another group. Some likely have a more nuanced view that relies on a perceived difference in features and a mixed explanation of what causes the difference.

Because racism is not a coherent notion, we shouldn’t spend so much time and effort trying to eliminate it. This is especially true when we could instead focus on inner-city problems such as broken public schools, out-of-wedlock birth rates, and the scourge of overcriminalization of American life accompanied by an ocean of incarceration.  

More generally, it’s time to eliminate the diversity-industrial complex because it focuses on racism and discrimination. Academia and the corporate world spend an enormous amount of money fighting against them. The money would be better spent elsewhere. The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald points out that the University of California at Berkeley diversity bureaucracy costs $20 million per year. UCLA has a Vice Chancellor of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion who alone makes over $400,000 per year. Clearly, she notes, this money would be better spent subsidizing the tuition of dozens of students. Writing in MarketWatch, Jeanette Settembre notes that American companies spend up to $8 billion a year on diversity training. During a recession, this is an abomination.  

Everyone claims to be an expert on racism and yet no one knows what it is. This is a good reason to focus on other things. One way to do this is to stop pouring money into the diversity-industrial complex.