Authored by Gaius Baltar (http://gaiusbaltar.substack.com)
The advocates of “equality” have been focusing their attention on western economies for decades. Mechanisms have been developed, including ESG (environmental, social & governance) – which mainly seeks to establish external (government) control of company operations. Another one is DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) which is mainly a power reconfiguration mechanism which seeks to place the “right” people into positions within companies. I have recently discussed ESG in the context of the European Union takeover of European companies and now it’s time to discuss DEI and other similar systems.
DEI has its origins in the affirmative action mandate from the sixties and has been increasingly active in the US economy since then. Other western economies followed suit. Over the decades DEI has transformed from a mandate/policy into a structured system. Currently efforts are being made to make it de facto mandatory. I will not discuss the actual social engineering purpose of DEI in this essay. I have already indirectly done that in this article: http://gaiusbaltar.substack.com/p/why-is-the-west-so-weak-and-russia. Instead I will focus on the effect of DEI on western economies and the mechanism behind that effect.
The assumptions
DEI is based on a number of assumptions about people, their competence, and suitability for jobs. These assumptions are then used to create “new” variables which are used to determine who should be hired, fired and promoted – and how people should be compensated for their work. In other words, the objective of DEI is to remove “traditional” variables which have been used to determine who is competent for a job and replace them with new variables. This means that skills, and competence in general, have been redefined. DEI is the system which encompasses these new definitions and enforces them.
From a hiring point of view, finding competent people is entirely about “discrimination.” You must discriminate between the competent and the incompetent, rejecting the latter. Hiring, firing, promoting and determining the salary of people is based on this discrimination. This discrimination is the foundation of what we call “meritocracy.”
The current definition of discrimination states that it only applies to groups or group memberships. DEI assumes that there are no “incompetent groups” or “competent groups” in the context of any job or task – and if you can identify with the right group, you cannot be discriminated against at all, regardless of competence.
DEI and its advocates make two sets of assumptions. One set refers to individuals and the other one to groups of individuals.
Assumptions for individuals
The assumptions made for individuals are the following: 1) People are equal in general ability and everybody can basically do anything. 2) All people have the same ability to learn specific skills.
Any DEI advocate will deny that they make these assumptions. In fact, these assumptions are so obviously false that no one can state out loud that they believe them without being ridiculed. The issue here is that the DEI advocates are lying. They really believe this implicitly. So, why do they believe this? They believe this because they must.
Regarding the equality of individuals their mindset is as follows: “I have master’s degree in art history. It was my choice. I didn’t get the degree because I’m too stupid to get other degrees and it’s not because my options are limited because of that. If I had chosen to study nuclear physics or brain surgery, I could have done that. I’m just not interested in that. I’m interested in art history.”
To justify this logic, their reasons for not being nuclear physicists must apply to others as well, not only to themselves. Every education or job is therefore a personal choice. It has nothing to do with intelligence or competence. Therefore, because everything is a choice, everyone must be equal beyond that choice. Otherwise they themselves might be stupid or incompetent, and that would result in a personal crisis.
This view on the equality of individuals is therefore an inevitable result of this narcissistic mindset. It cannot be otherwise. Deep down, the people who advocate DEI reject outright the concept of competence. It is a false concept, a conspiracy perpetrated by people they don’t like – directed personally against them. It impairs their work and educational prospects, and threatens their self-image. It is the ideology of the insecure, and to feel secure the entire concepts of competence and talent must be neutralized though redefinition.
Assumptions for groups
The assumptions regarding individuals above are so ridiculous that they cannot be used or discussed. The solution is to disguise them by using groups instead of individuals. Individuals are now reconfigured as groups and all groups are equal (except for groups they don’t like of course). However, individuals are still all equal because if you fire someone incompetent from the wrong group, you are discriminating. This is obviously because the individuals within that group are all equally competent the same way all groups are equally competent. The equality of individuals is still maintained despite the “equality of groups” camouflage.
Regarding hiring, firing, promotion and compensation, the following assumptions are made for groups:
- All groups have the same (average) competence for all tasks.
- All groups have the same proportion of competent people for all tasks.
- The competent people from all groups are all equally available for all tasks at all times.
These assumptions mean that quotas for hiring based on groups will never lower competence for any task. Any rules can be instituted for hiring, and the outcome competence-wise will always be the same. Also, since all groups are equal, differences between them in pay, position, achievements, creativity and so on and so forth must be because of discrimination.
The next step in the DEI logical chain is to correct this discrimination. This is done by introducing new selection variables for hiring, promotions and such. These variables reflect the inequalities perceived to be behind the discrimination. Those can be racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia – and just about anything that comes to mind. The new variables then replace the “old variables” which were used to select competent people and reject the incompetent.
It’s obvious to any rational person that individuals are not all equal in ability. What about groups? Are all groups really equally good at solving specific tasks? There is, believe it or not, a lot of research on this issue. This research is among the most radioactive in all of science because it finds group differences absolutely everywhere in how people perform on specific tasks, both intellectual and physical. The differences are, for example, very stark between men and women. They are so great that IQ subtests need to be weighted to force the male and female IQ into the same mean. IQ testers have even started eliminating IQ subtests which show “too much” difference between the sexes. The issue here is not that one gender is more stupid than the other. The issue here is that the genders are really different. They have different sets of abilities which makes comparing their IQs like comparing apples and oranges.
These group differences in ability to solve specific tasks don’t just apply to gender. They apply to almost every conceivable group comparison where the groups have different evolutionary history. They also apply to subgroups within very homogeneous groups, for example based on age or personality. Almost all conceivable groups are different from one another when it comes to specific tasks.
Our ability to perform specific tasks (not just IQ tasks) is determined by evolution, or more specifically the environment we evolved in and the evolutionary pressures in that environment. A large part of our evolutionary past was spent in a tribal environment and our roles within the tribe also influence our abilities to perform tasks.
The assumptions of equality which underpin DEI and other inclusion/exclusion systems actually reject evolution. Because all groups are identical, evolution cannot have influenced them at any time – unless evolution is run on a DEI principle ignoring the environment entirely – and reality in general.
Inclusion of non-competence variables
When hiring people we must always remember that competence is determined by the task. This means that a particular task, program, or any other work, requires a particular set of skills and abilities – which of course vary between tasks and people. In a perfect world we would map these required skills and abilities, and then hire the people who score highest on them. The better we define the skills and the better we evaluate prospective hires, the better chance the task has of being completed successfully. We can call this the development of competence-variables and the assessment of applicants based on them.
Developing the competence variables, i.e. mapping the required skills and abilities and evaluating applicants, is only half the job. The other half is to ensure that we are not including non-competence variables in the selection criteria. This means that we cannot hire people based on any other selection variables than the competence variables we have developed. If we include other selection variables, we will without fail decrease the competence of the group we hire for the task.
So, what are non-competence variables? They are usually rules which must be observed during hiring and are not a part of the requirements for the task. They tend to be “blanket rules” that apply to all kinds of tasks, the entire company, the entire sector or an entire country. They can be formalized (such as DEI) or “unspoken.” They may specify abilities, education, and other such things, but in reality they always refer to people who should or shouldn’t be hired. They can be classified into two types:
Inclusion rules: These rules specify that a particular type of people must be hired, often as a minimum ratio. This can be based on gender, race, immigration status, education, age, and so on.
Exclusion rules: These rules specify which types of people cannot be hired and can be based on the same variables as the inclusion rules. Arguably, the most common (unspoken) exclusion rule in the corporate world is age – with a lot of companies not hiring people over 45-50 years old for certain jobs. Another increasingly common one is the exclusion of white men, which is a formal policy at some companies – for example Disney. This has worked wonders for them like everybody who tried to watch The Acolyte can attest to.
Now, let’s say we have defined the perfect competence variables and have access to people who fulfil them. Let’s say we are going to hire 30 people. The probability of success is as good as it can be – let’s say it’s 100%. Now we start adding non-competence variables. Each variable will decrease the probability of success. The more of them there are, the lower it goes and a higher proportion of our group of 30 people will not have optimal competence for the task.
This will decrease the average competence of the group but that’s not all. It will also put more strain on the people who are actually competent and cause interference with their work as the incompetents try to justify their presence in the group. The probability of success will not be 100% anymore.
This is not speculative. This is basically a law of nature. You cannot introduce a non-competence variable into a selection process without decreasing the competence of the “task group.” Every single non-competence variable will do this.
The selection of the right people for any specific task is an extremely important issue. The right group of people can work wonders while the wrong group is likely to accomplish nothing. As we have seen, anything that compromises the selection process will jeopardize success. From the point of view of a job or a task, a quota or inclusion/exclusion rules will always diminish the competence of the worker pool assigned to that job or task.
All this is obvious and logical. However, we have only discussed this issue from the narrow perspective of specific tasks so far. Let’s move further and discuss this from the perspective of an entire economy. If there are rules, inclusive and/or exclusive, and quota systems being applied large scale to an economy – what would happen?
The sensitive economy
Many factors influence the competitiveness of an economy. However, key issues in modern technological economies are basic and applied research and the development of new products – the so-called bleeding edge. A technological economy can be seen as a shock wave which travels outward – or more specifically forward in time. At the edge of the wave are the inventions and developments which propel the competitiveness of the economy as a whole. The speed of the wave determines its competitiveness compared to other economies. Should this wave be blunted or slowed, the economy will fall behind other economies.
The bleeding edge is not the only issue. As economies become more advanced, they become more and more complex to manage. There are more complex products and more complex systems which require people with high-level skill sets for solving specific tasks. Even repairing an agricultural tractor nowadays is probably equivalent to maintenance work on an airliner not too long ago.
In other words, advanced economies depend more and more on two types of skills:
- Inventiveness and creativity – for the bleeding edge, i.e. to prevent it from being overtaken by other economies.
- The ability to deal with complexity – for managing the economy and preventing it from collapsing from the inside.
These issues have caused what can be described as escalation of consequences in modern economies. This means that as economies get more advanced, the more sensitive they get to mistakes and incompetence – and the greater the consequences are to the economy as a whole. This also applies to specific tasks.
- Tasks which demand creativity and the ability to deal with complexity are more important to the advanced economy than other tasks.
- These tasks are more sensitive to mistakes than other tasks – and the consequences of mistakes there are greater for the economy.
The most important ingredient in any economy is the people. No “system” can compensate for the lack of skilled and inventive people. To put things plainly – the competitiveness and maintenance of modern economies depend on three things above others:
- Proper education for the right people, and in necessary quantities.
- Proper selection of people for the inventiveness and complexity tasks.
- Proper incentives for the right people to seek this education and work.
Now ask yourself – how are those three issues being managed in western economies?
The education and incentive issues are related, and will probably be addressed in a later essay. Now, let’s look at the specific consequences for the advanced economy.
The bleeding edge
The development of bleeding edge technology requires very special people. Just being smart, analytical and well educated is not enough. Cracking complicated problems requires constant out-of-the-box thinking and constant decisions on where to go next. It also requires extremely specific skills which, in most cases, only come from experience and built-up knowledge in the field.
Bleeding edge tasks have very small potential employee pools. The more difficult and specialized they are, the smaller the pool. Because of this, bleeding edge tech is very sensitive to selection. Let’s take an extreme example. The Unites States is currently running several hypersonic missile development programs, including the ARRW, HACM and Mayhem programs. These programs haven’t been going well so far. The method has been to involve a bunch of companies all over the place, hoping someone comes up with a working missile. Now, how big is the talent pool in the US of people who are capable of designing and building a true hypersonic missile? I don’t know, but I know it’s small. Maybe it’s twelve people, or eighty people, or maybe more. It’s not hundreds of people or thousands of people.
To design this system or systems, the correct method would have been the following: Find and recruit people from this pool, and recruit no one from outside the pool. Put these people somewhere they can work in peace and give them the resources they need and attainable goals. The US Air Force didn’t do that. Instead it distributed the programs all over the place, involving hundreds or thousands of people in the conceptual and design processes. A huge majority of the employees working on these programs will be from outside the pool, and the projects will be managed by professional managers who will spend their time virtue signaling and interfering with the few truly skilled people. The plan, instead of recruiting a small group of true talent and giving them free rein, is to use a saturation bombing approach: Involve all the people and spend all the money!
Lockheed’s Skunk Works used to be an example of the philosophy of hiring from the pool and not from outside the pool. Neither non-competence variables nor external virtue signaling management were employed. This resulted in fantastic and groundbreaking solutions, such as the U2 spy plane and the SR-71. Recently they were involved in the development of the F-35, which was a “distributed” project involving all kinds of companies and all kinds of people in all kinds of countries. That program has turned out to be a disaster. I wonder why.
The small pool of competent people is not the only problem with bleeding edge programs. They also tend to be very specific in terms of the skills and abilities required. As the skills and abilities become more specific, the more likely they are to be found in a specific group. In other words, as the project becomes more specific, the more it requires a uniform group of people. As projects become less specific, the more likely they are to demand a group of people with diverse skills – and from different groups. This automatically turns bleeding edge programs into priority targets for DEI. Because of the importance of bleeding edge programs and the severe consequences of their failure, this is where DEI does its greatest damage to the economy and its competitiveness.
There are very simple rules regarding these programs – particularly their conceptual and design phases:
- Only hire from the competent pool.
- Hire no one from outside the pool.
- Never use a project manager from outside the pool.
- Give the project manager authority over support and logistics.
Bleeding edge projects are extremely important for the competitiveness of any technological economy. The single most important issue for completing them successfully is the selection of the people and how they are managed. It seems the West has forgotten how to manage these projects. Apparently, the main goal now is to distribute them them as much as possible ensuring the participation of as many incompetent people as possible – including in the conceptual and design phases.
Complex problems
Non-competence variables are being introduced into most jobs in the West, although there seems to be more urgency to introduce them into complex jobs than simple jobs. If we unscientifically divide jobs into unskilled labor, skilled labor and expert jobs, the focus seems to be on the expert jobs. The DEI advocates seem to care less about quotas for menial jobs than, say, high level healthcare jobs. See an example here:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2024-05-24/50-dei-admits-ucla-medical-school-found-be-incompetent
High level jobs carry more prestige, and prestige is important to DEI advocates – and narcissists in general. This creates a situation which is similar to the bleeding edge situation. High-prestige jobs tend to be more complex and more critical for the competitiveness of the economy – and those jobs are specifically targeted by DEI non-competence variables.
The importance of these jobs for the economy should be seen in terms of the consequences of failure. Complex and prestigious jobs tend to have greater consequences should an employee make a mistake. It is one thing to mess up a detailing job on a car. It’s altogether another thing to mess up an assembly job or a maintenance job on an airliner. The focus of DEI on these jobs therefore disproportionately pushes mistakes on the jobs where the consequences of failure are the greatest.
Some companies have tried to defend themselves against DEI, realizing the consequences. It seems that this resistance is fizzling out. When medical schools and aircraft manufacturers no longer realize what is going on, the situation in the economy will only get worse.
There is another serious issue which has made matters worse. The number of people with abilities to learn complex tasks is limited. It is only a relatively small part of the population. It is important that this group be properly utilized – particularly as society becomes more complex. The advocates of DEI don’t see this as a problem. As stated earlier, they believe that anyone can learn anything, no matter the complexity – and that competence is an artificial construct.
The utilization of the critical group is without doubt going down. The main reason is that the incentive structure in the economy has been skewed. In the last two decades or so there has been a tendency to reassess the value of jobs with certain types of education. The trend has been to define “university education” as unitary – i.e. of equal value no matter the specialty. Women’s studies should be equal to engineering, and so on and so forth. This trend has progressed relatively far, but as things get more difficult in the economy, it may reverse. There are even some indications that a reversal may have started.
The problem is that this “reevaluation” of education has influenced which education people have selected. The education required for complex jobs is generally harder than other education. If the pay is similar, why pick the difficult one? This has already caused serious damage to western economies, particularly the US economy.
The infiltration of DEI into complex jobs has not yet had particularly dramatic consequences – apart from parts falling off passenger planes from time to time and astronauts stranded in space. The effects are insidious rather than dramatic. They present as slow deterioration of infrastructure, services and the quality of goods. As with other slow-moving changes they are difficult to notice – although the deterioration has become quite noticeable for the more astute. Expect the erosion to continue. Perhaps there will even be a tipping point, similar to the way Hemingway described a bankruptcy in one of his books. “How did the technological economy collapse in the West? Gradually, then suddenly.”
Project avoidance
Back in the dark days before DEI, technology companies, and even governments, regarded bleeding edge programs as almost routine. If a passenger aircraft was behind the times, a new one would be designed and put into production as a matter of routine. New weapons systems were invented and designed all the time. Breakthrough nuclear power plants were developed and built. All this is still going on, but mainly outside the West it seems.
In the war in the Ukraine, most weapons systems NATO uses against the Russians are 20-40 years old. They have been upgraded, but there are few new ones. The air defense systems are old, the tanks are old, and the cruise missiles are old. European and US nuclear power plants are old. The Boeing 737 MAX is an old design, pimped up to fit new engines. It was made to fly through software development – which is much easier than designing real and complex things.
Failure of critical problems and the deterioration of complex systems are not the only problems caused by DEI. The infiltration of DEI into the bleeding edge and complex parts of the economy has resulted in the dilution of skills for those critical parts of the economy. This seems to be having very interesting and serious consequences regarding how new technological projects are approached – at least in some cases.
One result of the dilution of skill is that bleeding edge projects have become more difficult than before. They used to be routine, but are now almost insurmountable. This seems to have resulted in “avoidance behavior” when it comes to bleeding edge programs. There are many instances where companies and governments in the West have outright avoided replacing old systems, and instead tried to hang on to the old ones for decades beyond obsolescence. This is, in fact, becoming a very visible trend in the West.
The most common theory for this trend is simple corporate greed. New projects are expensive and it’s more lucrative to constantly update old designs. This is probably true as far as it goes, but there may be more to it. As talent is diluted through DEI interventions, bleeding edge problems logically become much more difficult than before. They will also become much more expensive because of all the inefficiencies. On top of that, the increased difficulty level increases the fear of failure. Many bleeding edge programs are now so expensive and risky that they may bring established companies down if they fail. Fear is therefore natural.
This avoidance and postponing behavior has extremely serious consequences for the economy. Firstly, it “regresses” the flow of money in the economy toward “manageable” technologies that are at a comfortable distance from the bleeding edge. Wind turbines, for example, are financed instead of breeder reactors that can run on nuclear waste.
Secondly, and more importantly, this avoidance behavior impairs the preservation of technical skills in society. With increased time between bleeding edge programs, skills are simply lost. This is a major problem for western economies and is possibly the worst consequence of the skills dilution trend.
The best recent example of this is the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant in Finland – which recently came online. It is of conventional design (BWR/PWR) which should be almost a routine to design and build. The contractors were the best Europe had to offer; Areva and Siemens. The project was a disaster from beginning to end. It took 18 years to complete and cost overruns were massive. There were constant technical problems and lawsuits – and breakdowns started as soon as operations started. The rumor was that Areva and Siemens simply didn’t have the technical skills anymore to deal with a project like that. Too much time had passed and there was too much DEI. On the other side of the new iron curtain, Russia and China can build reactors like that – and far more advanced ones – as a matter of routine.
There are many examples like this one. The systematic targeting of inventiveness and technical skills is destroying western competitiveness and western economies. The solution, like most solutions in the West, is to carry on regardless.
