Agree, and I think this is a really important and overlooked implication, that two tribes will talk past each other on. Unfair discrimination persists even with rational, non-racist, greedy capitalist.
A less charged example would be life insurance policies. Almost everyone would agree that mortality tables are acceptable; almost everyone could also imagine themselves getting older, and could imagine themselves as above average with in their group. The insurer will rationally charge the older group more premium. Atypical healthier older people within this group have experience unfair discrimination and the insurer is rationally non-prejudiced.
So when one tribe says that markets will punish racist, it doesn’t fix unfair discrimination. And when other tribe says that there is unfair discrimination, that doesn’t mean there is rampant racism. I personally feel a lot of compassion towards atypical individuals within a disadvantaged group, but how could we improve?
I personally feel a lot of compassion towards atypical individuals within a disadvantaged group, but how could we improve?
Well, do we want to fix the problem, or only to reduce its visibility?
By “reducing visibility” I mean solutions where some individuals are still discriminated more than others, but the numbers don’t show up when you do the statistics by race. As a reductio-ad-absurdum example, having cops additionally shoot a few innocent white people would fix the race statistics. I can imagine a few less obviously absurd solutions which would work in a similar way, some of them might even sound acceptable to an average reader.
But if we want to solve the essence of the problem, well, either we need to make sure innocent bystanders are never killed, or that all people have the same chance to be in a proximity of crime. I don’t think either is achievable. But there can be partial improvements in both directions.
For example, if we could reduce the total number of innocent people killed, then in absolute numbers there would also be less black innocent people killed. Ironically, for the BLM purposes, this might not register as an improvement. Imagine that the probability of innocent people being killed drops to a half, and it drops to a half for each ethnic group. Obviously, this would be an improvement for everyone. But if you would calculate the ratio of the probabilities for different ethnic groups, in this model it would remain exactly the same, so BLM would have the same reason to complain.
I am not sure about this, but maybe things like basic income could help poor people to get out of places with high crime. Imagine that whenever there is too much crime at some place, people who don’t participate in the criminal activities start moving away, because it’s easier for them. But probably I am just imagining things here.
Agree, and I think this is a really important and overlooked implication, that two tribes will talk past each other on. Unfair discrimination persists even with rational, non-racist, greedy capitalist.
A less charged example would be life insurance policies. Almost everyone would agree that mortality tables are acceptable; almost everyone could also imagine themselves getting older, and could imagine themselves as above average with in their group. The insurer will rationally charge the older group more premium. Atypical healthier older people within this group have experience unfair discrimination and the insurer is rationally non-prejudiced.
So when one tribe says that markets will punish racist, it doesn’t fix unfair discrimination. And when other tribe says that there is unfair discrimination, that doesn’t mean there is rampant racism. I personally feel a lot of compassion towards atypical individuals within a disadvantaged group, but how could we improve?
Well, do we want to fix the problem, or only to reduce its visibility?
By “reducing visibility” I mean solutions where some individuals are still discriminated more than others, but the numbers don’t show up when you do the statistics by race. As a reductio-ad-absurdum example, having cops additionally shoot a few innocent white people would fix the race statistics. I can imagine a few less obviously absurd solutions which would work in a similar way, some of them might even sound acceptable to an average reader.
But if we want to solve the essence of the problem, well, either we need to make sure innocent bystanders are never killed, or that all people have the same chance to be in a proximity of crime. I don’t think either is achievable. But there can be partial improvements in both directions.
For example, if we could reduce the total number of innocent people killed, then in absolute numbers there would also be less black innocent people killed. Ironically, for the BLM purposes, this might not register as an improvement. Imagine that the probability of innocent people being killed drops to a half, and it drops to a half for each ethnic group. Obviously, this would be an improvement for everyone. But if you would calculate the ratio of the probabilities for different ethnic groups, in this model it would remain exactly the same, so BLM would have the same reason to complain.
I am not sure about this, but maybe things like basic income could help poor people to get out of places with high crime. Imagine that whenever there is too much crime at some place, people who don’t participate in the criminal activities start moving away, because it’s easier for them. But probably I am just imagining things here.