Coloring By Numbers

My 4-year-old daughter has a coloring-by-numbers book. Each area has a number, and at the bottom is a legend that maps colors to numbers. She has learned to sound out the names of the colors so she knows which color crayon to use. It is proto-reading, and she is very proud when she colors the pictures correctly. Coloring by numbers is a wonderful way to teach a youngster how to color and to read, but the benefits pretty much stop there.

It would seem ridiculous to propose that we apply the same approach to running a society, and yet here we are. A pointed example is the recent bridge collapse in Florida. While it's not likely we'll ever see an exposé on the pitfalls of diversity-driven engineering by the establishment media, there seems to be plenty of evidence that diversity was the core ethos of the projects.

"Work Safely" - the value of platitudes

While it's unfortunate, any time we see an image of a perfectly blended rainbow of happy workers in a corporate setting, the natural reaction is raised eyebrows. Not because such diversity couldn't occur naturally, but because it is almost always forced. All such outfits are very open about their diversity initiatives. I've been surprised, as a software engineer, at how many firms are quite open during the interview process of their desire to hire more women. It would be a national outrage if they were telling their female applicants that they're more interested in hiring men. If the goal was really fairness, companies wouldn't ask for gender or race information at all, and make all efforts to nullify any sort of bias in the interview process. That is logically the optimal approach for building the most competent workforce. But they don't do that. They say up front they prefer one group over another. They're willing to sacrifice quality if the image isn't just right.

This is one of those cases where the libertarian argument breaks down completely. They argue that the free market solves all problems. A company that hires a subpar workforce will lose competitive advantage. Great theory, except that it is quite likely that the university was only willing to hire companies that were satisfactorily diverse. The free market is a myth. And in any case, what does it matter when you're the casualty of a botched construction job? Ten thousand tons of free falling steel won't be stopped by your equality bumper sticker. The downsides of a failing social structure affect everyone. When the cops can't stop crime and the public infrastructure becomes a death trap, we start looking an awful lot like a 3rd world country.

Clearly any approach other than hiring the best engineers based on their merit is a disaster waiting to happen. Not to be outdone, Canada's Prime Minister built his cabinet based on numbers. All genders and races are matched to the background demographics because it's $the_current_year. That means it is almost certain that some of the highest ranking officials in the Canadian government were not the most qualified. Think a bridge collapse is a tragedy? Wait until the broader social collapse. Running society in such a child-like fashion will eventually result in the deaths of millions.