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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

> Companies should be hiring on skill, and culture fit. Not to fill a quota or someone's agenda.

As opposed as I am to discrimination (including "reverse" discrimination), i have to point out that you're missing part of the picture.

Companies are optimising for profit, and there are many things that influence it. Including, for example, the media - and unfortunately, in the current (pro-female, anti-male) media climate, it pays off to be seen as pro-women - such companies simply get a better media exposure and extra praise! In other words, if the whole country supports discrimination, it might be in the best interest of a company to go along with it.

In general, I don't think we, as a society, should expect companies to influence the culture (in a positive way) - it would have to be the other way around.

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Yep. You're touching here on one of the common bridges from libertarianism to neoreaction. Libertarianism is based on a handful of simple principles that work -- in theory. Neoreaction takes a step back and looks at the practical issues surrounding implementation of libertarianism (e.g. profit being derived from culture as you mention here), and of the results of libertarianism, and thus all the philosophical deductions and political necessities that result from those considerations.

(new account because I would like to remain employed)

> You're touching here on one of the common bridges from libertarianism to neoreaction

Actually, my reasoning is coming from an entirely different point of view. My basic assumption is that people follow incentives. Markets (i.e. libertarianism) are very good at providing certain kinds of incentives (basically, they encourage competition and drive the world toward greater and greater efficiency), but there are also well-known examples of market failures: monopoly, duopoly, cartels; externalities (pollution, resource exhaustion); barriers to entry and wasteful competition (main example being infrastructure - do we really need 2 companies digging through the whole city to establish 2 sets of separate, but otherwise identical phone lines?); agency problem; tragedy of the commons and free-rider problem (i.e. who pays for the fire department). In this case, I believe that government regulation is required and welcome; it has to be carefully enacted and continuously evaluated to make sure it results in increase of competition in the markets (otherwise we get e.g. copyright, which significantly hurts competition). I don't think neoreaction is a good example here; I believe that parts of EU, allegedly Denmark in particular (with their "flexicurity" style labor markets) are particularly good examples.

Libertarianism is flawed in many ways, yes, and its proponents do not consider its peripheral realities. To what you wrote I would add the observations that markets are created from the will of a central authority, and that the mob can become tyranny when not restrained by a more level-headed authority in whatever form.

These critiques (and more) are prominent in the neoreactionary literature on liberalism/libertarianism (but nowadays they have more important things to talk about). An interesting hypothesis of neoreaction is that liberal ideals, or even a libertarian world, will invariably lead to democratic socialism -- due to the power of the mob.

Personally, the foundation of my disillusionment with liberalism/libertarianism is the fact that people are so much more than economic units, and that collectivism trumps individualism. What's important is preservation of heritage, culture, tradition, creation of art in all its beautiful forms, and the maximization of humanity's potential.

I can't see liberalism/libertarianism getting us much further than working on advertising systems to push junk food, while NASA spends half its time making reports to get a few more handouts, and cultures worldwide are systemically destroyed in the name of economic growth.

That may seem to be true, that a company being pro-female brings it better media exposure, which is also something libertarians like to promote (i.e. let everyone hire/sell to whomever they want, discriminate however they want, and let the market decide who wins). But I have a feeling that despite repeated pro-female media coverage for Yahoo, saying that it discriminates* for women, that when someone decides to search they will just go with Google because it's easier or a habit.

* = just in terms of making a choice, not a negative meaning.

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