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Comment by great_psy | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand how just giving a group of people more money will solve the problem. That's is an artificial way of addressing it, it's just a band aid.

Let's look at the causes , and address those.

I think that's how you solve it. It is pretty sexist to say , "give someone more money because they are a women"

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Ummm... you realize band-aids solve the problem of bleeding, right?

Similarly, giving women more money solves the problem of women getting paid less money.

why isn't everyone paid exactly the same? because that would suck for all of us here and be great for everyone that doesn't work as hard. I was messing with strange *nix distros for years and teaching myself programming before I got a tech job. I would be seriously pissed if someone that didn't know as much got my same job and pay just because they were a _____

I could understand getting mad if your pay was lowered, but how are you harmed if the other person's pay is increased?

We make all sorts of incredibly bizarre (from an outside perspective) decisions about who gets paid what; the fact that we've fooled ourselves into thinking that it's because of supply and demand curves may be comforting but is completely unfounded in any data.

Where does all this "equalizing" money come from? Does it just pop into existence because you want it to?

Yes, in fact, for some value of "you"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money

You can't create the amount of money you are talking about without severe economic consequences. That should be obvious.

The same logic would mandate that everyone gets paid the same amount of money, which I personally would be sort of OK with, depending on the details, but it is generally considered such a radical idea that it suggests there's something missing from your argument.

Giving preferential treatment to anyone based on their skin color, gender or sexual orientation instead of the value they provide or the skills they posses is exactly how not to address diversity issues. This line of thinking only fuels more outrage from other minority groups.

A band aid is a temporary solution to a problem that fixes itself. Do you expect this problem to fix itself?

Actually I do imagine that more gender parity in management and boardrooms would probably organically fix the problem, eventually. This is, ultimately, an outcome of culture(s), and cultural problems are situations where you can fake it until you make it (though it can take a generation).

But isn't the context here "women in tech"? As in, SWE/STEM positions, as opposed to upper management?

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