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Clearly, if you knock a fence down, you can't put the fence back up simply by saying "it is now unlawful to knock fences down". So: if not quotas, what repairs this fence?

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If you find evidence of discrimination, you take action. What action exactly is up for debate. You could even go so far as replacing the board.

But not all, all male boards will be caused by discrimination, and adding a few females members will not solve this problem in many cases.

What do you do about the generations of discrimination (of "fences being knocked down") without repercussions? You can outlaw and punish the behavior now, but look around and notice how many fences are still standing. How do you fix that? That's the path-dependence problem Rayiner is talking about.

To what extent may we apply this principle? Was the promise of forty acres and a mule to formerly enslaved black farmers in the U.S. too "far"? Was the actual result of some land redistribution and the Freedmen's Bureau providing supplies and opportunities to freed slaves too far? Maybe you believe this. If not, could we establish where the threshold is? That is, what's the volume of harm-over-time a group would drop below before being disqualified for any positive rights?

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