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Comment by nerbert | Hacker News Reader

Honestly there is not right angle to race. Saying "black people cant be at the board of companies" is just as wrong as saying "some black people have to belong to it". That being said, when only white people are at the board of companies without that being a calculated strategy, there is also a problem. If only white people come out on top where - allegedly - the smartest people belong, wouldn’t it be the place of the state to ensure that a fair chance is given to everyone from birth up to professional life, instead of trying to force an artificial standard upon companies?

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> is just as wrong as saying "some black people have to belong to it".

Umm you can have an all white board with the new law.

The problem is that the only real solution is a lot more extreme. I think once women are pregnant they go into managed care and babies are immediately taken at birth into academies (with no knowledge of parents) until adulthood. But that will never happen. Unfortunately short of that we’re likely to never have real equality.

That’s some pretty extreme all-or-nothing thinking. Why do you believe this is the only solution?

How else do you remedy the compounding advantage throughout various parts of the society?

You don't. "Compounding advantage" is a fact of life. Historically, the societies that have dealt with this unpleasant fact of life the best have been those that had some concept of "noblesse oblige"--if you are one of the fortunate ones with "compounding advantage" on your side, you have an obligation to use those gifts to help others less fortunate than you. But trying to erase the advantage doesn't work; every time it has been tried, it has just ended up causing even more misery (and in many cases lots of deaths).

> I think once women are pregnant they go into managed care and babies are immediately taken at birth into academies (with no knowledge of parents) until adulthood.

In other words, you've just reinvented Plato's Republic. Historically, the closest things to this have been societies like the Puritans or Geneva under John Calvin, or in the 20th century, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. How well did those experiments in "managed care" work out?

The closest thing to it in today's world is probably China or North Korea. If you think that's a good idea, you're welcome to go live in one of those countries.

> Unfortunately short of that we’re likely to never have real equality.

We won't have "real equality" even with such a draconian plan, because the inconvenient truth is that every human being is a unique individual. There is no such thing as "real equality" because human beings are all different. You can't pigeonhole human beings into boxes. You can't "manage" their care so they fit into whatever preconceived utopian fantasy you happen to have. Human beings are free individuals and we all have to figure out for ourselves how best to use whatever we have been given. And since we all get given different things, we are going to end up wanting different things, needing different things, and making different choices. No central planner can possibly comprehend all that. And every time it has been tried, it has ended up costing a lot of lives and a lot of misery even for those who managed not to be killed outright.

I’m not advocating such a plan. Just pointing out that pretty much anything we do short of that plan created a society that will favor whites people. When laws like those in a California get passed whites get up in arms about fairness. Blacks look around and think ”this is what gets you upset about fairness?”

Wow. That escalated quickly!

I hope you’ll never be in any position of power to realize this “solution”.

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