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Comment by fwungy | Hacker News Reader

DEI is a juice box for handing out cushy jobs to political hacks. Any organization that puts DEI as its core mission is headed for mediocrity.

Protecting people who can do the job but need a little help for whatever reason is one thing. Forcing companies to hire a bunch of people who will not contribute to satisfy DEI quotas so they can meet ESG goals and qualify for discount financing is a whole other thing. The government is basically outsourcing social programs by forcing businesses to hire people.

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>The government is basically outsourcing social programs by forcing businesses to hire people.

It is absolutely not, the entire scheme is zero-sum, so it can't replace social programs. What is given to one is taken from another, and even if this has some mild redistributive effect which could potentially lessen the need for social programs, it's never going to have much of once because the vast majority of money is held by people who will never be impacted by DEI by design.

DEI is just classic rent seeking and political influence of private business. The character assassinations of its critics are again, a function of furthering rent seeking. It's a very old story.

> The government is basically outsourcing social programs by forcing businesses to hire people

Is the (US) government pushing this directly through financial incentives?

Yes:

* https://www.sba.gov/federal-contracting/contracting-assistan...

"Department of Defense requires approval of a formal justification if the 8(a) sole-source contract exceeds $100 million; all other federal agencies require approval for sole-source 8(a) contract actions that exceed $25 million." That is, you can help the government launder up to $100M per contract and no one even has to write down a justification. Buy whatever the government asks you to, resell it to them for a 10% mark-up, and you can get up to $10M. And if you think people aren't playing that game, I have a bridge to sell you, but actually to this other person, who will get 10% for just existing.

If you take government money as a contract or a grant you must comply with their rules. These rules include diversity targets for race, gender, and disability.

Thanks, didn't know it was that widespread. Have Republicans never tried to end these rules?

They have. But any that do are painted as white nationalists.

Some really are 'lite' white nationalists, or sympathize. It's a very convenient boogeyman for the DEI crowd.

Yep. Worst part is there's people pushing hard for the Fed to be an arbiter on DEI and climate. They've resisted for now, but it's not long until a power-hungry governor figures it out.

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