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Comment by justonceokay | Hacker News Reader

I think social rights are great. I’m glad I don’t live in the 70s when I could be jailed for being gay. But I also feel like this is all bunk.

As soon as the government takes control of something it must be quantified and standardized. It immediately turns abstract goals like “increase opportunity for poor children” into easily tracked and digestible goals like increasing test scores or spending more money.

Let’s be honest, the reason that being gay legal today is not because the government enforced it. It’s because the opinion of the populace changed over time and the government had to capitulate. In the same way I feel like social change of other kinds cannot be top-down from the government. If they can barely be trusted to fill potholes why should I expect they would successfully foment complex social changes?

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>As soon as the government takes control of something it must be quantified and standardized. It immediately turns abstract goals like “increase opportunity for poor children” into easily tracked and digestible goals like increasing test scores or spending more money.

Title IX would like to have a word with you.

This prohibited sex discrimination in education and athletics, which enabled womens sports among other things.

The drive for easily tracked goals is not inherent in government, it is an artifact of current political process.

> The drive for easily tracked goals is not inherent in government, it is an artifact of current political process.

While I agree with your intent, I think this is incorrect. The need to quantize things is inherent in taking power over them - via government, corporate management, community groups, whatever. A large section of humanity's challenges can be translated back to what we choose to measure, how we measure it, when we measure it, what goals we set for it, etc. It is why we argue over statistical "facts" so much.

Seeing Like a State is a great book diving into this topic if you haven't read it. It diverts into a more depressing view of government efforts, but I have yet to find a good refutation of this particular topic, although I would be pleased to encounter one.

Touché.

I do feel like title IX suffers from the same problem that gay marriage did, insofar as it was a “win” that was very quantifiable, easy to implement, and almost comically far off from the kinds of change that was being asked for. Great, women can play college football, but what about addressing women-specific concerns, or funding programs that are heavily preferred by women?

I absolutely am not arguing against title IX, only to say that it is actually a great example of the kind of sterilization and heavy handedness that happens when the government gets involved.

An even better example to your point though might be the ADA. A giant pain in the ass to every business owner and contractor, but ultimately great for society.

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