Summary: The TV show Designated Survivor has all the elements of great TV — good acting and writing, skilled cinematography — and something powerful but rare. It shows us something about ourselves, about modern America.
This is a powerful TV show. Dramatic, with episodes often ending on powerful cliff-hangers. Excellent acting, with Kiefer Sutherland as a Secretary of HUD becoming a President-by-accident (all the important people dying in a terrorist attack. The attack was by a vast shadowy conspiracy.
The key to enjoying the show is to ignore the plots of individual episodes, which often make no sense. None at all. Focus instead on how the writers appeal to many common beliefs about America and the world — so many of which are false. This could be used as an educational film on PBS — both more fun and more educational than most of the shows on PBS. We see in…
“I have tried to pry economists away from narrow assumptions about self interest. Behavior is driven by a much richer set of values and preferences.” —Gary Becker, Nobel Lecture, 1992
It’s doubtful that many Americans outside of economic academia could tell you who Gary Becker was, and it’s doubtful that many Americans would have knowledge of Gary Becker’s recent passing, but the fair amount of press honoring the man offers an opportunity to explore some of the topics connected to Gary Becker’s fundamental life work. Becker won a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992. He presents a brilliant range of study which delves in to topics of:
racial and sexual discrimination,
investment in human capital,
crime and punishment,
marriage and divorce,
the family,
drug addiction,
and other topics which were, at the time, considered irrelevant to economic study. Now, it seems absurd to exclude the…
There is a large literature on the failing firm defence to merger law. I wrote an Australian Law Journal article about that defence many years ago.
The essence of the argument is that when a firm is to fail, the choice is between a high cost single plant monopoly and a lower cost multi-plant monopoly that absorbs the asset failed firm. For today’s purposes, that would be newspapers that would otherwise close but for the now blocked Fairfax/NZME media merger
Some think allowing mergers of market leaders with failing firms is good for competition.
To get a merger clearance on the basis of the failing firm defence, the merging companies must provide sufficient, compelling evidence that the failing firm will inevitably leave the market without the merger and there is no less anti-competitive alternative.
The basic rationale behind the doctrine is that since the failing firm would have left the market anyway due to its financial collapse, any harm to competition caused by the loss of an independent market player would arise regardless of the merger. Allowing the merger saves scrapping the assets of the failed firm.
Posner and Easterbrook described the failing firm defence as one of the most pernicious doctrines to ever arise in antitrust law. They did not elaborate much.
The Minister for Women Paula Bennett and the Ministry of Women published excellent research in February showing there cannot be a gender wage gap driven by unconscious bias. The Minister has blamed a large part of the remaining gender wage gap on unconscious bias.
… up to 84 per cent of the reason for the Pay Gap, that’s right, 84 per cent, is described as ‘unexplained factors.’ That means its bias against women, both conscious and unconscious.
It’s about the attitudes and assumptions of women in the workplace, it’s about employing people who we think will fit in – and when you have a workforce of men, particularly in senior roles then it seems likely you’re going to stick with the status quo – whether they do that intentionally or just because “like attracts like”.
It’s because there is still a belief that women will accept less pay than men – they don’t know their worth and aren’t as good at negotiating.
The reason why this February 2017 research on the motherhood penalty contradicts earlier Ministry of Women research on unconscious bias and the gender wage gap is simple.
There is a large difference in the gender wage gap from mothers and for other women. As the adjacent graphic from Ministry of Women research shows, the gender wage gap for mothers is 17% but it is only 5% from other women.
We men, us dirty dogs all, have no way of knowing whether a female applicant is a mother. Remember we are dealing with unconscious bias, the raised eyebrow, the prolonged pause, the lingering glance, not a conspiracy or a prejudice of which we are self-aware and take overt steps to implement. Unconscious bias is unconscious by definition.
— OECD ➡️ Better Policies for Better Lives (@OECD) March 8, 2015
Because the bias against women is implicit and unconscious, we men, dirty dogs all, do not know we are biased, so we do not know we have to make further enquiries to check if the female applicant is a mother so we can discriminate against her more than we do for other women.That is before we consider other drivers of the gender wage gap such as whether there are relatively large spaces between the births of her children.
Large spaces between the birthdays of children greatly increases the gender wage gap because women spend much more time out of the workforce and part-time if they spread births. This reduces their accumulation of on-the-job human capital and encourages women who plan large families to choose occupations and educational majors that do not depreciate rapidly during career interruptions.
I have no idea how an unconsciously biased employer can discover if a woman has children with spaced out ages and therefore discriminate against an even more, unconsciously, of course. We men, dirty dogs all, do not know that in order to discriminate against them, especially in shortlisting for initial hiring when we have no information beyond the application about them.
Memo to all profit-maximizing employers out there: Save 23% on your labor costs by hiring only women using this coupon. pic.twitter.com/RXH4WXhhEf
Do women have more unconscious bias against women than men? If not, there should be differences in the gender pay gap in firms with more women managers or owners.
Perhaps there is more unconscious biased in promotions because managers may have accidentally learnt are the ages of the children of female applicants and unconsciously taken a note to remember that when unconsciously discriminating against them in promotion. This unconscious bias involves a lot of very conscious data collection and retention.
All in all, the unconscious bias hypothesis simply cannot explain such a large difference between the gender wage gaps of parents and non-parents. There is too much evidence whose existence that is strictly forbidden by the hypothesis of unconscious bias against women in the workplace.
Prominent New Zealand Labour Party stalwart Sunny Kaushal has resigned from the Party amidst allegations of hostilities and bullying from Party Membership and Party Hierarchy.
With the growing use of arguments about unconscious bias, it is near impossible to rebut an accusation of racism.
Certainly, once the accusation is spit at you, the onus is on you to prove to a stranger who never met you before beyond reasonable doubt that you are not a racist. One misfortunate glance, a raised eyebrow, a jumbled sentence is enough to undo a life of principle
Unconscious bias is the main driver of the gender wage gap if my betters are to be believed. Why not racism? What is the view of the New Zealand Labour Party on unconscious bias in proving racial discrimination and pay inequity?
The Labour Party wants to reverse the onus of proof in sexual assault trials. Certainly these standards should filter down into civil proceedings and pub conversations.
The Labour Party must be a cauldron of sexism if the only way it can get gender balance in caucus is quotas. Why is racism not any less insidious within Labour decision-making than sexism?
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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