Fuzzy Little Things I Find Interesting

Payrolls rose by 209,000 in June, less than expected, as jobs growth wobbles:

• Nonfarm payrolls increased 209,000 in June, below the consensus estimate for 240,000.
• The unemployment rate was 3.6%, down 0.1 percentage point. However, a more encompassing jobless level rose to 6.9%.
• Government hiring led the job gains, followed by health care, social assistance and construction.
• Wages rose 4.4% from a year ago, slightly higher than expectations.

The ADP report came out a few days before, which is a more limited snapshot of the economy–and all over Twitter you could see a lot of Democrats making hay as to how great the economy was doing.

Don’t get me wrong; I am a strong believer that Presidents don’t have a lot of influence over the economy. So if the economy is doing well or poorly is not really a reflection on the job President Biden is doing. At best Presidents can provide headwinds or tailwinds–but they don’t actually hire or fire people, or cause jobs to be created, new inventions to be developed, or new ideas causing people to form new companies.

But to listen to folks in places like Twitter is to listen to propaganda: as if Biden personally helped pick the 500,000-odd people who were hired according to the prior ADP report.

And it’s absurd, as well as an abuse of statistics.

Resumes including they/them pronouns are more likely to be overlooked:

Inclusivity shouldn’t just be present in the workplace — it should be practiced during the hiring process as well. But unfortunately, nonbinary job seekers are facing clear biases during their job search.

According to a new report from Business.com, a business resource platform, over 80% of nonbinary people believe that identifying as nonbinary would hurt their job search. Similarly, 51% believe their gender identity has affected their workplace experience “very or somewhat negatively.”

The problem is, if you follow social media at all, it seems like anyone using non-standard pronouns is more likely to not play well with others.

And when you hire, you’re hiring for two things: for someone who can do the job, and for someone who can play well with others.

It’s a shame, really, because a variety of voices in the work place–assuming everyone can play well together, even with those who may not necessarily be on board with the current push towards redefining gender–helps allow a group of workers to think outside the box, which for many jobs is almost a requirement.

But in my own experience, it seems hearts have hardened, lines have been drawn–and unfortunately the last thing you need in the workplace is for the culture wars to be fought in the meeting rooms.

So, resumés which include pronouns are likely to be filed in the memory hole.

Judge Orders Biden Officials to Limit Contact With Social-Media Companies – WSJ:

“[T]he evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario,” wrote Doughty, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, in his ruling. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

We know, because it’s been slowly disclosed over the past year or two, that social media companies maintain offices which directly communicate with the government, and we know that the government has, in a number of cases, asked social media to censor topics ranging from questions about the relative safety of vaccines in certain population groups to getting the New York Post kicked off Twitter for running articles about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which the government assured Twitter was a “Russian disinformation campaign.”

These may not have been as well known with prior cases.

But that’s the thing: if the government cannot directly do a thing, because it violates the constitutional rights of the citizens of this country, the government cannot indirectly do a thing by getting a proxy to step in in the government’s stead.

Income and inequality in the Aztec Empire on the eve of the Spanish conquest | Nature Human Behaviour:

Today, Latin American countries are characterized by relatively high levels of economic inequality. This circumstance has often been considered a long-run consequence of the Spanish conquest and of the highly extractive institutions imposed by the colonizers. Here we show that, in the case of the Aztec Empire, high inequality predates the Spanish conquest, also known as the Spanish–Aztec War. We reach this conclusion by estimating levels of income inequality and of imperial extraction across the empire. We find that the richest 1% earned 41.8% of the total income, while the income share of the poorest 50% was just 23.3%. We also argue that those provinces that had resisted the Aztec expansion suffered from relatively harsh conditions, including higher taxes, in the context of the imperial system—and were the first to rebel, allying themselves with the Spaniards. Existing literature suggests that after the Spanish conquest, the colonial elites inherited pre-existing extractive institutions and added additional layers of social and economic inequality.

To be fair, I wonder if those layers of social and economic inequality pre-existed the Spanish Conquistadores.

After all, when an empire of any kind–Eastern, Western, Native-American–engages in unequal treatment of groups of people based on geography, they often have a strong racial component to them as well. Even if the “races” have to be made up to justify the unequal treatment.

China’s Ideological Affinity With Russia Is Over:

What, though, do the Chinese themselves think of the latest events out of Russia? If Beijing ever placed any stock in the idea that Russia and China were together defending the virtues of authoritarianism against an unending onslaught of what is fancied as Western liberalism and democracy, any such illusions by now must be cold and six feet under. There is no longer any possible way to understand or interpret Putinism that could make China comfortable with a close ideological pairing or even comparison.

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But China’s history holds even older reasons to feel repelled by Russia’s unrelenting decay under Putin. For decades prior to the CCP victory in 1949, the country was constantly riven by warlordism. Here is where the spectacle of today’s Russia comes most sharply into critical focus. As if pursuing history in reverse, Putin has increasingly relied on warlords and militias to shore up his power and pursue strategic goals.

The Russian Communists model of control was always a sort of decentralized or federated authoritarianism: the leaders of the former USSR were members of the Communist Party, which set goals for which those leaders were to enact in their own countries. But they were still leaders of their own countries–coordinating action via the Communist Party according to Marxist-Leninist lines towards a hypothetical ideal–but they still had sovereignty within this umbrella.

The Chinese model, however, has always been imperialistic: the form of the Chinese Communist Party may have all the trappings of the Russian Communists, complete with elections and a central committee and pretensions of debate–but make no mistake: President Xi is emperor in all but name of China. And to the Chinese, what is “communist” is what serves the Chinese Communist Party–even if it looks like and has the trappings of capitalism.

Wars tend to stress societies and show their differences and highlight their flaws–and the flaw of the Russian ‘federated authoritarian’ model is that you have a lot of very powerful people who may decide the guy on top (in this case, Putin) is not the right man for the job. More eyes may help you see more options–but that also means more people who can overthrow your lofty position–and suddenly the unthinkable happens overnight, as the Russian Royal Family learned one fateful night in July of 1918.

Imperial models are also subject to the same royal intrege, but one so thoroughly centralized as the Chinese Communist Party tends to suffer a different problem: underlings tend to like so as to make their bosses look good. Information flow within an Empire tends to be poor at best; even in today’s modern computerized age, we still have “garbage in, garbage out.” And fewer minds muddling over a problem tend to produce fewer options and tend to have a harder time ‘thinking outside the box.’

Meaning if China ever found itself at war, information flow problems and problems with centralized decision making would mean Chinese troops would become inefficient as individual soldiers are unable to take the initiative outside of a very narrow set of options.

Neither wishes to admit to the Western model of thought about such things, however, because the Western model–for all its flaws, including the public choice issues of regulatory capture and rent-seeking, including the capture of institutions by individuals who bend those institutions to their own purposes, even as groups insert themselves as the arbiters of merit–we are still fundamentally a merit-based model.

And in a merit-based model, power is decentralized and often is driven from the bottom-up. Culture, rather than a strong-man, is what defines the contours of daily life–and often the concerns of a people become rather mundane and banal. After all, how can one achieve the lofty goals of a Russian-led Marxist revolution leading to Utopia on Earth if one is more worried if the baker down the street carries gluten-free bread, or if one is more worried if the price of electricity is low enough to make air conditioning your home affordable.

Utopians of all sorts–those on the Left, and the growing utopian movement on the Right, which underpin authoritarianism–tend to forget the little things, because their eyes are set up on high trying to create a paradise in their own image: one where we all instinctively know each other’s pronouns and one where money and accounting and tracking imbalance of trade is replaced by some sort of universal love.

Even if it means a few people can’t have their gluten-free bread: once we sort out universal brotherly love, we can resume the shipment of gluten-free bread.

And the Western model seems so utterly banal and pointless and powerless: Napoleon could not invision how a “nation of shopkeepers” could come to best him on the field.

But the Western model, by empowering all members of society, can become a very powerful force–even on the battlefield. It may not be fashionable to say this, but Western values of individual empowerment have always had an advantage, especially when it comes to devising new ways to kill your opponents.

Just as it gives an incentive for shopkeepers to keep their customers happy by carring all sorts of products–including gluten-free bread: because their individual welfare is directly affected by it.

And Just Like That, Sex Talk Comes to Work

When Vanessa Van Edwards told a group of workers to ask their colleagues about the most exciting thing they did over the weekend, the communication trainer wanted to spark chitchat and collegial bonding.

She didn’t expect that one co-worker would be treated to details of a colleague’s Saturday-night sexual escapades in response.

A lot of young people are going to get a lesson in why we tend to separate various aspects of our lives–and, for example, not talking about our sex lives at work. Especially nowadays when HR is clamping down so hard after the “#MeToo” movement: because unless your sex life lies within a very narrow band of sexual activities that are considered “normal”, you could very well trigger an HR investigation. Or at the very least find yourself excluded from the rest because you’re too “weird.”

And that goes towards the conservative end of the spectrum: “I’m saving myself for marriage.”

And that goes towards the wild end of the spectrum: “Me and my wife got together with Becky down in accounting, and her husband invited three other people over for an orgy. We’re trying for a child, but we’ve decided to play ‘pregnancy’ roulette, especially after learning Becky has a breeding kink.”

The problem is, it’s often difficult to read the room–and it can become problematic because, especially in a work environment where people come from a diverse range of backgrounds, one person’s “oh, gosh, that sounds like fun!” becomes another person’s “hostile work environment.”

As an aside, I do want to note it’s one of the things that, as a Gen-Xer who learned the various rules of engagement in a business environment in an earlier era, bothers me. Not because I actually care that Becky in accounting has a breeding kink. But because in a real way, we all wear masks. And not for our own comfort: I honestly do not care what other people do to make themselves happy. We wear them for the comfort of others, in environments (such as when interacting with members of the public or with folks you meet at work) where you are surrounded by a variety of people from different walks of life.

I’m amused when the mask slips. But I also understand others would see it as overly problematic.

It’s also my primary concern with the multi-pronoun “woke” movement: again, I do not care what you do to be happy with your friends and family. And I personally don’t care what you want to call yourself or if you self-identify as a sexual cat in heat, complete with little pointy ears.

But the masks we wear for strangers, for the public, for those we interact with at work: they’re designed to smooth the interaction with people from all walks of life–and they are designed to smooth the interactions we have with others whom we have not quite yet allowed within the inner private circle of our own personal lives.

To discard all of this because you want others to acknowledge you in all your private sexual glory strikes me as terribly narcissistic. And to force those others to jump through non-obvious hoops–for example, having to commit to memory your pronouns are “ze” and “zis” on pain of an HR “sensitivity” meeting (or worse), when there are 50 other co-workers and the person has a problem remembering names and when you so obviously present as a woman–that just deliberately sprinkles the workplace with social landmines that almost designed to torture others for your own narcissistic pleasure.

Is Your Company’s DEI Program Lawful?

The U.S. Supreme Court last week held racial preferences unlawful in college admissions. But executives of U.S. corporations should read Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard closely, because it will likely end up applying to them. Many companies have pushed racial preferences and quotas under the guise of “diversity, equity and inclusion” policies that run contrary to the justices’ warning against choosing “winners and losers based on the color of their skin.”

The problem is, like college admissions, work place hiring for most companies is a zero-sum game. If you selectively hire from one race, you’re discriminating against another. And while the Supreme Court ruling ruled Title VI doesn’t permit discrimination in college admissions, folks forgot that there is a Title VII that immediately follows which applies the same rules to any business with more than 15 employees.

As always, more pictures here.

More photos here.

Supreme Court rules in favor of Christian designer in gay wedding website case | The Hill:

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that Colorado cannot require an evangelical Christian web designer to provide same-sex wedding websites.

The court found that the state’s anti-discrimination law violates Lorie Smith’s free speech rights under the First Amendment by demanding she creates same-sex wedding websites if she wants to do so for opposite-sex unions. Smith argued the requirement violated her religious beliefs.

Honestly, I have to ask–setting aside all other arguments–why in the name of Hell would you want to engage the services of someone you find openly hostile to your point of view to work on something as “expressive” as a web site?

I can only come up with two answers.

1. There is a monopoly in your state where the only providers available are hostile to your point of view.
2. You’re trying to put people who are hostile to your point of view out of business.

Now the first makes sense if you’re trying to do business with a large faceless corporation or one with a virtual monopoly–like Amazon. And note Amazon can wield a lot of power to restrict one’s expression–even in error. In such a case, I can see wanting to revisit the Supreme Court ruling, as you don’t have a reasonable alternative.

On the other hand, “expressive businesses” like “web site developer” and “cake baker” are a dime a fucking dozen. Meaning if the person you’re talking to dislikes your point of view–because you’re gay, you’re Wiccan, you’re a Christian evangelical trying to get a religious web site off the ground and you’re going to an LGBT+ web site designer trying to force them to post pages about the sinfulness of the LGBT lifestyle–you can always go somewhere else.

(And yes, Colorado’s law opens the last possibility: religiious belief is a protected class in business transactions, so in theory discriminating against a customer for their religious viewpoint is illegal under the prior interpretation of Colorado’s law. And yes, it does reveal the hypocrisy of such laws, if we can envision putting a web site developer out of business for not wanting to put up an LGBT page–but not doing the same to an LGBT web site developer for failing to put up web pages for an evangelical preaching the sins of the gay lifestyle. And if you think “religion” falls below “LGBT” concerns–then where does a Wiccan stand in this hierarchy?)

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Because they are a dime a dozen, honestly the only reason why I can see groups in Colorado using the protected status of LGBT individuals is door number 2 above: armed with the legal tools at their disposal, they were deliberately targeting businesses run by Christian evangelicals, for the explicit purpose of putting them out of business.

And that’s not a habit you want to be in, because quite simply–and we already see this with cancel culture–you may be higher on the “victimization totem pole” than the next guy, but you may not be high enough to save your own ass from the next guy to come along.

Given the penchant for “bi-erasure” within the LGBT community–that is, the penchent for lesbians and gay people to consider bisexuals as either “tourists” or “too weak to admit to themselves their homosexuality”–it’s not hard to see an LGBT business being attacked using the exact same Colorado toolset when the more outspoken lesbian or gay owners are “forced” to put together a page attacking bi-erasure.

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That’s the beauty of the Supreme Court ruling, by the way: we are forced to acknowledge we don’t all have to agree with each other, to leave each other alone and to try to get along.

That is, we don’t have to be constantly trying to destroy the people we disagree with by using the legal system to destroy the livelihoods of people who hold beliefs we dislike.