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Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

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51–60 of 118 posts

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#51

"diversity and inclusion" initiatives are coming up on a long overdue reckoning. The premise is to allege discrimination, based solely on "evidence" in the form of inequality of outcome, and then use that unilateral accusation as justification for the accusing party to practice the discrimination they claim to oppose. Bonus: you are liable to lose your job for criticising these practices. The comments ITT suggest tha…

It’s not lifting, there’s just a higher degree of anonymity here.

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies are not personal, they are purely about managing business and risks. Let's completely refute this notion: "Companies with more culturally and ethnically diverse executive teams were 33% more likely to see better-than-average profits. In McKinsey’s previous study—conducted with 2014 numbers—that increase had been 35%. At the board of directors level, more ethnically and cultural diverse companies were 43%…

I would dare say the causality is reversed here. Once your company reaches a certain size, NOT having a diverse executive team will very quickly get you labeled as racist and will cost you dearly. Nobody cares about a mom and pop bakery, but imagine the outrage in the media, if Apple or Google did not pick their executive teams based on the diversity constraints.

Seems like you're assuming that having an all-white workforce, absent the political blowback that this would cause, is some kind of competitive advantage? Am I understanding you correctly?

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#53
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea why are you being downvoted. It seems like a pretty accurate description of what's happening. We don't have much of that in my country but we have it with women. Anyway it will eventually reach us as we're already colonized by American culture.

Probably sooner than you think. Thanks to the internet nowadays things travel incredibly fast.

Yeah, we noticed with the last BLM protests. It's funny to see your government rushing to virtue signaling and pushing people into the streets, in the middle of the current crisis and calling the opposition to be criminals just a few weeks ago for suggesting that we had to stop quarantines.

And this in a country ravaged with structural unemployment and It's an increasing problem. People gets distracted with american internal agenda.

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#54
post #3

"At this moment of heightened public awareness, forcing big public pension funds to commit to putting more of their dollars in funds controlled by minorities could have a major impact. These public institutions, unlike their corporate kin, represent a wide and diverse swath of the country, making investment decisions for public servants like teachers, firefighters and municipal workers." While I think this is a pheno…

I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. It describes common practice for US Federal government business in response to the creation of minority business preferences in contracting. Many companies that are not actually minority-owned essentially rent minority-owned shell companies to clear the qualification hurdle for contract preferences, it is de rigueur unless you have unique capabilities that make it likely you'…

It's probably getting downvoted because people who support the preferences view it as someone trying to keep minorities down. I've seen a lot of people game the system, where they'll have specialized knowledge from the government of military, then start a small contracting company and make their wife the CEO so they can win contracts. I've also known people doing government contracting where the prime won because it's an Alaskan Native company, but they subcontract out all the work, and there's only 1-2 natives actually doing work on the contract.

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#55

For those who don't read the article, here's a quote: "Unless you're only selling to white people, if I was at a firm I would want every point of view represented in the investment process" Is this how people view the world these days? Where skin color is important? I feel like I'm totally lost and saddened by this new race-focused world. Can someone please tell me when I can go back to caring about the quality of ai…

How fortunate you are to merely be "exhausted" emotionally. This isn't really a conversation about skin color its a conversation on how we treat each other and we happen to treat people with certain skin colors in ways that make their lives worse and in some cases more dangerous. Talking about it like its about skin is foolish. It's about behavior.

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#56
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diversity of viewpoints is essential for long term prosperity - it allows for a marketplace of ideas and limits blind spots. The first time this really clicked for me was when I dived deeply into the history of the First World War. If I could restate the root cause, it was complete failure by both the British and especially the Germans to envision a point of view different from their own. They each operated like they…

Do you have any evidence/studies to back up this point of view? Sowell has done quite a bit of research which backs up his conclusions. He has a couple of books on the subject you might be interested in.

I don’t have any studies I could point to, but there is the fact that children of immigrants are over represented as founders. I unscientifically attribute that to growing up with two points of view on everything - the old country and the new. It gives you ideas.

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#57
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>What person from an underrepresented group wants to be chosen just because of their group status? Isn't that highly patronizing for someone who likely had worked hard to get to where they got? Do you want to be "pretty great for a xxxxx person!" or just "one of the best". For comparison, consider the case of people who get their jobs via nepotism. The people who are hired for nepotism are seldom concerned with the…

I think your nepotism example and "preponderance of talent and success is hard to quantify precisely" are nice arguments and give me something to think about, thanks. But when you say "I'm not sure if meritocracy makes sense"... you are really saying that instead of trying for meritocracy, they should just use skin color? How do you feel about the idea of blind auditions for orchestras (auditions where the candidate…

>But when you say "I'm not sure if meritocracy makes sense"... you are really saying that instead of trying for meritocracy, they should just use skin color?

I'm not GP but that doesn't seem like a charitable rendering of their argument. Its the stupidest possible rendering of their statement.

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#58
post #17

I still don't see the value in diversity for diversities sake. Having read much from Thomas Sowell on the matter I think most of these terms will lead to much worse outcomes than what we have present day.

Diversity of viewpoints is essential for long term prosperity - it allows for a marketplace of ideas and limits blind spots. The first time this really clicked for me was when I dived deeply into the history of the First World War. If I could restate the root cause, it was complete failure by both the British and especially the Germans to envision a point of view different from their own. They each operated like they…

> Diversity of viewpoints is essential for long term prosperity

Maybe the solution here is to develop a standardized test that measures diversity of viewpoint in a way that is blind to genetics.

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#59
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by being as racist as it's possible to be. Even if someone were to hire someone else solely because of the color of their skin, this would be nowhere near as racist as it’s possible to be. Hint: people are being killed because of the color of their skin right now. People in the US used to buy people in large numbers because of the color of their skin.

I know this will be hard to accept, but no matter how many people tell me that minorities are being killed because of the color of their skin, I've noticed that not a single one of these people ever include any facts or data to back up that claim. Sure, black people are killed by police. So are white people. So are people of every race. All the actual data I've seen is that black people are killed less frequently, in…

Surprisingly little data in this post complaining about not seeing data.

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#60
post #40

What person from an underrepresented group wants to be chosen just because of their group status? Isn't that highly patronizing for someone who likely had worked hard to get to where they got? Do you want to be "pretty great for a xxxxx person!" or just "one of the best". Is this a lesson that people want their kids to learn? Doesn't this also lead discrimination actually being a rational (and maybe ethical) thing to…

If the people in underrepresented groups are anything like the females I knew in the military, most of them will hate that they were treated differently. The females had lower physical fitness standards, but competed for the same promotion slots as males. Most females I knew resented the fact that they were put in a position where their male subordinates would always question whether they were actually qualified to b…

Remind me why higher physical fitness is important to leading a battalion.

Physical fitness is important for the grunts.

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