Non-discrimination laws matter least in helping women advance
On January 12th, the International Labour Organization – a specialized agency of the United Nations – published its global report “Gaining Momentum: Women in Business and Management.” The report -
looks at the most recent statistics and information at a global level, and provides a unique insight into the experiences, realities and views of companies in developing countries.
It aims to create greater understanding of the barriers to women’s advancement in business and management. It points to possible ways of tackling the issue, highlighting good practices among private sector businesses and organizations that represent them.
Unlike a lot of reports that focus on the underrepresentation of women in the workforce, the ILO’s puts a refreshing emphasis on facts and figures, rather than resting on the assumption that all inequality comes down to inherent sexism on the part of male employers.
The data it compiles provides a huge range of insight into the state of female involvement in different areas of public life - exploring why less than 5 percent of CEOs are women while also explaining how a third of the world's enterprises have come to be run by women.
But the most telling table in the report looks at "company respondents to the ILO company survey conducted across developing regions" who "ranked what they considered the most significant barriers in order of priority" to women's leadership and promotion:
It will be surprising (dare I say frustrating) for many people to learn that the top two ranked barriers to women's leadership had everything to do with traditional views of women in society and the their role in the family unit, and nothing to do with employer discrimination (inherent gender bias ranks 12th on the list!).
It often seems in western society that radical gender equality advocates want the reason for gender inequalities - especially in the workforce - to be sexism. To be honest, I'm somewhat sympathetic to what, I assume, is their reasoning. If inequality in the workforce is mainly driven by something as awful as sexism, then we can shout about it, legislate against it, demand board quotas, demand companies publicise payroll figures according to gender. Combined, we can legislate and ban the discrimination away.
But this just isn't the case: all regions in the ILO's survey, "identified inadequate labour and non-discrimination laws as the least significant barrier" to women leadership and promotion. (Bolded is my emphasis.)
In places like the UK, gender inequality has very little to do with male bias - after all, women in full-time work aged between 22 - 39 are now, on average, are earning 1.1 percent more than their male counterparts. The reality is that women's life choices are determining how far they succeed in their career, including the kind of degree they pursue, when and how they go about having kids, and how long they spend out of the work force.
We shouldn't harp or judge women for the choices they decide to make - different people have different priorities, and that's okay - but if we want to attack the institutionalised sexism that still exists in our culture today, it would be far more productive to target the teaching, training, and conditioning of women to become 'mothers and wives' than to go after the employers who, based on all recent evidence, seem to be giving women an equal and fair shot at having a career.
That's a big ask, I know. Solving sexism by reforming ourselves and our traditions will be a big change from legislating things.
The dark threat of the Snooper's Charter
Just hours after marching alongside world leaders in Paris in the name of liberté, David Cameron backed the revival of the Snooper’s Charter in terms little short of terrifying. Free speech, it now seems, is only acceptable only when it can be accessed and reviewed by the state. Speaking to ITV, Cameron said:
…ever since we faced these terrorist threats it has always been possible, in extremis, with the signature of a warrant from the home secretary, to intercept your communications, my communications, or anyone else, if there is a threat of terrorism. That is applied whether you are sending a letter, whether you are making a phone call, whether you are using a mobile phone, or whether you are using the internet. I think we cannot allow modern forms of communication to be exempt from the ability, in extremis, with a warrant signed by the home secretary, to be exempt from being listened to.
The Independent claims that restricting communication to interceptable channels would not just hit typically ‘nefarious’ spaces like the dark web, but any service that encrypts user’s data in a way which shields it from security services. This could include billion-dollar chat service WhatsApp, along with others like Snapchat and Apple's iMessage. Such companies would have to acquiesce to government requests for data and re-writing their software if required, or risk outlaw and the persecution of their users.
This would not be the first time that a government surveillance programme closed down commercial ventures. In 2013 Edward Snowden’s email provider of choice Lavabit chose to close its doors rather than be forced to install surveillance equipment on their network and hand over private encryption keys to the US Government. Silent Circle suspended their email service shortly after.
It’s difficult to predict the impact to the UK’s digital economy should Cameron press on in this vein. Compromising on privacy is something which WhatsApp in particular is unlikely to do. In November, it switched on end-to-end encryption for Android devices, with plans to extend this all 600m+ of its users. Growing up in communist Ukraine, for co-founder Jan Koum user’s privacy is not just a feature, but a defining characteristic of the product:
I grew up in a society where everything you did was eavesdropped on, recorded, snitched on….Nobody should have the right to eavesdrop, or you become a totalitarian state -- the kind of state I escaped as a kid to come to this country where you have democracy and freedom of speech. Our goal is to protect it.
Cameron’s newly- resurrected charter not only challenges a service used by hundreds of millions across the globe, but stands as a barrier to the very value of free expression western politicians profess to uphold. It is more than just a tool to listen in on ‘the bad guys’. And it doesn’t just affect the criminals and extremists, for it strikes right at the heart of our digital infrastructure and dictates exactly what channels of (monitored) communication British citizens are permitted to use to exercise our apparently hallowed right to free speech.
However, whilst the world’s typical, centralized communication industries are at risk from the government’s surveillance fetish, new forms of decentralized, distributed software and communication channels – which have no centralized store of user information or cryptographic keys to raid– would be near impossible to bring to heel.
As ASI Fellow and COO of Eris Industries Preston Byrne explains:
David Cameron has said he wants to 'modernise' the law. I think he fails to understand just how out of date his worldview is. The only way you can shut down encrypted distributed networks today is to either arrest every person running a node and ensure that the data store containing a copy of that database is destroyed, or shut down the internet. Curtailing free association and private communications in the manner proposed is a battle the government is going to lose.
Banning end-to-end encryption will do nothing to prevent the technology from falling into the wrong hands - as any encryption technology worth a damn is open-source, and freely available to all - but will do a great deal to criminalise entirely reasonable measures taken by ordinary people to protect what private lives they have left.
To hang the case for a significantly reduced private sphere off the back of last week’s attacks is opportunistic, unpleasant, and distasteful. The tragedy in France has far more to do with issues of free speech, toleration and extremism than national security. The perpetrators of the French attacks were already known to intelligence officials, as was also the case in the 7/7 bombings and Lee Rigby’s murder. Hardly any acts of terrorism are by relative unknowns, who might have been identified were surveillance laws just that bit wider-ranging. Granting further powers and bigger budgets to security forces might show how ‘serious’ we are that ‘something must be done’, but arguably let agencies off the hook in terms of actually following up on already acquired intelligence.
No doubt Cameron has underestimated the scale, if not the significance, of what he proclaimed yesterday, and his attempt to create a surveillance-friendly communications ecosystem will be futile. But his words represent a threat in many ways much larger and darker than the terror he pledges to protect us from.
It takes time to grow a General you know
The latest wafflery on the subject of gender equality is over the in German armed forces.
The Germany army must introduce quotas to boost the number of female officers, the country’s Defence minister said.Ursula von der Leyen said she was embarrassed that the army currently only has one female general.
“She is the only one in the history of the Bundeswehr. This is a lousy proportion. So we have to consider quotas with clear timelines,” she said, to Spiegel magazine.
This is simply nonsense. Other than the medical service and army bands women have only been able to serve in the German military since 2001. So, anyone who did join up as an officer would, possibly, be something around and about a Major by now. For it takes time to grow a General.
Yes, of course, this is just politics, a female politician playing to the gallery. But there's an important point behind it.
There's no doubt that women were discriminated against in the past in certain ways. The same is true of, over different timescales, various religions and ethnicities. But it is not possible to look at society and shout that because we do not have members of those formerly discriminated against groups at the top of society, or an organisation, therefore we must still be discriminating against them. Getting to the top, whether of society or an organisation, is something that takes a lifetime. The question is whether the lower levels of society are discriminating against members of such a group: if not then we've done the reforms that are necessary and will simply have to wait to see careers mature.
For example, the gender pay gap in the UK is in favour of women in the very early years of working life, doesn't really exist until the average age of first childbirth. That is radically different from how the situation was when women now in their 50s first entered the workforce. We can't thus measure the gender pay gap of those women in their 50s as a method of working out whether reform is necessary to produce equality for young women. It is the same with the German army's lack of female generals. Given that women have only been able to be officers for 14 years what does anyone expect? A 34 year old General or something?
Another way to put this is that evidence of discrimination against one generation of people is not, and should not be used as, evidence that there is still discrimination against the next.
Freedom of speech in a free society
Some people might be deeply shocked by the words, images, arguments and ideas that are sometimes put forward in a free society. But in a free society, we have no right to prevent free speech and block other people’s opinions, even if we all disagree with what is said or find it offensive or immoral. There is certainly a case for curbing language that incites people to violence against others, or that recklessly endangers life and limb – like shouting ‘Fire!’ in a theatre. And there is a case that children need special protection too, which is why we have age classifications on movies and games.
That is very different from preventing particular words, images, arguments and ideas from being aired at all. There can be no such censorship in society of free individuals – for then they would not be free.
There is a practical case for free speech too. People must understand the options available to them if they are to choose rationally and try new ideas – ideas that might well improve everyone’s future. Censorship closes off those choices and thereby denies us progress.
Nor can we trust the censors. Truth and authority are different things. Those in power may have their own reasons–such as self-preservation–to forbid certain ideas being broadcast. But even if the censors have the public’s best interests at heart, they are not infallible. They have no monopoly of wisdom, no special knowledge of what is true and what is not – only debate, argument and experience determines that. And censors may suppress the truth simply by mistake: they can never be sure if they are stifling ideas that will, eventually, prove to be correct. Some ideas may be mostly wrong, and yet contain a measure of truth, which argument can eke out, while the truth of other ideas may become obvious only over time.
The way to ensure that we do not stifle true and useful ideas is to allow all ideas to be aired, confident that their merits or shortcomings will be revealed through debate. That means allowing people to argue their case, even on matters that the majority regard as unquestionable. Truth can only be strengthened by such a contest. It was for this reason that, from 1587 until 1983, the Roman Catholic church appointed a ‘devil’s advocate’ to put the case against a person being nominated for sainthood. It is useful to expose our convictions to questioning. If we believe others are mistaken in their views, those views should be taken on and refuted – not silenced.
From Socrates onward, history is littered with examples of people who have been persecuted for their views. Such persecution often cowers people into staying silent, even though their ideas are subsequently vindicated. Fearing the wrath of the Roman Catholic Church, Nicolaus Copernicus did not publish his revolutionary theory that the planets rotated about the sun until just before his death in 1543. His follower Galileo Galilei was tried by the Inquisition and spent his remaining days under house arrest. Subsequent scientific endeavour and progress in Europe moved to the Protestant north.
Ideas that cannot be challenged rest on a very insecure foundation. They become platitudes rather than meaningful truths. Their acceptance is uncritical. And when new ideas eventually do break through, it is likely to be violently and disruptively.
Certainly, it can be unsettling when people say things with which we fundamentally disagree, express ideas we believe are profoundly wrong, do things we regard as deeply shocking, or even scorn our moral and religious beliefs. And in a free society we are at liberty to disagree with them and to say so publicly. But that is not the same as using the law, or violence, to silence them. Our toleration of other people’s ideas shows our commitment to freedom, and our belief that we make more progress, and discover new truths faster, by allowing different ideas to be debated rather than suppressed.
Adapted from Foundations of a Free Society.
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Why we stand up to bullies
Bullies succeed by making their victims fear them. The bully may be stronger than the victim, but he does not constantly use force against them. It is the fear of violence or humiliation that makes victims act in the way the bully wants them to. Once it has been established that the bully can hurt the victim, the threat is enough. Maintaining that threat is relatively cheap for the bully and for a sadist this may seem like a good deal. This might also seem cheaper for the victim, because the costs of direct confrontation may be very high.
When we tell children to stand up to bullies we do not expect that they will turn out to be stronger or more popular than them, though this is what usually happens in fiction. We assume that standing up to a bully will cause the victim to be hurt or humiliated. But it does make it more expensive for the bully to maintain his power over the victim.
Standing up to the bully means that his actions may not have the long-term effects that make them profitable. And it is good to have a general social agreement that bullies are bad, and should be stood up to. It discourages people from trying the tactic in the first place.
Terrorism often operates in the same way. Very few terrorists could ever hope to win in a full-scale war against their victims, so instead they do shocking, frightening things. Yesterday’s attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices was a very significant example of this, because the terrorists’ apparent goals (‘avenging the Prophet’ for blasphemous cartoons) seem ridiculously trivial compared to the lengths they were willing to go to to achieve them.
It is now clear that Western journalists who blaspheme against Islam may be murdered where they work. And most Western journalists don’t really want to blaspheme against Islam anyway. It’s rude, and it’s rude against a group that does not have much power in the West.
What’s more, that kind of wilful rudeness may drive moderate Muslims away from Western liberalism towards Islamic extremism. On the other hand, I’m not sure a person whose respect for free speech ends at a blasphemous cartoon was much of a moderate to begin with.
But if a bully tells you not to do something, sometimes you should do it even if you didn’t really want to do it anyway. Defiance of the bully is very important to rob him of his power over you, and – just as important – to show to others that bullying is not effective.
Simply talking about how unafraid we are of terrorism is an empty, weak reaction. Cartoons that show the power of pencils are worthless. No Jihadi is disturbed by any of this. What disturbs them is to show in our actions that they do not have the bully's power over us. The cost of rudeness is real, but it is insignificant compared to the cost of letting bullying work.
Marijuana legalization in Colorado: One year on
It's been a year since Colorado became the first US state to permit the commercial sale of marijuana for non-medicinal purposes, and statistics which hint at the impact of legalization have just started to emerge. With these come two conflicting reports— one from the pro-legalization Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), and another from the anti-legalization Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM). The two together make for an interesting read. Unsurprisingly, there’s been an increase in the amount of cannabis consumed in Colorado, as well as in Washington, where it has also been legalized.
Both states already had a higher than the US average use of marijuana, but between 2011/12 to 2012/13 the percentage of over-18s who had used marijuana in the past year rose from 16.1% to 18.9% in Colorado, and from 15.3% to 17.6% in Washington, compared to a national increase from 11.6% to 12.2%. Past monthly use of marijuana by 18-25 year olds in 2012/13 was 29.1% in Colorado and 25.6% in Washington, compared with a 18.9% US average.
Of course, an increase in marijuana use isn't in and of itself a bad thing; what matters are the other costs and benefits to society and individuals that legal and increased use creates. Predictably, the two reports paint very different pictures of these.
The DPA point out that Marijuana possession rates in Colorado have fallen 84% since 2010, from over 9,000 arrests a year to under 1,500. However, SAM's report claims that citations for the public display of marijuana have rocketed - from 183 in 2013 to 668 in 2014 in Denver alone.
Both violent crime and property crime fell in Denver in 2014. Violent crime was down by 2.2% in the first 11 months of 2014, compared with a 1.1% decline the year before. Burglaries were down 9.5%, and overall property crime 8.9%. This, the DPA say, is evidence of legalization’s success. However, at the same time, SAM report that drug violations in Denver are up 12%, disorderly conduct up 51%, and public drunkenness up 53%.
SAM also report that the number of citations given for driving under the influence of marijuana in Colorado have risen markedly between 2013 and 2014. However, despite concerns that marijuana legalization would result in an increase in traffic fatalities, the DPA point out that Colorado saw a 3% fall in the number of fatal accidents in 2014, continuing a 12-year downward trend.
SAM’s report contains a handful negative incidents which can be directly attributed to legalization, including a rise in the number of children in ER from the accidental consumption of marijuana edibles, and an increase in people attempting to make hash oil and setting themselves on fire. However, perhaps the most interesting claim of the report is a quote from a Colorado policeman that legalization has ‘done nothing more than enhance the opportunity for the black market’.
A potential reason for continued underground dealing is that, with taxes, legally-purchased weed is up to twice the price of that on the street. However, the market demand for legal weed has far exceeded earlier estimates, including those of the Department of Revenue’s. Unsurprisingly, there’s also been a huge increase in the amount of marijuana which has been stopped from leaving Colorado for other states — a 400% rise between 2008 and 2013, SAM claim. This has resulted in neighbouring Nebraska and Oklahoma suing Colorado for the flow of marijuana across state lines. However, whilst this might present a nice new business for criminal gangs or college students, it seems unlikely that it would increase the black market's size or power compared to pre-legalization.
Of course, it’s also very difficult to know if other reported stats like falling violent crime can actually be linked to marijuana legislation, and even things like a rise in disorderly behaviour arrests could be down to other factors. But there are a few stats we can be certain about, and these come down to cold hard cash.
Retail marijuana sales raised $40.9m in tax for Colorado between January and October 2014, and that’s not including revenue from medical sales, licenses or fees. Of the revenue collected, $2.5m has been directly set aside to fund more health professionals in Colorado public schools, many of whom will focus on mental health support and drug use education programs.
Legalization has been great for entrepreneurship, too. 16,000 people have been licensed to work in Colorado's marijuana industry so far, and unemployment is at a 6-year low. A study of two marijuana dispensaries by the University of Denver’s economics department found that they generated $30m of economic output and 280 jobs between January and July 2014 – and whilst paying ten times the amount of tax of a typical restaurant or store.
Though we can measure things like tax intake, both the DPA and SAM’s reports highlight the need for much more high-quality data, which can help unravel the effects of legalization, and quantify their impact. This is something which will likely to emerge with time, but without reliable facts and evidence campaigners on both sides will cherry-pick stats to confirm their existing views — which is no good for the policymakers elsewhere who are watching this experiment closely. (It's certainly a shame that Theresa May is not one of them....)
Nevertheless, a year on and we can tell a couple of things. Legalization is obviously a learning curve. To avoid serious backlash, marijuana users should stop lighting up where they shouldn’t (at school, in public places, before driving, etc), whilst the green industry should probably do more to provide information on the strength and dosage of new products, and particularly edibles.
However, it’s also clear that legalization is a major boon to the public coffers, takes millions of dollars of business out of the hands of criminals and into legitimate businesses, and is a major win for liberty.
SAM may be concerned about the 100 kinds of marijuana gummy bears out there, but these THC-ripened snacks are also testament to the creativity and entrepreneurship that flourishes when the state gets out of the business of deciding what peaceful activities adults are allowed to partake in, for recreation and for profit.
We can show that conscription is economically inefficient
Quite apart from the fact that conscription is vile in and of itself, it's the creation of slavery to the state, we've good evidence that it's economically irrational as well. This little snippet from Iran illustrates the point:
Iran has been hit so hard that its government, looking for ways to fill a widening hole in its budget, is offering young men the option of buying their way out of an obligatory two years of military service. “We are on the eve of a major crisis,” an Iranian economist, Hossein Raghfar, told the Etemaad newspaper on Sunday. “The government needs money badly.”
The amount people will pay to avoid conscription is higher than the value the government places on having conscripts. Thus the loss to the individual must be higher than the gain to the government. This makes the idea economically irrational: it's a destruction of wealth.
Now of course we're most unlikely to have military conscription in the UK anytime soon,. But it's worth keeping that lesson in mind. And yes, this economic reality does also apply to all of the various plans floating around for compulsory "voluntary" service and all the rest. Enslaving people to the state is simply wrong in the first place. But the value that people put on avoiding it is greater than the value the government places upon their doing it. Therefore this is a destruction of wealth: really not what we want a government to be doing, is it?
Ease up on Assisted Reproductive Technologies to close the gender wage gap
Of course, there is debate over whether the gender wage-gap exists or not. I, for one, believe it does exist but that the answer does not lie in legislating protection for maternal (or even paternal) leave. Charlotte Bowyer wrote about how firms such as Apple and Facebook have begun to offer female employees the opportunity to freeze their eggs (so that they can delay pregnancy until later in their career). One reason for the gender wage-gap is that women in modern society most often face the dilemma of having children earlier and potentially jeopardising career progress or having children much later and hopefully advancing their career. Each option has its pros and cons but neither is particularly appealing for many women. It’s a choice between probable fertility, children and significantly lower pay or probable infertility, childlessness and career success. Unsurprisingly, a sizeable proportion of women opt for the former and this means that the gender wage-gap persists (of course, econometricians can make it disappear using a bunch of control variables and certain methodologies).
Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) helps alleviate the situation for many women. Sure, they don’t provide what many might currentlyconsider a ‘natural’ conception, pregnancy or birth (as contemporary social perceptions depict them) but it does mean that there is an alternative to women being constrained one way or another.
Some Assisted Reproductive Technologies are completely unregulated, some are loosely regulated and some are definitely quite heavily regulated. For example, in certain jurisdictions where forms of ART is available, laws stipulate that only heterosexual couples (as opposed to say, a homosexual couple or a single person) can use these technologies. Such a restriction means that marriage is a pre-requisite for ART; again, however, this constrains her. We need to completely abolish restrictions like these (which exhibit a clear, conservative bias) in order for ART to be an effective means by which the biological causes of gender wage-gap persistence are overcome.
More importantly, we should ensure that the current freedom of access to ART is defended against misinformed, prejudiced zealots. This ensures not only that people have more freedom to choose but also partially addresses the social inequity and labour market outcome inequity arising from biological gender-inequality via the technological innovation that a relatively free market makes possible.
Free movement and discrimination: the case of football
The more you open markets up, the less discrimination you get on grounds of 'taste' (racism). The stuff left over is usually 'statistical' (i.e. where certain groups are different in their average levels of job-relevant criteria). There was already a great paper showing this for the Fantasy Premier League (which I play avidly), but now there's also one for the real Premiership! Pierre Deschamps and José de Sousa look at the impact of the 1995 Bosman Ruling on the gap between black and white footballer wages in the English league. They find that when only 20 clubs competed for their skills, black players were underpaid relative to white ones, indicating that owners were able to indulge their preference against non-whites (or indulge their fans' preferences).
But once the whole of Europe were effectively on an equal footing, blacks became highly mobile and garnered equal pay for their efforts:
This paper assesses the impact of labor mobility on racial discrimination. We present an equilibrium search model that reveals an inverted U-shaped relationship between labor mobility and race-based wage differentials. We explore this relationship empirically with an exogenous mobility shock on the European soccer labor market. The Bosman ruling by the European Court of Justice in 1995 lifted restrictions on soccer player mobility.
Using a panel of all clubs in the English first division from 1981 to 2008, we compare the pre- and post-Bosman ruling market to identify the causal effect of intensified mobility on race-based wage differentials. Consistent with a taste-based explanation, we find evidence that increasing labor market mobility decreases racial discrimination.
The figure below shows how the 'turnover' (i.e. churn between clubs) of black English players jumped when European markets opened up. Market freedoms; exit; a sort of 'voting with their feet', outperformed voice in bringing equality. And we know from ASI research that this did not harm the English national team.
This is in line with a lot of what we have been saying recently—markets are a good way to bring about justice!
The marijuana multiplier effect
Public sentiment is currently quite a way away from being conducive to drug-legalisation in its entirety. However, opinion concerning marijuana laws around the world is shifting and, since it is one of the most popular substances in the UK, legalisation (or at least decriminalisation) is certainly feasible. It’s worth examining some of the economic consequences of the oft-ignored behavioural implications of marijuana usage. So, besides the fact that many marijuana producers would open up, jobs would be created, marijuana would be safer, policing costs would decrease and there would be less crime, there are common behavioural symptoms of marijuana usage such as that which is colloquially referred to as ‘the munchies’, the medicinal, therapeutic effects and also the potential for enhancement of creativity.
The ‘munchies’ is characterised by increased hunger, thirst and a heightened sensitivity to smells and taste. This peculiar behavioural phenomenon often leads users to indulge in both a greater quantity and variety of goods that they normally would not. In fact, if marijuana usage was legalised then the increase in its usage would also be accompanied by an increase in the consumption of goods and services that are associated with the behavioural changes (or, at the very least, changes in patterns of consumption would occur).
There is also potential for an increase in productivity from the increased happiness or well being that could accompany marijuana usage since many would be able to fully enjoy the medical benefits (health being an obvious, important component of well being) and some would simply gain from recreational use. Incidentally, it’s noteworthy that Bhutan, the only country in the world that employs the Gross National Happiness measure, also has marijuana growing freely on the streets. Productivity increases associated with well being amelioration (amongst other things) would improve the morale of the workforce and lead to a supply-side-based multiplier effect that increased output and, therefore, incomes across the economy (since happiness is contagious, after all).
Finally, the link between marijuana and creativity is controversial and debated but it is possible that there is something in the postulate that it enhances creativity. If this is true, then the legalisation of marijuana would help encourage divergent thinking and, thereby, help fuel innovation across various industries.