Let's Sort Some Things Out

Netflix’s /The Social Dilemma, an exposé on social media, is informative and important. [It does not, however, absolve Netflix of its public disservice entitled “Cuties” (which I have not watched).] It describes the magnitude of a serious dilemma: Social media bestows unfathomable benefits on humanity/society, but humans are gravely harmed by it, and societies cannot survive social media its current incarnation.

About a year ago, I wrote a six-part blog series on “Free Speech and Big Tech.” The third installment discussed “Free Speech and Big Tech – The Conundrum.” The gist was that we couldn’t live with or without social media. /The Social Dilemma’s riff on the subject adds observations, explanations, and insights by mostly former executives and key developers of the big social media platforms, many of whom were very impressive.

The flick convincingly explained just how addictive and effective social media has become at manipulating users. With fascinating details, they also explain how and why social platforms (1) became so dominant and influential, (2) are addictive, and (3) are harmful, especially for kids under 16.

While quite a bit of time was devoted to pointing out that users are not Big Tech’s customers, the information users give to Big Tech is the product. (The adage, “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” comes to mind.) While true, dwelling on this relatively insignificant point added little to the thesis. Perhaps it was necessary to stir emotions.

The cast absolved the social media company founders of intentions to build a human-consuming monster, i.e., none believed that Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, etc. intended or expected the problems their platforms have created. (I do not doubt that.)

However well-intended the founders were, they built a human-consuming, tyrannical monster that is growing more powerful by the nanosecond. If anyone doubts that action is required to mitigate the harm and retain the benefits of social media, that there is no doubt should be evident to everyone, except possibly those who have not learned history’s lessons about tyranny.

The movie’s riff on Big Tech’s “fact-checking” being a farse (Big Tech cannot know or find out what is and is true) is a public service. However, it would have been better had they beefed this segment up a bit. For example, they could have added that the expertise of social media companies’ experts concerns social media platform development and operation. Those people cannot also be the top experts in art, science, law, medicine, philosophy, history, current events… So, they cannot have the expertise to determine the validity of a fact they want “fact-checked.” Facts needing a check typically concern matters about which there is controversy. That the platform needs to outsource the fact-checking means the platform lacks the expertise to declare a winner in debates between qualified scientists, economists, political philosophers, etc.

But the situation is worse than that. Everyone is biased, especially people involved in “fact-checking.” The impact of bias starts with the decision to check a fact. To check or not to check depends on whether the reviewing employee suspects a claim to be sufficiently false and harmful to warrant an intervention. Unavoidably, the decision to “fact-check” depends on the employee’s values, political persuasions, the interests of the company, and the employee’s self-interest. A highly biased or politically motivated employee is less likely to suspect a false claim that confirms her biases and more likely to doubt a valid claim contrary to her prejudices. Bias also affects which biased “fact-checker” will “fact-check.” That process has no chance of consistently finding the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. See also, “The Truth Is Hard For The New York Times.”

Back to the review: Social media’s power to manipulate the user’s actions and beliefs is tremendous, and As noted above, A.I. is increasing that power every nanosecond. A social media platform’s profit is a function of how much it can cause users to believe and do what the platform’s customers (advertisers and tyrants) want them to believe or do. The more time a user spends on a social media platform, the more power the platform has to manipulate the user. So, Big Tech developers make their platforms as addictive as possible. With the help of A.I., they have gotten very good at it (as their trillions in revenue attest). The data presented about the manipulative power of platforms and the resulting negative consequences on humans, especially those under 16, are shocking.

I take exception to a few of the pictures’ points, but only one was egregious enough to discuss. Sadly, the egregious point was its conclusion.

The conclusion argued that the solution to the dilemma (heaving the bathwater without the baby might be impossible) is to cede the power to regulate social media to the government. All that preceded the conclusion lays bare the danger of the proposed solution.

Before the conclusion, the flick advanced the sound proposition that social media is too powerful. Although not in the movie, a good case can be made that the handful of executives at the top of the top social media companies have greater power to influence politicians and bureaucrats than the country’s many million voters.

In general, those with power have the means to arrogate more power. The Constitution mitigated those means with a system of limited powers and “checks and balances.” While the Constitution was more respected and defended than it has been for the last 120 years, it was reasonably able to impede the aggregation of power by checking the power of the powerful.  Sadly, politicians who whittle on the Constitution’s checks and balances have been repeatedly elected and reelected. The resulting undermining of the Constitution is a large contributor to the mess we are in today.

The current arrangement between politicians/the Deep State and Big Tech (You don’t tread on me, and I’ll not tread on you) enables each side to check the other to some degree. Unfortunately, they are checking each other to advance their interests at the expense of the public. While the corrupt and destructive arrangement is deplorable, having some checks it better than having no checks. Therein lies the flaw of the film’s conclusory policy prescription.

If the power to regulate Big Tech were ceded to politicians, politicians could dictate to Big Tech what it must be banned and what the public will to see. As is being demonstrated in China, a government with that much power will use its political and technological monopolies for its benefit, with little regard for human rights or the public interest. To its credit, Google shut down its cites in China to protest China’s tyrannical censorship of its people,^[i] but that was after it had greatly expanded China’s ability to manipulate, control, and oppress its citizens. It has used that power to harass and influence its neighbors as well. Not all Big Tech companies similarly put ethics ahead of profits. For example, “Microsoft-owned properties such as Xbox, Bing, Outlook, and LinkedIn have generally been allowed to operate in China…”^[ii]

For more on how bad ceding that much power to the government would be, see “Free Speech and Big Tech – The Problem,” “Free Speech and Big Tech – The Most Negative Consequence,” “Free Speech and Big Tech – How To Make Things Worse,” and “Free Speech and Big Tech – The Legislative Betrayal.”

Allowing the government to regulate Big Tech would (1) remove checks on U.S. politicians, and (2) grant politicians far more power than was imaginable by the founders.  Checks on government power need to be re-established and fortified. Some checks on Big Tech are needed as well. Combining the powers of both in the hands of politicians would be a disaster. Regulation is not the only way to check power. For example, the content of news outlets is barely regulated. However, it is mightily checked by court-enforced violations of other people’s rights. Such is not the case with Big Tech.

As discussed in more detail in Free Speech and Big Tech – What To Do, 47 U.S. Code § 230 granted to “interactive computer services,” e.g., social media platforms, an exemption from being sued liable, slander, and other torts for which newspapers, magazines, and other publishers are liable.^[iii]  The exemption was predicated on the following finding:

(3) The Internet and other interactive computer services offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.

The rationale for exemption was that the forums (“platforms”) should not be treated as publishers because the platforms would be places where users posted “truly diverse” political discourse.

Now that interactive computer services are curating content and stifling true diversity and selectively “fact-checking.” They are selectively taking down any opinions adverse to platform’s preferred memes. Consequently, the justification for the exemption has no longer exists.

I described what should be done about Big Tech’s abuse of power in Free Speech and Big Tech – What To Do. In light of the cases made by /The Social Dilemma, I am now more open to the possibility that imposing some limited and carefully crafted limitations on what interactive computer services can do with personal data collected from users could do more good than harm.

The Social Dilemma

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[i] Google Shuts China Site in Dispute Over Censorship

[ii] A short history of Microsoft in China

[iii] Nick Sandmann’s lawyer targets 5 media giants in new round of lawsuits, Nicholas Sandmann announces settlement with Washington Post in defamation lawsuit, and CNN settlement with Covington student Nick Sandmann a win for the ‘little guy,’ expert says

In Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V of this series, we sorted out many of the grievances Blacks can legitimately lodge against US governments and Democrats for having created many of the injustices underlying their grievances. A cruel and confounding injustice experienced by the vast majority of Blacks that is not attributable to governments or Democrat policies is negative “stereotyping” (a.k.a., “racial profiling”). How it can be cruel and unjust is obvious. Why the problem is so confounding is less obvious. Alleviating a problem requires a correct understanding of the problem. A misunderstanding of negative stereotyping is why so many attempts to address it have failed. Let’s sort the confounding nature of negative stereotyping.

First and foremost, any stereotyping to advance or implement the notion that “race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race” [Merriam-Webster’s definition of “Racism”] is contemptible. The way to address it is to stamp it out. While there are a few, mostly powerless miscreants who stereotype for racist reasons, virtually all laws of that sort have repealed or declared unconstitutional long ago. The focus of this post is on stereotyping that creates negative results despite the good intentions of the stereotyper.

According to Dictionary.com, a stereotype is “a simplified and standardized conception or image invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group.” In and of itself, accurate stereotypes are benign and possibly useful. For example, believing mountain climbers are more likely to be killed from their sport than runners could be fair and useful to life insurance companies — despite the possibility of exceptions. Some people claim that Blacks are better at music than any other race.^[i] Whether or not that stereotype is valid, unless the claimant is suggesting that because of their musical superiority, Blacks are, in general, superior humans or that they deserve rights or privileges not afforded to other races, the claim is not racist.

Not all negative stereotypes about Blacks are racist either. As discussed in Part IV, affirmative action creates the negative presumption (stereotype) that Black college graduates were likely not to have been held to as high a standard as non-Blacks. At a minimum, because holding Blacks to lower standards (which in my opinion is bigotry^[ii]) is a feature of affirmative action, the presumption is rational. The idea is not racist because it concerns how Blacks have been treated, not their character, or the rights that should be denied to Blacks.  

BLM’s response to George Floyd’s invidious death has brought an intense focus on a particular and particularly troubling Black stereotype. It is as heartbreaking as it is valid. That stereotype is that Blacks are more likely to be violent than non-Blacks. [Arguments are also advanced that Blacks are justified in being more violent.^[iii] I am not disputing that claim here.] I am pointing out that the stereotype is based on reality, and attempting to sort out the consequences and cures for that reality.

Jesse Jackson once said, “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps… then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” Jackson’s reaction to that situation is common among people of all skin hues. Claiming that Jackson, a Black, is racist because he is relieved when he turns and sees a White would be absurd. The same would be true concernin an Asian or a person of any other race had the same reaction.

So, why the reaction? Human nature and crime statistics shed light on why Jackson stereotypes Blacks and Whites concerning dangerousness.

Humans must continuously distinguish between potentially harmful and harmless things. Stereotyping is an evolved aspect of humans’ innate survival mechanisms that enables them to make rapid decisions in the presence of potential danger and with little information. Humans who erred too much on the side of dangerousness did not make the evolutionary cut. Curing people of their irrational fears is often possible. “Curing” people of their rational fears is nearly impossible and is an oxymoron. Consequently, policies based on the idea that humans can or will turn off rational stereotyping are doomed to fail and typically make things worse.

Sadly, Jesse Jackson’s stereotype is rational. When he saw the White, he rationally determined that he was in less danger than he had feared.

Blacks ages 10 – 43 die of homicides at 13 times the rates of whites, and Blacks commit almost all of those homicides.^[iv] In the 75 largest counties, Blacks commit roughly 60% of all murder and robberies, but Blacks comprise only 15% of that population.^[v] The FBI reports that in 2016 Blacks, who are 13% of the US population, constituted 37.5%^[vi] of arrests for US violent crimes and 31.4% of “other assaults,” while Whites (which includes most Hispanics), who are 73.3% of the population, constituted 59%^[vii] of arrests for violent crimes and 66.2% of other assaults. Using violent crime arrests as a proxy for crimes,^[1] these numbers reveal that, although Jackson may have been relieved, he was at some risk of becoming the victim of a violent crime when he turned around and saw a White. However, had he turned around and seen a Black person, the risk would have been over 3.5 times greater.

3.5 times a minimal risk is a small risk. However, as we have seen with the tiny risk of harm that COVID-19 presented to most people, when the stakes are high (e.g., death or severe injury), tiny increases in minimal risks can make huge differences — for good reasons.^[viii]

These realities have severely adversely and unfairly^[ix] affected Blacks. In 2016, Blacks were arrested for violent crimes 153,341 times, and some of them were arrested more than once, i.e., the number of violent Black criminals is fewer than their number of arrests. That means that less than 0.38% of the country’s Blacks population were arrested for violent crimes, i.e., all but a tiny fraction of Blacks are not violent criminals. Yet, the “more violent” stereotype unavoidably applies to the average Black because, on average, Blacks are more violent. Why is it unavoidable? For the same reason that even though fruits are safe on average, some fruits will kill you.^[x] Humans who are wise enough not to gobble a whole fruit on their first encounter with an unfamiliar fruit tree are the ones who survived the evolutionary cut.

Note that 153,341 violent crimes are somewhat comparable to the country’s COVID-19 deaths in 2020. This is another example of how the fallout, including massive fear from small risks, can be monumental. Huge responses to personally catastrophic risks is a part of human nature that is here to stay.

Consequently, after the (1) warranted wailing and gnashing of teeth, (2) needed reforms to police forces, and (3) the current civil unrest based on to false or irrelevant narratives have fizzled out (or the revolution is accomplished), the rational stereotypes described above and their attendant problems will persist until the prevalence of Black violent crimes is roughly comparable to that of non-Blacks.

Ridding police forces of racists cops would only make a dent in the problem. Ridding police forces of cops with human nature is impossible.

The harms these stereotypes inflict on Blacks are many. Perhaps the most pernicious and tragic consequence of the stereotyping is the most topical. It is that when stopped by police, many Blacks presume that they would not have been stopped had they not been Black. Indeed, cops pull over Blacks disproportionately more than Whites. While Blacks’ disproportionate propensity to violate traffics laws accounts for some of the disparity,^[xi] much of it is due to the stereotype that Blacks are more likely to be engaged in serious criminal conduct (stereotyping). ^[xii] As if that wasn’t problematic enough, because such stereotyping is so unfair to the vast majority of Blacks (exacerbated by the despicable practice of declaring the cause of the disparity to be racism — which is very rarely applicable), the stereotyping plus the false belief that racism is the cause for the police encounter induces indignation in detained Blacks. All too often, that indignation turns into anger, then disobedience of police orders, chaos, and then tragedy.

Many will claim that the above line of thinking is racist. It is not. Jessie Jackson’s rational stereotypes are not racist. His relief at seeing White people when he turns around was not because he believed that Blacks are inferior to others or that Blacks deserved fewer rights. Quite the contrary, over his long life in the public eye, Jackson has argued Blacks are capable of success, and they deserve more rights than those to which others are entitled.^[xiii] The fact that those stereotypes are harmful to Blacks is horrible, but the stereotyping is a result of racism.

While Jackson’s stereotypes are natural, rational, and not racist, the existence of those stereotypes is terribly and heartbreakingly unfair and harmful to Blacks, especially the 99+% of Blacks who are law-abiding. That 99+% of Blacks have to live with the negative consequences of a tiny fraction of Blacks being disproportionately dangerous is astoundingly sad and in great need of redress.

To address this astoundingly sad problem, the public must not continue to be confounded by the multiple misdiagnoses of the nature of the problem. Hopefully, this post will help us turn away from the false characterization of the problem — there enabling us to eschew policies that have no chance of working to ones that might have a chance.

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[1] Take this analysis based on arrests with several grains of salt. Because no racial demographics are available concerning the likelihood that an arrest will result from a crime, a ratio based on arrests could be far from the mark. Moreover, because no universally accepted metric exists to determine the multiple with any precision, a precise multiple is unknowable and would vary significantly from place to place. The following analysis is offered to show that the multiple is much higher than 1.0, and the stereotype is rational. The fact that the stereotype exists among all races also lends credence to its validity.

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[i] Coleman Hughes Reacts To African-American Stereotypes Portrayed In Hollywood | Your Take

[ii] See “Biden’s Bigotry”

[iii] They’ve been saying it [advocating or condoning violence] all along…

[iv] Id. @9:00

[v] Id. @9:45 and Police Go Where the Crime Is

[vi] FBI 2016 Crime in the United States

[vii] Uniform Crime Report – Crime in the United States, 2016

[viii] The Logic of Risk Taking

[ix] Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) on Race Relations – FULL SPEECH (C-SPAN) [While I disagree with Sen. Scott’s assertion that the problem is the justice system (because even the law cannot overturn human nature), he eloquently describes the unfairness of reality human nature creates and why the wounds will not heal until the nature of the problem is understood.]

[x] The most dangerous fruits in the world

[xi] 7 Statistics That Show That ‘Systemic Racism’ Doesn’t Exist In Policing: “black drivers studied in 2001 sped at twice the rate of white drivers (with speeding defined as traveling at 15 mph or more above the posted limit) and traveled at the most reckless levels of speed even more disproportionately.”

[xii] e.g., stealing vehicles, firing guns from cars, and fleeing in cars from crime scenes.

[xiii] Jesse Jackson visits The City defending affirmative action

“Part III and Part IV” of this series reviewed 1) the tremendous progress that blacks in America were making before the War On Poverty (“WOP”) began — despite very high levels of racism and racist laws that intentionally impeded black progress, and 2) how the WOP brought the pace of black progress nearly to a halt and tore asunder family and neighborhood cohesion, which had facilitated the progress that had been achieved before the WOP. The long overdue and extremely positive civil rights laws and court cases to rid the country of Jim Crow laws and other racist barriers to blacks’ progress (clear examples of “structural racism,” “institutional racism,” or “systemic racism”) were insufficient to counteract the harmful effects of the War on Poverty.

Because the WOP laws inured to the disadvantage of blacks over the long run, one might be tempted to claim that it was an example of “structural racism.” That would be a mistake (although President Johnson, who ushered it in, was undisputedly racist). “Racism” (“[A] belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others”) is reviled by the vast majority of Americans. Such revulsion serves multicultural societies well and may be necessary for multicultural societies to thrive or, possibly, survive. Watering down “racist” to mean anything to which people of color happen to object takes the sting out of being called a racist. If being called does not sting, it’s power to cause people of all hues to act civilly toward each other will sapped.

While President Johnson and some congresspeople who voted for the War On Poverty were racist, there is no reason to believe that the voting public that supported the war had animosity toward blacks. Moreover, blacks supported WOP policies.^[i]

Because the WOP inflicted great net harm on blacks,^[ii] it was unfair to blacks. It wasn’t, however, “racism,” structural or otherwise, because most people believed that the WOP would help blacks. Sadly, Democrats still support discriminatory, but not racist, policies that disproportionately harm blacks.

The most debilitating unfair structures imposed on blacks by Democrats are inexcusable and deserve immediate attention. The following are two of the more critical examples:

EDUCATION. To thrive in a modern industrialized society without a good education, both intellectual and moral, is exceedingly difficult, if for the vast majority of people. Yet Democrat ideas about education have failed the vast majority of poor blacks.

UNIONS/DEMOCRAT COMPACT

The crony compacts between Democrat politicians and teachers’ labor unions^[iii] crush effective education in virtually all inner-city schools, which are mostly populated by non-whites. Because teacher’s unions’ effects are not limited to Democrat-run cities, the Union/Democrat Compact prevents black children from escaping the clutches of almost all big-city public schools. Those schools fail to teach all but a small percentage of black students.[iv] Not only do they fail to teach the skills to enable most black students to compete for and keep jobs, but they also fail by teaching black students that they should not have to work to have a good life because they are owed a good life because of their grievances. As valid or invalid as those beliefs are, holding those beliefs induces most of those students to live unthriving lives of dependency and to vote for the politicians who are politically advantaged by the grievances of those students and the dependence and poverty those grievances cause. Consequentially, the last thing those politicians can politically afford to support are policies that would enable those black students to thrive. The result is that as few students will be able to escape generational poverty and the perpetual exploitation by Democrats and labor unions.

An example of the corruption: “School expenditures in high-poverty districts are typically well above the national average,”^[v] but “In the last 20 years, the number of K-12 administrators has increased 2.3 times faster than the number of students in school…”^[vi] Significant reasons for spending money on expanding administrative staff instead of teacher pay increases or student education is that adding administrators increases the number of dues-paying union members. Why? 1) Some of those dues will find their way into campaign coffers our outright gifts; 2) More union members increase the size of armies of people willing to pound the pavement when Democrats run for office; and 3) educated students are more likely to be prosperous and no longer dependent on Democrats, all of which would be devastating to the Unions/Democrat Compact.

Neither those politicians nor people who vote for them are necessarily racist. Indeed, many of them wish that they did not have to exploit black students to keep their office. It’s not racism; it’s corruption.

THE FOUCAULT FALLACY

In his book, “Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison,” Michel Foucault chronicled the atrocious history of government and industry using punishment and discipline to cause people to serve the state and the economy. I thought the history he recounted was fair, although not completely accurate, and agreed that, although the brutality of punishment diminished over time and, where practicable morphed into discipline, the modes of discipline and punishment evolved to achieve the same ends as has always been the case. Whether he intended it or not, his highly influential book so discredited both discipline and punishment that ever more people have concluded that neither discipline nor punishment is necessary to civil society. The eternal questions about discipline and punishment are how much and how it is applied is optimal. The only question leftists are willing to countenance is: “How much less and how much milder can discipline and punishment be (unless civility can be maintained with trophies alone).”

As I have discussed HERE, HERE, and HERE, the fallacy that discipline and punishment are dispensable has done untold damage to black students. In “Nike’ Mistake—Supporting a Counterproductive Cause Against Police,” I described how Nike’s support of Colin Kaepernick’s protest against all police (which have been generally supported by Democrats, will cause there to be a higher percentage of bad cops is police forces over time — which will disproportionately hurt blacks.

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[i] “Black Past: WAR ON POVERTY”: When the Office of Economic Opportunity was not funded to Martin Luther King’s satisfaction, he “expressed the sentiments of many civil rights and anti-poverty activists when he argued that the War on Poverty was being ‘shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam,’” (connecting the underfunding was a consequence of spending on the war).

[ii] “What’s Going On? – Part IV

[iii] “Teachers Unions Don’t Really Strike for ‘the Kids’”

[iv] “Stagnant City Schools Are Failing Minorities”

[v] “Teachers Unions Don’t Really Strike for ‘the Kids’”

[vi] “Study: School administrative bloat increased 700 percent since 1950”

Last year, California passed a law[i] that went into effect in January that deemed ride-hailing drivers to be employees (as opposed to independent contractors, as they had been in California and are still in most places). Unable to get a court to strike down the law, Uber and Lyft are suspending operations in CA starting next Friday. The suspension will put 220,000[ii] formerly independent drivers out of work and income at least until November 3 (when a vote will be taken on a ballot proposition to classify ride-hailing drivers as independent contractors. The law requires Uber and Lyft to classify their formerly independent drivers as employees, which triggers payroll taxes and employee benefits. If the proposition fails, those 220,000 drivers and other California ride-hailing drivers (e.g., DoorDash drivers) will permanently lose their ride-hailing source of income. Ride-hailing companies will exit California.

At least until November, Californians will suffer:

• The convenience of no ride-hailing services (DoorDash will be sorely missed by people staying at home during an epidemic),
• More drunk driving,
• Downward pressure on low skilled wages (due to hundreds of thousands more people looking for work), and
• Retail outlets having fewer sales because hundreds of thousands of people will have less money to spend (which will reduce the sales and income taxes those retailers pay),

to name but a few of the negative consequences of the law.

The sweet nothing legislators cooed into the ears of voters to justify the legislation was that it would raise wages and benefits for ride-sharing drivers and taxes for the state, which, they said, would be for the benefit of all, especially the disadvantaged, downtrodden, marginalized, poor, and oppressed people of the state.  (As if Californian Democrats had previously shown a willingness to direct a sufficient percentage of its $50+ billion annual tax revenue in a way that would relieve those people of their hardships and dependency.)

The reality, however, is not as Democrat politicians depicted it. Everyone who understood the effect of the legislation would have known that the law would end the viability of ride-hailing companies operating in the state. An ignored critical reality is that no ride-hailing driver drove involuntarily. Consequently, ride-hailing drivers only drove when they believed the advantages of driving outweighed the disadvantages of driving, i.e., when they thought they were better off by driving. Having a right to higher pay and employee benefits is only helpful to people if such jobs are available. The legislation denied over 220,000 drivers erstwhile opportunities to improve their situation and become less dependent on others (which not only cost them livelihood and dignity, it burdened the people on whom they must now depend).

Because legislators hold hearings to gain expert counsel concerning the consequences of their legislation, the likelihood that the yea-voting politicians were ignorant of the likely adverse effects of their law is vanishingly small. One must either believe that California’s Democrat legislators and governor were too stupid to know that their policy would cause ride-hailing companies to leave the state, or that those Democrats were smart enough to know the consequences of the law and that the law benefits them personally and costs the public. In light of the advantages to the politicians of the legislation, the second possibility is a near certainty.

Taxi company owners routinely buy protection of their businesses by making it worth politicians’ while to protect taxi companies from competition and other disadvantages. Compared to unprotected companies, protected companies can charge higher prices, make more money (even after they make campaign contributions to “helpful” politicians), and pay more taxes. With more campaign contributions, politicians can more easily retain power. With higher taxes, politicians can wield and gain more power by:

• Subsidizing friendly companies and hamstringing their competitors,
• Trickling extra money to the disadvantaged, downtrodden, marginalized, poor, and oppressed people of the state — while making sure to never trickle enough to enable those people to no longer be poor (being independent would eliminate their political usefulness to Democrat politicians).
• Fund organizations that provide things Democrat politicians and their contributors enjoy, e.g., ballet, orchestras, opera, sports stadiums, universities that teach students to love social justice (as opposed to actual justice).

Perhaps saddest of all negative consequences is that by passing economically unsound but politically advantageous legislation, which purports to help people who will become the law’s victims, politicians can gain the adoration of economically illiterate people who irrationally believe laws that purport to do something will actually do that something.

The way out of this corrupt and destructive cycle is for voters to be better educated. Sadly, politicians are making it worth educators’ while not to improve economic literacy.

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[i] “AN UBER AND LYFT SHUTDOWN IN CALIFORNIA LOOKS INEVITABLE — UNLESS VOTERS BAIL THEM OUT”

[ii] “Why Uber and Lyft Are about to Shut Down All Operations in California”

This post adds yet another extreme example to the list of posts in this blog^[i] that discuss well-intended, insufficiently informed people (“Do-Gooders”) advancing policies and ideas that do more harm than good for the people the Do-Gooders want to help. In Part III of this series, we identified the slate of positive trends that Do-Gooders could mess up. This post and the next few sort out how Do-Gooder’s ideas and policies both messed up the positive trends blacks were achieving and caused many of the problems that are fueling what is going on in the country.  Sadly, most of the policy prescriptions of today’s Do-Gooders are merely doubling down on the failed Do-Gooder policies of the past.

This sub-series focuses on the unintended negative consequences inflicted on blacks by Do-Gooders’ ideas and policies. The reason for the focus on blacks is not that those ideas and policies did not negatively affect people of other skin hues (they did). That focus is on black grievances because Black Lives Matters, a leading player in what is going on, is exploiting the failures of Do-Gooders’ ideas and policies.

The seminal Do-Gooders’ legislation that sent the country down the path that has resulted in the current black grievances and civil unrest is known as the “War On Poverty” (“WOP”) (not to be confused with Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which produced net positive results). The WOP opened a pandora’s box of calamities that beset blacks and were so consequential that it deserves a separate post.

While LBJ’s motivation for advancing the WOP^[ii] was, in part, if not mostly for political advantage (to get blacks “voting Democratic for 200 years”^[iii]), most voters who supported the WOP believed that its net effects would be positive for blacks. Indeed, it did bestow some benefits. However, as I have described in prior posts, ^[iv] its adverse impacts on blacks have vastly exceeded its benefits to blacks. Here is a summary of a few negative consequences inflicted on blacks by the WOP:

• Stopped Robust Black Progress. Blacks were making tremendous progress socially, politically, and economically (closing the black/white income gap) until the WOP got up and running, at which point much of that progress stopped.^[v]
• Tore Black Families Asunder. Before the WOP, black babies were more likely to be born into two-parent families than white babies.^[vi] The WOP turned poor fathers who wanted to live with their children into economic burdens on their families (stripping too many black men of a great source of meaning in life, denying their children the benefits of a two-parent family, and more). The negative impact on children of single parents can be grim.^[vii]
• Caused Poor Black Neighborhoods To Be Less Nice and More Dangerous.^[viii] In the 1950s, “The interest in education [in black neighborhoods] was just profound… The moral standards and ethical standards for those people living in [black] communities was extremely high.”^[ix] According to Trends in Homicide Among African Americans: “The phenomenon of extremely high homicide rates in the nonwhite population is not new. Since 1914, when national mortality data were tabulated for the first time by cause of death and race, death rates from homicide among nonwhite males have exceeded those for white males by factors as great as 13 to 1. However, this ratio steadily diminished in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s; and the ratio held fairly steady in the 1980s as the homicide death rates from each race-sex group declined after sharp increases in the 1960s and 1970s. [As the effects of the WOP set in.]” [Emphasis added.]  “As for ghetto riots, these were never as numerous, nor of such magnitudes of violence, in the 1940s and 1950s, as they became in the 1960s…”^[x]
• Raised Minimum Wages. The WOP ushered in a constant stream of raises in minimum wages,^[xi] thereby disproportionately hurting the most unskilled laborers the most^[xii] (by raising the bottom rung on the latter of success so high that the most unskilled could not get on the job training/get a start^[xiii]).
• Inflicted Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action (“AA”) inflicted the following disadvantages on blacks:
  • In the mid-60s, America’s top universities desired higher enrollment of black students. The most capable black students did not need AA to gain admission. AA, however, caused black students of every ability level to wind up in universities in which they were, on average, the least qualified to grapple with the curricula and required pace of learning.^[xiv] Anyone finding themselves so outmatched is discouraging and debilitating and causes far too many highly-skilled blacks to drop out.^[xv] Had those students been admitted according to the same standards as applied to all other students, they would have been admitted to universities in which they would have been much more likely to excel. On average, AA denied black students the inspiring the encouraging positive feedback of success and replaced it with the debilitating feelings of unworthiness. All of this led to disproportionately high dropout rates — not because they could not succeed, but because they could not succeed at the school that admitted them. That the admission of AA students advanced the interests of the school at the expense of the students adds insult to injury. That they continue to do it after they have witnessed the consequences is disgraceful.
  • Before AA laws, blacks who succeeded by overcoming the disproportionate disadvantages and hardships of being black in America were correctly perceived to be exceptionally capable, hardworking, and had more grit than most of their non-black peers. The ability to gain that status was watered down, if not denied, as a consequence of the presumed unearned advantages that AA implied.
  • AA created resentment, if not animosity among non-beneficiaries of AA who felt unfairly disadvantaged by AA,^[xvi]
  • Employers knowing that an applicant or employee was aided by AA admission and, likely had grades boosted by teachers’ empathy or desire to avoid time-wasting hassles with students and the administration^[xvii] rather than merit often evokes suspicion that the employee may not be as competent as her peers from the same school with the same scores. Such presumptions can lower the likelihood that the “beneficiary” of AA is hired or, if hired, create wariness and reluctance when critical projects are assigned to employees. Consequently, because effectively handling critical assignments creates the appearance of cream to rising to the top, AA “beneficiaries” who are equal in competence are likely to have fewer opportunities to prove their mettle,^[xviii] i.e., rise to the top.
• Slowed Economic Growth/Cost Jobs. Complying with the laws and regulations the WOP imposed on businesses tremendous costs, inefficiencies, and liabilities — thereby slowing economic growth.^[xix] A consequence of the Economic Opportunity Act, capital and effort that could have been invested in activities that created wealth (which would have created faster technological innovation and job creation, and would, other things being equal, drive up the pay for low-income workers) were diverted into unproductive and unprofitable regulatory compliance. Black people are disproportionately poor and slower than necessary economic growth hurts poor people most.
• Increased Dependency, Bigotry of Low Expectations, Hopelessness, and Grievances and Decreased Incentives, Motivation, and Efforts to Thrive. The massive negative effects of these phenomena will be discussed in a later post.

The WOP proponents touted it as a means to improve conditions, especially economic conditions for blacks. Instead, between 1959 and 1967 (the period immediately before the WOP kicked in) the percentage of blacks in poverty fell 29% (from 51.1% to 39.3%), fell to 34% in 1968, and then flat-lined for 25 years.^[xx] Summing it all up in “Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed” (p. 170), Jason Riley says, “…fifty years into the war on poverty the picture isn’t pretty. While gains have been made, significant racial disparities persist in some areas and black retrogression has occurred in others. The black-white poverty gap has widened over the last decade and the poverty rate among blacks is no longer declining.”

That Do-Gooders meant well and feel good about having tried is little consolation for the damage they inflicted.

For more information on the negative effects of the WOP, see: “How We Lost the War on Poverty,” “Poverty in the US Was Plummeting—Until Lyndon Johnson Declared War On It,” “The War on Poverty Wasn’t A Failure — It Was A Catastrophe,” and the citations in the endnotes.

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[i] A few examples”

• “Welfare Wreckage,”
• “Biden’s Bigotry,”
• “Exploitation—Part IV (c), Exploiting Exploitation−The Path To Prosperity,”
• “Equal Rights or Equal Outcomes?”
• “You will always have the poor among you. . . .”
• “Solutions”
• “Wealth Creation – It’s for the Children, and their Children, and their Children. . . .”
• “Wealth”

[ii] “War on Poverty”

[iii] “Did LBJ Say, ‘I’ll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for 200 years’?”

[iv] “Welfare Wreckage,” and “Where is the Empathy?” (See Author’s Note “🙛” for an extensive discussion of the damage done to blacks by the War On Poverty),

[v] “What’s Going On? – Part III Black Lives Do Matter, The “Do-Gooders’” Slate,” “The Wage Gap — Thomas Sowell on the Economic Facts of Gendered and Racial Income Inequality” @10:47, and

“In the mid-1950s, black labor force participation rates for 16-year-old and 17-year-old males began falling below that of their white counterparts, and the gap grew wider in succeeding decades. For males aged 18 and 19, the same racial reversal in labor force participation rates occurred a decade later, in the mid-1960s. For males aged 20 to 24, that same racial reversal occurred at the beginning of the next decade, in 1970. The magnitude of the racial difference in labor force participation rates among males, after the racial reversal, followed the same pattern, being greatest for the 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds, less for males aged 18 and 19, and least for males aged 20 to 24.”

Sowell, Thomas. Discrimination and Disparities (p. 54). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.

[vi] “Thomas Sowell On The Myths Of Economic Inequality” @21:10

“[M]ost black children were being raised in two- parent families in 1960. But thirty years later after the liberal welfare state… the great majority of black children [were] being raised by… single parent[s].”

[vii] “What Are The Effects On Children Of Single Parents?”: “The forum concludes that the consequences are a result of more limited social, emotional and financial resources. These findings are reinforced in Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps, a book written by Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur. According to McLanahan and Sandefur, children of single-parent households are at increased risk of dropping out of high school. In the book’s findings, boys tended to be idle and teenage girls had a greater risk of pregnancy. Overall, the chances of these children going to college were greatly diminished.”

[viii] “Hard Fact about “War on Poverty,” and “Walter Williams: Up From the Projects”

[ix] “The 1950s Inner-city Black Communities Were Strong” and “PBS Documentary – The 1950s – Segment 2 of 3” @13:58

[x] “Facts and Fallacies with Thomas Sowell” @9:03 and “Sowell, Thomas. Discrimination and Disparities” (p. 183). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.

[xi] “History of Federal Minimum Wage Rates Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938 – 2009”

[xii] “Why the Minimum Wage Is Bad at Reducing Poverty,” “Minimum Wage Hikes Hurt The Poor More Than They Help” and

“Walter Williams: Suffer No Fools – Full Video” @15:28 and “In 2008 economists David Neumark and William Wascher published a book that surveyed the minimum-wage literature of the previous three decades. They reviewed more than one hundred academic studies on the impact of [minimum wage] laws and found ‘overwhelming evidence’ that younger, lesser-skilled workers suffer what economists call ‘disemployment effects,’ or loss of employment when the minimum wage goes up.”

[xiii] From Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder For Blacks To Succeed. pg. 127 and “Race, Politics and the Minimum Wage”:

“The Even and Macpherson study finds that among whites males ages 16-24, each 10% increase in a federal or state minimum wage has decreased employment by 2.5%. For Hispanic males, the figure is 1.2%. ‘But among black males in this group, each 10% increase in the minimum wage has decreased employment by 6.5%.’”

[xiv] From Justice Thomas’s dissent in Grutter v. Bollinger, pg. 25

“Race and Culture: A World View” 176 – 177 (1994) (“Even if most minority students are able to meet the normal standards at the “average’ range of colleges and universities, the systematic mismatching of minority students begun at the top can mean that such students are generally overmatched throughout all levels of higher education”).” [Some (e.g., Brookings) say things like, “There is very little high-quality evidence supporting the mismatch hypothesis…” Of course, that is the case. Too many professors know better than to even search for, much less publish the high-quality evidence supporting this self-evident fact.]

[xv] “The Perversity of Diversity” and “Quotation of the day: Thomas Sowell on academic mismatch”

[xvi] “THE STIGMA OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: A STEREOTYPINGBASED THEORY AND META-ANALYTIC TEST OF THE

CONSEQUENCES FOR PERFORMANCE,”

 and “Thomas Sowell: affirmative action creates academic failure & resentment” @2:15 and “The Uncomfortable Truth About Affirmative Action and Asian-Americans.”

[xvii] “‘Favors’ to Blacks”

[xviii] “THE STIGMA OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: A STEREOTYPINGBASED THEORY AND META-ANALYTIC TEST OF THE

CONSEQUENCES FOR PERFORMANCE,” and “An Assessment of Affirmative Action in Business”:

“Moreover, research has suggested that there are several flaws with affirmative action that preclude its success as a practice. These flaws are not only limited to external strains that others impose on it, they also includes internal burdens that negatively affect the same individuals they claimed to assist. The beneficiaries of affirmative action are often stigmatized as incompetent and incapable (Heilman, Block & Stathatos, 1997). Externally, when an organization has an affirmative action plan or program, fellow employees assume that the individual only received the job on the basis of their demographic. The perception that such a beneficiary lacks qualification causes the targets of affirmative to be evaluated negatively, regardless of their actual performance (Leslie, Mayer, & Kravitz, 2014). Such external developments create a cycle that then perpetuates itself to the individual and his or her evaluation of him or herself. The individual then believes that they are not capable of doing their job properly. For one, evaluations of work performance that is completed by supervisors lack clarity (Heilman, Block & Stathatos, 1997). Thus, the individual, upon receiving the evaluation of their performance does not believe that they are able to succeed in the workplace because they are not fulfilling the organization’s performance standards. This further leads the individual to evaluate him or herself negatively. Their self-perception leads to a negative view of oneself and a lack of confidence to thrive in that given corporate environment.”

[xix] “The Cumulative Cost of Regulations”

[xx] “Historical Poverty Tables: People and Families – 1959 to 2018” Table 14. Distribution of the Poor by Race and Hispanic Origin   

People who believe that black lives don’t matter deserve all the condemnation they get from their fellow Americans. Thankfully, however, racist Americans (people who believe black lives don’t matter, that blacks are inferior, or that blacks should not have all the rights afforded to every other American^[i]) are few, almost universally scorned, and are mostly powerless.  Those people betray America’s founding principles and are a nuisance at best and horrible at worst.

As bad as racists are, the harm that white racists have done over the last 55 years is insignificant compared to the harm progressive white people (“‘Do-Gooders’’”) have done over that period and propose to do to black people. The motivations of politicians who “Do-Gooders” support are mixed (ignorant, self-serving, evil, or all three).^[ii] Generally, “Do-Gooders” appear to be well-intended, mal-informed, and unaware of the harm their policies have and will inflict on blacks, especially poor blacks. Sadly, however, the pavement on the road to hell constructed by the “Do-Gooders’” good intentions is long and thick.^[iii]

Sorting out the many ways in which “Do-Gooders” have harmed blacks will be the subject of future posts. First, realize that the “Do-Gooders’” havoc was mostly unleashed by “War on Poverty,”^[iv] which was declared in 1964.^[v] To see that havoc clearly, understanding the situation and trajectory of blacks in 1964 is very helpful. Let’s sort that out:

According to the Brookings Institution,^[vi]

“…in 1944, most blacks lived in the South and on the land as laborers and sharecroppers. (Only one in eight owned the land on which he worked.) A trivial 5 percent of black men nationally were engaged in nonmanual, white-collar work of any kind; the vast majority held ill-paid, insecure, manual jobs—jobs that few whites would take. As already noted, six out of ten African-American women were household servants who, driven by economic desperation, often worked 12-hour days for pathetically low wages.

… with the shortage of workers in northern manufacturing plants following the outbreak of World War II, southern blacks in search of jobs boarded trains and buses in a Great Migration that lasted through the mid-1960s. [Blacks] found what they were looking for: wages so strikingly high that in 1953 the average income for a black family in the North was almost twice that of those who remained in the South. And through much of the 1950s wages rose steadily and unemployment was low.

Thus by 1960 only one out of seven black men still labored on the land, and almost a quarter were in white-collar or skilled manual occupations. Another 24 percent had semiskilled factory jobs that meant membership in the stable working class, while the proportion of black women working as servants had been cut in half. Even those who did not move up into higher-ranking jobs were doing much better.”

In “Discrimination and Disparities,” Thomas Sowell observed:

“[President Johnson’s] claim that only government programs could effectively deal with deep poverty was contradicted by the plain fact that the black poverty rate declined from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent in 1960…” (p. 183) Basic Books. Kindle Edition.

“In “America in Black and White,” authors Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom agree that the black middle class expanded well before “affirmative action.” The Thernstrom’s said, ” . . . The growth of the black middle class long predates the adoption of race-conscious social policies. In some ways, indeed, the black middle class was expanding more rapidly before 1970 than after…  Many of the advances black Americans have made since the Great Depression occurred before anything that can be termed ‘affirmative action’ existed. . . . In the years since affirmative action, (the black middle class) has continued to grow, but not at a more rapid pace than in the preceding three decades, despite a common impression to the contrary.”^[vii]

Dean Kalahar, reported:^[viii]

• In 1950, 72 percent of all black men and 81 percent of black women had been married.

• Every census from 1890 to 1950 showed that black labor force participation rates were higher than those of whites.

• Prior to the 1960’s the unemployment rate for black 16 and 17-year olds was under 10 percent.

• Before 1960, the number of teenage pregnancies had been decreasing; both poverty and dependency were declining, and black income was rising in both absolute and relative terms to white income.

• In 1965, 76.4 percent of black children were born to married women…

• Between 1960 and 1964, blacks were rising into professional and other high-level positions at a rate greater than the [following] five years…

Blacks were making tremendous social progress on many fronts, including an explosion in the popularity of black musicians, was achieved by blacks before 1965[ix] and, as Ebony Magazine put it:

“…events of [the 1950s] included U.S. diplomat Ralph Bunche winning the Nobel Peace Prize for successful mediation of Middle East Peace Talks between Arab and Israeli leaders. JET magazine, the weekly sister publication of EBONY, was born. The NBA color barrier was broken [having broken the MLB barrier in 1947 and NFL barrier in 1953]. Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till of Chicago (whose story is chronicled in JET magazine) was kidnapped and murdered by White thugs while visiting Mississippi. Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a White man on a city bus, kicking off the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Nat King Cole became the first colored man to host a national TV show in prime time, and Lorraine Hansberry became the first Negro woman to have a stage play, A Raisin in the Sun, produced on Broadway.”^[x]

“In addition to addressing social and political issues in the ’60s, EBONY afforded its readers a bird’s-eye view of how “the other half” lived. It offered proof that the Black middle and upper classes not only existed but in some instances were thriving, providing hope of upward mobility to its readers.  The magazine continued to shine a spotlight on Black stars from film, television, stage, politics and sports. EBONY alone boasted covers featuring exclusively Black glitterati. Eartha Kitt, Harry Belafonte, Nat King Cole, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Bill Cosby and Muhammad Ali not only graced the covers of EBONY but also shared their lives and their hearts with readers, particularly as both related to the struggle of Black America.”^[xi]

Perhaps their greatest accomplishment was that their message that they were not being treated fairly was resonating with a growing number of whites, was gaining traction with politicians and judges, and was producing positive results.^[xii]

Those positive things are not to say that, in general, blacks were doing just fine. They weren’t. They were subjected to significantly more racism and discourtesy than today,^[xiii] unfair obstacles, unequal justice, difficult living conditions, inadequate schools, insufficient education and job opportunities, exceptionally dangerous neighborhoods, and other disadvantages. Of course, neither a 47% poverty rate is fine nor a growing number of blacks thriving and being recognized for their accomplishments was good enough. Moreover, many of these gains were the result of many other hardships they had to endure, e.g., moving from the South to the North and starting over and little capital.

Improving the living conditions, education, and opportunities for blacks was necessary, important, and required by justice. So, encouraged by well-intended voters, intellectuals and politicians leaped into action. Sadly, they did not anticipate the multiple and compounding negative consequences of their policies. What they wrought made matters worse for blacks. For example, the chart below depicts how effective the “Do-Gooders’” War on Poverty was at reducing poverty.

Data Source

First, note that the opening act of the War on Poverty, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, was signed into law on August 20^th.  It took years to get it organized and fully up and running. So, the continuation of the decline in poverty that was well underway when the act was passed was a continuation of the progress that was underway when the war began. Second, note that the War on Poverty put a halt to progress against poverty for 25 years. Giving people false hope and then dashing those hopes leaves people more hopeless and demoralized than had nothing been tried.

Data Source. Pg. 26

As bad as the flattening of progress looks, it hides the fact that blacks fared worse than the composite number reflects (and non-blacks fared better than the composite number.):

Over the twenty-five years following 1968, on average, the percentage of whites in poverty fell while the rate of decline of blacks in poverty flat-lined. We’ll sort out why that was in future posts.

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[i] “Racist,” as used herein, refers to Merriam Webster’s definition. The more currently popular “definition” (read: erroneous application) of the word is something like “anything to which people of color object.” Such watering down of the word renders it largely meaningless. Worse, it unhelpfully takes the sting out of being called a racists.

[ii] “Did LBJ Say, ‘I’ll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for 200 years’?”

[iii] “‘Good Intentions’ with Walter E. Williams”

[iv] “The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964,” “Food Stamp Act of 1964,” “Elementary and Secondary Education Act,” and the following programs: VISTA, Job Corps, Head Start, Legal Services and the Community Action Program

[v] “Walter Williams: Suffer No Fools – Full Video” @8:20 & @41:13

[vi] “Black Progress: How far we’ve come, and how far we have to go”

[vii] “The Progress of American Blacks”

[viii] “The Decline of the African-American family”

[ix] “African-American History Timeline: 1960 to 1964”

[x] “The Colored People of the 1950s: Black History from the Pages of EBONY”

[xi] “The Blacks of the 1960s: Black History from the Pages of EBONY”

[xii] “Brown v. Board of Education,” “Gayle v. Browder,” “Civil Rights Act of 1957,” “Federal troops are sent to Little Rock, Ark by Dwight Eisenhower to enforce the desegregation of Central High School,” “Civil Rights Act of 1960,”  “The Civil Rights Act of 1964,” and “Voting Rights Act of 1965”

[xiii] “Racism in 1950s, ’60s was normal, accepted, insidious”

A disproportionately high number of severe and intractable problems beset Black Americans. The survival of America’s experiment to establish a government on the proposition that all men are created equal may come to an end if Americans do not find ways to address those problems effectively. The drafters of the Declaration of Independence were aware that the word “men” included blacks.^[i] The vast majority of blacks are law-abiding, contributing members of society, but too many blacks are not receiving equal protection and treatment. Most of the unequal preferences intended to compensate for that lack of equal protection and treatment have not achieved the intended goal.

So, many of the grievances highlighted by Black Lives Matter are legitimate and in dire need of attention and address. Raising awareness of the problems and resulting complaints is a noble endeavor. Let’s identify some of those legitimate grievances and some others that are ignored or given short shrift by Black Lives Matter (“BLM”).

Compiling a comprehensive list of unique problems that blacks face in America would be impossible. Hopefully, the following will suffice to make the point that there are plenty of serious problems that need to be redressed.

Blacks are disproportionately likely to be:

• Suspected of being dangerous or up to no good,
• Defrauded, robbed, injured or murdered,
• Engaged by police,
• Negatively affected by law enforcement,^[ii]
• Be poor — even those who adhere to the same norms as whites,^[iii]
• Trapped in poverty by a welfare system that creates negative incentives to work,
• In poor health.^[iv]
• Raising children in single-parent families.
• Raising children in communities with debilitating customs and mores and relatively greater hopelessness,
• Living with the consequences of a welfare system that renders fathers unnecessary to a family’s economic well-being, if not an economic burden to the family,
• Denied access to effective schools,
• Unable to land an entry-level job (in large part due to minimum wage laws),^[v]
• Victimized by Affirmative Action preferences,^[vi]
• Deluded into believing that harmful disparities are the result of racism and positive disparities are the result of black DNA or black culture,
• Victimized by crony arrangements between elite politicians and corporations (“corruption”) who siphon wealth from the economy for their unproductive personal benefit — thereby draining job-creating vitality from the economy. Poor blacks can least afford such suppression of job creation and the preservation of higher prices of goods and services due to protection from competitors that such crony arrangements always provide to crony companies.
• Burdened with the soft bigotry of low expectations,^[vii]
• Debilitated by communities and schools that teach children that they are and will be exploited and oppressed by white people and to blame others for their allegedly inescapable plight, i.e., they are robbed of the motivation to learn what is needed to succeed.

Blacks confront unique obstacles to progress and success. Organizations whose mission is to address those unique obstacles constructively are much needed.^[viii] If such an organization was named “Black Problems Matter,” a retort by critics that “All Problems Matter” would be accurate, but it could reasonably be considered petulant.

The hearts of everyone of goodwill should ache about the unique problems facing poor blacks in America. Sadly, many of the issues listed are attributable to or exacerbated by policies advanced by well-intended politicians of all skin hues. Aggravatingly, too many of those problems are the result of policies promoted by self-serving politicians and race hustlers.^[iix]

Consequently, to a considerable extent, “others” are to blame for causing or exacerbating many of the problems that blacks experience, i.e., blacks are victims of indignities and bad policies adopted by governments mostly comprised of white people. Similarly, race hustlers and Black Lives Matter have and will continue to create problems for blacks. We’ll sort out some of that out in the following posts.

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^[i] Eleven of the 13 colonies wanted the following paragraph in Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration to be in the final document. “Glenn Beck uncovers the truth about slavery and America’s founders”

“[King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”

^[ii] “Rand Paul: Conspiracy laws result in cruel prison sentences, particularly for Black Americans,” “Slowing the “School-to-Prison Pipeline”—At What Cost?,” and “Crime, Punishment, and Fairness”

^[iii] “Why Are Black Americans at Greater Risk of Being Poor?”

^[iv] “Race and health in the United States” “African Americans have higher rates of mortality than does any other racial or ethnic group for 8 of the top 10 causes of death.[22] The cancer incidence rate among African Americans is 10% higher than among European Americans” and “non-Hispanic black adults had the highest prevalence of obesity (38.4%) overall, followed by Hispanic adults (32.6%) and non-Hispanic white adults (28.6%),” i.e., blacks have 1.34 times the prevalence of obesity as whites.

^[v]“Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder For Blacks To Succeed” by Jason Riley. pg. 127 “The Even and Macpherson study found that for white males ages 16 to 24, each 10 percent increase in the minimum wage has a decreased employment by 2.5%… ‘But among black males in the group, each 10% increase in the minimum wage has decreased employment by 6.5%.’ The effect on black workers [in Chicago] was so pronounced, wrote the authors, that “employment losses for 16-to-24-year-old black workers between 2007 and 2010 [a period during which the federal minimum wage was raised by 41%] could have been nearly 50% lower had the federal minimum wage remained at the January 2007 level.”

^[vi] “Thomas Sowell: Affirmative action is a wrong answer,” “Walter E. Williams: The Effect Of Affirmative Action on Poor Communities,” “Thomas Sowell: affirmative action creates academic failure & resentment’” and “The Painful Truth About Affirmative Action.” I am aware of articles that attempt to refute the damage done to students admitted on affirmative action grounds (e.g.,   “Are Minority Students Harmed by Affirmative Action?,” “Does Affirmative Action Create Mismatches Between Students and Universities?”). Note, however, these articles do not refute the claim, they nit pick details about some studies that found the problem.

^[vii] “Biden’s Bigotry”

^[viii] For example, the small fraction of that tiny number of racist Americans who have some power (e.g., racist police) deserve to be called out and condemned.

^[iix] @ThomasSowell – Aug 18, 2019

“Racism is not dead, but it is on life support — kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as ‘racists.’” and “Eric Holder: A more dangerous race-card hustler than Al Sharpton”

The invidious death of George Floyd may prove to be an inflection point on the arc of American history. It caused multiple groups who seek the fundamental transformation of America to coalesce and intensify their efforts. Surely, more things are going on than meets the eye. It could be that the undiscernible things that are going on are more important than the ones that are. The discernable things, however, are monumental and well worth sorting out.  

Even this partial list of some of the discernable things that are going on is reason for alarm and validation of Benjamin Franklin’s doubt^[i] that the country would be able to keep the republic the founders proposed:

• Mass protests about police brutality, injustices, and income disparities experienced by black Americans.^[ii]
• Black groups demanding redress of and reparations for multiple grievances and significant governance changes, including the elimination of police forces and varying degrees of socialism,^[iii]
• A BLM leader threatened, “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking … figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation… I just want black liberation and black sovereignty, by any means necessary.”^[iv]
• The multigenerational efforts by 1960s revolutionaries to turn K-University education system into leftist indoctrination/social justice warrior training centers is at last bearing the intended abundant fruit.^[v]
• Mobs are demolishing statues^[vi] and intellectuals reframing America’s history, e.g., “The 1619 Project.”^[vii]
• Antifa and other fringe groups using fascistic tactics to cow and silence people who do not support Antifa’s political objectives.^[viii]
• A pandemic and a botched response to the pandemic.^[ix]
• The loss of credibility by public health experts,^[x] “experts” generally,^[xi] polling,^[xii] government agencies,^[xiii] politicians,^[xiv] mainstream media,^[xv] and the intelligentsia.^[xvi]
• An unprecedented aggregation and exercise of dictatorial power by governors^[xvii] and local officials.
• Federal and state government officials establishing a state religion of scientism,^[xviii] while infringing on or attempting to banish traditional religions.^[xix]
• The mainstream media are rejecting journalistic standards^[xx] and becoming the propaganda arm of a leftist uprising^[xxi] (and China^[xxii]).
• The reality and power of Deep State are becoming more evident and ominous.^[xxiii]
• Globalists are attempting to exploit the chaos to advance their agenda.[xxiv]
• An acceleration of the cancel culture is underway.[xxv]
• Republican leadership revealing their fecklessness or complicity in the face of the leftist uprising.
• An unprecedented push to replace America’s cronyistic economic system with socialism^[xxvi] (which would merely replace a “crony capitalism” system with a crony socialism system), and
• The absurdity of the two major political parties offering up Trump or Biden as the best candidates they could find.

The above mess could be the result of a perfect storm (multiple groups independently snapping into action to prevent this crisis from going to waste), a mastermind puppet master pulling strings at his disposal, a conspiracy executing its plan, the inevitable culmination of universities’ 100+ year project to undermine the limited government established by the Constitution and 50+ year project to replace science and reason with postmodernism, or God using a variation on the Babylonian theme^[xxvii] to punish human hubris (destroying Babylonian’s ability to progress by making it impossible for various peoples to speak to each other — “talking pass each other” instead of communicating could achieve the same result).

Whatever the cause, the mess needs some sorting out.

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^[i] When asked as he exited Independence Hall in Philadelphia where the Constitution was hammered out what kind of government the convention produced, Franklin said, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

^[ii] “George Floyd Protests: A Timeline”

^[iii] “The Agenda of Black Lives Matter Is Far Different From the Slogan”

^[iv] “Black Lives Matter leader states if US ‘doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system’”

^[v] “The Revolution Is Winning”

^[vi] “A list of the statues across the US toppled, vandalized or officially removed amid protests”

^[vii] “Project1619,” “NYT Admits, at Last, That Its 1619 Project Is Wrong,” “The 1619 Project: An Epitaph” and “The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts”

^[viii] “By Its Own Definition Antifa is Fascist”

^[ix] “The President and Governors Alike Botched the Pandemic Response”

^[x] “Public Health Experts are Embarrassing Themselves” and “Health experts fear long-term damage to CDC’s credibility” and “Coronavirus: Five Reasons Public Health Experts Have Lost Credibility”

^[xi] “Science’s ‘Replication Crisis’ Has Reached Even The Most Respectable Journals, Report Shows”

^[xii] “The Crisis of Polling” and See “These Truths” by Jill Lapore,” There was a time when polls had a chance of knowing what “Americans” think. When Gallup started polling in the 1930s, the response rate of people contacted by pollsters was above 90%. The response rate during the 2012 presidential race was less than 10%. In 2016, a past president of the American Association of Public Opinion Research said, “Election polling is in near crisis.” (And, of course, polling completely blew the election predictions.)”

^[xiii] “Victor Davis Hanson on Hubris, Nemesis in the Deep State”

[^xiv] “The Articles of Unity”

^[xv] “Now What the F**k is Going On? Sensemaking Series” and “Collapse Of Trust In Legacy Media Will Lead To Its Inevitable Demise”

^[xvi] “The Intellectual Yet Idiot 2” and “The Intellectual Yet Idiot”

^[xvii] “Virus Unleashes Newsom’s Inner Dictator,” “Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Signs Sweeping Mask Order Threatening Violators With $500 Fine” and “When Are COVID-19 Control Measures ‘Arbitrary’ and ‘Unreasonable’?”

^[xviii] “Scientism – COVID Stuff”

^[xix] “California Churches Sue Gov. Newsom over COVID Lockdowns”

^[xx] “Journalistic standards decline as the industry obsesses with war against Trump”

[^xxi] “Bret Weinstein and Matt Taibbi: Corruption and its Consequences,” “Media Keeps Confirming It’s The Propaganda Arm Of The Democratic Party” and “Bari Weiss’s resignation letter”

^[xxii] “Chinese Propaganda Outlet Has Paid US Newspapers $19 Million For Advertising, Printing” and “The Expansion of Chinese Communist Party Media Influence since 2017”

^[xxiii] “Glenn Beck Presents: The Democrats’ Hydra” and “Glenn Beck Presents: Democracy Does Die In Darkness”

^[xxiv] “UKRAINE SCANDAL EXPLAINED: Chalkboard on DNC Collusion, Joe Biden, Soros, Trump & more”

^[xxv] “Is Bari Weiss the New York Times’ James Damore? Insider Spills the Beans on Stifling Cancel Culture,” and “No Safe Spaces Movie”

^[xxvi] “The Rise Of American Socialism” and “Ocasio-Cortez: Collaboration with Sanders ‘Substantively Improved Biden’s Positions’ on Climate”

^[xxvii] “The Tower of Babel” and “Genesis, Chapter 11”

Everyone should be aware of “The Articles of Unity – A Patriotic Plan to Save our Republic.” It is a plan to address the problems that result in every four years Americans being left with the option to choose between two people whose primary expertise is evading questions, bunkum, balderdash, and bamboozling. As things are now, only people who have that expertise have a chance of winning the presidency. The exceptions to having to choose between the lesser of two morally flawed, technically incompetent, and often corrupt candidates have grown rarer over time.

The country has survived that growing trend because a large percentage of American voters used to believe in the American Creed and The American Experiment. Over recent decades, students are either not taught about those things or are taught to reject them.

Our incompetent and corrupt governments that resulted from the above situations cannot long endure. Much of the rancor, turmoil, and growing demands for fundamental change we are now seeing is the result of such corrupt and incompetent governments. Lesser of two evils politicians, who rely on pitting citizen against citizen, have proven that they will only exacerbate those problems and deliver mostly feckless outrage and gridlock.

@Unity2020 is a plan to elect competent patriots, one centrist conservative and one centrist liberal, as president and vice president who are not beholding to the powers that be. They will agree to share power in a way that will have a chance of saving the republic from the disastrous path we are now on.

I’m neither enthusiastic about all of the plan’s details nor optimistic about its success. It is, however, something that has a chance of effectively getting the country on a sustainable course. At a minimum, with a sufficient groundswell of support, politicians should be more inclined to change their corrupt ways. Without a groundswell, it will go nowhere.

For that reason, I have signed up in support of this challenge to the status quo. I urge you to do the same.

For more details see “The Articles of Unity – A Patriotic Plan To Save Our Republic” and “The Articles of Unity – A Patriotic Plan to Save our Republic (Bret Weinstein).”

On July 9, 2020, The Morning Dispatch reported^[i] the following:

“‘Some states, admittedly, opened up too early and too quickly,’ Dr. Anthony Fauci told the Wall Street Journal yesterday. ‘So that was something that probably should not have happened that led to this.’”

It is hard to tell whether this comment reveals Dr. Fauci’s lack of self-awareness, gracelessness, or political hackery.

Dr. Fauci made monumental decisions about when “flattening the curve” measures should be imposed and how severe they should be. When criticized for his recommendations, his most common defense is that his decisions were appropriate based on the scant information/data available at the time. Most Americans who believe the initial response was too severe assume that Dr. Fauci was not aware of how faulty both the Imperial College and the original IHME models were. Consequently, most of them have the grace to excuse Dr. Fauci’s judgments based on prediction models that either have proven^[ii] or might be proven to have wildly overstated the danger of COVID-19. (There is a consensus among modelers even now.^[iii])

Since the initial decisions, sufficient information/data has accumulated to reveal that his mitigation/suppression measures have killed and damaged the health of many people.

“…the disease has been responsible for 800,000 lost years of life so far. Considering only the losses of life from missed health care and unemployment due solely to the lockdown policy, we conservatively estimate that the national lockdown is responsible for at least 700,000 lost years of life every month, or about 1.5 million so far — already far surpassing the COVID-19 total.”^[iv]

Most people have the grace not to say of Dr. Fauci’s directives, “So that was something that probably should not have happened…” I have searched in vain for an admission by Dr. Fauci that his original “lockdown” advice was, in light of subsequent events, too harsh.

Dr. Fauci has said, “staying closed for too long could cause ‘irreparable damage’” and “I don’t want people to think that any of us feel that staying locked down for a prolonged period of time is the way to go.”^[v] To avoid such “irreparable damage,” states must reopen. Is Dr. Fauci unaware that the governors have insufficient data to determine precisely when or how rapidly to reopen? In other words, is he unaware that governors are in the same predicament that he was in when he advised the country “lockdown?” Though it is improbable, one cannot rule out the possibility that he is insufficiently self-aware to realize that he is doing unto others what he criticized others doing to him.

If Dr. Fauci is so unaware, he could redeem himself. For examples, he could admit that the severity of his “lockdowns” was overkill (literally), or have the grace not say about governors who must make agonizing and highly consequential decisions, “So that was something that probably should not have happened…,” or he could have gotten the National Institute of Health^[vi] to help the governors avoid “irreparable damage” to the people of their state and the country.^[vii] He has done nothing that I can find to redeem himself.

On the other hand, that may be too much to expect from someone in Dr. Fauci’s position. The primary expertise of anyone who becomes the head of any federal government agency is having the political skill and cunning to surpass all the other politically avarice people seeking the same job. People who have those traits tend not to have the level of expertise concerning the agency’s mission compared to those who devote their working hours to the agency’s mission. Politically avarice people also tend to be highly motivated to achieve political objectives.

Dr. Fauci has sowed fear-inducing confusion and has failed to explain the rationale for pivotal epidemiological issues, which people need to understand in order to assess the amount of danger COVID-19 presents. Such confusion and wondering adds to people’s anxieties (which weakens people’s ability to fight diseases) and fostered massive amounts of discord.

Fear and discord are quite useful if one seeks to transform a country fundamentally. Is that what Dr. Fauci is doing? Although there are signs that is his motive, a regular citizen can’t know. Sadly, however, the other explanations for why he is doing what he is doing are, at a minimum, unflattering.

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^[i] “The Morning Dispatch: New COVID Cases Hit Daily Record” 7/9/2020”

^[ii]  “We Will Regret Not Taking the Economic Effects of Mass Quarantine More Seriously” and “The Worldwide Lockdown May Be the Greatest Mistake in History”

^[iii] “The Madness of Competing COVID-19 Projections”

^[iv] “The Doctor Is In: Scott Atlas and the Efficacy of Lockdowns, Social Distancing, and Closings”

^[v] “Dr. Anthony Fauci says staying closed for too long could cause ‘irreparable damage’”

[vi] “The Real Issues Concerning COVID-19—Part IV, The Herd Immunity Messaging Problem” and “CDC to Revise School Reopening Guidelines After Trump Says They’re Impractical: Pence”

^[vii] “Kids and Teachers Are Going to Need Therapy if Schools Follow the CDC’s Recommendations for Classrooms”