Category: Economics

Dissenters from Orthodoxy Can Be Easily Blackballed When They Are Required to Write Diversity Statements

(p. A15) Amidst the explosion of university diversity, equity and inclusion policies, Texas Tech’s biology department adopted its own DEI motion promising to “require and strongly weight a diversity statement from all candidates.”

. . .

The biology department’s motion mandates that every search committee issue a report on its diversity statement evaluations. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, I have acquired the evaluations of more than a dozen job candidates.

To my knowledge, these documents—published in redacted form by the National Association of Scholars—are the first evaluations of prospective faculty DEI contributions to be made publicly available. They confirm what critics of DEI statements have long argued: That they inevitably act as ideological litmus tests.

One Texas Tech search committee penalized a candidate for espousing race-neutrality in teaching. The candidate “mentioned that DEI is not an issue because he respects his students and treats them equally,” the evaluation notes. “This indicates a lack of understanding of equity and inclusion issues.”

. . .

The biology department’s search committees also rewarded fluency in the language of identity politics. An immunology candidate was praised for awareness of the problems of “unconscious bias.” “Inclusivity in lab” was listed as a virology candidate’s strength: “her theme will be diversity, and she will actively work to creating the culture—e.g. enforce code of conduct, prevent microaggressions etc.”   . . .

Many critics rightly point out that diversity statements invite viewpoint discrimination. DEI connotes a set of highly contestable social and political views. Requiring faculty to catalog their commitment to those views necessarily blackballs anybody who dissents from an orthodoxy that has nothing to do with scientific competence.

For the full commentary, see:

John D. Sailer. “How ‘Diversity’ Policing Fails Science.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023 [sic]): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date February 6, 2023 [sic], and has the same title as the print version.)

Campus D.E.I. Perpetuates “a Strong Political Orientation Bias”

(p. A24) The same week that a U.C. Berkeley protest ended in violence, with doors broken, people allegedly injured, a guest lecture organized by Jewish students canceled and attendees evacuated by the police through an underground passageway, a group of academics gathered across the bay at Stanford to discuss restoring inclusive civil discourse on campus. The underlying question: In today’s heated political environment, is that even possible?

. . .

Hosted by Stanford Law School and the Stanford Graduate School of Education, the conference brought together professors, deans and academic leaders who were largely liberal, with libertarians and a few conservatives and progressives in the mix. Unfortunately, one of the organizers told me, most of the invited progressives, which is to say the group that currently dominates campus debates, refused to come.

. . .

Amna Khalid, a historian at Carleton College, endorsed the goal of diversifying staffs. The problem isn’t principle or legality, she said; it’s practice. Diversity according to whom? And in what context?

“It’s always ‘historically excluded and underrepresented,’” she said. “But historically when? Conservatives could argue they have been historically excluded. What’s underrepresented at Hillsdale College will be different from what’s underrepresented in the U.C. system.”

“We all know that there’s a strong political orientation bias being perpetuated,” she continued. “‘Not a good fit,’ they’ll say. It’s fundamentally dishonest, and it creates more problems than it addresses.”

. . .

“What they want are non-straights, nonwhites and non-men,” said Musa al-Gharbi, a sociologist at Stony Brook University. “But they don’t say it that way. There’s a lack of forthrightness that breaks people in these situations.” In his field, men are underrepresented, and queer scholarship is overrepresented. “But it strains credulity to say that anyone would read a D.E.I. statement about someone’s queer work and say that’s an overrepresented group.”

For the full story, see:

Pamela Paul. “Civil Discourse on Campus Is Put to the Test.” The New York Times (Friday, March 8, 2024): A24.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 7, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

Apple’s Bold “1984” Super Bowl Ad, Had Failed Marketing Test

(p. C4) Conceived by the Chiat/Day ad agency and directed by Ridley Scott, then fresh off making the seminal science-fiction noir “Blade Runner,” the Apple commercial “1984,” which was intended to introduce the new Macintosh computer, would become one of the most acclaimed commercials ever made. It also helped to kick off — pun partially intended — the Super Bowl tradition of the big game serving as an annual showcase for gilt-edged ads from Fortune 500 companies.

. . .

FRED GOLDBERG The original idea was actually done in 1982. We presented an ad [with] a headline, which was “Why 1984 Won’t Be Like ‘1984,’” to Steve Jobs, and he didn’t think the Apple III was worthy of that claim.

. . .

HAYDEN Steve Jobs was excited but frightened by it. Steve Wozniak offered to pay to run the commercial himself.

SCULLEY Before the commercial ran, we had to take it to the board of directors. The board sees the commercial, and then there’s just dead silence in the boardroom. They turn and look at me, and [a board member] says, “You’re not really going to run that thing, are you?”

HAYDEN As the closing credits scrolled up, the chairman, Mike Markkula, put his head in his hands and kind of folded over the conference table, and then slowly straightened up and [proposed hiring a different ad agency].

SCOTT I made it. I thought it was pretty good. But I was thinking, “Really? They’re going to run this on the Super Bowl? And we don’t know what it’s for?”

GOLDBERG I had them do a theater test. We get back the results, and it’s the worst business commercial that they’ve ever tested, in terms of persuasiveness.

SCULLEY The board said, “We don’t think you should run it. Try to sell the time.”

GOLDBERG And it was Jay Chiat who told us to drag our feet, basically, when we were told to sell off the time on the Super Bowl.

HAYDEN At long last, it came down that we would run the “1984” commercial once.

For the full story, see:

Saul Austerlitz. “The Super Bowl’s Big Ad Touchdown.” The New York Times (Saturday, February 10, 2024): C4.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added. The bracketed words in comments from Goldberg, Sculley, and Hayden were in the original.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Feb. 5, 2024, and has the title “40 Years Ago, This Ad Changed the Super Bowl Forever.” In the print and online versions, the names of panelists were in capitalized and bold fonts.)

Apple’s bold and famous “1984” Super Bowl ad could only be understood by those who were familiar with:

Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: The New American Library, 1961 [1st published in 1949].

Social Security Administration Is Lax in Stopping Fraud and Slow in Aiding Fraud Victims

(p. A1) For the past two decades, Liz Birenbaum’s 88-year-old mother, Marge, has received her Social Security check on the second Wednesday of each month. It’s her sole source of income, which pays for her room at a long-term care center, where she landed last October after having a stroke.

When the deposit didn’t arrive in January [2024], they logged into Marge’s Social Security account, where they found some startling clues: the last four digits of a bank account number that didn’t match her own, at a bank they didn’t recognize.

“Someone had gotten in,” said Ms. Birenbaum, of Chappaqua, N.Y. “Then I hit a panic button.”

It quickly became evident that a fraudster had redirected the $2,452 benefit to an unknown Citibank account. Marge, who lives in Minnesota, had never banked there. (Ms. Birenbaum requested to refer to her mother by her first name only to protect her from future fraud.)

Ms. Birenbaum immediately started making calls to set things right. When she finally connected with a Social Security representative from a local office in a Bloomington, Minn., the rep casually mentioned that this happens “all the time.”

“I was stunned,” Ms. Birenbaum said.

. . .

(p. A18) It can be a lucrative fraud, and a devastating benefit to lose. An estimated $33.5 million in benefits — intended for nearly 21,000 beneficiaries — were redirected in a five-year period ending in May 2018, according to the most recent audit from the Office of the Inspector General, an independent group responsible for overseeing investigations and audits at the agency. Another $23.9 million in fraudulent redirects were prevented before they happened over the same time period.

“Fraudsters were able to obtain sufficient information about a true beneficiary to convince the Social Security Administration that they were that beneficiary,” said Jeffrey Brown, a deputy assistant inspector general at the Office of the Inspector General, who analyzed the issue in 2019. “Once they were in the front door, they were able to change their direct deposits.”

. . .

Just months before Marge’s benefits were redirected, the O.I.G. issued a report that said the administration’s portal, called my Social Security, did not fully comply with federal requirements for identity verification: It said it didn’t go far enough to verify and validate new registrants’ identities, in all cases.

. . .

The issue would have been impossible for someone like Marge to rectify on her own. It was challenging enough for Ms. Birenbaum, a marketing consultant, and her brother, based near their mother in a Minneapolis suburb, who worked together to recover the benefits and secure Marge’s account.

Ms. Birenbaum — who reported the crime to the O.I.G. and the F.B.I. and alerted her state and federal representatives — once spent two and a half hours on hold with the Social Security Administration before connecting with a regional case worker. The rep was able to see that her mother’s direct deposit information had been altered in early December, the month before the benefits vanished.

Ms. Birenbaum’s brother visited their mother’s local Social Security office and became Marge’s “representative payee,” which allows him to handle her affairs (Social Security does not accept powers of attorney). They had to find ways to make the correction without bringing Marge to the office, which Ms. Birenbaum said would have been a “herculean task.”

Marge received the missing money on March 1, [2024] about a month and a half after they discovered the problem.

For the full story, see:

Tara Siegel Bernard. “Internet Thieves Drain Social Security Accounts.” The New York Times (Saturday, March 9, 2024): A1 & A18.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed years, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the same date as the print version, and has the title “How Fraudsters Break Into Social Security Accounts and Steal Benefits.”)

A PC Industry Run “By Middle-Manager Types” Is No Longer “Fun”

(p. B10) John Walker, a groundbreaking, if reclusive, technology entrepreneur and polymath who was a founder and chief executive of Autodesk, the company that brought the ubiquitous AutoCAD software program to the design and architecture masses, died on Feb. 2 [2024] in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

. . .

AutoCAD — the “CAD” stands for computer-aided design — was based on a program called Interact created by Michael Riddle, another company founder. With the contributions of Mr. Walker as well as Greg Lutz, who was also a founder, and the rest of the team, AutoCAD would go on to revolutionize industries including architecture, graphic design and engineering by allowing design professionals to ditch their pencils and paper and render their creations on a screen using an inexpensive personal computer.

“To him goes the credit for the Second Design Revolution,” the California software executive Roopinder Tara wrote in a tribute to Mr. Walker on the site Engineering.com. The “First Design Revolution,” as Mr. Tara called it, was the creation of earlier CAD programs that ran on expensive mainframes or minicomputers. But, he wrote, it was with AutoCAD, which “burst onto the scene in 1982, after the advent of the IBM PC, that the computer actually started to deliver on the promise.”

. . .

“In 1977, this business was fun,” Mr. Walker wrote in a book-length history of Autodesk that he published on his site. “The sellers and the buyers were hot-shot techies like ourselves, everybody spoke the same language and knew what was going on.”

“Today,” he added, “the microcomputer industry is run by middle-manager types who know far more about P/L statements than they do RAM organization.”

For the full obituary, see:

Alex Williams. “John Walker, 74, Recluse Who, as a Tech Mogul, Popularized AutoCAD.” The New York Times (Thursday, March 7, 2024): B10.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date March 6, 2024 and has the title “John Walker, Tech Executive Who Popularized AutoCAD, Dies at 74.” In both the online and print versions, the word fun is in italics.)

In Managing Workers Firms Should “Experiment with New Forms of Freedom”

(p. C1) In a classic 1958 lecture, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin distinguished between two types of freedom. Negative liberty is freedom from obstacles and interference by others. Positive liberty is freedom to control your own destiny and shape your own life. If we want to maximize net freedom in the future of work, we need to expand both positive and negative liberty.

The debate about whether work should be in-person, remote-first or hybrid is too narrow. Yes, people want the freedom to decide where they work. But they also want the freedom to decide who they work with, what they work on and when they work. Real flexibility is having autonomy to choose your people, your purpose and your priorities.

. . .

(p. C2) We need boundaries to protect individual focus time too.

. . .

One effective strategy seems to be blocking quiet time in the mornings as a window for deep work, and then coming together after lunch. When virtual meetings are held in the afternoon, people are less likely to multitask—probably in part because they’ve been able to make progress on their own tasks.

. . .

Flexible work is here to stay, but companies that resist it may not be. One of the biggest mistakes I saw companies make before Covid was failing to experiment with new forms of freedom.

For the full commentary, see:

Adam Grant. “The Real Meaning of Freedom at Work.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021 [sic]): C1-C2.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated October 8, 2021 [sic], and has the same title as the print version.)

If Standards of Merit Are Too Narrow, the Solution Is to Improve Them, Not to Reject Merit

(p. A17) In recent decades, . . ., it has become clear that the definition of merit reflected in quantitative standards was too narrow and created new forms of exclusion. This has led some thinkers to reject the idea of merit and view it as an affront to individual equality and social solidarity.

This overreaction is wrong in theory and damaging in practice. Whenever the ability to do a task well matters, so does merit. Our current challenge is not to discard merit, but rather to understand it better—and use this new understanding to extend opportunities to all who can take advantage of it.

For the full commentary, see:

William A. Galston. “POLITICS & IDEAS; Merit Means More Than Grades and Tests.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, July 26, 2023): A17.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 25, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

Super Agers “Have a Purpose”

I have personally benefitted from Vernon Smith’s longevity, since he graciously wrote two drafts of a positive blurb for my Openness to Creative Destruction book.

(p. A5) Vernon L. Smith, 97, is a very busy man.

The economist at Chapman University just finished writing a book about Adam Smith and works about eight hours a day, seven days a week in his home office in Colorado Springs, Colo. He enjoys chatting with friends on Facebook and attending concerts with his daughter.

“I still have a lot of stuff to do. I want to keep at it,” said Smith, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002.

. . .

(p. A10) Researchers studying “super agers,” people over 80 who have mental faculties of people decades younger, said strong social relationships are important for keeping brains sharp.

The same is true for people who live beyond 100, said Stacy Andersen, a behavioral neuroscientist at Boston University and co-director of the New England Centenarian Study.

“They have a purpose. They have things they want to go out and do every day,” Andersen said.

Smith says his work and his family keep him motivated and driven.

“I want to go to at least 106,” he said.

For the full story, see:

Dominique Mosbergen. “Several Factors Help Ward Off Mental Decline.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, Feb. 16, 2024): A5.

(Note: ellipsis and bracketed year added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Feb. 15, 2024, and has the title “How to Stay Mentally Sharp Into Your 80s and Beyond.” The last sentence quoted above appears in the online, but not in the print, version of the article.)

My book mentioned above is:

Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

FDA Delays Apple Offering Consumers Quick and Convenient Blood Pressure Readings

Doesn’t the FDA do harm by requiring that Apple watch blood pressure monitor be equal in accuracy to a standard clinical blood pressure monitor? Many people will not take the time and effort to get frequent readings from a standard blood pressure monitor in a clinic. But many of them would check their blood pressure conveniently on their watch. Isn’t a less accurate reading better than no reading at all?

(p. A1) Apple’s widening effort to turn its nine-year-old watch from a luxury timepiece into the ultimate all-in-one medical device is taking it into territory that is legally treacherous as well as potentially profitable.

. . .

(p. A2) “The studies that we’ve seen are not yet reassuring that they’re ready for prime time or for clinical use,” said Jordana Cohen, associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania.

To secure Food and Drug Administration clearance for selling a blood-pressure monitor, companies must demonstrate through the FDA’s 510(k) process that their device’s accuracy is comparable to an existing, already cleared device, she added.

Similarly, tracking glucose through noninvasive skin sensors is generally less precise than direct blood analysis, with factors such as skin tone and temperature affecting accuracy.

For the full story, see:

Dalvin Brown and Aaron Tilley. “Tech and Legal Hurdles Hinder Apple’s Quest for Medical Watch.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, Dec. 29, 2023): A1-A2.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date December 28, 2023, and has the title “Apple Keeps Chasing the Ultimate Health-Tracking Watch—but It Could Take Years.”)

“Discrimination on the Basis of Race, Which DEI Does, Is Literally the Definition of Racism”

(p. B1) Ackman and Musk, two billionaires with wide followings on X, which Musk owns, have . . . taken up the fight against DEI, giving it a bigger platform.

“Discrimination on the basis of race, which DEI does, is literally the definition of racism,” Musk posted in January [2024].

. . .

Ackman has frequently focused on DEI in the context of college campuses, where he says such initiatives foment antisemitism.

For the full story, see:

Tali Arbel. “Diversity Groups Urge Ackman, Musk Pushback.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, February 8, 2024): B1 & B10.

(Note: ellipses and bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Feb. 7, 2024, and has the title “The Case Against Ackman and Musk’s Anti-DEI Stance.”)

Akio Toyoda Had the Courage to Predict the Current EV Debacle

On Nov. 25, 2022, I ran a blog entry that reported on the severe criticism that then-Toyota-President Akio Toyoda [sic] was receiving for his skepticism that charging infrastructure and consumer preferences were ready for an immediate full switch to electric vehicles. Because he had the courage to keep Toyota focused on hybrids, consumers now have more of what they need and want. As a result Toyota prospers. In a capitalist system, firms run by executives with foresight and courage receive their just reward.

(p. B1) TOKYO—Gasoline-electric vehicles are flying off dealer lots in the U.S. and generating a windfall for the reigning hegemon of hybrids, Toyota Motor.

Toyota on Tuesday [February 6, 2024] forecast a record $30.3 billion net profit for the fiscal year ending March thanks to higher sales of hybrid vehicles in all of its major markets. The results sent Toyota shares up 4.8% in Tokyo to close at a record high.

Hybrid sales grew last year at a faster clip than sales for pure electric vehicles in the U.S. and some other markets. Signs have emerged that the EV push might have gotten ahead of U.S. consumers who are worried about charging problems and higher prices. That has steered them toward less expensive hybrids, which can be filled up with gasoline.

Automakers that had been rushing to pivot toward full EVs are now reconsidering. General Motors said last week it would introduce some plug-in hybrid models in North America after facing pressure from dealers. Ford Motor said last year it would seek to quadruple its hybrid sales in the next five years.

For the full story, see:

River Davis. “Toyota Is Cashing In As Hybrid Sales Boom.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, February 7, 2024): B1-B2.

(Note: bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date February 6, 2024, and has the title “Toyota Cashes In on Booming Hybrid Sales.”)