BlogWonks

While reading the many forums concerned with men’s issues, I came across a post that typified the current argument that many men and women are having while discussing the new employment law in Norway. In case you haven’t heard yet, a little while back Norway passed another “affirmative action” type law, or as the EU union would put it, a “positive discrimination” law. No matter what you call it a rose by any other name WOULD smell as sweet, and a pile of horse biscuits would smell just as poor.

The new law is simple, and is pretty much a form of blackmail (as most positive discrimination laws are). Basically a company with a board must by a certain time have a minimum of 40% women seated upon it or ELSE! That or else ranges from fines to the dissolution of the firm.

Now Norway is not a large country, and it has some special things going for it, so some social experiments have a clever boost there, that does not make them practical everywhere. Over the past few months there have been various conversations in the background over this subject. Most focus on speculation as what the response would be. In general the response has been pretty much absent. What’s more is that these companies have all but ignored this decree.

In general when the two camps square off on the issue the argument becomes one of business and economics more than gender politics in the pure sense. It boils down to an argument of whether companies and government should fund socialist causes. Of course the person arguing rarely realizes that socialism is what they are asking for, and are quite upset if you point it out (often citing all manor of reasons that that just couldn’t be so. this said as if a socialist country has within it none of the kinds of people she cites).

Another slant to these arguments are ones that assume some odd vague notion of how money gets into corporate hands in the first place. There is a tacit assumption (that once again they get touchy about if pointed out), that the company can just make more money, or people that are there would accept less money, or that the government can just print more money and give it out without raising our taxes to cover the spread, and those are just the more complete ideas that actually even contemplate that money comes from somewhere, and that it might be vaguely connected to what they do at the office.

There are lots of suggestions on the table. Of course no one can assemble all of them, but they usually aren’t too far from the ones you hear most about. They are either what follows or some combination of what follows.

Just put more women on the boards by adding them without removing anyone.
Remove a portion of the men from the boards and replace them with women.
Move your corporate headquarters to another country.
Sell your company to a foreign entity and cash out.
Do nothing and see if the government would really do this, then act.

The first three are expensive and a company may not recover from the action. The third being the most drastic and disruptive, and being that many of the largest firms are oil or energy concerns with majority ownership by government, moving is not easy.

The fourth is a valid option for many smaller companies whose businesses, technology, or IP are easily exportable, and whose owners and operators feel cant support or operate with a drain on their resources.

The last is the action that all the companies seem to actually have chosen. This makes sense. The herd basically dares the predator to attack it. When it does, only a few can be taken care of at a time, and so the others then have time to come into some form of compliance. True to form, they are looking for a sacrifice to let them know how things will pan out. The largest are betting on government wanting to make an example that doesn’t hurt the economy much directly, and so they are pretty safe.

Then here comes the Calvary. The EU declares that what Norway is doing is not allowed. Not because Norway is part of the EU, but because Norway agreed to internalize certain legal principals in exchange for trade rights and such (a form of blackmail perfected by the federal government in the U.S. used as a way to exert federal control over states that should be sovereign, who now through such actions are slaves).

All this is well and good and in general can turn international politics into an odd form of spectator sport, complete with side bets on outcomes. Like any good stakes game the favored don’t remain favored forever. People used to be on the radical feminists as the favored to win. This has depressed the odds in betting on other choices, and saner heads prevailing, for a long time. However, things do change. The EU stepping in and such, is just an empowered political monster (empowered to look at such things by the radical feminists), that in truth always had its own mind and always will. It chooses sides based on how popular something is, and so any ideology that comes in and starts to demand such life changes, tends to annoy a lot of people, and erode their power base. And while lack of breeding will eventually remove such ideas, way before it, and the population will become tired of having to compete with a socialist millstone around its neck.

The sad part is that with this new super hero swooping down on the scene no one really got to address the first two points. Either firing board members or expanding the boards. We forgot that it was the conceptual premise that these things can be done with minimal effect that got them into the position of considering such a drastic move. It seems that feminists are wonderful at seeing a rule change that will immediately give something they are focusing on an advantage, but when it comes to seeing or being able to have a clue as to where or what will happen, they are as blind as someone born with no eyes and no optic nerve. The ideology that gives them the strength to twaddle in everyone else’s business also blinds them from being able to predict with any accuracy the outcome of what they conceive.

As people with socialist ideals (known or not), they totally do not understand the concept of competition. I also quickly realized that one major reason that feminist leaders and the average lady feminist can’t do math. Despite all the flutter over what Larry Summers said or didn’t say, the fact is plain that when talking to, or discussing things that business should or shouldn’t do, that math is not their strong point. What happens next is also another blind spot they never do anything about.

Given all of this the EU stepping in, is at best just a delay in such an action. They will argue the premise that because the boards are not comprised of more women then there MUST be discrimination. We no longer have to prove discrimination, we only have to show by this simple rule and we know that even if cleverly undetectable, we MUST have discrimination. From here the cry goes up to “what will we do about it?”, and then the premise that you can change a rule and not change the rest of the game is ignored, so that they can simplify and get rid of annoying things in their plans. Things that really irk planners, such as intended consequences vs unintended consequences. With their eye on the prize how can anything be unintended?

The board is generally the operative entity of a larger firm. Its structure is not arbitrary, despite what people think. Qualifications are not just on book knowledge. Execution, style and how people regard other people comes into play. So while you can say that a person is qualified by their degrees, this has little bearing on whether they can actually do the job. Business leaders recognize an uncomfortable truth about business. That whatever they think or however they think things should be, they have to be the way the clients want them to be. They are stuck between a proverbial rock and a hard place, and often accepting the yolk of reduced efficiency over no output.

This is clearly evident when you travel and compare American airline companies’ vs. European or Asian airlines. While American companies know that passengers (male AND female) enjoy dealing with an attractive woman, they are forced to pretend that this truth doesn’t exist, and that they suffer no economic hardships for it. perhaps if you don’t want to believe you can trick yourself into saying it makes no difference, though then you would be hard put to explain why they don’t use more ugly people in advertising, and entertainment. The airlines from other countries that don’t do this consistently get higher points in customer satisfaction, and if you still think that this doesn’t have an effect on the bottom line then perhaps this discussion isn’t for you. Given that this is an American thing, feminists must export such business ideas to every other country or else their claim of no effect can be seen as not true. They rely on homogeneity to erase the perception of drag on economic performance (the core reason that socialism doesn’t work is it needs to be totalitarian, and then its problems become phantoms that everyone knows, but can’t see, like the emperors clothes).

If more than two companies fire their male board members you can be sure that they will create a competing firm. They will not be able to walk out and enter a market that is now flooded with upper management expertise. They will not sit still either. They will exercise their shares; depress the firm that fired them to get seed capitol. Create a new company registered in a ‘safe’ country, and then proceed to hire the top execs that before you couldn’t bribe away!!! They will then go head to head against the companies that now have a 40% level of inexperienced board members!!! Note that when the demand is so high, there is no way to assume with sanity that there are enough women who have the qualifications PAST education and such, to command such a position. Carly Fiorina was able to destroy in less than a few years a gigantic and hugely successful technology company that was often at the fore of new and clever technology. She made it a commodity printer company. There will be a whole lot of ladies who will use their new found position to experiment on the companies and peoples dimes. How else will they know what or what not to do, but to try, see what happens and go on? Meanwhile those other competitors know what to do and are not hobbled.

As far as keeping the employees to avoid that, and just increase the board… well now you just bloated a company’s management at its highest levels. What is accomplished is anathema to successful business: too many bosses, not enough workers doing work. In this scenario, those new people need infrastructure, and need salaries. The company only has a few options to choose from. Most women think that they can lower the board members salaries. Well in the last paragraph I didn’t mention golden parachutes, and that not only does the exodus cost you in a brain drain, but the company can be bankrupted by all the golden parachutes, to which it is still obligated. In this situation it’s put in the position of maintaining the ten million a year salary with bonuses, or has to kick in 100 million in golden parachute dollars (or some such thing).

So the money can’t come from the board if you intend to keep them and not operationally accomplish the first goal. Then they say, take it from the profits. Of course they don’t say how a company is supposed to prop up its stock value (what the owners think the company is worth in conjunction with the market), when now it has to stop disbursing the dividends it used to, so it can support a newly bloated board that contains people of power and not much to do! So you can’t take it from the profits without causing large valuation drops that will force layoffs.

So that means that you have to absorb the expense somehow. This means that you will have to go through the ranks and start cutting personnel. If the inevitable is a layoff, better layoff and preserve than not lay off, lose what you could save, and then layoff anyway. So the company has to find the money for each new board member, secretary, computers, electricity, etc… one board member representing a 10 million salary, actually costs more than double that to the firm! You would have to pare between 500 and 1000, $20k a year positions to do this. Of course then there are not enough workers. So you also have to trim medical before the overworked ones that remain and are fearful don’t cost too much in medical. You have to raid the pensions. Force long term employees to cash out early to save the cash. It’s an expensive process that feels like you are paying $2 to save every 5$.

All this is highly detrimental to the operation and functioning of what was before a healthy company. You can forget companies not on the top being able to absorb such change. There will be a lot of companies that will have to either work around the fines, or sell to larger (possibly foreign) concerns to avoid being taken apart. Often the workers get replaced, and management gets to preserve their structure on many levels and then continue to be able to work. It’s a forgone conclusion that to save their jobs they will decide to be swallowed up by a foreign company and operate as a subsidiary under its protective legal blanket.

All in all we have a classic feminist solution to a classical feminist non problem. of course the solution always seems to be one of “the operation was a success but the patient dies” variety, but hey, at least they are doing SOMETHING, no? I mean in the absence of your support and input, they are the people you want to make policy, decide what your kids are doing, take away your security in work, and all manner of fun adventures waiting those that decide to enter the fun house of feminist ideology.

Unless some people start doing some fancy explaining, we will shackle our companies while looking to Norway, and ignoring its special qualities (like a total population that is less than the city I live in)! Either company are engines of success as created by its founders, the markets demands, its ability to compete, and its employees efforts, or it’s just a tap to some economic maple tree for some socialist system of wealth redistribution. Already around the world fancy lawyers are sitting there trying to figure out how to put such things in place in their country. Not many people are opposing them as they think what they say will happen sounds so great. Perhaps its time that we start saying that these fantasies are not coming true. That these results promised are not what we are getting and demand either the results promised, or start refusing such solutions as our new direction.

We are playing a serious economic game here. To think our position is safe because its safe now and that represents always is not a real way to look at reality. When your king of the hill, you cant hobble yourself and expect to remain standing on the top of that hill. When we fall from that peak, the power, control, and choices that let us hobble ourselves will no longer be a choices of luxury. We will realize that this is something we can’t afford, and we will also realize that we will not be able to just climb back up on top. That we will have to hope that our children or grandchildren will be in a position to climb up again, though if we still continue to raise them this way, their lack of lofty living is a forgone conclusion.

Forcing companies to run races against competitors that are not forced to carry weights is training to lose. It’s always their answer while claiming to win. Perhaps now is a good time to see that they are more interested in power than in doing well, and being queen of a broken land is to them better than not being queen in a whole and productive nation.

So for them, it seems they prefer to rule in hell (of their creation and our tacit support), than serve in a heaven that they have to share power in.