Keeping up with the FITs, 4/4

Heather Heying defines "female;" David Sacks on censorship; Michael H. Creswell on the Achievement Gap; Iain Murray on curbing regulation; Ed West on sanctions and consequences

Heather Heying writes,

Females are individuals who do or did or will or would, but for developmental or genetic anomalies, produce eggs. Eggs are large, sessile gametes. Gametes are sex cells. In plants and animals, and most other sexually reproducing organisms, there are two sexes: female and male1. Like “adult,” the term female applies across many species. Female is used to distinguish such people from males, who produce small, mobile gametes (e.g. sperm, pollen)2.

. . .Just as pineapples are not apples, transwomen are not women. Because transwomen are male.

In an interview with Bari Weiss, David Sacks says,

one of these big tech companies takes the lead, and then all the others follow suit. It's like signaling. And it becomes like a speech blockade. And when each company basically joins the blockade, the pressure grows on every other company to do the same thing. Otherwise, they're subject to a boycott or a rage mob on Twitter. They're basically pressured into it. The pressure keeps growing on all the others to do the same thing. The thing that's very vexing about the problem is it appears to be decentralized. It's not like there's one centralized actor. But the collective effect is that they all do it.

. . .the pressure comes from both above and below. You've got the United States Senate basically saying: ‘Nice little social network you got there. Real shame for anything to happen to it.’ So that’s pressure that's coming from Washington. You've got the coercion of private companies by these enormously powerful people in government who are using the levers of government power to conduct antitrust lawsuits against them, to push bills through Congress to break them up, or otherwise harm their businesses. That's what's going on from above. 

From below, you've got the employees and the tweet mobs and basically forming these boycotts and subjecting the management of the company to pressure. 

. . .It would be possible to create a social media moderation policy that is rooted in First Amendment principles. That way, at least social media moderation will be grounded in case law that's been developed over decades by the Supreme Court as opposed to being made up by these social networks as they please.

Michael H. Creswell writes,

colleges and universities have decided that they know how to close the achievement gap and that they should assume the primary role in doing so. Although these institutions rarely state it this baldly, it is nonetheless the inescapable conclusion one draws from their words and actions.

Call this the Wizard of Oz theory: the only thing that weak black students lack is a diploma, and college can remedy that. It seems as though every university administrator has to act as if the Wizard of Oz theory is true. But no rational person can believe it. It is a lie that everyone lives by. Is there a word for that?

Iain Murray writes,

A commission could be established to reduce the backlog of regulation, while rules such as sunset provisions could be put in place to ensure that any delegated authority reverts to Congress automatically after a period of time. Other ideas, like a Devil’s Advocate “Office of No” within the administration aimed at challenging any proposed regulation, and rules to stop either the executive or Congress from abusing a genuine crisis like a pandemic to grab new powers, could be usefully explored.

I like the “Office of No” idea. It resembles my idea for a Chief Auditor function. Something that is set up to try to check regulators’ power.

Ed West links to Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, who writes,

Fearing the effects of a future blockade, Japan invaded Manchuria. When Chinese forces sought to push out the Japanese invaders, they were subjected to a blockade. The consequences of that blockade were profound. Weber argues that hyperinflation was a key factor in the fall of the Nationalist regime. “Inflation began with the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and by the mid-1940s had evolved into chronic hyperinflation,” she writes. The war led to a decrease in the supply of key commodities and a rapid increase in the money supply as the Nationalists sought to finance their war effort by printing money. Weber also makes passing reference to the role of “Japanese blockages” in exacerbating the “breakdown of the supply and distribution of food grains,” which had reached “a scale unknown in imperial times.” As the government struggled to bring prices under control, peasants confronted increasingly onerous taxes, urban wage earners and state employees resented the loss in their purchasing power, and the army grew restive as food supplies declined. The menace of inflation, driven in part by Japan’s undeclared war and economic sanctions, helped to pave the way for communist forces to cement their hold over China.

In spite of such sobering examples from history of unintended consequences,

the global attitude towards economic war continues to be decidedly laissez-faire. Western states that painstakingly rebuilt a liberal economic order after World War II are increasingly dependent on an economic weapon that fundamentally undermines that order.

I highly recommend following the link to the essay. Don’t forget to share my post.

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