Uber is now most certainly not a start up, and now that it has power it's starting to exert that power on those "down the line", as you say.

So, in terms of not overpricing the product, there is a valid discussion to have. But in terms of being a pushover, that's a bad thing. Often nice people get taken advantage of. So ther needs to be a clear differentiator between nice pricing/marketing and being firm and leading from the front. A founder needs respect from their team and nice might not make that happen.

Freedom of association covers this case. If Company A irrationally discriminates systematically against any competent group, Company B can hire members of that group at a discount and beat Company A on labor costs. As companies C, D, E, etc., figure this out, their demand bids up wages, and everyone wins except Company A.

But no. Freedom of association is biased against "marginalized" groups—an ever-expanding set that seems to be converging on "anyone who isn't a normal white (or maybe Asian) male". In the land of the free, "freedom" means "your company can hire whom it pleases, as long as the demographic pattern of those hires pleases me."

It's not the job of companies to make "marginalized" groups feel welcome, or to be a good "culture fit" for anyone in particular, unless you (and the US Federal Government) make it their job. Which it seems you're only too happy to do. Destroying freedom of association? Apparently a small price to pay.

> It's not the job of companies to make "marginalized" groups feel welcome, or to be a good "culture fit" for anyone in particular, unless you (and the US Federal Government) make it their job.

That would be the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Yes, it is your company's job to ensure that you are hiring fairly across all marginalized groups.

You are free to "associate" with whomever you wish, at all times. But when through seeming coincidence some 96% of tech jobs are held by men I'd say there's something larger afoot.

My theory is sexism. It provides a testable hypothesis that has been proven multiple times. It makes predictions on other effects we'd see. Those have also been proven.

What's yours?

That's the one. It seems like an obviously good idea. Are all seemingly good ideas actually good ideas?

But when through seeming coincidence some 96% of tech jobs are held by men I'd say there's something larger afoot.

Through what seeming coincidence are 100% of NFL player jobs held by men? Or 80% of health-care jobs held by women?

My theory is sexism. It provides a testable hypothesis that has been proven multiple times. It makes predictions on other effects we'd see. Those have also been proven.

Sexism is (a) not mutually exclusive with group differences and (b) is, in many of its claimed forms, wildly inconsistent with many observable facts. As an exercise, I suggest you try making a list of such facts. You might start by listing job categories dominated by women. (I'll get you going: health care, day care, education, publishing.) As a follow-up, try listing areas where men are objectively worse-off than women. (Maybe start with: homelessness, intellectual disability, autism, workplace fatalities, imprisonment, lifespan.)

If you scratch most supposedly definitive examples of unfairness caused by sexism, you'll find some variant of the Blank Slate hypothesis underneath. Once you admit the possibility that men and women might not be blank slates, many of the patterns that appear to be "sexist" suddenly make sense. For example, many people assume that women and men have the same innate aptitude and inclination for "tech" (broadly defined). From this point of view, any deviations from "equality" (i.e., proportional representation) must derive either from overt sexism or from an endemic sexist culture. But when you accept the possibility that men and women may differ in more than stature and genitalia, suddenly it's not so clear.

What's yours?

Due to a combination of genetic and non-genetic differences, different groups are systematically different, and have different aptitudes and inclinations. Group differences lead to a first-order effect: all NFL players are male because all qualified players are male; some majority of those inclined to health care are female. The preponderance of a particular group also leads to a group culture reinforcing group identity. This leads to a second-order effect: female health-care workers create a feminine culture, attracting further female workers (while repelling male workers). This latter effect is sometimes called "sexism", but it's an inevitable consequence of human nature. Efforts to fight it will (a) cause massive collateral damage while (b) not working. (Has the Civil Rights Act of 1964 brought racial and gender harmony? It seems to me that in many ways things are worse than ever.)

I'd guess we actually agree on many things, and in particular we want many of the same outcomes—or, at least, I want a subset of the outcomes you want. Let's say I want O and you want O + O'. Included in O is people of all races, colors, religions, genders, and national origins living prosperous, fulfilled lives free (as much as possible) of conflict and strife. Included in O' is the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Often (as with the Civil Rights Act) the intent of policies in O' is to achieve outcomes in O, but I believe that not only does O' not achieve O, it frequently achieves not-O. Believers in O' would rather wreck college athletics with Title IX, or wreck the black community with welfare, than admit that O' doesn't achieve its stated goals. That would lead to their being accused of "sexism" or "racism", and O'-believers are as eager to avoid such accusations as they are quick to deploy them against their enemies. (Whereas I don't care, because I see them for the Orwellian terms of abuse they are. Just call me a "crimethinker" and be done with it.)

I don't know of many people who assert that people are blank slates, they just take equality as the null-hypothesis until they see evidence to the contrary.

And I'm not sure what you mean by "suddenly make sense". Differences caused by discrimination also "make sense", the question is which is the better assumption. I think it's unhelpful to assume innate differences, because that assumption encourages discriminatory differences, and so confounds observation.

>Let's say I want O and you want O + O'.

People don't necessarily want the Civil Rights Act, they just think it's necessary to kick us out of the local maxima of self-reinforcing bias. Ideally, all the protected classes get their chance, and over time people come to realise they're actually equally good at most things, and then the act is no longer necessary.

>Has the Civil Rights Act of 1964 brought racial and gender harmony? It seems to me that in many ways things are worse than ever.

Cultural change is a slow process, but everything I've seen suggests that things are definitely far better now than they were in 1964. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

>Believers in O' would rather wreck college athletics with Title IX,

Personally I don't think women's leagues are an ideal solution, and I'd prefer a tiered unisex system that encourages competition at every skill level.

>or wreck the black community with welfare, than admit that O' doesn't achieve its stated goals.

Poverty traps are caused by economic policy, not anti-discrimination policy.

>Efforts to fight it will (a) cause massive collateral damage while (b) not working.

Do you have any other examples of this "massive collateral damage", because I'm not finding your examples particularly compelling.

You've not been paying attention to the media then. But even a "null hypothesis" of equality is indefensible given the facts. Everything heritable is correlated to a lesser or greater extent, that's just how genetics works. Pretty much anything you can think of a measure for - height, weight, IQ, myers-briggs personality traits, religiosity... - will have different averages for different sexes. It would take an extraordinary coincidence for job performance at some particular job to be uncorrelated with sex.

> And I'm not sure what you mean by "suddenly make sense". Differences caused by discrimination also "make sense", the question is which is the better assumption.

I think there are cases where people will tie themselves in epicycle-like knots where innate differences offer a much simpler explanation - see e.g. http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/24/perceptions-of-required...

> I think it's unhelpful to assume innate differences, because that assumption encourages discriminatory differences, and so confounds observation.

Assuming that any difference is evidence of discrimination is equally unhelpful. If you want the truth you can't assume one way or the other; you need to consider all the possibilities.

> Poverty traps are caused by economic policy, not anti-discrimination policy.

It can be both. Some anti-discrimination policies (e.g. having black students taught by black teachers) have made things worse for those they were trying to help. And I think those mistakes largely happened because the people involved were unwilling to even consider the possibility of innate differences.

> Do you have any other examples of this "massive collateral damage", because I'm not finding your examples particularly compelling.

Compelling (at least to me), relevant-to-here example: it's illegal in the US, and possibly elsewhere, to use an IQ or similar test in hiring (without doing an expensive study that large organizations may be able to afford but startups generally aren't). This is foolish; it damages the ability of companies to hire the best person for the job, dragging down the whole economy.

It's possible to be basically nice (firm, strong in your dealings, smart, deal-making, but nice all the same). Instead of being an archetypal asshole.

p.s. I recoil at the term "culture-fit", shivers down the spine. You make some valid points.

But take the IT industry. I just saw a startup offering unlimited Amazon books, unlimited Starbucks coffee, half day Fridays, zero cost health care, and remote work, all in an attempt to attract employees.

I'm not saying the Uber drivers should all go into IT, but there is a shortage of business administrators, educators, and health care workers in this country (and I'm sure lots of other fields).

Uber's technology isn't novel and will be replicated. Robot cars will probably make them a commodity. Alienating the frontline is selling the future.

Before Wal-Mart adopted a business model dependent on government subsidy of the workforce, they paid well and gave even part time workers significant discounts on stock purchases. When that stopped, and they took the asshole route, the shopping experience turned into the current state -- a few steps away from DMV.

There's no competitive advantage to paying your drivers well, there's no legal compulsion to pay drivers well, the only reason to pay your drivers well is to be nice.

Your example is bad because the reason all those incentives are offered is because IT workers are in demand and so market forces are forcing employers to offer lots of benefits. Not because they're nice.

That of course has a very simple view of niceness: you view people in only two categories. But I think it generalizes nicely to the nuanced groups people interact with: make the core group bigger or just be nicer to everyone. Of the two, I think the second is the hardest.