My Three Theses: Racism Does Not Pay

I understand race and slavery through My Three Theses on Abolition.

1. We abolished slavery because slavery Does Not Pay.
2. We abolished racism because racism Does Not Pay.
3. We will abolish liberal race politics because wokism Does Not Pay.

I discussed Thesis One, on slavery, here. Now let us discuss Thesis Two, that racism Does Not Pay.

Really there should be no need to go beyond the fact of Jim Crow laws in the South of the United States after the end of Reconstruction -- i.e., the military occupation of the South -- after the Civil War.

Why did the South need Jim Crow? Because otherwise people would not discriminate against blacks. At least, not enough.

Yes. Political folk have a real problem with businessmen and employers and corporations. They really don't want to discriminate. It's costly to have racially segregated railroad trains. It is crazy not to hire marginalized minority workers at a lower wage than privileged majority workers -- if it is more profitable. It is annoying to have to send blacks to the back of the bus. It means unhappy customers.

And clearly, the racism in employment since the Civil Rights era, half hidden by a score of euphemisms such as Affirmative Action, Diversity and Inclusion, Equity, and so on, costs money. Because all the HR and race-counting and Human Rights Commission busy work that a modern corporation is obliged to perform is a pure cost. Oh boy, what it would save not to have all those busybody women in HR collecting race and gender data so that the government can use it against the corporation!

But let us not just blame the racists for screwing the economy. Basically all wage and hour laws are put there to stop eevil corporate chieftains from using employees to get the maximum profit out of them, just like Marx said. 

Only, of course, nobody knows what makes the most money. Is it treating the employee as a widget? Is it treating an employee like a human? Is it reducing everyone to contractors with no benefits and no tenure? Encouraging and subsidizing employees that improve their skills? Firing everyone over thirty? Providing extensive benefits from pensions to health insurance? Paying premium wages? Paying low wages supplemented by profit-sharing in the good years?

Basically, I believe, the culture of capitalism is that you are the slave of the consumer. Whatever the consumer wants, and whatever price the consumer is willing to pay, that is final. And then there is trust. The point of trust is not that it is a good thing, although it is. The value of trust is that it reduces costs. That is why diamond merchants are often Hasidic Jews: they have a closed community and trust and reputation is everything, so they can exchange valuable diamonds and have faith that none of their fellow merchants will cheat them.

There is a Science to explain this. It is called the iterative Prisoner's Dilemma. It does not pay to cheat unless you will never see the other party to a transaction again.

This capitulation to the market is hard, very hard, for humans to do because we are all social animals and instinctively look for protection from our kindred and from the people that we know. Capitalism is an utter revolution in social relations that says that you trust those people that are trustworthy. It says that your life and prosperity depends on you serving your fellows, doing things that they are willing to pay for. And the customer is always right.

Racism is the old way, the way of the hunter-gatherer band, the way of the village, the clan, the ethnic ghetto in the big city. And it Does Not Pay.

Next up: We will abolish liberal race politics because wokism Does Not Pay.