"Underrepresentation does not equal racism" contradicts the academic party line ("systemic racism"). If a white person said something like that, they would get a lecture in "denying privilege". If an asian person said it, he would be ignored.

But I agree that the author's way of thinking is far healthier for any given individual. Which is why the author is so successful.

What do you mean by "academic party line"? The university system is not a party (let alone a communist party). Phrases like "denying privilege" are not general to all of academia, they are specific to certain people. What is your interest in portraying all academics as people who deliver lectures in denying privilege (or whatever)?

Leave the people who develop knowledge and disseminate it for the rest of society alone with your political agenda.

I have never heard an academic in a race-studies, Sociology, or Communications department seriously grapple with criticisms of the "systemic racism" hypothesis for the white/black performance gap, and nor have I heard any other hypothesis offered. Students and professors outside those departments dutifully recite the same theories. As far as I can see, academia is a den of groupthink and cultural Marxism when it comes to such issues.

Steven Pinker is a highly influential academic who criticizes positions like "underrepresentation implies discrimination". See for example his best-seller The Blank Slate (2002).

It doesn't contradict "systemic racism", it clarifies it. i.e. "a college degree does not equal intelligence"

What is the evidence that this is true? How much would it cost? (Coal provides ~30% of US electric power. It's not a trivial inconvenience to shut that down)

As I recall, environmentalists went all doom-and-gloom after hurricane Katrina, and that was followed by many years of below average hurricane activity. How many hurricanes per year could we prevent by spending, say, 10% of our GDP on carbon reduction? How many more hurricanes occur today than 100 years ago?

> How many more hurricanes occur today than 100 years ago?

Rhetorical question. It's not about the amount of hurricanes, but their strength and their path. Apparently Sandy was blocked by an anti-cyclone south of Greenland and instead of turning right it turned sharply left and made landfall. These highs are linked by latest research to the loss of ice in the Arctic. And connecting higher ocean temperature with more powerful hurricanes is trivial.

So, it is not about preventing hurricanes it is about preventing damage and victims and keeping the infrastructure functional. In this context you can easily justify closing fossil power plants.

Imagine if people could sell goods and services to each other without the resident government doing a quality check. What a hell that would be.

Wait a second, is this a certified political opinion that I'm replying to? Do you have your Internet politics license? I don't want to be cheated arguing with a low-quality commenter.

First, you're kinda putting words in my mouth. I'm not defending the law, I'm just pointing out that it's not as unjustified as people are making it out to be. The government provides and regulates education for children, it's not entirely unreasonable that they'd have their hand in higher education, too.

Also, it's nice to think that everybody would play nice, but without laws like this there are assholes who would teach people crap. Laws like this don't exist because somebody decided to make an arbitrary law out of nowhere. Apparently it was a big enough problem that the majority of people in Minnesota thought there should be a law...

No, it's absolutely fuckjng deplorable when a government stops the free flow of goods, services, and information to protect archaic business practices.

Where do you think the post office makes most of its money? It's basically a spam operation that subsidizes a useful service.

I'm glad you've found a pocket of the company that you enjoy working in. But the CEO is a sociopath, and that's bound to cause some trickle-down unpleasantness in the future. It already has, the company just changed its ways when it got bad press.

Equivalent is 3 years of work for every one year of bachelors degree missing (so partially college helps)

The marginal utility of college is declining. Our near ancestors got a lot out of a college degree. The author is noticing that we won't get nearly as much.

Becoming familiar with dozens of esoteric APIs that may change next month is not the fun kind of learning. The practice of programming is full of a lot more busywork than it looks like from the outside.

If the western world (re)colonized all the dysfunctional nations run by warlords that prevent relief from getting to people that need it, that would be very helpful. Strangely, nobody seems to consider this solution. Imposing order and good government on areas with pathologically bad governments seems obviously good.