The Myth of Equal Opportunity

The idea of equal opportunity is in many ways a myth. In ways we are all the same, however we also all have our differences as human beings. Some are taller, faster, smarter, better looking, whatever. The three hundred pound athlete has a better chance to become a Professional Football Player, the 100 pound person has a better chance to become a Jockey. Should we give the tall child drugs that stunt their growth so that their classmates will have an “equal” advantage to play basketball? Should we refuse an education to the smart child, which happens in government schools, so that the other students will have an “equal” chance to succeed in the academic setting? Maybe we should disfigure the good looking?

Every individual has an advantage over most other individuals in some way or another. There are exceptional athletes who aren’t that bright, people of genius intelligence who can’t walk straight and people born to incredibly wealthy parents who become afflicted with physical or mental disabilities. You can create equal opportunity by taking freedom away. The problem is that everyone can only be equal at the lowest level. You must break the legs of the talented athlete so that their opportunity is equal to the person born with a disability, you must lobotomize the genius so that they have equal opportunity to the person who is mentally slow, and everyone must live in poverty, so that nobody has more than the person who does not manage money properly or decides that sitting on a beach is preferable to working.

That is why freedom is so important. Only in a free society does everybody have a chance to use what talents they have to choose the life they wish to live. Some will be wiser, some will have more money, some will have better health, some will be better looking and some will be more athletic. Some will have more successful relationships and some will be happier. Some will enjoy sitting on a beach. It’s a little messy but it beats squandering all the world’s talent so that we all have an “equal” opportunity. The only way we all have an “equal” opportunity is if we all have no opportunity.

The National Debt

All recent presidents have left office with a huge national debt. I think there are two reasons for this:

1. The purse strings of the nation are controlled by the House of Representatives. The members of Congress know that the American public is ignorant enough that talking heads can blame deficits on the president.
2. It is easier to buy votes and power by borrowing money than by finding a source of income. Especially if you know you’re not the one who has to pay the money back.

One of the ways to combat deficit spending is to stop thee unproductive argument of "This or that president was better for the economy."  In reality, the president has little control on the economy or overall government spending.

Workplace Diversity: A Conscious Conservative View

It is best to hire whoever will bring the most profit to your business. So hiring decisions should have nothing to do with a person’s social or ethnic background. What it has to do with is what skills a person has and how they will apply those skills to the job which you need completed. If somebody keeps an open mind and concentrates on maximizing profits, they will necessarily end up hiring a diverse workforce of all types. One of the most overlooked types of diversity is psychological. There are people who naturally lean towards being more analytic, more organized, more action oriented, more empathetic, etc. Having a mix of these people in the right positions is more important than gender, social or ethnic background.

Diversity problems in the workplace usually come from two sources. The first is that rather than maximizing profit, people in large organizations want to build empires within the organization. That leads to hiring relatives and people who appear “loyal” over people who are competent. Often that will destroy diversity because it leads to people hiring people like them. The second source of problems comes when the organization tries to fix the first problem by creating some sort of arbitrary “diversity policy.” These policies invariably focus on simple, measurable external factors like ethnicity, gender or age. They miss the more profitable aspects of diversity such as differences in temperament, values, wisdom and emotional intelligence.