Rational vs irrational prejudice
Spoiler: I'm going to strip off the rational/irrational, but need to start with it.

In 1933 the surviving automakers were desperately working in two directions.

1. The 20s were a time of easy money and no effort. When you can sell more every year without improving the product, you don't improve the product. 1920 cars and 1930 cars were precisely identical. In 1931 the rubber check of Share Value hit the road and bounced. All manufacturers had to start improving FAST.

2. When you can sell more every year, you don't put effort into salesmanship. When the rubber bounced, manufacturers had to focus hard on advertising and publicity, and they had to do it efficiently and effectively, without any waste.

Studebaker was doing both. In '34 it introduced the beautiful and practical Land Cruiser, the first sedan with a usable trunk, and the best use of streamlining. Chrysler's Airflow, far more expensive to develop, made streamlining look horrible, and didn't use the newly created rear space.

Studie was also trying sales and promotion gimmicks. After strong success in many small-scale races, they decided to push their home-state advantage by entering a car in the Indy 500. They also sold custom-made racing engines to other teams that wanted to build their own car with a Studie engine.

The factory team was made up of employees with a passion for racing. They hired Luther Johnson, an experienced champion driver, to head the team.

Here's where the irrational prejudice comes in. Before the race, one of the mechanics let his car-loving girlfriend sit in the race car for a while to share the experience. This was normal and courteous. In real life as opposed to NYC life, men and women share experiences and divide labor naturally.

Whoops! Luther Johnson had an old nautical-style** prejudice that girl cooties jinxed a vehicle. He refused to drive the cootie-infected car, and Studie had to let one of the inexperienced mechanics drive. They lost.

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There are two opposite types of IRRATIONAL prejudice. Luther Johnson's cootie is one type, familiar and always named as such. Luther assumed that girls had a special quality or property which doesn't exist in real life, and his ANTIREALISTIC assumption lost the race.

The other type of irrational prejudice is the universal and lethally false assumption that everyone has exactly the SAME qualities and properties, which means that all teams and schools and organizations must consist of the various types in exact proportion to population. The racing team must be 51% female, 12% black, 1% Oriental, 3% homosexual, and so on ad infinitum, even if the forced conscripts have no talent or interest in racing.

RATIONAL prejudice isn't prejudice at all. If you let people accomplish a task without any ANTIREALISTIC THEORIES, they will balance out the assignments, find the best division of labor for the talents in the actual team, and GET SHIT DONE.

What's the ultimate purpose of life? GETTING SHIT DONE. If you want to GET SHIT DONE, whether it's winning the Indy or designing software or cleaning the house or just plain LIVING, you need to abandon both styles of ANTIREALISTIC ASSUMPTIONS and let people balance things on their own. The result will almost always be "discriminatory" by the genocidal standards of "human" "rights", but it will improve life for everyone.

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Footnote 1: I've previously described a parallel and simultaneous irrational prejudice at GM, who did a better job of solving their problem.

Footnote 2: The original nautical prejudice makes sense, for the same reason as the equivalent military prejudice. A crew of hardass men trying to get along for several months in a small space are going to have fights. Add one or two women to the mix, and the fights will be uncontrollable. Luther's version doesn't make sense. He wasn't objecting to a woman participating in the crew, he was allergic to the mere memory of a woman touching the car.

Labels: Equipoise, From rights to duties, skill-estate

  ¶ 6:50 AM