Listening to Freakanomics Book Club interview of Economist John List about his book The Voltage Effect. List is frank when discussing his time at Uber that he felt no powerlessness any minorities of the skin color, gender and sexual orientation varieties. It is asserted that he is adept to the environment of hyper-rational, high pressure, continuous criticisms and white high-power culture (let’s call these mean organizations—meanorgs) because of his academic training, that most people, like those who couldn’t deal with Uber competition, are more like Homer Simpson—they’re dumb.

This is a truly hard red pill to swallow. For one thing, it is being delivered by a white economist who is prized for his white childhood poverty—His being white and working low wage jobs while growing up is what makes him special. His idea is that most people are dumber than economist(and people who scale up things) assumes them to be. While he does sprinkle in the familiar refrains of diversity, it just sounds so disingenuous. Why would any existing meanorg want diversity of ideas when most people are dumb and irrational ? His thesis is self contradicting at best.

So, what do I want? If all these highly prized smart white people are coming up with nasty ideas, what exactly would I prefer?

I don’t know, and this isn’t a snarky comment about myself being a Homer Simpson too. And honestly, minorities finding themselves poorly prepared for meanorg is not an inaccurate observation. What is lurking in the back of some minorities’ mind might be that the meanorg isn’t the best way and that we refuse to conform to its norms and demands. We don’t want this, we don’t want to tie someone up and whip them into submission and we don’t think leaders should either.(for example) There shouldn’t be formal alphas, betas and gamma assignments in society even transiently. I mean, this is one of western prime objections to Confucianism is that it assigns roles to different humans with associated rights, duties and powers. We do not conform Confucian prescriptions any more. Just as we might want to abolish meanorgs .

It’s just a thought, followed by regular disclaimers that I grew up in a land where they chose a very volatile and violent cultural revolution to discard old and unacceptable social and cultural norms. That I am not saying that’s right or wrong, just that path occurs in my thoughts.