DEI policies sabotage our institutions

By undermining merit-based decision-making, transforming institutional goals, and encouraging systematic lies.

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This article is part of a multi-part series on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI):

1. Understanding Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

2. What’s wrong with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion? (podcast; video)

3. The Merit of Merit (part one; part two)

4. DEI sabotages our institutions (this article)

5. more articles on DEI coming soon…

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Regarding the concepts of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), there seem to be three main groups:

1. Strong supporters who believe DEI practices are essential for advancing the cause of Social Justice.
   These people are almost exclusively associated with the political Left, many of whom are far from the Left of the typical Democratic voter.

2. Strong opponents who believe that DEI practices are just rationalizations for “reverse discrimination.”
   Typically, these people are associated with the political Right, while some are on the political Center.

3. Mild supporters of DEI who acknowledge the limitations of the practices but take the “What’s the big deal? Can’t we just stop fighting about these ridiculous culture war issues and focus on more important issues?'” attitude.
   Essentially, this group argues that while DEI practices are based on good intentions, they acknowledge that the actual results of those policies are neutral or mildly negative. Many of these people get upset that both sides are fighting stupid culture war issues, when there are more pressing issues to solve.
   Typically, these people are associated with the Center-Left or less often the Center-Right.

This article will do nothing to change the mind of the first two groups. This article is aimed at the third group.

The policies and practices of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) are a big deal, particularly when they are mandated by the federal government. DEI policies and practices are a big deal because they systematically sabotage the effectiveness of American institutions.

More specifically, DEI sabotages Merit-based hiring, firing, and promotions within institutions. The systematic pushing of less qualified people to the top, and holding back the most qualified has substantial impacts on the quality of outputs from our institutions. The American people have noticed the declining quality of institutional outputs, and this changes their perception of the legitimacy and effectiveness of American institutions.

But isn’t opposition to DEI just mindless Populism?

While many in the third group try to hand-wave away this change in public attitudes as overly emotional “Populism,” the decline in public confidence in American institutions is a direct result of the declining effectiveness of those institutions.

It is not the “Populists” who are wrong-headed, it is the upper and middle ranks of American institutions who take DEI for granted. The so-called Populists may not know how to solve institutional problems or identify their exact causes, but they are absolutely correct about the extent of the problem.

And the Center-Left pretending that concerns about DEI are just meaningless culture wars is a big part of what makes it difficult to solve the problem of declining effectiveness of American institutions. Whether they know it or not, the Center-Left is providing air cover for a very dangerous Totalitarian ideology that is rotting out the foundations of our institutions.

It is time for the United States to rediscover the importance of Merit.

Defining Merit

Before going further, I want to define what I mean by “merit.” Unfortunately, the word has been somewhat conflated with the term “virtue” to imply that a person with merit is a more virtuous person than one with less merit. This meaning of merit implies a moral judgment about an individual.

I do not use merit in that sense. I would argue that merit is highly specialized to a specific domain, so that a person with a great deal of merit in one domain is very unlikely to have merit in many other domains. These domains are typically very specialized occupations or skills.

I use the term “merit” to mean:

having demonstrated an ability or accomplishment that is related to the decision at hand, typically hiring, firing, and promotion. In other words, merit is using a person’s past results in a specific field to attempt to predict the likelihood that they will show similar results in a related field. In practice, this means using job experience, educational credentials, and test results for hiring, firing, and promotion decisions within institutions.

A person may have a great deal of merit in one field and very little in most other fields. In practice, this is usually the case. We live in a highly specialized world, in which few people are good at doing many different things.

I go into more detail in this article:

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See also my other articles and podcasts on Ideology:

• Where do ideologies come from?

• Why neither the Left nor the Right have solutions

• Radical ideologies feast on mental disorders

• Why Ideologies Threaten Progress (Part 1 of 3-part podcast series)

• Why ideologies fail (podcast)

• Descent into a man-made Hell: Understanding modern Totalitarianism

• Why the Left endures

• Were Hitler and the National Socialists actually Socialist?

• The Left has hit a historic dead-end

• The Rebirth of the Totalitarian Left in the 21st Century

• The dangers of Soft Totalitarianism

• more

You might also be interested in reading my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:

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DEI is central to the view of the upper class

Now let me be clear: the policies and practices of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in hiring, firing, and promotions are not the only cause of declining institutional effectiveness. DEI policies are, however, a key element of that decline.

I believe that the key cause has been a shift in the intellectual and moral assumptions of the American upper class. I wrote an extended essay on this topic a few months ago, so I will not go into detail here. If you missed the article, I would suggest that you read it, as it was one of my popular articles.

Essentially, the old “WASP”(White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) upper class started seriously declining in social, political, and economic influence in the 1960s. This upper class, who effectively ran the United States from the American Revolution until the 1960s was:

• Very patriotic

• Believing in material progress

• Republican in partisan identification

• Conservative in ideology (although it was a very different type of conservatism than today).

• Many, though certainly not all, had a strong sense of Humility that they were lucky enough to be born into privilege, and this gave them a moral obligation to work for the betterment of God and Country.

Then came the Boomers

Starting with the Baby Boom generation, we saw a gradual broadening and massive growth of the American upper class. Now the four-year college degree, however earned, is the ticket into the American upper class (I explain more about the American class system in the linked article).

This new American upper class is far larger and more diverse than the previous upper class based on gender, race, ethnicity, and religion. Perhaps most importantly, this new upper class had a radically different value system based on:

• Secularism replacing Protestant Christianity

• Cosmopolitanism that sometimes flirts with anti-patriotism

• Post-modern skepticism of progress

• (and increasingly) Post-modern Left-of-Center politics

• Many, though certainly not all, have a strong sense of entitlement and an obsession with personal status and their virtue. The advent of social media seems to have spiked this sense of entitlement.

While it took a long time to consolidate into a collection of assumptions, policy stances, and practices, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) have become a central pillar in the American upper-class worldview. DEI has become accepted as more important than Merit by the new upper class. Even those who opposed the change have learned to keep their mouths shut.

DEI relies on fear and dishonesty

Anyone within the new upper class who is openly opposed to DEI policies and practices is immediately branded a “racist,” “misogynist,” “far right,” or a “MAGA supporter.” This public scorn will then carry serious consequences for one’s social acceptance within the class. This then has the potential to seriously affect one’s career trajectory, income, and ability to support your family.

I believe that the actual percentage of members of the upper class who actually believe that DEI is better than Merit is very low: maybe 10-20%. But I believe the percentage who do the following is much higher (likely the majority):

• Pretend to accept the practice while maintaining secret doubts as to its efficacy and/or morality.

• Actively argue against people in public who they secretly agree with.

• (when they realize the logic of their argument is untenable) Fall back on “What’s the big deal?’ argumentation.

Preference Falsification

This is what psychologists call “preference falsification.” That is a big word for lying, but it is very specific type of lying.

Preference falsification is deliberately lying about your own beliefs to conform to the group. It is important to realize that preference falsification is not lying to conform to the actual opinions of the group. It is lying to conform with the person’s perception of the opinion of the group.

In this case, those who lying and say they support DEI are doing so because they mistakenly believe the majority of their group support the practice. What they do not realize is that most of those people are also lying because them mistakenly believe the majority of their group support the practice.

What is so destructive about preference falsification is that the behavior enables a small group of very vocal and aggressive people to create the illusion of group consensus by relentlessly attacking those who disagree with them publicly. To avoid internal group conflict, less aggressive members keep silent about their disagreement and then actually lie to support the continuation of group consensus. They effectively choose the illusion of group consensus over internal discord and being the object of attack.

As Polish psychiatrist Andrzej Łobaczewski has pointed out, preference falsification is fundamental to the consolidation and maintenance of Totalitarian regimes in the 20th Century. Łobaczewski is known for his theory of “Political Ponerology.” Łobaczewski adopted the term "ponerology" which is the branch of theology that studies evil. If you are interested in the concept, I would suggest reading Harrison Koehli’s Substack

Political Ponerology

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Łobaczewski was a dissident under the Polish Communist regime who believed three things:

1. Totalitarian regimes are “pathocracies” where those with dangerous mental disorders dominate society. The upper and middle rungs of the regimes adopt an ideological mask to legitimize predatory behavior. Without the ideological mask, everyone would realize that the ruling elite were dangerous social predators.

2. Those social predators are kept in power by creating the illusion of group consensus through fear. When everyone is afraid, they will falsify their own preferences to keep from being a target of the regime. This social pressure is every bit as powerful as the threat of execution, torture or imprisonment.

3. The combination of targeted attacks on open dissidents, a strong ideological system that promotes morality, and preference falsification by the majority enables a small minority of dangerous social predators to control a much larger group of people who disagree with them.

Understanding Totalitarian Ideologies

In other articles, I wrote about how radical ideologies feast on mental disorders and enabled the establishment of horrific Totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century. I also have written about how the Woke and Critical theorists represent the Rebirth of the Totalitarian Left in the 21st Century. I believe that this in combination with the deliberate obfuscations of those who deny the threat are causing wealthy Western nations to slide towards what I call Soft Totalitarianism.

A key part of this slide towards Soft Totalitarianism is the preference falsification of the Center-Left in the media and social media as well as federal government censorship to restrict dissent. The danger to our institutions comes not so much from Leftist Totalitarians, so much as from Center-Leftists leaders and middle managers who allowed the Leftists power within our institutions.

This is fundamentally corrosive of institutional effectiveness because the policies and practices of DEI are central to:

• Turning every hiring, firing, training, and promotion decision into an inherent ideological decision. Everyone is confronted with the choice “Should I do what other people believe is the right thing to do, or should I make merit-based decisions?”

• Hiring Leftist activists within organizations, particularly in the HR and DEI departments.

• Promoting Leftist activists to a much higher level than they otherwise would have based on Merit. This is particularly easy within middle management where employees make neither strategic decisions nor work directly on profit-making projects.

• Using “training” as an excuse to implement ideological indoctrination within the organization.

• A dogmatic refusal to fire incompetent employees because they are members of protected classes.

• Censorship within the organization against dissidents who believe that these practices undermine the goals of the organization.

• A willingness to fire anyone who publicly contradicts the practices.

• Driving out good employees who take pride in their jobs and do not want to work in a toxic work environment.

• Constant use of the terms “Diversity” and “Social Justice” in advertising and public relations to increase the moral legitimacy of the organization with customers and the community. Hence the constant barrage of “strong black women,” rainbow colors, and gender-ambiguous people in advertising. It is not just a fad; it is ideological propaganda.

• Employees trying to find a reason why they represent a Diversity checkbox and their victimhood. Everyone, including high-income white males, can find something in their history such as age that makes them an oppressed minority. So every hiring, firing, and promotion has an incentive to market those characteristics over their merit.

All of the above leads to a demoralization of the workforce. All it takes is a few high-profile examples of the above to make people realize that they do not work in a merit-based institution where hard work, accomplishments, and skills acquisition are rewarded. Then the employees will either:

• Leave (particularly the good employees who are most likely to dissent), or

• Conform to the new institutional incentives. The easiest way to do so is preference falsification. Unfortunately, the more the preference falsification, the more the policies become legitimized.

If this were done by a government, this would immediately be recognized as Totalitarianism. Since it largely happened within privately owned corporations and non-profits, it is not as easily recognized for what it is. However, the practices of DEI transform effective merit-based organizations into incompetent Totalitarian regimes that subordinate the very reason why the organization was founded to propagate a dysfunctional ideology.

None of this could happen without people who realize the ineffectiveness or even immorality of the trend publically arguing “What is the big deal? Can’t we just stop fighting about these ridiculous culture war issues and focus on more important issues?'“

These people miss the point: the policies and practices of DEI fundamentally transform the goals and methods of organizations. It is not the cultural war bickering that distracts from focusing on more important issues. It is DEI itself.

The goal of DEI is to transform all institutions into vectors of Woke propaganda and cushy well-paying jobs for activists. The reason why the organization was created, to deliver a solution to a societal problem, becomes secondary to transforming all institutions into vectors of Woke activism.

That is why DEI is a big deal and why those who try to dismiss its importance are the real danger. If they would just publicly admit that DEI is a big deal and honestly express their opinion in public, then DEI would disappear very quickly.

I believe that this is exactly what is going on with the third group that I identified at the top of the article. The Center-Left are lying about their actual beliefs to maintain group consensus within their organization and the American upper class.

But since those who are practicing preference falsification are actually in the majority, they are really trying to maintain the illusion of group consensus and enabling a small but aggressive minority to dominate them and systematically undermine their institutional legitimacy.

So now that we can see the problem, what is to be done?

That topic I will reserve for another article.

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See also my other articles and podcasts on Ideology:

• Where do ideologies come from?

• Why neither the Left nor the Right have solutions

• Radical ideologies feast on mental disorders

• Why Ideologies Threaten Progress (Part 1 of 3-part podcast series)

• Why neither the Left nor the Right have solutions

• Why ideologies fail (podcast)

• Descent into a man-made Hell: Understanding modern Totalitarianism

• Why the Left endures

• Were Hitler and the National Socialists actually Socialist?

• The Left has hit a historic dead-end

• The Rebirth of the Totalitarian Left in the 21st Century

• The dangers of Soft Totalitarianism

• more

You might also be interested in reading my “From Poverty to Progress” book series: