TTSR The Economics Of Discrimination

Comments on The Thomas Sowell Reader, The Economics Of Discrimination, pages 87-97.

For hundreds of years, discrimination has been driven by the attitudes bias and prejudice, separating one class or group from another.  Although there are many penalties to open discrimination, whether against race, sex, or appearance, discrimination more commonly occurs quietly.

If a biased restaurant manager is hiring and one of the best applicants is black, the manager may quietly discriminate by not contacting that person.  The manager can afford to do so because the cost of discriminating is low and there are other suitable people to hire.  If the manager was in an environment where the cost for discrimination was high, the restaurant going short staffed or the position being inadequately filled, he might not have made such a choice.

 

Discrimination does not just affect the victim though.  Suppose a landlord, renting out his home, was to turn away all applicants that did not meet his high standards.  He would lose money for every month without a tenant when he could have had an income. That is all part of the cost to discrimination.

The cost of discrimination among higher powers is even more costly.  In World War 2, Jewish physicians made up an absolute majority of the all physicians in private practice because the Polish government would not hire them. They still received enough patients to make a living, but the government hospitals had fewer doctors to help the maimed solders.  The Polish government could have saved lives by allowing Jewish doctors into their medical service, but that was the cost of their racial discrimination.

Today we are paying the price for past discriminations by living in a world where, at the mention of different ethnicities, you will be labeled as racist.  If you talk about the husband being the head of the home, you will be labeled as sexist. Unless you are surrounded by free thinkers that are not afraid to speak out about such topics, the ‘politically correct’ will consider such observations as discrimination.  Although this is not discrimination, it is the price we are paying for those in the past.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

~ George Santayana ~