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Individual Blog Post From Tom Weiss
Retired Lieutenant Colonel with multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. I've written non-fiction for professional journals. It drives me nuts when people think Jethro Tull is just a person in the band.Contact me at [email protected]
Sunday, November 2nd 2014
Not a Race Problem
Posted Sun Nov 2 2014 11:19
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Over at Salon, Nancy Leong does a little hand-wringing today about the supposed race problem of businesses like Uber, Airbnb, and other such services which have been grouped together in recent years under the umbrella term "the sharing economy."
Her line of argument reminds me of a Twitter argument I engaged in some months ago with Larry Correia (of Monster Hunter fame) and a gentleman named Arthur Chu. Mr. Chu and Larry were arguing about racism and the free market when Mr. Chu tweeted this: "In practice being personally 'racist' & holding beliefs that enable and support a racist system? Not particularly different."
Wondering what he meant by this, I responded with, "So the free market is inherently a 'racist system'? Support and defend please."
Mr. Chu tried (and failed) to back up his argument with, "1) Free market is made up of people. 2) People are racist. 3) Market generates racist results."
Using this same logic, I replied, "1) Twitter is made up of people. 2) People are morons. 3) Twitter generates stupidity."
As funny as this exchange was, Ms. Leong uses the same logic to decry the apparent racism of the sharing economy. She goes on at length about implicit bias, which she defines as "attitudes that affect our behavior without our awareness," and credits this bias for the results of a study which found that "Airbnb properties offered by non-black hosts earned, on average, 12 percent more than properties offered by black hosts."
In another example, Ms. Leong cites a study that found baseball cards offered for sale on eBay "held by African-American sellers sold for approximately 20% ($.90) less than cards held by Caucasian sellers."
Reading this, I see an opportunity. If I'm in the market for a room on Airbnb or a baseball card, I'm going to look for African-American sellers because, based on this research, I can get a deal. But once I start doing that, others will eventually join in, driving up demand for these goods until prices reach equilibrium.
Here's another benefit - racists, whether victims of implicit bias or not, are paying a 12% surtax on Airbnb as a result of their racism.
Ms. Leong of course doesn't see it this way and like all good progressives has to look for a way to fix this problem. She asks, "So how do we build a sharing economy free from bias?" To her credit, she doesn't recommend a new government program or another regulation, she thinks the laws to combat this problem are already in place. And she thinks Airbnb should change their business model and remove pictures "and other signifiers that trigger implicit bias" from their website.
But even those steps are unnecessary - if implicit racism is triggering a price distortion in the marketplace, that distortion will be corrected quickly on its own. She doesn't have to spill a thousand words to do it, either, all she has to say is "Hey, there are some implicitly racist idiots paying more for a room on Airbnb than they need to." And consumers - like the one sitting here spilling another thousand words to dispute her first thousand - will change their behavior.
In her conclusion, Ms. Leong suggests that "the more laudable course is for a business to acknowledge that implicit bias affects almost everyone and to consider how to eliminate it." She's right, implicit bias does affect almost everyone of all races, genders, and sexual orientations. But it will likely never be eliminated, not by a business and certainly not by the government.
We can, however, minimize the effect. Just tell me how I can get the same thing for 12% or 20% less.