And you seem to know that's true because your claim slides smoothly from "getting something of lesser quality" to "lowering standards below acceptable levels" which aren't the same thing. The latter phrasing means the products are worse but you consider the lowered quality to be an acceptable tradeoff.
It does not require it. My second point refers to the fact that people often talk about evaluating candidates/choices as if there’s a single, objectively measurable metric by which we can rank them. I argue that’s not how people really make decisions, but even if they did, who’s to say that the top three choices of suppliers are not all owned by minorities or women? You can both fulfill a mission to engage with more diverse suppliers and not lower your standards.
I’ve personally never been a fan of stringent DEI requirements, especially those that came from companies that were clearly in it just for the optics, and I do think it can result in lower quality. It’s the way that some people almost take lower quality as a given if diversity is involved that doesn’t sit well with me.
That is bypassing competition, instead sorting by identity first. Competition is how the world found the best services/products for the best price for over a century and the foundation of our economy. Supporting that idea is how the west became as dominant and wealthy as it was. Only recently have large organization and gov bypassed that for social justice experiments and using ranked systems, similar to giving preferential treatment for 'national security' (aka keeping zombies like Boeing alive).
Even massive US defense contracts are being forced to contract out to minority owned businesses first. It's not an optional thing where the decision maker gets leeway, they are required to start there and narrows the options by definition.
> You can both fulfill a mission to engage with more diverse suppliers and not lower your standards.
There's no hidden genius in technocractic top down manipulation when it comes to purchasing decisions. The options are what they are. The less options you have the harder it will be to find the best. Like being forced to choose between 2 gov-backed monopoly ISPs for your internet here in Canada.
The biggest lie that they told you was that the world actually works on merit: it does not.
You’re right that success (as a company, or individual) is not only based in merit though. There’s plenty of examples of people continuing to do business with Oracle to prove that point.
Making a good enough product, at a good enough price point and make the executive with money happy enough with the trade-offs: and you’re successful. Same as B2C, really.
This assumption works if and only if you assume that the highest quality products are always (and categorically) produced by the folks that DEI initiatives do not target.
To say that it lowers standards _by definition_ is identical to saying that the system that disproportionately advances straight white guys is _by definition_ optimal and creates the best products — the simpler way of rewriting that sentiment is to simply say “straight white guys make the best stuff _by definition_”
As an aside it reminds me of something I saw a while ago — “There are two genders: men and ‘Political’, two races: white and ‘Political’, and two sexual orientations: straight and ‘Political’
It is funny to see people argue this with a straight face.
If you're shopping for a car and your top criteria is reliability, then your spouse overrides that and says your top criteria is now fuel efficiency, you have, by definition, lowered your requirements for reliability from first to second place.
This isn't to say DEI programs as implemented today are the best solution to this problem, or even an effective one. I personally think more broad anti-bias training and programs could be a good alternative since race and gender are hardly the only biases that lead to bad decision making (e.g. hiring someone just because they went to the same school as you is also bad). But it seems silly to pretend bias doesn't exist or that it doesn't take active effort to counter, although I understand the appeal of doing so especially for uncomfortable topics like race.
