Whitey Privilege

Faux Guilt, Faux Pity, Genuine Ignorance

We came across a tragic tale today.  New Zealand is rife with entrenched privileges for male whiteys.  It took us some time to stop laughing and get up off the floor.  Here is the whale of the tale:

The Human Rights Commission has launched an interactive tool revealing the full extent of gender and racial inequality in the workplace.  Young Middle Eastern and African women are at the bottom of the heap, with median pay of just $14.75 an hour, on par with the minimum wage.  At the other end of the spectrum, white men aged 45-64 command top dollar, earning a median hourly rate of $28.77.  [Stuff]

And here is the punchline that generated all the mirth:

Middle-aged white men might be sick of being cast as villains, but a report suggests they should check their privilege.

Oooooh.  Let's check our privilege.  Note the implicit guilt-manipulation in this sentence: "white men might be sick of being cast as villains . . . "  You see, if they "checked their privilege" they would learn they really are villains.  They are the reason other (non middle-aged, white) people are being paid less than them.  What a hoot.


Rather than "checking our privilege" we respectfully suggest that the idiots who wrote this particular piece of pabulum should check their thoroughly discredited assumptions and ideological cant.  Like most egalitarian pabulum, one core assumption never "checked" is the belief in a finitely fixed socio-economic pie.  In other words, these luminaries believe that economic growth is impossible and never occurs.  The pie is finite, fixed, and the only issue is how big a slice everyone gets.  If someone gets a bigger slice (that is, is paid a higher wage than another) then everyone else, by definition, is getting paid less as a consequence.  Hence the alleged moral guilt of white middle aged men.  They are "taking" wealth and money off other people because they are getting paid more.  If anyone believes that particular lump of putrescent nonsense it's time to check your invincible ignorance.

If that assumption were true it would mean that when whity's ancestors fronted up to the "Land of the Long White Cloud" the indigenous peoples should have redistributed all they had to ensure a just and fair equality.  The fact that they had sturdy storehouses replete with veg from the gardens and they were protected by strong defensive pallisades, whilst pakeha arrivals were living in flimsy raupo whares unable to withstand the slightest zephyr, was fundamentally unjust.  The fact that Maori had stock piled all the vegetables that were to be had was inequitable.  Maori should have checked their privilege.  It was not fair.

A second ignorant assumption is that labour does not operate in a market, such that the price of labour cannot be set by its respective supply and demand.  Somehow to connect human beings with a market where the labour of individuals is bought or sold or contracted is evil--akin to slavery.  Here we get to the nub of this particular foolishness which festoons the Chattering Class.  The idea that wage rates are set by a market is offensive because it appears to treat people as chattels, as slaves.  Far, far better--allegedly--to have wage rates set by the State.  Then true wage equity would break out like hives or measles.

Ironically, the exact opposite is the case.  When wage rates are understood to be best set in an open market, the wage earner is both free and responsible.  If another employer is offering higher wages, he or she can freely change employment, thereby acting freely in one's own self-interest.  But if wages are set by the State the employee is truly enslaved.  He has become a chattel of the king.

It is only in a free wage market that the wage earner enjoys maximum liberty.  The employee has the opportunity to build leverage to increase their earnings--whether by earning higher qualifications, or gaining more experience, or building up respect through honesty, reliability, diligence and a willing spirit.  If an ignorant employer were not to see these things as valuable, the employee has the opportunity to seek better returns elsewhere.

To be sure no economic system or paradigm is perfect.  But that does not mean that all are equally good or innocuous.  We have tried central wage fixing controls in New Zealand.  They failed--predictably so.  They worked to achieve two things: they suppressed wages over time, because controlled economies do not grow.  Remember the wage and price freezes.  Secondly, they drastically increased long term, secular rates of unemployment.

But there is such a thing as invincible ignorance.  And envy.  And the mentality of a slave that prefers to beg Massah for help rather than breathing the fresh, clean air of freedom.