History for paulm

The talk of Scandinavia as an example is very interesting given recent events in Sweden, which is largely going the same way as Germany, if not worse, after also taking an unwisely large number of immigrants and refugees in very quickly. Taking a very large number in a short space of time seems to be problematic. 

On quotas, lets think about how it would work in a practical sense. 

A common one spoken about lately is old white men on boards. So lets set a quota then. 

The argument is too many old white men, so the quota has to limit them. We can't define just by white though, that's not a race. How do we set the bar? What if someone is one quarter Maori but their skin is white? Do we have to agree a fraction that is allowed, and then prove our ancestral make-up on a case-by-case basis? What countries qualify as white? As you travel around the Mediterranean, or up the Americas, where does the skin colour officially cross from white to non-white per country of origin? Plus places that have had white people settle on them later, like here, SA, Australia, USA, Canada, do you have to check their family history and see if they are from the 'truly' white countries? 

That's getting a bit tough to do.

So do we reverse the formula? Make it X amount of females? But then what about Old White females? Young White females? We've got the same issue with race, we have to split everything into sub-categories, and we haven't even started on gender. If we're limiting males by setting a quota for females then it's only truly equal if we bring transgender people into the mix. Doing it from this direction turns out to be just as difficult.

Unless these quotas are done properly we're just cherry-picking, and whichever minority is not getting a quota is being discriminated against. You cannot allow for everything. Quotas are simply impractical without discrimination. 

The talk of Scandinavia as an example is very interesting given recent events in Sweden, which is largely going the same way as Germany, if not worse, after also taking an unwisely large number of immigrants and refugees in very quickly. Taking a very large number in a short space of time seems to be problematic. 

On quotas, lets think about how it would work in a practical sense. 

A common one spoken about lately is old white men on boards. So lets set a quota then. 

The argument is too many old white men, so the quota has to limit them. We can't define just by white though, that's not a race. How do we set the bar? What if someone is one quarter Maori but their skin is white? As you travel around the Mediterranean, or up the Americas, where does the skin colour officially cross from white to non-white in a geographical sense? Is it too hard, do we have to define by English, Russian, South African etc? Then sub-groups like New Zealanders of European descent, Australians of European descent, Americans of European descent, etc? What about white New Zealanders of non-European descent? 

That's getting a bit too big to do, especially given the size of a Board.

So do we reverse the formula? Make it X amount of females? But then what about Old White females? Young White females? We've got the same issue with race, we have to split the white and black and brown and everything into all it's sub-categories, and we haven't even started on gender. If we're limiting males by setting a quota for females then it's only truly equal if we bring transgender people into the mix. Doing it from this direction turns out to be even more difficult.

Unless these quotas are done properly we're just cherry-picking, and whichever minority is not getting a quota is being discriminated against. You cannot allow for them all, quotas are simply impractical without discrimination.