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Jess Gill
mises.org
Jess Gill is a British libertarian political content creator. She is the creative director of Reasoned UK. Jess creates political and economics videos on TikTok and YouTube where she has gained a following of over 30,000.
From the Equal Pay Act 1970 to the Equality Act 2010, there has been a wave of legalization in Britain to turn the state into some omniscient being that can determine the intentions of an employer. While these pieces of legislation did not enforce direct quotas onto businesses, they have increased inefficiencies through the increase in human resources roles for companies and organizations to cover their own backs.
These pieces of anti-discrimination legislation assume that the state can determine the intentions of an employer. There are many reasons why an employer may not hire somebody or give an employee higher pay. However, the government cannot possibly know their reasoning. This leads to employers overcompensating in order to escape the government punishing them for employing whoever they wish.
Lew Rockwell encapsulates this perfectly:
Imagine that the government appoints a party planner who says that you can invite or not invite whoever you want, provided that one consideration is not part of the mix: you must not decline to invite someone on the grounds of hair color. Now, it may never have occurred to you to think along these lines. But now you have to. You notice that you have no redheads attending the party, much to your alarm.
What if this fact is taken as evidence that you are discriminating? Will it? You can’t know for sure. You think again: even if no redheads are coming, this is surely not the reason why you are not inviting them. There are other factors, too many factors to name. In any case, how can the state’s party planner know what your motivations are? Isn’t it astounding that a government agency would presume to read your mind, know your heart and discern your innermost emotions and motives?
Truly this is totalitarian.
Over the past decades, those who believe that equality of outcome must be due to discrimination has come to the mainstream. Modern day feminists demand the abolition of the gender pay gap as if it is due to sexism. The Black Lives Matter movement has led to critical race theory becoming mainstream, an ideology which believes that any race inequality must be due to racism. These demands are an attack on private property and free enterprise.
Not only does this encourage companies to hire with equality of outcome in mind, but this egalitarian legislation has led to an increase in diversity and inclusion officers. This has made the UK lead in the world of diversity and inclusion roles. Those in these roles have been implanting leftist ideology into every industry while they receive a very generous salary. The interest in “diversity and inclusion” officers has grown by 122 per cent since 2010.
The Network Rail’s Diversity Chief, Loraine Martins, receives a salary of £160,000 a year. Martin openly tweets criticising Boris Johnson for his “white privilege” which should violate Network Rails’ code of ethics to “avoid conflict of interests” including “political activities”.
Furthermore, there are currently 20 known diversity officers within the Ministry of Defence. One director of diversity and inclusion receives a salary of £110,000 a year. Is there any wonder that the MoD is preaching that “If we want to be the best Armed Forces, then the only way to go is Feminist”?
These diversity officers work as activists. The NHS equality chief has led called a government watchdog’s ruling “transphobic” after it was decided that biological men who call themselves transgender can be excluded from single-sex wards. This mutiny is threatening the safety and comfortableness of biological women. Instead of prioritising the women who need treatment, there is pressure for the NHS to prioritize wokeness.
These roles have caused inefficiencies within each industry, taking money and resources away from what needs to be done in order to pour it down the endless drain of bureaucracy. Instead of prioritising efforts to what serves the customer the best, organizations and companies are forced to prioritise what is politically correct.
As Lew Rockwell states:
Every employer must constantly prepare and organize to diminish the likelihood that a complaint will be filed. In doing so, they take steps that lead to inefficiencies or avoid steps that might improve efficiency.
The Trojan horse of anti-discrimination legislation have led to leftism corrupting every institution which now has to discuss topics like “white privilege” and “microaggressions”. Through this Gramscian takeover, the notions that we should prioritise equality of outcome and value egalitarianism has further been normalized.
Not only are businesses and organizations concerned with government officials punishing them about not being progressive enough, now there is an enemy within. It is not enough for the business to be visibly diverse: their employers must now preach egalitarian ideas too.
