When they operate outside of the market, workplaces by nature become focused on priorities other than profit. So it is not surprising that to see this headline on the front page of today’s New York Times:
At I.M.F., Men on Prowl and Women on Guard
It turns out that notwithstanding its scandalous everyday practices that no one seems to notice — the transfer of conscripted capital to foreign regimes that promise to transfer it back to politically well-connected firms in the West — the I.M.F. is probably not the kind of place at which you’d want your daughter to work. And it didn’t start with Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Even Carmen Reinhart noticed the I.M.F.s “implicit sexual culture” when she worked there from 2001 to 2003: “It’s sort of like ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’” she said. “The rules are more like guidelines. That sets the stage, I think, for more risk-taking.”
It’s hard to think that if a similar culture was uncovered at, say, IBM, the New York Times wouldn’t be clamoring for federal investigations, lawsuits, and arrests of its senior leadership, all while decrying a sick nature inherent in capitalism. That we tend not to see such cultures arising in the private sector reflects the different incentives created when organizations are focused on profit first. In the private sector, a firm’s continued existed is tied to whether it satisfies customers today, and the firms that lose that focus tend to fail. Successful managers in the private sector have strong incentives to root out cultures that can arise and hinder focus from the firm’s primary goals.
Not so at the I.M.F. An internal review conducted there three years ago found that “the absence of public ethics scandals seems to be more a consequence of luck than good planning and action.”
In 2003, an I.M.F. study of itself, coauthored by Harvard economics professor Ken Rogoff, concluded that its policies rarely work. Countries that follow its economic reform plans (in exchange for conscripted capital) often suffer a “collapse in growth rates and significant financial crises,” with open currency markets merely serving to “amplify the effects of various shocks.”
So the I.M.F.’s continued existence is a scandal in itself. Its ostensible justification for existing ended with the collapse of Bretton Woods anyway. It is run by people who earn bloated, tax-free salaries that are much higher than they could ever earn if their salaries were based on their own productivity in the market. It’s like the post office, only sexier. And like the post office, its policies seldom work.
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5 Responses
Who needs IBM when you have Munich Reinsurance Company.
I don’t see what the problem is with “sexual harassment” from a libertarian perspective. This so-called “harassment” is nothing more than voluntary offers (and for some reason, women seem to be offended any time a man they aren’t attracted to makes a romantic offer toward them, but they are never offended if they’re attracted to him). If you receive an offer from somebody else that you don’t wish to accept, just decline the offer. If I was offered the option of buying a product I didn’t want (assume that the offer in this example was particularly insulting), I would decline the offer. If they are persistent and keep making the offer, I would keep declining it. I wouldn’t try to get revenge on somebody by trying to get them fired or (worse) use force against them just for making me an offer that I felt insulted by. But, apparently, women who cry “sexual harassment” don’t have the same high standards of character. Although an employer is well within their rights to prohibit his employees from having romantic relationships or from asking each other out at the workplace, I think it is inappropriate for any employer to intrude like that upon the personal lives of his employees. Sexual harassment policies are, in my view, largely a result of big government and probably would not exist in a free society (similarly, I doubt that drug testing would be widespread in a free society).
Even in the classic feminist scenario of the boss who tells his employee that she must sleep with him to keep her job, that is a wholly voluntary interaction. The employee does not have a “right” to her job, regardless of what the leftists may think (nobody has a “right” to anybody else’s property), so her boss may fire her for any reason (or for no reason at all) if he so desires. If she chooses to accept those kinds of conditions of employment, she has done so voluntarily because she was always free to leave and seek out other employment without such conditions. An employer who does this will undoubtedly make less money (assuming, of course, that most women don’t like this kind of thing) as a result, but “taking advantage of” their secretary (whom he hired because of her appearance and not her ability) might be higher on their value scale than maximizing productivity.
The IMF should certainly be shut down. However, it should be shut down because it is economically destructive. There is nothing wrong whatsoever with people using the workplace to seek out romantic partners for themselves, regardless of what some man-hating harpies and some bible-thumping prudes might think (so long as everything remains consensual, of course). Let’s keep our focus on the real reasons why the IMF is bad.
Your misses some important points, in my opinion. You’re assuming that harassment is always done by the boss, and you’re equating boss and owner. However, there are plenty of cases where harassment involves co-workers at the same hierarchical level. Or you could be harassed by a superior who doesn’t actually own the business – in fact, it may be someone who is not even your boss (say, a secretary in the marketing department being harassed by the manager of the finances department).
Now, you can argue that “if you’re not comfortable with romantic advances, you can quit. you don’t have a right to your job.” But hey, I got the job because I’m competent, because I’m got at what I do. You’re the one bothering me. Why should I leave? It’s akin to saying I should leave my house because someone is threatening to break in. No – I should instead fight with every resource available. And in the case of harassment, the resource is the law. From the point of view of the harassed woman, she’s being perfectly rational.
However, I suspect that in a truly free society, you might have more companies managed by women where this kind of behavior would not be tolerated. And perhaps some male-dominated business where it would be clear that women should expect to be hit on…
A problem with the current laws is that essentially they do away with the need to prove anything.
Just as the IMF’s head “advanced” upon that hotel maid.
It seems that the whole Dominique Strauss-Kahn thing might be a frame-up and kidnapping for high-stakes ransom:
http://presscore.ca/2011/?p=2642
After Nixon closed the gold window, America became theoretically bankrupt. Now the bankruptcy is actual, and Leviathan appears to be acting like any other cornered animal.
Of course, Strauss-Kahn almost certainly is a scumbag one-world socialist. Maybe he’s also guilty of sexual crimes, but I’d wager otherwise in this specific case.