Seeing one thing and saying another

A book review and interview which is bad at so many levels that it teeters between obnoxious and humorous.

From The ‘Hidden Mechanisms’ That Help Those Born Rich to Excel in Elite Jobs by Joe Pinsker.

Over the past five years, the sociologists Daniel Laurison and Sam Friedman have uncovered a striking, consistent pattern in data about England’s workforce: Not only are people born into working-class families far less likely than those born wealthy to get an elite job—but they also, on average, earn 16 percent less in the same fields of work.

Laurison and Friedman dug further into the data, but statistical analyses could only get them so far. So they immersed themselves in the cultures of modern workplaces, speaking with workers—around 175 in all—in four prestigious professional settings: a TV-broadcasting company, a multinational accounting firm, an architecture firm, and the world of self-employed actors.

The result of this research is Laurison and Friedman’s new book, The Class Ceiling: Why It Pays to Be Privileged, which shows how the customs of elite workplaces can favor those who grew up wealthier. The authors describe a series of “hidden mechanisms”—such as unwritten codes of office behavior and informal systems of professional advancement—that benefit the already affluent while disadvantaging those with working-class backgrounds.

Alarm bells are ringing everywhere. It is Sociological research. A field noted both for its far left positions and its intolerance of other viewpoints. It is also a field with a notorious research problem - most of its findings fail to replicate. Related, it is a field with notoriously lax research standards.

Further alarm bells - a tiny sample size of 179 individuals; no confounding variable controls; no published methodology.

Final alarm bell - Why these four industries? Three of them are tiny and unrepresentative of the market at large and the fourth (accounting) is highly regulated. Both TV Broadcasting and especially self-employed actors are both fields where there are minuscule means for measuring quality and where there is maximal emphasis on relationships. Who
knows who determines who gets ahead.

The cacophony of alarms is overwhelming.

But that is no barrier to the Ben Rhodes brotherhood of know-nothing journalists.

All the usual suspects are predictably rounded up for the interview. There is discrimination based on class. There is class privilege. There is race privilege. There is inequality. It is a social justice smörgåsbord of problems. And, again predictably, a smörgåsbord of standard statist solutions. Let's take away from the rich in order to reduce inequality. Let's eliminate "discrimination" by using affirmative action. Let's force people to do what we want them to do rather than let them determine what's best for themselves.

The anemic and insulting absurdity is tiresome.

But if you look at their statements carefully, you begin to notice that these blind-leading-the-blind sociologists are not completely unobservant.

For example, they notice that the most prominent confounding variable is not race or class but intact and supportive families.

They notice that cultivating and maintaining relationships is important and valuable and that this entails fitting in with whatever the in-group norms might be.

They notice that there are high costs and risks associated with forming non-homophilic relationships.

They notice that the stakes are high because it is frequently difficult to differentiate and distinguish talent and luck.

But as Sherlock Homes told Watson,

You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.

I have pretty low confidence that the sociologists will come right out and advocate that people cultivate stable life-long marriages, work to fit in with their colleagues, seek to demonstrate observable superior performance, or be cautious in over-relying on untested out-group relationships. But that seems to be what they are noticing.