Respekt teh Whamyns!

New law in California is heading to the governor's desk for signature. Its a Beauty!

On Aug. 30, California lawmakers voted to force publicly traded companies based in California to have at least one woman on their boards by 2019 and depending on the size of the company, one to three women by 2021.California Senate Bill 826, sponsored by California State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson (D), now heads to the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown. If it becomes law, this will be the first example of a state-mandated gender quota of its kind in the U.S.

Leaving aside the issue that this is certainly unconstitutional in both California and the USA federally, I found this bit here from the author to be noteworthy:

But forcing companies to accept a token woman could have unintended consequences. For one thing, women who are newly added to all-male boards may wonder if they are being asked to join because the state forced the company to do so. The larger policy problem, however, is that government overreach like this tends to have no limiting principle. Once the government decides it has the right to intercede in this arena, it is difficult to know where and when the government interference will end. What, for instance, is to prevent the government from requiring that each year, private employers hire employees from any number of classifications based on age, race, sexual orientation, or gender identity? Diversity is a vitally important goal, but one that the government should not mandate.

The author is clearly a liberal, self-identifies as a feminist, the article is hosted on an NBC affiliated page... and she's still sitting there saying "holy fuck!" to herself. Because holy fuck, this is a bad idea.

Hate to break it to ya girlie, that decision got made a loooooong time ago. Spoiler, we lost. Big Government means that the government "intercedes" (by which I mean meddles) in things that are not only none of its business, but in things which damage private enterprise. Because they are programmed to always "progress" and never stand still, they always take a little bit more. Another spoonful. Every day.

That's how you eat an elephant. One spoonful at a time. Pretty soon the elephant is gone, and they're looking around for another one to eat. The government raises taxes just a little, they regulate just one more thing, pretty soon you have no money and no freedom.

Now, this wouldn't be so bad, if they could deliver on their promises. In this case, if their new law actually delivered female equality in business, where the ladies get an even break with the men. But as even this airheaded Liberal journalist can see, it doesn't do that. All it really does is allow a government department to dictate the makeup of corporate boards. That's a bad idea for a lot of reasons, all by itself.

But it gets worse, because government progresses. They can dictate how many women are on the board of directors at Apple, pretty soon they will be dictating who those women are. And who the men are. And what Apple will be doing with its money, what little is left after the corporate taxes are paid.

The problem with Big Government is that if its big enough to give you everything you want, its big enough to take everything you've got. And it will.

The Phantom