[airforce1]

Doesn't free market capitalism automatically fix this though?

In the example of a car company with zero women employees, if the market doesn't want "black, angular, high-powered cars", then they will lose market share to companies that produce cars that the market does want.

And if "getting input from lots of people with various backgrounds makes a company much better and more profitable" is a true statement, then capitalism will prove it because the most diverse companies will naturally become better and more profitable than non-diverse companies.

[kstrauser]

> Doesn't free market capitalism automatically fix this though?

The companies we're talking about have DEI programs specifically because they believe they'll improve their profitability in one way or another. Meta is scaling their program back, not ending it, so they still believe it's good for the company in some way.

Now, I may be skeptical of the purity of their goals, in this case suspecting that they're more concerned about looking to be the "right level" of diverse than actually achieving it. Regardless, no one's making them do it. They're doing it for those free market reasons.

[notahacker]

Worth noting the same basic incentives apply to certain corporations performatively dropping their policies as a declaration of fealty to an administration they hope will refrain from interfering too much with their ability to make profits as a result. Whether that is considered to be a "free market reason" is another question entirely.

[mike_hearn]

> The companies we're talking about have DEI programs specifically because they believe they'll improve their profitability in one way or another

Definitely not. I've been exposed to the rationale for these. Profit and effectiveness have nothing to do with it. CEOs put them in place because otherwise left wing employees or board members will try and destroy them, and Democrat-run regulators will support them in that goal even if it means breaking the rules. There have been many examples of such things in action - look at the organized cartel-like boycotts of X after Musk upset left wing marketing execs.

CEOs don't want that to happen to them. That's why this is happening now, the moment Trump won a major victory. The fact that the left has lost power comprehensively makes it safer to stand up for what Zuckerberg believed in all along.

[notahacker]

Companies deciding not to spend money with X because consumers objected to ads there more than they bought products from ads there is "organized cartel like boycotts" and Zuck deciding to ditch decade old programmes because the new President hates them and him and his platform (and owns a rival platform too!) is freeing him to do what he believed all along!? I've heard it all now.

Bet Bezos has spent years dreaming of making that Melania documentary he's finally become free to spend $40m on too...

[dragonwriter]

> Doesn't free market capitalism automatically fix this though?

Free market capitalism: (1) does not exist, (2) structurally cannot stably exist (because economic power and political power are fundamentally the same thing), (3) is a utopian propaganda concept created in response to and to deflect critiques of the way that the capitalism that can and does actually exist works.