Post: Car Salesmen, Different Races, Different Prices

James Joyner writes:

Malcolm Gladwell highlights a long-running dispute (of which I had been previously unaware) between himself and Steve Sailer over what it means that car dealers quote higher prices to black (and women) customers than to comparable white (and male) customers.

Gladwell believes it is obviously evidence of “unconscious racism” whereas Sailer argues that it is much more likely that car salesmen have learned over time that they can get more money on average out of blacks and women and therefore are discriminating against them as suckers, not out of bias.

While it’s not inconceivable that some combination of both explanations are true (or that one is true for some salesmen and the other true for other salesmen) the Sailer explanation strikes me as more plausible. He cites economist Robert Stonebraker, who notes:

Ayres and Siegelman [the authors of the study Gladwell relies on] conclude that statistical discrimination is the real culprit. Blatant bigotry is not the cause. Rather, dealers and salespeople use race and gender to make statistical inferences about the consumer’s sensitivity to price — what economists term price elasticity.

[…]

While dealers and/or salespeople may know little or nothing about a particular customer, they know quite a bit about statistical differences among races and genders. They know that women and African-Americans typically enter the showroom with less information and less proclivity to bargain. Although white males often salivate at the chance to lock horns with car dealers in a bargaining struggle, females and African-Americans may be unaware that bargaining is even possible. Ayres and Siegelman cite a Consumer Federation of America survey that discovered that many female respondents, and more than one-half of African-American respondents, believed that sticker prices were non-negotiable.

Richard Posner adds,

It would not occur to Gladwell, a good liberal, that an auto salesman’s discriminating on the basis of race or sex might be a rational form of the “rapid cognition” that he admires… [It] may be sensible to ascribe the group’s average characteristics to each member of the group, even though one knows that many members deviate from the average. An individual’s characteristics may be difficult to determine in a brief encounter, and a salesman cannot afford to waste his time in a protracted one, and so he may quote a high price to every black shopper even though he knows that some blacks are just as shrewd and experienced car shoppers as the average white, or more so. Economists use the term ‘statistical discrimination’ to describe this behavior.

At the larger level, Sailer contends,

Some of these guys have been selling cars for as long as you have been alive. And, believe it or not, they pay close attention not just to what makes the most money for themselves but to what works for other salesmen as well.

Further, if the salesman’s unconscious prejudice is costing the dealership money, his manager will make him highly conscious of it quickly, or the salesman will be out on the street.

One would think.

Aside from my agreement with Sailer about how markets work, I also find this bit of information from Stonebraker rather telling:

African-American buyers were charged the same price differentials by African-American dealers as they were by white dealers. Female customers were treated just as poorly by female salespeople as they were by male salespeople. Neither the race nor the gender of dealers and/or salespeople seemed to matter.

If black men are treating other black men worse than they are treating whites because of racial animus, it must be “unconscious,” indeed.

Posted in America, Blacks | Comments Off on Post: Car Salesmen, Different Races, Different Prices

Politico: The Media Has Got Ron DeSantis Nailed (6-4-23)

01:00 Love makes you vulnerable
12:10 Rabbi Shlomo Einhorn’s New Learning Systems For Torah, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=145658
26:00 Richard Spencer update
32:00 The Coercive World of No Jumper’s Adam22: ‘He Exploited Me From Day One’, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/no-jumper-adam22-1234743860/
37:30 Stephen J. James on Luke’s magnum opus, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvYr_ZIDwtA&ab_channel=StephenJJames
57:00 When Dennis Prager realized his instincts were identical to the Torah, https://youtu.be/aZmAu8Rem3I?t=2764
1:02:00 What type of people become followers of gurus and cults? https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus/
1:06:20 Andrew Tate v Jordan Peterson
1:07:15 Scott Adams
1:08:30 Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager at the 2019 PragerU summit, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L47oJxwp6yg
1:16:00 Why do gurus never repent for their bad epistemics? https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus/
1:17:50 Oprah profited from being a guru
1:25:00 Ron DeSantis, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/05/24/the-ron-desantis-straitjacket-00098556
1:46:50 Strain/Counter-Strain Technique
1:49:10 Strain counterstrain neck and shoulders. Massage techniques, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nImd89p87pI
1:52:00 Counterstrain – Hamstrings, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpFeJ17O6ek
2:01:20 Step 6, Part 7, with Allen Berger and Michael McGee, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u34NHCZ3big
2:04:00 Janan Ganesh: Why DeSantis is losing Republicans to Trump, https://www.ft.com/content/f0cf9c81-a9df-44c6-b702-1b13120d5a05
2:08:00 FT: The vibes theory of politics, Our ‘beliefs’ are often just unexamined tribal loyalties, https://www.ft.com/content/0ca72be9-18c8-4b9f-9dbe-27d97b9e63e6
2:40:50 The Hill: TUCKER SPEAKS OUT? Carlson Hints THE REAL REASON He Was Ousted From Fox, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYEbYEjOQHs
2:46:00 Video: Would Trump really pull out of Ukraine? With John Mearsheimer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7EOKBF1nbQ
2:57:00 Daily Wire v Twitter over Matt Walsh documentary What is a Woman?

Posted in Alt Lite, Alt Right, America, Dennis Prager | Comments Off on Politico: The Media Has Got Ron DeSantis Nailed (6-4-23)

Politico: The Media Has Got Ron DeSantis Nailed

Jack Shafer writes:

There’s another recent candidate who was dressed by the press in unflattering garb who overcame the representation to win the presidency: Donald Trump. According to a thousand news bulletins, Trump was a narcissistic bully, a misogynist, a racist, a xenophobe, a Putin toady, an authoritarian, a con man, a cheat, a liar, an egomaniac, a fraud and a sexist. But instead of contesting these nasty effigies, Trump shrugged them off. Oh, he quarreled now and again with some of the assessments, like boasting about being the least racist person in the room, but by and large, he slept soundly in the bed the press made for him, wearing the insults like a toga and the descriptions like a wreath.

Could DeSantis make a similar bounty out of his straitjacketed personality? Could he pretend his straitjacket was a royal robe and welcome the abuse? Stranger things have happened in campaigns than organizing a presidential run around the politics of joylessness, even if it has proved successful in Florida.

If the straitjacket fits, maybe DeSantis should wear it proudly.

Posted in America | Comments Off on Politico: The Media Has Got Ron DeSantis Nailed

Pundits & Gurus (6-2-23)

01:00 I’m bathed in love
04:00 I woke up at 11pm filled with resentment
22:20 Elliott Blatt joins to talk about his alcoholic friend in recovery
23:40 He got on modafinil and feels great
27:30 Ethan Ralph’s redemption arc
30:00 Self-hatred
35:00 Changing mores in the work place
40:00 God’s suffering servant, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%2053&version=NASB
43:00 Chuck Johnson, Richard Spencer, Laura Loomer
44:00 ​I don’t think I’ve listened to TRS in more than five years
46:30 Ann Coulter on overturning abortion, https://anncoulter.substack.com/
47:00 With the overturning of Roe v Wade, democracy is working says Mickey Kaus
48:30 Ron DeSantis v Disney, Covid
53:30 Will Tucker Carlson succeed on Twitter? https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus/
54:20 Steven Crowder
55:00 Decoding the Gurus, https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/
58:00 How do you react to kindness?
1:04:00 The dull environment vs the thriving environment
1:08:00 Heterodox podcasters do a $200 Youtube course and establish rituals, nick names to establish parasocial relationships
1:10:00 Michael Shermer as a guru
1:12:00 Will Misogyny Bring Down The Atheist Movement?, https://www.buzzfeed.com/markoppenheimer/will-misogyny-bring-down-the-atheist-movement
1:17:10 Letters from The Rav (Part 12) || Dr. Marc Shapiro, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcZ-1e-pDhg
1:18:00 If Jews had Christmas trees

Posted in Guru | Comments Off on Pundits & Gurus (6-2-23)

Wild & Crazy Videos From 2018 II

Baked Alaska Goes Hollywood (4-16-18):

Fatherhood – A Panel Discussion (5-3-18)

Matt Forney Interview (5-6-18)

I Ran So Far Away, I Just Ran (5-7-18)

A Convert To Orthodox Judaism Talks With A Lutheran Pastor (5-14-18)

Kebab Shop (5-16-18)

The Bronze Age Mindset (6-22-18):

Hotep Jesus, Hotep Nation & Alt Blacks (6-3-18):

Kevin Michael Grace Book Club: Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Skin in the Game (6-8-18):

Greg Cochran Interview (5-25-18)

Kevin Michael Grace Returns (5-28-18)

Kevin Michael Grace Interview (5-17-18)

Patrick Little, Kevin Michael Grace, Tom Kawczynski (June 1, 2018)

Parsha Korach (Numbers 16–18) 6-10-18:

Kevin Michael Grace Vs Lexi Transexual (CV Vitolo-Haddad) 5-24-18:

#7: 6-11-18 Kevin Michael Grace: Witchcraft in Hollywood: Real or Not?:

#11 6-18-18 Kevin Michael Grace On The World Cup, Marijuana Legalization:

Posted in Alt Right | Comments Off on Wild & Crazy Videos From 2018 II