Olympic Bid Politics

So in one of my daily surfs I was wondering how the Olympic bid was going for Chicago. So I surfed on over to Wikipedia. Imagine my frustration when I came across the following passage*:

"...After the IOC commission left Chicago, the Chicago City Council approved an Olympic Community Agreement ordinance that was drafted by Alderman Toni Preckwinkle. The agreement commits 30 percent of Olympic Village units to affordable housing conversion and guarantees women and minorities a portion of Olympic-related contracts. Former Illinois Senate President Emil Jones derided the agreement as an inadequate deal." (I couldn't find the percentage, sorry.)

For reference the article links to the following webpages: 1, 2. Why would this frustrate me? From previous posts everyone knows I am not a fan of affirmative action anymore than I am a fan of racism. Both are morally, economically, and logically inconsistent. If your goal is equality by spreading inequality then you are not helping the problem. I will post more of my thoughts on affirmative action in the future as I do not think as a movement all of the output is bad, however as a policy it is.

So I do not take exception to the housing part of the bid. That makes sense, in America we feel we should subsidize housing for the poorer parts of society. I'll leave that aside for the time being. It is a very socially responsible thing to do, however it has the affect of artificially lowering wages for the poorer people in the city, which is in the long run can hurt those people you want to help. If the poorer people do not need a living wage to pay for housing then they can accept a lower wage and still survive which causes the lowest wage levels to decrease. If people moved more freely (they are currently less likely to not move due to social reason like being near family) then not subsidizing housing would have a leveling effect on the economy in that city. If a worker cannot make a living wage then they move (this is something I think the government should subsidize for lower paid workers). Then the only people left require pay to afford housing in the city. This raises the wages which raises the cost of goods. If instead no one wants to hire someone at that price then they will be understaffed. It is supply and demand. I'll post more on my thoughts later (more you think, I know, I have a lot to say).

The part that really gets me is the part where a certain percentage will go to women and minorities. First if your society and selection committee are unbiased then this sentence is completely without any information. If your selected process awards purely on merit then it doesn't matter what the biological grouping of the CEO is. However this statement is like a blanket acceptance that the selected will not be equal in two ways:

• The committee will take into account (unconscientiously maybe) the race or gender of the person when deciding and will thus it is natural for your committee to not pick those minorities.
• The committee will take into account (conscientiously) the race or gender of the person when deciding to actively enforce a distribution of minorities across the contract process.

This is actually a very bad idea. In an age where the Olympics are huge drains on various coffers (the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois, and the US government) invests a lot of money into the games through tax breaks, funding of athletes, workers, and just building the buildings through support. If these contracts are not awarded to the best company without regard to the race or gender of the CEO then the free market doesn't work and the best contractor will not be working. Thus the system is less efficient and more tax payer dollars are lost (I know we are losing tons of dollars anyway but it is important in all cases to stop wasteful spending). At a time where all of those aforementioned entities are in huge trouble it seems silly to waste money in that way.

Basically I advocate and always will against affirmative action in governmental contracts (I actually dislike it in ALL cases but lets focus on this one). Besides outwardly saying that the committee cannot recognize the best company and will use the race or gender to decide the contract, they have said that they will (instead of fixing the process) fix the outcome. This hurts the economics of the entire thing. Thus in the end the process becomes a politic tool for an agenda instead of a beneficial process of normal business.

* What I am not saying in this article is that women or minority companies shouldn't be contractors nor am I saying anything about the quality of those contractors. In fact there is the real possibility that companies run by these groups could significantly outperform the others and win a disproportionate amount of contracts based on proportion of minority companies compared to the rest. I have read about studies that show companies headed by people in the aforementioned groups are more likely to do better work due to the pressures of society against them. I just really really want the process to completely ignore irrelevant variables when deciding the contracts and this action by Alderman Toni Preckwinkle does NOT indicate that.