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What the #EllenPao Verdict Actually Means About the ‘Rights’ You Don’t Have

Posted on | March 28, 2015 | 135 Comments

A California jury on Friday rejected the claim by Silicon Valley executive Ellen Pao that her rights had been violated by her former employer, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer. And this verdict is a teachable moment.

The modern concept of employee “rights” is antithetical to economic liberty. Employment in a free-market system is always a matter of voluntary cooperation for mutual benefit. You need a job. You apply to an employer. Among many applicants for the job, the employer chooses you. This is the basis of a contractual agreement: You do the work, the company pays you. It’s simple.

If you subsequently become dissatisfied with your job, you can quit and go work someplace else. If the company becomes dissatisfied with your work, they can fire you. This is also simple.

Oh, but you’ve got “rights,” you say. So if you don’t get a promotion you want, or you don’t think you’re treated fairly otherwise, you’re going to file a discrimination lawsuit.

Might as well get the word LOSER tattooed on your forehead.

Winners don’t file lawsuits. Winners don’t whine about “discrimination.” You know why? Because winners win. Even if, in the course of a lifelong career of winning, the winner suffers an occasional defeat, the winner just grins and moves on with his life. Company X doesn’t treat him right? They don’t appreciate his valuable skills? Fuck Company X.

The winner will find a job at Company Y or, perhaps, he’ll walk out and start his own company. Life’s too short to waste time working for a bunch of losers who don’t appreciate quality work.

If Ellen Pao was such a hotshot in the venture capital field, don’t you think there would have been other companies eager to hire her away from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer? It’s a very lucrative field, and if Ellen Pao was such a goddamned rising star, it stands to reason that some other firm would have jumped at the chance to hire her. So if she felt she was a victim of discrimination, all Ellen Pao would have had to do is to talk to somebody at a rival VC company, “Hey, Kleiner passed me over for promotion. You guys hiring?” Boom — they’d leap at the opportunity to have this young genius Ellen Pao on their payroll.

That’s didn’t happen, did it?

Hell, no, it didn’t happen, because Ellen Pao is a loser.

The world doesn’t owe you a living. No employer is obligated to hire you or give you a promotion. Ellen Pao’s claim that she was a victim of “gender discrimination” was just a typical loser’s way of rationalizing her own failure. And the lawyers who thought they could get rich off her case are nothing but greedy parasites exploiting “equal opportunity” nonsense. Pao and her lawyers sued for $16 million and they’re walking away without a nickel, and if they’d gotten a nickel that would have been five cents more than what they deserved. Fuck you, losers.

UPDATE: David Graham at the Atlantic:

The verdict is the culmination of a three-year case in which Pao said she’d been denied a promotion and then fired, and that she’d been retaliated against after complaining about discrimination. Her suit opened up a range of questions about the culture of tech investing and Silicon Valley more broadly. . . .
She says she was pressured into an affair with a colleague, and when she broke off the affair, was punished. She was denied a promotion and then fired.
The case she later brought was seen as an important moment for tech, long a place where men got ahead by default and women were outnumbered and often felt marginalized. . . .
Pao couldn’t convince a jury to side with her, but the case forced Silicon Valley’s widespread gender inequality out into the open, and put specific instances of harassment into the court record. As my colleague Olga Khazan wrote, the system as it stands is stacked against women.

How many ways can I say “bullshit”? Any high-stakes, highly competitive business environment is likely to be male-dominated and if women feel “marginalized” in such an environment, whose fault is that? There are nevertheless females who flourish in such environments, however much they may be disadvantaged and outnumbered. To talk about “gender inequality,” to claim that men get ahead “by default” in such environments, is a misleading waste of words. The company is competing in a market; if the company is successful — and Kleiner has been vastly successful — that success justifies its policies, and the wise employee is the one who adapts best to the company’s policies.

If you don’t like the policies at Kleiner, don’t work for Kleiner.

Also, don’t tell me you were “pressured into an affair.” That’s another typical loser rationalization. Ellen Pao rolled the dice — gambling that she could fuck her way to a promotion — and she lost that bet. Period. End of sentence.

UPDATE II: Phil McG in the comments links to a Vanity Fair profile of Pao and her husband and comments:

Meet the new Affirmative Action elite. They go to Princeton and Harvard, then earn millions of dollars. But as soon as some minor setback happens to them, it turns out that they were poor wretched victims of racist or sexist discrimination all along!

The Ivy League elite of Special Snowflakes.

UPDATE III: Here is a Business Insider profile of the major personalities involved in the Pao lawsuit. The man with whom Pao had an affair in 2006, Ajit Nazre, also allegedly hit on another woman at the firm. All in all, this story is worthy of a Tom Wolfe novel.

 

Comments

135 Responses to “What the #EllenPao Verdict Actually Means About the ‘Rights’ You Don’t Have”

  1. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 28th, 2015 @ 1:15 am

    Homework Assignment: Watch Glen Gary Glen Ross and Whiplash.

  2. Adobe_Walls
    March 28th, 2015 @ 1:19 am

    It’s significant and encouraging that this was the verdict of a jury rather than a judge, particularly in California. The megaphone wielded by the shrieking hysterics creates the impression that the science in settled on ”social justice”. The people, no matter how far they’ve gone astray are not as far gone as the elitists who would enslave us. In particular this should be a lesson for those individuals falsely accused, convicted and punished by college kangaroo tribunals.

  3. robertstacymccain
    March 28th, 2015 @ 1:26 am

    The claim of “discrimination” is absurd in most cases. If you’re a top performer, if your services are valuable to the company, why would they treat you badly? And even if they did, a really high-value employee should be able to walk out and find another employer willing to hire them. So instead of suing your employer, find another job. Simple.

  4. RKae
    March 28th, 2015 @ 1:26 am

    “Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and f*ck the prom queen.”

  5. emil shue
    March 28th, 2015 @ 1:40 am

    Glad to see the Ds hung tough. Too many corp defendants run scared and settle BS cases…

  6. Daniel Freeman
    March 28th, 2015 @ 2:11 am

    I’m not used to being given assignments by bovines, but I’ll add them to my queue.

  7. BettorOffSingle .
    March 28th, 2015 @ 3:05 am

    You have just commited the “rational consumer fallacy,” with your premise that this country is a meritocracy where those who get ahead, deserve to, and no rules are ever broken.
    Wow that’s one of the more disgusting blame-the-victim articles I’ve ever seen. Obviously you have a problem with civil-rights laws, so why don’t you just advocate for their repeal? Not that the feminists are any better: they whine about 16 percent women in tech, and how it proves discrimination, but ask them about the 16 percent of nurses who are male, and their IQ drops 10000 points. I’m a SECRETARY, a profession which is 99 percent female, and employers would rather push me onto food stamps and disability than admit to sexualizing their workforce, and women would rather claim oppression than admit to whoring out and taking jobs from fat, old, and ugly women.
    Yes, “winners” eventually rise to the top, but no thanks to people like you, who are the first to show up in the good times, and the first to bail out in the bad. May you one day be the “whining loser” no one cares about.

  8. BettorOffSingle .
    March 28th, 2015 @ 3:08 am

    Why? Okay, here’s why: say you’re a fat, ugly, middle-aged attorney who pulls in $2 million a year, and need support staff to do entry-level jobs that any sixth-grader could pull off. You have a pool of applicants, mostly young, attractive women, who are as qualified as the rest of the applicant pool, so sexualized hiring won’t cost your company anything. Now a hot 18 year-old single-mother needs to feed her kids with your job, and might wind up on the street without it. She’s willing to have sex with you if you hire her. What would you do?

  9. BettorOffSingle .
    March 28th, 2015 @ 3:08 am

    If she could have found a similar job she would not have had standing to sue, under the failure-to-mitigate doctrine.

  10. BettorOffSingle .
    March 28th, 2015 @ 3:09 am

    I remember people who denied my claims of secretarial discrimination saying that if every company were like I said, they would go bankrupt. They said this in 1994, only to have me proven right in 2009. Remember the BAILOUTS? This is a nation of welfare bums and beggars now.

  11. useless eater
    March 28th, 2015 @ 3:46 am

    One reason you would be treated badly because, if you’re really good at what you hired to do, your supervisor begins to become afraid that you may take his job.

  12. useless eater
    March 28th, 2015 @ 3:53 am

    In my experience, the “winners” are generally the employee most willing to gargle the boss’s cock and lick his nutsack.

    I suppose, if you’re the boss, and you’re paying your employees salaries, you have every right to insist that your cock be gargled and your nutsack licked.

    …That’s the real economic liberty.

  13. Fail Burton
    March 28th, 2015 @ 4:35 am

    People like Shanley Kane, the lying feminists hovering around rape hoaxes and fake statistics, jazz hands and trigger warnings, and all the rest are their own worst enemy. We don’t even have to satirize these people really, all we have to do is signal boost them by quoting them. Insane feminists consider that “trolling” and “harassment,” which is in keeping with how nuts they are. What ideology wouldn’t want the main tenets of their “social justice” platforms given free promotion?

    Kane’s version of Pao’s case is “she won.” That is to be expected. Intersectionalists have no respect for law or due process. Anita Sarkeesian has said straight out she has no interest in mere equality. The whole “structure” must come crashing down.

    These people haven’t been phased by the UVA rape hoax, the Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown outcomes, the librarian who won his defamation lawsuit about fake sexual harassment 2 underemployed Twitter warriors provoked, the truth about rape statistics or anything else which proves intersectionalists routinely lie. The Patriarchy is real, it is insidious and it is a threat. Some people are coming to realize two things:

    A.) These people are moving gov’t policy

    B.) These people will destroy anything they touch

    The success of intersectionalists in the science fiction community should be taken as a warning in microcosm of what happens. Actual diversity is destroyed, the opposition done away with, art gutted like a fish until you’re left with a sociopathic Mannheim Steamroller in place of Jimi Hendrix.

    Pao writes “I’ve heard from people in Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, Australia, Malaysia, France, Argentina, Norway, Tanzania, Finland, and beyond.”

    What has she heard from success? Has she no idea how much Australia, France and Norway have been compromised? Feminists lost and declared victory. That is symbolic of their nuthouse. They don’t know success or failure when they see them.

  14. Francis W. Porretto
    March 28th, 2015 @ 4:43 am

    It’s amazing how many people aren’t able to see the logical equivalence between employee “rights” and slavery — specifically, the enslavement of the employer to the employee, with the government as the whip-wielding overseer. But then, the left-liberal mindset is rich in doublethink and well armored against evidence and reasoning that might undermine the conviction of superior wisdom and morality.

  15. Adobe_Walls
    March 28th, 2015 @ 5:07 am

    That’s as likely to happen to a man or a women, in other words it’s a job condition.

  16. Adobe_Walls
    March 28th, 2015 @ 5:09 am

    I’d hire the single mother and then not have sex with her. Particularly if the job was hourly.

  17. Phil_McG
    March 28th, 2015 @ 5:16 am

    The Vanity Fair article on Pao and her husband Buddy Fletcher is fascinating: http://www.vanityfair.com/style/scandal/2013/03/buddy-fletcher-ellen-pao

    Meet the new Affirmative Action elite. They go to Princeton and Harvard, then earn millions of dollars. But as soon as some minor setback happens to them, it turns out that they were poor wretched victims of racist or sexist discrimination all along!

  18. Adobe_Walls
    March 28th, 2015 @ 5:18 am

    You didn’t think they created this system just for the peons did you?

  19. Phil_McG
    March 28th, 2015 @ 5:22 am

    I hope you at least got a promotion.

  20. Phil_McG
    March 28th, 2015 @ 5:24 am

    Maybe corporate America is learning that paying the Danegeld is not a good long term strategy.

  21. Adobe_Walls
    March 28th, 2015 @ 5:24 am

    Yeah watched the trailer for ”Whiplash” gonna have to take an incomplete on that assignment.

  22. Phil_McG
    March 28th, 2015 @ 5:26 am

    “If she could have found a similar job she would not have had standing to sue”

    No.

  23. Phil_McG
    March 28th, 2015 @ 5:27 am

    Hire the male applicants as they work harder and don’t cause drama.

  24. texlovera
    March 28th, 2015 @ 6:13 am

    I am so glad that the jury shoved that verdict right up her, and her lawyers’, asses.

    She was a FREAKING PARTNER in the g_ddamned firm. Screw ‘er.

  25. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 28th, 2015 @ 6:44 am

    I loved American Sniper. Whiplash maybe a better film (it is certainly close). It is definitely worth a watch.

  26. JadedByPolitics
    March 28th, 2015 @ 6:45 am

    I tweeted this out with the comment, she thinks she won because “equality”. Woman is delusional, seriously delusional of course most seem to be!

  27. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 28th, 2015 @ 6:47 am

    Having sex with an employee at work is demoralizing to the rest of the crew, opens you up to a lawsuit (or divorce) and almost always ends badly. The Draft Day fantasy of Kevin Costner and Jennifer Gardner is a fantasy.

  28. JadedByPolitics
    March 28th, 2015 @ 6:47 am

    So you have made your way through corporate America on your knees have you? Whatever pays the bills huh honey!

  29. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 28th, 2015 @ 6:53 am

    Wait a second, Monica Lewinsky did not have any kids!

  30. JadedByPolitics
    March 28th, 2015 @ 6:54 am

    Where are you coming up with these examples? You work at a porn company?

  31. Steve Skubinna
    March 28th, 2015 @ 6:56 am

    “Losers whine about doing their best. Winners go home and f*ck the prom queen.”

  32. Steve Skubinna
    March 28th, 2015 @ 7:02 am

    Oh crap, I should have read all the comments before posting. Oh well, great minds think alike.

    And apparently so do ours.

  33. useless eater
    March 28th, 2015 @ 7:21 am

    It’s the first thing a boss is always willing to pay for.

    oops. i replied to the wrong comment

  34. useless eater
    March 28th, 2015 @ 7:24 am

    It says alot about what business finds acceptable.

  35. useless eater
    March 28th, 2015 @ 7:26 am

    I’ve worked with, and for, more people than i care to remember who have thought exactly that way.

  36. JadedByPolitics
    March 28th, 2015 @ 7:36 am

    Please, you live in a Harlequin novel or more likely a Playboy article.

  37. RS
    March 28th, 2015 @ 7:42 am

    The calculus leading to the creation of a job is actually more simple: For the employer, workers are always a cost. The question is whether a worker will make more for the employer than the worker costs the employer. “Rights,” such as they are, as established by well-meaning but economically ignorant legislators, together with regulations, employment taxes, mandatory benefits and so forth, increase the cost of that worker. The more you add on, the higher the cost, the fewer jobs. Employers will not–ever–pay someone more than the market will bear or more than an employee will generate for the employer through his labors.

  38. useless eater
    March 28th, 2015 @ 7:44 am

    In fact, my life has been very average.

  39. JadedByPolitics
    March 28th, 2015 @ 7:46 am

    I don’t disagree with you there which is why your fantasy life is so vivid.

  40. useless eater
    March 28th, 2015 @ 7:48 am

    I can only recite what i know and have experienced. You, on the other hand, are commenting on what you have neither known, nor (apparently) have experienced.

  41. gastorgrab
    March 28th, 2015 @ 7:49 am

    When an employer chooses a better qualified applicant over a lesser qualified one, they are discriminating against the weaker applicant.

    Yes, there is discrimination in meritocracy.

  42. robertstacymccain
    March 28th, 2015 @ 7:55 am

    It is obvious that the “employee rights” mentality has entrenched itself deeply in some minds. The claim of “discrimination” is self-evidently absurd when looked at in a larger perspective, as Thomas Sowell has repeatedly pointed out. If indeed unfair discrimination against women was prevalent in a firm, this would put that firm at a disadvantage to others in the field, because those other firms would be able to hire qualified women and minorities at a discount and make good use of them. No need for lawsuits to fix this problem; just quit the companies that discriminate and go to work for the companies that don’t. When it is claimed that an entire industry discriminates against women, however, this is likely a reflection that the industry is more naturally suited to the talents of men. Women in such a field may feel themselves “out of place” to a certain extent, but this doesn’t mean they are victims of injustice.

  43. RS
    March 28th, 2015 @ 7:57 am

    You have just commited [sic] the “rational consumer fallacy,” with your premise that this country is a meritocracy where those who get ahead, deserve to, and no rules are ever broken.

    The premise is not that the country (or any business enterprise is a meritocracy. Rather the premises are (a) will an employee generate more income for me the employer than what s/he costs and (b) can I get the same value for less money elsewhere based upon the market? The fallacy is believing that employees are different than paper clips, copy paper, electricity or anything else which is necessary to make money. You may be the best secretary in the history of secretaries, but if you cost me more than the 18 year old and I can get the same value–N.B. “value,” not “workload” or even “quality”–for less money, the rational employer will choose less money.

    Secondly, your statement presupposes the existence of “rules.” That’s a misdirection as the “rules” are artificial and they impose restraints on the calculus listed above. The calculus will always be there, because employers do not have businesses for fun, or to help the masses support their families or for any other altruistic reason. They do so to make a profit. The best thing for an employee to do is make sure his/her value to the employer’s bottom line exceeds his cost. Otherwise, find a place where s/he can do that and move on.

  44. Isa
    March 28th, 2015 @ 8:19 am

    common sense prevails. and in California, of all places.

    this is why i believe in miracles, people.

  45. useless eater
    March 28th, 2015 @ 8:25 am

    I see you’re familiar with “meritocracy”.

  46. Quartermaster
    March 28th, 2015 @ 8:36 am

    If you have accurately depicted your life, then you are anything but average. You seem to have found every pervert in corporate America. I’ve never seen your story in my life, nor has anyone else I have known had a life anything like you depict. Perhaps that’s how you “succeeded,” but all you did was prostitute yourself. In the end, you actually failed. Miserably.

  47. Quartermaster
    March 28th, 2015 @ 8:39 am

    It says far more about human nature. The left thinks they can pass laws and outlaw human nature. Somehow, human nature works around them and little changes.

  48. useless eater
    March 28th, 2015 @ 8:41 am

    I’ve found it’s not at all uncommon to suppose that it is our lives and experiences which are typical. And anything outside our experience, atypical.

  49. Quartermaster
    March 28th, 2015 @ 8:41 am

    There’s an old saying, “Don’t get your honey where you get your money.” It’s very wise advice.

  50. useless eater
    March 28th, 2015 @ 8:42 am

    probably, close to the last thing i would be called – would be “successful”.