Near Universal Myopia: Not Seeing Individuals

The Elusive Wapiti suggests certain folk are being myopicabout the race/I.Q. issue. Here is what keeps bothering me about what I hear, sometimes from the alt-right, but also far too often with the egalitarians.

An I.Q. of 100 is supposed to be the median score. Races are subsets of the set that sets the original median score, so they are going to trend toward that median. Large gaps between the groups can't exist, so we just get this rank order- a very consistent order.

Where are the large gaps? Between individuals. Skin color has nothing on the difference between 130 and 100 IQ. The most annoying part of commentary on the race/IQ issue is that people seem incapable of seeing that these gaps occur not only between people of different races, but within the races as well! Map IQs of black people and you'll get a bell curve too. Outliers are in every race.

So what does the race/IQ list tell us? STOP CENTRAL PLANNING! It is one more piece of evidence telling us the government gets practically everything wrong. As far as I can tell, this is what most of the right and/or libertarian types want. I haven't heard anyone suggest we should implement the race/IQ list as some sort of standard.

Success is not massively IQ dependent. IQ helps, but what helps even more is distribution of labor. Our very inequality, the differences the educational system tries to eradicate, are the keys to success. We could have spent our time developing different skill sets based on our abilities and preferences; instead the educational system seems to be churning out people who can be little more than paper pushers. This is not just a problem for the high IQ white person who doesn't get the job; it's a society wide problem since the loss of performance from misplacing two people (and in America it's likely millions since HR departments are about not getting sued instead of finding the right candidate) leads to less wealth creation than we would have had if they had found a better distribution of labor.

Just think about the cost of credentialism alone. H.R. departments slap on ridiculous educational requirements for a particular job, and everyone, including the people egalitarians are trying to help, have to go get a degree or certification, whatever. A huge, upfront cost. The rich and the subsidized can handle it; the poor intelligent who don't get a level playing field in the name of equality cannot.

Finally, perhaps a simpler example I've probably mentioned before. Libraries try to be egalitarian, so they buy 'black' literature, slasher movies, rap cds, etc...
The young, poor, intelligent blacks who depend on libraries don't want this junk. They want biology, architecture, ballet, decent literature- they want to learn, but they find they've been short-changed. Libraries, schools, universities- all these places have limited funds and, if they are properly ordered, would naturally be places for people with high IQs. Equal access makes sense; changing these institutions into day-care centers for uneducated adults does not.