5 ms·

The solution offered is offensive, amounting to randomly allocating power and privilege amongst a given population rather than allowing the best and brightest m

The solution offered is offensive, amounting to randomly allocating power and privilege amongst a given population rather than allowing the best and brightest make their case through personal excellence. All this supposedly so those that are incapable of succeeding in a meritocracy are not sentenced to the terrible fate of believing themselves worthy of their low station. I don't want to imagine a person so wretched they would prefer to ruin the world rather than understand their position in it as below average. I can think of little more depressing. Feudalism died for a reason, let's not bring it back.

InclinedPlane 17y ago
Imagine the state the world would be in if someone had put into practice his proposed "solution" back in, say, 1500. People who succeed do not just benefit themselves, they often benefit many others, including future generations. And people are motivated to succeed by desiring the rewards that come with success such as wealth, fame, etc. Without such incentives, success and progress suffer. Art, architecture, literature, music, and poetry suffers. The study and practice of medicine, physics, and chemistry suffers. Innovation in industry suffers. Free enterprise suffers. Everyone's quality of life is reduced because the automobile was never invented, penicillin was never discovered, radio was never discovered, the electric light bulb was never invented, the refrigerator was never invented, etc, etc, etc. Should we discourage the Newtons, the Shakespeares, the John Carmacks, the Sergey Brins, the JK Rowlings, and the Steve Jacksons of the world because there are so many other folks who are perfectly content to spend their lives working at the Try N Save and watching 5 hours of TV a night and some of those folks find their lives dissatisfying in comparison? Quiet down! You're being unruly! You're making everyone else look bad with your success! Here, come slum with us, it'll make everyone happier in the end, honest. Time and time again history has shown that unfettered individual liberty maximizes progress, both for individuals and for society as a whole. There will always be inequality and tragedy, that's the nature of life. Trying to pretend that we can make everyone identically equal and erase everything that makes people different from one another is a distopian vision, very Borg-like and anti-humane.
- drunkpotato 17y ago
  I'm surprised to see such a high number of points for this canned mad-libs response unworthy of the thoughtfulness of the original article. You fail to acknowledge issues raised in the article and narrowly argue the solution in the most trivial and trite way. I would like to find a way to combine the best of the technological brilliance and economic powerhouse that meritocracy and social mobility have provided, while also looking for a less disconnected, community-focused and psychologically healthier nation. Any discussions that help pinpoint problems in our current system, and propose solutions, are welcome to me. I do not agree with the author's proposed solution, but I do agree that there are problems inherent in the extreme selfishness and greed in our society that we have not adequately addressed.
  - timwiseman 17y ago
    I think part of the question is what you mean by less disconnected, community-focused and psychologically healthier nation. and specifically how you define connected and community focused. Most people who use those phrases are talking about their geographic area, but that means little to me. The community of SQL Server DBAs I participate in is important to me, but that includes members both physically close and around the world. My church group matters to me, and that one is somewhat centered around my general geographic area, but it has people from all over the city. My coworkers are very important in my life, but none of them live anywhere near me (I live in the South part of Las Vegas, work in the North, most of my coworkers live relatively close to the office.) The people who live in my neighborhood do not play a significant part in my life. They are thankfully all very nice people, and I wish them the best and say "Hello" when I meet them while walking my dog, but I have very little in common and little reason to interact with them. If you mean this group by connected and community focused, then why would we want that?
    - jimbokun 17y ago
      Because you have self selected yourself into a mono-culture of people very much like yourself. You have no reason, no incentive, to understand and empathize with people different from you. The essay makes that point with respect to the rich and poor kids in the Breakfast Club, who were at least in the same school, vs. the modern high school in the O.C., where everyone is uniformly spoiled and out of touch with other people's reality. This leads to the increasing political polarization we see today. A relative handful of people taking society's spoils for itself and isolating themselves from the rest of society. If unchecked, do you think this will end well? The end effect is something like the Feudalism rightly decried elsewhere in this thread.
moron4hire 17y ago
Agreed. This article expressed especially strange sentiments for an entrepreneurship board.
- plorkyeran 17y ago
  Which is exactly why it is an article people here should read. It's a decently reasoned argument against a view most people here (myself included) support, and it's important to understand why we disagree with it.
proemeth 17y ago
Well I think this article has its place on HN because it questions values that are so consensual they are never discussed. Ethics sure is a tough ground to venture on, the author goes there but not only, and makes a few points.
decode 17y ago
"The solution offered is offensive, amounting to randomly allocating power and privilege amongst a given population rather than allowing the best and brightest make their case through personal excellence." The important question that the author raises is this: why is that offensive? Right now we allocate power according to the chance of genetics and environment, and tell people that we're actually allocating it through personal effort. Which raises two questions: 1) Is it okay to lie to ourselves about what determines the meritocratic hierarchy? 2) Is it more tragic that a bright, smart, knowledgeable person not be able to fully exercise those properties, or for a slow, unintelligent, uninformed person to not be able to have a dignified place in society? The answers to these questions could be either yes or no, but we need to be honest about our answers to them, and why we answer them the way we do.
- anamax 17y ago
  > Is it more tragic that a bright, smart, knowledgeable person not be able to fully exercise those properties, or for a slow, unintelligent, uninformed person to not be able to have a dignified place in society? Those aren't mutually exclusive and neither is their inverse. Also, the first one is wrong in a subtle way. We want people to exercise their capabilities to the fullest - bright and smart are merely two kinds of capabilities, two that are far less important than bright and smart people think. In summary, we want all people going at full tilt and we want dignity regardless of what their "full tilt" is. The author's mistake is in thinking that you can give someone dignity by treating them as more capable than they actually are.
  - decode 17y ago
    "Those aren't mutually exclusive and neither is their inverse." They certainly aren't in general, but in a meritocracy they are. A meritocracy, almost by definition, assigns more value (and therefore dignity) to those who are more capable. I think the author is arguing for an environment where they are no longer mutually exclusive. "The author's mistake is in thinking that you can give someone dignity by treating them as more capable than they actually are." I think the author is saying that dignity should not be tied to how capable a person is.
jimbokun 17y ago
By your response, I suspect that you do not think a "solution" to this problem is needed at all. I find it refreshing that the author readily acknowledges that the people left behind are there because they are not talented enough to go anywhere else. It was very politically incorrect of him to say so. With that as the premise, what do we do with those people left behind? Our meritocracy allows fewer and fewer people to control ever more of society's wealth and resources. What of the rest of society? Basically, we are witnessing the ghetto-fication of Middle America. Is that not a problem?
- etherael 17y ago
  I'm not an American so I have not witnessed the exact situation being outlined in the article, but as I was born in the Australian countryside and grew up in the closest thing that Sydney has to a ghetto, I do think I have a grasp on seeing this from the inside, and I think I've seen the kind of people who largely result; the best summary to me is "Ignorant, and proud of it". I find the notion of organising a social structure around making these people feel better about their uselessness abhorrent, I find the notion that those distributed amongst them capable of greater things being sentenced to living their lives in the immediate presence of these people, as a close-knit good old fashioned "community" as a pretty good argument for euthanasia. And in case I come across too much someone swimming deep in the dunning-kruger effect, if I am or were afflicted with the same unfortunate situation with regards to my abilities as the group in question, I would still not wish that anyone who had the capacity to make the world better ought to be held back on account of not wounding my pride. I live in the world after all. Feudal serfs had it a lot worst than the modern ignorant and proud of it, and I believe this is largely because the world is a much better place on account of the very meritocratic values the original article decries.
exit 17y ago
I don't want to imagine a person so wretched they would prefer to ruin the world rather than understand their position in it as below average. I can think of little more depressing. You setup a straw man by simplifying their grievance to an abstract understanding of ones position. People who are below average live genuinely miserable lives in a meritocracy. WHY shouldn't they ruin the world? It was cruel of the world to create them (never mind fooling them into becoming attached to being alive). HOW is randomly allocating power and privilege any different than the random allocation of cognitive abilities?

InclinedPlane 17y ago

Imagine the state the world would be in if someone had put into practice his proposed "solution" back in, say, 1500. People who succeed do not just benefit themselves, they often benefit many others, including future generations. And people are motivated to succeed by desiring the rewards that come with success such as wealth, fame, etc. Without such incentives, success and progress suffer. Art, architecture, literature, music, and poetry suffers. The study and practice of medicine, physics, and chemistry suffers. Innovation in industry suffers. Free enterprise suffers. Everyone's quality of life is reduced because the automobile was never invented, penicillin was never discovered, radio was never discovered, the electric light bulb was never invented, the refrigerator was never invented, etc, etc, etc. Should we discourage the Newtons, the Shakespeares, the John Carmacks, the Sergey Brins, the JK Rowlings, and the Steve Jacksons of the world because there are so many other folks who are perfectly content to spend their lives working at the Try N Save and watching 5 hours of TV a night and some of those folks find their lives dissatisfying in comparison? Quiet down! You're being unruly! You're making everyone else look bad with your success! Here, come slum with us, it'll make everyone happier in the end, honest. Time and time again history has shown that unfettered individual liberty maximizes progress, both for individuals and for society as a whole. There will always be inequality and tragedy, that's the nature of life. Trying to pretend that we can make everyone identically equal and erase everything that makes people different from one another is a distopian vision, very Borg-like and anti-humane.

drunkpotato 17y ago
I'm surprised to see such a high number of points for this canned mad-libs response unworthy of the thoughtfulness of the original article. You fail to acknowledge issues raised in the article and narrowly argue the solution in the most trivial and trite way. I would like to find a way to combine the best of the technological brilliance and economic powerhouse that meritocracy and social mobility have provided, while also looking for a less disconnected, community-focused and psychologically healthier nation. Any discussions that help pinpoint problems in our current system, and propose solutions, are welcome to me. I do not agree with the author's proposed solution, but I do agree that there are problems inherent in the extreme selfishness and greed in our society that we have not adequately addressed.
- timwiseman 17y ago
  I think part of the question is what you mean by less disconnected, community-focused and psychologically healthier nation. and specifically how you define connected and community focused. Most people who use those phrases are talking about their geographic area, but that means little to me. The community of SQL Server DBAs I participate in is important to me, but that includes members both physically close and around the world. My church group matters to me, and that one is somewhat centered around my general geographic area, but it has people from all over the city. My coworkers are very important in my life, but none of them live anywhere near me (I live in the South part of Las Vegas, work in the North, most of my coworkers live relatively close to the office.) The people who live in my neighborhood do not play a significant part in my life. They are thankfully all very nice people, and I wish them the best and say "Hello" when I meet them while walking my dog, but I have very little in common and little reason to interact with them. If you mean this group by connected and community focused, then why would we want that?
  - jimbokun 17y ago
    Because you have self selected yourself into a mono-culture of people very much like yourself. You have no reason, no incentive, to understand and empathize with people different from you. The essay makes that point with respect to the rich and poor kids in the Breakfast Club, who were at least in the same school, vs. the modern high school in the O.C., where everyone is uniformly spoiled and out of touch with other people's reality. This leads to the increasing political polarization we see today. A relative handful of people taking society's spoils for itself and isolating themselves from the rest of society. If unchecked, do you think this will end well? The end effect is something like the Feudalism rightly decried elsewhere in this thread.

moron4hire 17y ago

Agreed. This article expressed especially strange sentiments for an entrepreneurship board.

plorkyeran 17y ago
Which is exactly why it is an article people here should read. It's a decently reasoned argument against a view most people here (myself included) support, and it's important to understand why we disagree with it.

proemeth 17y ago

Well I think this article has its place on HN because it questions values that are so consensual they are never discussed. Ethics sure is a tough ground to venture on, the author goes there but not only, and makes a few points.

decode 17y ago

"The solution offered is offensive, amounting to randomly allocating power and privilege amongst a given population rather than allowing the best and brightest make their case through personal excellence." The important question that the author raises is this: why is that offensive? Right now we allocate power according to the chance of genetics and environment, and tell people that we're actually allocating it through personal effort. Which raises two questions: 1) Is it okay to lie to ourselves about what determines the meritocratic hierarchy? 2) Is it more tragic that a bright, smart, knowledgeable person not be able to fully exercise those properties, or for a slow, unintelligent, uninformed person to not be able to have a dignified place in society? The answers to these questions could be either yes or no, but we need to be honest about our answers to them, and why we answer them the way we do.

anamax 17y ago
> Is it more tragic that a bright, smart, knowledgeable person not be able to fully exercise those properties, or for a slow, unintelligent, uninformed person to not be able to have a dignified place in society? Those aren't mutually exclusive and neither is their inverse. Also, the first one is wrong in a subtle way. We want people to exercise their capabilities to the fullest - bright and smart are merely two kinds of capabilities, two that are far less important than bright and smart people think. In summary, we want all people going at full tilt and we want dignity regardless of what their "full tilt" is. The author's mistake is in thinking that you can give someone dignity by treating them as more capable than they actually are.
- decode 17y ago
  "Those aren't mutually exclusive and neither is their inverse." They certainly aren't in general, but in a meritocracy they are. A meritocracy, almost by definition, assigns more value (and therefore dignity) to those who are more capable. I think the author is arguing for an environment where they are no longer mutually exclusive. "The author's mistake is in thinking that you can give someone dignity by treating them as more capable than they actually are." I think the author is saying that dignity should not be tied to how capable a person is.

jimbokun 17y ago

By your response, I suspect that you do not think a "solution" to this problem is needed at all. I find it refreshing that the author readily acknowledges that the people left behind are there because they are not talented enough to go anywhere else. It was very politically incorrect of him to say so. With that as the premise, what do we do with those people left behind? Our meritocracy allows fewer and fewer people to control ever more of society's wealth and resources. What of the rest of society? Basically, we are witnessing the ghetto-fication of Middle America. Is that not a problem?

etherael 17y ago
I'm not an American so I have not witnessed the exact situation being outlined in the article, but as I was born in the Australian countryside and grew up in the closest thing that Sydney has to a ghetto, I do think I have a grasp on seeing this from the inside, and I think I've seen the kind of people who largely result; the best summary to me is "Ignorant, and proud of it". I find the notion of organising a social structure around making these people feel better about their uselessness abhorrent, I find the notion that those distributed amongst them capable of greater things being sentenced to living their lives in the immediate presence of these people, as a close-knit good old fashioned "community" as a pretty good argument for euthanasia. And in case I come across too much someone swimming deep in the dunning-kruger effect, if I am or were afflicted with the same unfortunate situation with regards to my abilities as the group in question, I would still not wish that anyone who had the capacity to make the world better ought to be held back on account of not wounding my pride. I live in the world after all. Feudal serfs had it a lot worst than the modern ignorant and proud of it, and I believe this is largely because the world is a much better place on account of the very meritocratic values the original article decries.

exit 17y ago

I don't want to imagine a person so wretched they would prefer to ruin the world rather than understand their position in it as below average. I can think of little more depressing. You setup a straw man by simplifying their grievance to an abstract understanding of ones position. People who are below average live genuinely miserable lives in a meritocracy. WHY shouldn't they ruin the world? It was cruel of the world to create them (never mind fooling them into becoming attached to being alive). HOW is randomly allocating power and privilege any different than the random allocation of cognitive abilities?