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> It's not impossible to get ahead in a socialist economy, it's just that the bar is raised for the lower classes. Socialism is hinged upon making it harder fo

> It's not impossible to get ahead in a socialist economy, it's just that the bar is raised for the lower classes. Socialism is hinged upon making it harder for people to get ahead. If you get too far ahead, your gains are redistributed to those who you have left behind. By that definition, a pure Socialist system will ensure that nobody can ever get ahead of anybody else. > I think you're hitting on a bigger problem with American culture, which is the "hard working" bias. Is the employee who comes in at 7am and leaves at 7pm really a better person? Ask this a different way: is the athlete who comes to the gym at 7am and leaves at 7pm really a better athlete? The answer is, of course, yes. Sports are 100% meritocracies. You either perform, or you do not. The color of your skin, the disabilities you have, the socioeconomic status you grew up with; none of those things factor in. You can either perform better than the opposition, or you cannot. Full stop. There are very few people that would dispute that, yet for everything outside of sports there's a subsection of the population that has convinced themselves that hard work somehow doesn't equal success. Maybe it's because it's harder for people to relate to entrepreneurial success than it is to relate to success in a sport because the metrics for sports are very well defined. So if that's the case, to answer your question directly, we need to define the metric for success. In business, that's called profit. The hard working employee is a "better person" (your words) if their work results in greater profit for the company than the person coming in the bare minimum amount of time. If not, then yes, they're wasting their time just like the Athlete would be if their hard work didn't result in better performance in their sport.

papapra 11y ago
"Sports are 100% meritocracies" - that's just very false, genetics and where you come from play a huge role.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  Genetics is part of merit in sports. Merit is how well you can perform. Genetics influences that. As for "where you come from": Can you supply some evidence for that assertion? I'll give you argument (not evidence, I admit) that your claim is false. If it were true, then someone could create a high-performing team simply by selecting people who came from the places that other teams ignore. (Or are you claiming that, for example, there aren't many hockey players coming from Hawaii, even though one would expect that the population would include some with the genetics and talent to be excellent? Well, raw talent means little. Merit means talent and preparation and discipline and coaching and genetics and drive and mental toughness and probably a few things I've forgotten. If you're not going to chase that sport because it's not culturally a thing where you are, then you aren't going to be very good at that sport.)
  - papapra 11y ago
    For exemple, the family and the envirennement, the support of the family is very important... And I would say that raw talent means a lot, the majority of atheles work hard, but the deciding factor is talent.
bduerst 11y ago
Professional athletes typically spend 6 hrs a day, 6 days a week in the gym, because there are diminishing returns on 12 hours a day. Your crafted hypothetical and false analogy that American workers are athletes, all to support the argument that working harder is meritous, proves the "hard working" bias that I'm talking about. >Socialism is hinged upon making it harder for people to get ahead. Socialism is hinged upon making everyone get ahead. Meritous people still have opportunities to rise above.
- kamaal 11y ago
  >>Professional athletes typically spend 6 hrs a day, 6 days a week in the gym, because there are diminishing returns on 12 hours a day. May be in the gym. But on the game as a whole? A lot more. Gym work isn't all there is to sports. Just like just writing code isn't all there is to programming. You need to learn new things, read other peoples code, review code, learn a new algorithms etc etc. Similarly sports people have their stuff to do when they are not actually practicing. >>Your crafted hypothetical and false analogy that American workers are athletes, all to support the argument that working harder is meritous, proves the "hard working" bias that I'm talking about. People who do more work get ahead. This shouldn't even be surprising to you. Because this is common sense. Students who study hard score more marks than students who while away their time with friends. We could keep handing out free marks to non performing students, subtracting equivalent from performing students to make non performers feel good. But that doesn't change anything about those students. Good students are going to do well in the coming year, with more advanced subjects. And the bad ones will do worse. When they are done with their education, merely marks being same will mean nothing at all. Check back after a few years, what kind of jobs performing and non performing students are doing. It will be clear to you why that tiny equality exercise can never actually work. >>Socialism is hinged upon making everyone get ahead. Meritous people still have opportunities to rise above. Socialism gives incentives for people to stay in the back, because its assumed those getting ahead are supposed to make up for them.
dawnbreez 11y ago
>There are very few people that would dispute that, yet for everything outside of sports there's a subsection of the population that has convinced themselves that hard work somehow doesn't equal success. I have worked for Kroger for a little over a year now. I make 7.55 an hour handling dangerous chemicals; before that, I bagged people's groceries for 7.45. As a bagger, I not only worked hard, I constantly told my supervisor that I was willing to work 40 hours, that I wanted to work a register. They didn't promote me until I gave two weeks notice; my parents convinced me to stay. Now I get paid ten cents extra to clean floors and cover for absentee cashiers (and, mind you, I'm not actually trained; I had to learn it all myself). Oh, and one of the other janitors cannot figure out basic chemical safety. She is paid just as much as I am, and continues to work as a janitor. It's not that hard work never pays off. It's that I have a concrete example of hard work not paying off that I see every day.
- ap3 11y ago
  You know that the other janitor can't be paid less than min wage. If min wage is increased to $15 she will be paid exactly as much as you.
  - dawnbreez 11y ago
    However, the fact that she is paid the same as I am for a service that, in theory, is less valuable (due to greater danger) is fairly annoying. I expect to be more valuable for working in a way that doesn't endanger others. Ideally, I expect someone who tries to mix mustard gas in the mop bucket would be fired. My point is, the message that keeping this lady sends is "I don't care if you do your job right". And if that's the message you wanna send, whh should I do my job right? I end up split between doing my job right on principle and knowing it'll get me nowhere.
- kamaal 11y ago
  >>It's that I have a concrete example of hard work not paying off that I see every day. You have seen hard work paying off. For the level of work that you do. Of course there is no ideal world where a hair cut could be charged the same as surgery. Or someone who write database code, an OS or a search engine algorithm could be charged equally as some one troubleshooting a faulty CD drive in a call center. What are your contributions? What value are you creating? A clean floor, a good grocery bag may not be that much value. But the guy inventing the floor cleaning chemical, and people selling that for an affordable price are definitely creating a lot of value.

papapra 11y ago

"Sports are 100% meritocracies" - that's just very false, genetics and where you come from play a huge role.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
Genetics is part of merit in sports. Merit is how well you can perform. Genetics influences that. As for "where you come from": Can you supply some evidence for that assertion? I'll give you argument (not evidence, I admit) that your claim is false. If it were true, then someone could create a high-performing team simply by selecting people who came from the places that other teams ignore. (Or are you claiming that, for example, there aren't many hockey players coming from Hawaii, even though one would expect that the population would include some with the genetics and talent to be excellent? Well, raw talent means little. Merit means talent and preparation and discipline and coaching and genetics and drive and mental toughness and probably a few things I've forgotten. If you're not going to chase that sport because it's not culturally a thing where you are, then you aren't going to be very good at that sport.)
- papapra 11y ago
  For exemple, the family and the envirennement, the support of the family is very important... And I would say that raw talent means a lot, the majority of atheles work hard, but the deciding factor is talent.

bduerst 11y ago

Professional athletes typically spend 6 hrs a day, 6 days a week in the gym, because there are diminishing returns on 12 hours a day. Your crafted hypothetical and false analogy that American workers are athletes, all to support the argument that working harder is meritous, proves the "hard working" bias that I'm talking about. >Socialism is hinged upon making it harder for people to get ahead. Socialism is hinged upon making everyone get ahead. Meritous people still have opportunities to rise above.

kamaal 11y ago
>>Professional athletes typically spend 6 hrs a day, 6 days a week in the gym, because there are diminishing returns on 12 hours a day. May be in the gym. But on the game as a whole? A lot more. Gym work isn't all there is to sports. Just like just writing code isn't all there is to programming. You need to learn new things, read other peoples code, review code, learn a new algorithms etc etc. Similarly sports people have their stuff to do when they are not actually practicing. >>Your crafted hypothetical and false analogy that American workers are athletes, all to support the argument that working harder is meritous, proves the "hard working" bias that I'm talking about. People who do more work get ahead. This shouldn't even be surprising to you. Because this is common sense. Students who study hard score more marks than students who while away their time with friends. We could keep handing out free marks to non performing students, subtracting equivalent from performing students to make non performers feel good. But that doesn't change anything about those students. Good students are going to do well in the coming year, with more advanced subjects. And the bad ones will do worse. When they are done with their education, merely marks being same will mean nothing at all. Check back after a few years, what kind of jobs performing and non performing students are doing. It will be clear to you why that tiny equality exercise can never actually work. >>Socialism is hinged upon making everyone get ahead. Meritous people still have opportunities to rise above. Socialism gives incentives for people to stay in the back, because its assumed those getting ahead are supposed to make up for them.

dawnbreez 11y ago

>There are very few people that would dispute that, yet for everything outside of sports there's a subsection of the population that has convinced themselves that hard work somehow doesn't equal success. I have worked for Kroger for a little over a year now. I make 7.55 an hour handling dangerous chemicals; before that, I bagged people's groceries for 7.45. As a bagger, I not only worked hard, I constantly told my supervisor that I was willing to work 40 hours, that I wanted to work a register. They didn't promote me until I gave two weeks notice; my parents convinced me to stay. Now I get paid ten cents extra to clean floors and cover for absentee cashiers (and, mind you, I'm not actually trained; I had to learn it all myself). Oh, and one of the other janitors cannot figure out basic chemical safety. She is paid just as much as I am, and continues to work as a janitor. It's not that hard work never pays off. It's that I have a concrete example of hard work not paying off that I see every day.

ap3 11y ago
You know that the other janitor can't be paid less than min wage. If min wage is increased to $15 she will be paid exactly as much as you.
- dawnbreez 11y ago
  However, the fact that she is paid the same as I am for a service that, in theory, is less valuable (due to greater danger) is fairly annoying. I expect to be more valuable for working in a way that doesn't endanger others. Ideally, I expect someone who tries to mix mustard gas in the mop bucket would be fired. My point is, the message that keeping this lady sends is "I don't care if you do your job right". And if that's the message you wanna send, whh should I do my job right? I end up split between doing my job right on principle and knowing it'll get me nowhere.
kamaal 11y ago
>>It's that I have a concrete example of hard work not paying off that I see every day. You have seen hard work paying off. For the level of work that you do. Of course there is no ideal world where a hair cut could be charged the same as surgery. Or someone who write database code, an OS or a search engine algorithm could be charged equally as some one troubleshooting a faulty CD drive in a call center. What are your contributions? What value are you creating? A clean floor, a good grocery bag may not be that much value. But the guy inventing the floor cleaning chemical, and people selling that for an affordable price are definitely creating a lot of value.