7 ms·

Meritocracy and its discontents: The merits of revisiting Michael Young

51 points by nopinsight 9y ago

mcafeeryan92 9y ago
There are a lot of interesting ideas to unpack here: - As the initial meritocrats (does that pass as a word?) benefit from the meritocracy and accumulate wealth, they use that wealth to increase the odds for their children, resulting in a future where the "meritocracy" is made up of people whose merits in education were largely paid for, and so it ceases to be a meritocracy and ends up resembling an oligarchy. - People outside the meritocracy can't stand the smugness of elites, who have better opportunities and thus better outcomes. - This results in the breakdown of democratic function over time, because hating elites results in fact-denying when those elites are factually correct. An example is how the uneducated largely voted for Brexit, and won't change their minds in the face of evidence that it was a bad vote, because they don't want to admit that they were wrong and the elites were right. For me this presents some of the issues brought about by large inequality, whether brought about by traditional feudalism, oligarchy, or new-fangled "meritocracy." It causes unrest such that inevitably results in revolution. I also question the value of a meritocracy on its basic premise. It seems unfair in a society with so much wealth that "lazy" people or "dumb" people get such a short end of the stick when it is not their fault that they were born that way. Many of us want to build cool things and make money and contribute to the world, and capitalism makes sure we're rewarded for it, but for those of us who don't I see no reason they should be condemned to poverty while there is the means to feed them.
- deusum 9y ago
  Universal Basic Income sounds like a convenient way to prevent the various ways to create inequality and centralize wealth. Very curious how the experiments in progress will turn out.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    Basic income is bullshit that's getting loudly advocated from the top of society as a convenient way to tamper down social discontent while doing nothing about the unfair inequality at the root of many societies. In the middle of Dallas is a small city never actually incorporated by the city called Highland Park. This is where George W. Bush and the upper middle class lives. The people who grow up in Highland Park will go to some of the best high schools in the nation. They'll be well trained and well prepared to go to colleges like Harvard and Princeton and Yale. These people end up running major corporations and dominating politics. Meanwhile, if you drive ten miles south, you'll end up looking at public schools that look like prisons, that are desperately underfunded. These students, already having hard lives, will struggle to succeed, a large number will not graduate. There are no million dollar payouts or election victories for these people. They end up being the poor sods that the wealthy academics, politicians, and business people talk about when from their perch they are able to finally read about and observe human misery. But if you look at their actions, they will continue to take and take and take from these people. If not that, they benefit the most from talking about them. Every city has a Highland Park (Detroit, certainly). Check out the people who run most major companies. They come from those places to a large extent. Name a major politician that doesn't have elite school roots. That's not to say these people are bad or evil, but if we're going to be serious about ending this charade of meritocracy, we've gotta stop rewarding that. Basic income is more of the same. It's bullshit that doesn't strike at the heart of the problem. Netflix has a new series called Dirty Money. I thought the first episode about VW was pretty damn good, but the second is fascinating and sad. It's meritocracy in action. We have lots of practices in society which are business as usual which are basically scams. The poor are the most vulnerable to these scams. https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/83?jbv=80118100&jbp=0&jbr=0 https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/83?jbv=80118100&jbp=0&j... Why talk about basic income when we have glaring systematic flaws which can be solved without giving more power to that system?
    - scarmig 9y ago
      Absolutely nothing in your screed even talks about a basic income, except your first and last sentences.
      - 9y ago
  - yourcousinbilly 9y ago
    UBI isn't the clear choice everyone makes it out to be. I'm all for lowering inequality and spreading out wealth. But, fundamentally, UBI is just a welfare program with way more money pouring in so it guarantees a livable income to everyone. We could achieve the same effect by just increasing the progressive welfare. We could remove those welfare cliffs where people lose money by making more money by smoothing out the curves. But, UBI does something more by taking money from those who need it and giving it to those who don't. Every dollar going to an upper middle class tech worker is a dollar not going towards uplifting the lowest of our society. We should care a little about efficiency because UBI will be CRAZY expensive and CRAZY anti-business when we increase taxes on them. There are less costly ways to achieve better income equality like better education or increased welfare which don't hurt business. Businesses could operate with way thinner profits sure, but other countries offer other options. Here's a UBI debate for the interested: https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/universal-basic-income-safety-net-future https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/universal-basi...
    - visarga 9y ago
      > I'm all for lowering inequality and spreading out wealth I'd rather be for lowering inequality by spreading out the means of production, so people could be much more self reliant. This idea is called Distributism (the "Three acres and a cow" slogan of 1910) and stands in contrast to both capitalism and socialism. I see UBI as a demeaning form of help, that infantilises population and makes them state dependent, while self-reliance is based on one's own efforts and leads to better outcomes and increased self-esteem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism This is a great short vid about local self-reliance and the relation of normal people to big corporations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDw4dZLSDXg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDw4dZLSDXg Remember, if big corporations won't give people jobs any more, we always have one job left - taking care of ourselves directly. Self-reliance is a virtue, UBI is the opposite of that. We're headed in a technological direction that will empower self-reliance more and more in the future. By using solar energy, 3d-printing, agro-bots, community ISPs, credit co-ops, and automation in all forms, a small community could become self-reliant without backbreaking work. A social-network of skilled people (gigs) would replace regular jobs. We just need to keep these technologies very accessible and to help people develop solutions. Self-reliance is connected to the startup economy, the bootstrapping mindset, the anti-trust doctrine and creativity. It's the way to a good life without the perils of financial redistribution.
- gt_ 9y ago
  >Many of us want to build cool things and make money and contribute to the world, and capitalism makes sure we’re rewarded for it. No it doesn’t. I have been unemployed for a year and a half since suddenly losing my apartment on 30 days notice about 2 weeks after the company I worked for went under. My job was illegally skirted as contract work. The job (creative) necessitated that my work which was done for a major corporation not be included in my portfolio which made it very hard to find new employment overnight. I had to move in with my parents in a rural area so that finding a job and re-relocating to an urban area is a sick game, apparently begging for me to be dishonest, which I haven’t done yet. I have many very valuable skills (technical and creative, including programming) and very little opportunity to put them to use. Eventually I will crawl my way out but it’s pretty ridiculous so far. I am young, healthy, easy to get along with. My friends who generally all come from wealthier families are, like you may be, dumbfounded by my predicament until they realize I have no choice.
  - mathgladiator 9y ago
    I find it incongruent that you have valuable skills yet can't find work because if they are valuable then people would buy them. I went homeless, and would have remained homeless if I stuck to what I valued. Instead, I shifted my values to work on things that other people value. The cruelty of our world, imo, is that values shift and there is no good safety net to help everyone bounce back efficiently.
    - jnbiche 9y ago
      So what did you shift your values from, and to?
      - mathgladiator 9y ago
        From what interested me at the time (game engine, math, computational geometry, algebra) to what interested others like "how can computers help people become more effective", "how does this whole internet marketing thing work", etc... My first successful business was about helping self storage owners attract customers. It wasn't super interesting, but I focused on making it work and learned many things that were not comfortable to learn. A core lesson I learned is that the first step is find people that have problems and help them solve it. There is a value of having an entrepreneurial mindset even if one does not end up as the owner of a business, and one of my concerns is that the mindset of today is "get a job" rather than "help people with problems" Over time, I have built a career by focusing on other people's problems first to build skills, trust, and knowledge. Now, I am effectively a principal working on really cool distributed system problems. When I started, I had 20K debt in student loans and was living out of my car. However, my story is a case of Survivorship bias, and a difficult aspect is filtering out what was luck versus was could be applicable advice. I do think the focus on building relationships and helping people with their problems is key.
- pessimizer 9y ago
  > An example is how the uneducated largely voted for Brexit, and won't change their minds in the face of evidence that it was a bad vote, I'd argue that there's no evidence that Brexit was a bad vote for people without significant savings (designated in sterling.) It's easy to understand why the elites would hate it; it's responsible for a 10% loss in their worth. I think you're still (accidentally) assuming that the descendants of people of merit still hold that merit somehow, rather than just having divergent interests due to their positions as owners and managers, rather than wage-earners. edit: > Many of us want to build cool things and make money and contribute to the world, and capitalism makes sure we're rewarded for it, Capitalism rewards destruction, deception, and extortion as often, if not more often, as it rewards productive activity. Ransomware is a cool thing, as an application of technology.
  - Fins 9y ago
    The problem is that alternative systems still reward destruction, deception, etc., but do not reward the good things.
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    Those people without savings are certainly feeling the effects of inflation that are running through the system right now.
- rumcajz 9y ago
  There's another thing going on in parallel, namely, physical separation of elites from the rest. You may not agree with Charles Murray's political worldview, but the first part of Coming Apart has a nice analysis of how elites in the US aggregate in specific neighborhoods. But the problem is much wider IMO. Consider Russia. I read that 7% of its population is living abroad. In other words, the most agile and the most able are not in the country anymore. I imagine that Putin considers this to be a good thing: All possible dissenters just pack up and leave. What's not to like?
  - mc32 9y ago
    For one, they take their wealth and knowledge with them which adds to brain drain and anaemic economy at home.
    - Fins 9y ago
      That would not necessarily concern Putin too much, as the ones with brains almost by definition would not be too happy with him.
      - aaron-lebo 9y ago
        I know you are getting a zinger in, but yesterday's HN darling might be evidence against that: Many scientists protested, but Elbakyan didn’t understand the outrage. As far as she was concerned, Dynasty — particularly through its funding of the LMF — had spread “propaganda against Putin and the Russian authorities.” She describes Zimin’s work through Dynasty, and the organization itself, as “anti-communist,” though she’s vague about how. Elbakyan says the foundation and Sci-Hub are “ideologically opposed,” and contends that Dynasty is somehow Sci-Hub’s capitalistic foil.
        Fins 9y ago
        Actually it's exactly evidence for that -- anyone who considers "anti-communist" to be a bad thing, especially so in the ex-USSR, lacks both brains and even a single shred of human decency. Not that I thought much of her before anyway.
- mc32 9y ago
  I don't know if the first point is accurate. If a system is meritocratic, doesn't that mean that merit is the filter? Unless it's not based on merit (ability to deliver + actual delivery) then it does not guarantee that offspring of the meritous will merit advantageous position. I think the presumption is everyone is given access to tools and then its up to the participants to take advantage of those tools. Not everyone has the same aptitude or ability, so not everyone will merit the desired achievements. What the spread between achievement and non achievement is, depends on their rules (taxes, other handicaps, etc). Regarding Brexit, does it not potentially narrow the divergence between wealthy and non-wealthy? I.e. it has an opportunity to decrease inequality, even if it may result in diminished wealth for both?
  - katastic 9y ago
    Basically. But then you wouldn't be able to hate on meritocracy without shoehorning the logic to fit. The second people hire their family members (and not the best for the job) it's not a meritocracy, it's an oligarchy run by nepotism. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_forms_of_government https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_forms_of_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism I must be getting too old because I cannot understand how programmers and scientist who spend their days optimizing systems, would intentionally want a "job selection" or "government representative" mechanism that selects for anything except maximizing efficacy of the position. We don't need to "cure X by getting Y people into position Z". We need position Z to do its job. Back in the 90's on Slashdot, you never would had discussions like this. The answer was obvious: Hire the best person for the job regardless of sex, creed, color, or whatever. And "that" was the progressive position! I can't stress that enough. It's like walking into the bizarro world.
  - frobozz 9y ago
    That first point is one of the main thrusts of The Rise of the Meritocracy. A true meritocracy is unlikely because of the advantages that the entrenched higher classes pass on to their descendents. In part this can be higher ability due to better education. However, another feature is by shaping the attitudes of a society to favour particular forms of achievement over others. The only way to achieve a "pure" meritocracy as you describe it, would be to separate children from their parents before age 1, raise them all collectively, and instigate a 100% inheritance tax.
incompatible 9y ago
It's not a true meritocracy if some people have better access to opportunities such as education and jobs because of where they were born or who their parents are. That's not to say that the criticism of meritocracy isn't valid.
- yourcousinbilly 9y ago
  I think we can agree meritocracy means the best people for the job get the job. But, your contention points out what factors we evaluate when we say "best". Do we take "best" to mean when they apply for the job after years of some environment? Or "best" to mean the original genetic disposition independent of environment?
  - incompatible 9y ago
    Good point. The article suggests that the original definition was more oriented to finding those with the "best" attributes at a young age and putting them at the top. E.g., 'They were the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan report, which opened civil-service jobs to competitive examinations, and the Education Act of 1944, which decreed that children should be educated according to their “age, ability and aptitude”.'
  - incompatible 9y ago
    The word "meritocracy" also implies that its a way of running government. I'm not sure if it's proposed as an alternative to democracy. I doubt that many people would think the leaders of government, the politicians, are carefully selected from the entire population base, the best of the best, so it seems that what we have now isn't meritocracy.
- twblalock 9y ago
  The point is that a true meritocracy would end up being like the situation you are talking about. In a perfectly meritocratic world, the first generation of people would succeed based on their merit, but they would use the power they gained to make sure their children have an advantage over others.
tinokid 9y ago
Meritocracy is just a bare-bones version of a "founding myth" that a society adopts when enough people reject the traditional narrative. The problem is that it is so absolutist that it is easy to find holes and internal inconsistencies in its story. Hence it can scarcely perform its function--namely, to provide a narrative that establishes the legitimacy of the ruling class--for very long. Look only at the examples given in the article. >The most effective way to rile the meritocrats is to attack their faith in expertise: Lord Turnbull, a former Cabinet secretary, has said that Brexiteers’ willingness to question current Treasury forecasts of the impact of Brexit was reminiscent of pre-war Nazi Germany. Of course there is nothing wrongheaded about contesting the findings of government economic forecasts--governments produce such forecasts out of necessity, not because they exemplify any paragon of scientific truth. Reasonable people often disagree about them. >The easiest way to rile the populists is to imply that their attachment to symbols of national identity, such as blue passports or the Cross of St George, is a sign of low intelligence. This is so absurd it barely needs any mention. Nation-states have existed for a long time, and preference for their symbols has nothing to do with intelligence or lack thereof. So you have a dissident group making a claim about a point of fact, and the soi-disant intellectually superior group responding with an ad hominem that slurs vasts swaths of the population. This is not a sustainable situation.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  Of course there is nothing wrongheaded about contesting the findings of government economic forecasts--governments produce such forecasts out of necessity, not because they exemplify any paragon of scientific truth. Reasonable people often disagree about them. It's an interesting situation in the UK because the civil service which created those forecasts cannot respond to the criticism, they are not allowed to under their remit. Normally politicians would defend this work but what government politician would defend something so bleak, no matter how accurate it may or may not be.
mnm1 9y ago
So is it a meritocracy or did the leaders start the Iraq war? Because you can't have both. The people that started the Iraq war are not part of any meritocracy. Aristocracy, yes. Idiocy, yes. Meritocracy, fuck no. Because if the current state of affairs is what you call a meritocracy, you don't know how to speak English.
js2 9y ago
See also: - "Down with meritocracy" by Michael Young – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment - "What’s (still) wrong with meritocracy" by Toby Young – https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/whats-still-wrong-with-meritocracy/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/whats-still-wrong-with-m...

51 points by nopinsight 9y ago

There are a lot of interesting ideas to unpack here: - As the initial meritocrats (does that pass as a word?) benefit from the meritocracy and accumulate wealth, they use that wealth to increase the odds for their children, resulting in a future where the "meritocracy" is made up of people whose merits in education were largely paid for, and so it ceases to be a meritocracy and ends up resembling an oligarchy. - People outside the meritocracy can't stand the smugness of elites, who have better opportunities and thus better outcomes. - This results in the breakdown of democratic function over time, because hating elites results in fact-denying when those elites are factually correct. An example is how the uneducated largely voted for Brexit, and won't change their minds in the face of evidence that it was a bad vote, because they don't want to admit that they were wrong and the elites were right. For me this presents some of the issues brought about by large inequality, whether brought about by traditional feudalism, oligarchy, or new-fangled "meritocracy." It causes unrest such that inevitably results in revolution. I also question the value of a meritocracy on its basic premise. It seems unfair in a society with so much wealth that "lazy" people or "dumb" people get such a short end of the stick when it is not their fault that they were born that way. Many of us want to build cool things and make money and contribute to the world, and capitalism makes sure we're rewarded for it, but for those of us who don't I see no reason they should be condemned to poverty while there is the means to feed them.

deusum 9y ago
Universal Basic Income sounds like a convenient way to prevent the various ways to create inequality and centralize wealth. Very curious how the experiments in progress will turn out.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Basic income is bullshit that's getting loudly advocated from the top of society as a convenient way to tamper down social discontent while doing nothing about the unfair inequality at the root of many societies. In the middle of Dallas is a small city never actually incorporated by the city called Highland Park. This is where George W. Bush and the upper middle class lives. The people who grow up in Highland Park will go to some of the best high schools in the nation. They'll be well trained and well prepared to go to colleges like Harvard and Princeton and Yale. These people end up running major corporations and dominating politics. Meanwhile, if you drive ten miles south, you'll end up looking at public schools that look like prisons, that are desperately underfunded. These students, already having hard lives, will struggle to succeed, a large number will not graduate. There are no million dollar payouts or election victories for these people. They end up being the poor sods that the wealthy academics, politicians, and business people talk about when from their perch they are able to finally read about and observe human misery. But if you look at their actions, they will continue to take and take and take from these people. If not that, they benefit the most from talking about them. Every city has a Highland Park (Detroit, certainly). Check out the people who run most major companies. They come from those places to a large extent. Name a major politician that doesn't have elite school roots. That's not to say these people are bad or evil, but if we're going to be serious about ending this charade of meritocracy, we've gotta stop rewarding that. Basic income is more of the same. It's bullshit that doesn't strike at the heart of the problem. Netflix has a new series called Dirty Money. I thought the first episode about VW was pretty damn good, but the second is fascinating and sad. It's meritocracy in action. We have lots of practices in society which are business as usual which are basically scams. The poor are the most vulnerable to these scams. https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/83?jbv=80118100&jbp=0&jbr=0 https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/83?jbv=80118100&jbp=0&j... Why talk about basic income when we have glaring systematic flaws which can be solved without giving more power to that system?
  - scarmig 9y ago
    Absolutely nothing in your screed even talks about a basic income, except your first and last sentences.
    - 9y ago
- yourcousinbilly 9y ago
  UBI isn't the clear choice everyone makes it out to be. I'm all for lowering inequality and spreading out wealth. But, fundamentally, UBI is just a welfare program with way more money pouring in so it guarantees a livable income to everyone. We could achieve the same effect by just increasing the progressive welfare. We could remove those welfare cliffs where people lose money by making more money by smoothing out the curves. But, UBI does something more by taking money from those who need it and giving it to those who don't. Every dollar going to an upper middle class tech worker is a dollar not going towards uplifting the lowest of our society. We should care a little about efficiency because UBI will be CRAZY expensive and CRAZY anti-business when we increase taxes on them. There are less costly ways to achieve better income equality like better education or increased welfare which don't hurt business. Businesses could operate with way thinner profits sure, but other countries offer other options. Here's a UBI debate for the interested: https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/universal-basic-income-safety-net-future https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/universal-basi...
  - visarga 9y ago
    > I'm all for lowering inequality and spreading out wealth I'd rather be for lowering inequality by spreading out the means of production, so people could be much more self reliant. This idea is called Distributism (the "Three acres and a cow" slogan of 1910) and stands in contrast to both capitalism and socialism. I see UBI as a demeaning form of help, that infantilises population and makes them state dependent, while self-reliance is based on one's own efforts and leads to better outcomes and increased self-esteem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism This is a great short vid about local self-reliance and the relation of normal people to big corporations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDw4dZLSDXg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDw4dZLSDXg Remember, if big corporations won't give people jobs any more, we always have one job left - taking care of ourselves directly. Self-reliance is a virtue, UBI is the opposite of that. We're headed in a technological direction that will empower self-reliance more and more in the future. By using solar energy, 3d-printing, agro-bots, community ISPs, credit co-ops, and automation in all forms, a small community could become self-reliant without backbreaking work. A social-network of skilled people (gigs) would replace regular jobs. We just need to keep these technologies very accessible and to help people develop solutions. Self-reliance is connected to the startup economy, the bootstrapping mindset, the anti-trust doctrine and creativity. It's the way to a good life without the perils of financial redistribution.
gt_ 9y ago
>Many of us want to build cool things and make money and contribute to the world, and capitalism makes sure we’re rewarded for it. No it doesn’t. I have been unemployed for a year and a half since suddenly losing my apartment on 30 days notice about 2 weeks after the company I worked for went under. My job was illegally skirted as contract work. The job (creative) necessitated that my work which was done for a major corporation not be included in my portfolio which made it very hard to find new employment overnight. I had to move in with my parents in a rural area so that finding a job and re-relocating to an urban area is a sick game, apparently begging for me to be dishonest, which I haven’t done yet. I have many very valuable skills (technical and creative, including programming) and very little opportunity to put them to use. Eventually I will crawl my way out but it’s pretty ridiculous so far. I am young, healthy, easy to get along with. My friends who generally all come from wealthier families are, like you may be, dumbfounded by my predicament until they realize I have no choice.
- mathgladiator 9y ago
  I find it incongruent that you have valuable skills yet can't find work because if they are valuable then people would buy them. I went homeless, and would have remained homeless if I stuck to what I valued. Instead, I shifted my values to work on things that other people value. The cruelty of our world, imo, is that values shift and there is no good safety net to help everyone bounce back efficiently.
  - jnbiche 9y ago
    So what did you shift your values from, and to?
    - mathgladiator 9y ago
      From what interested me at the time (game engine, math, computational geometry, algebra) to what interested others like "how can computers help people become more effective", "how does this whole internet marketing thing work", etc... My first successful business was about helping self storage owners attract customers. It wasn't super interesting, but I focused on making it work and learned many things that were not comfortable to learn. A core lesson I learned is that the first step is find people that have problems and help them solve it. There is a value of having an entrepreneurial mindset even if one does not end up as the owner of a business, and one of my concerns is that the mindset of today is "get a job" rather than "help people with problems" Over time, I have built a career by focusing on other people's problems first to build skills, trust, and knowledge. Now, I am effectively a principal working on really cool distributed system problems. When I started, I had 20K debt in student loans and was living out of my car. However, my story is a case of Survivorship bias, and a difficult aspect is filtering out what was luck versus was could be applicable advice. I do think the focus on building relationships and helping people with their problems is key.
pessimizer 9y ago
> An example is how the uneducated largely voted for Brexit, and won't change their minds in the face of evidence that it was a bad vote, I'd argue that there's no evidence that Brexit was a bad vote for people without significant savings (designated in sterling.) It's easy to understand why the elites would hate it; it's responsible for a 10% loss in their worth. I think you're still (accidentally) assuming that the descendants of people of merit still hold that merit somehow, rather than just having divergent interests due to their positions as owners and managers, rather than wage-earners. edit: > Many of us want to build cool things and make money and contribute to the world, and capitalism makes sure we're rewarded for it, Capitalism rewards destruction, deception, and extortion as often, if not more often, as it rewards productive activity. Ransomware is a cool thing, as an application of technology.
- Fins 9y ago
  The problem is that alternative systems still reward destruction, deception, etc., but do not reward the good things.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  Those people without savings are certainly feeling the effects of inflation that are running through the system right now.
rumcajz 9y ago
There's another thing going on in parallel, namely, physical separation of elites from the rest. You may not agree with Charles Murray's political worldview, but the first part of Coming Apart has a nice analysis of how elites in the US aggregate in specific neighborhoods. But the problem is much wider IMO. Consider Russia. I read that 7% of its population is living abroad. In other words, the most agile and the most able are not in the country anymore. I imagine that Putin considers this to be a good thing: All possible dissenters just pack up and leave. What's not to like?
- mc32 9y ago
  For one, they take their wealth and knowledge with them which adds to brain drain and anaemic economy at home.
  - Fins 9y ago
    That would not necessarily concern Putin too much, as the ones with brains almost by definition would not be too happy with him.
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      I know you are getting a zinger in, but yesterday's HN darling might be evidence against that: Many scientists protested, but Elbakyan didn’t understand the outrage. As far as she was concerned, Dynasty — particularly through its funding of the LMF — had spread “propaganda against Putin and the Russian authorities.” She describes Zimin’s work through Dynasty, and the organization itself, as “anti-communist,” though she’s vague about how. Elbakyan says the foundation and Sci-Hub are “ideologically opposed,” and contends that Dynasty is somehow Sci-Hub’s capitalistic foil.
      - Fins 9y ago
        Actually it's exactly evidence for that -- anyone who considers "anti-communist" to be a bad thing, especially so in the ex-USSR, lacks both brains and even a single shred of human decency. Not that I thought much of her before anyway.
mc32 9y ago
I don't know if the first point is accurate. If a system is meritocratic, doesn't that mean that merit is the filter? Unless it's not based on merit (ability to deliver + actual delivery) then it does not guarantee that offspring of the meritous will merit advantageous position. I think the presumption is everyone is given access to tools and then its up to the participants to take advantage of those tools. Not everyone has the same aptitude or ability, so not everyone will merit the desired achievements. What the spread between achievement and non achievement is, depends on their rules (taxes, other handicaps, etc). Regarding Brexit, does it not potentially narrow the divergence between wealthy and non-wealthy? I.e. it has an opportunity to decrease inequality, even if it may result in diminished wealth for both?
- katastic 9y ago
  Basically. But then you wouldn't be able to hate on meritocracy without shoehorning the logic to fit. The second people hire their family members (and not the best for the job) it's not a meritocracy, it's an oligarchy run by nepotism. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_forms_of_government https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_forms_of_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism I must be getting too old because I cannot understand how programmers and scientist who spend their days optimizing systems, would intentionally want a "job selection" or "government representative" mechanism that selects for anything except maximizing efficacy of the position. We don't need to "cure X by getting Y people into position Z". We need position Z to do its job. Back in the 90's on Slashdot, you never would had discussions like this. The answer was obvious: Hire the best person for the job regardless of sex, creed, color, or whatever. And "that" was the progressive position! I can't stress that enough. It's like walking into the bizarro world.
- frobozz 9y ago
  That first point is one of the main thrusts of The Rise of the Meritocracy. A true meritocracy is unlikely because of the advantages that the entrenched higher classes pass on to their descendents. In part this can be higher ability due to better education. However, another feature is by shaping the attitudes of a society to favour particular forms of achievement over others. The only way to achieve a "pure" meritocracy as you describe it, would be to separate children from their parents before age 1, raise them all collectively, and instigate a 100% inheritance tax.

incompatible 9y ago

It's not a true meritocracy if some people have better access to opportunities such as education and jobs because of where they were born or who their parents are. That's not to say that the criticism of meritocracy isn't valid.

yourcousinbilly 9y ago
I think we can agree meritocracy means the best people for the job get the job. But, your contention points out what factors we evaluate when we say "best". Do we take "best" to mean when they apply for the job after years of some environment? Or "best" to mean the original genetic disposition independent of environment?
- incompatible 9y ago
  Good point. The article suggests that the original definition was more oriented to finding those with the "best" attributes at a young age and putting them at the top. E.g., 'They were the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan report, which opened civil-service jobs to competitive examinations, and the Education Act of 1944, which decreed that children should be educated according to their “age, ability and aptitude”.'
- incompatible 9y ago
  The word "meritocracy" also implies that its a way of running government. I'm not sure if it's proposed as an alternative to democracy. I doubt that many people would think the leaders of government, the politicians, are carefully selected from the entire population base, the best of the best, so it seems that what we have now isn't meritocracy.
twblalock 9y ago
The point is that a true meritocracy would end up being like the situation you are talking about. In a perfectly meritocratic world, the first generation of people would succeed based on their merit, but they would use the power they gained to make sure their children have an advantage over others.

tinokid 9y ago

Meritocracy is just a bare-bones version of a "founding myth" that a society adopts when enough people reject the traditional narrative. The problem is that it is so absolutist that it is easy to find holes and internal inconsistencies in its story. Hence it can scarcely perform its function--namely, to provide a narrative that establishes the legitimacy of the ruling class--for very long. Look only at the examples given in the article. >The most effective way to rile the meritocrats is to attack their faith in expertise: Lord Turnbull, a former Cabinet secretary, has said that Brexiteers’ willingness to question current Treasury forecasts of the impact of Brexit was reminiscent of pre-war Nazi Germany. Of course there is nothing wrongheaded about contesting the findings of government economic forecasts--governments produce such forecasts out of necessity, not because they exemplify any paragon of scientific truth. Reasonable people often disagree about them. >The easiest way to rile the populists is to imply that their attachment to symbols of national identity, such as blue passports or the Cross of St George, is a sign of low intelligence. This is so absurd it barely needs any mention. Nation-states have existed for a long time, and preference for their symbols has nothing to do with intelligence or lack thereof. So you have a dissident group making a claim about a point of fact, and the soi-disant intellectually superior group responding with an ad hominem that slurs vasts swaths of the population. This is not a sustainable situation.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
Of course there is nothing wrongheaded about contesting the findings of government economic forecasts--governments produce such forecasts out of necessity, not because they exemplify any paragon of scientific truth. Reasonable people often disagree about them. It's an interesting situation in the UK because the civil service which created those forecasts cannot respond to the criticism, they are not allowed to under their remit. Normally politicians would defend this work but what government politician would defend something so bleak, no matter how accurate it may or may not be.

mnm1 9y ago

So is it a meritocracy or did the leaders start the Iraq war? Because you can't have both. The people that started the Iraq war are not part of any meritocracy. Aristocracy, yes. Idiocy, yes. Meritocracy, fuck no. Because if the current state of affairs is what you call a meritocracy, you don't know how to speak English.

js2 9y ago

See also: - "Down with meritocracy" by Michael Young – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment - "What’s (still) wrong with meritocracy" by Toby Young – https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/whats-still-wrong-with-meritocracy/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/whats-still-wrong-with-m...