11 ms·

One of the biggest lie sold in the West is that if you work hard, give everything you should succeed. This has grave implications on policy and really blinds pe

One of the biggest lie sold in the West is that if you work hard, give everything you should succeed. This has grave implications on policy and really blinds people born with a silver spoon to the real problems in society as they have a 'i deserve it and they don't syndrome'. Contrast this with a poor society that is growing rapidly where you see islands of wealths with certain individuals, at least people over there do not harbor illusions of meritocracy. In general the more educated and developed a society is, it is much more meritocratic than others, however i still feel it is not enough especially for those who have everything stacked against them. May be sometime in the future we would have a universal human rights charter that expands and decides what are the basic needs of a human that a society should provide in exchange for basic responsibilities. This way life will not always be a rat race and the poorest and unlucky can at least have some dignity.

rb808 9y ago
Chris Dillow is my favorite economics blogger. http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com One of his quotes from memory is "Meritocracy is the myth that justifies inequality", which explains a lot of the current world.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- rb808 9y ago
  To add to this - yes he's not the only one who talks about it, the idea is even on the wikipedia page for meritocracy. Its worth following Chris, much of what he talks about is outside the world of regular media ideas, and usually has lots of interesting references. On this topic - he often says that social mobility is not a great goal to aim for, helping working & middle classes achieve interesting & rewarding work with security is better goal. http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2016/06/beyond-meritocracy.html http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli... http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2012/05/social-mobility-cui-bono.html http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli...
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  See also, the "Just-World Hypothesis", which investigates why people feel this need to blame victims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
- k__ 9y ago
  Some parties here in Germany actively pushing this. They talk about equality of opportunity and not equality of outcomes. But what can you do? You're phenotype is mostly determined by stuff you can't control. If you have low conscientiousness and a low IQ, you're basically f*cked and you can't control this either. Even if you're high on openness and have a average to high IQ, you're still playing a high risk game.
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    I do agree to equality of opportunity and not equality of outcome; those people with low IQ won't end up in the high tiers of e.g. the scientific world, simply because they can't. Equality of opportunity does not rule out a proper socialist system. You give everyone the same opportunities at life and work by e.g. affordable health care and insurances for everyone, but also scholarships for everyone so they can follow what they want to do instead of be restricted by e.g. what their parents earn. And if you can't work because of whatever reason, you don't have to end up on the streets. Equality of opportunity gives everyone the chance to graduate university; equality of outcome gives everyone a university degree regardless. I'm probably misinterpreting it. But give everyone the opportunity, and there will be enough social mobility so that people now born in poverty can grow up to become e.g. software developers, and pay that little equal opportunity was paid for them during their education back tenfold within just a couple years of working in that industry. That's my experience anyway, my dad was a not-greatly-paid metalworker with a high interest mortgage (as was the times back then) and three kids, I'm a college graduate and my first job paid almost as much as his.
    - k__ 9y ago
      I don't really think this is the problem here. Sure, you shouldn't give any idiot a degree without doing something for it and yes, you shouldn't make it harder for intelligent people to get degrees, just because their parents are poor or something. But if you have low conscientiousness and low IQ, that was also given to you without asking. It's playing on the same level as poor parents. With your proposed change (which is already done in countries like Germany, we have almost free healthcare and education) you still have 50% of the population that has a IQ below 100.
mapcars 9y ago
>what are the basic needs of a human that a society should provide Earning a living should not be a problem in the modern world with basically any kind of job. One of the big problems is people want the latest iphone, the best car, the most luxurious home, holidays, etc. The expectation of life had been set too high to make it happen even for a small part of the population. What is actually needed is way, way different from what is being promoted by media and society.
- rainbowmverse 9y ago
  What do you base this on? I know plenty of people working multiple jobs and saving every dollar they can who still barely get by.
  - troupe 9y ago
    You see many people in the United States who are working hard and avoiding foolish decisions that cannot seem to provide for their needs and set money aside for the future?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
      Plenty. Some have kids. Others are in grad school. Some are even dealing with both.
      - troupe 9y ago
        > Plenty. Some have kids. Others are in grad school. Some are even dealing with both. Yes people who go out and have kids without thinking through how they will provide for them usually have to work pretty hard at first. Still most of the people I've seen in this situation aren't really as bad off as they think. If you didn't plan for having kids, you likely aren't in very good control of your budget either and a small investment of time in learning how to manage and budget your finances can take off most of the financial strain. (That isn't to say there aren't some people who are in really bad situations due to random events, but I still find it rare to see people who are struggling from things that are/were completely outside of their control.)
kaolti 9y ago
Why is it a lie? Do you disagree that hard work leads to success, within limits?
- rectang 9y ago
  It depends on who you are. If there are structural factors arrayed against you, less success and more failure will come your way for the same amount of work.
  - kaolti 9y ago
    Yeah, but that doesn't mean that "work hard and you'll succeed"is a lie.
    - yulaow 9y ago
      If you keep it as it is, it is an absolute statement as in "I can guarantee that every single time any random person works hard, he will be successful after time X" which is clearly empirically false because ignores all the (extremely numerous) boundary conditions. The problem is exactly that, there are people who think that it is an absolute statement so poor people, unhealthy people, people in bad life conditions, etc are so just because they didn't work hard so they do not deserve any help.
    - rectang 9y ago
      If you take the fairness out, that phrase is worse than meaningless. It applies to slaves: those who work harder are rewarded to some extent. Does that mean a slave society fulfills the ideals of meritocracy?
    - jonathanstrange 9y ago
      With hard work you can be successful in the sense of being able to afford a basic living or being moderately middle class - which is enough for many people. The deception which looks like a lie to some is in implicating that one percenters got their wealth from hard work - most of them didn't. AFAIK, statistics show that in industrialized Western countries the wealthy people who are seemingly successful (because of their wealth) have inherited most of their wealth or at least benefited extremely from improved conditions provided by already rich parents. In contrast to this, vertical social mobility remains fairly low and the overall gap between poor & middle class and the richest has been increasing in almost all capitalist Western countries since WW2. So it's not literally a lie, it's just sometimes kind of dishonest and misleading. In most professions it's practically impossible to get rich from hard work.
fullshark 9y ago
Depends what you define as success. Hard work generally does lead to gainful employment and the ability to afford a home/car which used to be the canonical symbol of success in America. If you think success is "be as rich and respected as I desire to be" then that absolutely will not hold.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  Not really... I've known hard workers, they work hard, no success, they work hard, an unlucky event intervenes, they work hard, still no success, so on and so on and so they ask: what's the point in hard work? Can you blame them? Even to be a hard-worker implies that you've been lucky enough in life to see a correlation between hard-work and success.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dsacco 9y ago
    What does "no success" mean in this context?
    - Retric 9y ago
      Let's go with homeless. Plenty of hard workers end up homeless.
    - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
      I believe this comment is going to trigger my rate-limit so apologies for not being able to give further context. But to one: how about being poor, working hard and then staying poor? More importantly why should it matter how someone defines success? I think the false and self-perpetuating notion of meritocracy is massively benefitted by the lowered expectations of the lower class. If I'm born poor, making it to lower middle class could be a huge success for me, if I'm born rich that same outcome would be a massive failure. Even to acknowledge that that is true is admission of how massively tilted opportunity is. If the poor and the rich had the same visions of success, they dreamed the same dream, do you think we could still say with a straight face that, really, hard-work is the most important factor in success? I don't think so.
hliyan 9y ago
What if the problem is that the results of merit accumulate geometrically, so that beyond a certain threshold, some people just start rapidly pulling ahead of the pack?
- rectang 9y ago
  That's a choice that society has made, through laws and institutions which benefit the wealthy -- such as treating corporations as people. It doesn't have to be that way.
  - dasil003 9y ago
    The problem is the people who really understand how it works are largely the ones that benefitted from the current system and thus have no incentive to change it.
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    There's a natural power law distribution to many things. Economics is a natural force. We can't change it just by dictating that we'd like some things to change, just like we can't change other natural elements by fiat. There's a process, a technology, a science that has to be applied to shape and command natural forces. Human psychology is no exception. Things must be done within workable, realistic parameters. We can't just say "everyone will share and be happy and nice now" and expect it to work like that. "Corporations as people" is a massive politically-charged misnomer that doesn't mean anything by itself. The entire point of incorporation is to create a separate, independent legal entity divorced from its principals. This is what is meant when "legal personhood" is discussed. You have to be specific about what you'd like changed.
    - rectang 9y ago
      > Economics is a natural force. The extent to which "natural" inequality is amplified by institutions varies. Dictatorship is a very "natural" way to distribute rewards. We don't have to accept dictatorship as our destiny just because it is "natural", nor do we have to accept current levels of economic inequality as immutable.
aantix 9y ago
Isn't it the striving, the need to move from one circumstance to the next, is what propels us forward? People don't make progress in spite of their struggle, progress is made because of the struggle.
- troupe 9y ago
  This is a very good point. Regardless of talent or luck, the person who is willing to keep trying dramatically increases their chances of success. Someone who only applies for one job and stops if they don't get it, is much less likely to get a job than someone who is willing to apply for 100 jobs until they get hired.
pygy_ 9y ago
> One of the biggest lie sold in the West is that if you work hard, give everything you should succeed. Even if it were strictly true, this ignores the fact that the ability to work hard is mostly determined by one's genes: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2762790/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2762790/ The main merit there is to have the right genes.
simonebrunozzi 9y ago
Please, it's not the West: it's the anglo-saxon West (US, UK), or in general countries with a strong calvinist influence. Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, to some extent France) don't share that same mindset.
Tade0 9y ago
> Contrast this with a poor society that is growing rapidly where you see islands of wealths with certain individuals, at least people over there do not harbor illusions of meritocracy. Actually(speaking from experience) these islands of wealth only reinforce such illusions in poor countries. The logic is as following: apparently that person is exceptional and the fact that they've managed to get wealthy within one generation is proof.
aantix 9y ago
Whatever rules in life get laid out, whether it's scoring soccer goals or everyone gets X amount of food per month, someone always becomes good at "optimizing" those rules. We are humans born with different abilities with different tastes and strive for different things. Equalizing the outcomes of all by artificially holding some back suppresses the very creative life force in each one of us, ends in misery and progress is hampered.
- pintxo 9y ago
  Talking about the extremes, I agree. Talking about defining sensible rules to allow a wider range of people to be successful than only those being a member of the local Golf Club, I disagree. There should be no question that we need rules, and at the same time there should be intense discussions - if not intellectual fights - about which rules we need and how to implement and enforce them.
  - aantix 9y ago
    >allow a wider range of people to be successful But what does "successful" mean in practice? E.g. If there are 100 software security companies, 50% of those are below average in performance (and will probably get chosen less). Do we no longer choose let the consumers choose? All of these software companies should now receive a percentage of business, regardless of performance/trust/expertise? Or should the top performing companies be disallowed the following year to market or do sales in order to give the underperforming companies a chance to catch up? What is "sensible" and who decides?
    - pintxo 9y ago
      For me, this is about ensuring that all 100 companies play along the same rules. If, while following the same rule book, 10 are significantly more successful than the others, fine. If another 20 are significantly less successful, also fine. What is no fine, is having some companies be exceptionally successful by breaking some rules. Think insider trading, it's a highly profitable business for those risking it, but has a long term negative impact on the market. Therefore we, as a society, via our proxy, the government, decided to enforce rules forbidding insider trading. The above answers who. This leaves the question of sensibility, I am afraid there will hardly every be consensus on what is sensible or not within a diverse enough group of people. If you'd ask a bunch of investment bankers about sensible rules for banking regulation, I'd assume you'd get quite a different answer than by asking a bunch of consumer rights activists. Our current solution to this problem of finally arriving at a single "sensible" rule is the democratic process / parliament. I guess most would agree this process seems to be sub-optimal, but it seems there are not too many other options on the table.
toasterlovin 9y ago
>May be sometime in the future we would have a universal human rights charter that expands and decides what are the basic needs of a human that a society should provide in exchange for basic responsibilities. This way life will not always be a rat race and the poorest and unlucky can at least have some dignity. Life has always been a rat race. The only reason that it isn't for some people right now is that we are at a very unique time in human history where we have greatly increased our ability to produce food and, at the same time, have extremely low birth rates as a result of being poorly adapted for modern life. This, too, shall pass.
chmln 9y ago
> One of the biggest lie sold in the West is that if you work hard, give everything you should succeed I think this used to be true decades ago when you could without much effort get a well-paying manufacturing job with just a high school diploma. It would be foolish these days to rely on just "working hard". Not everyone "works hard" equally - it is important to work hard in the right direction. To work as say a Starbucks barista even full-time and expect a house, a car, and a luxurious lifestyle, then after failing to achieve that exclaim "meritocracy doesn't work" is narrow-minded at best.
stcredzero 9y ago
One of the biggest lie sold in the West is that if you work hard, give everything you should succeed. How is this a lie? There is no guarantee, just good odds. at least people over there do not harbor illusions of meritocracy. [Citation Needed] May be sometime in the future we would have a universal human rights charter that expands and decides what are the basic needs of a human that a society should provide in exchange for basic responsibilities. There was already a Declaration of Universal Human Rights from a commission headed by Eleanor Roosevelt.

rb808 9y ago

Chris Dillow is my favorite economics blogger. http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com One of his quotes from memory is "Meritocracy is the myth that justifies inequality", which explains a lot of the current world.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rb808 9y ago
To add to this - yes he's not the only one who talks about it, the idea is even on the wikipedia page for meritocracy. Its worth following Chris, much of what he talks about is outside the world of regular media ideas, and usually has lots of interesting references. On this topic - he often says that social mobility is not a great goal to aim for, helping working & middle classes achieve interesting & rewarding work with security is better goal. http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2016/06/beyond-meritocracy.html http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli... http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2012/05/social-mobility-cui-bono.html http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli...
ZeroGravitas 9y ago
See also, the "Just-World Hypothesis", which investigates why people feel this need to blame victims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
k__ 9y ago
Some parties here in Germany actively pushing this. They talk about equality of opportunity and not equality of outcomes. But what can you do? You're phenotype is mostly determined by stuff you can't control. If you have low conscientiousness and a low IQ, you're basically f*cked and you can't control this either. Even if you're high on openness and have a average to high IQ, you're still playing a high risk game.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  I do agree to equality of opportunity and not equality of outcome; those people with low IQ won't end up in the high tiers of e.g. the scientific world, simply because they can't. Equality of opportunity does not rule out a proper socialist system. You give everyone the same opportunities at life and work by e.g. affordable health care and insurances for everyone, but also scholarships for everyone so they can follow what they want to do instead of be restricted by e.g. what their parents earn. And if you can't work because of whatever reason, you don't have to end up on the streets. Equality of opportunity gives everyone the chance to graduate university; equality of outcome gives everyone a university degree regardless. I'm probably misinterpreting it. But give everyone the opportunity, and there will be enough social mobility so that people now born in poverty can grow up to become e.g. software developers, and pay that little equal opportunity was paid for them during their education back tenfold within just a couple years of working in that industry. That's my experience anyway, my dad was a not-greatly-paid metalworker with a high interest mortgage (as was the times back then) and three kids, I'm a college graduate and my first job paid almost as much as his.
  - k__ 9y ago
    I don't really think this is the problem here. Sure, you shouldn't give any idiot a degree without doing something for it and yes, you shouldn't make it harder for intelligent people to get degrees, just because their parents are poor or something. But if you have low conscientiousness and low IQ, that was also given to you without asking. It's playing on the same level as poor parents. With your proposed change (which is already done in countries like Germany, we have almost free healthcare and education) you still have 50% of the population that has a IQ below 100.

mapcars 9y ago

>what are the basic needs of a human that a society should provide Earning a living should not be a problem in the modern world with basically any kind of job. One of the big problems is people want the latest iphone, the best car, the most luxurious home, holidays, etc. The expectation of life had been set too high to make it happen even for a small part of the population. What is actually needed is way, way different from what is being promoted by media and society.

rainbowmverse 9y ago
What do you base this on? I know plenty of people working multiple jobs and saving every dollar they can who still barely get by.
- troupe 9y ago
  You see many people in the United States who are working hard and avoiding foolish decisions that cannot seem to provide for their needs and set money aside for the future?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
    Plenty. Some have kids. Others are in grad school. Some are even dealing with both.
    - troupe 9y ago
      > Plenty. Some have kids. Others are in grad school. Some are even dealing with both. Yes people who go out and have kids without thinking through how they will provide for them usually have to work pretty hard at first. Still most of the people I've seen in this situation aren't really as bad off as they think. If you didn't plan for having kids, you likely aren't in very good control of your budget either and a small investment of time in learning how to manage and budget your finances can take off most of the financial strain. (That isn't to say there aren't some people who are in really bad situations due to random events, but I still find it rare to see people who are struggling from things that are/were completely outside of their control.)

kaolti 9y ago

Why is it a lie? Do you disagree that hard work leads to success, within limits?

rectang 9y ago
It depends on who you are. If there are structural factors arrayed against you, less success and more failure will come your way for the same amount of work.
- kaolti 9y ago
  Yeah, but that doesn't mean that "work hard and you'll succeed"is a lie.
  - yulaow 9y ago
    If you keep it as it is, it is an absolute statement as in "I can guarantee that every single time any random person works hard, he will be successful after time X" which is clearly empirically false because ignores all the (extremely numerous) boundary conditions. The problem is exactly that, there are people who think that it is an absolute statement so poor people, unhealthy people, people in bad life conditions, etc are so just because they didn't work hard so they do not deserve any help.
  - rectang 9y ago
    If you take the fairness out, that phrase is worse than meaningless. It applies to slaves: those who work harder are rewarded to some extent. Does that mean a slave society fulfills the ideals of meritocracy?
  - jonathanstrange 9y ago
    With hard work you can be successful in the sense of being able to afford a basic living or being moderately middle class - which is enough for many people. The deception which looks like a lie to some is in implicating that one percenters got their wealth from hard work - most of them didn't. AFAIK, statistics show that in industrialized Western countries the wealthy people who are seemingly successful (because of their wealth) have inherited most of their wealth or at least benefited extremely from improved conditions provided by already rich parents. In contrast to this, vertical social mobility remains fairly low and the overall gap between poor & middle class and the richest has been increasing in almost all capitalist Western countries since WW2. So it's not literally a lie, it's just sometimes kind of dishonest and misleading. In most professions it's practically impossible to get rich from hard work.

fullshark 9y ago

Depends what you define as success. Hard work generally does lead to gainful employment and the ability to afford a home/car which used to be the canonical symbol of success in America. If you think success is "be as rich and respected as I desire to be" then that absolutely will not hold.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
Not really... I've known hard workers, they work hard, no success, they work hard, an unlucky event intervenes, they work hard, still no success, so on and so on and so they ask: what's the point in hard work? Can you blame them? Even to be a hard-worker implies that you've been lucky enough in life to see a correlation between hard-work and success.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dsacco 9y ago
  What does "no success" mean in this context?
  - Retric 9y ago
    Let's go with homeless. Plenty of hard workers end up homeless.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    I believe this comment is going to trigger my rate-limit so apologies for not being able to give further context. But to one: how about being poor, working hard and then staying poor? More importantly why should it matter how someone defines success? I think the false and self-perpetuating notion of meritocracy is massively benefitted by the lowered expectations of the lower class. If I'm born poor, making it to lower middle class could be a huge success for me, if I'm born rich that same outcome would be a massive failure. Even to acknowledge that that is true is admission of how massively tilted opportunity is. If the poor and the rich had the same visions of success, they dreamed the same dream, do you think we could still say with a straight face that, really, hard-work is the most important factor in success? I don't think so.

hliyan 9y ago

What if the problem is that the results of merit accumulate geometrically, so that beyond a certain threshold, some people just start rapidly pulling ahead of the pack?

rectang 9y ago
That's a choice that society has made, through laws and institutions which benefit the wealthy -- such as treating corporations as people. It doesn't have to be that way.
- dasil003 9y ago
  The problem is the people who really understand how it works are largely the ones that benefitted from the current system and thus have no incentive to change it.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  There's a natural power law distribution to many things. Economics is a natural force. We can't change it just by dictating that we'd like some things to change, just like we can't change other natural elements by fiat. There's a process, a technology, a science that has to be applied to shape and command natural forces. Human psychology is no exception. Things must be done within workable, realistic parameters. We can't just say "everyone will share and be happy and nice now" and expect it to work like that. "Corporations as people" is a massive politically-charged misnomer that doesn't mean anything by itself. The entire point of incorporation is to create a separate, independent legal entity divorced from its principals. This is what is meant when "legal personhood" is discussed. You have to be specific about what you'd like changed.
  - rectang 9y ago
    > Economics is a natural force. The extent to which "natural" inequality is amplified by institutions varies. Dictatorship is a very "natural" way to distribute rewards. We don't have to accept dictatorship as our destiny just because it is "natural", nor do we have to accept current levels of economic inequality as immutable.

aantix 9y ago

Isn't it the striving, the need to move from one circumstance to the next, is what propels us forward? People don't make progress in spite of their struggle, progress is made because of the struggle.

troupe 9y ago
This is a very good point. Regardless of talent or luck, the person who is willing to keep trying dramatically increases their chances of success. Someone who only applies for one job and stops if they don't get it, is much less likely to get a job than someone who is willing to apply for 100 jobs until they get hired.

pygy_ 9y ago

> One of the biggest lie sold in the West is that if you work hard, give everything you should succeed. Even if it were strictly true, this ignores the fact that the ability to work hard is mostly determined by one's genes: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2762790/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2762790/ The main merit there is to have the right genes.

simonebrunozzi 9y ago

Please, it's not the West: it's the anglo-saxon West (US, UK), or in general countries with a strong calvinist influence. Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, to some extent France) don't share that same mindset.

Tade0 9y ago

> Contrast this with a poor society that is growing rapidly where you see islands of wealths with certain individuals, at least people over there do not harbor illusions of meritocracy. Actually(speaking from experience) these islands of wealth only reinforce such illusions in poor countries. The logic is as following: apparently that person is exceptional and the fact that they've managed to get wealthy within one generation is proof.

aantix 9y ago

Whatever rules in life get laid out, whether it's scoring soccer goals or everyone gets X amount of food per month, someone always becomes good at "optimizing" those rules. We are humans born with different abilities with different tastes and strive for different things. Equalizing the outcomes of all by artificially holding some back suppresses the very creative life force in each one of us, ends in misery and progress is hampered.

pintxo 9y ago
Talking about the extremes, I agree. Talking about defining sensible rules to allow a wider range of people to be successful than only those being a member of the local Golf Club, I disagree. There should be no question that we need rules, and at the same time there should be intense discussions - if not intellectual fights - about which rules we need and how to implement and enforce them.
- aantix 9y ago
  >allow a wider range of people to be successful But what does "successful" mean in practice? E.g. If there are 100 software security companies, 50% of those are below average in performance (and will probably get chosen less). Do we no longer choose let the consumers choose? All of these software companies should now receive a percentage of business, regardless of performance/trust/expertise? Or should the top performing companies be disallowed the following year to market or do sales in order to give the underperforming companies a chance to catch up? What is "sensible" and who decides?
  - pintxo 9y ago
    For me, this is about ensuring that all 100 companies play along the same rules. If, while following the same rule book, 10 are significantly more successful than the others, fine. If another 20 are significantly less successful, also fine. What is no fine, is having some companies be exceptionally successful by breaking some rules. Think insider trading, it's a highly profitable business for those risking it, but has a long term negative impact on the market. Therefore we, as a society, via our proxy, the government, decided to enforce rules forbidding insider trading. The above answers who. This leaves the question of sensibility, I am afraid there will hardly every be consensus on what is sensible or not within a diverse enough group of people. If you'd ask a bunch of investment bankers about sensible rules for banking regulation, I'd assume you'd get quite a different answer than by asking a bunch of consumer rights activists. Our current solution to this problem of finally arriving at a single "sensible" rule is the democratic process / parliament. I guess most would agree this process seems to be sub-optimal, but it seems there are not too many other options on the table.

toasterlovin 9y ago

>May be sometime in the future we would have a universal human rights charter that expands and decides what are the basic needs of a human that a society should provide in exchange for basic responsibilities. This way life will not always be a rat race and the poorest and unlucky can at least have some dignity. Life has always been a rat race. The only reason that it isn't for some people right now is that we are at a very unique time in human history where we have greatly increased our ability to produce food and, at the same time, have extremely low birth rates as a result of being poorly adapted for modern life. This, too, shall pass.

chmln 9y ago

> One of the biggest lie sold in the West is that if you work hard, give everything you should succeed I think this used to be true decades ago when you could without much effort get a well-paying manufacturing job with just a high school diploma. It would be foolish these days to rely on just "working hard". Not everyone "works hard" equally - it is important to work hard in the right direction. To work as say a Starbucks barista even full-time and expect a house, a car, and a luxurious lifestyle, then after failing to achieve that exclaim "meritocracy doesn't work" is narrow-minded at best.

stcredzero 9y ago

One of the biggest lie sold in the West is that if you work hard, give everything you should succeed. How is this a lie? There is no guarantee, just good odds. at least people over there do not harbor illusions of meritocracy. [Citation Needed] May be sometime in the future we would have a universal human rights charter that expands and decides what are the basic needs of a human that a society should provide in exchange for basic responsibilities. There was already a Declaration of Universal Human Rights from a commission headed by Eleanor Roosevelt.