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Meritocracy doesn't seem like too bad of an idea at face value. It's far more fair than inherited wealth or class to base a society upon. Yet meritocracy does h

Meritocracy doesn't seem like too bad of an idea at face value. It's far more fair than inherited wealth or class to base a society upon. Yet meritocracy does have some serious problems, as described in this article (and plenty of other places). But it's a false dichotomy that these two are the only options. Egalitarianism is an option that the left strongly advocates for. And I believe it to be the only real moral option in the future. There's some talk about SAT scores here and how they relate to intelligence, and it reminded me of a truly interesting article I read the other day. It presents the idea that perhaps we shouldn't be ranking college applicants by SAT or any other factor at all for determining whether to admit them. Instead, admit qualified (TM) people based on a blind lottery: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/admit-everybody https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/admit-everybody

scrumper 8y ago
Can you expand a bit on Egalitarianism? What is it precisely?
- x2f10 8y ago
  >Egalitarianism: the doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
  - weber111 8y ago
    I think the sense in which GP is using the word is substantially stronger than that--or, maybe, it depends on what you mean by "rights" and "opportunities". (You could probably find people who think it's egalitarian to have generous state-funded child care and uniformly high-quality primary and secondary school, but competitive university entrance exams, for instance.)
ChrisLomont 8y ago
>Instead, admit qualified (TM) people based on a blind lottery If people have different aptitudes, and resources are limited, allocating resources randomly, instead of at least trying to optimize long term prospects, will result almost surely result in reduced quality of life for all in the long run. I don't find that moral. The vast improvements in quality of life, even for the very poor and unskilled, in advanced countries over the last few centuries, is the result of allocating capital (human, financial, material) in better ways than random over time. The countries and groups that have tried other forms of resource allocation have historically done far worse. Random (blind lottery) allocation seems worse than almost all of those systems.

scrumper 8y ago

Can you expand a bit on Egalitarianism? What is it precisely?

x2f10 8y ago
>Egalitarianism: the doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
- weber111 8y ago
  I think the sense in which GP is using the word is substantially stronger than that--or, maybe, it depends on what you mean by "rights" and "opportunities". (You could probably find people who think it's egalitarian to have generous state-funded child care and uniformly high-quality primary and secondary school, but competitive university entrance exams, for instance.)

ChrisLomont 8y ago

>Instead, admit qualified (TM) people based on a blind lottery If people have different aptitudes, and resources are limited, allocating resources randomly, instead of at least trying to optimize long term prospects, will result almost surely result in reduced quality of life for all in the long run. I don't find that moral. The vast improvements in quality of life, even for the very poor and unskilled, in advanced countries over the last few centuries, is the result of allocating capital (human, financial, material) in better ways than random over time. The countries and groups that have tried other forms of resource allocation have historically done far worse. Random (blind lottery) allocation seems worse than almost all of those systems.