10 ms·

This isn’t going to be popular, but: Should parents be allowed to try to give their children a boost in life? If the answer is yes, then it follows that paren

by dokein 8y ago

This isn’t going to be popular, but: Should parents be allowed to try to give their children a boost in life? If the answer is yes, then it follows that parents with more resources will be more able to provide that boost. For me, the line is drawn at “legacy” admissions or jobs, where a clearly lesser candidate is given the nod over someone who is more qualified. But if the parent is able to provide e.g. volunteer opportunities or early business exposure, tutoring, and other extracurriculars, and their child grows as a result of that, I think that’s actually progressive at a societal level (spurring more growth at earlier ages). The problem with summary statistics like in this article is that there’s no nuance — just a brute “unfair” reflex triggered in the reader.

balt_s 8y ago
> Should parents be allowed To paraphrase: "the question is not who will let them, but who will stop them?"
Qworg 8y ago
It is definitely inequitable. However, it is also how humans work - we want to advantage our inner group over other groups. This cuts directly to the heart of the meritocracy argument (most strongly in technology, but it exists everywhere): how can you claim that everyone is judged by their merits (directly related to how hard they work and how smart they train themselves to be) when being lucky (in genetics, in birth, in support and growth, in opportunities) plays such an overwhelming role?
- lend000 8y ago
  Unless you're a strong believer in free will, someone who is lazy, sleazy, unintelligent, etc. (has little "merit") did not 'choose' to be born that way, or even if they say they did, they did not choose to have the nature/nurture that caused them to be the kind of person to make that 'choice.' No more than a bird chooses to eat a worm or a salmon chooses to swim upstream, anyway. We can build productive societies based on incentive structures we put around merit, such as capitalist market systems. But in reality, nothing is fair and simultaneously everything is fair. Fairness is undefinable outside of a closed system. It's just how it is. Heuristics to define merit are just forms of evolution for human society that allow more productive people to command more responsibility.
- cthor 8y ago
  I don't think meritocracy implies cosmic fairness. The way it's used by most hackers is to say that someone's work is judged only on its own merits, rather than the author's social status or how good they are at playing political games or anything else orthogonal to the work actually being valuable. At least, that's the ideal.
  - iguy 8y ago
    Judging people on their work is partly about fair play. But it's also justified by concern for the results. A system which rewards the people doing great work will produce much more of that than a system which rewards political connections. I care quite a bit that the best cancer researchers should get hired, and the best ideas get the money -- their progress is likely to directly affect people close to me. And this is true but less obvious for almost every field... an economy where everyone was focused solely on zero-sum competitions would not grow very fast. I don't quite know what cosmic fairness means. But perhaps cosmic unfairness involves people's talents not being identical. The goal of trying to get the fastest progress against cancer does not align with the goal of trying to remedy such unfairness.
    - Qworg 8y ago
      The problem carries through time, not just at the moment you're making the decision to invest. What about the better potential cancer researcher who was left behind because their parents were poor? What about the one that decided to go learn programming because they couldn't get the exclusive internship due to lacking connections? The position that states "remedying inequity costs more than simply giving it all to the current best" is a shortsighted one.
    - Livven 8y ago
      To back up the other comment, recent studies find that students from worse secondary schools with worse grades end up outperforming students from more selective schools with better grades once in medical school. So in order to get the best doctors you can't just be all "meritocratic" by looking only at the results, i.e. grades, but have to take other factors into account. --- The relationship between school type and academic performance at medical school: a national, multi-cohort study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5589012/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5589012/ What is the effect of secondary (high) schooling on subsequent medical school performance? A national, UK-based, cohort study. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29792300 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29792300
- tomp 8y ago
  I interpret meritocracy as being judged by the outcome of your doings. If someone has IQ 10000 but spends it to dominate WoW, then... I don't see why they should be paid a lot (some other people might disagree, though). Likewise, if someone leverages their genetics, family, wealth, skills, efforts, and luck towards great outcomes (e.g. Elon Musk), then they should be rewarded, as they're meritocratically the best. To all "proponents" of "the luck argument": there are thousands of people far more lucky than Elon and Steve (born to wealthier families, smarter, better connected, etc) that didn't achieve what they have. So... luck obviously isn't the answer. Having said that, even if luck were the answer, I'd still support meritocracy, because it results in the best outcome. It's not about fairness, fundamentally - it's about creating the best society. If the only people who can do that are "the wealthy" (or whichever category you choose - most likely "the intelligent" these days), then so be it - it's best for all the rest of us if they "rule", meritocratically.
  - Qworg 8y ago
    Power doesn't work like that - it accretes to those who are able to leverage it. You generate a permanent power disparity with a gloves off laissez-faire system like that. I'd worry about your definition of "best society". Is the current system an existence proof in your mind?
    - roenxi 8y ago
      I can't speak for anyone else, but when I use "best society" it is code for the following argument that gets as long and involved as there is time to explain: Human instincts and morals are really well calibrated to small-village life. I take things like the Dunbar number [1] to indicate that we are optimised for a small circle of close relationships. "Fairness" has a sister in "equality" that is very powerful force on the local scale and scales horribly, to the point where equality being scaled up is usually a warning sign of an incoming economic breakdown where everyone starves. Unfortunately, people keep trying to scale equality up because they want it in their local relationships. Talking about "permanent power disparities" touches on the same vein of thinking - we know that permanent power disparities are an inevitable feature of society. The attempts to set up societies where there are no permanent power disparities have resulted in permanent power disparities forming, and frequently going to very nasty despots. Modern western civilisation has done _extremely_ well compared to the competition by dangling systemic advantage as the reward for massively improving the industrial base and consumer access to resources. This has worked a lot better than attempts to suppress inequality under, eg, the communist systems. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
- AndrewKemendo 8y ago
  I had a meeting with a very successful guy who is CIO at a major tech startup who was looking to acquire our company. Because we were friends for a while I said something to the effect of "I just want to make sure this doesn't look like nepotism" His response was basically, "Who cares? I love Nepotism. that means me and my friends do better and help each other out." Kind of shocked me to be honest, but after thinking about it it makes total sense. Why wouldn't you help your friends? I mean I help my friends all the time, but there seemed to be an artificial cutoff when it came to hiring and buying companies or otherwise giving them outward signs of "success." Not sure I can make a rational case against Nepotism even though it feels wrong.
  - aaronblohowiak 8y ago
    If you are directing other people’s money to your family it is a disservice to those other people. If it is your own money, go nuts. Nepotism vs family business, basically.
  - Qworg 8y ago
    In the societal sense, it is maladaptive - your CIO friend assumes that his friends deliver the best outcome.
    - adventured 8y ago
      That's not what the friend is assuming per the wording. The friend seems to be plainly stating they don't care if the max outcome is what is occuring or not, insofar as they all at least do better. Helping their friends out is more important than maxing out the quality of the outcome. Societally, reinforcing and protecting social trust systems may be dramatically more important than maxing out business success outcomes.
      - lotsofpulp 8y ago
        I don’t see how that can be true. Tribally, it might be (for a small tribe in a large group). Society wide, it’s definitely bad. I don’t want a bridge built by an uncle politician who “trusts” his nephew engineer’s company. Outcomes should (and do) result in trust, not the nepotism.
- perfunctory 8y ago
  > However, it is also how humans work - we want to advantage our inner group over other groups. This is too broad. Is it really so? I believe that we don't want to disadvantage ourselves relative to other groups. But that we want to gain advantage at somebody's else expense - not sure.
  - Thriptic 8y ago
    It is absolutely so. I would much rather help a friend or group of friends do well as opposed to randoms or people I don't like. First, I like my friends and want them to be happy (and am going to be the one who hears about it when they aren't), so I have a vested interest in helping them achieve happiness and success whereas I have a weak interest in the happiness and success of randoms as we have no relationship. Second, if I can help my friends become happy and successful, they become better able to help me become happy and successful (by pooling resources, providing advice, providing introductions, creating mutually beneficial opportunities, creating happiness by spending time with me, providing trust and facilitating vulnerability, providing capital or expertise etc). This sets up a positive feedback loop and creates strong ROI for my efforts. I get net negative ROI from helping a random (assuming no relationship will develop and I expend time or funds) so it's far less likely that I will use my scarce time and resources to do it. The entire world runs on relationships, favors, and reputation.
    - anigbrowl 8y ago
      How do you know that's not a cultural norm you learned? Blanket pronunciations on human nature tell me more about you than anyone else.
      - Thriptic 8y ago
        I'm fully willing to admit that there may be functional cultures in the world which frown upon showing preference to friends or family at the expense of random people. I've yet to see any of them though.
        8y ago
- mcguire 8y ago
  There was an article posted here recently about the originator of the term "meritocracy". He wasn't entirely positive about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18179583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18179583 From one of my comments: That's the weird part: “I.Q. + effort = merit” sounds pretty positive, right? But, "A system of class filtered by meritocracy would, in his view, still be a system of class: it would involve a hierarchy of social respect, granting dignity to those at the top, but denying respect and self-respect to those who did not inherit the talents and the capacity for effort that, combined with proper education, would give them access to the most highly remunerated occupations." The intended result doesn't sound very appealing. Then there was this quote: "Young’s vision was decidedly dystopian. As wealth increasingly reflects the innate distribution of natural talent, and the wealthy increasingly marry one another, society sorts into two main classes, in which everyone accepts that they have more or less what they deserve. He imagined a country in which “the eminent know that success is a just reward for their own capacity, their own efforts,” and in which the lower orders know that they have failed every chance they were given. “They are tested again and again…. If they have been labeled ‘dunce’ repeatedly they cannot any longer pretend; their image of themselves is more nearly a true, unflattering reflection.”" That sounds familiar. "But one immediate difficulty was that, as Young’s narrator concedes, “nearly all parents are going to try to gain unfair advantages for their offspring.” And when you have inequalities of income, one thing people can do with extra money is to pursue that goal. If the financial status of your parents helped determine your economic rewards, you would no longer be living by the formula that “I.Q. + effort = merit.”" And so does that.
skookumchuck 8y ago
> legacy admissions Parents who donate a lot of money to a college will expect preferential admissions treatment for their offspring. Colleges certainly know this, and they want the money.
- drngdds 8y ago
  Obviously, but that's not how it should be because it's ridiculously unfair.
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    Colleges are also likely to publicly insist they don't do legacy and donation based admissions, but do it anyway. For Rodney Dangerfield's hilarious lampoon of this, see the movie "Back to School".
  - kevinali1 8y ago
    Many times those colleges are great because of those donations... So maybe it is fair... Perspective
  - friedman23 8y ago
    When a parent donates 1 million dollars to a school with the expectation that their child will gain admission and that 1 million dollars allows the school enough resources to bring on 5 more students than they expected does it really matter? We should be optimizing for maximum utility not dubious concepts such as fairness.
  - iguy 8y ago
    Our best universities involve a symbiosis between the bright and the rich. They're famous for the talents of the brightest, which achieve their full extent because the rich paid... to be around this fame. This has, for a few centuries, been quite a productive system. Other systems are possible, but they have other tradeoffs. You can for instance pay for everything out of taxes, but this means putting those in control of the tax system in charge, and they have their own interests. The extreme of this was the USSR, and it did great science in some areas. But was far from paradise.
drngdds 8y ago
The problem isn't that rich kids get stuff that helps them. It's that other kids don't, which puts them at a major disadvantage.
- LocalH 8y ago
  This. If society must be based on equity rather than equality, then I'd rather see it be done by boosting people up to the same level, rather than knocking everyone down to the same level. Otherwise, society could start looking a lot like Harrison Bergeron, and that's not a society I'd want anything to do with.
- gamechangr 8y ago
  This isn't going to be popular, but the "general idea" of what could be fair and "the specific application" will never be on the same side. Why? On one hand - I love the general idea that everyone should start on the same playing field. On the other hand - My work ethic should infact give my children a major advantage. I know it's not PC to say that, but most fathers would like to "give an advantage" to their children. It's baked in to our basic psychology. Maybe the question is "who decides" and then "who enforces" fair?
jeffdavis 8y ago
Equality can be considered as many different things: * Equal treatment under the law * Equal treatment by kinda-public things like corporations and universities * Equivalent opportunities in general * Equivalent results
elicash 8y ago
The question is what interest we have when designing our laws and culture in providing opportunities to people born with fewer of them. People who can provide tremendous value are being shut out because of inequality, and I want a talented person who could start a business and create tens of thousand of jobs to have that chance not just out of fairness (like you say) but because it's also good for all of us. So yeah, people can inherit wealth but it seems obvious there is tons of opportunity to unlock a lot of potential that's being thrown away due to people being blind to the costs of income inequality.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Are they actually being shut out because of laws and culture, though? Most of the instances I've heard of where talented but disadvantaged people are shut out of opportunities are actually because of implicit bias. Someone may be very good at a particular skill, but they don't "pattern match" as the type of person who would be successful, and so they get passed over by the folks who could give them opportunities. The thing is - this is self-correcting by market mechanisms. It's profitable to spend a little more time overcoming your unconscious biases and learning to evaluate candidates on their own merits, because by doing so, you can get a talented employee who others are not extending offers to, likely for less money. And then once people realize this, either they'll do it or they'll be outcompeted by people who do it, and wages will go up for disadvantaged groups. We don't need collective action or societal change, we just need more greedy bastards who want to fuck over their competition by being smarter than them. There's a market opportunity here for people willing to get over their prejudices.
  - elicash 8y ago
    > The thing is - this is self-correcting by market mechanisms. Read the article. Clearly it is not.
nraynaud 8y ago
well it's always the conflict between what are our instincts and what we renounce in the name of civilization. The dramatic illustration is just that powerful people can just use violence to get food from other people, it's natural, but we have created laws against it. Do we want meritocracy because it is an enlightened value or do we want to follow the instinct of having our genes spread as far and wide as possible. That's the kind of societal dialog politics is made for.
dahart 8y ago
> Should parents be allowed to try to give their children a boost in life? Should society be allowed to try to give the poor but genetically gifted children a boost in life? Nobody’s suggesting that parents shouldn’t use whatever resources they have. The question is what we should do as a society with all the potential we’re wasting. If every dollar we spent on boosting smart poor children yielded two dollars back to the economy, why shouldn’t we do that? > if the parent is able to provide ... I think that’s actually progressive at a societal level The argument that those with private wealth helping their children is making society better is the opposite of what is normally called “progressive”. It’s trickle-down economics. When people say “progressive” they are talking about policies that benefit everyone, not policies that say if the rich do well, then surely we’ll all benefit from the margins and leftovers. > The problem with summary statistics like in this article is that there’s no nuance — just a brunt “unfair” reflex triggered in the reader. Life is extremely unfair, and very biased toward the rich. It’s not a surprise, we already knew it. This article just highlights some papers that confirm scientifically one of the many ways life is unfair. There might be some nuance, and of course there usually is when the press covers scientific research, but are you suspecting some specific nuance?
- ageek123 8y ago
  > Should society be allowed to try to give the poor but genetically gifted children a boost in life? Nobody’s suggesting that parent’s shouldn’t use whatever resources they have. But to a certain extent it is zero-sum. The way you boost smart poor children is by taking money from non-poor parents. So you really are suggesting that non-poor parents "shouldn't use whatever resources they have." I don't think anyone fundamentally opposes this, but there is a legitimate philosophical question about how much redistribution is appropriate, and what criteria go into defining "appropriate."
  - cm2012 8y ago
    Luckily, there are massively diminishing returns to money's effect on educational outcomes and overall happiness, so a dollar taxed from the rich is worth much less to them than to the poor it is given to.
khawkins 8y ago
Honestly, I think that the boost provided by money is probably quite small. At a certain level, poverty is going to detract from a young person's ability to succeed, but money very rarely begets success. What I think is far more likely the case is that parents who succeed in their lives are far better prepared to teach their children how to succeed as well. Further, that they're better at giving them a leg-up in networking and opening doors for them. The fact that this study cites "academic success" as a measure for determining capability for business success shows that the author himself doesn't really understand how to make big money. Does he really think most entrepreneurs are genius level IQ? I have a totally different interpretation. This study is evidence pointing towards the extreme failure of the public school system. The purpose of public schools is to provide talented, hard-working people with the tools to succeed. Schools haven't been preparing children for success, they've been largely focused on preparing them for college, and in turn for graduate school. They have not been teaching kids the values and skills which allow them to genuinely get ahead in life.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  The thing about money is that you don't need to be successful if you have enough of it. The job of a heir(ess) is to live long enough to inherit and not get disowned. Granted there are a few cases where even money can't save someone. A severe schizophrenic for instance could have poor quality of life even if they receive top quality care and have a trust fund. Technically they are better off than if they were poor and had it but the good is greatly reduced.
RestlessMind 8y ago
> Should parents be allowed to try to give their children a boost in life? Like many things in social contract, the answer is - okay to a reasonable degree, but extremes should be discouraged / forbidden. Some concrete examples: annual limits on gift taxes, inheritance tax beyond a certain estate size etc. Policies which will level the playing field between rich and poor kids: - very high rate of inheritance tax beyond $1M estate (some reasonable adjustment for inflation) - no legacy based admissions for any university benefitting from govt money - funding schools strictly at state level; not allowing local district to fund extra school activities in any way (because that is prone to gaming) - CA specific: disallowing inheriting tax basis for inherited homes (one of the most stupid aspects of Prop 13 and CA housing policies)
- jesssse 8y ago
  I am confused about taxes. When a person gives their family member a gift, why do you feel entitled to a portion of this private exchange of wealth?
  - shaklee3 8y ago
    I think the point is that if you can hand down a lot of wealth to your kids, they are already on a different playing field than other kids. it's fine to transfer wealth, but the way things are today means that that wealth can be used to buy a better education.
  - jwatte 8y ago
    The only reason you can accumulate and have wealth, is that the society exists.
  - TheCoelacanth 8y ago
    Same question but for wages or purchases. Are you arguing against estate taxes or all taxes in general?
arkh 8y ago
If people really wanted a level playing field the only solution would be to remove children from their parents at birth and implement a state controled education system from that point to your active life. But most socialists are ok to take from other to give until it touch their family.
spyckie2 8y ago
What theories of economics tell us is that favoring one party over the other for reasons that aren't utility or value derived is being inefficient with your allocation of resources, compared to a market only allocates based on how much utility is derived (a free competitive market or globally scoped decision making, I'm not sure if "free market" is even how economists view the market anymore). So the argument is that Nepotism, Nationalism, or anything that favors parties for reasons other than value / merit is seen as inefficient. To understand this, consider this - if you're bill gates, would you rather live in a society where your just your kids are well educated, smart contributors to making the life of all humanity better, or a society where EVERYONE that has potential is well educated and smart contributors to society. If you have $100 bucks, you'd think - my limited resources is not able to do the latter, even though its better both for me and humanity as a whole to invest in everyone, so let me stick to the former. But a rational actor with infinite resources who cares about their own well being will realize that their society is only as good as everyone in it, and would push for the latter kind of resource distribution. Of course, your goal doesn't have to be acting efficiently in a global market. It's not morally wrong to act inefficiently (although some would have you think it is).
jwatte 8y ago
Could society benefit if more people had these opportunities?
badrabbit 8y ago
Of course they should be allowed,the only line I would draw is to not let the boosting cripple your child. You would rob the child perseverance and many life lessons if you don't let him/het fight for their share of the figurative pie.
justinator 8y ago
> Should parents be allowed to try to give their children a boost in life? I'm pretty happy to have been brought up poor. I had to figure things out for myself, and if things went wrong, it was my fault. Emerson's "Self Reliance" became my guiding star. To be "indefatigable" is not something easy to teach if you have options for exits. As Dylan put it, "helpless, like a rich man's son" It doesn't make me rich; but it certainly doesn't make me think of wealth as the end all, be all, in life.
EdgarVerona 8y ago
To me, it's not so much that they shouldn't be allowed to do that - it's just that we need to recognize the advantage it gives. These statistics should give a person pause when they talk about "bootstraps" or when they hold a Calvinist perspective that a person not being successful somehow "deserved it." It doesn't mean that we need to have some sort of totally even playing field: but it does mean that we shouldn't pretend the field is even - even if the actionable result is just to treat poor and/or unsuccessful people with more empathy and compassion than we might have previously. And perhaps a measurement more of self-examination when we decide (consciously or unconsciously) that we are "better" than others due to our success.
zouhair 8y ago
Good old meritocracy[0] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT2iU9pAI_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT2iU9pAI_Y
cmurf 8y ago
>Should parents be allowed to try to give their children a boost in life? If society really believed and committed in meritocracy, no. But this is always the trap of meritocracies: people lower ladders for friends and family. And that is what always corrupts meritocracy in a free society.

by dokein 8y ago

balt_s 8y ago

> Should parents be allowed To paraphrase: "the question is not who will let them, but who will stop them?"

Qworg 8y ago

It is definitely inequitable. However, it is also how humans work - we want to advantage our inner group over other groups. This cuts directly to the heart of the meritocracy argument (most strongly in technology, but it exists everywhere): how can you claim that everyone is judged by their merits (directly related to how hard they work and how smart they train themselves to be) when being lucky (in genetics, in birth, in support and growth, in opportunities) plays such an overwhelming role?

lend000 8y ago
Unless you're a strong believer in free will, someone who is lazy, sleazy, unintelligent, etc. (has little "merit") did not 'choose' to be born that way, or even if they say they did, they did not choose to have the nature/nurture that caused them to be the kind of person to make that 'choice.' No more than a bird chooses to eat a worm or a salmon chooses to swim upstream, anyway. We can build productive societies based on incentive structures we put around merit, such as capitalist market systems. But in reality, nothing is fair and simultaneously everything is fair. Fairness is undefinable outside of a closed system. It's just how it is. Heuristics to define merit are just forms of evolution for human society that allow more productive people to command more responsibility.
cthor 8y ago
I don't think meritocracy implies cosmic fairness. The way it's used by most hackers is to say that someone's work is judged only on its own merits, rather than the author's social status or how good they are at playing political games or anything else orthogonal to the work actually being valuable. At least, that's the ideal.
- iguy 8y ago
  Judging people on their work is partly about fair play. But it's also justified by concern for the results. A system which rewards the people doing great work will produce much more of that than a system which rewards political connections. I care quite a bit that the best cancer researchers should get hired, and the best ideas get the money -- their progress is likely to directly affect people close to me. And this is true but less obvious for almost every field... an economy where everyone was focused solely on zero-sum competitions would not grow very fast. I don't quite know what cosmic fairness means. But perhaps cosmic unfairness involves people's talents not being identical. The goal of trying to get the fastest progress against cancer does not align with the goal of trying to remedy such unfairness.
  - Qworg 8y ago
    The problem carries through time, not just at the moment you're making the decision to invest. What about the better potential cancer researcher who was left behind because their parents were poor? What about the one that decided to go learn programming because they couldn't get the exclusive internship due to lacking connections? The position that states "remedying inequity costs more than simply giving it all to the current best" is a shortsighted one.
  - Livven 8y ago
    To back up the other comment, recent studies find that students from worse secondary schools with worse grades end up outperforming students from more selective schools with better grades once in medical school. So in order to get the best doctors you can't just be all "meritocratic" by looking only at the results, i.e. grades, but have to take other factors into account. --- The relationship between school type and academic performance at medical school: a national, multi-cohort study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5589012/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5589012/ What is the effect of secondary (high) schooling on subsequent medical school performance? A national, UK-based, cohort study. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29792300 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29792300
tomp 8y ago
I interpret meritocracy as being judged by the outcome of your doings. If someone has IQ 10000 but spends it to dominate WoW, then... I don't see why they should be paid a lot (some other people might disagree, though). Likewise, if someone leverages their genetics, family, wealth, skills, efforts, and luck towards great outcomes (e.g. Elon Musk), then they should be rewarded, as they're meritocratically the best. To all "proponents" of "the luck argument": there are thousands of people far more lucky than Elon and Steve (born to wealthier families, smarter, better connected, etc) that didn't achieve what they have. So... luck obviously isn't the answer. Having said that, even if luck were the answer, I'd still support meritocracy, because it results in the best outcome. It's not about fairness, fundamentally - it's about creating the best society. If the only people who can do that are "the wealthy" (or whichever category you choose - most likely "the intelligent" these days), then so be it - it's best for all the rest of us if they "rule", meritocratically.
- Qworg 8y ago
  Power doesn't work like that - it accretes to those who are able to leverage it. You generate a permanent power disparity with a gloves off laissez-faire system like that. I'd worry about your definition of "best society". Is the current system an existence proof in your mind?
  - roenxi 8y ago
    I can't speak for anyone else, but when I use "best society" it is code for the following argument that gets as long and involved as there is time to explain: Human instincts and morals are really well calibrated to small-village life. I take things like the Dunbar number [1] to indicate that we are optimised for a small circle of close relationships. "Fairness" has a sister in "equality" that is very powerful force on the local scale and scales horribly, to the point where equality being scaled up is usually a warning sign of an incoming economic breakdown where everyone starves. Unfortunately, people keep trying to scale equality up because they want it in their local relationships. Talking about "permanent power disparities" touches on the same vein of thinking - we know that permanent power disparities are an inevitable feature of society. The attempts to set up societies where there are no permanent power disparities have resulted in permanent power disparities forming, and frequently going to very nasty despots. Modern western civilisation has done _extremely_ well compared to the competition by dangling systemic advantage as the reward for massively improving the industrial base and consumer access to resources. This has worked a lot better than attempts to suppress inequality under, eg, the communist systems. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
I had a meeting with a very successful guy who is CIO at a major tech startup who was looking to acquire our company. Because we were friends for a while I said something to the effect of "I just want to make sure this doesn't look like nepotism" His response was basically, "Who cares? I love Nepotism. that means me and my friends do better and help each other out." Kind of shocked me to be honest, but after thinking about it it makes total sense. Why wouldn't you help your friends? I mean I help my friends all the time, but there seemed to be an artificial cutoff when it came to hiring and buying companies or otherwise giving them outward signs of "success." Not sure I can make a rational case against Nepotism even though it feels wrong.
- aaronblohowiak 8y ago
  If you are directing other people’s money to your family it is a disservice to those other people. If it is your own money, go nuts. Nepotism vs family business, basically.
- Qworg 8y ago
  In the societal sense, it is maladaptive - your CIO friend assumes that his friends deliver the best outcome.
  - adventured 8y ago
    That's not what the friend is assuming per the wording. The friend seems to be plainly stating they don't care if the max outcome is what is occuring or not, insofar as they all at least do better. Helping their friends out is more important than maxing out the quality of the outcome. Societally, reinforcing and protecting social trust systems may be dramatically more important than maxing out business success outcomes.
    - lotsofpulp 8y ago
      I don’t see how that can be true. Tribally, it might be (for a small tribe in a large group). Society wide, it’s definitely bad. I don’t want a bridge built by an uncle politician who “trusts” his nephew engineer’s company. Outcomes should (and do) result in trust, not the nepotism.
perfunctory 8y ago
> However, it is also how humans work - we want to advantage our inner group over other groups. This is too broad. Is it really so? I believe that we don't want to disadvantage ourselves relative to other groups. But that we want to gain advantage at somebody's else expense - not sure.
- Thriptic 8y ago
  It is absolutely so. I would much rather help a friend or group of friends do well as opposed to randoms or people I don't like. First, I like my friends and want them to be happy (and am going to be the one who hears about it when they aren't), so I have a vested interest in helping them achieve happiness and success whereas I have a weak interest in the happiness and success of randoms as we have no relationship. Second, if I can help my friends become happy and successful, they become better able to help me become happy and successful (by pooling resources, providing advice, providing introductions, creating mutually beneficial opportunities, creating happiness by spending time with me, providing trust and facilitating vulnerability, providing capital or expertise etc). This sets up a positive feedback loop and creates strong ROI for my efforts. I get net negative ROI from helping a random (assuming no relationship will develop and I expend time or funds) so it's far less likely that I will use my scarce time and resources to do it. The entire world runs on relationships, favors, and reputation.
  - anigbrowl 8y ago
    How do you know that's not a cultural norm you learned? Blanket pronunciations on human nature tell me more about you than anyone else.
    - Thriptic 8y ago
      I'm fully willing to admit that there may be functional cultures in the world which frown upon showing preference to friends or family at the expense of random people. I've yet to see any of them though.
      - 8y ago
mcguire 8y ago
There was an article posted here recently about the originator of the term "meritocracy". He wasn't entirely positive about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18179583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18179583 From one of my comments: That's the weird part: “I.Q. + effort = merit” sounds pretty positive, right? But, "A system of class filtered by meritocracy would, in his view, still be a system of class: it would involve a hierarchy of social respect, granting dignity to those at the top, but denying respect and self-respect to those who did not inherit the talents and the capacity for effort that, combined with proper education, would give them access to the most highly remunerated occupations." The intended result doesn't sound very appealing. Then there was this quote: "Young’s vision was decidedly dystopian. As wealth increasingly reflects the innate distribution of natural talent, and the wealthy increasingly marry one another, society sorts into two main classes, in which everyone accepts that they have more or less what they deserve. He imagined a country in which “the eminent know that success is a just reward for their own capacity, their own efforts,” and in which the lower orders know that they have failed every chance they were given. “They are tested again and again…. If they have been labeled ‘dunce’ repeatedly they cannot any longer pretend; their image of themselves is more nearly a true, unflattering reflection.”" That sounds familiar. "But one immediate difficulty was that, as Young’s narrator concedes, “nearly all parents are going to try to gain unfair advantages for their offspring.” And when you have inequalities of income, one thing people can do with extra money is to pursue that goal. If the financial status of your parents helped determine your economic rewards, you would no longer be living by the formula that “I.Q. + effort = merit.”" And so does that.

skookumchuck 8y ago

> legacy admissions Parents who donate a lot of money to a college will expect preferential admissions treatment for their offspring. Colleges certainly know this, and they want the money.

drngdds 8y ago
Obviously, but that's not how it should be because it's ridiculously unfair.
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  Colleges are also likely to publicly insist they don't do legacy and donation based admissions, but do it anyway. For Rodney Dangerfield's hilarious lampoon of this, see the movie "Back to School".
- kevinali1 8y ago
  Many times those colleges are great because of those donations... So maybe it is fair... Perspective
- friedman23 8y ago
  When a parent donates 1 million dollars to a school with the expectation that their child will gain admission and that 1 million dollars allows the school enough resources to bring on 5 more students than they expected does it really matter? We should be optimizing for maximum utility not dubious concepts such as fairness.
- iguy 8y ago
  Our best universities involve a symbiosis between the bright and the rich. They're famous for the talents of the brightest, which achieve their full extent because the rich paid... to be around this fame. This has, for a few centuries, been quite a productive system. Other systems are possible, but they have other tradeoffs. You can for instance pay for everything out of taxes, but this means putting those in control of the tax system in charge, and they have their own interests. The extreme of this was the USSR, and it did great science in some areas. But was far from paradise.

drngdds 8y ago

The problem isn't that rich kids get stuff that helps them. It's that other kids don't, which puts them at a major disadvantage.

LocalH 8y ago
This. If society must be based on equity rather than equality, then I'd rather see it be done by boosting people up to the same level, rather than knocking everyone down to the same level. Otherwise, society could start looking a lot like Harrison Bergeron, and that's not a society I'd want anything to do with.
gamechangr 8y ago
This isn't going to be popular, but the "general idea" of what could be fair and "the specific application" will never be on the same side. Why? On one hand - I love the general idea that everyone should start on the same playing field. On the other hand - My work ethic should infact give my children a major advantage. I know it's not PC to say that, but most fathers would like to "give an advantage" to their children. It's baked in to our basic psychology. Maybe the question is "who decides" and then "who enforces" fair?

jeffdavis 8y ago

Equality can be considered as many different things: * Equal treatment under the law * Equal treatment by kinda-public things like corporations and universities * Equivalent opportunities in general * Equivalent results

elicash 8y ago

The question is what interest we have when designing our laws and culture in providing opportunities to people born with fewer of them. People who can provide tremendous value are being shut out because of inequality, and I want a talented person who could start a business and create tens of thousand of jobs to have that chance not just out of fairness (like you say) but because it's also good for all of us. So yeah, people can inherit wealth but it seems obvious there is tons of opportunity to unlock a lot of potential that's being thrown away due to people being blind to the costs of income inequality.

nostrademons 8y ago
Are they actually being shut out because of laws and culture, though? Most of the instances I've heard of where talented but disadvantaged people are shut out of opportunities are actually because of implicit bias. Someone may be very good at a particular skill, but they don't "pattern match" as the type of person who would be successful, and so they get passed over by the folks who could give them opportunities. The thing is - this is self-correcting by market mechanisms. It's profitable to spend a little more time overcoming your unconscious biases and learning to evaluate candidates on their own merits, because by doing so, you can get a talented employee who others are not extending offers to, likely for less money. And then once people realize this, either they'll do it or they'll be outcompeted by people who do it, and wages will go up for disadvantaged groups. We don't need collective action or societal change, we just need more greedy bastards who want to fuck over their competition by being smarter than them. There's a market opportunity here for people willing to get over their prejudices.
- elicash 8y ago
  > The thing is - this is self-correcting by market mechanisms. Read the article. Clearly it is not.

nraynaud 8y ago

well it's always the conflict between what are our instincts and what we renounce in the name of civilization. The dramatic illustration is just that powerful people can just use violence to get food from other people, it's natural, but we have created laws against it. Do we want meritocracy because it is an enlightened value or do we want to follow the instinct of having our genes spread as far and wide as possible. That's the kind of societal dialog politics is made for.

dahart 8y ago

> Should parents be allowed to try to give their children a boost in life? Should society be allowed to try to give the poor but genetically gifted children a boost in life? Nobody’s suggesting that parents shouldn’t use whatever resources they have. The question is what we should do as a society with all the potential we’re wasting. If every dollar we spent on boosting smart poor children yielded two dollars back to the economy, why shouldn’t we do that? > if the parent is able to provide ... I think that’s actually progressive at a societal level The argument that those with private wealth helping their children is making society better is the opposite of what is normally called “progressive”. It’s trickle-down economics. When people say “progressive” they are talking about policies that benefit everyone, not policies that say if the rich do well, then surely we’ll all benefit from the margins and leftovers. > The problem with summary statistics like in this article is that there’s no nuance — just a brunt “unfair” reflex triggered in the reader. Life is extremely unfair, and very biased toward the rich. It’s not a surprise, we already knew it. This article just highlights some papers that confirm scientifically one of the many ways life is unfair. There might be some nuance, and of course there usually is when the press covers scientific research, but are you suspecting some specific nuance?

ageek123 8y ago
> Should society be allowed to try to give the poor but genetically gifted children a boost in life? Nobody’s suggesting that parent’s shouldn’t use whatever resources they have. But to a certain extent it is zero-sum. The way you boost smart poor children is by taking money from non-poor parents. So you really are suggesting that non-poor parents "shouldn't use whatever resources they have." I don't think anyone fundamentally opposes this, but there is a legitimate philosophical question about how much redistribution is appropriate, and what criteria go into defining "appropriate."
- cm2012 8y ago
  Luckily, there are massively diminishing returns to money's effect on educational outcomes and overall happiness, so a dollar taxed from the rich is worth much less to them than to the poor it is given to.

khawkins 8y ago

Honestly, I think that the boost provided by money is probably quite small. At a certain level, poverty is going to detract from a young person's ability to succeed, but money very rarely begets success. What I think is far more likely the case is that parents who succeed in their lives are far better prepared to teach their children how to succeed as well. Further, that they're better at giving them a leg-up in networking and opening doors for them. The fact that this study cites "academic success" as a measure for determining capability for business success shows that the author himself doesn't really understand how to make big money. Does he really think most entrepreneurs are genius level IQ? I have a totally different interpretation. This study is evidence pointing towards the extreme failure of the public school system. The purpose of public schools is to provide talented, hard-working people with the tools to succeed. Schools haven't been preparing children for success, they've been largely focused on preparing them for college, and in turn for graduate school. They have not been teaching kids the values and skills which allow them to genuinely get ahead in life.

Nasrudith 8y ago
The thing about money is that you don't need to be successful if you have enough of it. The job of a heir(ess) is to live long enough to inherit and not get disowned. Granted there are a few cases where even money can't save someone. A severe schizophrenic for instance could have poor quality of life even if they receive top quality care and have a trust fund. Technically they are better off than if they were poor and had it but the good is greatly reduced.

RestlessMind 8y ago

> Should parents be allowed to try to give their children a boost in life? Like many things in social contract, the answer is - okay to a reasonable degree, but extremes should be discouraged / forbidden. Some concrete examples: annual limits on gift taxes, inheritance tax beyond a certain estate size etc. Policies which will level the playing field between rich and poor kids: - very high rate of inheritance tax beyond $1M estate (some reasonable adjustment for inflation) - no legacy based admissions for any university benefitting from govt money - funding schools strictly at state level; not allowing local district to fund extra school activities in any way (because that is prone to gaming) - CA specific: disallowing inheriting tax basis for inherited homes (one of the most stupid aspects of Prop 13 and CA housing policies)

jesssse 8y ago
I am confused about taxes. When a person gives their family member a gift, why do you feel entitled to a portion of this private exchange of wealth?
- shaklee3 8y ago
  I think the point is that if you can hand down a lot of wealth to your kids, they are already on a different playing field than other kids. it's fine to transfer wealth, but the way things are today means that that wealth can be used to buy a better education.
- jwatte 8y ago
  The only reason you can accumulate and have wealth, is that the society exists.
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  Same question but for wages or purchases. Are you arguing against estate taxes or all taxes in general?

arkh 8y ago

If people really wanted a level playing field the only solution would be to remove children from their parents at birth and implement a state controled education system from that point to your active life. But most socialists are ok to take from other to give until it touch their family.

spyckie2 8y ago

What theories of economics tell us is that favoring one party over the other for reasons that aren't utility or value derived is being inefficient with your allocation of resources, compared to a market only allocates based on how much utility is derived (a free competitive market or globally scoped decision making, I'm not sure if "free market" is even how economists view the market anymore). So the argument is that Nepotism, Nationalism, or anything that favors parties for reasons other than value / merit is seen as inefficient. To understand this, consider this - if you're bill gates, would you rather live in a society where your just your kids are well educated, smart contributors to making the life of all humanity better, or a society where EVERYONE that has potential is well educated and smart contributors to society. If you have $100 bucks, you'd think - my limited resources is not able to do the latter, even though its better both for me and humanity as a whole to invest in everyone, so let me stick to the former. But a rational actor with infinite resources who cares about their own well being will realize that their society is only as good as everyone in it, and would push for the latter kind of resource distribution. Of course, your goal doesn't have to be acting efficiently in a global market. It's not morally wrong to act inefficiently (although some would have you think it is).

jwatte 8y ago

Could society benefit if more people had these opportunities?

badrabbit 8y ago

Of course they should be allowed,the only line I would draw is to not let the boosting cripple your child. You would rob the child perseverance and many life lessons if you don't let him/het fight for their share of the figurative pie.

justinator 8y ago

> Should parents be allowed to try to give their children a boost in life? I'm pretty happy to have been brought up poor. I had to figure things out for myself, and if things went wrong, it was my fault. Emerson's "Self Reliance" became my guiding star. To be "indefatigable" is not something easy to teach if you have options for exits. As Dylan put it, "helpless, like a rich man's son" It doesn't make me rich; but it certainly doesn't make me think of wealth as the end all, be all, in life.

EdgarVerona 8y ago

To me, it's not so much that they shouldn't be allowed to do that - it's just that we need to recognize the advantage it gives. These statistics should give a person pause when they talk about "bootstraps" or when they hold a Calvinist perspective that a person not being successful somehow "deserved it." It doesn't mean that we need to have some sort of totally even playing field: but it does mean that we shouldn't pretend the field is even - even if the actionable result is just to treat poor and/or unsuccessful people with more empathy and compassion than we might have previously. And perhaps a measurement more of self-examination when we decide (consciously or unconsciously) that we are "better" than others due to our success.

zouhair 8y ago

Good old meritocracy[0] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT2iU9pAI_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT2iU9pAI_Y

cmurf 8y ago

>Should parents be allowed to try to give their children a boost in life? If society really believed and committed in meritocracy, no. But this is always the trap of meritocracies: people lower ladders for friends and family. And that is what always corrupts meritocracy in a free society.