4 ms·

Pure communism doesn't exist, pure capitalism doesn't exist, pure fascism doesn't exist. Pure ideals of any kind don't exist. Meritocracy exists to varying degr

by darawk 8y ago

Pure communism doesn't exist, pure capitalism doesn't exist, pure fascism doesn't exist. Pure ideals of any kind don't exist. Meritocracy exists to varying degrees all over the place, and it's something we should be striving for wherever possible. There are good arguments for temporary exceptions to meritocracy to, say, correct historical inequities, but it's extremely important that those be viewed as temporary roadblocks on the ultimate path towards a society that is as meritocratic as we can make it. Which, by the way, doesn't necessarily mean that those low on 'merit' need to be left to die, we can still provide a good life for even the least economically valuable individuals, but yes, those who are providing the most economic utility to society should get to consume more of that utility. > According to Frank, this is especially true where the success in question is great, and where the context in which it is achieved is competitive. There are certainly programmers nearly as skilful as Gates who nonetheless failed to become the richest person on Earth. In competitive contexts, many have merit, but few succeed. What separates the two is luck. This is also completely false. What separates Gates from most other programmers of his skill level is willingness to take on risk. Gates took on tremendous risk to do what he did. He could have failed spectacularly, but he chose to enter the startup lottery and he won. That's the deal you make, you go into that game knowing that it's a lottery, and of course luck is involved. But we have that lottery in place for a very good reason: New companies provide tremendous value to society, and so it's important that we incentivize people to create them. Nobody would take on the kinds of risks that he did if the rewards weren't enormous.

foolrush 8y ago
You are predicating your entire premise on merit already existing. The surge in articles recently dig a little deeper. What is merit? Is it merit if, because someone is of faith, they donate food to those without? That person who is receiving the food has more than they did prior, the person who had the food has less. Merit is a metric, and in contemporary culture, it is one used to reinforce ownership and capital. Yet in the above overly-simplistic example, we can see that not all human interactions are, nor should, be overfit into the idea of “merit” nor “ownership of capital or goods.” In the above scenario, “merit” conveniently tries to avoid disclosing its ethical structure. It’s a fallacy. More folks are waking up to this fact[1]. [1] Avoiding the whataboutisms discussing “talent” or “skills” and other bogus terms.
- darawk 8y ago
  > What is merit? Is it merit if, because someone is of faith, they donate food to those without? That person who is receiving the food has more than they did prior, the person who had the food has less. Merit is extremely easy to define. Merit is providing economic value to society. We have an imperfect, but quite impressive system for measuring this, called pricing. If I can create something you want, you pay me for it. I capture part of the excess value of that transaction, commensurate with the uniqueness of what I created.
  - ivalm 8y ago
    So accidentally finding a gold nugget on your family farm is merit?
    - darawk 8y ago
      I didn't say luck didn't exist, or wasn't involved. But absent the incentive to capture some of the value of that gold, the person who finds it would simply leave it there on their farm, despite the fact that other people in the world want it.
      - ivalm 8y ago
        Sure, it is just not merit. People are incentivized and are rewarded for a variety of reasons -- some merit-based and many non-merit-based. I am not arguing against capitalism.
rileymat2 8y ago
> What separates Gates from most other programmers of his skill level is willingness to take on risk. Isn't there also a major component that involves the opportunity to take risk including things like a sufficient social safety net? Certainly, different people have different downsides in the case of failure. Many of those factors are not based on merit.
- darawk 8y ago
  Absolutely that is true. As I said, i'm not arguing that we live in a perfect meritocracy. What i'm arguing is three things: 1. We live in a partial meritocracy. Success is strongly correlated with effort and skill, but by strong I mean maybe in the 30-50% range. 2. Meritocracy is good, and we should strive to make that 30-50% correlation rise up to 100% (even if we can't ever quite get there). 3. Believing in meritocracy is extremely important, and has produced the tremendous economic largesse we all enjoy today.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    So did my son have more “skill” in getting into the college of his choice after we paid $1100 for ten sessions with a personal ACT tutor who was a college professor? Did the children of the parents who paid $250K to get their children into school by bribing administrators have more skill?
    - darawk 8y ago
      Did you actually read my comment or are you just responding to some odd emotional interpretation of what you imagine someone would have said? Because I very clearly stated that I didn't think society was completely meritocratic. I even put a numerical range on how meritocratic it was: 30-50%. So, your examples are really pretty meaningless.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        Since getting to college has a large affect on lifetime earnings and people of means can legally increase the odds of getting to college. Your family’s wealth has an overwhelming impact on your own success. https://www.brookings.edu/research/economic-mobility-of-families-across-generations/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/economic-mobility-of-fami... Forty-two percent of children born to parents in the bottom fifth of the income distribution remain in the bottom, while 39 percent born to parents in the top fifth remain at the top. Children of middle-income parents have a near-equal likelihood of ending up in any other quintile, presenting equal promise and peril for those born to middle-class parents. The “rags to riches” story is much more common in Hollywood than on Main Street. Only 6 percent of children born to parents with family income at the very bottom move to the very top.
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
Gates didn’t take much of a risk, he was never going to be homeless if his plans didn’t work out. He is pretty much the perfect example if you want to prove we don’t exist in a meritocracy.
- darawk 8y ago
  Gates absolutely took a risk. He devoted many years of his life to something that may not have panned out. He could have spent those same years working his way up at say, IBM. Opportunity cost is a real risk. It's not the same as being homeless, but that doesn't make it not a risk.
- sampo 8y ago
  > he was never going to be homeless if his plans didn’t work out There are entire countries, at least the Nordic countries, where you are never going to be homeless, no matter the business risks you take.
fsloth 8y ago
Gates was as obsessed about business almost asmuch as about programming. His father was a recognized lawyer. And he was immensly strong willed. He didn't really take huge risks. If his business had not succeeded the worst that would have happened to him (likely) would have been an upper-middleclass career and life. He was immensly shrewd, bold, hard working and smart. But ... I'm not sure what he exactly can be held for as an example since he had the right genes and the right topics of interest and the right place in history. You can't approach just the business as a form of lottety since, although it's a game of chance, it's not a single roll of the die. The stars must be aligned, lot of small things need to come together just right.
- darawk 8y ago
  Sure, i'm not saying luck wasn't involved. He was extremely lucky. However, he was also extremely talented at both business and engineering, and he worked very hard and absolutely took personal risks. He didn't risk becoming homeless, but if Microsoft had failed he'd have wasted many important years of his career, and would have been set back a great deal relative to his peers.
prewett 8y ago
> What separates Gates from most other programmers of his skill level is willingness to take on risk. Balderdash. His parents were wealthy, his father was a successful lawyer and his mother was on the board of IBM and was very well connected socially. From Wikipedia: "Gates explained his decision to leave Harvard, saying '... if things [Microsoft] hadn't worked out, I could always go back to school. I was officially on [a] leave [of absence].'" According to Gates, the decision was fairly riskless.
- darawk 8y ago
  His decision to start working on Microsoft may have been risk-limited, but his decision to stick around for many years was not. He wasn't wildly successful overnight.
refurb 8y ago
Thank you. I hate the black and white mentality of “I can think of an example where merit played no role” which becomes “we are not a meritocracy”. Sorry to say, but nothing in this world is perfect. However, a lack of perfection doesn’t prove that something doesn’t exist.
petra 8y ago
Why are we even comparing programmers to Bill Gates ? He was an a business owner, an entrepreneur. The world doesn't lack highly skilled entrepreneurs who take a lot of risk. Gates, besides being very talented, was extremely lucky - being at the right school at the right time, having a mom at the board of directors of the largest computer company in the world(IBM), and having IBM make the worst business decision probably ever - feeling that there won't be much money in the operating-system - so licensing it out.
- darawk 8y ago
  > Why are we even comparing programmers to Bill Gates ? He was an a business owner, an entrepreneur. He was a highly skilled programmer and entrepreneur. > The world doesn't lack highly skilled entrepreneurs who take a lot of risk. Erm, what? It absolutely does. > Gates, besides being very talented, was extremely lucky - being at the right school at the right time, having a mom at the board of directors of the largest computer company in the world(IBM), and having IBM make the worst business decision probably ever - feeling that there won't be much money in the operating-system - so licensing it out. Yes, my point exactly. He was both lucky and talented and hard-working. There were tens of thousands of kids as well off as him and more, who didn't amount to a hundredth of his success.

by darawk 8y ago

foolrush 8y ago

You are predicating your entire premise on merit already existing. The surge in articles recently dig a little deeper. What is merit? Is it merit if, because someone is of faith, they donate food to those without? That person who is receiving the food has more than they did prior, the person who had the food has less. Merit is a metric, and in contemporary culture, it is one used to reinforce ownership and capital. Yet in the above overly-simplistic example, we can see that not all human interactions are, nor should, be overfit into the idea of “merit” nor “ownership of capital or goods.” In the above scenario, “merit” conveniently tries to avoid disclosing its ethical structure. It’s a fallacy. More folks are waking up to this fact[1]. [1] Avoiding the whataboutisms discussing “talent” or “skills” and other bogus terms.

darawk 8y ago
> What is merit? Is it merit if, because someone is of faith, they donate food to those without? That person who is receiving the food has more than they did prior, the person who had the food has less. Merit is extremely easy to define. Merit is providing economic value to society. We have an imperfect, but quite impressive system for measuring this, called pricing. If I can create something you want, you pay me for it. I capture part of the excess value of that transaction, commensurate with the uniqueness of what I created.
- ivalm 8y ago
  So accidentally finding a gold nugget on your family farm is merit?
  - darawk 8y ago
    I didn't say luck didn't exist, or wasn't involved. But absent the incentive to capture some of the value of that gold, the person who finds it would simply leave it there on their farm, despite the fact that other people in the world want it.
    - ivalm 8y ago
      Sure, it is just not merit. People are incentivized and are rewarded for a variety of reasons -- some merit-based and many non-merit-based. I am not arguing against capitalism.

rileymat2 8y ago

> What separates Gates from most other programmers of his skill level is willingness to take on risk. Isn't there also a major component that involves the opportunity to take risk including things like a sufficient social safety net? Certainly, different people have different downsides in the case of failure. Many of those factors are not based on merit.

darawk 8y ago
Absolutely that is true. As I said, i'm not arguing that we live in a perfect meritocracy. What i'm arguing is three things: 1. We live in a partial meritocracy. Success is strongly correlated with effort and skill, but by strong I mean maybe in the 30-50% range. 2. Meritocracy is good, and we should strive to make that 30-50% correlation rise up to 100% (even if we can't ever quite get there). 3. Believing in meritocracy is extremely important, and has produced the tremendous economic largesse we all enjoy today.
- scarface74 8y ago
  So did my son have more “skill” in getting into the college of his choice after we paid $1100 for ten sessions with a personal ACT tutor who was a college professor? Did the children of the parents who paid $250K to get their children into school by bribing administrators have more skill?
  - darawk 8y ago
    Did you actually read my comment or are you just responding to some odd emotional interpretation of what you imagine someone would have said? Because I very clearly stated that I didn't think society was completely meritocratic. I even put a numerical range on how meritocratic it was: 30-50%. So, your examples are really pretty meaningless.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      Since getting to college has a large affect on lifetime earnings and people of means can legally increase the odds of getting to college. Your family’s wealth has an overwhelming impact on your own success. https://www.brookings.edu/research/economic-mobility-of-families-across-generations/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/economic-mobility-of-fami... Forty-two percent of children born to parents in the bottom fifth of the income distribution remain in the bottom, while 39 percent born to parents in the top fifth remain at the top. Children of middle-income parents have a near-equal likelihood of ending up in any other quintile, presenting equal promise and peril for those born to middle-class parents. The “rags to riches” story is much more common in Hollywood than on Main Street. Only 6 percent of children born to parents with family income at the very bottom move to the very top.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago

Gates didn’t take much of a risk, he was never going to be homeless if his plans didn’t work out. He is pretty much the perfect example if you want to prove we don’t exist in a meritocracy.

darawk 8y ago
Gates absolutely took a risk. He devoted many years of his life to something that may not have panned out. He could have spent those same years working his way up at say, IBM. Opportunity cost is a real risk. It's not the same as being homeless, but that doesn't make it not a risk.
sampo 8y ago
> he was never going to be homeless if his plans didn’t work out There are entire countries, at least the Nordic countries, where you are never going to be homeless, no matter the business risks you take.

fsloth 8y ago

Gates was as obsessed about business almost asmuch as about programming. His father was a recognized lawyer. And he was immensly strong willed. He didn't really take huge risks. If his business had not succeeded the worst that would have happened to him (likely) would have been an upper-middleclass career and life. He was immensly shrewd, bold, hard working and smart. But ... I'm not sure what he exactly can be held for as an example since he had the right genes and the right topics of interest and the right place in history. You can't approach just the business as a form of lottety since, although it's a game of chance, it's not a single roll of the die. The stars must be aligned, lot of small things need to come together just right.

darawk 8y ago
Sure, i'm not saying luck wasn't involved. He was extremely lucky. However, he was also extremely talented at both business and engineering, and he worked very hard and absolutely took personal risks. He didn't risk becoming homeless, but if Microsoft had failed he'd have wasted many important years of his career, and would have been set back a great deal relative to his peers.

prewett 8y ago

> What separates Gates from most other programmers of his skill level is willingness to take on risk. Balderdash. His parents were wealthy, his father was a successful lawyer and his mother was on the board of IBM and was very well connected socially. From Wikipedia: "Gates explained his decision to leave Harvard, saying '... if things [Microsoft] hadn't worked out, I could always go back to school. I was officially on [a] leave [of absence].'" According to Gates, the decision was fairly riskless.

darawk 8y ago
His decision to start working on Microsoft may have been risk-limited, but his decision to stick around for many years was not. He wasn't wildly successful overnight.

refurb 8y ago

Thank you. I hate the black and white mentality of “I can think of an example where merit played no role” which becomes “we are not a meritocracy”. Sorry to say, but nothing in this world is perfect. However, a lack of perfection doesn’t prove that something doesn’t exist.

petra 8y ago

Why are we even comparing programmers to Bill Gates ? He was an a business owner, an entrepreneur. The world doesn't lack highly skilled entrepreneurs who take a lot of risk. Gates, besides being very talented, was extremely lucky - being at the right school at the right time, having a mom at the board of directors of the largest computer company in the world(IBM), and having IBM make the worst business decision probably ever - feeling that there won't be much money in the operating-system - so licensing it out.

darawk 8y ago
> Why are we even comparing programmers to Bill Gates ? He was an a business owner, an entrepreneur. He was a highly skilled programmer and entrepreneur. > The world doesn't lack highly skilled entrepreneurs who take a lot of risk. Erm, what? It absolutely does. > Gates, besides being very talented, was extremely lucky - being at the right school at the right time, having a mom at the board of directors of the largest computer company in the world(IBM), and having IBM make the worst business decision probably ever - feeling that there won't be much money in the operating-system - so licensing it out. Yes, my point exactly. He was both lucky and talented and hard-working. There were tens of thousands of kids as well off as him and more, who didn't amount to a hundredth of his success.