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I would disagree that Meritocracy only distinguishes between those with the same opportunities, and argue that a true Meritocracy can only exists when people ar

by mreome 8y ago

I would disagree that Meritocracy only distinguishes between those with the same opportunities, and argue that a true Meritocracy can only exists when people are afforded generally the same opportunities. If everyone is playing with a different set of options or rules, success is inherently not based on skill, but at best on a combination of skill and the options/rules they were playing by. It seems to me that if "fewer opportunities doesn't actually change much in the 'what should I do' decision tree" then we are not living in a Meritocracy, as your saying the outcomes depend primary on the set of opportunities you either started with or achieved by chance, and no mater what skill is applied you have a limited "optimal" path and can not achieve more then that. I actually think I agree with that, while there are Meritocratic elements to the world we live in in that we get to apply skills to our choices, the significant limits to our individual "choice trees" caused by various social and economic factors rule out the possibility that we are living in what could be called a mostly Meritocratic system.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> I would disagree that Meritocracy only distinguishes between those with the same opportunities, and argue that a true Meritocracy can only exists when people are afforded generally the same opportunities. If everyone is playing with a different set of options or rules, success is inherently not based on skill, but at best on a combination of skill and the options/rules they were playing by. That is just defining meritocracy in a way that causes it to be impossible. Some people are 5'0" and others are 6'6" and that is not a personal choice but it is also a relevant characteristic in the game of basketball. There are two ways out of that. One is to define merit as including things like genetics and upbringing, so Gates is meritorious because he went to good schools and his parents had the money to expose him to computer hardware at a time when it was very expensive etc. causing him to know about business and code. But that's reaching the point of tautology -- if you're successful you're meritorious because merit is defined as things that produce success. The other is to recognize opportunity as something separate from merit but still relevant to position. Some people never had the opportunity to go to medical school and so they can't be your doctor. Some people did have that opportunity, but didn't choose it, and they too can't be your doctor. This allows us to recognize that not everyone has the same opportunities -- and that it is not even possible for everyone have the same opportunities, even if there are ways to improve the opportunities for some people, because there is still no way to make 5'0" people 6'6" -- while at the same time recognizing that the person who did become a doctor/engineer/CEO/etc. did so at significant personal effort when other, similarly situated people did not.
- mreome 8y ago
  It seems like you're just trying to redefine Meritocracy to fit the state of the world. Saying that "Some people never had the opportunity to go to medical school and so they can't be your doctor" means that no, we don't live in a true Meritocracy, unless you can also show that all such people would not have been able to get through medical school had they been given that opportunity. With your definition, a Monarchy would be a Meritocracy. The son of the King has the opportunity to rule because of "genetics and upbringing", he has enough skill that it doesn't lead to deposition or revolution, so he becomes King. Of course there are limits to this in terms of genetics, and I would agree that to determine if we were in a Meritocracy you would have to look at what differentiates the success/failure of those born with similar physical/genetic characteristics as that is not something we can realistically make equal as a society. I am also in full agreement in that I think an Absolute Meritocracy is impossible, and I think the question is are we a Mostly Meritocratic society or not, but you can't just redefine something because the definition makes it impossible.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    The point is that the question of "mostly meritocratic" is nonsense because it depends entirely on the definition of merit. If you call genetics a component of merit then society becomes much more meritocratic. If you call it not then it becomes much less. But it isn't society that is different in either case. You can make any society arbitrarily meritocratic or unmeritocratic by classifying various things as merit or not. And this gets into the whole question of free will. If you had the "opportunity" to be taught about expected value and opportunity costs and economic theory, do your choices that take into account that knowledge count as merit or opportunity? Did you make the choice, or do your circumstances cause you to? But those kinds of games aren't revealing anything deep, they're just shuffling paper around. It's a shell game used for political advantage to try to create a conflict between things that shouldn't. Rewarding is merit is good. If there is a law that says people can't keep enough of what they earn, that is a dumb law, because we will lose good entrepreneurs. Increasing opportunity is good. If there is a law that says black people can't be entrepreneurs, that is a dumb law, because we will lose good entrepreneurs. Where politics comes in is that you have people that want to trade one good against the other. So they vilify success to justify reducing its incentives in order to raise money for programs that increase opportunities, even though that is one of the dumbest trade offs available when it is possible to have both. And the rhetoric used convinces people that their circumstances mean that they can't succeed, even though the circumstances only make it more difficult, and then they don't even try. The straw man is that Gates is a representative example of anything when he is the far extreme outlier. Taxing him at even 99% would generate an inconsequential percentage of government revenue because there are so few people like him, whereas the median family in the "top one percent" is a surgeon who is married to an anesthesiologist. So if you want meaningfully more money, it's really going to come from the large number of doctors and software developers and college professors, not from one Bill Gates. But the government already raises more than enough money. The problem is that most of it goes to corruption and waste and appeasing the AARP. Use the same money to actually increase opportunities for people and you don't have to take it from doctors and entrepreneurs. (Have a look at what percentage of the federal budget is spent on retirees. Say what you will about the need for those programs at some level, but that percentage is just too high, and it keeps going up. All while the programs are sending big checks to millionaires and inflating healthcare costs. But it's much easier to vilify Bill Gates than anger a large voting block in the major swing state of Florida.)

by mreome 8y ago

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

> I would disagree that Meritocracy only distinguishes between those with the same opportunities, and argue that a true Meritocracy can only exists when people are afforded generally the same opportunities. If everyone is playing with a different set of options or rules, success is inherently not based on skill, but at best on a combination of skill and the options/rules they were playing by. That is just defining meritocracy in a way that causes it to be impossible. Some people are 5'0" and others are 6'6" and that is not a personal choice but it is also a relevant characteristic in the game of basketball. There are two ways out of that. One is to define merit as including things like genetics and upbringing, so Gates is meritorious because he went to good schools and his parents had the money to expose him to computer hardware at a time when it was very expensive etc. causing him to know about business and code. But that's reaching the point of tautology -- if you're successful you're meritorious because merit is defined as things that produce success. The other is to recognize opportunity as something separate from merit but still relevant to position. Some people never had the opportunity to go to medical school and so they can't be your doctor. Some people did have that opportunity, but didn't choose it, and they too can't be your doctor. This allows us to recognize that not everyone has the same opportunities -- and that it is not even possible for everyone have the same opportunities, even if there are ways to improve the opportunities for some people, because there is still no way to make 5'0" people 6'6" -- while at the same time recognizing that the person who did become a doctor/engineer/CEO/etc. did so at significant personal effort when other, similarly situated people did not.

mreome 8y ago
It seems like you're just trying to redefine Meritocracy to fit the state of the world. Saying that "Some people never had the opportunity to go to medical school and so they can't be your doctor" means that no, we don't live in a true Meritocracy, unless you can also show that all such people would not have been able to get through medical school had they been given that opportunity. With your definition, a Monarchy would be a Meritocracy. The son of the King has the opportunity to rule because of "genetics and upbringing", he has enough skill that it doesn't lead to deposition or revolution, so he becomes King. Of course there are limits to this in terms of genetics, and I would agree that to determine if we were in a Meritocracy you would have to look at what differentiates the success/failure of those born with similar physical/genetic characteristics as that is not something we can realistically make equal as a society. I am also in full agreement in that I think an Absolute Meritocracy is impossible, and I think the question is are we a Mostly Meritocratic society or not, but you can't just redefine something because the definition makes it impossible.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  The point is that the question of "mostly meritocratic" is nonsense because it depends entirely on the definition of merit. If you call genetics a component of merit then society becomes much more meritocratic. If you call it not then it becomes much less. But it isn't society that is different in either case. You can make any society arbitrarily meritocratic or unmeritocratic by classifying various things as merit or not. And this gets into the whole question of free will. If you had the "opportunity" to be taught about expected value and opportunity costs and economic theory, do your choices that take into account that knowledge count as merit or opportunity? Did you make the choice, or do your circumstances cause you to? But those kinds of games aren't revealing anything deep, they're just shuffling paper around. It's a shell game used for political advantage to try to create a conflict between things that shouldn't. Rewarding is merit is good. If there is a law that says people can't keep enough of what they earn, that is a dumb law, because we will lose good entrepreneurs. Increasing opportunity is good. If there is a law that says black people can't be entrepreneurs, that is a dumb law, because we will lose good entrepreneurs. Where politics comes in is that you have people that want to trade one good against the other. So they vilify success to justify reducing its incentives in order to raise money for programs that increase opportunities, even though that is one of the dumbest trade offs available when it is possible to have both. And the rhetoric used convinces people that their circumstances mean that they can't succeed, even though the circumstances only make it more difficult, and then they don't even try. The straw man is that Gates is a representative example of anything when he is the far extreme outlier. Taxing him at even 99% would generate an inconsequential percentage of government revenue because there are so few people like him, whereas the median family in the "top one percent" is a surgeon who is married to an anesthesiologist. So if you want meaningfully more money, it's really going to come from the large number of doctors and software developers and college professors, not from one Bill Gates. But the government already raises more than enough money. The problem is that most of it goes to corruption and waste and appeasing the AARP. Use the same money to actually increase opportunities for people and you don't have to take it from doctors and entrepreneurs. (Have a look at what percentage of the federal budget is spent on retirees. Say what you will about the need for those programs at some level, but that percentage is just too high, and it keeps going up. All while the programs are sending big checks to millionaires and inflating healthcare costs. But it's much easier to vilify Bill Gates than anger a large voting block in the major swing state of Florida.)