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I think wealth is essentially a means of distributing, directing and exchanging social power. So wealth and scarcity are not necessarily cruel, unless you feel

I think wealth is essentially a means of distributing, directing and exchanging social power. So wealth and scarcity are not necessarily cruel, unless you feel like cruel deprivation is necessary to maintain social power. Then the question is not how do you distribute cruelty and wealth, but rather, how do you direct society in order to minimize cruelty? I think meritocracy would be a really bad way to go about this, because rooting power in 'merit' would very quickly lead to merit being defined as whatever maintains incumbent power. So you'd end up with not only something that isn't meritocratic in any reasonable sense, but also corrupts the idea of merit. And since that's often knowledge-based merit, you'd end up with a situation where whatever 'knowledge' incumbents had proved proficiency in would become something they would protect against all challengers. Intellectual stagnation and extreme discouragment of creativity would be the norm.

082349872349872 6y ago
Goldstein says the Inner Party of Oceania is a meritocracy: > "The child of Inner Party parents is in theory not born into the Inner Party. Admission to either branch of the Party is by examination, taken at the age of sixteen. Nor is there any racial discrimination, or any marked domination of one province by another. Jews, Negroes, South Americans of pure Indian blood are to be found in the highest ranks of the Party, and the administrators of any area are always drawn from the inhabitants of that area." > "The Party is not a class in the old sense of the word. It does not aim at transmitting power to its own children, as such; and if there were no other way of keeping the ablest people at the top, it would be perfectly prepared to recruit an entire new generation from the ranks of the proletariat." I don't know how reliable a narrator Smith may be, because as an Outer Party member he's obviously an auxiliary who failed his quals... Also, we mustn't forget that reasonable incumbents won't protect against all challengers, merely most. The cream of society must consist not solely of the rich and the thick, but also a few nouveau aristos, if it wishes to be stable. I capture the rising elite You utilise potential leadership cadres from historically superseded classes They cut in the smart boys from the opposition, so that they can't set up a racket of their own https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24070333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24070333

082349872349872 6y ago

Goldstein says the Inner Party of Oceania is a meritocracy: > "The child of Inner Party parents is in theory not born into the Inner Party. Admission to either branch of the Party is by examination, taken at the age of sixteen. Nor is there any racial discrimination, or any marked domination of one province by another. Jews, Negroes, South Americans of pure Indian blood are to be found in the highest ranks of the Party, and the administrators of any area are always drawn from the inhabitants of that area." > "The Party is not a class in the old sense of the word. It does not aim at transmitting power to its own children, as such; and if there were no other way of keeping the ablest people at the top, it would be perfectly prepared to recruit an entire new generation from the ranks of the proletariat." I don't know how reliable a narrator Smith may be, because as an Outer Party member he's obviously an auxiliary who failed his quals... Also, we mustn't forget that reasonable incumbents won't protect against all challengers, merely most. The cream of society must consist not solely of the rich and the thick, but also a few nouveau aristos, if it wishes to be stable. I capture the rising elite You utilise potential leadership cadres from historically superseded classes They cut in the smart boys from the opposition, so that they can't set up a racket of their own https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24070333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24070333