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That’s not a confusion of merit and wealth. If I use wealth to teach you how to drive a truck or learn to program, that’s growing value inside a person. That pe

That’s not a confusion of merit and wealth. If I use wealth to teach you how to drive a truck or learn to program, that’s growing value inside a person. That person became stronger, and in the eyes of society, more meritorious for some tasks. Merit is due to many things, and mentorship, experimentation, and preparation are all parts of it. Medical training is also very expensive and part of medical merit, but also clearly entangled in discussions of money, opportunity, and growing inequity. If you have hidden biological talent but never trained as a doctor due to wealth, should we trust you now to perform medicine? Not before that expensive prep; it’s part of merit.

strogonoff 6y ago
> Merit is due to many things, and mentorship, experimentation, and preparation are all parts of it. Medical training is also very expensive and part of medical merit, but also clearly entangled in discussions of money and opportunity. Exactly, and if one has a lot of hard-earned wealth thanks to their own smarts and merit and drive to work hard they’ll of course happily spend it on all the right things to make sure their kids have even more of that than their parents. With private education and all that blocks opportunities for kids in lower income families and increase inequality; merit becomes a proxy for wealth and as meritocracy matures it becomes more and more a rule of the rich. (Being “a proxy for” is not the same as “being confused with”, it’s just that one would more or less follow the other.)
- andi999 6y ago
  Yes. And I believe this is sort of the best of all worlds. I find it better that like high paying jobs like a surgeon are given on merit (beeing a proxy for parents beeing rich, but still on merit) instead of given on e.g. power, like oh he is the son of ... he doesnt need to study to become a surgeon. Or whatever example you like. The question is, how possible is it to level up. At least in Europe not so difficult, and in the US the Asian immigrants also show it is possible (if you think in terms of 2 generations).

strogonoff 6y ago

> Merit is due to many things, and mentorship, experimentation, and preparation are all parts of it. Medical training is also very expensive and part of medical merit, but also clearly entangled in discussions of money and opportunity. Exactly, and if one has a lot of hard-earned wealth thanks to their own smarts and merit and drive to work hard they’ll of course happily spend it on all the right things to make sure their kids have even more of that than their parents. With private education and all that blocks opportunities for kids in lower income families and increase inequality; merit becomes a proxy for wealth and as meritocracy matures it becomes more and more a rule of the rich. (Being “a proxy for” is not the same as “being confused with”, it’s just that one would more or less follow the other.)

andi999 6y ago
Yes. And I believe this is sort of the best of all worlds. I find it better that like high paying jobs like a surgeon are given on merit (beeing a proxy for parents beeing rich, but still on merit) instead of given on e.g. power, like oh he is the son of ... he doesnt need to study to become a surgeon. Or whatever example you like. The question is, how possible is it to level up. At least in Europe not so difficult, and in the US the Asian immigrants also show it is possible (if you think in terms of 2 generations).