3 ms·

I don't think meritocracy is a deep concept aside from promoting fairness as it was originally meant to be. The irony that some people complained about a certai

I don't think meritocracy is a deep concept aside from promoting fairness as it was originally meant to be. The irony that some people complained about a certain github rug in the name of women was quite funny though. I do prefer it to anything around DEI, but it isn't really something that has any deeper meaning. It meant fairness to people, some people didn't like that.

rbanffy 5y ago
I have an issue with what some call “meritocracy” today being nothing more than privilege buying better opportunities. If we are really serious about meritocracy, we need to level all playfields.
- mikece 5y ago
  Though we need to be careful that in leveling playing fields we aren't leveling society in the process.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    The levelling is given by how serious a society is about meritocracy. It can go for anything from doing nothing and hoping for the best (us) to everyone having identical schools and upbringing, which is obviously a Very Bad Idea.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  That is true. It isn't fair if people have different starts. But trying to correct this or forcing everyone to be equal requires totalitarian control. It has often been tried with very bad results. The one thing you can do is giving future generations everything they need to accomplish, which primarily is education. This is currently under severe threat by big corporations that want their users to be passive consumers. Their equity campaigns are hollow and will very likely even have a net negative effect. Open access to literature and open source did at least provide people with the material that they need to learn about many topics. Living conditions, language barriers or simply no time to learn are still inhibitors which need addressing. These leveling takes time and multiple generations and there is no shortcut to this. Current diversity initiatives grant funding to the most wealthy corporations, politicians use this to gain access to them. It is mainly corruption that doesn't empower anybody aside a selected few. An extremely unfair process, good intentions from some that pave the way to hell.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    > big corporations that want their users to be passive consumers. Not only that, but having a good-enough universal public school system would completely destroy large companies that extract lots of money from barely-good-enough private education targeted at middle-class families. We already let that model take hold and they won't just let us improve public schools and cause their collapse.

rbanffy 5y ago

I have an issue with what some call “meritocracy” today being nothing more than privilege buying better opportunities. If we are really serious about meritocracy, we need to level all playfields.

mikece 5y ago
Though we need to be careful that in leveling playing fields we aren't leveling society in the process.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  The levelling is given by how serious a society is about meritocracy. It can go for anything from doing nothing and hoping for the best (us) to everyone having identical schools and upbringing, which is obviously a Very Bad Idea.
raxxorrax 5y ago
That is true. It isn't fair if people have different starts. But trying to correct this or forcing everyone to be equal requires totalitarian control. It has often been tried with very bad results. The one thing you can do is giving future generations everything they need to accomplish, which primarily is education. This is currently under severe threat by big corporations that want their users to be passive consumers. Their equity campaigns are hollow and will very likely even have a net negative effect. Open access to literature and open source did at least provide people with the material that they need to learn about many topics. Living conditions, language barriers or simply no time to learn are still inhibitors which need addressing. These leveling takes time and multiple generations and there is no shortcut to this. Current diversity initiatives grant funding to the most wealthy corporations, politicians use this to gain access to them. It is mainly corruption that doesn't empower anybody aside a selected few. An extremely unfair process, good intentions from some that pave the way to hell.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > big corporations that want their users to be passive consumers. Not only that, but having a good-enough universal public school system would completely destroy large companies that extract lots of money from barely-good-enough private education targeted at middle-class families. We already let that model take hold and they won't just let us improve public schools and cause their collapse.