5 ms·

It's not that meritocracy in abstract is bad, it's that it is a fiction which does not really exist, certainly not in our capital-skewed status quo.

bostik 5y ago
I tend to be mostly supportive of meritocracy as a driver, but with a pretty wide carve-out. When you declare something to be a meritocracy, you also have to answer one fundamental question: who gets to define merit? Taken to its (il)logical extreme, unchecked meritocracy is a route to a mix of mercenary rule and nepotism.
pydry 5y ago
Yeah, I find it weird that proponents of wealth inequality think that theyre defending meritocracy. They're overtly or inadvertently defending "the magic of compounding" which is the ideology of the parasite - precise antithesis of meritocracy. 3rd generation trustafarians are not 1000x more productive than a burger flipper. Theyre less productive. We'd probably have orders of magnitude less inequality with some kind of genuine meritocracy. War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength and Income Inequality is Meritocracy.
- jrsj 5y ago
  The phrasing used by the poll in the article probably resulted in the vast majority of respondents think in terms of differences in pay and not in terms of investment income. I’m not a fan of wealth inequality, but some degree of income inequality is useful as an incentive. Concentration of wealth is only loosely correlated to that & evening out wages wouldn’t do much of anything to change it.
Gravityloss 5y ago
But meritocracy is different from income inequality. Some examples. Society 1 has classes. The small owning class has all their income from their inherited investments. While the majority are peasants. If you are a peasant, no matter how hard you work, you won't get any more pay and thus cannot do investments. Society 2 has no real classes. Taxes on inheritance are high. Education is free. Startups are supported by the governments. Rich people's offspring don't usually just live on investments. In families, generations and even siblings move up and down between rich and poor status all the time. Society 1 and 2 might have the same income inequality by some metric. Yet 2 is much more meritocratic than 1.
- pclmulqdq 5y ago
  The problem with society 2 is that people have very few incentives to start new companies, except if they can use the startup to reach into the pot of government subsidies for less effort than any other job. In other words, the people who start companies will be the nephews of the officials who control the pot of money. This is what happened in the Soviet Union. The economy hollowed out under this set of "fair" rules because human nature was left out of the equation. Corruption wasn't allowed, but it happened on a massive scale because it was effective. The more "fair" system resulted in greater income inequality than the unfair capitalist countries! Forget income inequality. The metric we should be tracking is median income (in real terms). Wealth of the normal household is what we want to optimize, so optimize for it. Horribly unequal capitalism has been great for the average person. "Fair" systems, not so much. "Meritocracy" is a bad word for what people who like capitalism actually want.
  - BlargMcLarg 5y ago
    Uh, going from 2 to Soviet Union is quite the leap. The way 2 is described, it is more like your average West European country today, depending on what GP believes is "high" inheritance tax. 2 would work just fine for many years, especially if inheritance tax was progressive. Don't underestimate the good will of some people, and the need to excel above others for some other people. As long as the incentives aren't flat-out dead and the people in charge aren't corrupt to the bone.
    - pclmulqdq 5y ago
      2 is described based on the government funding startups quite heavily and having heavy inheritance taxes and "no real classes," where rich kids "don't usually just live on investments." This is not how your average Western European economy functions. Yes, they have free education and healthcare, but startups are still very risky and unsubsidized, and rich kids do get to inherit a lot of wealth. Risk and income inequality (in other words, the important factors for wealth creation as in society 1) are very much alive and well in Western Europe.

bostik 5y ago

I tend to be mostly supportive of meritocracy as a driver, but with a pretty wide carve-out. When you declare something to be a meritocracy, you also have to answer one fundamental question: who gets to define merit? Taken to its (il)logical extreme, unchecked meritocracy is a route to a mix of mercenary rule and nepotism.

pydry 5y ago

Yeah, I find it weird that proponents of wealth inequality think that theyre defending meritocracy. They're overtly or inadvertently defending "the magic of compounding" which is the ideology of the parasite - precise antithesis of meritocracy. 3rd generation trustafarians are not 1000x more productive than a burger flipper. Theyre less productive. We'd probably have orders of magnitude less inequality with some kind of genuine meritocracy. War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength and Income Inequality is Meritocracy.

jrsj 5y ago
The phrasing used by the poll in the article probably resulted in the vast majority of respondents think in terms of differences in pay and not in terms of investment income. I’m not a fan of wealth inequality, but some degree of income inequality is useful as an incentive. Concentration of wealth is only loosely correlated to that & evening out wages wouldn’t do much of anything to change it.

Gravityloss 5y ago

But meritocracy is different from income inequality. Some examples. Society 1 has classes. The small owning class has all their income from their inherited investments. While the majority are peasants. If you are a peasant, no matter how hard you work, you won't get any more pay and thus cannot do investments. Society 2 has no real classes. Taxes on inheritance are high. Education is free. Startups are supported by the governments. Rich people's offspring don't usually just live on investments. In families, generations and even siblings move up and down between rich and poor status all the time. Society 1 and 2 might have the same income inequality by some metric. Yet 2 is much more meritocratic than 1.

pclmulqdq 5y ago
The problem with society 2 is that people have very few incentives to start new companies, except if they can use the startup to reach into the pot of government subsidies for less effort than any other job. In other words, the people who start companies will be the nephews of the officials who control the pot of money. This is what happened in the Soviet Union. The economy hollowed out under this set of "fair" rules because human nature was left out of the equation. Corruption wasn't allowed, but it happened on a massive scale because it was effective. The more "fair" system resulted in greater income inequality than the unfair capitalist countries! Forget income inequality. The metric we should be tracking is median income (in real terms). Wealth of the normal household is what we want to optimize, so optimize for it. Horribly unequal capitalism has been great for the average person. "Fair" systems, not so much. "Meritocracy" is a bad word for what people who like capitalism actually want.
- BlargMcLarg 5y ago
  Uh, going from 2 to Soviet Union is quite the leap. The way 2 is described, it is more like your average West European country today, depending on what GP believes is "high" inheritance tax. 2 would work just fine for many years, especially if inheritance tax was progressive. Don't underestimate the good will of some people, and the need to excel above others for some other people. As long as the incentives aren't flat-out dead and the people in charge aren't corrupt to the bone.
  - pclmulqdq 5y ago
    2 is described based on the government funding startups quite heavily and having heavy inheritance taxes and "no real classes," where rich kids "don't usually just live on investments." This is not how your average Western European economy functions. Yes, they have free education and healthcare, but startups are still very risky and unsubsidized, and rich kids do get to inherit a lot of wealth. Risk and income inequality (in other words, the important factors for wealth creation as in society 1) are very much alive and well in Western Europe.