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How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself
- druswick 14y agoSo I love this topic. This is a big deal now, and looking at trends in demography, incomes, and wealth, it's going to be a yet bigger deal for many years to come. But is there something that can be done? Is there a tech/business solution that helps alleviate the mutual exclusive quality that bingobangobongo mentions? If you could crack that, you could probably be make a big impact for a long time.
- contingencies 14y agoMy first thought on the subject, as someone writing a history book on part of China's borderlands was the (still-current) ancient Confucian government-meritocracy's simple anti-entrenchment practice of forcibly posting leaders to areas in which they were neither native nor had family, and shifting them periodically. To this day, it's how China continues to operate. Totally effective? No. But pretty good.
- davidiach 14y agoThis is really strange in my opinion. We should make it harder for rich children to get a good eduction and easier for poor children? Really? Why not make it harder for bright students to get good grades and easy for dumb students to get good grades? That would lead to greater "equality" too.
- CJefferson 14y agoThe fact that someone on a site like hacker news (which I like consider are on the more intelligent side) would make a comparison like this, deeply disturbs me. We clearly have fundamentally different world views. (edit: I don't want this to sound like davidirch shouldn't have that opinion, just that it's easy to assume people will share your opinion) I don't understand how you can be against what seems to be a completely reasonable proposition to me, that everyone should get a fair chance, regardless of where they start from. I don't see any of this as making it harder for rich children to get a good education, except to remove situations where they currently have an (in my opinion) unfair advantage, like expensive tutoring aimed towards helping them pass exams, which is not available to many. In fact, the precise aim here is to help bright students get good grades, and dumb ones get bad grades, which is the exact opposite of the comparison you seem to be making!
- bingobangobongo 14y agoThe following are mutually exclusive: a) All children have equal opportunity. b) Parents are able to spend money on their children. I've spoken with many people who are in favor of both a) and b) and don't see the cognitive dissonance, but from this: > like expensive tutoring aimed towards helping them pass exams, which is not available to many. I guess you really favor a) over b). Unless your point was that exams should be selected to minimize the influence of last minute cram efforts which disproportionally benefit those with expensive tutors, in which case I might agree with you.
- polymatter 14y agoExcellent point. I certainly favour a) over b), but in the real world we need to appreciate there is a balance here. The aim should be to limit the effectiveness of parental help by giving 80% of the benefit to all children. In regards to b), not all help is monetary in nature. Some of it can be in the form of social favours, familiarity of cultural norms (national, company and industry culture) and expectations etc.
- paulhauggis 14y agoMaking University education free won't solve the problem. If Education was free, entrance exams would be much more difficult. Rich kids could still pass the exams, because their parents would pay for more tutoring/education.
- Evbn 14y agoIndia uses strict exam-based entrance exams. US doesn't. Admission criteria can be lotteries above minimum standards, or designed to choose the students who responded most to the level of investment they got (a bit harder to measure)
- arethuza 14y ago"except to remove situations where they currently have an (in my opinion) unfair advantage" How would you do that?
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- maeon3 14y agoDo you also think someone should take the money away from the rich child and give it to the paycheck-baby welfare mom's dad's-run-away child? I have noticed lots of robin hoods in the world today. Maybe a true communistic and socialistic society would work if we just gave it a proper chance? If everyone just shared one bank account, all suffering would end?
- chrisbennet 14y agoGoogle "Just World Fallacy"
- zzleeper 14y agoNone of the proposals were about that. They propose relying more on intelligence tests instead of the current SAT that can be gamed with money. Also, having varying college fees based on whether you are rich or poor also makes sense.
- hnal943 14y agoWhichever rule set you choose, you're always going to disenfranchise someone. What about people with a rich parent who doesn't invest in their education? Under your system, education would be unavailable to them because they would be a poor person being charged as a rich one.
- youngerdryas 14y agoWhen I first read the title I thought this would be an article about governments impeding meritocracy not a screed against it. I guess we are running out of problems if meritocracy is one. Lots of immigrants come here work hard and are very successful. Virtually anyone willing to work hard will succeed but people have different priorities. As for always comparing the US to Nordic countries, if you compare them to Massachusetts they look bad, if you compare them to California they look insignificant and then of course there is the rest of the country.
- maeon3 14y agoMeritocracy is not a problem with government, it is the solution. This badmouthing of Meritocracy is a way for the ones who are in power but don't deserve to be there as a way of maintaining that power. On the other hand, if you make it too easy for a young person to climb the ladder (working like a dog), than what's the point of getting to the top? There are no benefits to being there except you will be living a life with more hours at the office than ever before. The reason people work to climb the latter is because there is a reward where you can work less and tell others what to do, and they can't dethrone you. Remove that reward, and you may find a population regarding climbing the career latter as foolishness. Why would you want to take on a second job, for no extra pay, where the workload increases exponentially with the new upstarts out of college, and the right to take it easy is gone. Like a second job at McDonalds, the moment you take it easy, you are replaced. Why strive to get that?
- stcredzero 14y agoMerit == effort? I don't think so.
- hnal943 14y agoMerit == Value to others. Most of the time, that will require effort though.
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- monochromatic 14y agoThis article isn't really about railing against meritocracy so much as it is about promoting equality of opportunity. I ended up agreeing with much of it, but based on the title I sure didn't expect to.
- kryptiskt 14y ago"For instance, standardised tests were supposed to favour the brainy, but the $4.5 billion test-prep industry, which disproportionately caters to the rich, indicates that this is being gamed. Intelligence tests should be more widely used." As if intelligence tests weren't gameable and didn't favor the prepared. What's worse is that they test a very narrow definition of intelligence. That cure would be worse than the disease.
- Ilverin 14y agoThe author might respond "They are less gameable than the 'standardised' tests, and the 'standardised' tests are even narrower than the intelligence tests".
- yummyfajitas 14y agoSATs are actually not particularly amenable to test prep (unless Kaplan is funding the study). http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124278685697537839.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124278685697537839.html
- drakeandrews 14y agoThis, yet again, reinforces my view that funding schools through property taxes is a perverse and ultimately damaging idea. I understand the ideals behind it (schools are funded locally, playing into the strange american fixation with avoiding distributing tax revenues). Affirmative action is mentioned as outdated, but perhaps it is a sign that american society still feels guilty over the fact that not sixty years ago large swathes were still arguing against the integration of schools. (As an aside, isn't there a thing where the titles of links are changed when they don't match the content that everyone keeps complaining about? Wouldn't this be a prime example of a link whose title should be changed to match the article within?)
- druswick 14y agoDefinitely! This was the most line of reasoning in the article with the most impact. Property taxes are often progressive, disproportionally affecting the relatively wealthy. That's good. But when the benefits are collected and spent too locally, it means areas with higher property values also get better services. It takes away the progressive quality of property taxes. Continue this to an extreme: property taxes that I pay are only spent on my household. The city/county maintains my property, educates my children. There's no more progressive distribution.
- Evbn 14y agoWhat definition of progressive are you using? They aren't super linear relative to income.
- drakeandrews 14y agoI think you've gotten your definition of progressive muddled. Property taxes are considered to be progressive because property values are widely considered to correlate strongly with income and wealth. Spending those taxes locally (or apportioning funds for local amenaties based on local tax revenue) is regressive, because increased benefit is then therefore correlated strongly with increased wealth and income. Therefore, your example represents a most regressive distribution of tax distribution.
- stcredzero 14y agoAn "entrenched meritocracy" is a contradiction. It's not a true meritocracy. Instead, it's an aristocracy claiming to be one, which is a bit tautological, since every such class claims it deserves its privileged position. People in other times and places believed they deserved their privileges just as sincerely as you do right now. Of course, the situation is different because we're smarter than they are ;)
- chime 14y agoI disagree. Except for the ultra-wealthy 0.0001%ers, it is as close to a true meritocracy it has ever been because the ones with merit rise to the top. A good surgeon can make 3-4x a poor surgeon. A good programmer can make 2-3x a poor programmer. If you are a fantastic programmer and you make $50k/yr in US, it means either (1) you don't care about money (2) you don't know how to negotiate. There is no way a fantastic programmer is going to be stuck at 50k in the US today. A poor programmer can end up with a 100k salary through connections/seniority etc. but more often than not, most of them are in the 35k-65k range. It is entrenched because only those on the top can afford to pay for good education for their children so they can become good in their professions. Doctors can afford to send their kids to top tier private-schools and Ivy League universities, which means their kids have a better shot at being a good doctor or engineer learning under Nobel Laureates compared to the kids of auto-mechanics and park rangers, whose teachers might not have the best credentials. What I would agree with you on, is that this isn't too different from the past when children of top ranking military generals got better training and ended up being better soldiers and generals than the children of farmers and blacksmiths. Nobody's saying children of farmers or auto-mechanics are any less able. They just don't get the best training.
- svachalek 14y agoWhenever you talk about what someone can "make", salary, earned income, you are automatically excluding the "top". Engineers and surgeons may be at the top of the middle class but their kids are still not getting auto-accepted at Harvard because there's a building named after Dad.
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- michaelochurch 14y agoEvery elite in history has called itself a "meritocracy". Who defines "merit"? The elite. They will always look out for themselves in doing so. If anything, the "dumb", brutal aristocracy of medieval Europe had more of a claim of innate superiority ("merit") than the current elite. Because of superior nutrition and better working conditions, they were half a foot taller, probably 20 IQ points smarter, and overall more physically, aesthetically, and intellectually fit than the peasants. If you're "in the know" about these sorts of things, you realize that raw intelligence isn't what's valued by our society. It's still about connections. More specifically, it's about adopting the behavioral patterns and attitudes of well-connected people. What we actually have in the US is some degree of social mobility within the middle class. The parasitic upper class is still a problem, and resistant to improvement. The lower class (which is about half) is still screwed. But it's relatively easy to move from the 50th percentile to the 95th percentile either through unusual talent or extreme sacrifice.
- bingobangobongo 14y agoWhether or not the term "meritocracy" is thrown around as propaganda is a separate issue from whether or not we should want to live in a meritocracy, which is what the article was about. In fact, most people don't want to live a pure meritocracy, as that would for example preclude the freedom to give gifts to others (as gifts are by definition unearned). I think one property that our economy ought have as we head into a future of machines increasingly displacing human workers is this: If all human work in the economy stopped, wealth should converge to an approximately fair distribution, preferably within a small number of lifetimes.
- svachalek 14y agoAnd in a world without work, what is "fair"? It will almost certainly go to those who own the machines.
- bingobangobongo 14y agoI almost wrote "uniform", but that seemed simplistic since it didn't take into account factors like age, number of children, etc. But if the majority of the wealth goes to the few owners of the machines, then the economy certainly doesn't have the property I'm talking about.
- ap22213 14y agoGiven the audience of this site, it's interesting that this topic has even floated toward the top. And, it's also interesting (but hardly surprising) that most of the comments are blindly for meritocracy. Yeah - meritocracy sounds great in principle. And, we can agree that it's leagues better than aristocracy. But, over generational scales, aristocracy and meritocracy are very closely aligned. Meritocracy begins first with a wave of smart, risk-taking, hard-working, uncompromising, (perhaps immoral) people who usurp the establishment. And, we certainly celebrate that. It brings a shift, and usually rewards many others. But, it's when those same people put their children and grandchildren in positions where risks nearly vanish that we worry about. They naturally give their descendents their connections, secret knowledge, wealth, safety and other benefits. And, they unconsciously change the rules to favor themselves. And, they seem to dismiss all those elements when their spawns happen to reach similar heights. And, slowly, they begin to believe that it's some genetic component, or something innate in them, that has caused it. And, then the new aristocracy is born. I think the article is bringing attention to this, and it's good to do so. The new rich should be allowed to let their children and grandchildren live great lives. But, those descendents should not become the gatekeepers of the rest of the world's amazing talent. There are just to many brilliant, hard-working people in the world, who aren't connected, who need a chance.
- scottshea 14y agoTo expand on your comments I think it is safe to say that the elite, whether aristocracy or meritocracy, are adept at keeping the wealth, influence and power for themselves and their friends. Some of it is innate in that they will pass on resources to their children out of a desire to see them succeed. Some of it is cronyism as they want to do good things for their friends.
- betterunix 14y ago"meritocracy sounds great in principle. And, we can agree that it's leagues better than aristocracy" Meritocracy is a form of aristocracy. The word "aristocracy" comes from the Greek words for "best" and "power," or in other words a system where those who are most fit to rule will be the leaders of society. It sounds great in principle, the only problem is the definition of "best."
- hakaaaaak 14y ago"Outdated affirmative-action programmes should give way to schemes to help students based on the poverty of the applicant rather than the colour of his skin." Tell that to Harvard and look at Caltech's Asian student enrollment numbers: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/339778/racial-quotas-harvard-and-legacy-ibakkei-ron-unz http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/339778/racial-quotas-... Race should be left out of the qualifications for getting into university, but be prepared for those universities' Asian student populations to grow significantly, probably whether they are rich or poor. That's fine with me (I dislike racial quotas), but it wasn't mentioned.
- brianchu 14y agoMost of the arguments over our meritocracy come down to a matter of semantics. People seem to have wildly different definitions of a meritocracy. If you define (as I do) a meritocracy as a society in which power is given according to ability, then a society in which there are educational disadvantages for the poor is nonetheless still a meritocracy, albeit an educationally-unequal meritocracy. A society can be both a meritocracy and have poor social mobility. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive (though in some cases they can be). Yes, it is true that today's society is by no means a pure meritocracy. Connections matter. That is unlikely to ever change. The problem of "who you know matters" is a problem of information - people would rather hire a slightly-below-competent friend than a supposedly-competent stranger because their friend is a known quantity.
- officemonkey 14y agoAs long as money and power give a leg up to the dumber children of smart people, it's not really a meritocracy. Exhibit A: George W. Bush
- Evbn 14y agoWas HW notably smarter? W wasn't an academic, but that is diffferent from dumb.
- gyardley 14y ago"Using one-generation measures of social mobility—how much a father’s relative income influences that of his adult son—America does half as well as Nordic countries, and about the same as Britain and Italy, Europe’s least-mobile places." Good, because of course I would want my income to influence that of my children. Yes, yes, I would want them to work hard and be curious and chart their own path, etc., but because I'm their father I'm going to try and stack the deck in their favor as high as I can possibly stack it. And let's not kid ourselves - everybody who cares about their children, no matter what their political inclination or relative level of wealth, tries to do exactly the same thing. From the hedge-fund billionaire to the immigrant janitor.
- npc 14y agoI don't think anyone thinks that it's wrong to try and give your children a better position in life than they would be able to achieve through their ability alone, just that it's beneficial to society as a whole to minimize this effect. Prisoner's dilemma and all that.
- saraid216 14y agoYes, but that's precisely the definition of what a meritocracy is not. Here's the thing: do you want to stack the deck so that only your children have such favor, to the extent you are able, or do you want to stack the deck so that all children have such favor, again to the extent of your ability? Yes, of course, if it's an either-or choice then you'd go with your kids. But if you weren't forced to make such a choice, which would you go with?
- hnal943 14y agoThis article seems to misunderstand the definition of merit as something related to education or money. In a true meritocracy your standing is based on your value to others. If you do valuable work, the market rewards you. If not, then not. In capitalism, the market decides what is valuable; it seems to be pretty efficient at it.
- eriksank 14y agoGood academic training/education used to be inaccessible to the poor. This is no longer true. The internet is busy changing all of that. Home schooling at any level has now become feasible. The difference that remains, however, is the difference in outcome for children due to family breakdown. That has, however, nothing to do with income, and everything with the views on marriage with which the person was educated. To the extent that keeping children away from the often rampant depravity prevalent in the government-run education system will preserve their home-instilled views on marriage, NOT expanding the school system will contribute to improving the outcome for the demographic that has less trouble with marriage breakdown and other social ills. In my opinion, it is about time to remove the control of the depravity-encouraging politicians from anything related to education.
- larsonf 14y agoIt seems some of us are missing the implication of the article. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that there really were a way to negate all advantages a person could be born into. No social networks, no additional wealth, no additional opportunities, etc. A place where everyone is born at 25 at the exact same moment: no friends, no past, no parents, no money. We can call this place 'Equalistan', population 1 million. Now, in Equalistan, there is still random genetic mutation. Some people are taller, some people have working memories that store more information, some have long-term memories that store more information, some solve problems by simple heuristics, some follow bodily signals for cues, etc. There's no such thing as 'smarter' or 'better' at birth in Equalistan, however, because these only make sense in hindsight. Each person in Equalistan just has a different, inherited strategy at living. Everyone just showed up at the same moment, 25 years old, no history, no buddies, but just an inherited genetic toolset. Now, in Equalistan, there's a test to decide who gets the most resources. However, no one in Equalistan designed this test because, remember, we are making sure no one has any advantage; each person only has an inherited, random strategies from birth. So everyone takes this test and there is then a distribution of resource possession. But here is the upshot. Every person completely deserves the outcome they receive on the test. After all, the only thing being tested was each person's 'merits'. Now the question is, does it ever matter whether people "deserve" the amount of resources they possess? The article isn't saying so much that meritocracy begets old-school elitism after assortative mating as much as it's saying that meritocracy itself is a terrifying thing. That it may be 100% the truth that people deserve the outcome they receive in life, but, who cares?
- sophacles 14y agoThere are many strange and not necessarily good assumptions in this post. 1) How is it "merit" is strictly about genetic variation, rather than a combination of said genetic ability and a record of the use of it (achievement). 2) How is it that equality is strictly about starting position, rather than starting position resource allocation protection? One can have a meritocracy in which resource allocation is not about more-to better. It can in fact be about responsibility and accountability being greater. Not saying I agree with this, it is just a hole in the argument. 3) Resource distribution need not be 0-sum. There can in fact be more than 2 categories of "mine" and "not mine". There can be categories such as "available to everyone", "available to no one", and variations on "available to some". [1] 4) deserves is always and strictly a moral argument. There is no justification of deserves that doesn't at some point refer directly to axioms (morals). Therefore we again get to assumptions that need be discussed. [1] Here in lies all the interesting stuff. Interplay between "some people get access" and "mine" categories of resources are where all discussions like this are really happening. How you define "some people get access" really can change the end result of "mine" for various actors. Similarly, "everyone gets access", in reality, is very tricky. For instance you could claim, and be mostly right, that everyone gets access to computers (via public libraries etc). Yet, not everyone gets access to training in effective computer use - that is reserved for "some people get access", where the rules are 'has enough money for proper training' (aka defining access rules on how much is already in your "mine" resoures). It is a complicated interplay.
- yarianluis 14y agoWhile this article makes many good points: "The other great unfairness has to do with the preferences that elite American universities give to well-connected children, either because their parents went to the university themselves or because they have given money." "An educational institution should focus on attracting the best people, and then work out how to finance the poorer people in that category." ==== Legacy admissions usually come with legacy donations. These donations can be in the millions each year for an organization like Harvard, which in turn pays the tuition of the poorer people in the category. The issues of legacy admissions and affirmative action are pretty closely linked. So to address one part of the issue without looking at the other is not quite fair.
- mfsch 14y agoThere are two parts to both “merit” and “cracy”. Merit can be thought of as your abilities and talents or as your willingness to work hard. “Kratein” means to rule (i.e. have responsibilities, make decisions), but in this context it’s often seen as earning money (i.e. having a comfortable life style). I would say that in an ideal meritocracy, the people with the most knowledge, abilities and intelligence should be the ones making the decisions and carrying the responsibilities. The willingness to work hard, however, should determine income, luxury and comfort. The problem, of course, is that the powerful usually try to make themselves and their friends wealthy, but maybe this separation of the idea of meritocracy into (knowledge/ability = power/decisions) and (hard work = wealth/comfort) is what we as a society should strife for. Thoughts?
- shawn-butler 14y agoI would consider spending some time with Plato's Socratic dialogue The Republic if you haven't already. The tension of a timocracy devolving into an oligarchy depends greatly on the concept of justice in play at the time. I often hear in the valley "work hard, play hard" as a justification of oligarchic excess, when it should actually be "work hard, work harder" or "work hard, play less".
- liber8 14y agoThe premise of the article is faulty, and the problem overstated. First, the author has to sleight-of-hand his way into his argument. He's worried that the "elite" will use their money to ensure that their children get such a leg-up on the non-elite children that the non-elite children won't be able to compete and will become (I guess?) the modern equivalent of feudal peasants. Of course, he doesn't present any evidence that this is happening. He states that "the top 1% have seen their incomes soar", but this isn't a statement of a problem.[1] While it seems intuitive that privileged children will do better than non-privileged children, and even that a cadre of privileged children could keep the non-privileged children non-privileged for eternity, this just doesn't jibe with reality. For example, across just three generations, the complete loss of inherited wealth is nearly 90%. That means the great-grand children of nearly every founder who had a big exit will never see any of that money. (Note that this same argument is often made with respect to corporations as a basis for stringent anti-trust regulation. But, pick any 50 year increment of the DJIA and see how many companies on the list in the starting year were on the list at the end.) The "problem" of perpetual wealth a specter. Sure, you can point to the Rothschilds as an example of dynastic wealth. But (conspiracy theories aside) how many “wealthy” Rothschilds are there? Do they wield any real power? What about some of the other richest people in history? If dynastic wealth is a true problem, why aren’t the Hugheses, the Gettys, the Rockafeller’s the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts, the Mellons, and the Fords dominating world politics, finance or culture? (Interesting aside: many of these titans were actually dirt poor themselves before building their own fortunes.) It’s easy to take a small, 30-year slice of history and claim that, if things continue this way, surely the world will be hell in just a few more short years. Fortunately, it almost never works out that way. [1] See pg's article re "money is not wealth" here: http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html)
- stcredzero 14y agoFrom other comment threads, I've come up with "A Modest Proposal" of my own, largely derived from Aldous Huxley. I can eliminate all contradiction of "meritocracy entrenching itself." Meritocracies tend to lose their purity due to our propensity for passing on advantages to our friends and relatives. Over time, this yields something less like a meritocracy and more like aristocracy -- though it will perniciously continue to identify as a "meritocracy." Eventually, the contractions give rise to social upheaval. This is generally chaotic and bad, but the good news is that we can now have both the technology and social engineering know-how completely prevent this. Simply engineer humans and human society such that the ruling classes really are smarter, fitter, and in every way superior to the lower classes. Relocate sources of fresh, nutritious food to big box stores in newly developed neighborhoods only accessible by car. Re-price food generally, such that once normal essentials like fresh produce are now luxury items. Furthermore, use subsidies to flood the market with empty calories in the form of synthetic starch, fat, and sugar, making it a concerted effort and additional expense over market norms to afford nutritious food conducive to intellectual development. (Not to mention subtle and complex gustatory stimulation.) In fact, make it economically advantageous in the short term for a household to buy food that makes its members sicker, fatter, and stupider. Use the media and market forces, such that companies are motivated by higher margins to aggressively market food -- both that of poorer quality to the less affluent and that of higher quality to the more affluent -- so that market forces directly reinforce the goals of the program, greatly leveraging (by orders of magnitude) the government subsidy of raw ingredients with private money. While doing this, flood the media with trash, to cut off lower classes from excessive intellectual stimulation. Promulgate an ideology that attaches attractiveness and desirability with anti-intellectual attitudes, with the goal of raising the value of subconscious and tribal signaling over actual intellectual accomplishment. Close libraries, eliminating them as a source of unregulated intellectual stimulation. Also put additional pressure on the remaining libraries as locations for ad-hoc social work by eliminating funding for alternative places for underclass adults and children. Grant de-facto (but deniable) media monopolies to create market forces conducive to more trash content produced for the biggest audience at the lowest cost while discouraging the production of competing intellectually stimulating content. Certainly suppress, where it is possible to do so deniably, any media which is not subject to the above market forces. (Public radio and television, for example.) Also recognize that such a program will succeed in suppressing a large proportion of the population, but additional measures will be needed to suppress the excess population of dangerous intellectually competent persons which will still crop up. Again, market forces can be leveraged with the aid of the right societal manipulations. Push a "nerd-culture" which is misunderstood by (and therefore isolated from) the mainstream, but which (outwardly) welcomes intellectuals. Manipulate this nerd culture, such that its population either largely discounts politics, or is attracted to fringe politics of no consequence. Also attach "coolness" in this segment of the populace with obsessive attention to technical and otherwise misunderstood esoteric pursuits which take up time and energy and act to distance this group from the mainstream. Realize also, that such persons are economically valuable, and further harness their economic potential by promulgating workaholic tendencies in the form of a "work hard, play hard" ideology. Create a norm of long hours, and provide on-site facilities to encourage this. Also promulgate the idea of "side projects" with the idea that the only worthy programmers are passionate enough to have such, and so create social pressures to dissipate yet more time and energy. Market forces can again be harnessed through the mechanism of a "startup scene" which keeps the youngest and most energetic intellectuals working long hours. Synergistic to such a scene and to the overall meritocratic ideology, also establish a nerd underclass sharing the same outward cultural trappings, but stuck in underpaid dead-end jobs or overpaid corporate dead-end jobs. Note also that the promulgation of a nerd underclass means that many of the nerd/mainstream bifurcation strategies can also be applied within the nerd segment itself, further increasing the control of dangerous excess intelligence. Do this by also promulgating anti-intellectual attitudes within the nerd segment itself. Glorify the unquestioned parroting of memes from certain nodes on the Internet as indicators of cleverness and coolness. For whichever segment of the nerd populace that will buy it, place greater status to faster access to such memes over true skepticism and creativity. Also promulgate ideologies which elevate unquestioned ridicule as a kind of magical ultimate good, so long as it's funny, and which are easily applicable to suppressing complex and controversial topics through noise. Similar effects can be attained with the notion of the intellectual transcendence erroneously placed on a hazy notion of "irony," thereby causing susceptible persons to insulate themselves from reality and issues of social consequence in a bubble of their own smugness. By throwing up so many dietary and socially engineered cultural barriers/traps working against actual personal development, the overall effect will be twofold. On one hand, the moneyed elites will have the resources to easily escape and side-step most of these traps, resulting in their population actually being largely superior, thereby placing the truth on their side. On the other hand, any individuals who manage to escape all of the above traps are likely to be superior individuals as well, making it easy for the existing elite to co-opt their talents, additionally bolstering the truth of the meritocratic ideology. I think I have shown that the above scheme is not only extremely robust, but possesses other striking beneficial qualities, some of which may be unprecedented in human history. The scheme can be thought of as a disguised aristocracy which maintains the trappings of meritocracy through the use of numerous disguised and subliminal barriers to personal and intellectual advancement. Most uncontrolled intellectual and personal advancement is handily suppressed, and the remaining advancement is channeled in ways which produce considerable economic gain for the good of society as a whole. For the proportion of the population for which these barriers to personal advancement fail, absorption into the elite diffuses any potential for social upheaval while bolstering the power of the elite and its strength within its stated meritocratic ideology. In particular, this scheme has considerable advantages over a naive meritocracy, in that it successfully suppresses most social mobility while avoiding the ideological and actual contradictions that arise in following generations. By deliberately but deniably engineering the actual inferiority of the lower classes, ideological contradictions are eliminated. In this way, it's "the best of both worlds" -- achieving the social stability of aristocracy while avoiding its long term diffusion of talent and sustaining the ideological cover of "meritocracy" indefinitely. I hope the "merits" of such a system are self evident, and that such a system is adopted by our society in the near future. (Addendum - This system is not without flaws. For one thing, it can be easily distinguished from a true meritocracy from its lack of social mobility. However, dissent resulting from this information can be readily suppressed by the same mechanisms outlined above.)