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Consider the following statements: A) We live in a meritocracy B) Meritocracies are fair Most people accept that A is false. We all know a fucktard that man

Consider the following statements: A) We live in a meritocracy B) Meritocracies are fair Most people accept that A is false. We all know a fucktard that managed to get rich by being manipulative and destroying value. The problem is that people then fail to realize that B is also false. Meritocracies are not fair. Allocating wealth to the people that provide a large amount of entertainment, seems fair, but it is not fair in a broad sense of the word. Meritocracies reward those with good health, good luck, good parents who are encouraging, and the lucky gamete club who have high intelligence or exceptional physical skills. Meritocracies are like democracy: "the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." Working hard on a startup doesn't really earn you anything. The best you can hope for is that hard work increases your luck surface area. Keep in mind, that there are people that came from better sperm and eggs who will work just as hard but have a much higher chance of success.

brc 13y ago
I read a lot of whining on this thread (and many other, recently as well). 'Fair' pops up a lot. The world is not fair. You can either spend your time griping, or you can spend your time living. I sense a lot of 'daddy' models of wealth swimming in peoples heads. http://paulgraham.com/gap.html http://paulgraham.com/gap.html If you didn't win the birth lottery it's not a death sentence. You can still win. Measure your progress against your own expectations, not against the lottery winners.
- barrkel 13y ago
  The world is not binary either, and that doesn't mean that we can't adjust society to increase or decrease the amount of fairness. It also doesn't mean that the adjusted amount of fairness in society and its rules (both laws and social norms) can't have positive or negative effects on overall total welfare. Oh, and also: nobody wins. Some just take longer to lose.
- almosnow 13y ago
  The way I see it. This guy didn't won the birh lottery but his mom worked her ass off so he could have a ticket at it. The fact that he feels guilty of basically having accomplished everything that his mother ever wished for him should be a very dishonirable situation. Ooh the humanity...
- quasque 13y ago
  The world is not fair, therefore we should collectively just shut up and put up with this enduring inequality? The majority of the world's population are living in poverty, and well over a billion people are entirely destitute. Lacking food, water, healthcare, sanitation, education - can they still 'win'?
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  And then there's situations like this: https://www.secret.ly/p/feexnrnpunzjadkhinaegigziy https://www.secret.ly/p/feexnrnpunzjadkhinaegigziy (HN auto-kills secret.ly submissions, but I'm willing to bet this will be a top story next week when verifiable details emerge.)
  - marvin 13y ago
    What the fuck, dude. That's just atrocious. On the other hand, this is the most beautiful sex discrimination lawsuit I've ever seen waiting to happen. I really hope she has the ability, guts and staying power to move through with it.
  - joyeuse6701 13y ago
    Yeah holy crap, talk about an injustice.
    - supergauntlet 13y ago
      I just kept scrolling down and was thinking 'okay... maybe they weren't that great of a worker?' and then they claim that they both came up with the company idea and the UI/UX. If that's true that's all kinds of fucked.
      - tim333 13y ago
        I imagine if it becomes public Google would be shamed into doing something. It wouldn't make them look very good.
        ericd 13y ago
        It seems like it's already becoming public. But yeah, I'm not a fan of how acquihires work at all - if you own 20% of the company's stock, you should get 20% of the payout upon acquisition. Otherwise, those employment and investment terms are significantly less meaningful.
        13y ago
- EGreg 13y ago
  Guys winning is relative to the game you play. Do you really think every game is going to be fair? In the games which everyone MUST play - healthcare, food, shelter - there should be a minimum safety net for ALL. This can be achieved using Basic Income. But fairness? What exactly does that mean? At the end of the day those who do better in the game will get a better reward and maybe do better in the future etc. Is this because they had more "talent"? Or got more lucky? What is fairness here? At the end of the day, people want to be happy and healthy.
- ACow_Adonis 13y ago
  While I agree with Paul Graham about a lot of things, its worth pointing out that the man's wikipedia page says he was born (in the US, sorry, in the UK, my bad), went to Cornell where he graduated at 22, then practically straight on to Harvard to do masters, and then a PhD, and is primarily noted for being rich because he was bought out by Yahoo. Something that cannot happen for the majority of people, merit or no, and if that black swan didn't happen for him, i imagine we'd have a significantly different opinion of him. Indeed, who is to say that Yahoo didn't make a complete mistake? We'll never know i guess because we can never see the opportunity costs of alternate futures we haven't experienced. While its possible to end up being rich if you didn't win the birth lottery, its pretty obvious Paul Graham did win it, and you'd have to be numerically or statistically illiterate to not realize that where you start the game is basically the most powerful predictor of both riches and poverty... Frankly, i wish we could just get over this nonsense of equating extremes of wealth and merit, since there seems to be such little empirical evidence of how to equate the two, or agreement on what merit even is... One thing that does seem empirically obvious though. Rich people aren't "individually responsible" for wealth themselves. No one has walked out of the amazon forest in a loin cloth and already been a billionaire because of how much wealth they were able to create while there by themselves... /no offense intended to Paul Graham, he was just used in the example, but from reading his essays I'm guessing he's not terribly insecure :P
  - marvin 13y ago
    I respect PG because he's a really good essayist and also a visionary in technology. Don't know why you seem to be attributing his fame to the fact that he's rich.
  - bootload 13y ago
    "... says he was born in the US, went to Cornell, then to Harvard, ..." pg is a Pom, "is an English programmer," cf: ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_%28computer_programmer%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_%28computer_program...
    - ACow_Adonis 13y ago
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- koonsolo 13y ago
  If you can read and post on Hacker News, you've already won the birth lottery. Some babies are born in North Korean prison camps. If you live in the western world are handy with technology, you definitely won the birth lottery.
bluekeybox 13y ago
Philosophical question (don't take offense, please): Why should we be rewarding "unlucky" gametes? Please note that I don't consider the likely answer "because they have something useful to contribute to society" as a good one because it assumes that one individual mind (with all its hopes and biases) can comprehend what is really good for society in the long run (think thousands or tens of thousands of years).
- barrkel 13y ago
  ISTM you're approaching a social Darwinist (i.e. 20th century fascist) perspective there. Take your philosophical angle: do you think society is better off in the long run for having had Socrates, Plato, Aristotle? How many unlucky Aristotles are we wasting in poverty in Africa? I can't directly address your question, because it doesn't seem well formed to me. Which "one individual mind" is comprehending, and what is it doing with this comprehension (is it a judge)? Why is tens of thousands of years important - is that because you explicitly want to discount intelligence and knowledge, and only look at the biological ramifications? By that metric, humans might be better off if we wiped out all mammals and devolved into flowers - you haven't established what good even means (it cannot be survival, since that fails Hume's is/ought rule).
  - hueving 13y ago
    >I can't directly address your question, because it doesn't seem well formed to me. Let me see if I can take a stab at re-wording it. Why should someone who provides little value to society be rewarded the same as people that provide more value to society?
    - gress 13y ago
      That's a strawman - the alternative to a meritocracy is not necessarily communism.
      - nikatwork 13y ago
        Although The Communist Manifesto rails against capitalism's devaluing of art, philosophy and anything else that can't immediately be converted into ka-ching.
anatari 13y ago
These things aren't binary. I believe the USA is more meritocratic than it's not. Also depends on what you define as merit. Is having capital a merit? In the eyes of the economy anything that has utility has merit, and capital certainly has very high utility. B) Yes, meritocracies are not equal by definition, but again, I think it is more fair than not. Fair does not mean equal, it means being "thought to be right" so it will depend on each person's morality. I for one, certainly do not want to live in a world where good health has no advantages over bad health, even if I was unhealthy.
- quasque 13y ago
  I guess you're thinking of an unlikely "Harrison Bergeron" type of scenario. But if such a world was instead achieved instead via highly advanced medicine and universal access to health care, then why not? I would consider that a best case scenario for humanity's future.
- loup-vaillant 13y ago
  > * In the eyes of the economy anything that has utility has merit, and capital certainly has very high utility.* Depends on your utility function. Capital can certainly prove very useful for whoever is wilding it, but the near-edge of this sword can easily cut us when the wielder happens to be a sadistic psychopath. Or when the power of money corrupts the wielder. Or when the costs of building that capital (externalities such as pollution, rip-offs, lay-offs…) outweigh any later benefit… > Fair […] [depends] on each person's morality. Luckily, we humans appear to have a fairly stable morality across individuals. (There are psychological experiments on moral dilemmas, and as far as I know, they indicate we agree on most of the important things. Though there are some "off-switches" in our moral systems —religion, "following orders"…) > * I for one, certainly do not want to live in a world where good health has no advantages over bad health, even if I was unhealthy.* There are two aspects you need to keep track of. On the one hand, the absolute advantage, and on the other, the comparative advantage. Height for instance is a comparative advantage. We tend to look up to taller people, merely because they are taller. So they're more followed, they "get all the girls", better jobs, and so on. But if everyone was taller, it wouldn't change a thing. That's a purely comparative advantage. Health on the other hand has an absolute component. If we were suddenly immune to all diseases, the world would be a significantly better place. In other words, you wouldn't care if everyone was taller, but you would like everyone to be healthy.
loup-vaillant 13y ago
Nitpick: your quote about "the worst form of government" generally assumes we're living in a democracy. But the people don't rule. Money does. So it's not a democracy. Or, the definition of the word changed, and 90%+ of the people still uttering it haven't got the memo. (I have few kind words for those who have.)
- username223 13y ago
  > But the people don't rule. Money does. That sounds like Meritocracy 2.0.
  - sgift 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy "defines a society or a system ruled and dominated by the small minority of the wealthiest citizens." - sounds correct.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
kartman 13y ago
I like to think what we value drives our day to day actions. Often, the rewards for those actions are along another dimension and independent of your values. If we are lucky enough to line up our values and the rewards we get for our actions, that might be a happy life :). In this case, I speculate the guy wanted to build something fun, the reward came in $, so there is angst of values driving the action vs the reward of the action. It's great he is so aware of it though. In a path dependent process like life, I feel a good way to measure yourself is % increase over your former self, along any dimension and quantification you see fit.
bane 13y ago
> Meritocracies are not fair. True, for a meritocracy to be fair implies there is a fair arbiter. In absence of a fair arbiter people use something else as a proxy, money is typical.
narrator 13y ago
The system isn't a democracy or a meritocracy, it's the system with all its ugliness, obfuscation, ambiguity, complexity and pettiness that comes with it being composed of lots of people seeking their own interests. Stop trying to turn it into an abstract philosophical concept. Just deal with it as best as you can, and if you really understand it well or just let dumb luck lead you down the right path you might even be able to hack it like the guy in this story.
WalterBright 13y ago
Hard work actually has very little to do with success. Effective work is what matters.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- marincounty 13y ago
  Who you know, and a wealthy father will take you far in life. This is Always conveniently left out of the speeches. I guess out of some kind of denial. i've only heard one wealthy person publicly admit his wealth and opportunities in life was because of their father. Yea, there's a reason the wealthy stay rich--generation after generation. The man who spoke the truth was George Soros. Growing up in Marin I have seen the process first hand. If you are a poor kid trying to make it in America, keep your wealthy friends close, if you can stomach it--I couldn't. I guess today it's called networking. Ugh!
  - WalterBright 13y ago
    85% of Americans are self-made - see the book "The Millionaire Next Door."
    - username223 13y ago
      You might want to read Piketty and Saez. Facts kinda matter.
ekianjo 13y ago
> Meritocracies reward those with good health, good luck, good parents who are encouraging, and the lucky gamete club who have high intelligence or exceptional physical skills. I wonder what's the good luck doing in the middle of your argument... but it's plain not true. I know a ton of smart people who didn't end up becoming widely successful nor rich once they entered the job market (or tried to create something on their own). If at all, who YOU KNOW and relate to is more important than your own skills, that's why even dumbasses from university were able to get great jobs, because they were great at socializing and making the network work for them, while their own skills at doing anything were actually very poor. And that's fair. Even people who are not highly intelligent can make it to the top of society (look at politicians, hehe). Look at all the immigrants from different countries who actually ended up being successful after starting lower than anyone else in society. And I'm not sure what is your definition of fair. There are some people who assume stuff is not fair when they don't get their share of the cake at every party. That's not what fair means in a broad sense.
Crito 13y ago
If everyone exceeds to their full potential, then those with greater potential will see greater success. That seems problematic to you, but what are the alternatives? Those with less potential exceeding beyond there potential is nonsensical. If that happens, it only means that you incorrectly estimated their potential in the first place. Alternatively if we limit success such that those with the most potential can never realize the full extent of their potential, how is that fair? Those people only get one life, you should not deprive them of their ability to live it to their fullest.
- ericd 13y ago
  I've always liked this quote from Enemy at the Gates (set in the USSR during WW2): I've been such a fool, Vassili. Man will always be a man. There is no new man. We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there'd be nothing to envy your neighbour. But there's always something to envy. A smile, a friendship, something you don't have and want to appropriate. In this world, even a Soviet one, there will always be rich and poor. Rich in gifts, poor in gifts. Rich in love, poor in love.
duaakshay 13y ago
Expanding on: "Meritocracies are like democracy: "the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."" Assuming the goal of any system of government (e.g., democracy) or marketplace (e.g., meritocracy for society, opportunity etc.) is the advancement/ progress, a meritocracy fails where the value it attaches to certain events/ attributes is flawed. It rewards something more than it contributes to progress, and insufficiently rewards something that brings greater value. Bringing it back to the original post, I have often shared the opinion that currently providing entertainment, is rewarded more than it deserves in the current state of our meritocracy. One could contribute more to the advancement of society e.g., by improving energy efficiency but the person would not really be rewarded as disproportionately for doing so. I find it sad therefore that so many smart people are driven to game development and not solve other more pressing problems. Or probably that society currently attributes so much value to entertainment.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  > I find it sad therefore that so many smart people are driven to game development and not solve other more pressing problems. Or probably that society currently attributes so much value to entertainment. Nobody is driven to game development, it's an individual choice. And your perspective that there are more pressing problems is an illusion. The more pressing problems are from your own point of view. From someone else's, making a living may be their top pressing problem before caring about anything else. And there are people who are genuinely good at making games, and they should keep doing it as long as they can bring good games on the market, because it benefits gamers as well. Gamers don't buy games to throw their time and money away, they do it also because they have fun with it, it stimulates them, makes them excited or relaxed, or in other words make them live in more ways than they would usually live. Not talking about flappy bird here, but there's a number of games that have depth and where you learn stuff by playing that develop your intellect as well. Entertainment is important, because for most people, daily work is NOT entertaining nor fulfilling.
  - duaakshay 13y ago
    "Nobody is driven to game development, it's an individual choice" > Acknowledge this "there are more pressing problems is an illusion" > disagree. As some on another comment pointed out that around the world enough and more people do not have access to food, shelter, healthcare, education, energy etc. You could also refer to Maslow's priority of needs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs). Entertainement can't fit anywhere other than right at the top of the pyramid. And yes, everyone has individual needs and those are the most pressing for them. I was talking more from a society perspective.
VMG 13y ago
It starts even earlier A-1) There is such a thing as "fair"
baddox 13y ago
For an argument that relies so much on the word "fair," you should really start by defining it. Does "fair" mean equal? Equality of opportunity? Equality of results?
bildung 13y ago
> The problem is that people then fail to realize that B is also false. Indeed. Interestingly, the term meritocracy also had a negative meaning when it was coined in the 1950s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Etymology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Etymology That meritocracy is interpreted in a positive way is a relativly recent phenomenon.

brc 13y ago

I read a lot of whining on this thread (and many other, recently as well). 'Fair' pops up a lot. The world is not fair. You can either spend your time griping, or you can spend your time living. I sense a lot of 'daddy' models of wealth swimming in peoples heads. http://paulgraham.com/gap.html http://paulgraham.com/gap.html If you didn't win the birth lottery it's not a death sentence. You can still win. Measure your progress against your own expectations, not against the lottery winners.

barrkel 13y ago
The world is not binary either, and that doesn't mean that we can't adjust society to increase or decrease the amount of fairness. It also doesn't mean that the adjusted amount of fairness in society and its rules (both laws and social norms) can't have positive or negative effects on overall total welfare. Oh, and also: nobody wins. Some just take longer to lose.
almosnow 13y ago
The way I see it. This guy didn't won the birh lottery but his mom worked her ass off so he could have a ticket at it. The fact that he feels guilty of basically having accomplished everything that his mother ever wished for him should be a very dishonirable situation. Ooh the humanity...
quasque 13y ago
The world is not fair, therefore we should collectively just shut up and put up with this enduring inequality? The majority of the world's population are living in poverty, and well over a billion people are entirely destitute. Lacking food, water, healthcare, sanitation, education - can they still 'win'?
anigbrowl 13y ago
And then there's situations like this: https://www.secret.ly/p/feexnrnpunzjadkhinaegigziy https://www.secret.ly/p/feexnrnpunzjadkhinaegigziy (HN auto-kills secret.ly submissions, but I'm willing to bet this will be a top story next week when verifiable details emerge.)
- marvin 13y ago
  What the fuck, dude. That's just atrocious. On the other hand, this is the most beautiful sex discrimination lawsuit I've ever seen waiting to happen. I really hope she has the ability, guts and staying power to move through with it.
- joyeuse6701 13y ago
  Yeah holy crap, talk about an injustice.
  - supergauntlet 13y ago
    I just kept scrolling down and was thinking 'okay... maybe they weren't that great of a worker?' and then they claim that they both came up with the company idea and the UI/UX. If that's true that's all kinds of fucked.
    - tim333 13y ago
      I imagine if it becomes public Google would be shamed into doing something. It wouldn't make them look very good.
      - ericd 13y ago
        It seems like it's already becoming public. But yeah, I'm not a fan of how acquihires work at all - if you own 20% of the company's stock, you should get 20% of the payout upon acquisition. Otherwise, those employment and investment terms are significantly less meaningful.
        13y ago
EGreg 13y ago
Guys winning is relative to the game you play. Do you really think every game is going to be fair? In the games which everyone MUST play - healthcare, food, shelter - there should be a minimum safety net for ALL. This can be achieved using Basic Income. But fairness? What exactly does that mean? At the end of the day those who do better in the game will get a better reward and maybe do better in the future etc. Is this because they had more "talent"? Or got more lucky? What is fairness here? At the end of the day, people want to be happy and healthy.
ACow_Adonis 13y ago
While I agree with Paul Graham about a lot of things, its worth pointing out that the man's wikipedia page says he was born (in the US, sorry, in the UK, my bad), went to Cornell where he graduated at 22, then practically straight on to Harvard to do masters, and then a PhD, and is primarily noted for being rich because he was bought out by Yahoo. Something that cannot happen for the majority of people, merit or no, and if that black swan didn't happen for him, i imagine we'd have a significantly different opinion of him. Indeed, who is to say that Yahoo didn't make a complete mistake? We'll never know i guess because we can never see the opportunity costs of alternate futures we haven't experienced. While its possible to end up being rich if you didn't win the birth lottery, its pretty obvious Paul Graham did win it, and you'd have to be numerically or statistically illiterate to not realize that where you start the game is basically the most powerful predictor of both riches and poverty... Frankly, i wish we could just get over this nonsense of equating extremes of wealth and merit, since there seems to be such little empirical evidence of how to equate the two, or agreement on what merit even is... One thing that does seem empirically obvious though. Rich people aren't "individually responsible" for wealth themselves. No one has walked out of the amazon forest in a loin cloth and already been a billionaire because of how much wealth they were able to create while there by themselves... /no offense intended to Paul Graham, he was just used in the example, but from reading his essays I'm guessing he's not terribly insecure :P
- marvin 13y ago
  I respect PG because he's a really good essayist and also a visionary in technology. Don't know why you seem to be attributing his fame to the fact that he's rich.
- bootload 13y ago
  "... says he was born in the US, went to Cornell, then to Harvard, ..." pg is a Pom, "is an English programmer," cf: ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_%28computer_programmer%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_%28computer_program...
  - ACow_Adonis 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
koonsolo 13y ago
If you can read and post on Hacker News, you've already won the birth lottery. Some babies are born in North Korean prison camps. If you live in the western world are handy with technology, you definitely won the birth lottery.

bluekeybox 13y ago

Philosophical question (don't take offense, please): Why should we be rewarding "unlucky" gametes? Please note that I don't consider the likely answer "because they have something useful to contribute to society" as a good one because it assumes that one individual mind (with all its hopes and biases) can comprehend what is really good for society in the long run (think thousands or tens of thousands of years).

barrkel 13y ago
ISTM you're approaching a social Darwinist (i.e. 20th century fascist) perspective there. Take your philosophical angle: do you think society is better off in the long run for having had Socrates, Plato, Aristotle? How many unlucky Aristotles are we wasting in poverty in Africa? I can't directly address your question, because it doesn't seem well formed to me. Which "one individual mind" is comprehending, and what is it doing with this comprehension (is it a judge)? Why is tens of thousands of years important - is that because you explicitly want to discount intelligence and knowledge, and only look at the biological ramifications? By that metric, humans might be better off if we wiped out all mammals and devolved into flowers - you haven't established what good even means (it cannot be survival, since that fails Hume's is/ought rule).
- hueving 13y ago
  >I can't directly address your question, because it doesn't seem well formed to me. Let me see if I can take a stab at re-wording it. Why should someone who provides little value to society be rewarded the same as people that provide more value to society?
  - gress 13y ago
    That's a strawman - the alternative to a meritocracy is not necessarily communism.
    - nikatwork 13y ago
      Although The Communist Manifesto rails against capitalism's devaluing of art, philosophy and anything else that can't immediately be converted into ka-ching.

anatari 13y ago

These things aren't binary. I believe the USA is more meritocratic than it's not. Also depends on what you define as merit. Is having capital a merit? In the eyes of the economy anything that has utility has merit, and capital certainly has very high utility. B) Yes, meritocracies are not equal by definition, but again, I think it is more fair than not. Fair does not mean equal, it means being "thought to be right" so it will depend on each person's morality. I for one, certainly do not want to live in a world where good health has no advantages over bad health, even if I was unhealthy.

quasque 13y ago
I guess you're thinking of an unlikely "Harrison Bergeron" type of scenario. But if such a world was instead achieved instead via highly advanced medicine and universal access to health care, then why not? I would consider that a best case scenario for humanity's future.
loup-vaillant 13y ago
> * In the eyes of the economy anything that has utility has merit, and capital certainly has very high utility.* Depends on your utility function. Capital can certainly prove very useful for whoever is wilding it, but the near-edge of this sword can easily cut us when the wielder happens to be a sadistic psychopath. Or when the power of money corrupts the wielder. Or when the costs of building that capital (externalities such as pollution, rip-offs, lay-offs…) outweigh any later benefit… > Fair […] [depends] on each person's morality. Luckily, we humans appear to have a fairly stable morality across individuals. (There are psychological experiments on moral dilemmas, and as far as I know, they indicate we agree on most of the important things. Though there are some "off-switches" in our moral systems —religion, "following orders"…) > * I for one, certainly do not want to live in a world where good health has no advantages over bad health, even if I was unhealthy.* There are two aspects you need to keep track of. On the one hand, the absolute advantage, and on the other, the comparative advantage. Height for instance is a comparative advantage. We tend to look up to taller people, merely because they are taller. So they're more followed, they "get all the girls", better jobs, and so on. But if everyone was taller, it wouldn't change a thing. That's a purely comparative advantage. Health on the other hand has an absolute component. If we were suddenly immune to all diseases, the world would be a significantly better place. In other words, you wouldn't care if everyone was taller, but you would like everyone to be healthy.

loup-vaillant 13y ago

Nitpick: your quote about "the worst form of government" generally assumes we're living in a democracy. But the people don't rule. Money does. So it's not a democracy. Or, the definition of the word changed, and 90%+ of the people still uttering it haven't got the memo. (I have few kind words for those who have.)

username223 13y ago
> But the people don't rule. Money does. That sounds like Meritocracy 2.0.
- sgift 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy "defines a society or a system ruled and dominated by the small minority of the wealthiest citizens." - sounds correct.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

kartman 13y ago

I like to think what we value drives our day to day actions. Often, the rewards for those actions are along another dimension and independent of your values. If we are lucky enough to line up our values and the rewards we get for our actions, that might be a happy life :). In this case, I speculate the guy wanted to build something fun, the reward came in $, so there is angst of values driving the action vs the reward of the action. It's great he is so aware of it though. In a path dependent process like life, I feel a good way to measure yourself is % increase over your former self, along any dimension and quantification you see fit.

bane 13y ago

> Meritocracies are not fair. True, for a meritocracy to be fair implies there is a fair arbiter. In absence of a fair arbiter people use something else as a proxy, money is typical.

narrator 13y ago

The system isn't a democracy or a meritocracy, it's the system with all its ugliness, obfuscation, ambiguity, complexity and pettiness that comes with it being composed of lots of people seeking their own interests. Stop trying to turn it into an abstract philosophical concept. Just deal with it as best as you can, and if you really understand it well or just let dumb luck lead you down the right path you might even be able to hack it like the guy in this story.

WalterBright 13y ago

Hard work actually has very little to do with success. Effective work is what matters.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
marincounty 13y ago
Who you know, and a wealthy father will take you far in life. This is Always conveniently left out of the speeches. I guess out of some kind of denial. i've only heard one wealthy person publicly admit his wealth and opportunities in life was because of their father. Yea, there's a reason the wealthy stay rich--generation after generation. The man who spoke the truth was George Soros. Growing up in Marin I have seen the process first hand. If you are a poor kid trying to make it in America, keep your wealthy friends close, if you can stomach it--I couldn't. I guess today it's called networking. Ugh!
- WalterBright 13y ago
  85% of Americans are self-made - see the book "The Millionaire Next Door."
  - username223 13y ago
    You might want to read Piketty and Saez. Facts kinda matter.

ekianjo 13y ago

> Meritocracies reward those with good health, good luck, good parents who are encouraging, and the lucky gamete club who have high intelligence or exceptional physical skills. I wonder what's the good luck doing in the middle of your argument... but it's plain not true. I know a ton of smart people who didn't end up becoming widely successful nor rich once they entered the job market (or tried to create something on their own). If at all, who YOU KNOW and relate to is more important than your own skills, that's why even dumbasses from university were able to get great jobs, because they were great at socializing and making the network work for them, while their own skills at doing anything were actually very poor. And that's fair. Even people who are not highly intelligent can make it to the top of society (look at politicians, hehe). Look at all the immigrants from different countries who actually ended up being successful after starting lower than anyone else in society. And I'm not sure what is your definition of fair. There are some people who assume stuff is not fair when they don't get their share of the cake at every party. That's not what fair means in a broad sense.

Crito 13y ago

If everyone exceeds to their full potential, then those with greater potential will see greater success. That seems problematic to you, but what are the alternatives? Those with less potential exceeding beyond there potential is nonsensical. If that happens, it only means that you incorrectly estimated their potential in the first place. Alternatively if we limit success such that those with the most potential can never realize the full extent of their potential, how is that fair? Those people only get one life, you should not deprive them of their ability to live it to their fullest.

ericd 13y ago
I've always liked this quote from Enemy at the Gates (set in the USSR during WW2): I've been such a fool, Vassili. Man will always be a man. There is no new man. We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there'd be nothing to envy your neighbour. But there's always something to envy. A smile, a friendship, something you don't have and want to appropriate. In this world, even a Soviet one, there will always be rich and poor. Rich in gifts, poor in gifts. Rich in love, poor in love.

duaakshay 13y ago

Expanding on: "Meritocracies are like democracy: "the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."" Assuming the goal of any system of government (e.g., democracy) or marketplace (e.g., meritocracy for society, opportunity etc.) is the advancement/ progress, a meritocracy fails where the value it attaches to certain events/ attributes is flawed. It rewards something more than it contributes to progress, and insufficiently rewards something that brings greater value. Bringing it back to the original post, I have often shared the opinion that currently providing entertainment, is rewarded more than it deserves in the current state of our meritocracy. One could contribute more to the advancement of society e.g., by improving energy efficiency but the person would not really be rewarded as disproportionately for doing so. I find it sad therefore that so many smart people are driven to game development and not solve other more pressing problems. Or probably that society currently attributes so much value to entertainment.

ekianjo 13y ago
> I find it sad therefore that so many smart people are driven to game development and not solve other more pressing problems. Or probably that society currently attributes so much value to entertainment. Nobody is driven to game development, it's an individual choice. And your perspective that there are more pressing problems is an illusion. The more pressing problems are from your own point of view. From someone else's, making a living may be their top pressing problem before caring about anything else. And there are people who are genuinely good at making games, and they should keep doing it as long as they can bring good games on the market, because it benefits gamers as well. Gamers don't buy games to throw their time and money away, they do it also because they have fun with it, it stimulates them, makes them excited or relaxed, or in other words make them live in more ways than they would usually live. Not talking about flappy bird here, but there's a number of games that have depth and where you learn stuff by playing that develop your intellect as well. Entertainment is important, because for most people, daily work is NOT entertaining nor fulfilling.
- duaakshay 13y ago
  "Nobody is driven to game development, it's an individual choice" > Acknowledge this "there are more pressing problems is an illusion" > disagree. As some on another comment pointed out that around the world enough and more people do not have access to food, shelter, healthcare, education, energy etc. You could also refer to Maslow's priority of needs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs). Entertainement can't fit anywhere other than right at the top of the pyramid. And yes, everyone has individual needs and those are the most pressing for them. I was talking more from a society perspective.

VMG 13y ago

It starts even earlier A-1) There is such a thing as "fair"

baddox 13y ago

For an argument that relies so much on the word "fair," you should really start by defining it. Does "fair" mean equal? Equality of opportunity? Equality of results?

bildung 13y ago

> The problem is that people then fail to realize that B is also false. Indeed. Interestingly, the term meritocracy also had a negative meaning when it was coined in the 1950s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Etymology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Etymology That meritocracy is interpreted in a positive way is a relativly recent phenomenon.