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One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

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Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#11

Post by ACow_Adonis »

lwhalen wrote: post #3
njarboe wrote: post #2

"Estonia wants to be a role model and leader for a different way of seeing the world: a world that is more open, meritocratic and reflective of the demands—and opportunities—of the 21st century." Meritocratic seems highly promoted in many circles (seems like on first glace a good idea as opposed to say, despotic), but in a meritocratic world, what happens to the dumb and/or lazy (unmeritable?) people.

Is it bad if they just fall by the wayside? If one puts forth zero effort, they should get zero reward.

It never ceases to amaze me how most people in capitalist (all) countries continue to work under the folk-belief of a labor theory of value.

How much effort you put in has, at best, a second order relation to reward.

Far stronger effects are supply, demand, mechanism of action, distribution of initial resources, and social factors.

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#12

Post by lwhalen »

njarboe wrote: post #8
lwhalen wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it bad if they just fall by the wayside? If one puts forth zero effort, they should get zero reward.

"fall by the wayside" is a bit hand wavy. Do you mean they become poor, broke, with nothing to loose, ripe for a revolution? Or that they are killed by automated drones when they come over the fence of your/my/our/their gated community?

if they were prone to revolution, you'd think "get a danged job" would be the path of least resistance (pun fully intended).

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#13

Post by txsh »

whb07 wrote: post #10
gervase wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they exert maximal effort, but achieve zero results?

Kind of like any venture where you try as hard as possible and yet fail ? Kind of like an athlete in the olympics who ends up losing by a fraction of a second? Idk, they don’t get the gold right?

So, in your world, the best software developer gets paid the most (gold), the second best gets paid less (silver), the third best gets paid the least (bronze), and everybody else works as slaves because they're losers.

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#14

Post by polm23 »

Given the date I thought this might be fake, but it seems the program is real:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Residency_of_Estonia

That said, the article also claims "Shinto" Abe was the first person to enter the program, but besides mispelling his name I can't find any other reference to him being involved with it at all.

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#16

Post by polm23 »

polm23 wrote: post #14

Given the date I thought this might be fake, but it seems the program is real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Residency_of_Estonia That said, the article also claims "Shinto" Abe was the first person to enter the program, but besides mispelling his name I can't find any other reference to him being involved with it at all.

Actually I did find this:

https://news.err.ee/115597/japanese-prime-minister-becomes-e...

That's surprising.

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#17

Post by stonogo »

mpweiher wrote: post #9
njarboe wrote: post #2

"Estonia wants to be a role model and leader for a different way of seeing the world: a world that is more open, meritocratic and reflective of the demands—and opportunities—of the 21st century." Meritocratic seems highly promoted in many circles (seems like on first glace a good idea as opposed to say, despotic), but in a meritocratic world, what happens to the dumb and/or lazy (unmeritable?) people.

> in a meritocratic world, what happens to the dumb and/or lazy? They don't get to run things? Put another way: assuming you're going to have some sort of hierarchy, and you will, how would you want to organize that hierarchy? Merit seems like the least bad way to do so.

"Merit" is not a quantifiable characteristic. All your plan would do is give the power to the people who define "merit."

It's like you're advocating for correctpersonocracy. Put another way, literally every government that has ever existed would call itself a meritocracy.

The actual word 'meritocracy' comes from a book that warned about the dangers of creating easily-gamed draconian systems that needlessly exclude people from the process of governing. I wish as many people would read the book as use the word.

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#18

Post by pjmorris »

txsh wrote: post #13
whb07 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of like any venture where you try as hard as possible and yet fail ? Kind of like an athlete in the olympics who ends up losing by a fraction of a second? Idk, they don’t get the gold right?

So, in your world, the best software developer gets paid the most (gold), the second best gets paid less (silver), the third best gets paid the least (bronze), and everybody else works as slaves because they're losers.

"As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired." - from Glengarry Glen Ross

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#19

Post by inopinatus »

mpweiher wrote: post #9
njarboe wrote: post #2

"Estonia wants to be a role model and leader for a different way of seeing the world: a world that is more open, meritocratic and reflective of the demands—and opportunities—of the 21st century." Meritocratic seems highly promoted in many circles (seems like on first glace a good idea as opposed to say, despotic), but in a meritocratic world, what happens to the dumb and/or lazy (unmeritable?) people.

> in a meritocratic world, what happens to the dumb and/or lazy? They don't get to run things? Put another way: assuming you're going to have some sort of hierarchy, and you will, how would you want to organize that hierarchy? Merit seems like the least bad way to do so.

Sadly, merit is a terrible qualifier. Humans have proven time and again that they are appallingly bad judges of “merit”, and this holds whether they are doing so on an ad-hoc/heuristic basis or by some systematic quantification: both approaches are wide open to intrinsic bias and systematic discrimination, and this routinely happens on scales from the job interview to national elections.

As for democracy, however, what we don’t have (yet) is anything demonstrably better. A meritocracy will not be an improvement over a democracy. The critical function of a democracy is affording the governed a guaranteed means to evict bad adminstration.

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#20

Post by mathgladiator »

lwhalen wrote: post #12
njarboe wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"fall by the wayside" is a bit hand wavy. Do you mean they become poor, broke, with nothing to loose, ripe for a revolution? Or that they are killed by automated drones when they come over the fence of your/my/our/their gated community?

if they were prone to revolution, you'd think "get a danged job" would be the path of least resistance (pun fully intended).

I've been thinking about this with respect to America's future. Basically, suppose people want a revolution. Well, that would require a competent leader to make the mob effective. This is the rub, if you have leadership skills then you make bank and would be in 'the system'.
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