561–570 of 656 posts
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Rand Paul does not have a bachelor's degree. He does have an MD. And is a US Senator. Wonder how that happened. Oh, right, meritocracy.
Neat, "today-I-learned". I have to wonder if it being his father's medical school also was a factor, considering it's a private school. But still, that's quite impressive.
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Neat, "today-I-learned". I have to wonder if it being his father's medical school also was a factor, considering it's a private school. But still, that's quite impressive.
He also created his own medical board to certify himself with a take-home test because learning is hard.
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility != https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility
3) Reservations is not a Poverty alleviation program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guar...
4) In 1932 British regime offered a separate country to Lower caste where Upper caste can live on a Visa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_Award
5) marks != merit "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid" --Einstein
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Actually, one of the main criticism of meritocracy (as in, the social structure that we (the Western civilisation) strive to have, not the stupid "it's not actually a meritocracy" argument) is that, combined with assortative mating, it would eventually result in incredibly unequal society, with high-IQ genes becoming increasingly concentrated.
Care to elaborate why "it's not actually a meritocracy" is a stupid argument? IMO every metric we define will be gamed by bad actors so "meritocracy" will only be used to provide legitimacy to said bad actors. It's quite telling that "aristocracy" (the government of the best) which was supposed to be just like "meritocracy", became to mean just the opposite, meaning nepotism and idiotic inbred leaders.
By attacking the goal, you collapse the whole argument. Meritocracy is bad because it results in super-inequality. Representative democracy is bad because it collapses all policy dimensions into one. Of course, it’s also helpful to propose an alternative; I’m a big proponent of direct democracy; no idea what’s better than meritocracy.
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> 2. Reservation is the real problem (no it's not) Of course Reservation IS the problem if you're unfortunate to be an upper caste. The problem is that a caste-based reservation did NOT eliminate caste-based bias, it amplified it. More and more castes, outside the original designation, demanded it in exchange for votes, and more and more upper caste Indians felt cheated as they lost limited opportunities that should…
This comment reminds me of "All Lives Matter".
I understand that you may not have firsthand knowledge of the issues, but at least be open to the fact that there may be more depths to a situation than what is superficially evident.
(from what I've seen)
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> 2. Reservation is the real problem (no it's not) Of course Reservation IS the problem if you're unfortunate to be an upper caste. The problem is that a caste-based reservation did NOT eliminate caste-based bias, it amplified it. More and more castes, outside the original designation, demanded it in exchange for votes, and more and more upper caste Indians felt cheated as they lost limited opportunities that should…
>> The problem is that a caste-based reservation did NOT eliminate caste-based bias. It is not the goal of the reservation system to eliminate caste-based bias. The goal is to eliminate unfair competition by ensuring candidates of equal backgrounds compete with each other. A low caste candidate who was historically denied education can not compete with a higher caste student from an educated family. Hence the candida…
I appreciate your comment and you do make some very interesting points. But the above quote seems to contradict the gist of your earlier points.
Once a lower-caste family has become affluent and is educated, they should be competing with people, per your own earlier statement, with those of equal backgrounds. The background of a lower-caste but educated and affluent family is no longer the same as that of a poorer lower-caste person from relatively uneducated family. So, how in any way can an argument be made that the affluent family should be allowed to reap rewards from reservation for ever, while the same is not available to poor lower-caste family. If makes no logical, nor socially justifiable sense.
Also, there is an implied assumption that every upper-caste, richer or poorer has a strong educational background. I believe that economic conditions dictate educational and other background a lot too.
Of course, I will accept that solely going by economical criteria may not be sufficient, but it has to be a major factor.
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Unfortunately, no. My wife's best friend is Hindu from Upper Caste. (Brahim) she was born in the United States. She always been so liberal and open minded. Most of her friends are Muslims. She is barely religious. But whenever it comes relationships, she brings up caste. She married into upper caste, she was very worried about caste of the guy. If her sister is dating a someone from a different caste, she brings it u…
Unfortunately, some immigrant parents indoctrinate their children in the ways of the old world. I've had many american born Muslim friends growing up, some of them were self professed atheists, but one thing I've never seen any of them do is eat pork. I believe it is because from a young age if you are made to believe that pork is disgusting, unhygienic etc... You develop a reflex that cannot be overcome. It is proba…
Notwithstanding the ecological reasons to do so, I voluntarily don’t eat beef because I feel like it’s one of the easiest and least-damaging (ie it’s a tradition that seems to represent comparatively little direct historical social strife) means left to me, as a second-gen person, to maintain some aspect of my heritage.
Identity and tradition among second-gen immigrants in America is complicated (as is identity, generally) and doesn’t really admit generalizations like these.