Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk, Bill Hewlett, David Packard, Henry Ford and many others who were born poor and succeed are the perfect counterexample of this comunist manifesto. Life is not fair, but if the merit wasn’t rewarded soon there will be no achievement. Why try harder to get what everyone else gets? Look to a society who abolished meritocracy: Cuba.
Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point
61–70 of 126 posts
Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, meritocracy works fine. It's far from perfect, but the 'special case' you describe is actually rare. There are people who are brilliant and hardworking in the academic sense slinging coffee for life, because both those attributes will result in 'good grades' which is a really good proxy for other things in life.
Interesting! Do you have a specific example where it seemed to work fine for you? (The example where I learned was in diverse web communities, including Wikimedia.)
Take the most broad and crude measure, educational outcomes, as some, albeit imperfect input to the system and you'll see very unambiguously and consistently that kids with better grades will do better in life, in most measures.
Next time you are at the office, look to your left, look to your right: you will notice conscientious people, probably educated, probably reasonably hard working, team work oriented, and probably bright.
Then hop on the bus and have conversations with the 'average person'. You fill find somewhat less conscientious, less interested, less curious, less intelligent people.
We have very clearly and unambiguously a mostly meritocratic system: as you go from coffee maker, to skilled labourer, to creative worker, to middle management to executive, you'll see a pretty obvious trend.
It's funny how the meritocratic naysayers, probably already in the top 20% of income earnings, probably would believer firmly they are more 'deserving' of their job than the dude who drove them there on the bus, but that somehow, the system 'above them' is 'not meritocratic'.
The issue then becomes one of 'self awareness': we don't like our boss, we are jealous of others who have more, we see some folks 'skip the line' with better access to education i.e. we see flaws or things 'we don't like' to varying degree and so somehow we believe the system is existentially flawed. It's not.
The first time you start to hire people, it becomes perfectly clear: either 'you' are fundamentally part of that of that byzantine, unfair system, inflicting your woes onto everyone with unfair hiring/advancement - or - more likely, you're actually trying to hire decent candidates, capable of doing the work.
So what's more likely: 1) you are the lone hero in an unfair world, trying to hire 'good people' while everyone else is either dumb or plotting like Mr. Bean a fools dystopia - or 2) that most people are like you, trying to hire reasonably good people (hopefully the best you can) and trying to do a reasonable job - and there is some intelligence in that process.
It's the later.
Most modern systems are crudely meritocratic. When they are not, it's obvious, but that doesn't mean those failures are normative or existential to the system.
Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point
#63Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk, Bill Hewlett, David Packard, Henry Ford and many others who were born poor and succeed are the perfect counterexample of this comunist manifesto. Life is not fair, but if the merit wasn’t rewarded soon there will be no achievement. Why try harder to get what everyone else gets? Look to a society who abolished meritocracy: Cuba.
We should look to Cuba as an example of what happens when a neighboring rich and powerful country cuts off trade, and threatens other countries who try to trade.
Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point
#64Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk, Bill Hewlett, David Packard, Henry Ford and many others who were born poor and succeed are the perfect counterexample of this comunist manifesto. Life is not fair, but if the merit wasn’t rewarded soon there will be no achievement. Why try harder to get what everyone else gets? Look to a society who abolished meritocracy: Cuba.
I'm pretty sure most of those people were born into homes with plenty of access to good food and education.
Elon had a nice computer from an early age in the early 80s, and went to a fancy prep school. Gates had parents who were successful lawyers, and who got him into Harvard. Bezos went to Princeon. Woz's dad was a well paid enigeer at Lockheed and went to UC Berkeley.
Lots of mobility for sure, but it really does take a couple generations in most cases. None of those people you mentioned grew up poor.
Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article literally lists examples of things that would help people with undiscovered latent talents. Access to education, unemployment insurance, universal basic income...
I'm sure those things would help some people, but probably not as much as you would think. I always see "access to education" as if lack of good teachers is the main thing holding disadvantaged kids back and not their trainwreck of a family life where the single mom working 2 jobs and didn't graduate high school herself has no idea how to help her kids and lets them slip into truancy like she did. Making the public s…
> the single mom working 2 jobs and didn't graduate high school herself
This isn't a quick fix strategy, it's a long term fix strategy that takes generations. The "access to education" is exactly for the benefit of people like the mother. Also the UBI means that she no longer has to work two jobs to pay for basic services for her kids.
UBI is the ultimate safety net that catches almost everyone who the current system has failed, and education is the long term guarantee to break the cycle of poverty.
Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
One reason why life isn't fair is that there are contradictory definitions of fair. Unfairness is a poor criticism of any system, because there isn't a completely fair system.
Which makes all this mainly about personal values and not "objective truths".
That's only true if you accept moral relativism.
Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting! Do you have a specific example where it seemed to work fine for you? (The example where I learned was in diverse web communities, including Wikimedia.)
Take the most broad and crude measure, educational outcomes, as some, albeit imperfect input to the system and you'll see very unambiguously and consistently that kids with better grades will do better in life, in most measures. Next time you are at the office, look to your left, look to your right: you will notice conscientious people, probably educated, probably reasonably hard working, team work oriented, and prob…
> Then hop on the bus and have conversations with the 'average person'. You fill find somewhat less conscientious, less interested, less curious, less intelligent people.
Wow, this is jaw-dropping stereotype.
I used to ride the bus, and unsurprisingly, my level of intelligence was completely unaffected by the mode of transportation I happened to be using at the time.
Also, public transportation is more environmentally friendly than everyone driving cars.
Now that I think a little more about it, your comment is interesting because I'm wondering how much empirical experience you have striking up conversations with people on the bus? If you're a frequently bus rider, doesn't that make you, by your own argument, less intelligent?
Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, meritocracy works fine. It's far from perfect, but the 'special case' you describe is actually rare. There are people who are brilliant and hardworking in the academic sense slinging coffee for life, because both those attributes will result in 'good grades' which is a really good proxy for other things in life.
Hi there! If you pay attention to the ratio of pro vs against meritocracy rants in this page you will find some interesting (anec)data. Make your own conclusions!
By definition the average person will have mediocre merit so it makes sense that most people are biased against meritocracy.
Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point
#69As a woman in tech, I feel that it isn't actually a meritocracy. I think people have a habit of assuming men did the real work in a project, so they get a disproportionate share of the credit. People also have a habit of pushing women towards front end work, making the assumption that men are more 'technical' than women. It can be difficult to watch men get all of the credit for your blood, sweat and tears. It's espe…
Meritocracy is a good thing and we should never stop striving for it. The problem isn't that some strive for meritocracy, the problem is when people argue that they are meritocratic when they aren't. It is pretty easy to argue that there is plenty of merit in hiring women, like adding diversity to teams has benefits and so on, I don't see why you need to argue against the concept itself.
> The concept of a meritocracy sounds nice on paper, but I think it ignores how humans work.
Not really, the concept is nice both on paper and in reality. The most successful companies in the world today are much more meritocratic than most organizations that preceded them, they produce great results using it, the concept works great. And I don't see why you think it wouldn't, we humans have two signals, merit and bias. Without merit we just go by our biases. The problems you describe doesn't come from focusing too much on merit but too little on it.
Re: Meritocracies Are Unfair – and That's the Point
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Take the most broad and crude measure, educational outcomes, as some, albeit imperfect input to the system and you'll see very unambiguously and consistently that kids with better grades will do better in life, in most measures. Next time you are at the office, look to your left, look to your right: you will notice conscientious people, probably educated, probably reasonably hard working, team work oriented, and prob…
> Then hop on the bus and have conversations with the 'average person'. You fill find somewhat less conscientious, less interested, less curious, less intelligent people. Wow, this is jaw-dropping stereotype. I used to ride the bus, and unsurprisingly, my level of intelligence was completely unaffected by the mode of transportation I happened to be using at the time. Also, public transportation is more environmentall…
He didn't say that bus riders are less intelligent. If you talk to a random person they are pretty dumb, and you find random people at busses. There isn't more to it than that.
Personally I experienced the average person when I did my military duty. Most people were forced to attend so you got a good slice of what society looks like. And yes, the average person there wasn't that bright, the discussions I heard there was the dumbest I've ever experienced.