How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself • Hacker News Board

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#11

Post by bingobangobongo » Sat, Feb 09, 2013, 2:21 PM UTC

CJefferson wrote: post #3

davidiach wrote: post #2

This 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.

The 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 compl…

The 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.

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#12

Post by drakeandrews » Sat, Feb 09, 2013, 2:26 PM UTC

This, 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 Affirmative action is mentioned as outdated, but perhaps it is a sign that american society still feels guilty over the fact that not sixty years ago large swathes were still arguing against the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?)

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#13

Post by stcredzero » Sat, Feb 09, 2013, 2:27 PM UTC

An "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 ;)

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#14

Post by stcredzero » Sat, Feb 09, 2013, 2:28 PM UTC

maeon3 wrote: post #10

youngerdryas wrote: post #4

When 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 Mas…

Meritocracy 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 lif…

Merit == effort? I don't think so.

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#15

Post by Ilverin » Sat, Feb 09, 2013, 2:31 PM UTC

kryptiskt wrote: post #8

"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…

The author might respond "They are less gameable than the 'standardised' tests, and the 'standardised' tests are even narrower than the intelligence tests".

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#16

Post by michaelochurch » Sat, Feb 09, 2013, 2:37 PM UTC

Every 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.

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#17

Post by paulhauggis » Sat, Feb 09, 2013, 2:40 PM UTC

CJefferson wrote: post #3

davidiach wrote: post #2

This 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.

The 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 compl…

Making 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.

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#18

Post by chime » Sat, Feb 09, 2013, 2:40 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #13

An "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 ;)

I 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.

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#19

Post by vannevar » Sat, Feb 09, 2013, 2:44 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #13

An "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 ;)

Yes, the article brushes aside the idea of wealth redistribution, but the simple truth is that, all else being equal, the more money you have, the easier it is to make more of it. It's like a marathon that gets easier as you go on. Even the wealthy acknowledge it: "The first million is the hardest." So we have (or had) a progressive system of taxation to attempt to counter the natural flow of wealth toward the wealthy.

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#20

Post by Uchikoma » Sat, Feb 09, 2013, 2:45 PM UTC

michaelochurch wrote: post #16

Every 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 mor…

"What we actually have in the US is some degree of social mobility within the middle class."

The article seems to contradict that:

"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."