Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 106 posts

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#91

Post by stcredzero »

neilk wrote: post #79
michaelochurch wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, the situation is different because we're smarter than they are ;) First, we aren't the real elite. Founders are yeoman project managers at best, engineers are less than that-- not even able to raise a family in the Valley-- and even the venture capitalists are, for the most part, merely junior elite. I'm not so sure about that claim, anyway, given that IQ is relative. The intellectual edge of the modern el…

> Average people were a foot shorter, and were probably at an IQ level around 70-75. A foot shorter, yes (we know this from all sorts of physical evidence) but how do we know the average IQ? They also might have spent their mental processing power differently. Medieval people trained their memory much more - I think this also extended to the average peasant, but I can't find a reference right now.

What I read from authors like Jared Diamond indicates to me that this is too often couched in ethnocentric terms and was heavily dependent on nutrition. In a highly extractive, oppressive state, I could believe people might be oppressed into a lower IQ. I'd also suspect that those regions would be out-competed by regions where the average people had better diets and whose intelligence is average.

In the wilds of Papua New Guinea, lots of highlanders meeting us there would consider us clumsy and stupid and wonder how we run a complex civilization.

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#92

Post by BadCookie »

druswick wrote: post #35
tnuc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...it is as close to a true meritocracy it has ever been because the ones with merit rise to the top. And then; >Nobody's saying children of farmers or auto-mechanics are any less able. They just don't get the best training. So it's a meritocracy but the training isn't available to all? Doesn't sound like a meritocracy to me.

I think the article did a poor job of representing the recent efforts by elite universities to open up access to the children of farmers and auto-mechanics. http://npc.fas.harvard.edu/ There's still more to be done, sure, but it's important to mention that this isn't as bad as it was even 10 years ago.

Interesting. I'm the daughter of an electrician. I was admitted to Harvard in 2002, and at that time I believe they wanted my parents to pay about $12,000 for my first year. My parents couldn't afford it, and I did not attend. If that calculator is to be believed, Harvard would now expect less than $3000 from my parents. I probably would have attended had that been the case back then.

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#93

Post by druswick »

BadCookie wrote: post #92
druswick wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the article did a poor job of representing the recent efforts by elite universities to open up access to the children of farmers and auto-mechanics. http://npc.fas.harvard.edu/ There's still more to be done, sure, but it's important to mention that this isn't as bad as it was even 10 years ago.

Interesting. I'm the daughter of an electrician. I was admitted to Harvard in 2002, and at that time I believe they wanted my parents to pay about $12,000 for my first year. My parents couldn't afford it, and I did not attend. If that calculator is to be believed, Harvard would now expect less than $3000 from my parents. I probably would have attended had that been the case back then.

I think things changed a lot around 2009? I'm just going by memory... but I think that's when a lot of the ivies drastically changed tuition assistance based on income.

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#94

Post by druswick »

drakeandrews wrote: post #58
druswick wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely! This was the most line of reasoning in the article with the most impact. Property taxes are often progressive, disproportionally affecting the relatively wealthy. That's good. But when the benefits are collected and spent too locally, it means areas with higher property values also get better services. It takes away the progressive quality of property taxes. Continue this to an extreme: property taxes tha…

I think you've gotten your definition of progressive muddled. Property taxes are considered to be progressive because property values are widely considered to correlate strongly with income and wealth. Spending those taxes locally (or apportioning funds for local amenaties based on local tax revenue) is regressive, because increased benefit is then therefore correlated strongly with increased wealth and income. There…

I think we agree. I didn't put it as succinctly. Progressive tax. Regressive distribution. That's an excellent way of looking at it.

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#95

Post by michaelochurch »

wamatt wrote: post #87
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…

>Every elite in history has called itself a "meritocracy". Who defines "merit"? I'd concede that the word itself may have been used questionably to capitalize on the associated ideological goodwill. However, simply stating it may have been abused, does not automatically preclude an actual meritocratic group from existing. For example, while many generally dishonest individuals (eg sociopaths) may profess to being tot…

In summary, while perhaps uncommon, it is possible to for a meritocracy to flourish given excessive care and thoughtfulness is spent designing fair and useful incentives and metrics.

When I get back to blogging (probably in a week or so) one of the topics I want to hit is Smart People x War.

War is the stupidest thing imaginable: a negative-sum slugfest. It's inhumane, unjust, and wrong. So, naturally, most Smart People hate it.

However, what is the best thing for Smart People? For an irreparable fissure to occur within the Elite, splitting it into two or more pieces that want nothing more to destroy each other. (This tends to result in War.) If you look at history, the times of greatest meritocracy are also times of war.

When was the golden age of American scientific and technological R&D? The Cold War.

If you let the Elite function as one, they collude to keep Smart People down. They take all the resources and society stagnates. If you rip them in two and put the halves in mortal conflict, it creates jobs for Smart People.

So there is a weird symbiosis going on. War itself is horrendous, but the only thing that gives Smart People a chance (opportunities to ascend, rather than being preemptively shot down by a defensive Elite) is severe crisis, which War tends to produce.

Capitalism is supposed to have this effect (fissures in the Elite, creating competition and opportunity for middle-class talent) but corporate capitalism doesn't, because even if firms compete economically, they collude on who's cool and who's not. See also: VC-istan, which is more like a postmodern corporation (with founders as semi-independent PMs) than what it claims to be.

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#96

Post by vannevar »

cbeach wrote: post #77
vannevar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wealth…

I disagree. A threshold amount of wealth makes it easier to make more, sure. But IMO that threshold is low (i.e. enough to cover the basics of life). Rich people can lose wealth far faster, and far more easily than poor, trust me. The difference is that people who are capable of becoming wealthy are generally able to make more (through sensibly investing their cash and working hard in good jobs)

Rich people can lose wealth far faster, and far more easily than poor, trust me.

It is a tautology to say that you can lose more money the more money you have, because anyone (rich or poor) can simply choose to throw it away. That doesn't change the mathematical fact that interest compounds and that more wealth translates into more income in our economic system.

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#97

Post by michaelochurch »

ef4 wrote: post #85
pdonis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noted for a while that a significant fraction of those successful in business, especially in certain sectors, are basically glorified street hustlers. Exactly. The Economist article lost me at the point where it said this: The top 1% have seen their incomes soar because of the premium that a globalised high-tech economy places on brainy people. No, the top 1% have seen their incomes soar because they have been a…

> Exhibit A: Wall Street investment banks. Then you're thinking of the top 0.01%. The people right at the 99th percentile are still considered peons by Wall Street investment banking standards. And the kind of money that puts you at 1% (about $500k annually for a household) isn't enough to get you special access to powerful politicians. That costs a lot more. I agree with you that we have a corrupt elite. But I prefe…

People use "1 percent" as a euphemism for the global elite because (a) it's fewer symbols, and (b) it's not natural for us to think of such low proportions (e.g. 0.005%).

You are absolutely right, by the way. The enemies are the Davos Men, not the people who worked their asses off to get a few million.

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#98

Post by lutusp »

vannevar wrote: post #96
cbeach wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. A threshold amount of wealth makes it easier to make more, sure. But IMO that threshold is low (i.e. enough to cover the basics of life). Rich people can lose wealth far faster, and far more easily than poor, trust me. The difference is that people who are capable of becoming wealthy are generally able to make more (through sensibly investing their cash and working hard in good jobs)

Rich people can lose wealth far faster, and far more easily than poor, trust me. It is a tautology to say that you can lose more money the more money you have, because anyone (rich or poor) can simply choose to throw it away. That doesn't change the mathematical fact that interest compounds and that more wealth translates into more income in our economic system.

Complete agreement. I've been writing about the mathematics behind a well-known feedback effect in which ... get ready for a cliche ... the rich get richer and the poorer get poorer. Simply put, and as you point out, it's caused by compound interest:

http://arachnoid.com/wrong/index.html#Economics

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#99

Post by pdonis »

clarkmoody wrote: post #81
pdonis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noted for a while that a significant fraction of those successful in business, especially in certain sectors, are basically glorified street hustlers. Exactly. The Economist article lost me at the point where it said this: The top 1% have seen their incomes soar because of the premium that a globalised high-tech economy places on brainy people. No, the top 1% have seen their incomes soar because they have been a…

The top level comment mentioned extreme sacrifice as a way to move to the 95th percentile. I argue that investment bankers also make extreme sacrifice to stay where they are, in the form of 80 hour weeks, horrible family life, etc. Anger and jealousy toward the "1%" is a dangerous road for a country to go down. Besides, without investment banks and private equity firms, an essential part of the economy -- namely, buy…

I argue that investment bankers also make extreme sacrifice to stay where they are, in the form of 80 hour weeks, horrible family life, etc.

I wasn't claiming investment bankers don't make sacrifices. I was claiming that they don't create wealth; they just siphon it from other people's pockets into their own. The fact that they work 80 hour weeks so they can siphon more wealth doesn't make it right.

without investment banks and private equity firms, an essential part of the economy -- namely, buying and selling companies -- would be missing and we would be worse off.

Investment banks do make money on mergers and acquisitions, but that's not where they make most of it. Most of it is made by finding suckers to take the wrong end of zero sum trades.

Corporations do not want free markets; they want government-sponsored monopolies.

Quite true; they want them so much that they are willing to pay good money for them.

We the people should hold our government responsible for succumbing to corporate special interests instead of blaming the companies once they are granted such privilege.

I disagree; we should blame both. The corporations for buying government favors, and the government for allowing them to be for sale.

Re: How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself

#100

Post by stcredzero »

michaelochurch wrote: post #28
chime wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fantasti…

it is as close to a true meritocracy it has ever been because the ones with merit rise to the top. How? Please explain what magical elevator makes this happen, because VC-istan seems to be a combination of connections and luck, large organizations tend to be clueless and political, and academia has been dying for at least a generation and a half. What I've seen may be limited and atypical, but I haven't seen anything…

> How? Please explain what magical elevator makes this happen, because VC-istan seems to be a combination of connections and luck, large organizations tend to be clueless and political, and academia has been dying for at least a generation and a half. What I've seen may be limited and atypical, but I haven't seen anything that looks like this. I've seen the same nonsense that humanity has been repeating for thousands of years.

The problem may well be the "human condition" as substrate. In addition to talent in whatever domain or particular desirable skill-set, a person also needs to negotiate other people. If a large project is to be accomplished, the talents and effort of large numbers of people need to be marshaled. Unfortunately, our heuristics for interaction were tuned to keeping together small bands of people primarily concerned with food and defense. ("Paleo" BS notwithstanding, but this much is certainly true.)

What we have isn't a magical elevator. It's more like our brains doing Boolean algebra and predicate calculus. On average, we humans are notoriously unreliable at logic. So much so, we have terms for dozens of dysfunctions which happen all the time. (Fallacies.) With proper training and attention, we can be quite good, however. So it is with "meritocracy" and all of its various doppelgangers. The "cream" does rise to the top, but so does the scum. Talent can help you. "Talent" in the form of attributes that let you sleep your way to the top also help you. You can make it on sheer talent, but the ability to wage subtle, deniable psychological warfare on your rivals to diminish their confidence and shine will help you too. So will realpolitik maneuverings or just being physically attractive.

Many will just put it down to getting older and bitter, but the older I get, the more I realize that we really are (mostly metaphorical) feces-flinging, screeching, long-legged savannah-apes that just so happen to have exceptional individuals and exceptional moments of godlike beauty, wisdom, and insight. Neal Stephenson: “The difference between stupid and intelligent people – and this is true whether or not they are well-educated – is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.” The muck and mess of human interaction is every bit as subtle as it is unsavory.

(And the older I get, the stupider I feel.)

Post reply on HN