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Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

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Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#61

Post by Tade0 »

newyankee wrote: post #2

One of the biggest lie sold in the West is that if you work hard, give everything you should succeed. This has grave implications on policy and really blinds people born with a silver spoon to the real problems in society as they have a 'i deserve it and they don't syndrome'. Contrast this with a poor society that is growing rapidly where you see islands of wealths with certain individuals, at least people over there…

> Contrast this with a poor society that is growing rapidly where you see islands of wealths with certain individuals, at least people over there do not harbor illusions of meritocracy.

Actually(speaking from experience) these islands of wealth only reinforce such illusions in poor countries.

The logic is as following: apparently that person is exceptional and the fact that they've managed to get wealthy within one generation is proof.

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#62

Post by new_hackers »

sametmax wrote: post #32
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #22

One of the biggest issues that discussions of inequality ignore is generational issues. People view wealth as an individual thing. However, if you look at American society, probably the majority has been generational. Each generation worked and saved to better their children's lives. An example of this is probably in immigrants. Many people came with practically nothing but he clothes on their back. They took whateve…

I'm not sure the Y-generation would agree it worked for them. The student loads have never been such a burden. The cost of housing skyrocketed. If they want to eat for the same price as their grand parents they need to eat junk food. I mean: my grand parent could buy their own house while only one was working, and a job that didn't require any diploma. But the flat screen prices are very cheap so they got that going…

There is truth to this, however there has also been major changes to how we live and the expectations.

"my grand parent could buy their own house while only one was working, and a job that didn't require any diploma"

Yes, but they probably couldn't buy a house anywhere in the world they wanted. The house size was probably much smaller than the sizes of today's suburban houses. I would argue that one could by a small, economical home in the midwest.

"If they want to eat for the same price as their grand parents they need to eat junk food."

Again, look at the diet lifestyle choices of Gen Y versus their grandparents. My grandparent (I'm a Gen Xer) told me stories of eating onions for a month because his parents were migrant workers and they worked picking onions when they were in season.

Even today, it is possible to eat simply (rice, beans, in-season vegetables and fruits) for a low-price. You won't be eating much meat, and you won't be eating "luxury" items. But that is very similar to how people ate in the 30's, 40's and early 50's.

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#63

Post by jonathanstrange »

kaolti wrote: post #44
rectang wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on who you are. If there are structural factors arrayed against you, less success and more failure will come your way for the same amount of work.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean that "work hard and you'll succeed"is a lie.

With hard work you can be successful in the sense of being able to afford a basic living or being moderately middle class - which is enough for many people. The deception which looks like a lie to some is in implicating that one percenters got their wealth from hard work - most of them didn't.

AFAIK, statistics show that in industrialized Western countries the wealthy people who are seemingly successful (because of their wealth) have inherited most of their wealth or at least benefited extremely from improved conditions provided by already rich parents. In contrast to this, vertical social mobility remains fairly low and the overall gap between poor & middle class and the richest has been increasing in almost all capitalist Western countries since WW2.

So it's not literally a lie, it's just sometimes kind of dishonest and misleading. In most professions it's practically impossible to get rich from hard work.

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#64

Post by castlecrasher2 »

kaolti wrote: post #16
newyankee wrote: post #2

One of the biggest lie sold in the West is that if you work hard, give everything you should succeed. This has grave implications on policy and really blinds people born with a silver spoon to the real problems in society as they have a 'i deserve it and they don't syndrome'. Contrast this with a poor society that is growing rapidly where you see islands of wealths with certain individuals, at least people over there…

Why is it a lie? Do you disagree that hard work leads to success, within limits?

I recently read Stealing the Corner Office which gives great insight into this. The premise is that incompetent high-level executives exist, so the answer isn't simply hard work.

The author doesn't specifically state it but the problem, at least in my case, is one's definition of work; I don't think I'm alone when I used to think my code spoke for itself and that's that. There are a few problems with that but essentially the issue is many of us myopically ignore other seemingly unimportant work-related tasks such as building relationships, personal marketing (I know that sounds like a buzzword phrase but it's true), among other examples.

Basically, at its core I believe that hard work does lead to success but our definition of work gets in the way.

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#66

Post by dsacco »

sol_remmy wrote: post #58

Everyone in this thread directly supports inequality through their buying decisions and I'm callin' them out. Anytime you use Netflix, Google, HackerNews is supporting inequality. Every time you bought a Harry Potter book as a kid you supported inequality. You're giving more money to the winners. If you want to reduce inequality, then buy books from unpopular authors. Use unpopular OSes like TempleOS instead of givin…

I'm not going to respond to most of your comment, but this suggestion is pretty weird:

> Use unpopular OSes like TempleOS instead of giving even more market share to Google/Apple/Microsoft

...Why? You could also just use Linux or BSD. TempleOS seems like a very odd suggestion for people looking to cut out non-free operating systems cold turkey.

Edit: In case this isn't clear, I'm responding to the commenter's commercialism thesis. I mean free as in beer, not as in speech.

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#67

Post by lmcarreiro »

sol_remmy wrote: post #58

Everyone in this thread directly supports inequality through their buying decisions and I'm callin' them out. Anytime you use Netflix, Google, HackerNews is supporting inequality. Every time you bought a Harry Potter book as a kid you supported inequality. You're giving more money to the winners. If you want to reduce inequality, then buy books from unpopular authors. Use unpopular OSes like TempleOS instead of givin…

"And don't watch anything Disney." It's difficult since Star Wars now is Disney. But you made a really good point.

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#68

Post by alain94040 »

kaolti wrote: post #30
mistermann wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an absolute, binary statement, yes, because it is not always true, not even close. Hard work is only one component of success. Physical attractiveness and charisma are often at least as important, even though logically they seem irrelevant. Dealing successfully with humans is often not terribly intuitive.

I don't think anyone is saying they are irrelevant, nothing is black and white. For practical purposes however, hard work does lead to success.

I can think of plenty of people who work way harder than me, and have clearly no path to ever being successful (financially).

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#69

Post by dasil003 »

rectang wrote: post #28
hliyan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the problem is that the results of merit accumulate geometrically, so that beyond a certain threshold, some people just start rapidly pulling ahead of the pack?

That's a choice that society has made, through laws and institutions which benefit the wealthy -- such as treating corporations as people. It doesn't have to be that way.

The problem is the people who really understand how it works are largely the ones that benefitted from the current system and thus have no incentive to change it.

Re: Talent, luck and success: simulating meritocracy and inequality

#70

Post by sol_remmy »

dsacco wrote: post #66
sol_remmy wrote: post #58

Everyone in this thread directly supports inequality through their buying decisions and I'm callin' them out. Anytime you use Netflix, Google, HackerNews is supporting inequality. Every time you bought a Harry Potter book as a kid you supported inequality. You're giving more money to the winners. If you want to reduce inequality, then buy books from unpopular authors. Use unpopular OSes like TempleOS instead of givin…

I'm not going to respond to most of your comment, but this suggestion is pretty weird: > Use unpopular OSes like TempleOS instead of giving even more market share to Google/Apple/Microsoft ...Why? You could also just use Linux or BSD. TempleOS seems like a very odd suggestion for people looking to cut out non-free operating systems cold turkey. Edit: In case this isn't clear, I'm responding to the commenter's commerc…

You're still giving market share to the "open source winners". Linus and RedHat have both made piles of money.
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