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Quote Meritocracy Unquote

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Re: Quote Meritocracy Unquote

#61

Post by scarmig »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #54
jacques_chester wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hand waving is pretty much the one currency every school of political economy deals in. I used to be a fully dressed libertard. But the world is too complex for any one humanly comprehensible theory to completely explain. Writing software for a living brought that home. When I got around to reading Hayek, I felt like I was revisiting familiar territory. I realised that I was doing the same thing as the various leftie…

Interesting Rothbard is actually a fascist, like a real fascist of the old school. He just usually dresses his fascism up in the pretty colors of capitalism but he choose not to do so in the following essay in which he: * "dog whistles" racism and sexism, * advocates a police state beyond the rule of law "Cops must be unleashed, and allowed to administer instant punishment, subject of course to liability when they ar…

I have plenty of issues with Rothbard... but, a fascist? His capitalism is a very different capitalism than what most of us would associate with the word capitalism. Even your quote of requiring police to be liable for their faults isn't something that any police force in the United States is subject to.

The key to improving liberty is trying to find allies, not trying to find enemies.

Re: Quote Meritocracy Unquote

#62

Post by erikpukinskis »

kamaal wrote: post #58

As somebody who has pondered this problem over a while. You can give different names to this problem. You could also look at this from a Karma perspective. You could also question this in very different ways. I've tried to study this problem in many ways. To an extent I can tell you karma works in very mysterious ways, its slow and there are simply too many factors which are often unknown to us to make a judgement on…

> Ultimately karma works. It actually does.

What is that, your opinion? What is that based on? Does it apply to the kid who got caught selling pot for the third time, because he didn't know what else to do with his life, because he grew up in a place and a family where no one gave him any other choices, and is now spending the rest of it in prison?

Here's my opinion: Karma works sometimes. And other times people are crushed by the ugliness in this world.

Re: Quote Meritocracy Unquote

#63

Post by JoachimSchipper »

mindcrime wrote: post #31

First of all, I absolutely agree with the general sentiment of this article. And I don't mean to nitpick, but I just want to point out something about this bit: But we don’t ask why they know their stuff. How did they get into a good university? Depending on exactly how you define "good university", I contend that the importance of this may be overstated. For the sake of argument, let's go with the idea that to many…

This is bad statistics. You're cherry-picking the state schools to consider (plus what Evbn said). The S&P 500 has ~500 CEOs, so some random deviation is to be expected.

(This is purely a methodological comment; I haven't looked at any data either way. I agree, at least, that going to a state school should not mean that your life is over.)

Re: Quote Meritocracy Unquote

#64

Post by JoachimSchipper »

CleanedStar wrote: post #10
coolsunglasses wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Don't let your own notions of use-value blind you to what the market cares about: exchange value. This has been the key lesson of my career as a programmer and entrepreneur. Reading Marx made me a better capitalist. I tell people that ask for book recommendations to read Marx all the time and they sneer at me even though they know I'm not a Marxist.

I have no clue how people who don't understand Marxian political economy can understand things like the huge dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, and then the crash. Or the (sub-prime) real estate bubble. Or how the finance sector is growing, in GDP percentage wise and in power, relative to the economy which produces real commodities. Then again, according to polls (and my experience), the majority of Americans believe…

> Then again, (...) [o]ver 70% [of Americans] believe in "God, Heaven, the resurrection of Christ, survival of the soul after death, miracles, the virgin birth, the devil and hell". If blindness to the way the world really works is so overwhelming with these fantasies, (...)

There is a way to phrase this sentiment without alienating quite as many decent people. Try to find it next time.

(I, too, am an atheist; but I don't see a need to enforce atheism on HN.)

Re: Quote Meritocracy Unquote

#65

Post by kislayverma »

The "Outliers" argument. The only way for a meritocratic system to work is by creating an absolutely level starting plane for all competitors. Which is in itself somewhat ironic because meritocracy reminds of capitalism (indirectly, I admit) while the level playing field requirement suggests a socialistic-ish system.

Re: Quote Meritocracy Unquote

#67

Post by kamaal »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #62
kamaal wrote: post #58

As somebody who has pondered this problem over a while. You can give different names to this problem. You could also look at this from a Karma perspective. You could also question this in very different ways. I've tried to study this problem in many ways. To an extent I can tell you karma works in very mysterious ways, its slow and there are simply too many factors which are often unknown to us to make a judgement on…

> Ultimately karma works. It actually does. What is that, your opinion? What is that based on? Does it apply to the kid who got caught selling pot for the third time, because he didn't know what else to do with his life, because he grew up in a place and a family where no one gave him any other choices, and is now spending the rest of it in prison? Here's my opinion: Karma works sometimes. And other times people are…

Yes its my opinion.

Karma works because people judge what is fair based on their opinion and not on facts, simply because too many facts are unknown to take a decision.

>>And other times people are crushed by the ugliness in this world.

Yes this is true, but if you are going to keep talking why you will fail regardless how hard you work. You will always find enough reasons why you shouldn't try because you will fail anyway. Thereby you will never try, somebody else sure will. And by the virtue of merely being there will win. And then thereby simply going into this deeper cycle of victim hood.

Re: Quote Meritocracy Unquote

#68

Post by CleanedStar »

jacques_chester wrote: post #43
steveklabnik wrote: post #2

> They have one test, the market has another. This is actually one of the biggest things I appreciate from studying Marx: the reminder that 'use-value'[1] and 'exchange-value'[2] are two, separate things, and while I generally want things based on how I can use them, the market doesn't care about that at all. Startups would be wise to heed Marx's words here, and remember this difference. Your job as a startup is to m…

As a disclaimer, I only made it through a few chapters of Capital before I gave it away. This distinction was not invented by Marx. In fact a lot of Marxism was invented by Marx; most of it was an extension of the prevailing classical economics. He read Smith and Ricardo. The key problem with original Marxism, as it was with classical economics, was relying on the labor theory of value. Marx runs with that to come up…

You say that the modern economic system as it runs has large oscillations and busts, and you are perturbed that Marxists say "I told you so" when a bust happens. But US mainstream economists through the twentieth century did not say that the economy came with large oscillations and busts. How many US economists even in the late 1990s said that the economy would run into big busts in the future? The people who predict correctly are marginalized by a media controlled by capital, and the Jim Cramers of the world are free to continue their panglossian bromides and predictions, no matter how often they turn up false.

Five hundred years ago, the HN class equivalents would be clergy and lower (and some upper) nobles. The majority of people would be praising feudalism, saying that feudalism was common sense etc. Now we are five centuries later, in a different economic system, and the majority of people here praise the economic system they are in as the best one, saying it makes sense etc. In 1935, the intelligentsia in the USSR praised their economic system, said it was common sense etc. - why shouldn't they have? The western world was in a depression while their economy went full steam ahead. Despite the world having seen four economic systems (hunting-gathering, slavery, feudalism, capitalism), and the sparks of a possible fifth one (socialism), it's not surprising that the majority of people under the current economic system see it as being, unlike its three predecessors, as permanent, lasting forever, as being common sense etc. The majority of people felt the same way about serfdom centuries ago. Many felt this way even one century ago, when most of Europe was run by kings.

Re: Quote Meritocracy Unquote

#69

Post by jacques_chester »

CleanedStar wrote: post #68
jacques_chester wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a disclaimer, I only made it through a few chapters of Capital before I gave it away. This distinction was not invented by Marx. In fact a lot of Marxism was invented by Marx; most of it was an extension of the prevailing classical economics. He read Smith and Ricardo. The key problem with original Marxism, as it was with classical economics, was relying on the labor theory of value. Marx runs with that to come up…

You say that the modern economic system as it runs has large oscillations and busts, and you are perturbed that Marxists say "I told you so" when a bust happens. But US mainstream economists through the twentieth century did not say that the economy came with large oscillations and busts. How many US economists even in the late 1990s said that the economy would run into big busts in the future? The people who predict…

Marxists are not the only ones saying "I told you so", is my larger point.

Every Hedgehog casts the events in the world in terms of their unifying theory of everything.

Re: Quote Meritocracy Unquote

#70

Post by chrischen »

Evbn wrote: post #40
chrischen wrote: post #32

Isn't the universe by default a meritocracy? Millions of years of evolution proves this... And society can either have policies that work against this default meritocracy or with it to speed it up.

Define "merit" and whether such a thing is desirable to me. I don't have much love for a cockroach's merit.

I define merit as deserving to live. Because you can't cheat the universe, if you live then by definition you have merit. You can't create merit, it already is. You can only align yourself with merit.
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