Meritocracy

[vulcanlogician]

I saw this afterwards, we are having this debate about social welfare in our country, a lot of people say that the people from the romani ethnicitie that are on social aid are freeloaders, but most of them would get low end jobs because of the Romanian extrem rasism, how will want that?

My favorite thing is how things that can potentially solve problems are dismissed out of hand because they aren't perfect solutions. Don't get me wrong. Good solutions are better than bad solutions. But (and racists and nationalists seem especially guilty of this) some people seem to say "THIS perfect solution, or NO SOLUTION AT ALL!"

Fuck that mindset. We have to make things better one step at a time. If you need a "perfect solution" or a "final solution" there is a historical model you can follow. When the walls come crashing down and you realize that you will be held accountable for your crimes, there is a reasonable course of action you can take.

Or... if you're feeling experimental, you can try to treat all mankind as your brothers and sisters. Sure, if you do that you risk getting kicked around a bit by those who would take advantage of you. But you won't ever be placed in a situation where shooting yourself in the head as the Allies approach Berlin seems more preferable to owning up to what you've done.

Long story short: there are worse things than welfare mothers. And those who speak loudly against socialism and welfare are likely to be one of those "worse things."

[notimportant1234]

I saw this afterwards, we are having this debate about social welfare in our country, a lot of people say that the people from the romani ethnicitie that are on social aid are freeloaders, but most of them would get low end jobs because of the Romanian extrem rasism, how will want that?

My favorite thing is how things that can potentially solve problems are dismissed out of hand because they aren't perfect solutions. Don't get me wrong. Good solutions are better than bad solutions. But (and racists and nationalists seem especially guilty of this) some people seem to say "THIS perfect solution, or NO SOLUTION AT ALL!"

Fuck that mindset. We have to make things better one step at a time. If you need a "perfect solution" or a "final solution" there is a historical model you can follow. When the walls come crashing down and you realize that you will be held accountable for your crimes, there is a reasonable course of action you can take.

Or... if you're feeling experimental, you can try to treat all mankind as your brothers and sisters. Sure, if you do that you risk getting kicked around a bit by those who would take advantage of you. But you won't ever be placed in a situation where shooting yourself in the head as the Allies approach Berlin seems more preferable to owning up to what you've done.

Long story short: there are worse things than welfare mothers. And those who speak loudly against socialism and welfare are likely to be one of those "worse things."

 I think a good way to tackle this is to increase social mobility, mainly educating the people. 
  But, in the situation of Romania, the chances of that happening are extremely low.

[tackattack]

social mobility is great when it's not tied to economic mobility. They try and do that here in the states at a macro level and I'm not sure it's effective. Moving the rights of groups like the #metoo'ers based on their perceived oppression. should granting more mobility be based on income class, aptitude, education, color, gender, etc. who knows? I think if we're going to go Macro the class should reflect the highest level organized that is desired to be affected. Similar to nationalists in that we should all be Americans in America at the macro level and then increase social mobility for Americans. Then you could go to the micro level to the individual or family and say the under-privileged individuals and families need an increase in social mobility, which I believe is the goal of welfare. The problem is neither of the qualifiers for any of those classifications is clearly defined, nor is the support qualified.

I think education about the social strata and policies of this like are important, perhaps more important than an MBA in horticulture with regard to improving awareness, but I'm not sure that a meritocracy based on education level is any more likely to be a successful measure of what is worth of merit.

Perhaps smaller incentives with clearer defined criteria and a practical working out of the loopholes. Did you see the article about medium-to-rich kids getting emancipated just to get scholarships. People are going to exploit the loopholes so the smaller the impact the easier to manage and then widen it out gradually.

[Javaman]

I think people are (ideally) entitled to 100% of the fruits of their labor. But no one seems to be able to be figure out how to do things without some exploitation. It's like exploitation is some kind of constant that makes production possible. I think Marx had a pretty good idea of a meritocracy, but all the attempts to realize his vision are worse (in the exploitation department) than capitalism.

To me, elimination of all exploitation is essential if you are aiming for a "meritocracy." I mean, you can't call it a meritocracy if your "merit" can be claimed by those to whom it does not belong.

One thing I think we could do is implement free education (all the way through grad school) to students who demonstrate mastery. Scholarships and such do this to some degree, but they are more like a lottery (much of the time) than a functionary system that rewards merit.

Listen, I'm not a fan of Marxism particularly. We live in a meritocracy now. It's simply the measure of merit is how much money you make. I think we could step that in a better direction by saying "how much money you make with eco friendly means" or "how much money you make without stepping on other people". I'd prefer a non-capitalist focus like "the most intelligent well meaning philanthrope is the top of the hierarchy and the rest are ranked by IQ, EQ and intention" because I do feel capitalism exacerbates greed. I don't lean towards the strictly deterministic because I'm not sure it takes into account unknown variables very well.

I'm not certain we agree on a definition of fruits, or what exploitation is in these instances, but we can agree that a great first step would be education. It would also be the best place to small scale a meritorious system.

Yes labor is a merit, generating useful ideas is merit, moving the economy is merit. In some places, having lots of likes facebook or youtube is worthy of merit by ad companies, tricking the population to buy things it doesn't need, being a celebrity, convincing people that debt is good... all those are merited somewhere. I think one of the few useful ways to work on societal change is to examine and manipulate it's framework. What would you prefer to see at the top of the dominance hierarchy we call society: ability, beauty, money, power, wealth, education, work ethic, crops produced, etc. and why?

No, we don't. There's no point in carrying on this conversation until you acknowledge this. Constructing an alternate definition of merit just doesn't cut it.

Systemic racism, sexism (and lots of other isms) are baked into our society. The fact is that being white, male, heterosexual, realatively wealthy, and Christian confers such a tremendous advantage in our society that fretting about an individual's "merits" is not just a distraction, it makes things worse.

[tackattack]

@Javaman - I believe we do. As I stated back in post 4 meritocracy is the holding of power by people selected on the basis of their ability. That ability in our capitalist economics is on the basis of their ability to attain wealth. As was pointed out one of the best descriptors of success is how much money you inherit. That's the 1%.  20 percent of US households held 77 percent of total household wealth in 2016, more than triple what the middle class held (defined as the middle 60 percent of the usual income distribution) but the 1% currently holds, all by it's lonesome, more wealth than the entire middle class. We live in a dominance hierarchy. Currently it's topped by the merit of a fat wallet. I propose there are better standards of merit, and just wanted to discuss those. Systemic racism, classism, sexism, etc. are from the inequality produced by the pareto distribution of wealth. My point was that it's so much worse than, what most would feel is ideal, or even what most think of as the top American earners.
side video on his point-

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I think as the rich get richer, we, socially, should move the goalposts to redefine what rich is. I think some people individually try and do that by valuing loyalty and family above getting bonus at work, etc. I just wanted to verbalize some other merits that are more worthy and discuss how to make for towards a more egalitarian society. Not that I think I have any answers, just that it's good to discuss ideas. If I'm too biased and privileged to participate in the discussion well I guess I'll just stfu, because talking makes things worse.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don’t think that altering the de facto metrics will do anything to address the issue. If we made environmental conscientiousness the metric, the 1percent wouldn’t suddenly stop amassing wealth and start amassing carbon credits.

They’d continue to amass wealth while laughing at the rubes, pretty much business as usual. Hell, they’d just buy the carbon credits while they were at it for the sweet cdg.

As distasteful as it may sound, the only practical recourse for distributing wealth or power more equitably or by some merit that doesn’t resolve down to a bank account, is to literally take those amassed piles of influence and ones and zeros.

Sucks, but that’s the bind we got ourselves into. Should have Strangled it in the crib, but we didn’t, and now we’ll have to slog through shit to fix the problem we created.

[tackattack]

So we can't trust the rich to have our best interests in mind, that wipe out using charitable contributions as a rebuttal. I'm fairly certain my CEOs don't work 100 times harder, produce 100 times more opportunities or live 100 times happier lives than the average worker either. What about unequally increasing the tax burden on inheritance and investments of the rich. There we are asking the rich to take voluntary pay cuts which seems terribly idealistic and ineffective. Do we just need a robin hood to rob the rich and give to the poor? Maybe not necessarily all the way down to socialism, but in at least a more equitable distribution?

[The Grand Nudger]

There’s nothing voluntary about taxation.

Just ask the IRS

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Can’t help but add that people should look into the intentional defunding and defanging of the irs, and how that plays out in who gets audited and ends up owing- as well as the effective tax rate for the one percent compared to we lowly middle class worms.

If they had to deal with the irs we know, they’d be begging for a higher rate over enhanced enforcement.

[Cecelia]

No. Not even close.

We live in a society where it's more about who you know, and less about what you know. And this Presidency is the perfect example of that. Each cabinet member of this Presidency is so wholly unqualified for the position they're in, and only got the jobs because they suck up enough or are friends with the President. Betsy DeVos literally bought her position as the head of the Department of Education. If I did as poorly in my interview to become a teacher, as she did in her interview to become head of the Department of Education, I would not have a job today.

[tackattack]

Cecilia, I think we agree that the current system is bad and that top people in the hierarchy aren't even basically qualified for their positions. You're just claiming it's about people not money, but if the people you know are rich, then you can get the job because money=power. So in your particular example what do you think would help head positions... should we elect all public leaders? Should the Institutions they are over vet their governmental leadership? got an idea for a stop gap?