Posted on 06/01/2021 7:40:37 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
Meritocracy has become a leading social ideal. Politicians across the ideological spectrum continually return to the theme that the rewards of life—money, power, jobs, university admission—should be distributed according to skill and effort. The most common metaphor is the ‘even playing field’ upon which players can rise to the position that fits their merit. Conceptually and morally, meritocracy is presented as the opposite of systems such as hereditary aristocracy, in which one’s social position is determined by the lottery of birth. Under meritocracy, wealth and advantage are merit’s rightful compensation, not the fortuitous windfall of external events.
Most people don’t just think the world should be run meritocratically, they think it is meritocratic. In the UK, 84 per cent of respondents to the 2009 British Social Attitudes survey stated that hard work is either ‘essential’ or ‘very important’ when it comes to getting ahead, and in 2016 the Brookings Institute found that 69 per cent of Americans believe that people are rewarded for intelligence and skill. Respondents in both countries believe that external factors, such as luck and coming from a wealthy family, are much less important. While these ideas are most pronounced in these two countries, they are popular across the globe.
Although widely held, the belief that merit rather than luck determines success or failure in the world is demonstrably false. This is not least because merit itself is, in large part, the result of luck. Talent and the capacity for determined effort, sometimes called ‘grit’, depend a great deal on one’s genetic endowments and upbringing.
Okay, the next time a Princeton prof need brain surgery, they can get the last in the class to do it, it’s all the same right?...............
At my company, if you do good work, you will never be promoted.
Management does not want competition for future management jobs and if you are promoted, who will do the work they claim they did?
That’s why you should support communist ideals and judge people based on their class and race.
That’s how you get ahead in life.
Retards.
It’s becoming hard to believe that our civilization will last much longer.
The interesting thing with this is how progressives usually wield science like a bludgeon. The concept of “luck” is a much more dominant point with progressives than they often times let on. They do boil over the fact that one person born in The U.S. to a wealthy family is much more “lucky” than someone born in another country to a poor family.
Yet put luck in a cup. Can you measure it? Is it two millimeters? Is it a half-liter? Is it two gallons of luck? Is it more dense than balsa wood or less dense than uranium? Does luck therefore float? Can you melt it with acid? Etc etc etc.
Science is nothing but a weapon(like everything else) for progressives. The ends justify the means.
Some old thoughts on “luck”:
http://progressingamerica.blogspot.com/2012/03/examining-john-rawls-from-totalitarian.html
http://progressingamerica.blogspot.com/2012/07/luck-totalitarianism-and-accidents-of.html
It’s called the “Peter Principle”
You rise to the level of your incompetence.................
Perhaps Princeton should stop requiring applications and just accept students chosen at random from 12th graders across the country. Then we shall see how the education at Princeton, supposedly superior, will work out.
“By contrast, research on gratitude indicates that remembering the role of luck increases generosity.”
People have replaced the providence and grace of God with luck.
The guy who gets to decide your place in life is your king.
Makes sense... Everyone should give away three fourths of the fruit produced from their own knowledge, skill, and labor.
Why produce anything yourself when you can just take it from those who already did all the work for you?
Mediocrity doesn’t do so great, when compared to meritocracy. But that seems to be the ideal that is being presented as the alternative to rewarding the best and brightest.
It is the exceptional individual that moves and shapes society, society should not be molding the individual to the exclusion of all other “virtues”. Herd mentality can get the world only so far, and must from time to time be deserted, that any improvement ever takes place.
I admit that don’t like LeBron James. Why don’t I like him? He’s too damn lucky. Same with those Olympic athletes. “Look at me! Look at me do gymnastics!” Big deal. She doesn’t fall and hurt herself because she’s lucky.
“A belief in meritocracy is not only false: it’s bad for you”
And the bigger a goof-off you are, the worse it is for you.
Why would one work in such a place?
“Retards.”
That is the best description.
If I were king, I’m not sure if I’d beat them within an inch of their life, or banish them to a communist paradise. Most likely both.
This article is, first, a false dilemma, saying that it’s “not true” that rewards come as a result of merit and not luck. Both are important. Second, the article mentions Bill Gates, explaining that lots of programmers were or are as good as Bill Gates was, but only he got rich. They neglect to mention that Gates has the business ethics of a hyena, e.g. racing a GUI to market after being shown one at Apple, before even Apple did. (Yes, perhaps it was foolish of Steve Jobs to have shown it to Gates, but, still it represents outright theft of IP on the latter’s part.) Given how crappy and insecure Microsoft software is, it is difficult to argue they have any programming expertise whatsoever. Instead, all Microsoft has to offer is new and expanded ways of capturing market share and then expanding the imposition of rentier fees on those captured.
“The guy who gets to decide your place in life is your king.”
This is why I started working for myself at 26 and never looked back.
Sounds like the guy in the next cubicle there might be Dilbert.
How evil is your Human Resources dir3ctor?
https://dilbert.com/search_results?terms=Catbert
At the heart of their argument, is the admission that there are genetic differences between individuals, in the qualities which contribute towards success.
And they hate that.
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