
A belief in meritocracy is not only false: it’s bad for you - azemda
https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/a-belief-in-meritocracy-is-not-only-false-its-bad-for-you
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sn41
"Tailspin" by Stephen Brill is a relevant read in this context. If you measure
the correlation between which percentile of income one's parents lie in a
generation and which percentile of income one lies in a generation, it might
be very high in most modern societies. This itself might indicate that there
are problems with social mobility when it comes to meritocratic societies.

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burfog
Meritocracy produces moderate social mobility.

Making success (income, etc.) uncorrelated between generations would require a
lottery. This includes a lottery for parental care, for DNA, for
attractiveness, and so on. It really isn't possible. Getting close would
require severely restricting choice. We'd have to assign employment and
spouses by lottery.

Going the other way, making success fully determined by parental success,
would also require severely restricting people from choosing their own lives.
It might be a bit less extreme. We'd still have to assign everything to
people, but it would be according to parental success instead of a lottery.

The closest we've gotten to those extremes seems to be communism and
feudalism. Either one forces people into choices against their will. Either
one creates inefficiency.

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mjfl
I think this article has a stupid definition of meritocracy. If I work really
hard digging a giant hole in my backyard and no one pays me for it, few would
agree that "meritocracy is dead". The article argues that there are
programmers "as good as" Bill Gates that didn't become billionaires, but don't
acknowledge that Gates never let being a good programmer get in the way of
being a great business man. In doing so, I think they make an equivalent
argument to the "digging holes in backyard" guy. Being merely a good
programmer is insufficient to become a billionaire.

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azemda
The article in no way says that being a good programmer is sufficient to
become a billionaire. It states that there were long-shots and coincidences
that led to Bill Gates's stellar rise as Microsoft's founder, beyond his
programming and business skills (It's not denying that his programming and
business skills didn't contribute). The article states that, in competitive
contexts, many have merit (programming + business skills, in the context of
Bill Gates), but few succeed. What the article is effectively trying to say
and the point you seem to miss is that, the the link between merit and outcome
is tenuous and indirect at best.

~~~
bathMarm0t
"the the link between merit and (cladogenetic)[1] outcome(s) is(are) tenuous
and indirect at best."

[1] :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium)

In new and fertile territory (random) variations that offer small
(unforseeable) advantage can and often do dogpile until total victory is
achieved, but I would hardly say the rest of the field flounders. Populations
of 1%er's begetting the next don.

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HNLurker2
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19359460](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19359460)

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wtdata
Meritocracy is the worst form of societal organization, except for all the
others.

