
The Problem Isn't the 'Merit,' It's the 'Ocracy' - traject_
http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-problem-isnt-merit-its-ocracy.html
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traject_
I thought that this excerpt from Andrew Yang's book was particularly thought
provoking and also troubling:

 _We say success in America is about hard work and character. It’s not really.
Most of success today is about how good you are at certain tests and what kind
of family background you have, with some exceptions sprinkled in to try to
make it all seem fair. Intellect as narrowly defined by academics and test
scores is now the proxy for human worth. Efficiency is close behind. Our
system rewards specific talents more than anything. I got pushed forward for
having certain capacities. Others had their horizons systematically lowered
for having capacities that our academic system had no use for. I’ve seen
countless people lose heart and feel like they should settle for less, that
they don’t deserve abundance...._

 _Intelligence and character aren’t the same things at all. Pretending that
they are will lead us to ruin. The market is about to turn on many of us with
little care for what separates us from each other. I’ve worked with and grown
up alongside hundreds of very highly educated people for the past several
decades, and trust me when I say that they are not uniformly awesome. People
in the bubble think that the world is more orderly than it is. They overplan.
They mistake smarts for judgment. They mistake smarts for character. They
overvalue credentials. Head not heart. They need status and reassurance. They
see risk as a bad thing. They optimize for the wrong things. They think in two
years, not 20. They need other bubble people around. They get pissed off when
others succeed. They think their smarts should determine their place in the
world. They think ideas supersede action. They get agitated if they’re not
making clear progress. They’re unhappy. They fear being wrong and looking
silly. They don’t like to sell. They talk themselves out of having guts. They
worship the market. They worry too much. Bubble people have their pluses and
minuses like anyone else._

 _In coming years it’s going to be even harder to forge a sense of common
identity across different walks of life. A lot of people who now live in the
bubble grew up in other parts of the country. They still visit their families
for holidays and special occasions. They were brought up middle-class in
normal suburbs like I was and retain a deep familiarity with the experiences
of different types of people. They loved the mall, too._

 _In another generation this will become less and less true. There will be an
army of slender, highly cultivated products of Mountain View and the Upper
East Side and Bethesda heading to elite schools that has been groomed since
birth in the most competitive and rarefied environments with very limited
exposure to the rest of the country._

 _When I was growing up, there was something of an inverse relationship
between being smart and being good-looking. The smart kids were bookish and
awkward and the social kids were attractive and popular. Rarely were the two
sets of qualities found together in the same people. The nerd camps I went to
looked the part._

 _Today, thanks to assortative mating in a handful of cities, intellect,
attractiveness, education, and wealth are all converging in the same families
and neighborhoods. I look at my friends’ children, and many of them resemble
unicorns: brilliant, beautiful, socially precocious creatures who have gotten
the best of all possible resources since the day they were born. I imagine
them in 10 or 15 years traveling to other parts of the country, and I know
that they are going to feel like, and be received as, strangers in a strange
land. They will have thriving online lives and not even remember a car that
didn’t drive itself. They may feel they have nothing in common with the people
before them. Their ties to the greater national fabric will be minimal. Their
empathy and desire to subsidize and address the distress of the general public
will likely be lower and lower._

