Meritocracy: Good or bad?

[LuckyTheDog]

America is a great meritocracy -- that's what the right claims. What they can't decide is whether that is a good thing or a bad thing.

They claim to be all for merit. But, when a black kid from a single-parent home rises on his merit, gets into the best schools, writes two best-selling books and gets close to getting the presidential nomination of a major party, that is apparently bad.

Such a person is considered to be a tainted "elitist" who can't possibly relate to "regular folks."

On the other hand, a rich kid from a family of admirals, who dumped his first wife to marry beer heiress -- now THAT'S a REGULAR GUY! Never mind that he has several homes (at least one of which was featured in Architectural Digest) and flies around in a private jet. He's JUST LIKE US!

:wtf:

[mattclearing]

1. If America were a meritocracy Dean Kamen would be President. n/t

[Smith_3]

2. America is not a meritocracy. It's a fairytale.

Think about it: Our president is a guy who has failed at anything he ever attempted in his life.

In a true meritocracy schools have to be free, so people can rise in hierachy in accordance with their performance. We have a class-barrier
system in place that ensures that rich idiots will get a place in a school, but poor but smart people have to beg for crumbs of the table in terms of scholarships.

America is an oligarchy. We have a small ruling class. Maybe the barrier is not completely solid (perhaps by design in order to make it
all less obvious), but the cases where one was fortunate enough to slip through are rare and when it happens, it gets sold as the norm, in order to keep that illusion of "american dream" alive.

[EmperorHasNoClothes]

3. Success in America is overwhelmingly tied to who your family and friends are

If you know the right people, or have the right parents, you can easily be successful. Otherwise you have to work a hell of a lot harder, to accomplish a lot less.

That said, I think the key to being able to succeed later in life is education, beginning with preschool. Kids who enter the first grade with no reading ability (especially) are much less likely to keep up with their peers.

[JCMach1]

4. Had to get out of America to crack those limitations

This kind of BS also permeates academia... So, you went to a State School instead of Ivy League...

Hell yes I went to State schools, my mom was a school secretary and my dad a bus mechanic. My dad didn't even graduate HS.

I now work in the Administration of the Best private University in the Middle-East... Why? This place was a MERITOCRACY and my skills are highly valued (culture-wise and remuneration-wise).

[Bill McBlueState]

7. excellent point

It's astonishing how many college professors think we're living in a meritocracy. People who end up on the top of the pile want to believe they got there on merit alone.

[JCMach1]

5. Of course if this movie is as good as Idiocracy...

it might be fun...

[warren pease]

6. A meritocracy would be great...

...but unfortunately, those from families with money and influence always seem to merit more than anybody else.

You don't have to look any further than our own little Il Duce for perhaps the most stunning example of social promotion ever to achieve international notoriety. The idiot scion of a rich, powerful and famously vicious criminal enterprise called the Bush family, he spends his whole life fucking up and the getting family or Bush flunkies to protect him from the consequences.

Here's an interesting article on CNN.com how Bushie cruised on the rich old white guys' affirmative action society. As the article notes:

They may not have had an explicit point system at Yale in 1964, but Bush clearly got in because of affirmative action. Affirmative action for the son and grandson of alumni. Affirmative action for a member of a politically influential family. Affirmative action for a boy from a fancy prep school.

Exciting isn't it? All you need to do to succeed in the American meritocracy is die; get reincarnated as a silver-spoon brat from one of our landed gentry families; grow up believing that you're the apex of human evolution (divinely guided, of course); attend a string of prestigious academic institutions and accomplish absolutely nothing except getting the proper paperwork; acquire a few unsavory, illegal habits along the way and flaunt them openly without consequences; act as a one-man destruction derby in the oil business, leaving a string of failed companies, shady stock manipulations, SEC investigations and broke investors in your wake -- and again, there are no consequences.

In fact, not only is there no downside to all this but people keep giving you more money to prop up more failing businesses and just sit back and watch calmly as you take them from marginally functional to complete ruin and bankruptcy.

It's all in the script if you're a Bushie. If you're a member of the peasantry, though, you need to get your reincarnation order in now while this offer lasts. Don't delay. Operators are standing by.


wp