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Comment by ra1n85 | Hacker News Reader

>It's a good reminder of privilege.

En vogue Orwellian group think for simple minds. Implying that some have undeserved fortune is reprehensible with this complete disregard for context.

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> En vogue Orwellian group think for simple minds

Please eliminate name-calling from the comments you post to HN, as the site guidelines ask:

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Why stop at implying that some have undeserved fortune? Obviously plenty of people do. A truly meritocratic society would not let the personal circumstances of your biological parents affect (either positively or negatively) your life status, whether by moving to a more expensive part of town with better grade schools, encouraging you to stay in school and helping you with your homework, paying for college, immigrating to a more prosperous country, having money you can borrow when starting your career, etc.

Who will determine where merit is deserved and undeserved? You? The Flying Spaghetti Monster?

I was assuming that "merit" inherited from parents is undeserved, but yeah, perhaps that's unjustified. Do you have an argument that it is deserved?

Unless someone has broken the law in their process of accumulating resources, they are legally in possession of such resources.

I'm not disputing legality. There are plenty of unjust but valid laws that uphold a non-meritocratic society.

And there go the goalposts.

We're not talking about legality, we're talking about deserved merit. And as you yourself have shown, one cannot really independently judge merit, as it always comes down to who is actually judging it. Making the idea of a meritocracy not really feasible.