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Comment by wongarsu | Hacker News Reader

On the other hand the replacement of existing hierarchies with meritocracy seems to be one of the appealing things of post-apocalyptic scenarios for average people.

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It is an interesting question how various countries would turn out after a big civilization reset like a nuclear war. Seems like it would likely go the feudal route with the cruelest warlords rising to the top in various locales (pretty much like narco-lord ruled Mexico). How would the United States turn out? Would the Ohio valley turn into its own kingdom? Texas its own? All of Northeast probably. I wish there was historical fiction along these lines.

> I wish there was historical fiction along these lines.

Ah, but there is. I highly recommend S.M. Stirling's Emberverse series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emberverse_series

Well worth the read. One Second After: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After is another great choice.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a famous sci-fi that directly mimics feudalism and the church after nuclear war-- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz

Just finished reading One {second,year} after. It was entertaining but a lot of the story revolves around military inspired heroics and battles. You can tell the author is into military fiction.

Ah, thank you so much for linking "One Second After." I had seen someone recommend this book on HN previously but had lost track of the comment and the title of the book.

Not strictly nuclear war but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer%27s_Hammer is a great read about if a comet nucleus hits the earth, immediate aftermath/ survival and ends with society just beginning to reform.

Ironically, in that book a nuclear power station is a plot device and the key to humanity's survival.

A lot probably depends on the amount of infrastructure left standing. In most of history kingdoms/empires would grow to roughly a week's travel time from the capital, since that's an area that can be effectively governed. Anything larger than that needs a strong local government, which eventually causes a separatist movement.

If a nuclear war destroys a large portion of highways and communication equipment, you probably end up with Houston being ruled by one group, Dallas by another and San Antonio forming a government with Austin.

I think in any scenario where "nuclear war destroys a large portion of highways and communication equipment" then Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin will all be smoking craters.

Here's the 1990 FEMA assessment of nuclear targets in Texas: https://www.webpal.org/SAFE/state/TX/tx_nuclear.htm

Assuming that's accurate, my guess is that Odessa/Midland and Laredo would be Texas's major population centers.

I can recommend A Canticle for Leibowitz - it covers your last point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz

I wouldn't call it "historical fiction" since that takes "what really happened" as its starting point. On DDG, a query of "post apocalyptic fiction" finds over 1,000 books.

I don't think all of them (e.g. The Hunger Games) are what you're after, but some of them surely are.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1840.Best_Post_Apocalypt...

Post apocalyptic meritocracy doesn't poll very well last i checked

Worse, it doesn't even seem realistic. Far more likely you'll have anarchy and those with the resources to do so will create social hierarchies.

It would be a meritocracy of sorts, but what talents would you be optimizing for?

My guess would be: Willingness to use violence, cunning, manipulation, organization.

Doesn't sound all that different from the status quo.

Exactly

You'd just get rule by sociopaths - as usual.

No genuine meritocracy anywhere.

Yes, watch or read The Road.

No thank you, once is enough.

Indeed.

In that sort of survival situation, meritocracy would mean survival of the fittest. But not necessarily the person with the most/best survival skills. You will have different groups lead by what they perceive is the "best" person.

Your local groups will probably consist of:

Religious groups

Groups centered around politicians

Scouting groups

Survivalists

Law enforcement groups

Military groups

Gangs

Each of those groups will be vying for control of limited resources with varying degrees of violence.

For the average person, all they will see is a rapid decrease of the average lifespan. The leaders who make it to the top will do everything in their power to keep themselves and those who they favor at the top.

I think a good example of this is North Korea, Afghanistan or any of the other Middle East countries where the government collapsed and there was not a single clear leader.

Group's can succeed because they are communal. The survivalist idea of an isolated compound does not work. Because the larger group of people who can work together will out man you. The best survival strategy is to make friends with your neighbors. And to be in a town and city with less territory to control. Ethnic communities can do this kind of thing really well.

I was thinking about the sort of people who tend to create small communities out in Montana, not the modern preper movement. But a quick search shows me that the prepers have several forums and communities and the advice I saw was that you should form a close group of diverse talents and that there is safety in numbers, just be choosy of who you count in your number.

You're going to be in a new one. Generally, I expect it won't be very pleasant / the 'law' a bit less predictable.

Meritocracy is economically efficient but often congeals into an ideological dogma justifying a plutocracy of the talented, even though talent is - to a very great extent - an undeserved function of genes and environment outwith one's control.

Personal hot take on meritocracy: I think that "talent" is a tricky thing. Meritocracy (which I might define as "how much you get/are paid/are given access to is based on your talent and/or contribution to society") based on talent sounds maybe sort-of fair if "talent" is either innate or purely self-driven.

If instead "talent" is (primarily) about the quality and extent of your training/schooling (and there's a lot of research to suggest that in most domains, it is) than even a very effective meritocracy is going to (IMO) perpetuate wealth and class disparities (5-year-olds don't decide to go to a great preschool and pay for it themselves, their parents do).

If I were a wizard trying to make a society with lots of upwards mobility I'd make it a lot harder to transmit generational wealth/privilege and try a lot harder to make sure everyone has the same resources/opportunities. I'm sure that would come with a ton of its own problems (even outside of just pissing people off), but it does seem worth at least acknowledging that any kind of merit-based assessment of people is going to be super biased towards those with wealth and privilege.

It seems very unlikely to me that an apocalypse scenario would lead to a _more_ merit-based society - rather that it would wipe out a lot of social protections & aids that _do_ exist (both from the government and civil society at large) for those currently at the bottom of the economic ladder. Whether we'd go feudal or just kinda-worse-than-we-are-now I certainly have no idea.

The work that coined the term meritocracy was actually describing a dystopia - for the very reasons you mention around education:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy

>even though talent is - to a very great extent - an undeserved function of genes and environment outwith one's control

Worse - merit/talent/reward is determined by what the monied classes find useful, not what is actually useful to society.

That only bothers people who want to make life "fair" at the expense of what is practical.

There is a reason we let people keep the wealth they build. It's not because it's "fair." It's because taking it away, and having the brutes or demagogues decide how to distribute it, makes the society a hellhole.

"Demagogues decide how to distribute it, makes the society a hellhole"

Fortunately corporate management and promotions are so different frin politics, no way would a demagogue or someine incompetent be in position of power and decide how to distribute wealth

You should try visiting the Scandinavian hellholes to see how bad this can get.

They're so backward they don't even have hundreds of thousands of health insurance bankruptcies every year.

>>...There is a reason we let people keep the wealth they build.

>You should try visiting the Scandinavian hellholes...

It is misleading to group all of the Scandinavian countries together in terms of wealth inequality.

Here are the latest available wealth inequality numbers for the Scandinavian countries:

Denmark 0.838

Finland 0.742

Iceland 0.694

Norway 0.798

Sweden 0.867

As a comparison the US is 0.852

The entire range for the world (where there are stats) is 0.498 - 0.902

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_in...

Wouldn't work in the Americas, which have a far lower average level of human capital. You can't redistribute what has not been produced. There are lots of examples of this in history.

By the way, the US health system crisis is caused by regulatory capture. There is no way to regulate the regulators to prevent this. At least, not in a failed democracy such as the US.

Probably the only way to regulate the regulators in a society as complex as the US and most other countries (contra Scandinavia) is with strict constitutional principles. That's the only way I know. Once you put "people" in charge, corruption and other dysfunctions eventually reign.

Are there any “not failed” democracies in your estimation? If so, what are they doing right that the US is doing wrong? Or is the whole Democratic experiment a failure?

(not the person you are replying to...)

One might look at Switzerland. A big difference between there and the U.S. seems to be that the people can petition for a vote on adding or removing any law or amendment they don't like, at any of their three levels of government. Contrast that to the U.S., where this ability doesn't exist in most places, including the federal government which was designed to be responsive to the states and not the people.

The Swiss also have a tradition of local power where possible, to the point that most of their social programs such as health care are handled by cantons (states) that average a third of a million people each. While in the U.S. we have literally a thousand times that many people arguing over health care at the federal level.

Here's a bunch of info on the Swiss political system: https://wolf-linder.ch/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Swiss-poli...

Until you factor in there that merit in immoral behaviors such as pillaging, looting and bullying will also be a big factor.

Yes, but what hierarchy would replace what we have now?

Do you want RoadWarrior/MadMax? Because that's how you get RoadWarrior/MadMax.

right, the merit in "Post apocalyptic meritocracy" would be the most equipped, most armed, most violent, and the most followed.

Looking back at ancient cultures, how many millenia would it take for Grecian democratic ideals to re-evolve from a hoard of gun toting MAGAs? Let alone Descartes level introspection?

Gun toting MAGAs by and large survive on a supply chain of McDonalds Hamberders and insulin.

It's a point not brought up very often, but they'll crash and burn in around a week once that supply chain is interrupted.

I find your take comically misguided and naive.

There are, first of all, some basic things that need to be established: what is merit? how do you rank people based on their merit? can this ranking be objective and absolute? are the people with most "merit" also the most moral or capable to lead? are differences in merit meaningful in any way? why would the most "meritorious" end up on top after the apocalypse?

Aside from this, I'm pretty sure that life after a nuclear holocaust will be much worse for the average survivor than their life before the event. At best people would revert to some pre-modern self-governing communes (which are not necessarily a bad thing, it's just that they would lack a lot of things in terms of healthcare, nutrition etc.). At worst we would get Mad Max or Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" or smth along those lines.

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