The Myth of Meritocracy Runs Deep in American History

A myth that runs so deep especially in silicon valley that any article about it gets flagged to death rather than being discredited in the comments.

This is pure garbage. Please suggest an alternative to "The Myth." I see two immediate problems with any alternative that far out-weigh its purported benefits. (1) Any solution you propose involves a government imposing its will on the people, 'reallocating' their wealth, and using that loot to pick and choose the winners. (2) Any alternative to "The Myth" necessarily deprives people of ownership of their future -- you create more victims. When people believe they have no control over their destiny, they fall prey to nihilism. Thanks to rhetoric like yours coming from BLM, Antifa, and the rest of the progressive ilk, you only need to look at the news to see how well a nihilistic society works.

This article is worthless. It's just another made up 'thing' to prop up some other 'thing'. It's just more noise, and we already have a lot of that. It's also got so many holes that it looks like someone used it for target practice.

This same guy said that $2T in reparations is the least we could do to fix systemic racism.

Where does it end? What is the end game? What is the definition of done when your career depends on discussing such topics?

Realistically, the game was always played by the wealthy and the few that were lucky enough to be at the right place and the right time. Survivorship bias is almost inescapable as the mega successes crowd out all of the other failures and attempts.

To use myself as an example: My family was poor and my father passed away when I was young. A wrongful death suit was the sole reason why I had a modest college fund. That fund was the reason why I was able to go to college and become a software engineer and escape poverty. I still had to sacrifice my personal health in many ways to make that money last, as a large amount of it went to supporting my parents.

Multiple steps of the path that lead me today could've failed. My personal health sacrifice very literally could've killed me given the stuff I put off, I could've gotten injured, my mother could've needed more medical support. There's so many dice rolls that can put you on the path to success or failure in America and a lot of people don't even see them, or are lucky enough to not have to make those rolls in the first place. In every step I took there's a shadow of me whose roll failed.

In many senses I'm somewhat thankful of that poverty I went through because it keeps me grounded. But also that poverty and system that created it is a construct of over a century of the 'American Exceptionalism' mythos. And I didn't even have to experience the worst of it.

It’s known that China, Russia, and their Allie’s promote anti-western content to steer discussion or drown out engagement through the use of bot networks upvoting and downvoting content across social media. I don’t know to what extent, but if I had to guess it’s pretty significant. Is that happening here? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/20/technology/ch...

I love how people act like Meritocracy is oppressive, or something like that mertiocracy is as simple as this.

You have a choice of two surgeons to operate on you for a rare and risky surgery. One has 80% of his patients die on the operating table the other has 10% of his patients die on the operating table. Which one are you going to choose? That's meritocracy

Another example, you need to hire a carpenter. Both your neighbors recently had to hire a carpenter. The neighbor on the right hired a carpenter that showed up late, overcharged, and did shoddy work that is already coming undone. The neighbor on the other side hired a carpenter that was punctual, did good work and finished ahead of schedule. Which carpenter are you going to choose? Congratulations you're reinforcing the "Myth" of meritocracy.

I get the impression reading articles like this that the authors take exception not only to the 'myth' of meritocracy in regards to its misrepresentation in political rhetoric in the past couple centuries, but to the idea of meritocracy itself. There is an underlying animosity towards the very concept that makes me think the idea of any one person being better than another in any regard is what truly makes the author uncomfortable, and motivates them to try deconstructing the entire idea of meritocracy on the basis of discrimination (as opposed to just pointing out some historically unfair applications of it)

I'm a huge critic of a lot of uses of "meritocracy" as a sole guide in how things are or should be, but this attack on it still feels lacking. Would be akin to my talking about "the myth of good people", because there have always been bad people. Or because the "good people" we look towards were not perfectly "good" in all ways.

It seems it is still very fair that the US approached an ideal meritocracy far more so than many of the other nations that could be looked towards. Is that not at all the case?

i prefer meritocracy to anything else. it may not be perfect, but talk is cheap, world is filled with people on bullshit jobs where they do nothing. there are people that push science, human achievements and create new things we did not have before.

if you think you have better, create a company, apply your "rules" there and let's see how it goes.

me, seeing that POS article you linked, i'm just gonna move my left hand towards my popcorn.

If everything is a social construct, why is socialism not equally myth?