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Comment by petersonv | Hacker News Reader

Why do you say 'too much'?

I'll get downvoted for this because it's a bitter medicine, rather than a sweet poison, but since it affects human lives, it's worth sacrifing internet points.

The poster you are replying to is fundamentally anti-meritocratic, against equality of opportunity, and supportive of equality of outcome. Any amount of reward doled out to the competent as a function of their competence is 'too much' when the incompetent aren't being rewarded identically, in the world view of these types. There is no way to appease them besides nobody receiving any distinct recognition, effectiveness and efficiency of solutions be damned.

I say this with such confidence because there's only one type of mindset that accuses the successful and competent of being 'rewarded too much', it is the mindset of those who have never really emotionally accepted that life is unfair, and that some human beings are simply more useful than other human beings. The poster is coming from a place of empathy for the less useful human beings. Good intentions, sure, but implementing their preferred solutions will inevitably result in a broad degradation of the quality of goods and services (and thus quality of life) across the board wherever their ideas are implemented.

This is because some humans are more useful than other humans, and meritocratic systems are efficient at grouping people based on how useful they are. Removing the meritocratic systems that lead to unequal reward will simply allow the incompetent to flourish in environments where a lack of competence is fatal. Feelings saved, lives lost.

See: Boeing today vs Boeing 30 years ago.

That is a very poor faith reading of the OP’s comment. They didn’t argue for ‘equality of outcome’, just for a fairer distribution of reward.

To use your formulation, let’s say as true meritocrats, we want to reward ‘competency’. Well then surely we would like equal competency to receive equal reward (but assuming competency is not evenly distributed, this will necessarily lead to unequal outcomes - but justly so, for us meritocrats)

But OP is decrying a world where we reward ‘success’, and sadly ‘competence’ doesn’t guarantee success (nor vice versa). Success is a function of circumstance and competence (and indeed in some circumstances success can manifest even for the utterly incompetent) so our current ‘success’ system rewards some people ‘too much’.

'too much', compared to what alternative? The one where we magically compute the contributory effect of circumstance for every person, such that all presumed "privileged" groups get automatically downgraded in a reward hierarchy, through no fault or wrongdoing of their own, and where all presumed "oppressed" groups get automatically upgraded in a reward hierarchy, through no competence or demonstrated merit of their own?

If not that, then what is the relative position against which 'too much' is even being determined?

Your use of ‘presumed “privileged” groups’ and ‘presumed “oppressed” groups’ suggest you believe that in general, in most societies, there is actually equality of opportunity, and that our current ’reward hierarchy’ system mostly already rewards competence, and ignores circumstance.

You’re entitled to that belief but I’d encourage you to exercise some cognitive empathy and reckon with the possibility that other people might have good reasons for disagreeing with that premise.

Based on the words actually written, you could as well argue the opposite.

The original comment might as well be about successful people being over rewarded by a non-meritocratic system, because their actual merit is lower.

They might also mean something completely differently.

I don't believe I'm against anything with my comment or supporting anything.

I'm just not interested in feel good fantasies people telling themselves to keep going and others to exploit them. I'm just spreading awareness that where and when you are is more important than who you are, what you think or often even what you do if you are not hellbent on sucking the setup dry (See: Boeing today vs Boeing 30 years ago). A thing about life that's really not up for belief because it was researched from various angles.

Also, I never spoke of any reward. Just attribution. Alteration of reward may or may not follow.

Very well, I encourage you to prove my initial assertions wrong.

How does the reader appease you - what is your proposed solution?

Solution to what? You are arguing against a position that you yourself invented. Just observing that succes is a combination of skill and luck (and thus arguable not 100% fair) doesn’t mean it has to be solved.

Also your other comments makes me think of the term “sealioning”. Hope this is unintentional.

Make your own damned arguments next time, without harnessing them to a bald and frankly embarrassing drive-by ad hominem. That would at least appease this reader to the extent of imagining it possible you have something here to say which could stand on its own.

Meritocracy is a satirical concept.

Please share the details of your preferred alternative.

We’re talking about the fragility of your world view, defined around a single satirical comment about the 60’s English school system, not mine.

You are making so, so many assumptions, many of them false. For instance, there is all likelihood the OP doesn’t mind meritocratic systems, and just thinks ours aren’t nearly meritocratic enough. That’s what that “too much” could also mean.

For instance, Elon Musk is one of the richest people in the world. He inherited a ton of wealth, made some good decisions, and made a ton of bad decisions. In your version of the world, because he is the richest person in the world, he is also the most “competent” person in the world.

You’re completely ignoring the possibility that the poster is lamenting that there isn’t enough meritocracy, not that there’s too much of it, because you are for some reason assuming we all live in a 100% meritocratic world, or at least that’s the impression you give in this post.

Why do you assume that? It’s for a very similar reason that you attribute others not being able to accept the unfairness of meritocracy. You are presumably relatively successful, or think you will be, and don’t want to live in a world where that’s not 100% because you are more competent than others. You don’t want luck to have played a role.

It may be frustrating to hear someone who doesn’t know you make a ton of possibly false assumptions about you, your circumstances, and your motivations, but I’d say you invited that on yourself when you did the same.

That's a lot of uncharitable assumptions.

> The poster you are replying to is fundamentally anti-meritocratic, against equality of opportunity, and supportive of equality of outcome.

> there's only one type of mindset...

How could you possibly know these things? How would you even know if you're wrong?

Feelings indeed. There's no "medicine" here.

How do we know our current system is a functional meritocracy with equality of opportunity? Can we measure it?

Please explain me how meritocracy works for some orphan kid born in some nameless random village, in a country devastated by war and hunger vs a rich kid born in an extremely wealthy family. I agree that both of them deserve a worthy life and enough opportunities to develop their full potential and show their value. Unfortunately the possibilities of the first one are extremely low, and the possibilities of the second one are extremely high, both cases, no matter what possible merits or lack of merits are involved.

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