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>...it is as close to a true meritocracy it has ever been because the ones with merit rise to the top.

And then;

>Nobody's saying children of farmers or auto-mechanics are any less able. They just don't get the best training.

So it's a meritocracy but the training isn't available to all? Doesn't sound like a meritocracy to me.

I think the article did a poor job of representing the recent efforts by elite universities to open up access to the children of farmers and auto-mechanics. http://npc.fas.harvard.edu/ There's still more to be done, sure, but it's important to mention that this isn't as bad as it was even 10 years ago.

Interesting. I'm the daughter of an electrician. I was admitted to Harvard in 2002, and at that time I believe they wanted my parents to pay about $12,000 for my first year. My parents couldn't afford it, and I did not attend. If that calculator is to be believed, Harvard would now expect less than $3000 from my parents. I probably would have attended had that been the case back then.

I think things changed a lot around 2009? I'm just going by memory... but I think that's when a lot of the ivies drastically changed tuition assistance based on income.

> Doesn't sound like a meritocracy to me.

Yes, but nothing made out of organized humans ever adheres to mathematically rigorous definition. (1)

Our lot is loads better than that of some poor orphan in Haiti, and our opportunities were distributed with tons more equity. That said, it's far from perfect. There are parts of our messy society that are close to meritocracy, and there's other parts that are headache inducing doppelgangers of it. It's a mess, but you can also think of it as opportunity.

((1) - In fact, whenever you think you are about to make a clever or skeptical point in a societally based intellectual discussion, tell yourself this first, then see if you still want to. Same goes for biology and software engineering.)

"Except for the ultra-wealthy 0.0001%ers, it is as close to a true meritocracy it has ever been because the ones with merit rise to the top."

The article seems to contradict that:

"Using one-generation measures of social mobility—how much a father’s relative income influences that of his adult son—America does half as well as Nordic countries, and about the same as Britain and Italy, Europe’s least-mobile places."

I have no doubt that there are problems in America caused by the fact that children who are born from poorer families have significant handicaps (i.e., it's hard to concentrate in school when you're hungry, and the sound of gunshots at night tend to distract you from homework).

It's also true, though, that to whatever extent that genetics influence relative income (and despite counter examples such as the Romney family, I'd like to hope that intelligence has _some_ correlation with income) that might explain some of the correlation between parental income and the income of their children. A proper study should try to study the correlation of parental income with the income of the income of adopted children (preferably adopted under the age of two). This is why sociological research is so difficult....

it is as close to a true meritocracy it has ever been because the ones with merit rise to the top.

How? Please explain what magical elevator makes this happen, because VC-istan seems to be a combination of connections and luck, large organizations tend to be clueless and political, and academia has been dying for at least a generation and a half. What I've seen may be limited and atypical, but I haven't seen anything that looks like this. I've seen the same nonsense that humanity has been repeating for thousands of years.

A good programmer can make 2-3x a poor programmer.

That has more to do with the fact that the good programmers tend to gravitate toward high-COL places. Even those good programmers can't raise a family (in NYC or Silicon Valley) on what they make unless (a) they beat the VC-istan game (see above) or (b) they work for those large companies, in which case advancement is 90% political.

The closest thing to a meritocracy seems to be finance, which is seriously flawed but is more honest about its shortcomings.

If working at a big company gives a low level employee an upper middle class lifestyle, who needs advancement? That is extremely advanced (95%) compared to the developed world as a whole.

Advancement and improvement over time are, for many (I might say most), fairly major parts of what Maslow would call self-actualization--the drive to improve and better oneself.

So, "most people"?

> How? Please explain what magical elevator makes this happen, because VC-istan seems to be a combination of connections and luck, large organizations tend to be clueless and political, and academia has been dying for at least a generation and a half. What I've seen may be limited and atypical, but I haven't seen anything that looks like this. I've seen the same nonsense that humanity has been repeating for thousands of years.

The problem may well be the "human condition" as substrate. In addition to talent in whatever domain or particular desirable skill-set, a person also needs to negotiate other people. If a large project is to be accomplished, the talents and effort of large numbers of people need to be marshaled. Unfortunately, our heuristics for interaction were tuned to keeping together small bands of people primarily concerned with food and defense. ("Paleo" BS notwithstanding, but this much is certainly true.)

What we have isn't a magical elevator. It's more like our brains doing Boolean algebra and predicate calculus. On average, we humans are notoriously unreliable at logic. So much so, we have terms for dozens of dysfunctions which happen all the time. (Fallacies.) With proper training and attention, we can be quite good, however. So it is with "meritocracy" and all of its various doppelgangers. The "cream" does rise to the top, but so does the scum. Talent can help you. "Talent" in the form of attributes that let you sleep your way to the top also help you. You can make it on sheer talent, but the ability to wage subtle, deniable psychological warfare on your rivals to diminish their confidence and shine will help you too. So will realpolitik maneuverings or just being physically attractive.

Many will just put it down to getting older and bitter, but the older I get, the more I realize that we really are (mostly metaphorical) feces-flinging, screeching, long-legged savannah-apes that just so happen to have exceptional individuals and exceptional moments of godlike beauty, wisdom, and insight. Neal Stephenson: “The difference between stupid and intelligent people – and this is true whether or not they are well-educated – is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.” The muck and mess of human interaction is every bit as subtle as it is unsavory.

(And the older I get, the stupider I feel.)

I think it's also worth considering, "How does one become a top doctor or programmer or whatever?" Just because talented people are well paid, does not mean we live in a meritocracy. There are lots of people who have untapped talent they are unable to utilize. Impoverished child prodigies and Taxi driver M.D.s come to mind.

Whenever you talk about what someone can "make", salary, earned income, you are automatically excluding the "top". Engineers and surgeons may be at the top of the middle class but their kids are still not getting auto-accepted at Harvard because there's a building named after Dad.