Take the easy route and just change what is measured for merit.

I do see significant problems with meritocracy at my employer where it has been strongly preached. It appears like it works up to a certain level. As you go higher who you know and luck become more and more of a factor.

I believe for my last move up (to my current position) I had the skill (actually much more) and it was just luck to actually get it - just happened to be at the right spot at the right time. Heck awhile ago I was assigned to help ramp up a guy who would be working with our sister team using my team's output... I thought he was intern based on what he was doing and the knowledge he showed. He was a principal engineer.

Meritocracy is too often confused the Credentialocracy.

"And if the avowed intention of the moment is to challenge "white fragility" and yet lots of white people seem strangely enthusiastic about the challenge, it's worth considering that maybe a different kind of fragility is in play: The stress and unhappiness felt by meritocracy's strivers, who may be open to a revolution that seems to promise more stability and less exhaustion, and asks them only to denounce the "whiteness" of a system that's made even its most successful participants feel fragile and existentially depressed."

What's super-interesting about this comment is that Critical Race Theory actually mandates its conclusion. CRT asserts that EVERYTHING that whites and the white-controlled current system do is ALWAYS designed to advance and preserve white privilege. Any civil rights gains, for instance, were only permitted by whites because it was ultimately for their best interests.

Even in a strict meritocracy, there are ancillary considerations beyond pure talent. The best scientists and engineers don't always make the best managers. This is the underlying reality behind the Peter Principle.

Sometimes the ability to make contacts and put people at ease is an asset. Gaining the trust of strangers is an art - one that not everyone is good at.

Sometimes the guy who's good at making contacts, and only fair at the technical stuff, gets the promotion; because sometimes the job is about being good at those things and not at the technical work.

And yes, sometimes, somebody sucks up, kisses enough ass, and massages the ego of the hiring manager. Sometimes the guy getting the promotion is tight with the people the hiring manager wants to placate, please, or ingratiate himself with.

Meritocracy is too often confused [with] the Credentialocracy. ~ David Foster at July 19, 2020 5:41 AM

Sometimes the person promoted has the type of credentials the hiring manager wants to showcase on his team.

For example, most engineers don't bother with a Master's degree, but consulting engineers find it useful, at least from the standpoint of impressing the client and getting promotions within the company.

For another example, many government agencies reward advanced degrees with higher wages and promotions. This credentialism is especially prevalent in the teaching ranks, in some part due to union-negotiated work rules.

The NYT commenters seem to think that universal income would make this all better. If the Govt sends you a check, why bother to study?

The NYT commenters seem to think that universal income would make this all better. ~ KateC at July 19, 2020 8:55 AM

UBI might be a valid concept some day - in a Star Trek -like existence where even food can be conjured out of thin air by robots.

Star Trek robots have the advantage of not expecting to receive a cut of the fruits of their labor. They just conjure food all day without complaint.

However, today it is not that day.

Douthat has a point. There's extreme distaste among all political points of view these days for "standardized testing," or — as the graybeards among us knew it — "tests."

The rootless young men who make up Antifa do not want to work hard. They want to cut to the front of the line. It has always taken time to work your way up in a career. It was never reasonable to expect to jump from college to a six figure income. You can in fact make big bucks with little education if you are willing to move out west and work in the oil/gas fields. Actual fields. School has become easy for people and they have gotten soft and expect life to be handed to them. When it is not, they look for a reason to be angry. When you observe them burning an elk statue and tearing down statues of abolitionists, you know it is not about civil rights.

Merit was, sometime well before I arrived on this moist and annoying little planet, a perfectly useful word &/or concept. Things had merit or they didn't.

Mostly amazed at how the word "merit" has been corrupted to mean "good + non-disruptive at school."

Brains be neither the first nor second on the list of meritricious qualities I keep in my wallet. "Doing well in schools," specifically, appears not at all.

> Kevin at July 19, 2020 10:57 AM

✔

I think what Kevin has "publicly stated" here is "right on," as the kids the 1970's used to say.



In general, I think UBI is what people who do well in schools want to pass to everyone else as compensation for excluding them entirely from the direction of Earthly affairs evermore.

It seems unlikely to have the desired effect.

...I think UBI is what people who do well in schools want to pass to everyone else as compensation for excluding them entirely from the direction of Earthly affairs evermore. ~ Crid at July 19, 2020 3:58 PM

Sounds about right. Once those kids cannot fend for themselves, they'll have no choice but to do the bidding of those who dispense the Turkish Delight.

I'm willing to bet that, underneath it all, that kind of extreme dependence on the largesse of society is a major driver of the unrest today; fear of losing the meager sustenance society provides.

And those that have painted themselves as the champions of that largesse are the puppet masters; stirring up anger, resentment, and rage, all in the name of "fairness" and "social justice."

> they'll have no choice but to
> do the bidding

I gotta find a Big Mac interview from this week I want you to listen to hold on

Okay yonder

https://www.howdowefixit.me/new-blog-3/cancelculturemeganmcardle

Start at about 16:30.

On any given day, McArdle is likely to express a spotlessly condescending view towards those not enjoying her own station in life, a happily-laptop'd wordsmith earning her paycheck, from the comfort of her home, signed by the wealthiest man on the planet.

But at 16:30, and a few minutes later, she frankly acknowledges that the left overplayed its hand.

Hence Trump, and many other costs to be borne at a later date.

So she's about the fifth apple polisher to catch the scent of the Monster, or at least a whiff of it.

Others are Carville, Haidt, and I forget the rest.

(Murray is grandfathered in the club, Emeritus.)

It is deeper than that Conan. Paid work meshes well with the human mind. I do x and then get y dollars is easy to understand and functions well at multiple levels. Seeing the things you made out in the world making it better than it was before uplifts the soul.

UBI is no different than welfare under any other name. Instead of making people happy about what they can do for others it makes them selfish about what they can take from others. It also inspires shame and resentment as people don't think they can support themselves. They are dependent on someone better to provide for them. Eternally children.

Crid is right that many who push a UBI want to just pay off the masses with the intent they never have to listen to them anymore. The old golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. But those aren't just the educated. Many people who did very well in school quickly find they were not trained to make an income. They have spent their lives learning things that have no value. And often negative value. They want a UBI out of simple greed and despair.

Ben: " pay off the masses with the intent they never have to listen to them anymore."

One would hope the 50 days of constant protests/riots would show them the error of that thought, but with political class they always learn the wrong lessons. Give people cash for nothing, and free time for some but not for others, will not go over well.

You would think that, Joe. But people are pretty stubborn. Even if they succeed you can look to Europe to see the failures of such technocratic rule.

Another consideration - what's currently being described as 'meritocracy' is actually more of a tournament system and closer to a form of credentialism. There's been so much grade inflation and dilution of testing instruments that they can't reflect true merit, as competency, very well any longer. And then to compensate for that fact, students have been padding their CV's with all sorts of activities purpose-designed to suit admissions criteria. That's what's created the Red Queen Race Douhat's identified.

Also Crid's right about UBI IMO - its a consolation prize meant to disincentivize ambition. You can see that within debates among UBI advocates. They'll frame it as a need to thwart 'rampant consumerism', 'environmental domination', 'reckless competition', 'popular unrest' etc. but at it root, it's a desire for other people to stop trying.