The aristocracy of talent: How meritocracy made the modern world

https://www.city-journal.org/review-of-the-aristocracy-of-talent-by-adrian-wooldridge

by pseudolus • 4 years ago

23 9 4 years ago

more_corn• 4 years ago

Ya lost me in the first sentence. That’s not what meritocracy is.

dang• 4 years ago

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? We've already had to ask you this, and you've unfortunately continued to do it. We want thoughtful, curious conversation here. If you want to say something about what you think meritocracy is or isn't, that's fine, as long as you do it in the intended spirit.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note this one:

"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."

jschveibinz• 4 years ago

Social hierarchy is a matter of socio-biological factors. It’s as ancient as civilization, if not humanity.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5494206/

dredmorbius• 4 years ago

This is little more than a book blurb which does little to characterise or describe the book let alone advance a meaninful discussion on its titular subject.

Isamu• 4 years ago

Wooldridge holds out hope that a “wiser,” “remoralized” meritocracy, cleansed of nepotism and elite hoarding, is still possible. He points to the success of Asian countries like China and Singapore newly committed to their own forms of merit-based hierarchies.

China is held up as an example meritocracy? And how can you even have nepotism in a meritocracy? Are you talking about false meritocracy, or something that you are calling a meritocracy but instead is not based on merit?

purplepatrick• 4 years ago

There are very few meritocratic systems. Chess may be one. Some sports. But other than that, it’s hard to assert that meritocracy exists in practice. Claiming that it existed in any complex system would be like claiming it where it is already impossibly hard to establish correlation.

gc22browsing• 4 years ago

Any system of meritocracy based on educational attainments is tainted by the fact that only the wealthy can afford sufficiently high level of education to pass the tests for meritocracy. Perhaps a function might to weed out those who have been afforded the education and have failed the tests.

In China, there are people who sit tests on behalf of wealthy, yet intellectually less accomplished young adults. So how does that truly test for merit. As with all incentive schemes, there are those who game those systems.

euroderf• 4 years ago

And to aggravate this tilt towards the monied, nowadays many big-city internships do not pay a living wage, or do not pay a wage at all, restricting these opportunities to the children of the monied.

thomassmith65• 4 years ago

If you take the global perspective, Europe embraced meritocracy over the same few centuries in which it colonized most of the world. It's easier to increase meritocracy if you can outsource serfdom.

The aristocracy of talent: How meritocracy made the modern world

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