84
Do you believe in meritocracy? Why or why not?
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
84 points (92.9% liked)
Asklemmy
42502 readers
2222 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
As a general rule, yes. People who are able to better perform a task should be preferentially allocated towards those tasks. That being said, I think this should be a guiding rule, not a law upon which a society is built.
For one, there should be some accounting for personal preference. No one should be forced to do something by society just because they're adept at something. I think there is also space within the acceptable performance level of a society for initiatives to relax a meritocracy to some degree to help account for/make up for socioeconomic influences and historical/ongoing systemic discrimination. Meritocracy's also have to make sure they avoid the application of standardized evaluations at a young age completely determining an individual's future career prospects. Lastly, and I think this is one of common meritocracy retorhic's biggest flaws, a person's intrinsic value and overall value to society is not determined by their contributions to STEM fields and finance, which is where I think a lot of people who advocate for a more meritocracy-based society stand.
Why do you think this is?
If I was guessing, in general, I think people who advocate for a pure meritocracy in the USA feel the world should be evaluated in more black and white, objective terms. The financial impact and analytic nature of STEM and finance make it much easier to stratify practitioners "objectively" in comparison to finding, for instance, the "best" photographer. I think there is also a subset of US culture that thinks that STEM is the only "real" academic group of fields worth pursuing, and knowledge in liberal arts is pointless -> not contributing to society -> not a meaningful part of the meritocracy. But I'm no expert.
Yeah I agree with this quite a bit.
I don't think the idea of meritocracy only lives in the U.S.
I didn't say it did, but I am a citizen of the USA and the vast majority of my cultural experience and knowledge, and therefore what I can intelligently comment on, are centered on the US.
That's fair.
Just to make it clear the definition that I used does not talk about choosing people for tasks they are suited for, but rather putting them in positions of power, success, and influence.
Well you need to clarify further then. Are you saying we should make the best scientist the president, or the person with the most aptitude for politics and rule to be president? I don't see how this is functionally different than what I said.
Well the way I interpret it is that people who demonstrate their ability are put into a position where they are rewarded more relative to their peers and/or have control over what their peers do.
So for example if I was a engineer and based on some metric was considered highly valuable then I would be paid more than other engineers and I would be put into a position where I can give other engineers directions on what needs to be done.
Then no, I don't agree with this specific implementation of the system, at least the second half. I do think more productive/effective workers should be compensated more. But being a good engineer does not make you a good manager, and the issues associated with promoting an excelling worker into management (a job requiring a substantially different skill set) are so common there's a name for their inevitable failure, The Peter Principle
I don't think anyone who views contributions in STEM fields as the most valuable to society has any respect for finance.
All of my encounters with individuals who feel liberal arts are useless and STEM is the way seem to, at their core, feel that way because of earning potential, and I've never heard one of them bash Econ/finance/investment as a career path. But 🤷♂️
You were saying a group of people believe that value as a person is determined by their contributions to STEM fields and finance.
Now you're saying that this group of people believe that value as a person is determined by earnings potential. Those are not the same things.