I have a point to do here.
Ill quote an old post of my own from another topic first:
“but that judging only works if the system evaluated is very close to a meritocracy system because it always says that it is either your fault (when things goes downhill) or your merit (when it works). However, a meritocrathic system is more an exception than a rule in the real world (in terms of political debate there is not even a single one system that it is truly merithocratic). Giving a short resume to a very long discussion, meritocrathic systems needs to follow at least all four of these points:
1) No or minimized inheritance [like 1-million dollar limit]
2) Equal opportunities for every person. In political terms, the motto is equal opportunities for every children, which only works if there is a very good and accessible to everyone education and health-care system.
3) A system that can have some kind of "armory" or a defense against randomness. The results to be evaluated must be purely from merit and the random factor/distortions must be either minimal or zero.
4) There is controversy on this, but it is very important to state that "input" must equal "output". Most, if not all, merithocrats [the real ones, which are super rare] agrees that no one can produce hundreds or thousands more than the average, so, all these super or ultra rich lacks merit at least partially. This is an important part that nobody, as far as I know, could tackle it and create a system from a completely objective point of view.
Its quite funny to note that there is not a single country in the world, as far as I know, which passes in all of these four at the same time, however most games do. A regular game does provide equal opportunity to every players if anti-cheat is well stablished once they bought the game and the console (or a good PC). It does not have inheritance, you dont inherit items from your parents. If you evaluate the average of results in long terms, the downs and ups from randomness tends to be equal and cancel each other(supposing that the further results are mostly or completely independent from the present results). And most developeres wont let the best players to produce hundreds or thousand times the average players at the same time frame (or handle hundreds or thousands of enemies in a row or without dying, they got bots for that), because if they do most of the player base will simply quit and not buy the game again.
In most societies I believe (I live in Brazil so I will speak in brazillian society, although USA and others shouldnt change much), things arent completely meritocrathic. It is usually a middle point between meritocracy and anti-meritocracy (anti-meritocracy is the obedience of some of these 4 points in reversion - the output must be random or the result must be simply from inheritance). In regular societies, the inheritance is usually unlimited. There are not equal opportunity for every child. The results are subject to external crisis, floating on marketplace demands and a lot of random stuff. There are people winning hundreds or thousands times more than average per year/month. â€
There is even a Meritocracy Party UK “Manifestoâ€, I never read it, and a website called Meritocracy party, the ideology of Meritocracy Party on its own seem to sank already (site dont post for years):
The Meritocracy Party - Equal Opportunity For Every Child
It is quite surprising that most Meritocracy Party requests are close to “left†than the right-wing, however they are not really "leftists" at all. Most people use Meritocracy (and I thought this was only on my country) in a complete different sense.
There is one thing that I hope clarify your understanding, I call it as “the chess championship principleâ€, which belongs mostly to number 3 (randomness filtering) and it is inside the game example. In a chess championship, every new game is a completely restart. Every piece comes back to a start position, every new game is truly a new game. Now just imagine if there was a different rule, like, for example, if you win the match you are awarded the right to start with two queens in next matches until you lose a match. Imagine if every win was awarded a better advantage for the next game. What would happen? Well, you can only have one opponent per match in chess. If you are lucky on the start, your first opponent is a newbie, and you will win the match and gain advantage for the next one. In the next match, another newbie, more advantages. At the same time, suppose another chess player that is your twin brother that plays exactly like you with same skills, have a grand-master chess player at first round. He loses. Then one pro at the other. He loses. Then he becomes your opponent. You, with three queens, against him with only one, same skills, who wins? You. This example is just a wordly explanation of something that is inside math, and it is basically this: If there is a dependency on the initial condition (if the latter results depends on the former results), and if the initial condition is subject to randomness, then the whole system is subjected to randomness. What I call Chess Championship Principle is this in english: When the next match depends on the former match, and the former match (or any former of the former of the former ….. match) is subject to randomness, this match is subject to randomness as well. Regular Chess Championships resets the table in every new match and the result from a new match dont have any interference from the last one. So, in this championship example where winners can have extra queens, if we spread chess players from the same level, they will have very different results and it will be dictated by how lucky they are with their first opponents. Some of these players will likely match the same results that they would have without this system if they are not too lucky or too unlucky (lets call too hazardous, since english should have a proper word for the opposite of luck).
I seem to have gone way off topic but I am not. The capitalism we know – any system we know, include “kingismâ€, socialism, whatever – dont fullfill all those 4 (and we could have more) meritocracy conditions. Including Chess Championship Principle for capitalism! What actually happens is that the capitalism never truly resets the game, and that the game has a clear dependency on the beggining, those who gets hazardous keeps it for the rest of their lives despite the hazardousness comes from a bad market time, no inheritance, crysis, whatever.. So, as we expect, people from the same “skills†(hard work, effort, hability, inteligence, etc...) are spread over several different incomes, it is imminent that there are some coincidences – people who were not too hazard but not too lucky – with “skill†and income matched. These ones are the perfect to fruitpick and get used as evidence that everything is properly working with merit. And, of course, some will start from ‘zero’, but will have a fortunate series of events that led them, aha!, fortunate (first matches, except the one counting heritage, were lucky)! But guess what – a series of events with them being at the right time at right place doing the right activity, so it is possible to fruitpick one case of that and say ‘you see, he/she did it, why not you?’ and all the speech comes after that question (“it is just victimism of yours and etc...â€). You can fruitpick any unfair cases as well, such as too income for zero “skills†or too much “skills†for low income.
But there is one conceptually big deal here. Those who wants to claim its fairness, or better, its merit and that its a meritocracy, they have a claim that needs to show that every case, or the very almost cases, are fair. One fruitpicking wont do it. It is much more complicated than that because Meritocracy is complicated. But for one who is only trying to disprove that claim only needs one case or at the very best/worst a family of exceptions to prove the thesis wrong, so the fruitpicking does it.
PS: “And most developeres wont let the best players to produce hundreds or thousand times the average players at the same time frame (or handle hundreds or thousands of enemies in a row or without dying, they got bots for that), because if they do most of the player base will simply quit and not buy the game again.â€
Since we cant really quit the market these days (its impossible to live, at least here, without having any financial transation), then its easy to the market to keep the cheap work.
PS 2: I thought this kind of judgement was a TJ/Te trend, but this thread seems to prove me wrong.
PS 3: I used to be merithocract for some months but then I think the best is making my mind free and open to new alternative ideas. I would love to see a country that has a free-market state, a socialist state, meritocracy-state, welfare-state, scientifical-policy state, and etc...and you being able to pick one yourself (no need for not being accepted because you were not born on these states). I would love to see the systems 'competing' with themselves instead of some sort of free-market capitalism monopoly.
