Asklemmy

It's easily manipulated. We already have barrier to entry in several professions via required degrees and certifications. Those degrees and certifications require significant time and resources to attain. They can also be skewed to certain demographic a la old school SAT exams.

My own personal experience is the CPA exam. Passing it shows me nothing of one's accounting abilities. I've seen people who pass it and I wonder how they tie their shoelaces in the morning without injuring themselves. I've seen others who haven't passed it but are brilliant accountants.

All that exam tells me is that a person had resources to not work for six to nine months so they could study and pass the exam. That's it.

But without it, you're just not gonna go very far in the industry at all.

Then the AICPA keeps making the exam more difficult and whines that there's a shortage of young talent.

So what "merit" are we going to measure in this hypothetical system?

Do I believe it could work? Maybe.
Do I believe it's been seriously tried to a significant degree? Nah.

"Wherever you go, there you are" also applies to the human condition and any kind of whatever-cracy. At the end of the day, people are people and a lot of people suck, there's no fix for that.

There is a meritocratic aspect to reality. There are also meritocratic aspects to capitalism. So it's partly real, for sure.

A real meritocracy would nurture merit. In terms of policy that would manifest as socialist policies that create a level playing field.

Hiring based on identity is fiercely anti-meritocratic. Expensive degrees and high interest student loans are also anti-meritocratic.

Like eugenics, it's just another way for racists to push their racism under the guise of "science". It's not "corruptible", it comes pre-corrupted.

It's a good idea in theory, but there's a few problems:

• Wealth and power above a certain level tends to become generational no matter how meritorious the origin
• People who are less capable through disability, ilness, generational poverty or anything else not their fault would still be left behind
• A lot of jobs and other functions can benefit from several different skillsets, some of which aren't mutually inclusive
• Who decides who's best? Who decides who decides? Etc ad infinitum.

No.

Currently: "meritocracy" has nothing to do with "merit" and more to do with eugenics, it's just a word to make white-supremacist-patriarchal-cis-heteronormative-abled-supremacist bigotry sound less terrible than it is.

In general: because hierarchy is bad for society, since someone always ends up at the artificial "bottom" and treated badly or at the very least as less worthy or deserving (of life, dignity, freedom, access, and so on). The only reason anyone would want/believe in a "meritocracy" is because it makes them feel superior to others.

SO LONG AS IT IS ACTUAL MERITOCRACY,

and not just privilege's gaslighting about it ( via making-certain that the poorest have inferior-nutrition, inferior-air-quality, worse-pollution, inferior-education, inferior-healthcare, etc ),

then yes, I hold it is The Proper Way.

However, it REQUIRES a truly-level playing-field, and not a 2-tiered "level" playing-field.

The Scandinavian system of ONLY public-schooling, so there is only 1 tier of education-quality, is a required component.

Student nutrition needs to be guaranteed.

Healthcare needs to work properly, for all.

Livingwage needs to be for all full-time work, and companies that try to hire only part-time for the real-work, have to have the profit-benefit of such hamstringing-of-many-lives cut from them all, permanently.

Fairness requries careful systematic, & openly-honest enforcement, because the DarkHexad: narcissism/machiavellianism/sociopathy-psychopathy/nihilism/sadism/systemic-dishonesty ALWAYS seeks to enforce abusive-exploitation, and it is underhandedly aggressive, and natural in our human nature.

Not mitigating it == accommodating it.

Salut, Namaste, & Kaizen, eh?

_ /\ _

No.

Who gets to determine what counts as merit? If it's the people with merit already, it's trivial to corrupt such a system. Think billionares.

And then, is everyone even given the opportunity to display their merit and if they are, is their merit recognised? I'm concerned esp. about people perceived by society to have inherently less merit. Think disabled people, old people, young people, women, people of colour, queer folks, etc.

And then, how does the system ensure that merit wasn't faked or even just exaggerated, how does it investigate and how does it respond? Does a sufficient amount of merit allow someone to cover up such things? If implemented, can and would this investigation power be used to punish people with low merit, those that are the most vulnereable?

And then, why do people that are not constantly being useful to the system deserve less and esp. if meritocracy is the only system in place, do some people not deserve to live at all? Here I'm talking about people that want to have a hobby or two or want to spend time with their friends and family, basically anything that doesn't give merit. I'm also talking about people that can't or don't want to be useful to society.

Beyond all this, meritocracy aims to replace the people's purpose in life with "being useful". And that's just a really miserable mindset to live with, where you feel guilt if you're not being useful all the time, where you constantly have thoughts like "am I good enough" or "am I trying hard enough".

I don't think this would ever be achievable. It also sounds like a broader form of technocracy (to my very much unqualified brain)

I believe in a theoretical meritocracy but I think there are some pitfalls. We have a market that's very efficient at rewarding incredibly unproductive people. The correlation between money and skill in the modern world just... isn't. So we'd really need a better evaluation system... if we had that I think it'd be achievable.

Love the idea, though.

Wildly untenable concept in modern society...

I'm sure it would work great in a video game or something, but In the real world, this shit goes crony AF guaranteed.

We don't measure aptitude or ability in our society, we absolutely suck at it. A person's ability is measured by what pedigree they purchased at degrees R us, or worse, by how articulate and verbose they were when typing a resume. Occasionally, ability is measured by how well someone likes a person even...

Competence is valued in a very select few enterprises. Trades, IT, and at higher echelons, math nerds... That's about it...

I'm confused about the definition. They are moved? Forcefully if needed, or they are offered the position? Also what kind of position are they moved to you mean? Like the person best in the world in welding, they will atrificially be placed in a position of influece? Influece over what, policy? Culture? Or they will be the boss of other welders? How is the demostrated ability measured? Do people take exams in like welding to compete on who is better than someone else? If so, is the test the only thing that matters? If the best welder in the world is also a complete asshole, they still get the position of power? If not, where is the trade-off on how good a welder do you have to be to be a certain amount of asshole?

I'm very wary of the term because it could only be measured correctly if everyone started from the same conditions. People with more resources have it easier to go up.

The issue will always be reality. In theory, meritocracy and even geniocracy sounds promosing but so does our current system.

The reality is that incompetent or malicious people will always find ways to corrupt the idea.

At this point, I‘m pretty sure the only way to go forward is to think in new ways. Maybe general AI will work, or anarchy (more like anarcho communist probably).

We tried and broke everything:

• representative democracy - politicians lie to get into office and do their thing after
• autocracy - the person in charge freaks out and becomes a lifetime ruler
• communism - people starve while the politicians become rich
• monarchy - the bloodline will produce some idiot who breaks stuff - also no reason to be this rich
• multiparty system - will get little done and devolves into populism as well
• two party system - devolves into hating the other party

The real problem imo is that a few people just cant make decisions for the masses over an extended time. Its too much power and responsibility.

I‘m pretty sure a more direct democracy represents this day and age more since the majority sees how our world goes to shit.

Generally yes with two huge caveats.

First, It has been widely demonstrated that diverse teams are more productive and produce higher quality products than homogeneous teams.

Second, selection criteria is heavily biased towards homogeneous teams and has also been demonstrated to stifle innovation.

Desire/inspiration is nearly as important as capability and non-optimal teams (according to most, if not all selection criteria) will consistently outperform "optimal" teams in any tasks that require innovation.

The problem is the powerful make the rules, but don't abide by them. What starts off as a meritocracy quickly turns into this growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots. Like we have now.

Meritocracy is a dogwhistle white supremacists created to justify their position of power over people of color.

No.
“American Dream,” was built on belief where workplaces are meritocratic environments where workers, regardless of their background, can, on merit and abilities overcome any deprived situation they may find themselves in and rise above.

Just like communism when the Wall fell, I think it's safe to say this ideology, when tried and tested, has been proven a total and complete failure.