Meritocracy

The Economist has a survey on talent, "the world's most sought-after commodity":

This survey will argue that the talent war has to be taken seriously. It will try to avoid defining talent either too broadly or too narrowly but simply take it to mean brainpower... It will thus focus on what Peter Drucker, the late and great management guru, called “knowledge workers”. ... The survey will conclude by looking at the widening inequalities that will result from the competition for talent, and weighing up the risks of a backlash against the talent elite.

Here's one of the articles about the potential backlash:

Meritocracy and its discontents, The Economist: In “The Rise of the Meritocracy”, published in 1958, Michael Young ... conjured up an image of a society obsessed with talent. The date was 2034, and psychologists had perfected the art of IQ testing. But far from promoting social harmony, the preoccupation with talent had produced social breakdown. The losers in the talent wars were doubly unhappy, conscious not only that they were failures but that they deserved to be failures. Eventually they revolted against their masters.

The rise of the talent elite has bred resistance, which started on the right. ... But after the second world war the resistance spread leftward. Leftists argued that meritocracies were ... unjust. If “talent” owed more to nature than nurture, as many social scientists insisted, then rewarding people for talent was tantamount to rewarding them for having privileged parents.

This resistance has occasionally boiled over into outright rebellion. Young's book was an opening shot in a successful war against the 11-plus, a British school examination that divided children between a gifted elite destined for academic grammar schools and those consigned to run-of-the-mill secondary modern schools. The 1960s saw widespread student revolts against selection and elitism.

There are plenty of signs that another backlash is on the way... Much of this resentment focuses on growing inequalities. People complain that these are straining the bonds of society to breaking point: a new aristocracy of talent is retreating into golden ghettos and running the global economy in their own interests. ...

In some ways things are worse than they were when Young wrote his book. Inequalities are much wider ... and the talent elite has gone global. ... Samuel Huntington, a political scientist, argues that “ a major gap is growing in America between its increasingly denationalised elites and its ‘thank God for America' public.” On American television personalities such as Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly beat the populist drum against those cosmopolitan elites. ... Across much of the developing world the targets of choice for rioters are rich ethnic minorities and foreigners.

But in other ways things have got much better. The number of winners now is much larger than it was in 1958. In Young's day, the meritocrats concentrated on spotting recruits for Oxbridge and the senior civil service. The rest were labelled failures. Since then, America and Europe have created a mass higher education system, and developing countries are determined to follow suit. ...

Moreover, some problems could prove self-correcting. ... The growing returns to education create incentives for people to get themselves educated, producing a better-trained workforce as well as upward mobility. ...

Above all, there is something appealing about the meritocratic ideal: most people are willing to accept wide inequalities if they are coupled with equality of opportunity. In America, where two-thirds of the population believe that everyone has an equal chance to get ahead, far fewer people favour income redistribution than in Europe.

Growing wealth also means that society can reward a wider range of talents. ... These days, sports stars and entertainers can make millions. There are also ample rewards for all sorts of specialised talents... Takeru “Tsunami” Kobayashi earns more than $200,000 a year as the world's hot-dog eating champion: he can eat more than 50 in 12 minutes.

The backlash is not inevitable, then. But it is sensible to take steps to prevent it. One popular answer is affirmative action, an idea that is making headway even in that last redoubt of old-fashioned meritocracy, the French establishment. However, experience in America—which introduced the practice in the 1970s—suggests that it raises a host of problems. ... The biggest problem with affirmative action ... is that it comes too late. The best way to boost the life-chances of poor people is to intervene much earlier in life—to set them on the right path in kindergarten and primary school and reinforce those lessons in secondary school.

Progressive taxation can help. For much of the post-war period most rich countries taxed talent too heavily, causing bright flight. But today, in America at least, the danger is the opposite...

The best way to head off a backlash is to give everybody a fair chance. This means investing in childhood nutrition and pre-school education. It also means repairing the lowest rungs of the educational ladder. Developing countries need to continue the march towards universal primary education: failure to do so will exacerbate skill shortages as well as widen inequalities...

The rise of a global meritocracy offers all sorts of benefits, from higher growth in productivity to faster scientific progress. It can boost social mobility and allow all sorts of weird and wonderful talents to bloom. The talent wars may be a source of trepidation for companies and countries. But they should also be a cause for celebration.

"In America, ... two-thirds of the population believe that everyone has an equal chance to get ahead."

Many of the arguments for redistribution to overcome growing inequality are based upon the idea that inequality arises, at least in part, from government policy giving unfair advantages to some groups (e.g. favoring firms over unions) or other factors (e.g. corporate governance and CEO pay, differences in educational opportunities). The counterargument has been that the income is not from government policy or other such factors, it is earned through hard work - it is a skill-based premium that is a reward for higher productivity - and hence it would be unfair to take it away. Above, one of the arguments is that the skill-based premium itself, or perhaps talent-based premium is a better word, is undeserved when it arises from genetic advantage rather than superior effort (nature not nurture) and hence these individuals do not deserve the high compensation they receive (If I were seven feet tall, I could play in the NBA too...). Should such "luck" be taxed away?

Comments

[wcw]

On compensation for "talent" just listen to Jack "Six-Sigma" Welch.

And this was brought home to me when I was at a boot camp for CEOs where the audience was being lectured on how to be a CEO by Jack Welch, who had just retired. And, when asked who should chair the compensation committee on the board, Welch said, "Put someone in charge who is nearing the end of their career, so they're not jealous of you as a younger CEO, is immensely rich, much richer than you, and enjoys seeing other people get rich." And someone raised their hand and said, "I had a distinguished academic as my compensation chair." And everyone else in the room just shook their heads and sort of held their heads in their hands, and Welch said, "Never, ever make a distinguished academic your compensation committee chair because you'll be a poor man by the end of it."

The idea that we now live (or ever have) in a meritocracy is pretty risible. I have zero (0) worries that there is any risk of Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron distopia, and I say this knowing that a good statistician never, ever uses 0.

[tom s.]

I'm with wcw on this. The Economist does seem to be saying something like this:

1. The competition for talent leads to increased inequality.
2. We are experiencing increased inequality.
3. Therefore, we are seeing a competition for talent, and
4. Therefore, we live in a meritocracy.

- which is obviously full of holes.

[evagrius]

In response to the article, I can only point to George Bush.

[realpc]

There will always be inequality, and inequality itself is not a problem. Inequality that results from the oppression of a powerful elite, or other forms of injustice, is a problem.
Vague discussions that look for general causes of inequality don't seem very helpful. Obviously there are various causes, some under an individual's control and some not.
I think that almost everyone is capable of much more than they actually accomplish. I think we all have great reserves of talent and motivation that we hardly use. I also think that laziness is an enormous factor -- we are all lazy, at least part of the time.

For example, if you give someone a job that pays well and is guaranteed for life, you dramatically decrease their motivation. Why burn extra mental calories when you can coast along and do just fine? Unions can be very de-motivating. And if a law were passed that guarantees everyone a living wage for life, regardless of what they do, motivation would sink to record lows.

Various factors raise or lower motivation. We are motivated by praise and rewards, and also by fear and punishments. And of course motivation isn't the whole story, since we may be born with different levels of different talents and strengths. Height is the obvious example of a genetic trait we can't change.

I agree that a decent society should try to give everyone a fair start, to the extent that's possible or practical. If we can afford to prevent children from going hungry or uneducated, then of course we should.

We should not try to make everyone equal, and we should not want to make everyone equal. The idea is absurd. Inequality and injustice are very different things.

People will always compare themselves to others and there will always be someone to look up to or down at. I read somewhere that some of the unhappiest people are executives who made it to second place in their company.

Human nature is never ever satisfied, so satisifying human nature should not be a political goal. It's mostly up to each one of us to figure out how to get what we want, and to be happy with what we get.

[Don Robertson]

From the article: "The best way to head off a backlash is to give everybody a fair chance. This means investing in childhood nutrition and pre-school education. It also means repairing the lowest rungs of the educational ladder. Developing countries need to continue the march towards universal primary education: failure to do so will exacerbate skill shortages as well as widen inequalities..."

I need only ask, Who delivers the most and perhaps the best healthcare in this country?

The same people who feed these kids right, moms.

I will ask secondarily, What the hell does a kid fresh out of college know anyway? (They're in there early twenties and today generally full of tattoos, steel and Ritilin or worse.)

Not much. I've hired 'em plenty of times and they're generally more worthless than tits on a bull.

Thirdly, I will point out, some are hired and paid quite well for their simple-minded ability to bend over and pick up a pen or a piece of paper intentionally thrown into a corner. That sort of thing keeps roughly half the staff at your whim and mercy if you're an employer.

As one with no more than the better part of a third grade education, the view is just fine from here. I'm not in debt, (debt, What is the matter with you people?)I have good money in the bank, I have a wife of thirty-eight years, two grown sons and all the liesure time a man has a right to at my age, (57 in three months). But, the best thing I have is the fact that I haven't had to lie, steal, cheat or brown-nose my way to where I am. Confucian principles mean nothing to me, less those who abide by these principles are people no one should trust, or, even live next door to.

That's how and why I'm ahead in this game.

And, no I'm not going on Letterman. He doesn't pay enough, and I'm sick of all his "hooker" jokes.

And, they can keep the Nobel prize in Sweden too. Who wants the dumb blonde stigma?

Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
Limestone, Maine

An Illustrated Philosophy Primer for Young Readers
Precious Life - Empirical Knowledge
The Grand Unifying Theory & The Theory of Time
http://www.geocities.com/donaldwrobertson/index.html
Art Auctions:
http://www.artbyus.com/auctions.php?a=6&b=4807

[Robert]

There is a grand continuum betweeen talent and luck. I recall a guy - a US Govt Bond Trader - who was "sitting in the chair" as Chief Customer Bond Trader at one of the largest securities firms. This guy had spawned a Texan-sized ego as a result of his alledged money making prowess, but the reality was that it was the real estate that he occupied in the midst of the substantial two-way flow generated by a network of thousands of brokers around the world. A monkey, or most certainly a simple market-making computer program could have done equally well (if not better), and no doubt, 15 years on, it probably is at the best of shops. The cult of the CEO creates the same issue. But how did HE get that seat? No doubt a tangled multitude of serendipitous events, from his unlikely birth, avoiding mortal accidents as a child, nice boarding school, college frats, dad's friends, that in the end are unattributable.

And since on average a society cannot ferret out the differences - leaving aside whether attribution itself would be wise - arguments for legitamizing sole attribution of the earned triumph of the meritocracy - certainly as justification for perpetuation of elite economic priviliege, is just sophistry. The 90% top marginal rate as economic equalizer was more of a social message than a practical revenue tool. It was a throttle forcing all to pay heed to some sense of decency and humility . Sort of like the fact that it is well-nigh impossible for a French student to obtain a 20/20 on his exam results, given that no one is perfect.

[anne]

WCW, and the clever reference to Kurt Vonnegut:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/weekinreview/21tier.html?ex=1258779600&en=fc4fe0c8975507d8&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt

November 21, 2004

When Every Child Is Good Enough
By JOHN TIERNEY

THE Incredibles" is not just an animated adventure for children, at least not to the parents and teachers who have been passionately deconstructing the story of a family of superheroes trapped in suburbia. The movie has reignited one of the oldest debates about child-rearing and society: competition versus coddling, excellence versus egalitarianism.

Is Dash, the supersonic third-grader forbidden from racing on the track team, a gifted child held back by the educational philosophy that "everybody is special"? Or is he an overprivileged elitist being forced to take into account the feelings of others?

Is his father, Mr. Incredible, who complains that the schools "keep inventing new ways to celebrate mediocrity," a visionary reformer committed to pushing children to excel? Or is he a reactionary in red tights who's been reading too much Nietzsche and Ayn Rand?

Is Syndrome, the geek villain trying to kill the superheroes, an angry Marxist determined to quash individuality? Or is his plan to give everyone artificial superpowers an uplifting version of "cooperative learning" in an "inclusion classroom"?

At one level, the debate is over current controversies in public education: Many parents believe that their children, mostly in elite schools, are being pushed too hard in a hypercompetitive atmosphere. But other parents are complaining about a decline in programs for gifted children, leaving students to languish in "untracked" and unstimulating classrooms. Some critics of education believe that boys especially are languishing in schools that emphasize cooperation instead of competition. No Child Left Behind, indeed.

But the basic issue is the same one raised four decades ago by Kurt Vonnegut in "Harrison Bergeron," a short story set in the America of 2081, about a 14-year-old genius and star athlete. To keep others from feeling inferior, the Handicapper General weighs him down with 300-pound weights and makes him wear earphones that blast noise, so he cannot take "unfair advantage" of his brain.

That's hardly the America of 2004, but today's children do grow up with soccer leagues and spelling bees where everyone gets a prize. On some playgrounds dodge ball is deemed too traumatic to the dodging-impaired. Some parents consider musical chairs dangerously exclusionary.

Children are constantly feted for accomplishments that used to be routine....

[RW]

Interesting contrasts in this thread -- Harrison Bergeron with gifts well pursued and George W. Bush with economic rents well extorted -- is there any fundamental difficulty discerning the difference or judging which should be taxed?

[evagrius]

"For example, if you give someone a job that pays well and is guaranteed for life, you dramatically decrease their motivation. Why burn extra mental calories when you can coast along and do just fine? Unions can be very de-motivating. And if a law were passed that guarantees everyone a living wage for life, regardless of what they do, motivation would sink to record lows."

Gee...that sounds like what George Bush and Paris Hilton do.

[evagrius]

From the article;

"Nor does stocking up on talent seem to protect companies from getting it spectacularly wrong. Enron did everything that Mr Michaels and his colleagues recommended (indeed, McKinsey was both a consultant and a cheerleader for the Houston conglomerate). It recruited the best and the brightest, hiring up to 250 MBAs a year at the height of its fame. It applied a “rank-and-yank” system of evaluation, showering the alphas with gold and sacking the gammas. And it promoted talent much faster than experience. Another corporate disaster, Long-Term Capital Management, was even more talent-heavy than Enron, boasting not only MBAs but Nobel prizewinners among its staff. But despite all this talent, the companies still succumbed to greed and mismanagement."

I have to laugh at this- who says that MBA's are intelligent or have any talent? Who says that Nobel prizewinners are any better than anyone else when taken outside their little field of expertise?

[joan]

"Corporate Executive Board (CEB)also surveyed some 4,000 hiring managers in more than 30 companies, and was told that the average quality of candidates had declined by 10% since 2004"

I would like to see how they define "quality" with an accuracy capable of detecting a 10% change. Maybe hiring managers have a talent for convincing people they know something they don't.

[Bruce Wilder]

Proposition: Keanu Reeves, highly paid international film star, should be recognized as a highly talented and accomplished actor.

Proposition: Guillotining Jack Welsh on Rockefeller Center, just before putting up this year's Xmas tree, would have a bracing effect on the motivations of America's aspiring corporate executives and should be televised.

[Don Robertson]

More thoughts on so-called meritocracy, meritocrisy, and/or American Confucianism.

I'm currently re-reading Samuel Eliot Morison's (one "R" is correct) The Oxford History of the American People, New York, Oxford University Press, 1965, LCCC# 65-12468. (I'm later going to quote from page 606.)

This idea of a meritocracy is very appealing, pluralist, even charmingly Horatio Alger, but we should never lose sight of what was similarly appealing to those of the past so we can reflect upon their wisdom in light of our own in order to shine a brighter light upon our own wisdom in our own time. We will similarly be judged in the future.

As the Civil War was coming into clear view statesmen north and south were expressing their opinions about the construct of society. We forget just how convincing were the arguments, or perhaps how convincing they must then have seemed to some at the time, and how more importantly that convincingness is a malady of the human mind.

Daniel C. DeJarnette a freshman congressman from Virginia summed up his thoughts thus:

"The free suffrage and free labor of the North... has so shattered the framework of society, that society itself exists on in an inverted order.

"African slavery furnishes the only basis upon which republican liberty can be preserved.

"There is more humanity, there is more unalloyed contentment and happiness, among the slaves of the South, than any laboring population on the globe.

"For every master who cruelly treats his slave, there are two white men at the North who torture and murder their wives."

Similarly and on the same page, "Henry Timrod, in his rapturous Ethnogeneis, predicted that a Southern Confederacy would not only extend from sea to sea, but would solve the problem of poverty throughout the world."

Here we are reading an article that ostensibly sets forth the concept of merit, but explores not what is actually considered merit.

Merit in this article is clearly meaning demonstrated educational qualification. This sort of measure then of merit seems to exist solely based upon academic certifications and ranking that occur prior to the age of say twenty-four, or as late as twenty-six in the case of a medical doctor.

I have known quite a few young men and women between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-six, first when I was that age, 1974-1976 and as my sons became that age, 2004-2006. I can assure you, nothing that occurs up to or within this time span of an individual's life predicts what skills they might posses or what value they will be to society.

The problem we are being asked to consider is American Confucianism, which necessarily excludes certain classes of individuals from segments of the economic mainstream due to prejudice, socio-economic status, and the sheer weight of faulty logic. It is in fact as blatant, if not as wholly exclusive, as was slavery in 1860.

The problem is "merit" in fact has little to do with the exclusionary process we are considering.

The problem we are considering has everything to do with certifications that are handed out by corrupt bureaucracies represented by educational institutions both public and wholly private, and by laws that have been passed (sold) by corrupt legislatures that exclude anyone from certain business practices if they do not obtain these certifications.

In Maine you need a license to be a tree arborist or a hairdresser! You tell me. Go ahead, YOU tell me...

De-regulation at every level is the only answer to "free" market in the labor force. And, that is the only way to insure free opportunity based upon merit.

And, for those who say, THEY don't want to be treated by a physician or a lawyer who isn't certified, fine. I personally wouldn't employ either one that is.

That's your choice and mine, but, my choice is not open to me.

And, it's been my experience certified lawyers and certified doctors need to be watched very carefully, like rattlesnakes, the clergy, judges and politicians.

Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
Limestone, Maine

An Illustrated Philosophy Primer for Young Readers
Precious Life - Empirical Knowledge
The Grand Unifying Theory & The Theory of Time
http://www.geocities.com/donaldwrobertson/index.html
Art Auctions:
http://www.artbyus.com/auctions.php?a=6&b=4807

[GeorgeNYC]

I am a nicely succesful lawyer in New York. My father was a foreman in a steel mill. He was a union man and that goodness for that because I never would have gone to any decent school if he had been working at Wall Mart. That is the diiference between then (the 60's nd 70's) and now.

[K]

I can't agree with Robertson's condemnation of certification. A certain amount of control simply makes things easier for consumers.

But I can applaud when he points out that ideas we utterly condemn today as evil or unwise were completely and sincerely believed years ago. And all the believers were not the fools of their time. This insight should be kept in mind when we look at our the issues of today.

As for the role of meritocracy. One unmentioned factor is increasing life span. It means the successful are in positions of power andor wealth for far longer. Perhaps, on average, twice as long as a century ago. And there is no reason to believe this will reverse.

And the reverse is of course true, the less successful are less successful for much longer. No wonder the two groups agree less on common concerns, or even perceive that there are any common cercerns.

Robert and I would differ about the ninety percent tax rate being a social message about decency. The rates were a message about unity during serious times: war and adversity. The draft and universal military service sent the same message.

We no longer have either the draft or the tax rate as attention getters. And recent wars are of no more concern to the rich and famous (or those not volunteering) than are which plays run on Broadway.

This separation is illustrated by the government payments to those who lost relations at the WTC. The compensation amount depended upon the wealth or income expectations of the dead person. The message 'this is not an expression of our regret, but confirmation that wealth and income are how we are to value people'

[save the rustbelt]

"...The growing returns to education create incentives for people to get themselves educated, producing a better-trained workforce as well as upward mobility. ..."

I'm not so certain about this.

I think there is a growing return to good office politics skills, good connections, and being at the right place at the right time. I know there is also a penalty for being ethical.

The worst people to work for and with, I've found, are those from elite MBA schools. They are wildly self-centered and have a tendency to ignore ethics (and perhaps I'm overgeneralizing, but I don't think so).

Jack Welsh was a master at taking credit for the work of an entire company.

And then there are the clowns running GM and Ford, getting rich while sinking the companies. Meritocracy? I don't think so.

[calmo]

GeorgeNYC reminds me of Alito's autobio heard on NPR just before his appointment to the Supremes.
These cases (you are not a case George and thanks for joining us) are rare and misleading wrt the meritocracy issue, no matter its non-existence.
Thank you for supplying that link wcw, a worthwhile read on un-bound CEO compensation and the problems of containment.
But the promo survey piece from The Economist was about some vague talent associated with academic achievement and even more elusive meritocracy that nearly everyone posting has not been able to locate.
Clearly the man was writing for his life with the spectre that some Talent was after his job.
(Not to worry. There is no evidence that The Economist recognizes talent.)

[Lord]

The biggest myth is that talent is in limited supply. The world is overflowing with talent and talent floods the marketplace. Now power, that is a different story. Given the choice between talent and power, I'll take power any day.

[Lord]

This is an case of attribution error. No one wants to admit their success is chance. If it were chance, you would have no method to follow and no claim on the rewards. Therefore you must have something called talent that tells you what you must do to achieve success and justifies your accomplishment. If you are ahead of the pack you must have talent and talent is the reason you are ahead of the pack.

[calmo]

Following Lord and Attribution Errors

And so the track record of performance is also muddied by Chance? [I can see a lucky incompetent CEO surviving, but less so an unlucky but competent one.]

In the CEO camp, performance is adjudicated incestuously so bad performance is rarely recognized and even if recognized, still rewarded (as the wcw link reports).

In the academic camp, talent is not judged so incestuously and performance based on track records has some weight. These people are sought after and remunerated, but not like the CEO camp. [And this does not constitute a meritocracy.]

There are some talented people who can and do demonstrate their abilities. And as long as they perform they are compensated more or less fairly.
And then there are CEOs who are compensated outrageously (the BLS shows that only large corporate CEOs are paid like this) who do not require demonstrations of their abilities. They have their marketing agents. Only in America apparently.

[donna]

I'll take talent over power, thanks. Talentless power is a really Bad Idea, as we're currently finding out.

My biggest problem is with the power that comes with inherited wealth. The rich have a duty to see their children raised responsibly instead of selfishly. The porblem right now is that they've forgotten that.

The rich don't make that money all by themselves - they shouldn't get to spend it that way, either.

[Bruce Webb]

My GREs rocked. Could I have got into Cal's MBA program? No doubt. Could I have gotten a place in Boalt? Probably, I knew some people. Instead I joined a PhD program to explore some less than examined areas of Medieval Welsh literature. And in the end didn't get that PhD, nor did I end up getting the PhD in the second doctoral program I managed to enter. But in the course of that I knocked my brains up against some of the smartest people on the face of the planet.

Would I trade all of that in to be Jack Welch? Well sure, I am not an idiot and I am working for a living today. Would I concede that those guys that took an MBA or a JD and are now making big bucks are by that fact more deserving, talented, or smarter than me? As if.

says...

Hannibal Lecter: ...And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer.
Clarice Starling: No. We just...
Hannibal Lecter: No. Precisely. We begin by coveting what we see every day.

[Don Robertson]

As I was sure someone here would issue a sterile and blank condemnation of my opposition to certification and against my right to determine for myself what I consider is meritorious....

"I can't agree with Robertson's condemnation of certification. A certain amount of control simply makes things easier for consumers." by "K"

I held back the best to rebuff what some might find reassuring in their own disagreement with me.

Legislatures, legislators, governors and presidents require no educational certificate or government license to ply their trade.

Harry Truman dropped the A-bomb without any certification required. George W. Bush declared war on terror without any certification required...

But in Maine you need an education, degree and state license and certification to be a hairdresser?

The state legislature here simply sold the right to be a hairdresser to a group lobbying for tighter control of their trade and the right to make a living therein.

Well I certainly feel like my choice as a consumer has been greatly eased.

You can shut out the lights when you're done digesting the meritocracy and American Confucian slavery question here tonight.

Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
Limestone, Maine

An Illustrated Philosophy Primer for Young Readers
Precious Life - Empirical Knowledge
The Grand Unifying Theory & The Theory of Time
http://www.geocities.com/donaldwrobertson/index.html
Art Auctions:
http://www.artbyus.com/auctions.php?a=6&b=4807

[k]

Robertson: I think you misunderstand what certification does. And I am no big fan of it.

Certification is designed to reduce misrepresentation more than activity. You are free to engage anyone you like about legal problems, health, architecture, or hair styling. But the person you engage is not free to do whatever he/she likes or proclaim themselves skilled in law, medicine, construction, or hair treatment. They can only say they do these things without any formal test of skill or training.

Hence the seller, not the consumer,is limited.

Every program tends to outlive its purpose. Barbers and hair stylists were originally reined in because some were using dangerous chemicals and dubious techniques - especially for dyeing or hair regrowth. And head lice, etc. were spread by unsanitary practices. Licenses for barbers and hair dressers make little or no sense today.

Barbers were performing surgery, as were butchers. Sometimes it was better than nothing; much depended upon the operator. But there was a fatal flaw: there was no process to improve results. Physicans broke out of this difficulty by shunning secrecy, and reviewing and documenting what worked and what did not.

Every group, if they become sufficiently powerful, will attempt to eliminate opposing opinion or new methods. But that does not mean said group never has improved anything. It does not even mean the opposing opinions and the new methods are better. The one does not follow from the other.

[Richard]

Show me, by some objective measures other than the money they bring in, that the top 0.1% of pay earners evidences "talent" at levels greater than their equally educated peers, and I will concede some of the claims of meritocracy-in-action.

But I suspect that the larger liklihood is that the top 0.1% has greater access to levers of power and were often quite lucky to boot. Which, of course, is not a mertiocracy at all.

[Don Robertson]

K-

"Barbers were performing surgery, as were butchers. Sometimes it was better than nothing; much depended upon the operator. But there was a fatal flaw: there was no process to improve results. Physicans broke out of this difficulty by shunning secrecy, and reviewing and documenting what worked and what did not."

Better than nothing? Yes, and probably quite affordable for those who could afford nothing else.

I repeat, moms provide most of the medical care in this country, probably to the tune of a trillion dollars worth if billed at common medical-malpractice rates.

I remain unconvinced of your argument in an era long ago established with part of the professional equation being the practice of covering up for other doctors, lawyers, politicians, CFOs etc. by their cohorts in their criminal syndicates.

Doctors are particularly easy to point out as selling quackery long after it has been revealed as such.

Lawyers and CFOs are not far behind, if at all.

And every teaching professional teaches utter horse crap as standard faire, surely worth tenure, paying for, and publishing.

America has increasingly become a nation of liars and thieves, which merely remarkable and otherwise is fine enough, but call it what it is, caveat emptor.

A nation of liars and thieves wants to invade another country, or several other countries, and despite the public representations as to why, make up your own mind what their motivations are.

I won't be long on this board. The fruit has long since over-ripened, and has fallen to the earth rotten.

I encourage you and everyone else here to read what I've written. It is the most important work in philosophy written in a thousand years. I encourage each of you to be a young reader for a few hours.

Best.

Don Robertson, Philosopher
Limestone, Maine

An Illustrated Philosophy Primer for Young Readers
Precious Life - Empirical Knowledge
The Grand Unifying Theory & The Theory of Time
http://www.geocities.com/donaldwrobertson/index.html
Art Auctions:
http://www.artbyus.com/auctions.php?a=6&b=4807

[Lee A. Arnold]

Don Robertson, in your theory of Time, you state that T=EMC^2. I will not read further, because this is false. Energy has the physical dimensions, (if I recall correctly:) Mass x Length^2 / Time^2. That is why E may equal MC^2, as Einstein taught us. So on the right side of your equation, you have actually multiplied E times MC^2, or in other words E times E (for that is what MC^2 equals,) or in other words E^2. So your equation actually reads, Time = Energy squared. Applying dimensional analysis, the dimensions of your equation come out to: Time = Mass^2 x Length^4/Time^4. But Time cannot equal another quantity divided by the fourth power of Time, unless that "other quantity" has plenty of time to spare. And if you take the square root of both sides of your equation, you get: √Time = Energy. It is hard to understand how "the square root of time can equal energy." This is because, as aforementioned by the physicists, Energy ALREADY EQUALS Mass times the square of Length, DIVIDED BY THE SQUARE OF TIME.

[ninjaplease]

E, energy measured in Ergs, is equal to the product of mass and the speed of light squared. The speed of light is measured as 300000 meters per second.

Time is already in the equation. Go philosiphize on something else, leave physics to physicians...

[cm]

Lord: Sometimes luck vs. merit is easy to attribute. But often, e.g. when reasoning not about a single event but a period of tenure or a whole career, the impact of luck vs. competence + perseverence is harder to tell. In areas where the concept of merit applies, luck is more of an enabler than the real thing.

For example, one may be lucky to apply one's efforts to a highly visible project, and hence to not just "complete it" but "shine". Or a number of people may apply similar efforts to different useful things, and by a whim of chance (or the mental gamut of a management figure) one of those gets noticed and rewarded (and the others perhaps aborted).

During my education, I had the initial luck of my parents being capable, willing, and having the time, to develop my talents, and then during school/college I noticed how subsequent chances to shine and develop myself were granted to me based on past performance and track record. In a world of limited resources, this meant for example being allocated to more challenging assignments and projects offering the opportunity to meet interesting people/mentors and grow. All along I made good and hard efforts of course (e.g. studying the books more than hanging out with the gang/girls). (In my subsequent corporate career the track record thing continued, albeit in an increasingly weaker way. I guess as an individual contributor I'm closer to the end of my rope, where the significance of merit declines.)

In hindsight it is probably difficult to determine what of that was "unfair" luck (why did somebody make the choice to give a good opportunity precisely to me), and "tax it away".

And prompted by realpc, at no point has a perception of job security dissuaded me from making an effort. Whenever that has been happening, and it has, it was mostly because of management/environmental obstacles or disinterest.

says...

OT ninjaplease: Check out my recent response to you in this previous thread if you haven't.

[cm]

Oopsie, forgot my ID.

[Lord]

Chance happens to everyone but few have the background, the experience, the knowledge, the position, the connections, and the courage to act on it. This is what is rewarded. It is totally unfair, but life is unfair, and pablum about more ability, more skill, more effort, and more education, while helpful, is hardly critical. One might as well attribute it to being taller and tell everyone they need to strive to be taller. The education needed is far different from that being peddled by educational institutions.

[evagrius]

Considering the notion of luck in economic sucess- there was a study, ( I'm not sure where-sorry) that examined European and U.S. attitudes on sucess. Europeans attributed luck, social connections etc; far more as factors than Americans who, ( of course), attributed success to "hard work and character".

[MikeM]

Nice seeing a blog that doesn't devolve into one of those left-wing , right-wing wrestling matches such as those run by a pseudo-strategist Money Manager-wannabe in NY

[piglet]

"a new aristocracy of talent is retreating into golden ghettos and running the global economy in their own interests."

That fairy tale "meritocracy" again. Sure, nobody would deny that the members of our ruling classes are somehow talented, although few would describe their talent as "brain power". Do you remember the "Bell Curve"? Here's what Murray and Herrnstein said in 1994: "Do you think that the rich in America already have too much power? Or do you think the intellectuals already have too much power? ... just watch what happens as their outlook and interests converge." Powerful intellectuals converging with the money elite. The global economy run by an "aristocracy of talent". Hilarious.

[Holly W.]

My morning Globe greeted me with an article about how worker productivity in MA is at an all-time high, but inflation-adjusted wages haven't budged since 1989 ... it's a little hard to believe in a meritocracy when hard work and high productivity seem to get people exactly nowhere.

[evagrius]

"My morning Globe greeted me with an article about how worker productivity in MA is at an all-time high, but inflation-adjusted wages haven't budged since 1989 ... it's a little hard to believe in a meritocracy when hard work and high productivity seem to get people exactly nowhere."

Which is why I'd like to see a definition of productivity.

[cm]

Productivity: Wikipedia's shot at it.

I think it is fair to say there is a consensus that the input base/denominator is the labor-unit-of-time (hour, day, week, ... -- notice the difference; the day may include the night, and the week the weekend - perhaps relevant when estimating productivity of salaried/white-collar workers by imputed hours).

But what is a reasonable measure of output? Counting/weighing widgets only applies where the very same widgets are produced over and over again, or arguably classes of widgets are "comparable" and can be "normalized" to labor-required-per-unit. Failing that, aside from hand-waving and nebulous quality adjustments, you can measure associated sales volume, but that comes with a host of other problems tied to inflation or "structural" changes in negotiating position across business sectors.

In short, from my vantage point regardless what the official definition is, if there is one, the primary problem is how to define and measure output. Defining and measuring what labor to include in the inputs too (e.g. corporate overhead and outsourcing), but that's secondary as it's relatively easier to get a handle on.

[piglet]

The question is why the meritocracy theory is so readily believed (well, at least by economists and pundits) without much supporting evidence. Remember that earlier societies also claimed to distribute wealth and power according to some kind of merit. Today's definition of "merit" is ostensibly different but the circular reasoning is the same: the rich and powerful must somehow have earned their position, simply because this is how our societie likes to view itself. If a Harvard MBA is an entrance ticket to the upper class, and belonging to the upper class is helpful for getting a Harvard MBA, then this upper class is not much more meritocratic than those of earlier times. And just as in earlier societies, the apparent failure of this society to provide opportunity and social mobility is being explained by a theory of natural privilege ("genetic advantage"). Intergenerational social mobility is much lower in the "meritocratic" US compared to Europe. The data are out there, and, as evagrius noted, the Bush dynasty is the living symbol of that "meritocracy".

What's new? Nothing at all.

[cm]

piglet: You pretty much answer your own question. To add a minor perspective, what you describe is the "global" view. To the extent a society admits "alternative lifestyles", i.e. subculture niches where people can eke out an existence off the mainstream, whatever that means, there will be alternative "metrics" of merit and success, and subsequently meritocracy. E.g. academia, or bohemians/artists.

[calmo]

piglet's the circular reasoning [do you divvy up all reasoning the way I do piglet --either circular reasoning or begging the question?] is the same: the rich and powerful must somehow have earned their position, simply because this is how our societie likes to view itself. example of circular reasoning invites me to consider the society that has no control over its marketing arm.
Let's have Chavez for a day (I'll do anything for that translator's voice people) for an alternative view --seeing as how we're so rich and powerful (And have just bought Chomsky stock) [Ok, U B right --there is no Chomsky stock.]
Those checks and balances, (remember them?) that help(ed) us see ("societie likes to view itself") good government and implement measures to curtail bad government, are currently exhibited before us with the Foley case. They're not the same checks and balances of the Clinton era where that administration did not have control of the marketing arm.
But I'm done reasoning piglet --circular or non-circular (through and through)...tutto finito.

cm, with all due respect to the meticulous detail you bring to each and every post, are you over-looking the large number of illegal aliens in your analysis? Are you under-weighting the importance of the financial component of these services?
Ok, so much for the respect for Substance. (So excruciating people...crushing especially for us loners who were long ago smitten by Form and feel quite endangered really. [Have I obtained my accomplishment units for the day that might allow me a few moments to post here...like cm?] (I have my bag of fruit...ready.))

[evagrius]

cm- Thank you but as the Wiki article states;

"This may mean that a lot of what is said about productivity is based on opinion, rather than empirical evidence. Modern management literature emphasizes the important effect of the overall work culture or organisational culture that an enterprise has. But again the specific effects of any particular culture on productivity may be unprovable."

As far as I see, this means that much, if not all, that has been written about the recent "productivity" gains of the U.S. is merely opinion, i.e; "Bull".

[cm]

calmo: That's correct. "Undocumented" labor is excluded from the denominator.

And "undocumentation" of labor hours can happen in various ways -- illegal aliens and under-the-table pay, in addition to outsourcing/offshoring and unreported/unpaid overtime.

[cm]

And which types of undocumentation apply how much depends on the type of business.

[sean]

Hello,

I'd appreciate if you can give me some feedback on our site: www.regencyshop.com and our item hanging Ball Chair.

I realize that you are home decor-modern design connoisseur :) I'd like to hear your opinion/feedback on our products. Also, it'd be swell if you can place our link on your blog.

Thank you,

Sean