Why we can't have a "meritocracy": We have no idea how to measure worth

[MissMillie]

https://www.salon.com/2021/12/25/why-we-cant-have-a-meritocracy-we-have-no-idea-how-to-measure-worth/

Moreover, money is not the common standard that it seems to be. This is because there are two different ways of earning it. Capitalists benefit from portfolio income, which is timeless, spaceless and potentially limitless. Other people don't.

Owners' income is not limited to the labor that they alone put into an enterprise, which is bound by space (a person can only be in one place at any given moment) and time. Instead, owners get the profits produced by their entire labor force. They earn when anyone in the enterprise is working. They thus earn from multiple bodies in multiple spaces. They can simultaneously earn in Tulsa, Phoenix, Richmond, Paris, and Bangkok. They can also earn round the clock. They can earn while they are eating or sleeping. They can earn while they are watching a movie or reading a book. Their earnings, then, are divorced from their person — from their labor and from their bodies in space and time. They have broken through these limits. Their earnings are spaceless and timeless.

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This small excerpt is just one of the arguments made in the Op Ed. It's a good read, though I expect that it's stuff that's pretty obvious to DUers.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. White male privilege & systemic racism are extremely corrosive of meritocracies. . . . nt

[Hortensis]

5. Yes. News at 11? Men ruled the entire world just 100 years ago,

Last edited Mon Dec 27, 2021, 06:25 PM - Edit history (1)

men of whatever race was dominant in each area, usually members from a few dominant families. Of course their efforts to hold the power they've held for thousands of years are delaying and often corrupting -- just as much as they can -- the transition to new intrinsically egalitarian merit-based systems.

Apparently some do need reminding that meritocracy has been making tremendous progress in an amazing short period of time, right along with equality of all.

Meritocracies aren't just the ideal, meritocracy is the best we can do for ourselves and our institutions. Of course some ideologies, like hierarchies, are threatened by meritocracy -- they can't compete with others on a merit basis. So it's not just wealthy males but also some of the people who claim equality and freedom as their own special ideals who rightly see merit-based choices as threats to the systems they want to create.

Btw, anyone but me remember when the extremely few women in congress were almost always widows who took their dead husbands' seats -- courtesy of friends of their dead husbands doing themselves the favor? That's in our lifetimes. And some living now were born before women, half of all Americans and of all colors, had the right to vote, or just to sign contracts in many places. The political merit of that entire half of all Americans was nonexistent.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Caring for people needs to be valued much much higher: teaching, elder care, health care, so much.nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Wealth & income inequality severe problems around world & will be addressed one way or another. nt

[3Hotdogs]

4. So merit can be measured by wealth. John Calvin thought of this, centuries ago. But anyway,

aren't a couple of the Walmart heirs known to be drunken boils on society's anus? Then we can also look at Fred Drumpf's heirs.

But they are wealthy. So they are deserving of our respect and whatever benefits society can bestow upon them.

The British meritocracy/nobility system of government gave them Admiral and General Howe and Lord Cornwallis in the American Revolution. It also gave them Field Marshall Montgomery.