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Comment by devoply | Hacker News Reader

Only ones it seems left with privilege are those who have a lot of capital. Everyone else has been reigned in to serve them and their needs and interests. Which I guess is how meritocracy works.

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"A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in their health and genetic endowment; luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement, and, probably, income; luckiest in their educational and career opportunities; and luckiest in so many other ways difficult to enumerate — these are the folks who reap the largest rewards. The only way for even a putative meritocracy to hope to pass ethical muster, to be considered fair, is if those who are the luckiest in all of those respects also have the greatest responsibility to work hard, to contribute to the betterment of the world, and to share their luck with others."

-- Ben Bernanke, Princeton University Commencement 2013

Well when has this ever not been the case? The way most of our economic systems are set up, the disparity of wealth between nations, between races, etc. They are all about this luck. In fact the difference between human beings and animal is exactly that as well. The concept taken to its conclusion is absurd. The point that he's trying to make is one for a more social system. But gasp that's socialism, isn't it? Capital drives the system. Those who hold capital want more capital. So obviously they are going to do everything in their power to do just that. To ask them to appeal to lower common denominators, well that's sort of like asking a General to hire less competent soldiers; how then do you expect them to win a war?

This speech was given to Princeton undergraduates -- 1150 of the most fortunate and well supported people in the world. He's urging them to be self aware of their immense good fortune, and to be generous and grateful rather than selfish and envious.

Princeton is the epitome of a capitalistic school. Very few students will become socialists. Having more Rockefellers and Carnegies (who have both given to the university) is not a bad thing for this world.

Weren't they also both robber barons who used philanthropy to retroactively clear their names after they've made their billions (similar to the later Bill Gates, but even less scrupulous)?

Actually, they arguably weren't. In his Rockefeller biography Titan, Ron Chernow notes that Rockefeller gave to charity from his earliest days of income, well before it was clear that he would become exceptionally wealthy.

>Princeton is the epitome of a capitalistic school.

Please explain this. I know little about Princeton.

>Well when has this ever not been the case? The way most of our economic systems are set up, the disparity of wealth between nations, between races, etc. They are all about this luck. In fact the difference between human beings and animal is exactly that as well. The concept taken to its conclusion is absurd.

More need to come to this realization and abandon the idea of absolute meritocracy altogether instead of paying lip service with talk of "equality of opportunity".

>It is important in disputes that law treat us equally because it is necessary for the preservation of suppressing violence by forcing all competition into voluntary exchange. Otherwise the institution cannot provide the incentive to suppress our instincts and redirect our efforts.

>But the western illusion that those values necessary to create incentives for us as an individual economic unit can insulate us from our family, and clan, and the necessary operation of our reproductive evolutionary system is a postmodernist, socialist fiction that assumes economic and legal equality can be extended to genetic equality – contrary to all evidence and reason.

>The rawlsian veil of ignorance is a complex rhetorical device for the neurolinguistic programming of the masses precisely to confuse them into the illusion of biological equality and to divorce the individual from his ancestry so that his loyalties are to the state and rather than to his familial genetic heritage.

>The blank slate, likewise is a device for the same purpose. So are diversity and open immigration.

propertarianism.com/2013/07/20/legal-equality-is-necessary-economic-equality-is-unattainable-and-genetic-equality-is-undesirable-your-genes-matter/

Nah, folks with capital think that they're being screwed too. It's very hard to find investments with positive inflation-adjusted returns, and when you do, the perception is that they're often overvalued and hence quite risky. Public-company shareholders who thought they had a steady dividend-paying income source are finding that even the steadiest dividend-paying income sources are going out of business or getting bought in transactions that shareholders have little leverage on.

What's really happening, I suspect, is that we're living in a time of great change where all existing institutions are steadily decaying and eventually collapsing. And so if you can identify a group as a class and write about them in a news article, chances are they're getting screwed. Plenty of individuals are not getting screwed and are profiting massively off this, but they belong to groups that didn't have labels a decade ago, like "tech startup founder" or "import/export business owner" or "Chinese contract manufacturer" or even "data scientist". These individuals have a very strong incentive not to crow about their success, because when everybody else is getting screwed and you say "Oh, actually I'm doing better than I ever expected", you paint a big target on your head.

>It's very hard to find investments with positive inflation-adjusted returns

While I understand that you're perhaps not asserting this personally, and are restating the words of others it's important to say that this part is absolutely untrue. In fact, if somebody with wealth actually believes this, and isn't just using it as propaganda in class warfare, that person is a poor steward of capital and it would be best if it were in more capable hands. Trivial investment choices, like total-market stock index funds, have solid returns that easily beat inflation, and little to no risk on 10 year time scales, which is where investment should take place. If they can't stomach any temporary negative dips, TIPS will give them that. In any case there is an abundance of easy, inflation-positive investments out there just lying around. Even the middle-class that have saved small amounts can get first-class investment in index funds.

Totally agree, this drives the point home: https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/26/warren-buffett-jus...

> What's really happening, I suspect, is that we're living in a time of great change where all existing institutions are steadily decaying and eventually collapsing.

I'll add to that that finally the law of compound interest seems to have reached its limits, the same as Moore's law. Capitalism has been riding on its tails for the last 200 years or so, but IMHO we're in new territory right now where the good and steady returns are no-where to be found anymore.

Good and steady returns are easier than ever to find! Where does this idea come from?

And if one doesn't consider the returns good, what would be good, and was it actually better in the past?

The 10-year treasuries have stood at bellow 3% for 6 years now while the 10-year German bonds have stood at bellow 2% for 5 years. There's a reason for all that. I'd personally consider a "good return" as somth trying to approach double-digits.

That's not meritocracy. It's just flat out rent-seeking.

Well I define meritocracy not as ability, but appearance. Because in a corporation it is often very difficult to gauge ability but much easier to gauge appearance. So everyone should appear as if they are being squeezed and kept in line. And they are doing just that.

That's one way to make America a meritocracy, just redefine meritocracy to loosely reflect inheritance based feudalism.

The divine right of meritocrats!

That's not a reasonable definition of meritocracy. "I guess thats how meritocracy works" sounds like you're saying "meritocracy is a good thing, but look at how bad the outcomes are, or at least how bad the outcomes appear", but by how you claim to define meritocracy, it wouldn't be a good thing in almost anyone's book.

Well what is the purpose of this piece. The purpose of this piece is to play down how much more compensation CEOs get. It's basically a P/R piece to tell all the working classes that everything is fine, and the CEOs are being reigned in. So obviously some sarcasm is in order. But the picture is complicated, that on one hand CEOs are made to appear a certain way, as if they don't have privilege and are working harder than everyone else to deserve all that extra compensation. At the same time they do have much more privilege than any time in history, in terms of their compensation.

Another way of looking at it is that this is exactly how the shareholders want the situation to appear, in that CEOs are working hard for them, their bosses, and they don't mind paying for that hard work with extra compensation, which I guess is the exact dynamics of the situation.

Thank you for pointing this out and I agree. This is very much propaganda. Reigning in the total square footage of the executive wing at GE and replacing walnut with glass is just tokenism. No changes have been made to the outsized pay packages where a CEO will make 70 to 300 times what the average worker makes.

I will certainly trade a walnut-lined suite for a $85m pay package.

Boards have moved from investing (expecting a CEO to work for a decade or two improving the company) to speculating (betting that a new hotshot is going to bring big fast returns). The pay increases are an acknowledgement of that change, almost like hazard pay.

Agreed. Outwardly the definition of meritocracy sounds positive:

"an elite group of people whose progress is based on ability and talent rather than on class privilege or wealth."[1]

However defining what constitutes "merit" has some issues:

The term "meritocracy" was originally intended as a negative concept.One of the primary concerns with meritocracy is the unclear definition of "merit" What is considered as meritorious can differ with opinions as on which qualities are considered the most worthy, raising the question of which "merit" is the highest—or, in other words, which standard is the "best" standard. As the supposed effectiveness of a meritocracy is based on the supposed competence of its officials, this standard of merit cannot be arbitrary and has to also reflect the competencies required for their roles.[2]

[1] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/meritocracy

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy

Plus military power. We always forget that but if we talk super rich, we also talk Sheik/President/King level. And as said in other subthreads: They are also not feeling save anymore.

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