Meritocracy and equality
In the George Packer article I wrote about on Saturday, he sharply criticized “meritocracy.” We hear quite a bit of that sort of thing these days.
First, let’s define the word:
Meritocracy…is a political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people on the basis of talent, effort, and achievement, rather than wealth or social class. Advancement in such a system is based on performance, as measured through examination or demonstrated achievement.
Note the phrase “rather than wealth or social class.” One of the criticisms of meritocracy that you hear these days is that meritocracy seems linked to wealth and/or class (or race or ethnic group or sex), and that it seems to perpetuate the links between these things rather than sever them. Another criticism is that it fosters a viciously competitive environment, but we’ll stick to that first criticism because it seems to be the major one.
In line with this, critics of meritocracy speak approvingly of equality. Long ago—when I was young—that meant equality of opportunity. But only conservatives speak of that these days. The left wants cosmic justice and cosmic (that is, impossible to achieve) equality. If you want to read what is meant by that, just pick up a copy of Thomas Sowell’s wonderful book The Quest for Cosmic Justice. Just one quote of many (more quotes can be found at the link):
A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.
Humans are inherently unequal in drive, intelligence, talents, personality, life experience, and a host of other attributes or deficits. These traits are not necessarily distributed with perfect equality between groups. Whether that inequality is innate or cultural or stems from some combination of the two, in the real world we cannot possibly create perfect equality of outcome, and all attempts to procure it are doomed. All we can do, and what we should continue to strive for but have to a certain extent abandoned, is equality of opportunity and equality under the law.
But the left says that if the playing field of privilege as the left defines privilege really were equal, the races and the groups would all achieve equally (and perhaps, as in Lake Woebegone, everyone would be above average). But the left’s strained effects to achieve the impossible are hurting everyone, and that includes those they are supposedly trying to help.
Meritocracy means that merit—as in achievement, both academic and in the larger world—brings rewards. It’s hardly a perfect system, but there is no way to avoid that sort of arrangement without making a society less productive and less free, as in the old Soviet Union. Kill the kulaks and you’ve killed the most successful people in the rural areas. Stop serving the needs of the smartest kids—of all races, even if the proportions of each group among the smartest (as best we can measure such things) turn out to be somewhat different than each group’s proportion of the general population—and you create a society less able to invent things, run things, build things, and achieve brilliance.
Once again Mike Judge, in Indiocracy speaks elegantly, and much more entertainingly than the brilliance of a thousand Instapundits!
That’s Idiocracy.
That traits are not necessarily distributed equally amongst groups is an excellent observation, and this uncomfortable truth lies at the heart of the the leftist obsession with “social justice” and “racial equality.” If perfect equality of potential is assumed to be axiomatically true, then all disparities must be the result of discrimination or some other structural problem. Interestingly, this “disparity fallacy” (which will always seek an unattainable equality of result) has been analyzed most effectively not only by Sowell, but also by Walter Williams and Coleman Hughes, all of whom are black.
Equality of opportunity is a wonderful concept, but it’s also an impossibility. Accidents of geography – where you were born – can have a big effect on what you will eventually achieve. But your innate talents/abilities/temperament will also be a big factor. How did Ben Carson make it from the inner city to a become top neuro-surgeon? His mother encouraged him to read, but he had the innate gift for understanding what he was reading.
One problem today is that the mantra that a college education is a ticket to success (by that I mean the American Dream – a good family wage job, a decent home, good enough schools for your children, and a comfortable old age.), is not necessarily true. Many people do well in the trades, manufacturing jobs, resource extraction, small businesses, etc. without benefit of college.
People from well to do families with traditions of white collar jobs have an opportunity advantage based on their families of birth, which will point them toward education and the “professions.” Children born in the inner cities will find it hard to conceive of how to proceed to improve their lot in life, but those with innate traits that help create successful people will emerge.
One way to improve equality of opportunity for college would be to allow all C or better students to enroll in the state colleges and weed out those who can’t do the work. That was the system when I was in college back in the early 1950s. Today, the schools have developed byzantine enrollment standards such that even wealthy parents don’t know how to assure their children of a place in a school. So, the profession of “educational counselor” (or some such) has sprung up to guide these families in how to beat the system. Witness the present scandal over wealthy families under indictment for “cheating.” What kind of fairness is that? Better to let the young worthies from all economic backgrounds who did passing work in high school try their hand at the college level. Flunk out those who can’t do the work. That’s a meritocracy and as close as you can get to equal opportunity.
I look back on my recruitment into Navy OCS. I was told by the recruiters that it would be very difficult for me to match the talents of all the Ivy League recruits that were in my class. After all, my diploma was from a lowly state school known more as a “party school” than a serious institution of education. Imagine my surprise when I graduated 25th out of 750.
The military is mostly a meritocracy. You have to meet their entrance requirements, but after that it’s all about performance. If you stay in, as I did, you see the ranks thinned out as you move upward. Only a tiny percentage will make General/Admiral. And that’s as it should be. Meet the entrance standards (not exactly equality of opportunity, but ethnicity/social standing/ wealth won’t keep you out) and do your best to rise to your potential. It’s a good (but not perfect) system. And you get to serve your country in the bargain.
The airline industry, as far as pilots go, is less of a meritocracy once you have met the entrance requirements. All pilots at all levels are held to high standards, but advancement is based on available openings and seniority. Constant testing in the form of line check rides, simulator checks, and physical exams attempts to ensure high standards from the most senior to the most junior pilots. It works pretty well, but isn’t the typical meritocracy where you are rewarded according to you talents, experience, and industriousness.
Anyway, I guess what I’ve seen is that things have changed a lot in our culture, but the standards of the two employers I worked for have stayed pretty much the same.
I am reminded of the article by a NYT reporter on the dearth of black math professors at top research universities. What I Learned While Reporting on the Dearth of Black Mathematicians. She found out that blacks comprised 0.7% of tenured math professors at top research universities. Our wise reporter informs us this is a consequence of “exclusion”… racism…what have you.
Guess what? The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education informed us, in“The Widening Racial Scoring Gap on the SAT College Admissions Test” (2006) , that blacks comprised 0.7% of those scoring 750 or above on the Math SAT. It’s a fairly good guess that most math professors come from that group scoring 750 or above.
Blacks comprised 0.7% of those who scored 750 or above on the Math SAT, and also comprised 0.7% of tenured Math faculty members at top research universities. Looks to me as if there is no racial exclusion at all in doctoral level mathematics. On the contrary, Math SAT scores and blacks as math professors track very well.
But some SJW will start in on equality and all that good stuff.
There have certainly been societies more egalitarian than our current one, yet no more oppressive, societies which rewarded individual merit above status at birth, but where people acted with “more enlargement towards others and less respect towards ourselves and our own right . . . [displaying] liberality and readiness in remitting their debts to their brethren, and disposing liberally to such as wanted, and stand not upon their own dues which they might have demanded of them.” Not that any of the candidates (except maybe Marianne Williamson) are saying anything of that nature.
Perfection is highly overrated. Creating utopia is impossible simply because such efforts follow a path to dystopia.
I think your missing whats actually going on here..
reading the definition is reading the false words of the scame (according to the feminists, and other left groups… do note they unpacked first)…
now we are not equal because whites (like Jews in Germany) cheated…
and are using this false thing called merit to manipulate the system
i said long ago, and you can look it up, being cheated is how you get moral good people to do an immoral thing…
we talk like ducks, we even think like ducks, and more, yet we arent ducks
The fact is, meritocracy is a myth. states their side..
so all your doing reading the definition is supposedly quoting a socialist commentary and not knowing the pedigree of its discussion to evolve to today, a justification that will later be used to do what?
It is a system of “educational apartheid” – Danny Dorling
Deviously created non logic… but formulaic…
In addition to being false, a growing body of research in psychology and neuroscience suggests that believing in meritocracy makes people more selfish, less self-critical and even more prone to acting in discriminatory ways. Meritocracy is not only wrong; it’s bad.
https://aeon.co/ideas/a-belief-in-meritocracy-is-not-only-false-its-bad-for-you
and if we bring up equality of outcome?
In the novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Dodo tells Alice that “everybody has won and all must have prizes”. One analyst suggested that this quote describes the controversial concept of equality of outcome…
Meritocracy. Problem….
Who’s on the “panel”
Dancing with the stars?
Shark Tank?
Studio audience of Family Feud?
Nobel Committee?
Hugo award Jury?
The Duke 88?
Twitter Squad?
Russell Kirk addressed this issue in The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot.
Pure meritocracy is the ONLY just methodology by which a society may be ordered. That’s because success must be earned in a pure meritocratic system.
That human nature abuses it, does not change its rightness.
“Why, mused the industrial sociologist Alan Fox, would you want to give more prizes to the already prodigiously gifted?”
Uh… because they’ve earned it? Whereas, those who have accomplished less… have not?
“The fact is, meritocracy is a myth. states their side..
so all your doing reading the definition is supposedly quoting a socialist commentary and not knowing the pedigree of its discussion to evolve to today, a justification that will later be used to do what?” Art
Who the hell cares what the initiator of the etymology of the word/concept may be? It’s objectively demonstrable that if two people play a game of chess and one checkmates the other, they’ve won and the other has lost. That dynamic leads to Grandmasters. Bobby Fisher earned his status and so has every other Grandmaster. Sports are inherently the most meritocratic of endeavors.
That in the 1920s, Harvard University curbed the number of Jewish students admitted and today universities deny entrance to high scoring Asians is a moral criticism, not an indication of an inherent flaw in meritocracy.
“Although widely held, the belief that merit rather than luck determines success or failure in the world is demonstrably false.”
So speaks a shallow intellect. Absent corruption, success in the world lies at the intersection of preparation (merit) and opportunity (luck). Opportunity does not bless those unable to apprehend it and capitalize upon it.
“Bill Gates’s stellar rise as Microsoft’s founder,”
Bill Gates did not “rise to be” Microsoft’s founder. He was its principle founder from the very start.
“Luck intervenes by granting people merit, and again by furnishing circumstances in which merit can translate into success.”
Luck CANNOT ‘grant’ merit. Luck CAN furnish circumstance that merit may leverage into success.
“Where success is determined by merit, each win can be viewed as a reflection of one’s own virtue and worth.”
Only the egotistically immature view success as a reflection of one’s own virtue and worth. And yes, that includes Donald Trump. But… he fights.
“worldly failures becomes signs of personal defects, providing a reason why those at the bottom of the social hierarchy deserve to remain there.”
“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.” Abraham Lincoln
Those not content with failure have the ‘corrective’ that learns from failure. Those content with failure demonstrate their personal defect in character.
“I didn’t fail 1000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.” ? Thomas A. Edison
Wow, Jordan Peterson says a lot about meritocracy, effort, and earning your rewards.
What a surprise!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6H2HmKDbZA
“That’s because success must be earned in a pure meritocratic system.”
So, you agree the U.S. is NOT a meritocracy? I mean, what meritocratic system offers up someone like Hillary Clinton or George W. Bush as one of two choices to lead a nation?
In the context of the United States…and possibly other modern Western societies…the problems with meritocracy is that “merit” has been defined in such a restrictive and limited way and that success within a system has become a common substitute for it. Compare the respective resumes of three people to anchor the CBS Evening News: Dan Rather, Jeff Glor, and Norah O’Donnell.
Rather, whatever else you say about him, spent 31 years as a reporter before getting the big desk and covered just about everything under the sun. Glor and O’Donnell COMBINED can’t match his record. They essentially just got network jobs and slowly rose up through the ranks by attrition as much by achievement.
Mike
rose up through the ranks by attrition as much by achievement.
Huh? You don’t get coveted positions that way. You have competitors. Pyramids are narrow at the top and broad at the bottom.
Looking at a precis of Rather’s career and O’Donnell’s, I’m not seeing anything grandly different. She spent the same amount of time in network broadcasting before getting the anchor job, less time in print and radio prior to that (3 years v. 11 years).
whatever else you say about him,
No one has audited his career. What is known is that he and his producer were caught trying to injure the reputations of a retired officer of the Air National Guard and the President of the United States using fake documents. We also know that the producer’s interactions with her document examiners (not allowing any one of them to examine more than two of her six documents and not collecting multiple opinions on any one document) strongly suggest she knew bloody well the documents were sh!t. We know that when the fraudulence of the documents was exposed, Rather and Mapes through chaff in everyone’s face and have spent 15 years lying. Do you honestly think that’s the first time those two (who were at the time 48 and 73 years of age) had ever pulled such a scam on the news director or their audience. There’s no ‘everyone does it’ excuse here, because the other broadcast networks spotted the problems immediately and C-BS eventually sanctioned the two of them, though I don’t know if any peers have been willing to call Rather a fraud in explicit therm. He conned Robert Redford, but I expect that’s hurling yourself against a door ajar.
I mean, what meritocratic system offers up someone like Hillary Clinton or George W. Bush as one of two choices to lead a nation?
A system which puts a premium on being able to work a room (something Bush and Bill Clinton do well) conjoined to an electorate which responds to branding campaigns (which allowed Buddy’s ghastly wife to inherit his constituency). You want something different you need (1) a better political culture and (2) better recruitment and screening methods. Ask yourself how it is that in 1992 a combat veteran who presided over the end of the Cold War and organized the removal of Saddam Hussein from Iraq was run out of office by a grifter like Bill Clinton (who, unlike Dan Quayle and Donald Trump, was an honest-to-God draft dodger)? All you have to do is look around you. Bill Clinton is who media types admired, and a critical mass of the public fell for the sales job.
“…the races and the groups would all achieve equally.” That’s what all the fuss is about. We have leveled the playing field in some areas and the races and groups have not achieved equally. That is an intolerable reality, and reality itself must be protested.
“I expect that’s hurling yourself against a door ajar.”
Nice visual. I like it.
“So, you agree the U.S. is NOT a meritocracy?” MBunge
I agree and disagree. The key word in my assertion is “pure”. We do not have a pure meritocracy nor, given human nature… has there ever been one. But we’ve come closer to it than any other nation. And, it IS an ideal worth striving for because again, it’s the only just basis by which a society may be ordered.
Inheritance aside, to each according to what they’ve earned; whether through talent, persistence in pursuit of their goals or capitalizing upon opportunity or… all of the above.
How do you seriously argue AGAINST meritocracy? I mean, I see their attempt to turn it into a negative, but the cognitive dissonance or the argument is deafening.
“You don’t get coveted positions that way. You have competitors.”
Who were Glor and O’Donnell’s competitors? What did they do to elevate themselves above their competitors? Do you seriously think EITHER of them were the best possible candidate for the job?
There was no competition with Glor or O’Donnell. It was a selection by corporate executives who were focused on a great many things besides merit.
As for Rather, this isn’t about whether or not he’s a good person. It’s about his experience and his achievements. If you think O’Donnell even vaguely matches Rather in either respect, you haven’t looked very hard.
And there’s another aspect about meritocracy which seems to have been overlooked. ACCOUNTABILITY. For any meritocracy to function, people have to move down as easily as they move up. While American society isn’t entirely free of accountability, there’s shockingly little of it at the top.
Mike
Market economics is all about “merit”. Getting, buying, qualities desired as compared to other choices — with lower price one of the chief desired qualities. Those producers able to make the purchased products best, get market success — and deserve that success more than those whose products are not chosen by the buyers.
who were focused on a great many things besides merit
Whatever is being “focused on”, including large breasts in the case of many young women, is the “merit” — in the eyes of the beholder.
America has been more successful than other countries because it has been more merit based than other countries.
Individual luck is a huge influence — all “genetic” influences are a form of luck, and are not part of an individual’s decision making merit. IQ & physical beauty are two of the most important luck issues. They might even be called privileges, but it would be better to not equate luck & privilege, altho it seems that’s now being done.
There is no just way to compensate the unlucky for the advantages that the lucky have. That’s part of reality which SJ Stalinists don’t address or admit.
So who SHOULD get to the top of a pyramid? For every pyramid of success in the US, there are plenty of people who could be chosen. Licking the boots of the decision makers has long been, and continues to be, one of the key “merits” looked for. In the case of a young actress asking for a movie role from Harvey, maybe licking something else is needed.
I understand that China has a long tradition of extensive exams in order to get promoted within their gov’t structures. This Chinese meritocracy method is surely one of the reasons their benign commie dictatorship system has been successfully growing so well for a few decades. How they deal with inequality among the millionaires & billionaires who are in the Politburo, and the upcoming competitions after(?) Xi to see who gets to their pyramid tops will be interesting. Maybe scary.
For most Americans, being born American is the non-merit Biggest Lucky Break they ever get.
I think most people miss the key problem here: it depends what you mean by ‘merit’.
According to Merriam Webster, ‘merit’ can be both praiseworthy quality and character or conduct deserving reward.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/merit
The idea of ‘meritocracy’ relates to the first definition. The reward links to the quality of your achievement, no matter your wealth or social class… and no matter how much effort it took to you. Add to that the idea that every citizen should have a reasonable chance to reach that achievement (provided you have enough will and talent), and you have the basis of meritocracy. The main criticism is that, in practice, it’s easier to reach achiviements if you’re born in a wealthy family.
Advantages?
– Having it easier if you’re born in a wealthy family creates an incentive to build wealth. If your kids will the exact same advantages and problems than anyone else, why bother in building any wealth in first place?
– The society doesn’t dismiss capable people. It can be more difficult for then depending on their family, but if they have will and talent enough, they should move up (otherwise the system is not working).
‘Fixing’ the system to take effort into account has several problems:
1. There’s no way to measure effort efficiently. If you’re poor and get bad grades, how much should be blamed to ‘being poor’ and how much to not studying or not being intelligent enough?
2. What do you do with the lack of skill and intelligence? Do you prioritize people without enough skill or intelligence because it takes more effort to reach the same achievement?
3. What do you do with the lack of discipline? If a guy hasn’t been educated in being disciplined, making the same effort will take (paradoxically) much more effort. Which effort do you take into account?
4. In what point you stop assessing effort? What about a person with Down syndrome? Should he hired as engineer if he tried hard enough?
At the end of the day, the main problem is that taking effort instead of achievement as key element doesn’t work. That’s one of the causes of fast decline of modern US.
Who were Glor and O’Donnell’s competitors? What did they do to elevate themselves above their competitors? Do you seriously think EITHER of them were the best possible candidate for the job?…There was no competition with Glor or O’Donnell. It was a selection by corporate executives who were focused on a great many things besides merit.
What, you fancy NBC News should hold some sort of contest to pick their anchors? Presumably, they considered a number of candidates for the position. Unless you’re working in the news director’s office, what would you know about the screening process. And, again, they’re newsreaders. What skill goes into being a newsreader?
It f*$@ing never occurred to me to ask who was the ‘best possible candidate’ to sit in Peter Jennings’ chair or John Chancellor’s. And there’s a reason for that. I didn’t work for CBS News, NBC News, or ABC News, and have no clue who were the other candidates for their positions when they received them. Unless you’re actually employed there, I’m not seeing why you’d have more than an idle opinion on this matter.
As for Rather, this isn’t about whether or not he’s a good person. It’s about his experience and his achievements. If you think O’Donnell even vaguely matches Rather in either respect, you haven’t looked very hard.
What achievements? He went to work, reported stories, went home. So did she. So did every other person who sat in that chair over the years. Rather wasn’t Elizabeth Neuffer or Marguerite Higgins or Ron Nessen, all of whom spent years of their work life in physical danger. Nor was he a foreign correspondent like Clifton Daniel or AM Rosenthal. Nor was he an innovater in news programming like Dave Garroway or Jack Lescoulie. Nor was he phenomenally energetic like Dorothy Kilgallen, who wrote a regular column, had reporting assignments, had a morning radio show, wrote books, and had other gigs – all while raising three children (popping the last one at age 41).
And yes his character is germane. He’s in a trust-invested occupation, and he and Mary Mapes proved to be brazen and persistent liars. It’s not as if no one had complained before about the quality of his reporting, it’s just that the sheer pig-headed lunacy of his lying was so apparent that his employers and others in the news business had to quit pretending it wasn’t happening.
And there’s another aspect about meritocracy which seems to have been overlooked. ACCOUNTABILITY. For any meritocracy to function, people have to move down as easily as they move up.
Why do they have to move down ‘as easily’ as they move up?
“Market economics is all about “merit”.”
No, market economics are PARTLY about merit. That’s one of the things that make it better than socialism, But market economics also involves a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with merit. Let’s try two more examples.
Jimmy Kimmel has been hosting a late night talk show for years. He’s become rich and famous doing so. He’s also spent essentially ALL of those years getting his ass kicked in the ratings by his main competitors. Kimmel has been paid millions to consistently finish third in a three man race. In the face of that failure, are we still supposed to believe there’s NO ONE better for that job than Jimmy Kimmel?
Then there is NFL hall of famer Kurt Warner. He’s one of the greatest quarterbacks of his era yet he was stocking grocery store shelves after college and might never have gotten a chance to even be an NFL starter if someone hadn’t gotten injured,
How the market works in theory and how it actually functions are two very different things.
Mike
MBurge:
And your point is that what? Life and the economy have chaos and randomness?
“Don’t sell the bicycle shop Wilbur.”
I agree with om.
(Yeah, I know… Shocking!)
Merit is also about successfully adapting to change and chaos. Merit is about seeing and recognizing opportunities others don’t. Merit is about having the courage take advantage of opportunities at the cost of risking one’s existing comfortable routine.
There was no need to quibble about Tom Grey’s opening statement.
My goddaughter worked very hard to achieve her Masters Degree with honours. The university she went to is located on the East Coast. At her graduation she was not allowed to wear the the ‘honours’ ropes and tassels, because it might offend the the class members with a lower GPA. This was over 5 years ago. I was offended that her efforts were not recognised. It is quite ridiculous that the USA is striving for mediocrity.
“For most Americans, being born American is the non-merit Biggest Lucky Break they ever get.”
For a relatively brief time, from the end of WWII to about 1970, the U.S. was so dominant in nearly all aspects, that one could say that being an American was like winning the Lottery. I grew up with the myth of American Exceptionalism. That America was the “best” and “free-est” country in the world was a matter of faith.
However, after living most of my adult life overseas I have a different and broader perspective. The USA is still the most powerful country in the world. But, it is not the free-est. Nor is it the wealthiest, per capita. Nor, is it the most technically advanced.
The rest of the world has been catching up to and, in some instances, surpassing America. The reasons for this have everything to do with America’s turn away from it’s original founding principles.
Such is history… Empires come and go.
Yan
You make some good points.
My family always had food on the table and a roof over our heads, but had a very ‘Grapes of Wrath’ story. My youngest brother was not an honours student. He had his first job at 14 years old babysitting, paid rent at 16, started mowing lawns for a company that he later owned, retired in his early fifties, has money in the bank and races Porsche’s. He had no contacts or money when he started out. What he had was the ability to work hard, talent, intelligence, honesty, charm, and he knew how to save money. He is not and was not a ‘whiner’.
Roy Nathanson:
I’m curious. What country would you say is the free-est?
@JHCorcoran
My mother had to leave school and work when she was a kid since my grandfather was in jail and couldn’t provide. She ended in her 20s working during the day and studying at night until she got a high school graduate. If you want something, you don’t whine. You just do it, or at least you keep working until finally you get it.
Nor is it the wealthiest, per capita. Nor, is it the most technically advanced.
I think you mean the most affluent. There are 11 countries in the world which supposedly have a higher gross domestic product per capita than ours.
1. The advantage possessed by the Norway, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Norway is entirely attributable to fuel and mineral exports – i.e. they sit atop natural resource bonanzas.
2. Qatar is also sitting atop a natural resource bonanza, which accounts for most of their advantage. All the remainder and then some is accounted for by a phenomenon that you find in Kuwait and the UAE (and in a more attenuated way, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Bahrain). These countries are an assemblage of industrial parks, office parks, and tourist parks. The permanent population (who have citizenship) are the proprietors (and heavily represented in government employment), while resident aliens supply the labor. In Qatar, the indigene population accounts for 5% of the working population, but 10% of the resident population.
3. Compensation per worker in real terms is lower in Ireland, Hong Kong, and Macao than it is in the U.S. A great deal of their output is accounted for by conventions followed in booking corporate revenue. (European companies reap tax advantages by attributing profits to Irish subsidiaries, for example).
Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Singapore actually are more affluent than the United States.
“The advantage possessed by the Norway, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Norway”
Correction: Norway, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Brunei.
I wonder if the Bee is talking here about Packer’s heresy on the meritocracy line?
https://babylonbee.com/news/the-atlantic-quickly-patches-echo-chamber-after-discovering-leak
“It was a dicey situation. We were exposed for a short while to a dissenting opinion on a social issue, which is unacceptable, and could have wreaked havoc on our homogeneous corporate culture,” Goldberg said in his statement. “We want to thank the frenzied and ruthless social media mob for bringing the abnormality to our attention—it has been successfully dealt with.”
JHCorcoran on September 20, 2019 at 12:11 pm said:
My goddaughter worked very hard to achieve her Masters Degree with honours. The university she went to is located on the East Coast. At her graduation she was not allowed to wear the the ‘honours’ ropes and tassels, because it might offend the the class members with a lower GPA. This was over 5 years ago. I was offended that her efforts were not recognised. It is quite ridiculous that the USA is striving for mediocrity.
* * *
Okay, now I believe we’re doomed.
PS Jordan Peterson talks about merit, effort, rewards, discipline, and shutting down the universities as they now exist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6H2HmKDbZA
From the Aspen Ideas Festival, recorded Tuesday, June 26, 2018.
Neo,
That is a good question.
Firstly, I only wish to speak of the twelve countries that I have actually lived in. I am answering based on my personal experience, not on research.
Secondly, I have to separate freedom into three categories: Economic, Personal, and Political. Obviously, there some overlaps, but the distinctions are important. As an example, Cuba has no political freedom and very little economic freedom, but a surprising amount of personal freedom. People do pretty much whatever they wish, so long as they don’t infringe on the government’s monopoly on political and economic power.
I would also note that some countries have laws
Roy Nathanson:
Ordinarily, when people speak of “freedom” in the US, or the US being “the freest country in the world,” they really mean “liberty.” They don’t mean “freedom” as in licentiousness or anarchy.
I think we can safely say that Cubans have very little liberty. I’m not sure what you exactly mean by “personal freedom” as opposed to “political freedom.” Do you mean they can screw around or take drugs, if they have the money?
Oops… accidentally hit the button…
Continued…
I would also note that some countries have laws restricting personal behavior that, in practice, are only enforced as a means to control political and economic behavior.
So, with those notes, here we go…
Economic Freedom: Singapore
I have heard that Hong Kong beats Singapore, but I have never been there, so I cannot say from personal experience.
Political Freedom: Republic of Georgia
I was there during the Rose Revolution. They gave the existing power structure the boot and got a fresh start. Perhaps, by now, the bureaucracy has gotten entrenched again, and their version of the “Deep State” has taken over. But, while I was there, it was a breath of fresh air.
Personal Freedom: Thailand
Perhaps it is part of the Buddist religion and philosophy. They have a strong “Live and let live” kind of culture. They do have laws regulating personal behavior but, in practice, they are not enforced unless someone threatens the monarchy, or the economic hegemony. The Buddist culture is very good at enforcing acceptable social behavior without the police or legal intervention.
If I have learned anything from my travels, it’s that the older a society or country gets, the less freedom they demand. Younger societies value freedom more. Older societies are more willing to sacrifice liberty for security. Just consider what we put up with at the airports for the mere illusion of security.
Neo:
In Cuba, there are no laws about where you can and cannot drink or smoke. I don’t smoke (any longer) but I think that bars should be free to make their own rules.
In my lifetime, the U.S. has added a mountain of laws and regulations (federal, state, and local) the regulate every aspect of our personal lives. In my town, it is illegal to drink a beer in the park! Believe me… at my age, after all I have seen and done, I don’t appreciate being told where I can and can’t drink a beer!