Timex
5061
Eh, I gotta call bullshit on this.
I mean, you can say that it’s not solely a meritocracy, or that it’s not some totally pure meritocracy… but to just say that it’s a myth is kind of going to far.
Your success in American society is most definitely heavily based upon your own merits.
Nope. Merit is part of the recipe for success, certainly, but so are lots of other things that people from more privileged backgrounds take for granted. It’s easy for someone from a privileged background to look at their success and their merits and conclude a strong relationship between the two. It’s less easy to understand that someone equally talented might not have been able to achieve the same things due to lack of opportunities.
Timex
5063
I guess it depends on what is meant by success. Certainly a person who is born rich can stay rich, probably without a ton of effort. So, for them, their wealth is not based on merit.
But I think that our society is open enough, especially now with even more ability for individuals to receive investment and support for good ideas, that hard work most certainly DOES play a major role in success.
It’s not just luck… and to believe it’s simply luck is basically to guarantee failure.
The way I like to think of it is: ANY person who works hard can be successful. However, not EVERY person who works hard will be successful.
Of course it is. It’s not some imagined utopia where your families previous accomplishments are irrelevant, and you’ll encounter encumbrances if you choose a politically administered vocation such as gymnastics or acting, but it’s as close as a human society has yet come to ensuring that individuals have the opportunity to advance based upon merit.
That’s certainly true, but every person who works hard will achieve more than they would have had they been less determined and diligent. Hard work without ability and the wise application of that effort has natural limitations, even if you’re not otherwise handicapped by a crappy situation or ailments.
Very successful people usually work very hard, often to an extent that the average person can’t even imagine emulating. But if you’re working double shifts as a cab driver for 16 hours a day you’re not necessarily going to be successful unless it’s a stepping stone to a vocation with more potential upside.
Aleck
5067
I think this is right. There’s a combination of smarts, hard work, and luck that are the formula for success. You generally need all three (in greater or lesser degrees) to be successful. What most advocates of “meritocracy” seem to think is that smarts and hard work are all it takes – ignoring luck, which plays a critical role. Luck can be/is being in the right place at the right time, being born the right race, having the right friends/connections, etc. Those are critical for success in virtually all cases, but by themselves typically don’t translate to success.
Luck certainly plays a role in life, and an important one.
It’s lucky to be born in a non-violent family, with 2 decent parents, who are loving and value education. It’s lucky to be born without a physical or mental handicap, and without genes that make you more susceptible to an early fatal illness. It’s lucky to be born into a country where people don’t walk around with machine guns executing political opponents, and you’re unlikely to be attacked by foreign countries. It’s lucky to be born as the son or daughter of a Dentist instead of being the offspring of a retail shoe salesman. It’s lucky to be born physically attractive, instead of ugly. It’s lucky to be taught the tools and ethics you need to succeed in life early, and not to grow up spoiled and without the values needed for long-term success. It’s lucky to be born curious about the world, and to have that curiosity fostered in a healthy, constructive manner. It’s lucky to be born competitive and with the drive to push yourself to achieve more than you or others might have thought possible. It’s lucky to be born with a creative mind, to be born and raised in a manner that leaves you even-tempered, able to handle stress well and make lucid decisions despite pressure, and to be self-confident in unexplored territory.
But almost nobody is lucky in all of those respects, and many who have many advantages still accomplish little. Many who are capable of achieving what other people would consider a greater level of “success” aren’t inclined to do so because living up to someone else’s perception of their capabilities isn’t what’s most important to them. Others will be inhibited by catastrophic misfortune.
Luck can make someone who would have been successful anyway, into Bill Gates. But bad luck doesn’t limit someone with Steve Jobs’s talents and work ethic into working in a dead-end cubicle office job. Bad luck can shorten your life, require you to have more ability or to work harder to overcome bad fortune, or keep you from having as easy access to the same opportunities available to more fortunate individuals, but nothing is more important to your achievements in life than you, even though luck gives us advantages or disadvantages and we start from uneven ground.
That’s a fine sentiment. I really wish it was more than a fantasy.
Timex
5070
OK, bear in mind here that I’m not really a fan of Ben Carson, as his views on lots of things seem crazy to me.
But how did he achieve his success in life, if not based on his own merit? He certainly had no advantages growing up to the average. If anything, he was pretty significantly disadvantaged.
And yet now he’s extremely successful. How did that happen?
It is! If only all our wishes could come true that easily!
magnet
5072
Exactly right. This would be completely uncontroversial if it were described in common sense terms.
For example, let’s rephrase the story linked above:
Only on a college campus would an art project about rudeness become rude itself.
Members of Brandeis University’s Asian American Student Association (AASA) were recently pressured to apologize after hanging posters outside a campus building aimed at addressing the “rudeness” Asian students allegedly endure on a daily basis.
The collection of small white signs hung on the stair railings at the university’s Rabb Graduate Center featured various questions and statements that the group found offensive, including but not limited to:
—“Chinese people will eat anything;”
—“I totally have an Asian fetish;”
—“You’re my favorite Asian;” and
—“Why can’t people learn English when they come to this country?”
—“We hope that this will foster a healthy dialogue about racism in the Brandeis community and how harmful and pervasive rudeness can be,” an additional sign read.
According to AASA’s Facebook page, the display was intended to “represent the entirety of the effects of these derogatory or negative, racially based, rude comments … [which] can be overwhelming and frustrating.”
The group placed the signs in a high-traffic location on campus with the hope that the words would “become impossible to ignore.”
…
However, some students at the Massachusetts-based private research university took issue with the display, causing AASA to issue a subsequent apology for “irritating” students.
“We would like to acknowledge and apologize to the Asian students on campus who were irritated or hurt by the rude content of our installation,” AASA president Esther Lee wrote in a lengthy e-mail to Brandeis’ student body, as reported by the Daily Caller.
Lee explained that the art installation had been removed and that the group “had no intention of mocking or harming our own community and ourselves.”
“We acknowledge the disconnect between intention and effect,” Lee wrote.
A simple find/replace, and the whole thing becomes ordinary and unobjectionable.
Timex
5073
But when you simply say rudeness, or irritating, then it kind of loses the impact… Especially when you see that many of the folks most concerned with it demonstrate extreme rudeness.
Beats me, I know diddly about Ben Carson.
Don’t view the issue in absolute terms. I’m not saying it’s impossible for someone of impoverished background to become successful. I’m just saying the deck is stacked against them. America has an unfair playing field. This has been pretty conclusively demonstrated. One can argue over the reasons and the mechanisms in play that cause that but it’s pretty easy to show that white males have a disproportionate amount of the wealth and power and success. The only logical way to try to claim America is primarily a meritocracy is to go full-on crazy misogynist/white-supremacist and argue that white men really do have more talent than anyone else.
magnet
5075
Yes, but only because society has deprecated the value of simple etiquette. A generation or three ago, being accused of uncivil behavior really stung. Now we are finally returning to the idea that being civil is important, though we need to invent new words to defend an old concept.
Especially when you see that many of the folks most concerned with it demonstrate extreme rudeness.
No doubt. Radicals always seem to lose their sense of irony.
Compared to what non-imaginary place? The Congo? China? You’re pretty insular in your thinking. All that’s been conclusively proven is that you’re not even able to win a debate through rhetoric, let alone on facts.
Ah, we’re back to “America is better than China, therefore shutup commie.” Fantastic.
Quite odd then that both Asian Americans, who suffered all kinds of historical discrimination, far outperform whites in a host of measures including median houseold income (66k vs. 49.8k). What are the mechanisms that have lifted them above whites if not their success in a meritocratic society? What about Jews who average about double the income and more than quadruple the net worth of non-jewish whites? Is it racist to point out facts like this?
Naw, this is the internet: we’re back to people just whining and feeling sorry for themselves on message boards instead of recognizing the wealth of opportunities and doing something more constructive.
If you think anyone successful ever wasted time doing what some of us spend a substantial amount of our time doing, you’re wrong - we’re lazy fucks by comparison. Examine that before indulging your racist fantasies, perhaps.
magnet
5080
Compared to other Western countries, of course.
Here are the facts according to a summary of a Pew study:
The United States has a greater degree of “stickiness,” in which people at both extremes of the income distribution are likely to stay in the quintile into which they were born, than neighbor Canada.
Here are the facts according to a summary of a Brookings study.
But the United States is distinct from other countries, research shows, in having “less, not more, intergenerational mobility than do Canada and several European countries.”
Upward mobility is particularly uncommon for children who are born into families at the lowest income bracket.
Here are the facts according to a summary of an OECD study.
The study found Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Spain and France out-ranked the U.S. in terms of a child’s ability to earn more than his or her parents. Only Italy and Great Britain had stronger links between a person’s earnings and his or her parents than the U.S. of the 12 countries evaluated.
Here are the facts according to a summary of a Harvard study. (EDIT: link fixed).
Today, the odds of escaping poverty appear to be only about half as high in the United States as in the most mobile countries like Denmark
And is your argument supported by rhetoric, or facts?
