It was excellent that Dad lived up (down?) exactly to the jaundiced expectations he had outlined in his influential book.
Said another way, the fictional fruit/characters born of his mind did not fall far from the tree of the actual character himself.
Michael Young intended the book to be satire, not a blueprint, and in later years he was disappointed to find people taking it as one.
One man’s cautionary tale is another man’s manifesto.
A bit like The Onion has discovered, it’s impossible to write lasting parody; the world gets crazier faster than you can move your own signposts for the line between reality and parody.
I hate it when I write a satire and people take it as a blueprint. People are so annoying that way.
Yeah.
On another note, these pigs are fucking shit at crop rotation.
On another other note: we are getting more meritocratic.
We had systems that restricted poor people from high status jobs, but they are weaker now
We had systems that restricted women from high status jobs, but they are weaker now.
We had systems systems that restricted non-white people from high status jobs, but they are weaker now.
We are not there yet! Black female CEOs who grew up in poverty are rare. But a steep and narrow path is open that didn’t used to be. And this is obviously a good thing, even if it doesn’t compare to the wide and gentle path open to people whose surname just happens to be engraved in the stone lintel above the door of their Harvard dorm.
Likewise, it obviously makes sense to pay the better worker more than the average worker. Not least because you want to retain her skills. But that makes it less about “merit” in its pure sense and more about self-interest. Like, if the boss could retain her skills without paying her more, he would be lacking in merit as a boss to do so. The meritorious boss gets the most, best work for the least salary bill, regardless of what workers “deserve”.
So we’re back to the invisible hand. Merit isn’t rewarded out of the benevolence of the factory owner, but out of their self-interest. Which means that in those cases where people identify their self-interest as lying somewhere other than in rewarding others merit, that’s what will happen.
Hence for example, anti-discrimination laws. Plenty of people saw their self-interest lay in hiring the average white candidate rather than the excellent black candidate; laws meaning you can get sued for that decision nudge self-interest back towards rewarding merit. Good. But the fundamental justification for free-market economics/liberalism is that self-interest is an incredibly powerful force, so channeling it in a given direction is a task that necessarily lies somewhere between difficult and impossible. Changes in the culture are gradually eroding the idea that it is in a white hiring managers self-interest not to hire a black candidate; further inroads are welcome but there will be a limit.
Right.
Let’s say that a pastry chef is effectively average in every respect, except that she has a more sensitive nose, and is better at spicing and everything else that smell and taste are used for in baking.
That person is likely to sell more because their stuff tastes good. So after a while, that person makes more money because they sell more pies and cookies.
Why is that bad? They didn’t take it from anyone- they just made better stuff, and either sold more of it, or sold it for a higher price. No victims here.
That’s what I’m not getting- all the thinking around here is more centered around the other baker who’s average in every way, but whose nose isn’t very sensitive and who makes awful baked goods.
Why should they be entitled to an equal share of the baking business pie? Maybe they should go do something else instead? It’s certainly not the good-nose baker’s problem to subsidize them, nor do they deserve to have the fruits of their labor taken because that other person is bad at what they do.
What does deserve to happen to the not-so-good baker? What would you like to see happen to that person, in this scenario. Don’t hold back.
IMHO the less talented baker would earn less money. Maybe that means they can only refresh their iPhone every other year, where the more talented baker can afford to do so every year. Maybe they have to watch their favorite NFL team on TV instead of being able to afford tickets to watch the game in person. Maybe they have to get a membership to a local gym instead of being able to buy a treadmill or exercise bike to have at home. Things like that. The less talented (but still capable) baker should still be able to afford the basics (food, safe shelter, good medical care, etc.). Of course, at a certain point the idea is that the person who lacks the ability to make it as a baker should look into a different line of work. We as a society only need so many bakers (or plumbers, doctors, teachers, garage collectors, rocket scientists, football players - we’ve settled at 1,696 as the right number for the top level for that particular occupation, or any other job you can think of).
Sure - the better baker would either sell more cakes or sell more expensive cakes or possibly both; the better baker might expand to run more than one bakery; the better baker might buy out the less-good bakery, rebrand it as their own and set their own standards in place; the less-good baker might end up cleaning the toilets in the big chain of bakeries. All of that already happens, so I’m not sure how it’s a useful thought experiment for how the world needs to change toward meritocracy.
I think we need an example where it doesn’t happen.
IMO, the real question is, if you want absolute meritocracy, what do you believe should be the outcomes for people who, for whatever reason, are not able to prevail at anything?
Nah. What’s going to happen eventually will be that there aren’t enough people in the workplace to do the jobs.
And in the meantime, many of the jobs won’t be done well because everybody’s going to be jockying for position and trying to make the other guys look bad, and/or working themselves into burnout breakdowns and becoming incapable of doing anything well, instead of doing the reasonable best that they can.
Mine isn’t. Mine is centered around the fact that the excellent baker may be a terrible dog trainer, and the excellent dog trainer may or may not be any good as a baker. And either of them may be, or may not be, any good at running a business. And the excellent baker may be terrible at showing up on time. If the baker works for a company with a business manager: is a skilled business manager going to keep on the skilled baker who’s often late to work, or the less skilled baker who’s always there when promised? How about if one of them’s rude to the customers and the other one isn’t? How about if the one who’s always nice to the customers is so nasty to the dishwasher that all the dishwashers quit within a month? – even being a baker is made up of a whole mess of different factors, and there aren’t going to be enough people good at all of them to make enough baked goods to go around.
You can’t assign overall merit to people in that fashion. You can only say that they’re better suited to one sort of work than another. And there are so many kinds of potential work, and so many aspects that go into doing well at any one of them, that even that is complex and not suited to a simple “merit at x” rating.
– while we’re at it: before she retired, we had an excellent baker for our farmers’ market. She drew in a lot of customers, who came every week for more of her product; which was very high quality, made with good ingredients, and delicious.
And she had almost no sense of taste or smell, and had to rely on feedback from other vendors and from her customers as to what her baked goods tasted like. She was, obviously, very good at that.
Is it a coincidence that you chose a pastry chef as your example on the day Discourse has a birthday cake next to your name? 
Happy Birthday @bump!
bolding mine
How did we get to this description of the average baker? Yes, bakers who make awful baked goods shouldn’t be rewarded for it, that isn’t a remarkable take.
You stared by suggesting your above average baker can make better stuff, and should get a bigger share of the baking business pie. Also not a remarkable take.
The real question is about the average baker, a professional who makes professional quality baked goods. Should they be relegated to the scraps of the industry, a tiny fraction of what the exceptional baker can earn, because they’re just average?
Some lines of work are already more meritocratic than others. Running a small business like a bakery is one of those. But here’s an example where most people would benefit from a meritocracy, other than those that are currently doing a bad job.
I’m from Corpus Christi, where we currently have a major road project underway, the building of a new Harbor Bridge to replace the old one, which was built in the late '50s. The contract was awarded to Flatiron Dragados, which was already infamous at the time the project was started due to one of their bridges in Florida collapsing. None the less they were still awarded the contract by the state. And things have gone every bit as bad as would be expected when the contract doesn’t go to the builders with more merit. We’re 7 years into the project now, still with no firm estimated date of completion, and with various episodes during this time period where they had to shut down to re-work the building plans due to high risk of collapse had they continued on the plan they were following. There was even an episode where one of the company managers killed someone on the current bridge when they got drunk and drove the wrong way, ironically after a night out celebrating the state having given them the green light to resume construction after one of their delays. If that isn’t rewarding a lack of merit, I don’t know that is. Other than the upper management and engineers at Flatiron Dragados, no one benefitted from that decision, and other than them, no one would have been hurt by the decision to go with someone else. And if some incompetent engineer and incompetent manager loses their job and has to lower their personal standard of living, then yes, it sucks to be them, but society as a whole would benefit, as would the more capable engineers at one of the other companies, who would justly benefit from having provided a needed service.
That, I think is the crux of the issue. When people say they want meritocracy, are they saying they want high levels of skill to be rewarded, or are they saying they want lower levels of skill to be punished?
It depends on how saturated the market is. Are there only two bakers in a city of hundreds of thousands people, or are they trying to open the 53rd bakery in a town of only a few thousand? If it’s the latter, then yes, the less talented bakers (including things mentioned above like how they treat their customers, the dishwashers, if they show up to work on time, etc., not just how good the donuts taste) should look into a different line of work.
Depends on just how low the level of skill is that’s under consideration. If we’re talking about a baker who shows up on time, is respectful to their co-workers and customers, and who happens to make pastries that taste good but not good enough to beat Bobby Flay on Iron Chef, then that person should be rewarded, just not quite as much as someone at the very top of the game. But if we’re talking about someone who shows up to work drunk, is rude, abusive to co-workers, and also does a bad job, that person should end up having their basic needs met by some kind of public welfare, rather than being hired to do a job just because they need the money.
I was thinking more of someone who is, for want of a better term, just talentless and ham-fisted at everything they try. Not malicious or rude or abusive or drunk or late; just someone for whom mastery of any and every skill continually eludes them, even though they try quite hard; arguably, they try much harder than the people to whom skilled craftsmanship comes as naturally as breathing.
They could sell the BBC the rights to their life story.
Lawsuit from ITV incoming for infringment of IP