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by FeepingCreature 3042 days ago
> intrinsic

How exactly do you expect intrinsic merits to arise if not via your ancestry? Merits don't materialize out of thin air; and even if they did, how exactly would that be fair?

A lottery is more fair than corruption and bribes, but it's still a lottery. There's nothing inherently virtuous about it.

1 comments

I don't buy into the whole 'pure bloodlines' thing.

It didn't work out too well for aristocracies; 'pure' is potentially another word for 'inbred'. And with the way things are now and have been for centuries, it is money rather than merits that are getting people ahead from square one, so I don't see how you can argue in good faith that ancestry is necessarily as strongly responsible for successful traits as it currently appears to be.

The point is, it's arbitrary either way.