| Maybe it's a regional thing but I feel like there are some pretty big caricaturisations is this piece. On meritocracy: "I think a defining feature of the group culturally is this belief in meritocracy, in the sense merit is what makes the economy work. The sum total of our GDP is the sum total of the individuals in it." Nothing too controversial... "Everyone earns what their merit is worth." I feel like this only works in a very technical sense and doesn't translate to what people would mean using natural language. Merit is a morally loaded term which I think makes the whole debate over Meritocracy confusing. A better way to put this would be: 1. Individuals have different amounts of leverage, which is correlated to earnings.
2. Competency is non-trivial and significant source of leverage.
3. A person with competency has more leverage than a person without competency all things being equal. "That is coupled with a market myth that says that whatever people do that earns money is essentially good for society." Perhaps there are people that believe this, but they must be a small group of people. Everyone everywhere complains about the knock-on effects of different industries. It's not clear to me where they are drawing these conclusions from. |