[_yb2s]

As a US academic at a prestigious institution, I find it surprising how few of my close colleagues and collaborators are US born- a very small percentage (maybe 10-20%?). In some sense it makes sense that if our institutions are best, the globally best researchers would all come here. If it were a true meritocracy, I guess we would expect ~4-5% of US academics to be US born, given that it's our percentage of the world population, but in practice there are huge obstacles for foreigners to come and work here and succeed.

[i_have_an_idea]

> few of my close colleagues and collaborators are US born- a very small percentage (maybe 10-20%) [..] If it were a true meritocracy, I guess we would expect ~4-5% of US academics to be US born, given that it's our percentage of the world population

It's unrelated to meritocracy. It's just that a significant portion of the world population lives under conditions that are too poor to be able to develop extraordinarily smart people in significant quantities that are able to compete with other smart people born in rich countries. In other words, if you are poor, have poor access to sanitation and nutritious food, you'll be at a severe disadvantage to develop the skills needed to be a top researcher.

[ideamotor]

We don’t live in a meritocracy even just in our own country. It’s a myth that is used to justify bad behavior.

[Enginerrrd]

We also don't live in the antithesis of a meritocracy either.

Competency is usually rewarded, and rewards are pretty well correlated with competency.

There's plenty of room in the tails one can cite to justifyany opinion on the matter, but on average I think we're far more meritocratic than not.

[anonporridge]

On the scale of nepotism<->meritocracy, the US is probably much closer to meritocracy than most human societies have been.

Are there examples of societies who have done meritocracy better, from which we can take ideas to improve our own system?

[asabjorn]

Do you think this remains true with DIE and affirmative action being implemented in all major employers, universities and institutions? It is not fashionable to point to the unmeritocratic treatment of Asians and white males, so I guess I will point out the emperors nakedness.

Hiring people of all backgrounds that agree with a forced marxist outcome (diversity), firing people dissenting to Marxist forced outcome or shutting them up (inclusion), and a forced marxist outcome (equity) never lead to meritocracy in other places. Why would it here?

Likewise, affirmative action in hiring and research grants favor a less productive woman or a less competent person with the right identity category. Affirmative action categories are from the 60s when the US had a very different demographic, and whom held high status office jobs looked very different.

[inglor_cz]

Your comment is unpopular, judging from the downvotes, but it is still thoughtful and should be debated, not simply downvoted. But you are touching topics that come close to religious faith for some folks, and in an irreverent way.

[asabjorn]

Marxism actually is a theology and by proxy wokeness as well, so it is not surprising you get religious zealots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqj-MKG9SnU&t=1s

[dataflow]

> Do you think this remains true with DIE and affirmative action being implemented in all major employers, universities and institutions?

Meritocracy is about how government employees (or those who aren't legally "employees" per se, but who still have the political power) are chosen, not about how students or private employees are chosen. (c.f. how the existence of religious schools doesn't imply the country is a theocracy, the existence of CEOs doesn't imply the country is an autocracy, etc.)

[anon291]

Meritocracy actually is about how students or private employees are chosen, since the word is typically used to apply to the entire society of the USA, not just its government.

So yeah, if all schools were suddenly uber-Catholic and dissuaded non-Catholics for example, then that would mean the society has become less meritocratic. Or if companies had racial preferences in hiring instead of hiring based on merit and achievement, and this was widespread, then the US could not be said to be a meritocracy.

This is not a legal or governmental discussion, this is about sociology, anthropology, and culture.

[asabjorn]

DIE is also implemented all over the government, and public schools and universities also apply it. Are you saying you are concerned about this affecting meritocracy, but not in private schools and companies?

Your definition of meritocracy to be related only to those that have political power is not a universal definition. Merriam Webster defines it as "a system, organization, or society in which people are chosen and moved into positions of success, power, and influence on the basis of their demonstrated".

But let's go with just political power. Are you saying that getting a high-status private education, eg. harvard or yale, or a high power private company role has no influence on you wielding political power?

[Enginerrrd]

I'm not a huge fan of the form DIE practices take almost every time I've run into them, and I'm often even appalled it's gotten to this point, but I also don't think it is an all-or-nothing proposition.

A metric of diversity being applied to selection really doesn't mean it's the sole criterion. The effect isn't negligible, but neither is it fully-like wannabe egalitarian marxist systems where your parent's job or political affiliations forever determined your future status without negotiation.

There's definitely a scale between a meritocratic and egalitarian society.

[asabjorn]

How do you think about DEI and affirmative action systematically discriminating against poor people from poor families with unfavored identities?

The problem is that although there is for instance merit to helping the poor, that is in direct conflict with DIE that will choose Colin Powell’s son over a multi-generation poor white son of a black father any day.

Likewise, affirmative action will choose to give Hillary Clinton’s daughter research funding over an Asian male from a poor railroad worker family.

If one really cared about class or generational injustice, then the poor white male and Asian male in the examples above would have not been systematically discriminated against using DIE&affirmative action

[kahrl]

Capital is usually rewarded, and rewards are pretty well correlated with capital.

[inglor_cz]

Depends on the sort of rewards.

Saudi Arabia does not seem to be rewarding scientists or inventors and doesn't consequently get any significant scientific results at home, even though the country is obscenely rich.

[xyzzyz]

Ah yes, the US universities are well known to hire the wealthiest elites as researchers. Poor foreign grad students are virtually absent from US universities.

[kahrl]

What are you on about? If you read the parent comments, we are talking about country-wide generalisms.

[xyzzyz]

Which are clearly false when applied to the actual topic of discussion, so why bring them up?

[hderms]

There are huge obstacles for foreigners to move to the US and work, but higher education is also one of the most straightforward paths to the immigration pipeline (afaik as someone who's never dealt with it themselves). I believe that indicates there are two opposing forces, so the relative proportions being off would likely be expected as we don't know which force is stronger.

[wutbrodo]

I don't think even the most Pollyanna-ish perspective claims that there's a global meritocracy. The smashing success of merit-based immigrants in high-income countries is a pretty undeniable signal that we're nowhere near the point where the marginal legal immigrant is less "meritorious" than the pop avg.

I'm personally willing to bite the whole bullet and am an open-borders advocate. But it's a mistake to think that supporters of border restrictions aren't aware that they're explicitly anti-meritocratic.

[dougabug]

Immigrant populations aren’t generally uniform random samples of the rest of the world’s population. People with wealth, social capital, high levels of education (which correlates with family background), extraordinary athletic ability, etc. have a generally easier time of immigrating to this (or probably most) countries.

Anti-immigration lobbies have tended to caricature and scapegoat low skilled, low income, “undesirables;” while touting their support for (limited) immigration of high skilled, well-heeled immigrants as evidence of that they aren’t simply against foreigners.

[wutbrodo]

Yes, my comment doesn't assume a uniform sample.

In fact, it's predicated on there being a substantial filter applied to legal immigrants, such that they are highly successful in their destination country.

The performance gap between legal immigrants and natives is sizable, implying that marginal extra immigrants from loosening this filter would still outperform natives.

And the marginal extra immigrant outperforming the median native means that claims of a global meritocracy are farcical.

----------

> while touting their support for (limited) immigration of high skilled, well-heeled immigrants as evidence of that they aren’t simply against foreigners.

As mentioned, your comment isn't too related to my point. But to follow the tangent: This perspective seems like a consistent and defensible worldview? Wanting a Canada-like system that prioritizes economically-productive immigration is absolutely evidence against a bias against foreigners per se.

(I don't share this worldview. I think borders are something close to a crime against humanity. But I'm aware that mine is a radical position. The anti-immigrant boogeyman you describe sounds like a fairly logical extrapolation of a general belief in borders)

[dougabug]

Hm, I confess I don’t understand what you are talking about. Who is claiming that there is a global (or even national) meritocracy? What is meritocracy?

Do immigrants outperform natives? On what metrics?

Let’s suppose, as a thought experiment, said immigrants outperform natives at being seven feet tall, since maybe we need them for some set of tasks and we are short of seven footers. If we preferentially admit seven footers and find that immigrants statistically outperform natives at being tall, I don’t see that we’ve necessarily disproven all forms of meritocracy.

[wutbrodo]

It's the top of the thread, the comment that I replied to and was referring to.

> If it were a true meritocracy, I guess we would expect ~4-5% of US academics to be US born, given that it's our percentage of the world population, but in practice there are huge obstacles for foreigners to come and work here and succeed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32595436

My claim was that even avid restrictionists don't claim a global meritocracy. They are optimizing other axe: Volk-style prioritization,cultural stability, etc.

[TMWNN]

>I'm personally willing to bite the whole bullet and am an open-borders advocate. But it's a mistake to think that supporters of border restrictions aren't aware that they're explicitly anti-meritocratic.

I'm an immigrant to the US. I support tight border restrictions because the current status quo regarding the Mexican border, visa overstays, and emphasis on family reunification makes it harder for the US to have a truly meritocratic system, which would be something akin to the points-based systems of Canada and Australia.

[wutbrodo]

I agree with you more than you'd think. I'm aware that my open-borders belief is a radical one, and I accept the dramatic implications and knock-on effects.

But the vast majority of people accept the legitimacy of restricted immigration. IMO the line of moral revulsion they draw between your view and their own is largely illusory. Once you've accepted that you're selecting immigrants, it seems nonsensical to me that your selection criteria should consist of a) rigid and horrifyingly Kafkaesque processes for 99% of countries and b) an inconsistent drip of unselected migrants from an adjacent country (through a process that puts them at substantial physical risk).

Frankly, I'm a little contemptuous of people with this perspective. They don't seem to have thought through their belief that we should restrict the border, but do a shitty job of it in random ways.

[bnug]

I think its because advanced degrees fast track the immigration process, and the better paying jobs are in the US. Those born in the US get a bachelors degree and then a job (probably to pay off the student debt). For a non-US born person with a bachelors degree, it is far more difficult to find a job in the US, so they apply for a MS/PhD program. Then the MS/PhD programs are full of foreign nationals, and naturally the academic R&D jobs pull from that pool made up of mostly non-US persons.