[wjnc]

There is a book called “Seven checkmarks” in Dutch that argues that succes in the Netherlands is strongly correlated to seven checkmarks to have: male, highly educated parents, white, certain type of elite high school, university educated and one more. Having all the marks, having generally underperformed academically and still coming out on top comparatively I feel there might be some truth in it. It would signal a quite stratified society with a “ruler class” inside a society that thinks of itself as classless for the last 60 years at least. (It’s pretty hard to reason about this being while being under scrutiny.)

Why post this? After reading your comment I thought wouldn’t want to live there or raise children there. But the second thought was, wait - that’s meritocracy in action. Imperfect meritocracy as you point out, but it might still be more equitable not than having seven checkmarks and generally faring worse than those born under a different star. My Rawlsian self thinks grit should be rewarded more than birth, even though testing for grit would probably massively increase burnout.

Thinking even further, I don’t think that societies with “high grit” (Korea, US) are generally considered to treat their children and general society very equitable. Still mentally debating if there is a very socialist argument growing inside of me. That book (read it three months ago) does make me think a lot. It was the first time something ‘near-woke’ made me think so hard. The book mentions the reflective point as well - might I only take it that seriously because it was written by someone from the same “class”? Foundational stuff.