6d ago

"Meritocracy"

159 comments

We need to stop being in shock and awe at how stupid these people are and start understanding that they are our enemies. They work in direct opposition to the welfare of average Americans. They're also stupid. But more importantly, they are our enemies, and we need to start framing it as such.
- Intelligence and Cunning are two different things.
  If I'm walking through the woods and I'm being stalked by a predator the fact that it cant do long division doesnt matter for shit.
  
  I mean, depending on the predator it can probably divide you lengthwise. Does that count?
  
  Humans became the dominant species on the planet because we learned how to throw rocks. That was our big innovation. Our intelligence is an entirely incidental byproduct of learning how to throw rocks.
  In fact we are way more intelligent is these efficient, so these people are simply more correctly synced up to the actual intelligence that is necessary to survive.
- We've been doing that for years, but people just chanted "genocide" at Kamala and let this happen.
  
  BLUEMAGA never stops whining. Go bitch at Biden and Harris for not doing the thing Trump did before he even got in office. It was on the table for like 8 months and those monsters said “nah”.
- Hear hear.
  
  Hear*
- Enemies? I disagree. It's more like watching a toddler playing with a loaded gun.
  
  Toddlers murder a wild number of people.
  This is exactly a toddler with a gun.
  Edit for numbers:
  Some might assume that toddlers and young children may not be strong enough to pull a trigger, but that is not the case, experts said. At least 895 children aged 5 and under have managed to find a gun and unintentionally shoot themselves or someone else from 2015 to 2022, according to Everytown.
  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/children-fire-guns-toddlers-unintentional-shootings/
  Remember, children cannot purchase guns in the USA. Many also lack the hand strength to fire.
  I apologize for the source.

She didn't get her job by knowing how to spell or read
- Go on...
  
  It was probably by being racist.
  
  A certain age range of men have a Topanga fetish. Or maybe that's just me.

If the US was actually a meritocracy, I’d be rich. I built my career in comp sci and UXD from nothing. I left school in 9th grade, then taught myself programming in multiple languages – BASIC then Perl, Java, C, and on to C++, C#, ObjC, JavaScript, and markup languages, – and UXD including related important fields (psychology, sociology, philosophy), and worked my way from a delivery driver to cook, to assistant mgr in retail and restaurant to manager (to make ends meet whilst learning) to programmer, to assistant lead, to PM assistant, to project manager, to designer, to lead designer at a company where I had more than 10 million users and was submitted for an Apple design award for my design.
Then I got sick with a genetic disease for which there’s no treatment or cure. Now I can no longer work and as a result, I had to leave the career I loved and had worked so hard for – and lose the health insurance that came with that. Now I am destitute, my savings are gone, and I have nothing but social security and Medicare, and Medicare is horribly broken. I can’t afford housing, and have to choose between medicine and food.
This is in the US, obviously. I have plenty more to contribute – my mind still works fine – but I can’t contribute in this system because I can’t reliably work.
I am fucked. I can’t afford to live anymore and, regardless of what I could contribute in a system that might allow me to, I am stuck doing nothing and slowly dying because this system is designed to fuck me as hard as possible.
This is not a meritocracy. If it was, I would not be in the position of choosing whether to eat or buy medicine.
e2: and we wouldn’t have a complete moron making billions by stealing the work of others (people like me) then just casting them aside like they’re nothing. Yes, I mean that absolute shitbag poser, you all know his name.
Sorry for all the edits, this pisses me off.
late e3, because changes keep being tossed around lately with an apparent near-total lack of even the scope of a single project they’re heading and executing, and that’s quite alarming in this context:
Social security and Medicare both try hard to spend as little money as possible, often under pressure from congress, and Medicare is worse. Medicare is so much worse than people think it is, I cringed every time I’d hear someone shout ‘Medicare for all!’ – especially when they’d go on to prove their notions of Medicare were vague. Congress has been beating the shit out of it whilst big money tends to its wounds for a long time. It’s nearly functionally useless by comparison to what all but the worst insurance companies and scammers do. It’s so bad, in fact, it’s just generally known that you must buy what’s called ‘gap’ insurance so they can slather their slime into the chasms left in Medicare’s wake.
Gap insurance is private insurance. People living on Social Security cannot afford gap insurance (please read my last 4 words as though spoken with the complete inability to keep the disbelief from my voice. I’ve no idea how to annotate that.)
Been on a tear lately because people are currently worshipping a moronic, childish, nepo-baby who didn’t work for what he has, didn’t invent anything, clearly didn’t learn anything except how to use other people most effectively, perhaps designed that laughable abomination of a truck… it really does boggle my mind.
e: I also wrote a scifi novel that I can’t market because I’ve been too sick. Because I’m so desperate, I’m going to mention it here – I could use a couple of reviews. Based on current reviews, it’s not bad: Blue Are the Hills by Lilly Piper on Amazon, if you’re into dystopian fiction. I’ve tried to market myself as much as I can, but it’s hard. That’s why my Lemmy icon is my face – not because I’m a boomer, but because it’s my branding.
- I resonate quite a bit with this, I just had to take a demotion because of a long term medical condition renders me unable to return to office 3 days a week. I was doing a great job as a Solutions Architect, but since they feel that the role is only good in person and not over technology I had to step down to a senior developer role. Hopefully I overcome this condition but it is lifelong but can be managed, but this feels like the first gate I've been hit with since starting to ascend as an IT Professional. RTO is dumb, especially with potential pandemics on the horizon. My wife is complete and total disabled and barely makes it out of our room, so I'm on the hook to bring home the money to keep everything running. It is frightening times in this shit show.
- I hope it works out, I hope you keep going as best a you can. I've been stuck in a health crisis for years and everytime I think I'm almost out I remember that recovery is for the rest of my life. I don't know why our society discards people who desperately WANT to be of use and I saw it a lot in retail too, there's a lot of people I kept around in the backroom working just because I can't imagine looking at someone in a part time minimum wage dead end job and saying ''This isn't working out, please leave'' that's already the bottom. I'm not telling people to start living in their car.

There are certain things which are required of those who wish to serve in the Trump Administration. None of those things happen to be intelligence.
Covfefe
- In her case, T&A don't stand for talent and ability.
  
  Training and approachability?

Left-Wing: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
Right-Wing: Deathcamps, Extermination, Invasion

She’s a core respondent. Get woke libtard.
- I almost wish that hadn't been sarcasm, only because I haven't seen libtard in the wild in a long time. 😀

She has, uh, other qualifications.
- Assets bro

It's written right there on the tag: "Escort"
- Hardly. Escorts charge by the hour. She's salary.
  
  So... Concubine?
  Idk if they are paid tho
- Can we not accuse people of being whores just because we dislike their politics?
  
  I agree. Sex work should not be slandered by comparing this idiot to a sex worker.

How do you even misspell things, when every device you have has spell check and autocorrects you?
- Auto Correct causes me a lot of grief tbh
  
  I hate autocorrect, but I at least still have spellcheck with it's funny lil red lines.
  
  Ain’t that the ducking truth.

One of the top people they've appointed to OPM, (yes that OPM sending scam resignation deals to civil servants), graduated high school in 2024.
When they say Meritocracy they mean Aristocracy.

What's even fucking worse is that we live in an era of autocorrect and autofill.
- "Corespondent" is a word, though. It just has a totally different meaning.
  
  Corespondent
  Huh, TIL. That is a very different meaning but one that makes a surprising amount of sense in this administration.
  
  Maybe she's both?

The term meritocracy was originally created as a satirical joke. It was never meant to actually be taken seriously
- Maybe sarcastic people should stop inventing shit ideas ironically for a minute while we clean up this mess.
  
  Sarcasm and parody were tools used against corrupt oppressors for centuries. The problem is, it requires education, context, and the capacity for abstract thought to process and understand. If everyone requires we put “/s” after everything, then they are just taking everything at face value without any attempt at critical thinking or reading between the lines. Which I guess is why we are where we are today.
  
  I'm really starting to feel that way lmao
  
  What? You mean you don't want a Tournament Nexus?
  
  But they aren't in a position of power to change anything. Maybe if we lived in a sarcastocracy though
  
  Yeah
  Power in a state should be based on how good you are at not being sarcastic and caught saying something sarcastic should be given the death penalty
- I dont see the reason why it shouldnt be used. Merit - earned, cracy - to rule. Seems like its self described well. Imo its a useful word and don't see why we shouldnt use it just because it was meant to be satirical. Art imitates life and life imitates art.
  
  The issue is how do you "meassure" merit? How do you decide who has earned what they have and who hasn't?
  If you are a conservative it's very easy, the status quo defines merit. Those who have are those who deserve because the system is working as expected. So rich people ruling is meritocracy for them.
  If you are a racist/xenophobe/etc then it's also very easy, those who are in the "good" (read white in the USA) group are the ones with merit, so they are the ones that should rule.
  A few years back, when college degrees where just for rich people with connections, merit was having a college degree because that proved you where educated and hard working jajajaja. Now that a lot more people can get college degrees it no longer means that for some reason jajajaja.
  Etc, etc. In general, people use meritocracy to justify their own biases and the decisions they make based on those biases. The USA is of course the current poster child of this, but by no means it's exclusive to them.
  The reality is that when you think about it there is no such thing as merit in the general sense. For example, I get paid well by working as a programmer. And I'm the first one to say that I'm very good at it and deserve my pay. Yet, if my toilet is broken I need to call a plumber and defer to them. So, who says I deserve to earn more than a plumber? I do say so because it greatly benefits me of course jajajaja. But if push come to shove I would absolutely prefer to have a society without programmers than a society without plumbers. So who has more merit?
  The simple truth is that we are all valuable in our own context and we should try to build a society where we all can participate and contribute as needed. Ideas like meritocracy are used by right wing people to justify the existence of hierarchies and social classes. If there are better people (with more merit) then of course they should be in charge and everyone else must obey. But the more you dig into the idea, the less it makes sense. Meritocracy is just a very easy trap to fall into because it's the kind of idea that sounds good to people until you really think about it, but in practice it's just a useless idea if you want to make rational decisions.
  
  Seems like its self described well.
  In theory. But in practice what you're describing tends to be the licensure of corruption. Rather than paying off a guy for a no-show job, you pay a school for a degree to show the guy (getting kickbacks from the school) that gives you the no-show job.
  Great example of this was Bob Jones, Liberty, and the assorted christian conservative schools injecting whole graduating classes into the '00s Bush Administration.
  When your "meritocratic" institution really starts to pay off is when it looks more and more like an MLM. The modern Ivy League/Federalist Society-based judicial system looks a lot like this. You need to be a member of a school who joined a club to get access to the clerkship that qualifies you to join a firm that will fast-track you into the appellate judiciary. So these "elite" institutions get swarmed with applicants, and now you need to go to a particular prep school or join a certain social group to get into the school/club. Now those schools/groups get flooded. So you need to join a partisan organization or work your way into a country club hierarchy to get access to the prep school / social group, and they start assigning ranks for members and fees to climb the ranks.
  Now "meritocracy" is just a massive web of patronage, with access to the inner layer predicated on outclassing all your peers in the outer layer. Whole industries exist to prove "merit" either through cheating explicitly (straight up buying accreditation) or implicitly (paying for study guides that contain the exact questions to be asked) and get you special access to the people doing manual selection of applicants. Its almost exclusively pay-to-play and a lot of it is scams.
  
  Absolutely. Words change, and it's not an unhelpful term, but we already had a word for 'ruled by the best', aristocracy. Over time it became very apparent that aristocracies did not promote leaders who were objectively 'best' or often even 'adequate', so it began to mean a small group of privileged people who used their power to keep that privilege for themselves and their peers.
  So although meritocracy started as a joke, it could be used sincerely. But unless it's pretty clear how 'merit' is assessed its hard to take it more seriously.
  
  It is worth understanding why it was considered satirical.
  Although the concept has existed for centuries, the term "meritocracy" is relatively new. It was first used pejoratively by sociologist Alan Fox in 1956, and then by British politician and sociologist Michael Dunlop Young in his 1958 satirical essay The Rise of the Meritocracy.Young's essay pictured the United Kingdom under the rule of a government favouring intelligence and aptitude (merit) above all else, being the combination of the root of Latin origin "merit" (from "mereō" meaning "earn") and the Ancient Greek suffix "-cracy" (meaning "power", "rule"). The purely Greek word is axiocracy (αξιοκρατία), from axios (αξιος, worthy) + "-cracy" (-κρατία, power).
  In this book the term had distinctly negative connotations as Young questioned both the legitimacy of the selection process used to become a member of this elite and the outcomes of being ruled by such a narrowly defined group. The essay, written in the first person by a fictional historical narrator in 2034, interweaves history from the politics of pre- and post-war Britain with those of fictional future events in the short (1960 onward) and long term (2020 onward).
  The essay was based upon the tendency of the then-current governments, in their striving toward intelligence, to ignore shortcomings and upon the failure of education systems to utilize correctly the gifted and talented members within their societies.
  Young's fictional narrator explains that, on the one hand, the greatest contributor to society is not the "stolid mass" or majority, but the "creative minority" or members of the "restless elite". On the other hand, he claims that there are casualties of progress whose influence is underestimated and that, from such stolid adherence to natural science and intelligence, arises arrogance and complacency. This problem is encapsulated in the phrase "Every selection of one is a rejection of many".
  It was also used by Hannah Arendt in her essay "Crisis in Education", which was written in 1958 and refers to the use of meritocracy in the English educational system. She too uses the term pejoratively. It was not until 1972 that Daniel Bell used the term positively. M. Young's formula to describe meritocracy is: m = IQ + E. The formula of L. Ieva instead is: m = f (IQ, Cut, ex) + E. That is, for Young, meritocracy is the sum of intelligence and energy; while, for Ieva it is represented by the function between intelligence, culture and experience, to which energy is then added.
  
  I get that it feels cool when you think about it, but it falls off shortly after, same as Communism :P
- So was"The Donald" subreddit.
- We should totally go back to “I’m in charge because my daddy built me a goon squad”.
  /s
- Wasn't it the Greeks?
- see: Daylight Savings

Elon is a DEI hire because of his Asperger’s that causes sudden nazi salutes.
- As someone who was diagnosed with asperger's syndrome when I was like three, I want to skin him alive for that piss poor excuse. The South African Nazi is just a maladapted sub-human who incapable of owning up to the fact that he is aggressively mediocre. Also im calling him sub-human cause je thinks he is better than anybody, its meant to be demeaning to his ego.
- Also because he is an immigrant. This is like Dr. Strangelove, except he’s not in a wheelchair. He’s jumping around on stage. MEIN FUHRER, I CAN WALK!

Going for some Ivanka resemblance, perhaps?
This journalist is going to have the nuclear codes in the tabloids before long.
- Looks nothing like her though? Ivanka is middle aged and looks the part.
  
  Thin white woman, long blonde hair, lots of eye makeup, full lips, etc. It’s not that they’re twins, it’s that they’re a similar type.
  And it doesn’t matter what we think. The president is the one that wants to fuck her, lol.

Also, looking past that spelling mistake, what the hell is a War Room White House? Is that meant to refer to the situation room? The briefing room? Is it that she's in two places at once, the White House and a virtual War Room of whatever media organisation she represents?
Or is it, as I may be forced to suspect, a perpetual state of mind, a designation not in conflict of course with any of the above, but indicative of someone who not only cannot spell their job but is just there to, as the phrase goes, perpetually and obsequiously stir shit?
- War Room is a podcast of Steve Bannon. So she's the White House correspondent for that podcast.
  
  White House correspondent for a fucking podcast. Look where we've arrived at.
  
  Yep Trump new press sectary said thsy would go beyond legacy media and allow influencer and podcast in on all briefing..
  I am sure it meant only the right wing Podcaster and influencers though. No left wingers will be allowed.
  So this lady and whoever Joe Rogen sends etc.
- IDK if this helps, but at least in IT a "war room" is usually a dedicated and specialized support team temporarily put in place when large changes or updates are rolled out.
  It would make sense for the incoming administration to set up a war room to handle questions, exceptions and comments about both the administration change, and the sweeping (probably illegal) XOs issued by the President.
  Edit: I just looked her up. She is not related to an internal "War Room" but is actually affiliated with Bannon's stupid podcast.
- I think you might be right. She may be one of Eris's representatives in the current administration.
  
  I mean, all hail Discordia, but this isn't how I imagined it.
- Looks to me like the bigger reason she's not the smartest isn't because of spelling, which english is crap at, but that she doesn't understand word order, which is much more concrete.
  "White House War Room Correspondent" would make way more sense

Topanga?
- Vivek absolutely maldin' right now.

go watch idiocracy again. and again. i think they were on to something.

Local radio fired their news department and brought in cheap new talent.
Last night they mispromounced Potomac and i shook my head.
But a few weeks ago when the news reader mispronounced Orwellian, a canary died somewhere.

<Al Pacino’s voice>
“Uh-oh… we’ve got a moron.”

Marrytocracy maybe
- It certainly sounds more "educated" than blowjobtocracy

$10 says she'll speak out about sexual harassment like that cunt Megyn Kelly.
Don't get me wrong, Megyn Kelly is a victim and is also a fascist.
- I don't think fascist can be victims. Does not seem to compute.
  
  Why not?
  
  As soon as the same rules they want to apply to everybody else are applied to Fascists, they're immediately convinced they're victims.
  So yeah, as soon as the pretty little Fascist ends up treated as a pussy-with-legs with no upsides for herself (so, not a trade but a taking by people with more power than she has) even though she's ben part of making sure that legally there is no such thing as sexual harassment, she'll feel like a victim.

'Mericocracy
- Heh,
  Cock

It doesn't count as DEI if you're hired to be a sex object (disgusted sarcasm)
- Hot women don't deserve to be included?

Is there any reason this person should he seen as a journalist? Im only seeing an IMDB page
- Because she's white and conventionally attractive. Can't spell for shit but we are to rely on her narrative? Nah homie.
  
  She's on Steve Bannon's podcast apparently

It’s all so fucking stupid.

This Nazi shit makes me want to puke.

To be fair thats a hard to spell word but im not steering a country of 340 million people so i get to spell it wrong.
- Did she have the squiggly line turned off or did she ignore it?

These people don't deserve to breath the same air we breath. If you can't see everyone as equal then you are beneath us and need to be dealt with in the most severe method possible.
- I don't know where I got it from, but I like the quote "See that tree? Go apologise for wasting the oxygen it produces."
  
  Holy shit I love this. 🤘
- f you can’t see everyone as equal then you are beneath us and need to be dealt with in the most severe method possible.
  Does that mean you need to be dealt with in the most severe method possible, after all if you see them as beneath you then you clearly can't see everyone as equal, by definition?
  
  There is no requirement to be tolerate the intolerant.

This is unpresidented!
As a second language learner of English, I used to stress over getting my English right and would spend time double checking my spelling and grammar, checking the dictionary to make sure I am using the word correctly, even when posting on forums and comment sections. Once Trump became president and I saw the numerous mistakes he made, I stopped caring.
- I used to get everything perfect at work no matter how many hours it took. When Donald took office in 2016 I realized skills and effort weren't really that important. I focused more on talking to the right people and getting good reviews. Life got a lot easier. Less work and more money. Now that he's back in office I'm finding it really hard to even check my work once before pushing it out. People keep forgiving mistakes though.
  I miss the days when competence was expected.

Wtf
SAD!

Camachos' secretary of state was hotter.
- Pic?

They do this intentionally, it's part of Trump's populist cult, White house messages under his last admin had intentional spelling and grammar errors and when asked staffers said they did it intentionally to match Trump's 'style' breaking norms is a big part of populist cults of personally.

What even is a Meritocracy
- It's when you replace an Army four star general with a major from the national guard.
  The reason they keep saying the word merit is to convince their base they have any. Many of them do not. No offense to any retired majors out there, but do any of you think you are more qualified than a 4 star general to fill the position of Secretary of Defense?
  
  Well I would ask what they've done in addition to being a Major. Just in case it's something that qualifies them to run an organization with over a million people and a budget that's nearly a trillion dollars. You know like being a news reporter for a biased organization. (Ugh)
- A way to justify letting an aristocracy form while calling it something else.
  "Merit" it a vague and nebulous term, so you can set the rubric however you want to justify the merit of any mouth breather with their head so far up their own ass they can see their own tonsils.
- Traditionally promotions to leadership positions could only be selected from a small pool of men: wealthy, with good pedigree and with some kind of connections to the current top leader(s). Any top leadership positions had to be filled with people from this small pool: the aristocracy. They could be incompetent or corrupt, but that was usually not that important, as long as they had the right parents and kissed the right ass(es), they were the right person for the job.
  Meritocracy is when people are selected for promotions based on something other than social standing or wealth. Merit for the job can be: getting a top score on an anonymous uniform exam, having a good track record in similar roles, having a solid plan to solve the problem at hand, ... Any positive qualification that is not based on social standing or wealth. And all candidates for the job have to be weighted based on the same qualifiers.
  As I understand it, the usa federal administration used to have a meritocratic system until right under the top departemental positions, who were politically appointed (appointed based on loyalty, not merit). But while those top positions were political appointees, they were usually selected from the top meritorious people, so those people were usually qualified for the job.
  Trump has politized the promotions much deeper into the administrations, basically doing away with meritocracy and replacing it with a system based on personal loyalty and a willingness to break laws when asked to.
  Trump and his administration might say that his appointments are based on merit, but that's just Trump speaking, his words have no meaning.

gotta have them ribs

they dont need her to do the job in the title they just need her to be a populist

OMG FOLKS!!! I cant even bleeev what happend todai!!! ther was this adorabule White House Corresponant (wink wink) tryin to report on Donalds latest rulz, but she goth a littl somethin wong!!! She speld it "correpondent" (see? I'm alredy righting about it! LOL) instead of the coplete word!!! Whoop Dee Doo!
I mean, like, whats the big deil with this? It's just a tiny tiny mistake. I bet she was just in a rush and it happend. Or maybe she was tryin to send a message or somethin (wink wink). The pweeps r gonna be all upset about this but let me tell you, it's NOT A BIG DEAL. Nobody even noticd! It's just a lil typo.
I mean, I'm the one who is a reel journalist and a master of word spelwing. I speld it "correpondent" 5 times in a row in this same post! So don't you worry about this Corresponant gal, she'll get 'em rite next time (HA!).
- I'm getting My Immortal flashbacks...

To be fair, a mate of mine had 'Incident Reponse' in his professional signature for more than a month. At least the Cyber Analyst part was spelled correctly I guess?
- Incident reponse is not that bad of a typo hell it has roughly the same meaning. Reponse meaning to answer in French, so incident reponse would mean the same thing as incident response. Mind you thats cause we get responses from Norman French but hey it works.