Meritocracy and DEI are fundamentally incompatible, and pushing politically-driven structural programs that prioritize identity over competency is a recipe for civilizational decline.
The Author wrote: "Meritocracy is the improper elevation of a good to a station beyond its proper place; a fetishization of the good of qualification. It is a blindness to the richness of human existence, and the reduction of life to a system. In Aristotelian terms, it represents a deviation from the golden mean to an extreme of excess.”
I replied: In a perfect world where perfect people were geared toward the perfect outcome of each child, and education were dynamic & intelligent enough to compensate for every single learning type, maybe...
In reality focusing on anything else but merit - because we do not have the tools, resources, intelligence, emotional intelligence, goodwill quotient, or know how to do otherwise - leads to ruin as we are seeing with the common core & CRT curriculum.
Idealism and utopia are noble concepts which we should all strive to achieve, but here's the thing, in our current system of imperfect individuals in an imperfect world of systemic corruption, meritocracy is the ONLY way to get there.
Great reply. Checked out his website, based on the title of his posts ( appeared to ne no reason to read them and both waste my time and aggravate myself) he appears to be a completely misformed ideologue or an escapee from some asylum), perhaps he was a speechwriter for Kamala Harris in defense of her candidacy 🙂🙂
Not paywalled any more. I read through this and his second article. I think he's overly definitive with the word meritocracy (e.g. to have meaning it has to be radical and new) - not necessarily so IMO. And his second article dives deep into the role the Ivies play in distributing rewards for meritoriousness. As one commenter said, this is a great argument against using the Ivies as gatekeepers for excellence and reward. What a lazy shortcut for any business (including a major corp I worked for) to unofficially have a standard of graduating from an Ivy to be hired for a coveted role.
Is your final paragraph the longest sentence you have ever written? And it was cogent. Congratulations!
Seriously, great piece on an important topic. I could get behind DEI if equity were dropped as it is a nonsensical goal, if diversity was expanded to include those holding differing viewpoints, and inclusion meant all who wish to work hard and perform at their maximum are welcomed and valued.
We need to take control of the conversation by having the balls to start asking "why?" To wit:
- Why does representation matter?
- Why is diversity our strength?
- Why must we have equitable outcomes?
- Why must employment of favored minorities across every field be proportionate to -- or exceed -- the proportion of their representation in society?
We need to change the terms of the game from "recite the correct pious affirmation or suffer the consquences" to "you're going to explain your bullshit value system right now."
Because if representation matters because it shows that race and class and ethnicity are no obstacle to fully participating in society, then we can agree on that and work to lower the barriers to that participation.
What you don't do is lower the standards.
What you don't do is adopt processes detrimental to the safety of others in order to help social-credit seekers feel better about themselves because they're trying to atone for their privilege.
I love seeing the lunacy train getting exposed by hard-working, independent journalists. Seeing the absolute scum hypocrites protesting because their grift is being revealed is a joy to watch. And isn't it stochastic terrorism when these jackoffs say "We're at war!", "We've got to take this to the streets!"?
I still consider myself to be liberal, but not INSANE like many people I know that swallow this shit like fresh pablum.
I think the classic liberals are still out there, but they're too afraid to admit how they really feel about the loony libs for fear of retribution. I'm betting millions of classic libs voted for Donald Trump because the others have lost the plot.
Yes, it would be beneficial to all if liberals could go back to sanity. Two parties are a good thing, but only if neither of them is bat-shit crazy. A lot of people seem to think having two parties is so important that it’s OK if one of them is engaged in a war on reality.
👏👏👏Well stated and obvious to any non ideologue with commonsense. However , the TDS from which many Dems, particularly the extreme liberal/radical wing of their party has meant that they continue to dig deeper the hole into which they have fallen and thus are moving farther away from any change they have of regaining the power which is the overarching goal of the majority of their party leaders.
Thanks Brad. Great and well researched analysis of what I feared was the case but was too lazy to research myself. The only time “diversity” made sense to me was when I was in interview training. It is very hard to look only at the other’s person’s skills for the position. You tend to want to hire “people like me” and you have to watch out for that. That still makes sense to me, but changing the SKILLS level required for various jobs to achieve diversity is a race to the bottom.
I think the "people like me" factor is pretty much still active in DEI, it's not enough to tick some diversity boxes you also have to profess absolute faith and allegiance to the woke gospel.
Maybe instead of using the Progs' misleading terminology - "diversity, inclusion, equity" - we should be plain spoken. Say "anti-white racial discrimination" instead. Means the same thing.
Are we using merit as measured by objective tests such as the SAT as opposed to subjective assessments based on measures such as essays which are easily gamed in our decision making to determine who is being admitted to the top universities, hired or promoted to the best jobs or are we currently discriminating against whites, Asians and men in an attempt to compensate for the past discrimination against others?
If we are currently discriminating based on race and sex and recent Supreme Court cases suggest that we are, then don't those currently being discriminated against have the same legitimate grievances that women and blacks had in the past? Just asking.
“you’d have to be a moron not to understand that systematically lowering standards in hiring and promotion in industries related to public safety to achieve equal outcomes will affect outcomes.”
I have walked through life owning some insecurities over my lacking prestigious academic credentials common for my personal and professional station. However, I have recently concluded that these “higher credentialed” people are in fact just raging morons with impressive vocabulary.
In Canada 44 percent of personnel in the Canadian Armed Forces are considered overweight while 28 per cent are classified as obese, diversity kills everything good!
The whole "equity" thing isn't really new, it's all based on Marxism and Postmodernism or what Thomas Sowell calls the Unconstrained Vision. Merit is a social construct, the reason people perform differently are existing biases in the power structure and if you just hire a work force that is more representative of the general population it will perform just as well if not better.
It usually takes some time for the system to collapse when these ideas are enacted and it's usually accompanied by a lot of propaganda and total denial of reality by the ruling class. It very often feels like we're somehow witnessing the collapse of the soviet union all over again.
Good lord, hadn't seen the video of the female Stooges in the Secret Service detail bumbling and stumbling their way around the limo.....bizarre, hilarious, and disturbing.......
Hmmm. Meritocracy. How about Trump nominating, one after another, unqualified loyalists for his all white Cabinet and hiring unqualified loyalists for civil servant positions. Trump tries to tell us he’s eradicating DEI to promote “ meritocracy”. What a joke. Hypocrisy is what it is.
Ann, Kamala Harris is what happens when you put identity before merit. She perfectly encapsulates why the Left's race communism grift will doom the Democratic Party.
As for the Trump administration, who are the "unqualified loyalists" you're referring to?
Brad: Both the fact that Harris was an unqualified DEI pick for president and the reality that RFK Jr is an unqualified candidate for HHS Secretary can be and are true. Both DEI and simplistic loyalty or political tests are inadequate approaches to achieving merit selections. We have to hold Trump to the same standards in selecting the best possible candidates as we do Democrats. Both have failed.
So you want more of the same failures of the last 35 years.
I challenge you to provide one incident/event/crisis/initiative they establishment got right during that time.
Leadership has been a colossal failure going on 4 decades. Do you think putting more of these parasitical plutocrats in Leadership will change anything?
Could it possibly be any worse than the status quo for "regular" people to serve? It's what our Founders intended anyway.
It's time to shake it up and stop looking back to doing things the same way.
I want to see any administration claiming to be reformers, to reform our problems within the framework, laws, of our democracy. I want strong balance of powers between executive, legislative and judicial. I want a President that doesn’t lie every day, doesn’t use chaos and division to distract. I don’t want a long list of all the dem adm faults ok? I do want reform. We all do. But it’s so damned obvious that we start with getting big money OUT of politics. Anything else is futile. Every year it becomes more obvious. And now, the most wealthy have taken the reins supported by the most wealthy. The hypocrisy is just so hard to take anymore.
I’m sure you’ve heard the proverb about how you eat an elephant- one bite at a time. You want to start with getting big money out of politics. An admirable goal, but how about we start with smaller steps that can be immediately achieved?
Here in Chicago, we are told that children cannot be educated until we get a better society. Again, an admirable goal, but also an excuse for inaction on the immediate problems.
Do you propose continuing on our current course until you succeed in getting big money out of politics?
Ok…here is what and who and how we will get reform? You think Musk is working for our good? Come on, folks!
“…Another Musk/DOGE aide, 19 year-old high school graduate, Edward Coristine, operates multiple Russian websites, worked at a startup that hired convicted hackers, and is linked to a Telegram account that solicited a cyberattack, Wired magazine reported today.
Coristine “is now listed in Office of Personnel Management records as an ‘expert’ at that agency, which oversees personnel matters for the federal government,” Wired wrote. “Employees of the General Services Administration say he also joined calls where they were made to justify their jobs and to review code they’ve written.”
“The White House did not immediately respond to questions about what level of clearance, if any, Coristine has, and if so, how it was granted,”
If that's really the best you've got, I think it's well past time for you to go on a politics sabbatical. I'm getting second hand embarrassment from your hysteria, which is no doubt being exacerbated by your inability to steer clear of #resistance media.
You're living in an alternate reality. And if anyone's a hypocrite, it's YOU, Ann. Enough.
It's a suggestion to shut up because you're embarrassing yourself.
Your party just made 24 y/o David fucking Hogg its new vice chairman. You think a 17 year-old Swedish teenager and chronic truant is a climate change deity.
You said JACK SHIT when Zuckerberg spent $400 million to help elect a puppet. Kamala Harris had WAY MORE billionaires support her than Trump.
“Leadership has been a colossal failure going on 4 decades. Do you think putting more of these parasitical plutocrats in Leadership will change anything?
Could it possibly be any worse than the status quo for "regular" people to serve? It's what our Founders intended anyway. “
You believe Trump and Musk and his billionaire Cabinet (12 billionaires, right?) are not parasitic plutocrats? Actually they are probably better characterized as parasitic oligarchs. And Trump and many of those billionaire Cabinet members started with inherited wealth. And I don’t follow your “regular” comment. I tell you what, any one with that kind of money is not “regular”. I would love to see more “regular” people in office. You can still find some in Congress.
You know, I thought I would find more successfully handled crises that I did. I used ChatGPT and some of the items it deemed successful, I did not. For example, the 2000 election (Supreme Court overruling Florida court on a one time basis is not a good resolution to an electoral crisis), and the 2008 financial crisis, to which I'd give a partial "meets expectations".
The one success I initially agreed with was the 1995-1996 budget conflict between Clinton and Gingrich. Successful results from the crisis as we shouldn't sneer at a prolonged balanced budget. But Chat noted that this made government shutdown a valid tactic to use in future crises. Not a great result.
So Ryan, while I agree with Ann's sentiment (both above and below), and have disagreed with you in the past on the value of Hegseth, I can't find fault in your argument above.
Brad, did you happen to see this article from yesterday: https://becomingnoble.substack.com/p/meritocracy-is-not-a-good-thing
He paywalled it pretty quick, but before he did:
The Author wrote: "Meritocracy is the improper elevation of a good to a station beyond its proper place; a fetishization of the good of qualification. It is a blindness to the richness of human existence, and the reduction of life to a system. In Aristotelian terms, it represents a deviation from the golden mean to an extreme of excess.”
I replied: In a perfect world where perfect people were geared toward the perfect outcome of each child, and education were dynamic & intelligent enough to compensate for every single learning type, maybe...
In reality focusing on anything else but merit - because we do not have the tools, resources, intelligence, emotional intelligence, goodwill quotient, or know how to do otherwise - leads to ruin as we are seeing with the common core & CRT curriculum.
Idealism and utopia are noble concepts which we should all strive to achieve, but here's the thing, in our current system of imperfect individuals in an imperfect world of systemic corruption, meritocracy is the ONLY way to get there.
CRT Removes the Reason to Try, This is Not Theoretical: Black Lawyer Excoriates Critical Race Theory: https://old.bitchute.com/video/DaS25FLR8ktR
DEI is almost, but not quite, exactly the same: https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/why-all-these-brands-ab-inbev-target
I didn't, but great reply!
Great reply. Checked out his website, based on the title of his posts ( appeared to ne no reason to read them and both waste my time and aggravate myself) he appears to be a completely misformed ideologue or an escapee from some asylum), perhaps he was a speechwriter for Kamala Harris in defense of her candidacy 🙂🙂
Not paywalled any more. I read through this and his second article. I think he's overly definitive with the word meritocracy (e.g. to have meaning it has to be radical and new) - not necessarily so IMO. And his second article dives deep into the role the Ivies play in distributing rewards for meritoriousness. As one commenter said, this is a great argument against using the Ivies as gatekeepers for excellence and reward. What a lazy shortcut for any business (including a major corp I worked for) to unofficially have a standard of graduating from an Ivy to be hired for a coveted role.
Is your final paragraph the longest sentence you have ever written? And it was cogent. Congratulations!
Seriously, great piece on an important topic. I could get behind DEI if equity were dropped as it is a nonsensical goal, if diversity was expanded to include those holding differing viewpoints, and inclusion meant all who wish to work hard and perform at their maximum are welcomed and valued.
We need to take control of the conversation by having the balls to start asking "why?" To wit:
- Why does representation matter?
- Why is diversity our strength?
- Why must we have equitable outcomes?
- Why must employment of favored minorities across every field be proportionate to -- or exceed -- the proportion of their representation in society?
We need to change the terms of the game from "recite the correct pious affirmation or suffer the consquences" to "you're going to explain your bullshit value system right now."
Because if representation matters because it shows that race and class and ethnicity are no obstacle to fully participating in society, then we can agree on that and work to lower the barriers to that participation.
What you don't do is lower the standards.
What you don't do is adopt processes detrimental to the safety of others in order to help social-credit seekers feel better about themselves because they're trying to atone for their privilege.
Couldn't agree more. Particularly your the paragraph after your bullet list of questions
I love seeing the lunacy train getting exposed by hard-working, independent journalists. Seeing the absolute scum hypocrites protesting because their grift is being revealed is a joy to watch. And isn't it stochastic terrorism when these jackoffs say "We're at war!", "We've got to take this to the streets!"?
I still consider myself to be liberal, but not INSANE like many people I know that swallow this shit like fresh pablum.
Where the hell did all the classical liberals go?! Did TDS warp them so bad that they forgot all their ideals?
Still one of the most perplexing phenomena I've witnessed in the last 9 years.
We desperately need them back. I fear they're either lost or didnt truly mean what they said they believed in.
It has been striking for me to see many friends of this ilk, just throw it all away because of their hatred for ONE person.
I think the classic liberals are still out there, but they're too afraid to admit how they really feel about the loony libs for fear of retribution. I'm betting millions of classic libs voted for Donald Trump because the others have lost the plot.
Yes, it would be beneficial to all if liberals could go back to sanity. Two parties are a good thing, but only if neither of them is bat-shit crazy. A lot of people seem to think having two parties is so important that it’s OK if one of them is engaged in a war on reality.
People so shameless and unintelligent that they don’t mind being diversity hires as long as they get a paycheck.
👏👏👏Well stated and obvious to any non ideologue with commonsense. However , the TDS from which many Dems, particularly the extreme liberal/radical wing of their party has meant that they continue to dig deeper the hole into which they have fallen and thus are moving farther away from any change they have of regaining the power which is the overarching goal of the majority of their party leaders.
Thanks Brad. Great and well researched analysis of what I feared was the case but was too lazy to research myself. The only time “diversity” made sense to me was when I was in interview training. It is very hard to look only at the other’s person’s skills for the position. You tend to want to hire “people like me” and you have to watch out for that. That still makes sense to me, but changing the SKILLS level required for various jobs to achieve diversity is a race to the bottom.
I think the "people like me" factor is pretty much still active in DEI, it's not enough to tick some diversity boxes you also have to profess absolute faith and allegiance to the woke gospel.
“DEI till you die”?
We accept your terms.
Maybe instead of using the Progs' misleading terminology - "diversity, inclusion, equity" - we should be plain spoken. Say "anti-white racial discrimination" instead. Means the same thing.
The question that everyone needs to be asking is:
Are we using merit as measured by objective tests such as the SAT as opposed to subjective assessments based on measures such as essays which are easily gamed in our decision making to determine who is being admitted to the top universities, hired or promoted to the best jobs or are we currently discriminating against whites, Asians and men in an attempt to compensate for the past discrimination against others?
If we are currently discriminating based on race and sex and recent Supreme Court cases suggest that we are, then don't those currently being discriminated against have the same legitimate grievances that women and blacks had in the past? Just asking.
“you’d have to be a moron not to understand that systematically lowering standards in hiring and promotion in industries related to public safety to achieve equal outcomes will affect outcomes.”
I have walked through life owning some insecurities over my lacking prestigious academic credentials common for my personal and professional station. However, I have recently concluded that these “higher credentialed” people are in fact just raging morons with impressive vocabulary.
In Canada 44 percent of personnel in the Canadian Armed Forces are considered overweight while 28 per cent are classified as obese, diversity kills everything good!
The whole "equity" thing isn't really new, it's all based on Marxism and Postmodernism or what Thomas Sowell calls the Unconstrained Vision. Merit is a social construct, the reason people perform differently are existing biases in the power structure and if you just hire a work force that is more representative of the general population it will perform just as well if not better.
It usually takes some time for the system to collapse when these ideas are enacted and it's usually accompanied by a lot of propaganda and total denial of reality by the ruling class. It very often feels like we're somehow witnessing the collapse of the soviet union all over again.
Good lord, hadn't seen the video of the female Stooges in the Secret Service detail bumbling and stumbling their way around the limo.....bizarre, hilarious, and disturbing.......
Hmmm. Meritocracy. How about Trump nominating, one after another, unqualified loyalists for his all white Cabinet and hiring unqualified loyalists for civil servant positions. Trump tries to tell us he’s eradicating DEI to promote “ meritocracy”. What a joke. Hypocrisy is what it is.
Ann, Kamala Harris is what happens when you put identity before merit. She perfectly encapsulates why the Left's race communism grift will doom the Democratic Party.
As for the Trump administration, who are the "unqualified loyalists" you're referring to?
I love the “he’s hiring loyalists” complaint. Don’t you know a good President hires people who violently disagree with his positions?!
Brad: Both the fact that Harris was an unqualified DEI pick for president and the reality that RFK Jr is an unqualified candidate for HHS Secretary can be and are true. Both DEI and simplistic loyalty or political tests are inadequate approaches to achieving merit selections. We have to hold Trump to the same standards in selecting the best possible candidates as we do Democrats. Both have failed.
So you want more of the same failures of the last 35 years.
I challenge you to provide one incident/event/crisis/initiative they establishment got right during that time.
Leadership has been a colossal failure going on 4 decades. Do you think putting more of these parasitical plutocrats in Leadership will change anything?
Could it possibly be any worse than the status quo for "regular" people to serve? It's what our Founders intended anyway.
It's time to shake it up and stop looking back to doing things the same way.
I want to see any administration claiming to be reformers, to reform our problems within the framework, laws, of our democracy. I want strong balance of powers between executive, legislative and judicial. I want a President that doesn’t lie every day, doesn’t use chaos and division to distract. I don’t want a long list of all the dem adm faults ok? I do want reform. We all do. But it’s so damned obvious that we start with getting big money OUT of politics. Anything else is futile. Every year it becomes more obvious. And now, the most wealthy have taken the reins supported by the most wealthy. The hypocrisy is just so hard to take anymore.
I’m sure you’ve heard the proverb about how you eat an elephant- one bite at a time. You want to start with getting big money out of politics. An admirable goal, but how about we start with smaller steps that can be immediately achieved?
Here in Chicago, we are told that children cannot be educated until we get a better society. Again, an admirable goal, but also an excuse for inaction on the immediate problems.
Do you propose continuing on our current course until you succeed in getting big money out of politics?
Ok…here is what and who and how we will get reform? You think Musk is working for our good? Come on, folks!
“…Another Musk/DOGE aide, 19 year-old high school graduate, Edward Coristine, operates multiple Russian websites, worked at a startup that hired convicted hackers, and is linked to a Telegram account that solicited a cyberattack, Wired magazine reported today.
Coristine “is now listed in Office of Personnel Management records as an ‘expert’ at that agency, which oversees personnel matters for the federal government,” Wired wrote. “Employees of the General Services Administration say he also joined calls where they were made to justify their jobs and to review code they’ve written.”
“The White House did not immediately respond to questions about what level of clearance, if any, Coristine has, and if so, how it was granted,”
Read this short piece
https://open.substack.com/pub/diplomatic/p/split-screen?r=jlqal&utm_medium=ios
We are being scammed !
If that's really the best you've got, I think it's well past time for you to go on a politics sabbatical. I'm getting second hand embarrassment from your hysteria, which is no doubt being exacerbated by your inability to steer clear of #resistance media.
You're living in an alternate reality. And if anyone's a hypocrite, it's YOU, Ann. Enough.
“Enough”. is that an order, Brad? Ahhh…I must be reading “the wrong” stuff. Ooooo.
Well Brad, the feeling is mutual.
It's a suggestion to shut up because you're embarrassing yourself.
Your party just made 24 y/o David fucking Hogg its new vice chairman. You think a 17 year-old Swedish teenager and chronic truant is a climate change deity.
You said JACK SHIT when Zuckerberg spent $400 million to help elect a puppet. Kamala Harris had WAY MORE billionaires support her than Trump.
“Leadership has been a colossal failure going on 4 decades. Do you think putting more of these parasitical plutocrats in Leadership will change anything?
Could it possibly be any worse than the status quo for "regular" people to serve? It's what our Founders intended anyway. “
You believe Trump and Musk and his billionaire Cabinet (12 billionaires, right?) are not parasitic plutocrats? Actually they are probably better characterized as parasitic oligarchs. And Trump and many of those billionaire Cabinet members started with inherited wealth. And I don’t follow your “regular” comment. I tell you what, any one with that kind of money is not “regular”. I would love to see more “regular” people in office. You can still find some in Congress.
You know, I thought I would find more successfully handled crises that I did. I used ChatGPT and some of the items it deemed successful, I did not. For example, the 2000 election (Supreme Court overruling Florida court on a one time basis is not a good resolution to an electoral crisis), and the 2008 financial crisis, to which I'd give a partial "meets expectations".
The one success I initially agreed with was the 1995-1996 budget conflict between Clinton and Gingrich. Successful results from the crisis as we shouldn't sneer at a prolonged balanced budget. But Chat noted that this made government shutdown a valid tactic to use in future crises. Not a great result.
So Ryan, while I agree with Ann's sentiment (both above and below), and have disagreed with you in the past on the value of Hegseth, I can't find fault in your argument above.
Jealous much?
What?