Meritocracy is a Paradox.
Before we kick this one off I'd just like to point out that in my last post I said that March will be a terrible trading month and that February will be bullish till the end of the month.
Then like clockwork during the next four hours the market proceeded to dump harder and faster than it had anywhere else on the hourly chart. Amazing. How do I keep doing this? My psychic link to the market is still strong, as it continues whispering lies into my ear. When it comes to gambling and pattern recognition, being wrong 90% of the time is just as good as being right 90% of the time. All that matters is the correlation. Take note.
What was this post about again?
Oh yeah...
Meritocracy is a sham.
This is the idea that people should be rewarded by merit.
Skill and aptitude in a certain area should promote citizens in that area.
It is a utopian dream-world that can never and will never exist.
Because how would it work?
The idealism is sound. Obviously if those with skill and drive and decency ascended to all the available positions of power the world would be in a pretty good spot. But we can't just say things and expect them to happen. How would we reward people for being good at their job?
Being "good at your job" is a totally subjective measurement.
Which means someone must decide if you are good at your job or not.
Which is already the system we have today, and it's garbage.
As long as people control the narrative Meritocracy can not exist.
What about AI?
What if we automate out the people and have an algorithm that ranks how good people are at certain tasks? Again, this is a self defeating algorithm, because if a computer is skilled enough at a certain task to rank other people, why wouldn't we just automate the task completely and leave people out of it?
It's such a simple concept.
People should be rewarded for being good at their job. How can that be so difficult? But it is. In fact, this is quite possibly the root cause for why the world is so messed up today.
There are so many variables.
For example, what if a promotion needs to be given out and there are two people of equal skill vying for that job? What are they going to do? Flip a coin? Ha! No, the boss will just pick the person they like the most or the one who's been with the company the longest or the one who took the least time off or literally whatever other metric they decide is important. Again, it all circles back to centralized control.
Decentralized systems.
The very concept of a "promotion" assumes a garbage centralized corporate structure. In decentralized systems there is no boss and random coveted positions don't just pop up out of nowhere. However, even in decentralized systems, while meritocracy is more likely to happen on smaller scales, the overarching theme remains an impossibility.
Hive is a prime example of this. We value "quality content" in a lot of cases, but we are really just all running around tipping whoever we want because that's how the system works. Some of us like the idea of meritocracy so we try to reward the things we deem to have the highest value, and some people don't. It's a numbers game, and those numbers are never going to be in favor of 100% altruism. That is a fact.
Failing up.
Failing up is the opposite of meritocracy, and it happens all the time. It's a big club, and you're not in it. It's not what you know, it's who you know. These problems are known, and largely we just accept that they exist and there isn't really anything we can do about them.
Fixing this problem even just a tiny bit will have huge ramifications to the global economy. It's one of those things that fixes a lot of problems all at once. If one can get rewarded for merit, things like racism have a tendency to just melt away. Poverty as well. Everyone works harder when actual work-ethic reenters the workforce. Everyone working harder creates more value, for everyone. At least that's the theory.
The reality of these situations is a bit more complex than all that. In a very real way, the system CANT reward people based on merit. What if ten people need to be rewarded but there are only enough resources or promotions for one person? The entire theory falls flat on its face when we look at how business actually works.
Payed by time spent.
This is another thing that makes meritocracy impossible. How can one get paid for their work when their work is paid for by the hour? There's a reason we do things this way. Imagine trying to qualify every single task an employee does and itemize all those values into a spreadsheet and then rank how well the employee did on each task to determine their pay. You'd need another employee just to build the spreadsheet, and even then it would still be completely subjective and full of corruption. Not to mention that the new employee might need another employee to rank their own tasks. It's not hard to see how quickly meritocracy spirals into absurdity and inefficiency.
Idealism is self-defeating
I think one of the biggest problems is that we have people trying to solve everything all at once. Then when they inevitably fail nothing gets done, as they weren't willing to make compromises or achieve incremental successes. People expect too much too fast, and I'm sure that's something that anyone in crypto can agree with. Wen moon?
Capitalism
In theory, capitalism and meritocracy are the exact same thing. Capitalism values good work, and thus good work will be compensated fairly. Again, we see that the theory and the reality of the situation are completely disconnected. Again, getting paid by the hour and stripping workers from ownership of the thing they are helping create is a big part of all of this.
Will crypto fix a lot of this problems?
Probably! But certainly not all of them. We already see how tribalism is taking root. Bitcoin maximalists are comically one of the most toxic tribes in the space (right under XRP). I cringe when I think about Satoshi Nakamoto looking at the direction that his invention has gone in. Nakamoto was not a maximalist, as that is clearly the opposite of decentralization. Luckily we have many options as this flat architecture pours outward away from the source.
Borderless
Things get even weirder when we start factoring in the borderless nature of this emergent economy. I personally know people that would be happy to work for $5 an hour. In fact if the job was fun and if the participants are their own boss and choose their own hours, this becomes a "dream job" situation for many.
Does the competition for work undermine meritocracy? Probably a little bit. If there are thousands of people out there willing to work for $5 an hour it's not going to matter how good you are at the job if you're asking for $50/h. That's just a 'simple' supply and demand issue. But then again perhaps it's foolish to be measuring these things by the hour in the first place. It's quite difficult to quantify systems that don't exist yet.
Fairness
It all comes down to the economy being more fair and less subjective and corruption resistant. It's a tall order, but most people are on board. Everyone thinks the world should be "more fair". Will crypto be a part of that future? I have to assume it will in some capacity or another. However, I do expect that these developments will materialize in very strange ways that we could have never predicted. Technology has a way of maintaining consistent volatility and change over long periods of time.
Conclusion
Meritocracy is a utopian fantasy.
It's a target.
Aim for the stars and you'll hit the moon.
This is a journey, not a destination.
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Meritocracy is a scam. It all depends on luck.
Working hard is kinda the only way, since it gives more chance for luck to happen, but I know many people that fail terribly even after working hard, and I have met people that achieved success without doing anything due to a streak of luck.
Meritocracy sucks and is a fantasy, as you said, but I keep working hard because I have no choice. Good luck to us, because 99% of those who work hard fail terribly.
Let just say smart work gives more chances of luck than hard work. To me, I feel hard work is more like a waste of time in most cases. You work smart by studying past and future events of how things have and would occur to determine what you need to do.
Meritocracy simple doesn't exist. And truth the world as it is now is who knows who, what connections do you have. With that, you can even get lucky than someone who works tirelessly and maybe someone who works smart. But this life, if you want to succeed, you need to be SMART.
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I definitely believe crypto have a positive impact to play in the nearest future which we are experiencing now and there are still more to happen to change things positively. Inflation and deflation of price doesn't matter in the Crypto world because it's definitely what we are going to experience in the blockchain be it high or low it is a win-win scenario but we all hope for a positive pump in price.
yeah be it high or low crypto gives us the opportunity to make profit or build our portfolios.
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No capitalism is the political system. Meritocracy is the actual thing. it's based on merit of what you produce. Capitalism is a political structure with government decree, mandates, pay gos, spoil systems, trade agreements, embargos. So no it's not the same thing we think it's the same thing due to propaganda like yours
Early bitcoin was more of a social movement about setting men free not making them rich. The early bitcoin before the manipulation came in maybe could have fixed it.. the bitcoin fork bitcoin myk is probably the closest thing that could fix it now.
Meritocracy is a utopian fantasy
It can't be a utopian fantasy because we're moving into a world were it wont' be any job a person can do that a machine can't do better. So even the idea to monetize work at this point becomes obsolete. So you're marching yourself down a road of contradictions. You have 3d printers i assume will only get several times better. Where people will just take home resins and materials and there will be no labor intensive thing that goes into cost. For example i was watching a debate last night where a person felt his gold watch was valuable because of the gold it was made out of it. The thing is even if the watch wasn't made out of gold it would have still been valuable based on the intricacy of the detailed work that went into it. that's what gave it value. When machines take away labor that wealth transfers back to people but the political flaws of capitalism typically allows it to be monopolized when you have to pay everyone on the planet for the resources. As technically everyone on the planet owns the resources.
Even if you wage a war and take from me. You've only proven you can steal and kill better for the resources. you haven't proven entitlement of value. that's the concept of we reap but we do not sow. that means one group goes around and plunders from others but don't create anything. don't produce anything.
You guys suffer from a barbaric conquering mindset because you're just like animals. you lack the mental aptitude and ability to think. it's a handicapp or you'd know these things.
So by logical deduction you would understand machines will make all work obsolete at some point in the future or enough to make it almost impossible for most people to earn a living anyway. Yes meritocracies can form based on attention value. We do it everyday on bitcoinmyk.com because we're smart enough to know this is where it's headed. sure we're ahead of the world. what smart projects aren't? and dumb people catch up later. however the people who are at the beginnning generally still will do better and that's something meritocracy will even have trouble removing. i'd say it's proper meritocracy though because you invested more attention value before everyone else. which is different than politically government enforced and controlled capitalism. or even the hive system that allows manipulation from outside money and not internal mining per se..
I don't know if you smart enough to have these conversations edicted. you probably need to study alot first then come with alot of details. maybe it's enough for some of your followers they aren't very smart people either lol. Maybe you can manipulate them.
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The political ideology of meritocracy is such an interesting one . However, it is meritocracy itself that creates radical inequality and causes so many people in society, including those who are supposed to benefit from the situation, to be worse off. This is more or less a meritocracy trap !
if you don't mind, explain in simple terms the political idea of meritocracy?
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in simple terms, it means a type of political power vested in an individual/people based on efforts , talents and achievements rather than social class .
A broken clock is correct twice a day. So am going to follow the opposite of your prediction for March
Please do.
smiles... I have always been following the opposite of his predictions. I think that is his special talent.
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Meritocrazy is the merits of the crazy, to be honest is bs since inception the idea of a fair world, being crypto or any other way we just can't pull the humanity out of the shit, we are corrupt, power hungry and crazy people as a race. Is part of us, that is why countries are banning crypto, they want to use money as a weapon and not as a trade commodity, no way around it :S
So, is it ok to root for ideals?
market back up 17% lol...
I know it's hilarious!
Like, wtf? lol
Nailed this one, unlike your crypto market prediction.
The world hasn't been designed to be a fair place, we're not robots... Once we understand that, many frustrations we currently have will simply vanish.
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lol 😅😂..
yeah, life itself isn't fair. we accept what it gives us or either fight for what we want.
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There's a lot of Crypto currency that's selling today
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Very interesting post. Just so much to learn. Meritocracy is indeed a sham. We just accept the results and say the other person deserved it more because the boss says so.
The world is corrupt. Where i live is twice as corrupt and the economy cannot be fair or let me say would take a miracle to start being fair.
Crypto will change the structure of so many things. I doubt if corruption will easily be solved by crypto. And yes,I agree, technology will develop in a strange way and we might not notice when some things start changing.
Corruption is something that would exist as long as humans exists. I see it as something part of us. We favor those who we know in relative to who exactly deserves it.
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the problem is, the other systems do not work either. socialism tried all the 20th century, and failed, democracy is trying for 4000 years, and it is still failing in front of brute force. capitalism, do not get me started. so, where is the balance? if there is any. a 'pay it forward' society may work, but then, the flower power ended not that well.
aiming for education, for knowledge, for teaching right stuff in school, including personal finance. somehow we are lucky, as now we can find any class we need online, and we have access to information on a scale that was never here before.
another important thing is compassion and self-compassion. many try to dehumanize us of the neighbors (see Ukraine now) and see everyone like pieces on the chessboard. bringing the care into the equation also changes stuff.
we are not there yet, but hopefully will be. some people are working hard to make this happen.
Smiles you get it 90% wrong, and I just hope not to get good news in terms of prediction from you regards crypto related 😅😂.
I have gotten the idea of Meritocracy from your blog but having exactly what it is, is something maybe we might find in heaven because it is quite tough to have a system that best evaluate the effort of a person or group of person and how best are to reward them.
And also, for the $5 per hour, just working two hours a day for the next 7 days is far higher than the minimum wage in my country. Many people here would kill to have that kind of job.
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As long as people control the narrative Meritocracy can not exist
This is sadly very true. There is some sort of utopian perspective to believe that a human being can sincerely evaluate another human being without becoming biased. It is in our very nature to be volatile. Maybe the whole idea that merit has to be given to X and Y is flawed. Because it makes the process of appreciation a comparison, a process of finding flaws in the other so that the other can be awarded the "more merit" sign. Maybe the whole humanity would evolve more if people would act without the need to be awarded a certain degree or performance stars. At that point humans would probably understand that we are all a part of a system, just like in a car. You can't say that the wheels are more meritous than the engine or the windshields. They all have their place in that perfectly designed piece of technology. I wonder if we would think the same about the Universe how our paradigms would change. Because wars and violence happened precisely because of this culture of meritocracy that we have been imbued with. Who deserves more power, more control, more money, more recognition?
So many sub...
Each of them can be a post by themselves.
You are a machine full of ideas.
Keep them coming.
!BEER
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I agree for the most part. As a kid I believed meritocracy was possible and would solve everything. Now, older and wiser, I lean more towards your perspective on things. Thanks for an interesting post. :) 🙏