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Capitalism is designed to give power to the few at the top. Nothing about it is a meritocracy, its a funnel of money straight to whoever can exploit the system more than the rest. Has nothing to do with merit, but to "get yours" through whatever means necessary, including crushing those employees who actually do the hard labor that they then extract wealth from.
Say, the system was designed to prevent cheating. Could a meritocracy exist?
Define cheating. I doubt many CEOs would consider anything they've done to get to the position they are as "cheating".
To "cheat", one must break the rules. And the rules have been designed to not only allow for but encourage current behavior.
CEO'S are propped up by investors and guaranteed the money invested traces back to some sort of nepotism.
Which is the way it's designed to work, so not cheating.
Also, the definition of nepotism involves favoring relatives. I get what you mean, but it's not quite accurate. There's certainly favoritism going on, just not between relatives generally.
Here's a common definition of neoptism:
Undue attachment to relations; favoritism shown to members of one's family; bestowal of patronage in consideration of relationship, rather than of merit or of legal claim.
Maybe I sprung the word "cheat" on you too soon, but 'nepotism is cheating' is a brief a summation of my argument.
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What's going on with overpaid CEOs and underpaid workers is not nepotism
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cheating means breaking of rules, and they're not
You can argue that we should change rules to disincentivize some of the behaviors we're seeing and to make them "cheating". And I would't argue against you if we could somehow make those improvements. But if you're framing "cheating" as against yours or my personal moral framework instead of law, that is not something you can expect everyone to agree with you on.
But if you’re framing “cheating” as against yours or my personal moral framework instead of law, that is not something you can expect everyone to agree with you on.
This is actually the supposition of my question.
But you're not cracking the surface and it's honestly really boring exchanging ideas with you. I don't think I'll carry on.
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It can't.
It's a logistical nightmare. In order to be rewarded for your efforts, you need some system of evaluating the worth of every effort. Any societal system that exists is made by at least one person, and every person had biases and ambitions.
There's no way to prevent cheating, because any rule to prevent cheating will be ignored, because that's what cheating is. Any rules to make cheating harder only make it harder, not impossible.
Oh look, it seems the act of deciding a person's worth to society is 100 times the worth of a labourer. And the worth of a writer for Batman is 20 times the worth of a writer for Spider Man. Oh, my physicist girlfriend just broke up with me... Looks like that's practically worthless now!
Wait, what's a youtuber? Is that a new thing? I made my value system back in 2002, so this is all new to me! You're not on the list, so I guess you're not worth anything? I guess we could make the list again, and while we're there, my opinions on Batman have changed, so we can tweak some other things too.
Ah, the problem is that a person's worth is entirely subjective... But what if we press it down into clear and objective statistics? What if we limit it to a single statistic, and a person's value is entirely related to raising that statistic? We can call the statistic... Capital!
So a person's value in society is entirely tied to their ability to obtain as much capital as possible, no matter what they do. Ah, meritocracy.
You said a lot of words but only convinced me that you think very highly of your own judgment.
I'm not convinced you actually read my comment before responding.
I don't even think you wanted a discussion. I think you just want to say your belief and have it treated as fact.
I did. It was a whole lot of assumptions backed up with anecdotes all designed to come to one single conclusion.
Okay, you definitely didn't read my comment if that's what you think it was. Let me sum it up for you:
- A person's merit is subjective.
- Judging merit based on subjective values will bring in biases and corruption.
- Judging merit based on objective values is impossible, and will need to be a simplification.
- In either case, people will game the system to raise their value, regardless of whether they actually contribute anything of merit.
- Any system will become outdated VERY quickly, as society is always changing.
- Capitalism only judges the acquisition of capital, which is not a merit.
- A person can cheat literally any system if they try hard enough.
I explained all of that without a single anecdote.
From which semi-tautological contortions we can conclude that, uh, capitalism probably isn't the problem, after all.
First, my conclusion is that meritocracy is impossible. Your conclusion was something you came up with on your own.
Second, capitalism isn't the ONLY problem. It's still a problem. Greed will corrupt any system, but capitalism is a system that openly rewards this corruption.
Yes yes, nothing can be done. All is futile. It's always the same shit with you people.
I don't think I said "nothing can be done". I just said meritocracy is impossible. And since it's impossible, we need a different system we can actually achieve. It won't be without flaws, but we can still aim to have LESS flaws than currently.
You don't improve by pretending nothing's wrong.
I don’t think I said “nothing can be done”. I just said meritocracy is impossible.
Why would I want to discuss anything with someone who will contradict themselves in the first two sentences they mutter.
Anarcho syndicalism
Capitalism is designed to give power to the few at the top
This rads like some communist propaganda.
Still not wrong though.