Re:Kakistocracy
by papeda on Friday April 10, 2020 @03:58PM
(#22836775)
Oligarchy translates literally as "rule by the few" [1], and aristocracy as "rule by the excellent" [2]. Kakistocracy is "rule by the worst" per the featured article. So kakistocracy and aristocracy are opposites, and oligarchy describes something different: the number, not quality, of rulers.
Re:Kakistocracy
by dang on Friday April 10, 2020 @03:58PM
(#22836772)
Oligarchy means government by the few: https://www.etymonline.com/word/oligarchy (although today we tend to use it as a synonym for plutocracy, which is government by the rich). So the opposite of oligarchy would be democracy.
Aristocracy means government by the best: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=aristocracy, so kakistocracy would be its strict opposite. In fact, it was probably coined for that reason, since the people who invented it would have known that "aristos" means "best" in Greek. (Edit: the Wikipedia page says that.)
The pre-modern sense of "best" in "aristocracy" has to do with being of the best class or, if you like, having the best breeding. It has nothing to do with individual quality, except insofar as praiseworthy qualities like "nobility" were traditionally associated with the nobility (making the point rather hard to miss).
There have been a couple of HN threads about Michael Young, the coiner of 'meritocracy'.
From the Economist (see the first of those links):
Young used the term pejoratively on the grounds that meritocracy was dividing society into two polarised groups: exam-passers, who would become intolerably smug because they knew that they were the authors of their success, and exam-flunkers, who would become dangerously embittered because they had nobody to blame for their failure but themselves.
Sounds just like 2020, no? If you generalize "exams" to "education", things exactly like that are being written today. Relatedly, the 1970s coinage "professional managerial class" is currently undergoing a revival (if there were a language market, I'd go long on that one).
Re:Kakistocracy
by dang on Friday April 10, 2020 @07:39PM
(#22838492)
1865, American English, probably from Dutch dialect pappekak, from Middle Dutch pappe "soft food" (see pap) + kak "dung," from Latin cacare "to excrete" (from PIE root kakka- "to defecate").
H.L. Mencken
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristocracy
Aristocracy means government by the best: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=aristocracy, so kakistocracy would be its strict opposite. In fact, it was probably coined for that reason, since the people who invented it would have known that "aristos" means "best" in Greek. (Edit: the Wikipedia page says that.)
"Best" in aristocracy doesn't mean what we nowadays mean by that word, which is "most qualified". That would be meritocracy. That's strictly a modern notion, in fact a postwar one, and it has not aged well: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Actually it was a satirical creation to begin with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy, and the British academic who invented the word would have been aware that he was sticking a Latin and a Greek root together, making the satire funnier, since in classical terms only an ignoramus would do that. See https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/the-monstrous-ind... or, if you prefer, https://www.google.com/search?q=%22polyamory+is+wrong%22&sou....
The pre-modern sense of "best" in "aristocracy" has to do with being of the best class or, if you like, having the best breeding. It has nothing to do with individual quality, except insofar as praiseworthy qualities like "nobility" were traditionally associated with the nobility (making the point rather hard to miss).
There have been a couple of HN threads about Michael Young, the coiner of 'meritocracy'.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16338360
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18179583
From the Economist (see the first of those links):
Young used the term pejoratively on the grounds that meritocracy was dividing society into two polarised groups: exam-passers, who would become intolerably smug because they knew that they were the authors of their success, and exam-flunkers, who would become dangerously embittered because they had nobody to blame for their failure but themselves.
Sounds just like 2020, no? If you generalize "exams" to "education", things exactly like that are being written today. Relatedly, the 1970s coinage "professional managerial class" is currently undergoing a revival (if there were a language market, I'd go long on that one).
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/on-the-origi...
But, that's a latin root, not greek.
Then again - it does suggest the same root: https://www.etymonline.com/word/*kakka-?ref=etymonline_cross...
Wow, poppycock literally means shit pabulum. I had no idea. Puts a new spin on https://www.google.com/search?q=poppycock&source=lnms&tbm=is....
More seriously: Political cronyism, charismatic demagogues, pandering via popular but bad policies, etc.