> Say you work at McDonald's and you're a brilliant person. You will soon be promoted and get more options.

I really don't think this is very likely. for one thing, it's hard to stand out as brilliant in a low-end food service job. no one cares. diligence is valued, but once you don't mess up customer orders and thoroughly clean everything on the closing checklist, there aren't really any ways you can improve as an employee. a place like mcdonald's is already highly optimized. there's not much room to get creative and show how clever you are. the difference in productivity between a barely qualified employee and the absolute ideal just isn't that great. if you do everything right and stick around a while, you might ultimately get to manage a single location. but you're still not making much money, and there's no obvious next promotion. the franchise owner isn't gonna be so impressed that they give you their own job.

Here’s one data point for you: There’s a fantastic writer out there that goes by the penname “A Man In Black”. He’s unable to write because he’s stuck in a medium wage job that doesn’t provide medical benefits - completely unrelated to writing - and has to spend his money to keep himself and his mother alive and in housing. As a result, he’s unable to even write in his limited spare time. That, to me, is the definition of under-utlised talent with low economic mobility.

The system is, as you say, highly unmeritocratic. It has no incentive to be meritocratic for a vast majority of the population. Even your theoretical brilliant McDonalds employee would find a ceiling at the management level a raise of a mere handful of dollars over the line cooks.

How do we know he's fantastic? If he has produced work that is fantastic he would be able to get paid to do more such work. My guess is that you're presuming that he had an undiscovered skill that he can't discover because of his menial job.

It's his responsibility to plan his life accordingly. He may write on weekends and slowly steer toward his passion. I'm with you that some talents are less appreciated by society and thus less rewarded. Fundamentally it's down to the individual to decide what he wants to sacrifice in his life.

Why doesn't he use his writing to support himself? Is it really because he won't get paid until the future but he needs the money now, or is it that writing won't ever earn enough to support himself and his mother? If the latter, then it's not an under-utilized talent, it's a talent that's not worth his time to practice. Many people are good at painting or singing or other things that are fun for themselves but of very little value to others - less value than working in McDonalds. If they spent their time doing what they're good at, they'd actually be wasting their burger-flipping talents.

"If the market doesn't value it, it has no value"

This is a sick way of thinking about the world.

A parent doesn't get paid for the work they do raising their child. Better flip burgers.

The lady who wants to teach under privileged youth art. Has no market value, better to flip burgers.

The next JK Rowling wants to write, but her writing produces no immediate market value. Best to just flip burgers.

The man who wants to help the homeless. Darn, next to no market value, better flip burgers.

I'm sick of forcing everyone to live as a slave to the market. The market is not perfect. The market does not solve every human problem. The market cannot accomplish everything we want to do as a species. The market is a tool, let's treat it as one and stop worshiping it.

We're specifically talking about the man who wants to write things. Not that other stuff you listed. We have ways for writers to make money from their work if other people actually want to read it, whether it's a book or a blog or a technical manual. It sounds like he can't make money because other people don't want to read his writing enough to pay for it even though they will pay for other people's writing.

Have you seen how many cheap books 2nd hand shops try to sell? Nobody wants them. They often get dumped. Libraries continually dump books too. Some writing is so worthless that people won't even read it for free. That's not a value like teaching underprivileged youth art. It's a zero-value or negative value.

Money is only part of the value relevant in a market transaction. There's the remaining value in a transaction, to you. I'll pay $10 for a very nice take-out hamburger, served with a smile. But I wouldn't pay $1 for that same burger, if the server insulted me or especially my family.

So some of your examples have a short-vs-long term aspect, but others seem to miss the relevant non-monetary aspects, like feeling like you're "making a difference", status, control, beliefs, etc. The fact that things other than money matter on both sides of trade does not mean that markets are failing.

Surely if a business plan has value, then it can be started without an initial investment, right?

Huh? Of course not. Are you being sarcastic?

This is a perfect summation of why people despise libertarians.

Would you rather live in a world where everyone does what they want instead of what you want? Good luck getting things that almost nobody has the passion to provide for free, like food and technology. We all benefit enormously from other people working for money instead of for their unpaid passion, no matter how good they are at drawing pictures of fruit or photographing sunsets or writing stories.

> Say you work at McDonald's and you're a brilliant person. You will soon be promoted and get more options.

Up to manager, which google tells me is ~$40k/yr?

Before getting into software development I worked a couple of retail/kitchen jobs where I was continually recognized for my hard word and dedication. My best wage was $11/hr, but the many "Employee of the month" awards were nice I guess.

> Unless the system is highly unmeritocratic this does not happen. Say you work at McDonald's and you're a brilliant person. You will soon be promoted and get more options.

  This sounds not well thought out to me. How many movers and shakers do you know that started out poor and working at Mcdonads? None?
  

The world is highly unmeritocratic, otherwise Jared Kushner would be the one working at McDonalds.

If you were born economically disadvantaged the odds of success are highly unlikely, do not let anyone tell you otherwise.

My personal experience is very different. I was born in a modest family in eastern Europe and now I work in an investment bank in London.

To give an example, one of Goldman Sachs former CEO's started as a janitor in the company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Weinberg#Career_at_Gold...

He was a high school drop-out.

It will sound harsh, but the truth is that most people are average. If you are brilliant and with a bit of luck you will make it to the top in most western countries.

In statistics you are what is called an outlier. Many of us on HN came from humble roots and made something of ourselves, but just imagine where you would be if you were politically and economically connected?

It can be both meritocratic and unlikely for disadvantaged people to succeed. Those kids who are born disadvantaged are more often disadvantaged in their merits too. Their parents and peers teach them life habits and emotional problems that keep them poor, and their genes keep them similar to their parents.

Maybe you're confusing meritocracy with equality. Meritocracy does create an underclass of "unmeritous" people.

>Unless the system is highly unmeritocratic this does not happen.

This may be the most Hacker News sentence ever written.

>Unless the system is highly unmeritocratic

The system is highly unmeritocratic.

Also meritocratic systems don't actually exist. All systems are flawed.

https://www.fastcompany.com/40510522/meritocracy-doesnt-exis...

>> Say you work at McDonald's and you're a brilliant person. You will soon be promoted and get more options.

You don't have to be brilliant. You need to be a good worker, pay attention to detail, keep your area clean, get along well with others, not buckle under pressure, and treat the customer well.

Do you have experience with this? How high did you rise?

> Unless the system is highly unmeritocratic this does not happen. Say you work at McDonald's and you're a brilliant person. You will soon be promoted and get more options.

To judge whether or not a society is meritocratic, one metric until it falls to Goodhart's Law is look to how its whistleblowers and those who speak truth to power are treated. By that measure, populations in the US and most of the G20 are very tribal-, patronage- and nepotic-bound. Meritocracy prevails when challengers to ideas are embraced for the potential to further strengthen the system for everyone including themselves instead of excoriated.

Have you ever worked in food service?

Nobody cares how smart you are. Managers care that you come to work, do your job, and come in on you off days when people call off. Your coworkers only care that you don't fuck up and get them in trouble, and that you cover for them when they need a day off.