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A comment on It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016). Parent comment

Re:It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has n... by TT3351 on Thursday November 12, 2020 @11:07AM (#25071285)
Meritocracy set out from birth, no? Are not all people in that book test tube children with specific selected genomes? I fail to see how creating a class of genetic garbage men, relegated to working with trash for their entire lives is "meritocratic," since advocates of the meritocracy concept generally rely on the system's alleged mobility.
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Re:It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has n... by me_me_me on Thursday November 12, 2020 @08:02PM (#25077550)
Meritocracy - government or the holding of power by people selected according to merit.

Every single person in that world IS selected for their role in society based on merit. There is no asterics attached there with +1 conditions.

I am not saying that it is a good system as a matter of fact I call it dystopian, only that everyone in it was rather content with their lives.

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Re:It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has n... by ForHackernews on Thursday November 12, 2020 @11:10AM (#25071318)
Reminder that "meritocracy" came to prominence in a satirical essay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy

Unfortunately a bunch of folks read that and thought it was a great idea.

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Re:It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has n... by jhbadger on Thursday November 12, 2020 @02:11PM (#25073618)
But it would be a great idea if it were real. The problem isn't in the theoretical idea of a meritocracy. It's that the real world isn't nearly as meritocratic as assumed and a lot of people in high places got there by connections, being from wealthy families, and so on and not due to their own merits.
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Re:It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has n... by ThrowawayR2 on Thursday November 12, 2020 @11:43AM (#25071633)
From what I recall from reading it, the meritocracy part actually worked incredibly well, yielding tremendous technological advances. It was the secondary effects of pushing meritocracy to extremes that were the problem.
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Re:It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has n... by throwaway2048 on Thursday November 12, 2020 @11:32AM (#25071547)
Pretty sure people see the first 5 letters, and then decide since they've earned everything in life, its a great idea.
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Re:It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has n... by Nasrudith on Thursday November 12, 2020 @01:49PM (#25073307)
Well of course - his underlying thesis was weak and failed to show how it would be worse off than the status quo. No wonder it caught on when what was mocked is a better idea than the current system! The downsides again failed to be worse than a fixed caste system and relied upon bad extrapolations.
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