Is this true? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_theory_of_invention_and...
Another example is the Finnish education system aiming to raise the floor instead of increasing the ceiling.
I can think of counterexamples in Hungarian mathematicians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)
A lot of them knew each other growing up, but you could argue they would've succeeded anywhere.
If this question were more carefully explored I think it'd do a lot for the author's argument as a whole.
Also, I was loose with my words. I didn't really mean few as in you could actually count the individuals. I meant more along the lines of the 1% of the population that has a PhD and at least making some minor contribution to academia.
No, it would make it more worthwhile to invest in promising players, who now would have the prospect of making a decent living as a top 250-ranked touring pro, rather than needing to be in the top 50 or 100 in order to do so.
I think more generally the idea is that we should focus on equality rather than equity: people should be able to live well even if they "lose" the meritocratic contest.
Again, this doesn't solve the meritocracy problem. If the top 250 get a steady source of income, which ones do you invest in? You wouldn't bother with the moonshot talent because the expected payoff is lower. It only becomes worthwhile to invest in those that have a good chance of breaking into the top 250. That is, the well established. It doesn't follow that a flatter pay structure is fairer in any way.
Taking the tennis example, sure, it would be beneficial for the top players to have a flatter payout structure. But this ultimately leads to the ATP tour being solidified and newcomers being barred from entry as now the player ranked 250 is now earning an income that they can afford much better training than outsiders. It isn't immediately clear that this system is better from a social point of view.
Relating it back to elite institutions, randomly assigning professors and students to random institutions definitely raises the floor but also lowers the ceiling. Is that socially better? Not immediately obvious. I'm of the opinion that we want to maximize the max possible achievement of an individual to improve the human condition. Very few individuals are responsible for key advancements of civilization.
Finally, the closing statement about Milton Friedman seems rather contradictory to me. The argument that changing the entire cultural attitude of business is somehow different than regulation seems odd to me. Stigmatizing certain actions is just merely the weakest form of regulation that allows for unethical behavior to be rewarded even greater.