Though baseball (and other American sports) aren't generally a good example. With only 20-30 world class teams, it's easy to get contaminated by groupthink. Soccer is a better example. It's easy for all 32 NFL teams to have the exact same ideas about how to measure playing ability. It's hard for thousands of clubs in hundreds of countries to all have the same ideas. Even if English or American teams focus too heavily on size and strength, a Spanish team might take a chance on an undersized kid with a lot of speed and technical ability.
Moneyball deals with inefficiencies in antiquated markets, and fits well into Lewis's oeuvre (see Big Short, Liar's Poker for examples of how to take advantage of credit default swaps or the bond market). It has much less to do with "merit," as one can observe a player's true merit over a sufficient sample in baseball. If the guy's a bum, he'll live in Single A for the rest of his career.
tl;dr: baseball statistics are much better at quantifying a player's skills. See "WAR" and the recent Red Sox and Yankees teams for examples.
Anna Kournikova was never a very successful tennis player but her earnings never reflected that.
Ferrari have a good F1 team, sure, but not necessarily the best; pre-Schumacher, their win rate was dwarfed by both Williams and McLaren. Yet their brand is strong enough that they uniquely can sell old cars to enthusiasts and run them at a profit, were able to get higher payments from the governing body and can license a new circuit (Yas Marina) to include a Ferrari-themed amusement park. All of which gives them a substantially higher baseline income from which to develop their cars.
Professional sports is as much about building and exploiting a brand as anything else in life.
Depending on how you define success, Kournikova was successful. You can't qualify routinely for grand slam tournaments unless you're a top tennis player - you get there purely on merit.
F1 is a different matter entirely. For all the love I have for it, it's hardly a pure sport. But even then, the top drivers do win the top drives. I remember telling my Spanish friend that Alonso was going to win the championship some day, after seeing him routinely out-qualify and out-race his teammate, and drivers in better cars.
If I had to put a bunch of rich people on a chart with three axises of merit, luck, and inheritance, I still think professional athletes lie the closest to the pure merit line.
I'd assume at some level finance is like this; the algorithmic trading parts, not the "we went to Yale together and you have compromising pictures of me with that nun, so I'll give you this business" parts.
There are lots of roles in finance where connections and likability are probably primary (once you pass a certain level of competence), though.
That's a brilliant way to put it.
Sarcasm aside, let me tell you why there are so few black tech entrepreneurs. Fact 1: Most successful tech founders in the Valley are themselves technical. Fact 2: Go to your favorite college, how many black people there studying math or computer science ? how many white or asians?
If there are very small percentage of black studying math and computer science, of course, the number of the black tech entrepreneurs would be small.
To all the black people out there, please don't turn venture capitalism into philanthropy. You will destroy Silicon Vally.
The whole sport (e.g basketball) industry is dominated by black people. Do you see asian people crying around shouting 'racism'? If you are really good (like in sports), you gain success. If you are not good, you're not (like making tech companies). It's simple.
I have wondered about this and think the core problem lies with two cognitive short cuts. The availability heuristic and the belief that other groups (predicated on culture) are much less varied in individuals than yours (out-group homogeneity bias). And everyone suffers from it. Black, white and every shade between. That is, even blacks will assign the same stereotype backed attempt at a conditional distribution to various outcomes and the only difference is blacks will not lump it into the its just cause they is black bucket. But even that alone is damaging to the cultural self image.
The effects are subtle. Ignoring socio-economic crippling effects, there is a very strong hostile affect against book learning in black culture. And I do not mean the standard antigeek treatment. I inhabited the intersection and can tell you there is a striking difference in the type of hostility, the other one actually creates feelings of real guilt and self questioning. And the underlying cause is not due to a hatred of knowledge but a chronic unacknowledged buried belief of lesser intelligence due to inferences made against the cultural Zeitgeist peppered with lingering traces of an oppressed past and a lack of many examples to counteract the claim.
This results in a defeatist attitude. See, if you try to study you nudge the insecurities of those around you which leads to a "so you think you are better than the rest of us" effect. There is a pressure to not try too hard and an almost pride in ignorance and keeping it real. And if you do press on you will still have this imposter effect suggesting that you struggle against your genes. I succumbed to this pressure in my school years. The cycle maintains a fixed point for the continued apathy towards knowledge in black culture, resulting in a dearth of intellectual achievement. So we think the only way forward is in sports or entertainment. This is the inward problem, why so little of us study math and computer science.
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Personally, I have not met with much overt racism in any culturally diverse setting. Outside diverse settings though and the rapid degradation of the quality of broad-mindedness can be quite cumbersome.
I am much more subjected to the subtle effects of the availability heuristic. I am not offended but sometimes disheartened. Where nice people meaning no offence will cross over to the other sidewalk and back, especially at night (useful when I wish to be left in peace). Or people feel the need to dumb things down and are surprised I am interested in certain subjects cause you know, you people typically don't - well no offence. Or that I am searched more often than my nonblack friends (0 vs twice a year or so) and on days when I say absolutely nothing have to end up being hauled to the station while they look up that my record is as spotless as a cleanroom.
This is the real problem. Well meaning people will say things meaning no offence and which only the most righteously uptight, persecution complex suffering person would take as such. Benign and small indvdually but in aggregate they give away beliefs that end up being real roadblocks when attempting to initiate an interaction. The tragedy is they do it without even being aware that they are doing it. When pointed out the more enlightened will mention some nonsense about statistics and time savings. But this is useless to tell the individual and such beliefs are self perpetuating or confounded by low iodine and magnesium diets - poisoning the well of general knowledge with effects leading to what i mention in my third block of text.
Ah well, I seem to have lost the point of what I was trying to say. but basically the number of dimensions underlying the manifold of this problem is far more vast than the simplistic picture you have painted using only one color.
Interestingly, the prejudice against "acting white" is much lower in black schools, and very high in schools with 20% blacks.
Also, Hispanics are much worse off - African Americans are respected for a GPA of 3.5, but start losing friends if they get anything more. Hispanics seem to lose friends once their GPA goes over 2.5.
see http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/fryer_t...
But part of what you say is a symptom of the chronic heuristic I spoke of. To perpetuate ignorance just because those who do not appreciate it will leave? makes no sense. Why, leaving is almost part of the job description of a sports or entertainment job and they don't get ostracized. Plus part of the problem is a lack of availability of models. The more that achieve the more it becomes okay to try an intellectual avenue as a way out and the less and less notable it becomes to be interested in say math. Plus as a matter of numbers some of them will come back to try and better things, the spaces in entertainment are much more limited than in technology.
Finally, "acting white" exactly exemplifies what I mean. Just because I am not fluent in ebonics, like music with guitars in it, like to read scifi by Egan and books on information theory does not mean I am acting white. Nor does my like of chicken, basketball, funk, hiphop and bboying mean I am acting black. It is a cultural and personal lifestyle choice not predicated on color in deciding what I wish to identify with.
"Where nice people meaning no offense will cross over to the other sidewalk and back, especially at night". I agree that this does happen. I'm guilty of that. But only when I see a group of black teenagers at night, and I might cross over and back without even thinking much about it. I don't know how to solve this problem. One of my black friend who went to Havard Law told me he is guilty of the same irrational fear when he is walking at night.
Not until it is common knowledge that ignanance is not a symptom of race will the problem be solved.
That aside - I believe the premise of Hank's post is that it's not a meritocracy in Silicon Valley. It's hard to know for sure whether this is true because there's no way to test this hypothesis. But I think it's safe to assume that VC's are still human, and like every other human, they all have biases, including racial biases. There's nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. However, if they're not aware of that bias - perhaps, mentally, they reject that they have any racial bias because they think that will make them a bad person - then they won't take any conscious steps to correct it. The result would be that fewer black entrepreneurs get funded.
You should realize that being black in America is not like being fat. For most of our country's history, black people have been treated as less than human. It wasn't even until fairly recently in our country's history that blacks gained the legal right, throughout the country, to use the same restrooms and water fountains. Can you imagine that? If you think that that kind of institutionalized racism has completely evaporated, you are wrong.
I think it would benefit you to read the book "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin. It will probably change your apparent opinion that black people are a bunch of whiners demanding charity.
Like you said, black people have been mistreated for hundreds of years. So even today, not many black students go to college (comparatively), and when they are in college, not many of them choose engineering(cultural?). The reason why there are few black tech entrepreneurs is because there is a small selection pool to begin with.
I think it's more productive to try to solve these root causes than to blame Valley meritocracy which i think is working ok.
When it comes to sports, it's easy to claim they are a meritocracy because the players don't always look like the coaches or GMs. If the players and coaches always looked the same, people might question it.
People are generally blind to their biases, and some biases are wrong. For example you mentioned most founders being technical, but some VCs have promoted picking startups run by designers.
Let's not pretend venture capital is a completely neutral meritocracy. There are plenty of VCs who speak about the herd mentality within their profession and how many social factors like "who's already invested" have an effect on where money goes.
I thought venture capital would be full of strictly analytical decisions, but the more you listen to VCs talk about themselves the more you realize that they use many social factors to try to mitigate their perceived risk. It's possible things could be overlooked. It's not just complaining. How else could a person bring attention to something without talking about it? Edit: I don't see a difference between this argument and the belief that most of the startup talent is in Silicon Valley. Convincing and generally accepted, but not necessarily true.
edit: Don't just vote me down because you disagree. Please respond.
see:
http://www.thegrio.com/opinion/should-the-nba-assist-white-p...
I see parallels, it's a cultural thing, generally speaking in the African American community tech startups are not valued like playing basketball/football or being singer/rapper/actor.
The startups that are popular in the African American community is the record label.
I also thought this was interesting as well: http://deadspin.com/kyle-mcalarney/
I think Marc Andreesen (not exactly sure if it was him) wrote about how companies that provide entertainment (YouTube, Twitter etc) end up being worth much more than others.
No.
But I do see them start fights with black people when they get beat by them. You should see it ... it's hilarious ->
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmG9G-ZwDDc
I think the PHYSICAL fighting you see on the part of the Chinese teams is a manifestation of the same frustration that blacks show towards their own under representation in tech fields.
Just my take.
It's men (or women) competing against one another. I suppose you think its also a manifestation of some deep frustration when two white hockey players fight on the ice? Or when two black players fight in the NBA? Or when a black guy fights a white guy, etc. etc.
I've played them ... NCAA Div 1 Track and Basketball.
Anyone fighting in Track and Basketball is fighting because they are getting beat. And because they are generally a whiny Beeyotch. And that was true even back in my day, (early 90's).
Never played other sports, (hockey), so I can't say. But if you are fighting in Track or Basketball ... I can guarantee it is because you are a beeyotch. Now you couple this fact with the fact that the CBA gets into fights with nearly every visitor that beats them...and you have to think there are some frustrated players over there. Google China vs. Brazil or China vs US or China vs Australia or China vs anyone really.
I question whether you have played sport at a sufficiently high level if you believe that fighting is just a part of it. Or if you have ... your coaches failed miserably in getting the point of athletics across to you.
I think your statements are pretty bigoted and assuming. I took a look at some of your examples:
"Yesterday, a friendly game between men's national basketball teams from China and Brazil turned into a melee when Zhang Qingpeng was fouled hard by a Brazilian player less than a minute into the game."
"You can see the tiny Aussie guy in red swipe at the ball not once, but twice at 0:36-0:37. The ball is being held up high by the Chinese player (rightfully so), and the short Aussie looks like he's swiping (or could be throwing punches - hard to tell) high near the Chinese player's face, which is not going to be taken so kindly by the Chinese rebounder.
At that point, the Chinese rebounder is intimidating the short Aussie, then the Aussie teammates runs in (from the bottom right of the screen) and push the Chinese rebounder. That's when the Chinese bench clears and the brawl breaks loose."
I really don't see how you come to any conclusion that fighting = racial frustration. A cuban tae kwon do competitor lost his temper, kicked a ref and got banned from the Olympics. Ron Artest jumped into the stands. Team Canada once had a bench brawl with the Soviets in hockey.
Race really has nothing to do with anything in these instances.
Chum-tactic: the first filter applied to you, for press or investment or anything, is "Who sent you to me?" Some people think "Silicon Valley is a meritocracy" implies that the first filter would be merit. Ahem. Be meritorious, but make sure being meritorious makes an impression on someone who routinely has dinner with the people whose cooperation you need. (Hint: this happens spontaneously sometimes but that isn't the way to bet.)
P.S. Lots of the world and lots of situations work like this, with wide variations in local etiquette for what counts as an intro and what warrants one. "Who sent you?" is also the first filter for Chicago government contracting and Nagoya job offers.