Preemies, Genes, Meritocracy, and the Left
Hard Work is Only Sometimes Necessary and Never Sufficient, But What Else Can You Do?
Freddie deBoerfreddiedeboer.substack.com
Of course the game is rigged. Even many enthusiastic capitalists, these days, will concede that a lot of people are born on third base, that preexisting familial advantage can play a huge role in monetary success and success in any given field. Of course chance influences everything we do within our various systems of achievement. (I know someone... See more
Freddie DeBoer • Hard Work is Only Sometimes Necessary and Never Sufficient, But What Else Can You Do?
Talent and even effort cannot, as the UCLA Law School professor Joseph Fishkin has observed, “be isolated from circumstances of birth.”
David Brooks • How the Ivy League Broke America
The largely dominant meritocratic paradigm of highly competitive Western cultures is rooted on the belief that success is mainly due, if not exclusively, to personal qualities such as talent, intelligence, skills, smartness, efforts, willfulness, hard work or risk taking. Sometimes, we are willing to admit that a certain degree of luck could also... See more
Bullshit ahead
Genetic advantage only implies greater inherent worth if we decide it does.