Susaga

Granted. The chef accidentally knocked over his rack of hot sauces while cooking, and all of them mixed together on your chicken. No, the flavours don't work well together. It's spicy, but not actually tasty.

Oh, and it's not free either. And given the cost of all the hot sauces...

Okay, you're clearly not even reading your OWN comments now, so I don't know why I expected you to read mine. You clearly don't want people to respond to you, so I won't. Goodbye.

You made the bold claim that a system could be designed to prevent cheating, then asked if a meritocracy could exist. I said no. I also backed up my claim with actual reasoning, while you just stuffed your fingers in your ears and made loud noises.

Did you actually WANT people to respond to you, or did you just want people to agree with you? Because we don't.

There are options other than "meritocracy" and "nothing", you know. It's worrying that didn't occur to you.

First, my conclusion is that meritocracy is impossible. Your conclusion was something you came up with on your own.

Second, capitalism isn't the ONLY problem. It's still a problem. Greed will corrupt any system, but capitalism is a system that openly rewards this corruption.

I don't think I said "nothing can be done". I just said meritocracy is impossible. And since it's impossible, we need a different system we can actually achieve. It won't be without flaws, but we can still aim to have LESS flaws than currently.

You don't improve by pretending nothing's wrong.

Oh, nuance definitely has value, but only where it exists. You can look for nuance in capitalism all you like, but you won't find anything. It's just greed.

Okay, you definitely didn't read my comment if that's what you think it was. Let me sum it up for you:

• A person's merit is subjective.
• Judging merit based on subjective values will bring in biases and corruption.
• Judging merit based on objective values is impossible, and will need to be a simplification.
• In either case, people will game the system to raise their value, regardless of whether they actually contribute anything of merit.
• Any system will become outdated VERY quickly, as society is always changing.
• Capitalism only judges the acquisition of capital, which is not a merit.
• A person can cheat literally any system if they try hard enough.

I explained all of that without a single anecdote.

It's also correct.

I'm not convinced you actually read my comment before responding.

I don't even think you wanted a discussion. I think you just want to say your belief and have it treated as fact.

It can't.

It's a logistical nightmare. In order to be rewarded for your efforts, you need some system of evaluating the worth of every effort. Any societal system that exists is made by at least one person, and every person had biases and ambitions.

There's no way to prevent cheating, because any rule to prevent cheating will be ignored, because that's what cheating is. Any rules to make cheating harder only make it harder, not impossible.

Oh look, it seems the act of deciding a person's worth to society is 100 times the worth of a labourer. And the worth of a writer for Batman is 20 times the worth of a writer for Spider Man. Oh, my physicist girlfriend just broke up with me... Looks like that's practically worthless now!

Wait, what's a youtuber? Is that a new thing? I made my value system back in 2002, so this is all new to me! You're not on the list, so I guess you're not worth anything? I guess we could make the list again, and while we're there, my opinions on Batman have changed, so we can tweak some other things too.

Ah, the problem is that a person's worth is entirely subjective... But what if we press it down into clear and objective statistics? What if we limit it to a single statistic, and a person's value is entirely related to raising that statistic? We can call the statistic... Capital!

So a person's value in society is entirely tied to their ability to obtain as much capital as possible, no matter what they do. Ah, meritocracy.

The spookiest of bees.