Seeing people say "Yes" is as bewildering as it would be if the question were, "Do you believe in Santa Claus?"
The implication of the world being a meritocracy is that all the devastatingly poor people in the world are somehow lazy and untalented, and if they just worked harder, they could rise to at least a middle-class European level of comfort.
Yes and no. It's more of a meritocracy than the people who say "no" recognize, but it's less of a meritocracy than the people who say "yes" think it is.
"The answer is somewhere in between" is a very boring answer but frequently the only correct one, "somewhere in between" doesn't need imply centrism after all. If the world is 1% meritocratic, that is greater than "Not meritocratic", if the world is 99% meritocratic, that is less than "Meritocratic". The only way to go about it is define what you think is Meritocratic, what isn't, and if column A is big enough compared to column B that you believe it qualifies as "Generally".
Then again this isn't really a deep thinking exercise, it's just an opinion poll.
I said "yes", but the function for weighting merit is not the fair, just one that you might hope for; the most meritorious person is the one that knows how to exploit and use the system to their advantage.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 37.8 ms ] threadThe implication of the world being a meritocracy is that all the devastatingly poor people in the world are somehow lazy and untalented, and if they just worked harder, they could rise to at least a middle-class European level of comfort.
Then again this isn't really a deep thinking exercise, it's just an opinion poll.
You're essentially saying that you believe the world rewards people who know how to get rewarded.