Stop Intelligence-Based Discrimination

All true, it's unfair and backwards. But it's the way things work. You can't change it but you CAN exploit it.

 

Dave

LOL – I don’t claim to have a genius level IQ or to be smarter than virtually everyone else on the forums and as I keep telling people I’m not here to teach but to learn. And thanks to everyone I learn a lot.

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Oh those poor insecure Robber Barons, Rockefeller, Carnegie etc who supported the doctrine and helped propagate it. As to it's proponents all being people who are considered fit by its tenets, well…duh that’s the whole point.

It may not be openly talked about (since the Nazis had a lot of similar ideas) but it hasn’t gone away it underpins the ramblings of Ayn Rand and the Objectivists as it does neo-con ideas and much of right wing and free market thought.

The whole idea that a ‘free market’ naturally throws up the ‘fittest’ products and companies is part of that mindset that wealth is a measure of a human beings ‘fitness’.

So why is this “the wrong problem” and “doesn't matter”? As I’ve pointed out these are the ideas behind the OP.

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Why?

To be replaced with what?

How does this person know they meet all of the job’s qualifications? Who makes the judgement? Don’t you mean they think they do? If the degree is so easy why can’t this person do the degree?

And if there are no formal qualifications how would you gauge who was right for the job?

Can you explain, I have given my reasons for saying why certain socio-economic systems favour certain socio-economic groups – can you explain your thinking?

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Rhetoric – it is meant to give the impression you know something you don’t. “Oh I could explain it but you know…like well…its just that….I just kinda can’t be bothered like…you know…its not like…I’m talking out of my arse or anything its just like…

The wealthy play with other people’s money they are usually very guarded with their own. Oh such people might loose what seem like astronomical amounts in a crash but they usually have plenty of other assets to fall back on. Lehman Brothers may have been leveraged to the hilt and no longer exist but Richard Fuld isn’t living in skid row these days he has a choice of his large mansion in Idaho or the other one in Florida or the estate in Vermont or Connecticut.

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You think you live in the 18th century?

Do you think plasma screens are knitted in little cottages in the Scottish highlands?

That computers are put together by a single artisan, beavering away in their backroom workshop?

I’m all for people getting fair wages but I live in the 21 century, what you’re talking about seems like some kind of fantasy.

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Rhetoric

Once more this is just rhetoric, sounds good, people nod they, then they go away and realise you actually didn’t really say anything but the bloody obvious.

Of course we don’t want bad management but as I’ve pointed out people were praising those like Richard Fuld as great managers and leaders who didn’t just follow ‘the book’, right up to the point when the shit hit the fan.

It is easy to say the obvious what I’m trying to work out is if you have anything more than just rhetoric – and so far you don’t seem to.

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Again how do you know “middle managers don't do anything”?

So like I have this army and what I’m going to do is keep the ‘workers’ the soldiers and the senior management the generals and I’m going to rid of all that middle management dead wood like the corporals, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, majors, colonels etc.

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So lets get this right you want to promote someone from the shop floor to senior management, without them ever having any kind of managerial experience (because you’ve got rid of all the managerial posts in between)?

And so how would you know they had merit?

And who decides?

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An engineer is usually in a managerial role. I’ve know engineers and they are usually the ones explaining and directing things. Arguably one of the world’s greatest engineers Isambard Kingdom Brunel was in management roles for the whole of his career.

The other thing about engineers is they’re educated; they don’t just pop out fully formed from their mother’s wombs. In fact many countries have laws forbidding people calling themselves an ‘engineer’ when they’re not, meaning they have to have an accredited qualification.

Again you seem to be living in some bazaar other world from which you sprout meaningless rhetoric.

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And you just ‘know’ these are “pretty worthless people” are you saying that just by definition ALL middle managers are “pretty worthless people”?

Empty rhetoric

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How? So far all you’ve presented is pie in the sky, somehow, someone, somewhere will be able in someway or other as yet unexplained by methods unknown choose people of supposed ‘merit’ and this will somehow make everything wonderful and great.

Well excuse me for not cheering just yet.

I agree – but how is sprouting hollow rhetoric with your head in the sky going to help?

Again all rhetoric – Who decides who is ‘best’ at something? Are they being punished? Of course punishing people for this is wrong but how can I get worked up over some hypothetical someone that you haven’t even convinced me is being punished?

It hasn’t always been this way? What way? And just when are you talking about?

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Your entire post is rhetoric, You ask why when there is an explanation simply to play small political games.

You are a creature of piss poor games, and you don't want to learn, you only say that for furthering of rhetoric (and hypocrisy)

You aren't worth reading, or responding to further, as you do not bring arguments further, you simply pontificate.


Btw. "We're all keynesians now"

 

Dave

So you’re unable to answer, fine, maybe you’re not as smart as you think you are what was it you said –

Thing is I was interested to hear what you had to say, you didn’t seem to have given your ideas much thought and I wondering if you’d realise the holes in your thinking if asked to explain them in more detail.

It’s a pity you’re running away you might have learnt something.

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Attributed to Richard Nixon (but actually originating with Milton Friedman, Nixon seems to have said “Now I’m a Keynesian”)
“It is popularly associated with the reluctant embrace in a time of financial crisis of Keynesian Economics by individuals such as Nixon who had formerly favoured free market capitalism.”

I’ve been a supporter of Keynesian type economics ideas for over thirty years and I’ve written on it in the forums many times.
Here is an example -

Utopia, no just Keynes
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=328353&f=36

But I’m not really sure why you’re bringing it up here?

The original poster littered the forum with a number of posts with social Darwinist content and that was what I saw here.

The thing is that to me the idea that ‘intelligence’ can be gauged and that people of ‘merit’ should achieve success (again without explaining how merit would be gauged) can lead to ideas that people can be split up ‘naturally’ into winners and losers, the successful and the failures, the superior and the inferior etc. When to me people are a mixed bunch with differing abilities (even within the same person) that have their own goals and their own ideas of what is a success or failure.

That is why I have problems with supposed meritocral systems based on financial indicators.

To me a doctor who works for aid or community projects and earns a pittance is as worthy if not more so than a doctor that makes a fortune doing cosmetic surgery on minor celebrities.

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I suppose you could make a connection between economic theory and social Darwinist thinking. As I’ve said they seem to have very similar philosophical roots.

But I’d love to know why you felt you needed to mention Keynesianism?