If the Occupiers became super rich...

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Well, the issue is that networking is not a component of merit though, because we don't consider a person meritorious for having the right friends. And that becomes particularly questionable in an AS group because part of having AS means NOT reacting well to the social world.


So, you're now arguing that goofing off at a golf course while trying to brown nose your boss is working hard? Do I really have to form a rebuttal to that idea, or can I let that refute itself? I mean, the fact that we consider this "brown-nosing", and "sucking up" kind of shows that a distinction between being a productive worker and a clever schmoozer exists already in the culture, where one is considered more praiseworthy and meritorious than the other.


Why is it either/or? The simple issue is that working hard may allow you to have success, and find some of these opportunities, but a lot of the variables are simply outside of this control. So, being liked by Benjamin Graham may involve Warren Buffett's skills, but there is no way he could have acted in a manner to guarantee the outcome, so he could have had a bad first impression, he could have gotten sick on the day he was supposed to meet Benjamin Graham. He could have simply opted to another opportunity that wouldn't have worked out as well.

I mean, luck probably isn't "an unquantifiable variable". If anything, luck could probably be considered the variation not attributable to strategic choices and/or personal qualities found in the data. I mean, surely if you know finance, you know that a regression is going to find that some data points do not fit very well to the theory UNLESS one engages in overfitting. So..... what is the variation where hard work and personal qualities do not pay out the ideal outcomes, and where nepotism, and other less desirable traits pan out? Presumably luck. Surely you must recognize this exists. I mean, so far, you've based your case upon cherry picking examples of success and minimizing the non-virtuous successes, but as pointed out, there are successes that are not virtuous, but similarly there seem to be some virtuous failures. After all, if the EMH(efficient market hypothesis) is true then financial successes are going to be matched by equal or more failures of the same level of virtue, as it is a random walk, and there are reasons to think an EMH is true. Additionally, for each successful entrepreneurial effort, the majority do not meet with the same level of success.

The problem is that if a significant degree of luck exists, meritocracy is undermined as a theory of how the world works.

Wow... that's pretty uninformed. Who do you think invented the transistor? Or the techniques to manufacture them? (Or the vacuum tube, for that matter?) A guy with an MBA who can't hack basic calculus? Who do you think invented the bulk of the high technology that exists today? All those folks were physicists.

(Ok, the guy with the MBA put a clause in the scientist's contract saying that he gives up all rights to anything that he invents or discovers, so that MBA-guy and his MBA friends all get rich while the scientist doesn't.)

Modern physics is extremely mathematical. Most physicists are essentially mathematician-physicists. And, they are hired along side mathematicians into the financial industry. (Physicists may even have an edge in experience with casting concepts into mathematical terms.) I know because I looked into it when I was a student in the 90's (it was just starting, then).

Re: black holes = uselessness. Global positioning satellites require a (general) relativistic correction due to the Earth's gravitational field changing the rate at which time passes in orbit relative to the Earth's surface. Without that correction the system could not function. So, you can thank Einstein for making GPS possible.


They're minimum wage because people who are in a position to manipulate the wages of other people push them down to that level. It's lucky that there is a legal minimum wage at all (in England in the past there was a legal *maximum* wage for the lower classes).

There are those who want high unemployment, no unions, and no social safety net, precisely because it forces people to accept working for less and putting up with bad working conditions. Alan Greenspan even admitted it (on tape!).


? Farming is hard work.

Most people would prefer to do something they like, sometimes even for less pay than they could get doing something else. The Soviet Union produced Prokofiev, Barishnikov, Sakharov, Soljenitisn, and a lot of Soviet scientists and mathematicians (they had a lot of good ones). If money is only motivation that most people have, then I think you'd be correct.

Where I live (with my parents who bought their home in 1975) there's a lot of rich people buying land, planting grapes and building wineries. I suspect that most of them like the idea of making and selling wine more so than profiting from it (though I'm sure they don't want to go bankrupt).


Well, I agree on all that. It's hard to see how things are going to change, though, with money being such an advantage in politics, now.

You're conflating them too much with libertarians. One can be pro-business without being pro-free market.

That being said, by attributing "ideology" to somebody, I am mostly just trying to bring some order to the chaotic set of things they respond to. Very few people actually have a real ideological consistency, however, they do have trends, and one can call these trends "ideology" just for simplicity's sake. One may just say a person tries to espouse two incompatible ideologies, etc. In short, most people are a mess, even brilliant people and noted ideologues fail by the perfect standard. Would you that's fair.

I doubt that last point. I can see why you'd think that, but this kind of problem emerges all the time with certain personality types. There is a certain "aesthetic" to being a tough-minded person, so these people pick the "tough-minded" solutions even when it's really just sociopathy in that context. I have historically shown the same tendency. Given that I'd strongly bet that TM is young, this is probably just the initial theorizing of an inexperienced mind trying to make sense of the world. Youth is probably also part of why he seems to think highly of himself, because at this point, he probably doesn't have a lot of experience with other minds who can challenge him. And frankly, early efforts tend to be sloppy. So, he's defending and proposing a lot of solutions that are probably stupid. The question really ends up whether he will learn over the long-run, and realizes that he's really probably not as smart as he thinks he is. (Even if he's some National Merit Scholar, the problem is that even this level of intelligence exists in large numbers in the world. It's hard to find due to rarity, but there's going to be approximately 1 million people in the US with this level of talent)

Given that I don't think you have that tendency to the "tough-minded aesthetic", I think it is something hard for you to empathize with/understand. (Note: I use "aesthetic" to highlight that this isn't really a coherent path, but rather some arbitrary tendency governing how one thinks about situations)

The fact is, that networking ability is a valued skill in many professions, so it is in ways a qualification. One of the uses for the word "merit" is "b. A quality deserving praise or approval; virtue:" according to thefreedictionary, ability to network is such a quality. The context of being a discussion in an AS group doesn't affect that.



I'm arguing that per definition networking is work. You can ridicule the idea all you want, use negative terms to color things you disagree with in negative light and so on, but it doesn't change it.



I'm not going to get into the EMH, purely because its one of those things that sound awesome in theory, but doesn't tend to pan out. Some of the most successful investors over the last 30 - 50 years couldn't have done what they did if it was true.

This becomes one of those cases where you just chalk everything you cannot measure up to "Luck". Absolutism in this case isn't warranted, as there will be people who get rich off nepotism, people who get rich of merits, people who get rich as a combination of the two.

On a completely unrelated note though, I really enjoy clashing with you. Any time I need to actually spend time thinking before replying is a thrill. Also, how do you define "young"?

TM, you failed to prove your point.

Premise 1: networking ability is a valued skill in many professions
Premise 2: A quality deserving praise or approval; virtue
However, this doesn't lead to the conclusion:
Networking ability is deserving praise or approval.

Your argument is a non-sequitur. To give an example: Lying is a valued skill in the profession of starting and leading a cult. Lying is NOT a quality deserving praise or approval. It is not a virtue. In fact, it is the OPPOSITE. Therefore, a valued skill is not the same as one deserving praise or approval.

Additionally, is it valued for doing the actual work or advancing? Are you talking about professions that are sometimes questioned on the value they add to society, or are you talking about professions that would be needed in literally every social organization?

The context of this discussion being in an AS group is going to affect our background assessments of whether something is a virtue or not, and that's because of our background knowledge on what a virtue is. So, people with AS do not tend to think of themselves as inherently less virtuous than NTs, and part of this is that they perceive the NT specific mechanisms(networking a part of those) to not be good things, but rather glitches in the system that ideally would be worked on to allow for a system more based upon one's merit at doing the actual job.


I'm arguing that it's not going to change anything relative to the original issue of meritocracy. Working hard to be the biggest weasel on earth doesn't mean you deserve the money. It means you're a really big weasel. You're trying to present your argumentation as "tough-minded" but the problem is that anybody whose put any thought in can see the cracks, and realize that you're being ideological and foolish. If I work hard to perfect my lying become a big politician and use that to get rich, then..... is this merit? Does this prove the system fundamentally works? No. The Occupy Movement doesn't have to say that rich people are lazy to question the virtues of our system.


How would you know? Some people being successful is definitely going to happen if they keep on being lucky, and it's expected with a large number of people anyway. (Especially since it's not like there is somebody who NEVER loses money)

Not only that, but you don't even have to have the strictest form of an EMH be true. Just have enough market efficiency where a lot of people get arbitrarily rich, while maybe a few, very rare people, can beat the market in a consistent manner. So long as this isn't a normal thing, and most people are really just getting lucky or unlucky, we still have the same luck problem, as the issue isn't accounting for a minority of data points, we're going to be most concerned for the bulk of them, and given how few mutual funds actually consistently beat the market, there is a real case for that. Given how well index funds and passively managed funds do compared to actively managed funds, there is a very real case for this being a matter of luck.


Well, this is basically a matter of definition. If it doesn't relate to a merit, and it does not relate to a cheat, and it doesn't really relate to just practicing a strategy or having ability, then yeah, the remaining stuff is going to probably just be luck.

It does lead to the conclusion "Networking ability is deserving of praise and approval within those professions" In finance where information is everything, networking so you get the best information, is deserving of praise and approval. An entrepreneur who is good at networking tend to get better deals from suppliers and additional work for his or her company, which is also worthy of praise and/or approval.

However, at this stage we're getting very close to the "value judgment" territory.

The reductio ad absurdum is not appreciated by the way.



Again, I don't see how morality factors into it unless we are talking about things that are illegal by law. The occupy movement are free to criticize things on a moral basis, but as I've said about morals on a previous occasion, they only really work if people agree on them. Some people consider it immoral to invest in certain industries, some don't.

Part of my mindset is that I may feel good about being the most moral person, but it matters little if I'm being screwed by people with less stringent moral standards than myself.

Which is kind of irrelevant if we're dealing with the larger issue of the justifiability of the status quo and the higher income earners.


If you mean insider trading, then no, it isn't. If you're talking about public information though, then you don't have to network really to get it. It's publicly available.


You mean a negotiator? Maybe, but that kind of status of a negotiator is kind of questionable to any technocrat.


We're already there. We've been there. If you're just recognizing it, then you're being a bit slow.


I don't care.


Unless one holds to ethical realism, or unless one believes in a large segment of intersubjective judgment in this context. But whatever.


TM, you first started off talking about how hard they worked. The presumed argument you have is an apologetic for the status quo, particularly based upon the ethically justifiable elements of it. If you aren't actually defending the status quo, then your entire place in the entire discussion is deeply confused. If you are defending it, then you really do have to move beyond "does something which was valued by enough people to reward them handsomely for it" because nobody cares. I mean, a quack doctor and a con artist can easily do the same, but people oppose both.


With enough people, then yes. How many people in finance are there? I mean, TM, it's telling that one of the proofs against Bernie Madoff's success was that it violated the EMH, which shows how uncommon this kind of success is.


Well, the issue is that people only get rich if they invest other people's money. They don't get rich off of their own money very often. If they do, they're betting on high risk stocks, which most people don't invest in heavily anyway.


Well, the other issue is that once this kind of inefficiency exploitation becomes common, it will also then fail to provide returns above the market.


But the issue is that policy decisions are often made on the basis of morals. So, I don't even know what kind of criticism you're trying to make. Especially given that you're not actually avoiding arguments with normative content. You may question it, but your entire engagement is a failure without some normative content to make sense of it. After all, you didn't just clarify issues, you basically are acting in a defensive manner towards a presumed ideological end.


Umm.... ok? I don't think that clarifies a single aspect of the issue at all. If you're in the Occupy Movement and believe that top-earners screw over the rest of us, then..... organizing against this is reasonable. If you believe in the status quo, then you probably don't believe you're actually being screwed over all, so I don't see your issue then. Finally, I don't even know what this means in practice. Do you simply ignore morality in every single action because at any given point in time, people are going to try to screw you over? I mean, "screwed over" is a pretty complicated mess as things go, as any situation with asymmetrical information should involve you failing to get the good deal, acting in full information, and thus you'd be "screwed over" by some standard.

perhaps i over simplified the "theoretical psychics is useless thing" but trying to find the higgs particle is to me.

I will concede one thing, i am very sick and tired of the disconnect between the chattering classes and the rest of society, this is one of the inherent flaws of capitalism, it creates its own feudal system if left unabated. They go to the same schools, then the same university, then end up in all of the 4 estate jobs, they end up being our politicians our bankers. Thats why (revolutionary i know) i would like to destroy private education, have all education based upon a league system where the brightest go to the best schools, the stupidest go the worst, , or what is inevitably deemed worst by some system (you know we can't have every school achieving the same). Because all we have at the moment is political financial and media dynasties that are awful, its sort of like a bad case of feudalism. i was just trawling the twitter sphere and saw that Bob Diamonds daughter works for barclays too, shocking... When we have a system in which all the people pulling the strings went to school together we can only have bad outcomes. If capitalism is to work our education system has to be meritocratic because everything that stems from that would have to be meritocratic.

What we have at the moment is not capitalism, our financial markets are rigged, manipulated and twisted through various mechanisms, also they take on a life of their own, a secondary economy that provides no benefit to the real economy, i mean what benefit could possibly derived from CDS ? i can see the benefit of CDO's although still the downside is majorly heavy.

Marshall, i don't think i have a bs world hypothesis, "if big banks fail small businesses and ordinary wage earners get hurt, more than the ceo's" Thats true, but when the big banks don't fail, the small business just gets raped by the cartel of banks who are now too big to fail, with small business tax dollars too.
Corporate pay structures need to be levelled out, perhaps giving shareholders more powers would do this, because on some of the smaller exchanges i see cep's of like 200mil market capitalisation companies taking a huge amount of stock options without even making profits, this is so wrong. I never said everything would be right, i know if they failed the depression would be major, but sometimes it needs to be, because all we are doing is reinflating the same bubbles that bust us in the first place.

the whole system at the moment is awful.

Maybe the occupy kids have a slight point, maybe we've gone to far in this current cycle, just take one look at the uk, Cameron son of a wealthy man son in law to a lord, Chancellor son of a lord, in opposition we have ed milliband, son of a famous marxist, then we have shadow chancellor ed balls, who's brother works for pimco, all went to private schools, all went to oxbridge, all have never been inside the society they are supposed to represent.

I stand by everything else i said, but the new normal is looking more and more like communism, where nepotism rules roost

since your definition of hard work disagrees with any practical definition of the phrase I suppose I am forced to call you a sophist and not waste time in your universe.

Even if you're right that the economic system is bound to fail and we're only kicking the can down the road so to speak (I'll admit I don't have the knowledge or understanding to be certain either way), I don't think allowing the economy to fall into a massive depression solves anything. I don't think you can separate the economic system from the political system. If the economy deteriorates too far you can expect government to eventually become involved in one way or another whether the action is wise or not. The bottom line is there must be a balance between freedom and security to maintain peace and prosperity. With the destruction of economic security, freedom itself eventually becomes compromised as well. When the situation becomes so bad that people are terrified they tend to go to extremes politically. It's already happening to some degree in Europe. You just can't separate economics from politics.

On another point, if we need to keep re-inflating bubbles just to keep our head above water economically, maybe this points to a deeper structural issue with the economic system itself. The absurdity is there isn't truly any shortage of resources or skill in the US. All the ingredients for productivity are there. There is no real scarcity. The only problem I see is the level of unemployment and underemployment.

i think you got it, there is something structurally wrong. I think another problem might be our banks aren't banks, we need more banks smaller banks, that can fail or succeed not behemoths stifling competition,. banks should be about deposits and lending, thats where we went wrong, we let people work for faceless corporations, instead of local banks to suit local needs. I also think we might need to use some good old protectionism to keep wages up, immigration crushes wages limit that.

I think they would be neutral.