California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

What is Better - a Meritocracy or a Democracy?

by John Lawrence, May 22, 2020

It is assumed that in a democracy the voters will elect wise and stable leaders. However, that is not always the case. The US circa 2016 elected an idiot with no previous government experience to the highest office in the land. He in turn has appointed bigots to the highest court in the land and fired anyone in government who is critical of him. Democracy is no panacea. And how can it even be called a democracy when one of the Houses of Congress puts the kibosh on the wishes of the other House which more truly represents the people? The Senate controlled by one party effectively has a veto over the other party.

Many opinion polls have shown that Americans want gun control. In a true democracy that opinion should prevail, yet it doesn't because the other party has a veto over what the majority of Americans really want. In a true democracy only the opinion of the majority should determine what the laws should be. The designers of the Constitution did not want the US ruled by the majority of the people since they considered that mob rule. Instead we got mob rule for the one office that all Americans vote for: the President. But mob rule is guaranteed by the one House that was supposed to prevent it - the Senate. Instead the Senate is beholden to the President who was elected by the mob.

One writer thinks that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has delivered more good governance than any other party in the world. Kishore Mahbubani writes:

"Yet, it is also a fact that relative to its peers around the world, the Chinese governing class generates more good governence (in terms of improving the well-being of its citizens) than virtually any other government today. Since the CCP is constantly vilified in the Western media, very few people in the West are aware that the members of the Communist Party have delivered the best governance China has ever enjoyed in its entire history."

Delivering 850 million people out of poverty in less than 40 years is a pretty good record. During that time period the wages of the American working class have stagnated. One reason the CCP has done so much good for the Chinese people is that it promotes the best and brightest Chinese minds to the top of the government. This makes it a meritocracy much more than an autocracy.

Mahbubani, a Singaporean, continues:

The strong and competent CCP is therefore delivering a global public good by ensuring that China behaves as a rational and stable actor on the world stage and not as an angry nationalist actor disrupting the regional and global order. To appreciate why this is important, American officials should spend some time probing the leaders and officials of China's neighbors to ask if they would be happier if the CCP were to be removed from power. Since I live in the neighborhood, I can say with some confidence that most of China's neighbors would prefer to see China led by calm and rationbal leaders, like Xi Jinping, and not by a Chinese version of Donald Trump...

The Chinese value order and stability. They are opposed to chaos. They value the continuity of the CCP because they have had an Emperor culture for millenia. The Chinese Communist state is a replacement for the Emperor state. The Chinese people are afforded a great deal of personal freedom in economic terms. In fact upward mobility is greater in China than in the US. Their approach to balancing personal freedom and social order is different then in the west, but it has more to do with the Chinese character than it does with the Communist Party. The CCP does not actively interfere in the daily lives of its citizens. They have enjoyed more personal freedom under the CCP than any previous form of Chinese government.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Myth of Meritocracy

by Robert Reich

Sunday, April 7, 2019

Most Americans still cling to the meritocratic notion that people are rewarded according to their efforts and abilities. But meritocracy is becoming a cruel joke.

The Justice Department recently announced indictments of dozens of wealthy parents for using bribery and fraud to get their children into prestigious colleges.

But the real scandal isn’t how far a few wealthy parents will go to get their kids admitted (apparently $1.2 million in illegal payoffs), but how commonplace it has become for them to go almost as far without breaking any laws – shelling out big bucks for essay tutors, testing tutors, admissions counselors, and “enrichment” courses (not to mention sky-high tuition at private schools feeding into the Ivy League).  

Inequality is lurking behind all this, and not just because the wealthy can afford it. Researchers Daniel Schneider, Orestes Hastings, and Joe LaBriola found that in states with the biggest gaps between rich and poor, well-to-do parents spend the most trying to get their children into elite colleges.

America’s unprecedented concentration of wealth combined with seemingly bottomless poverty have increased parental anxiety – raising the stakes, and the competition, for admission.

While some entrepreneurs in America’s billionaire class lack a prestigious degree, it’s become harder to become a run-of-the-mill multimillionaire in America without one.

Most CEOs of big corporations, Wall Street mavens, and high-priced lawyers got where they are because they knew the right people. A prestigious college packed with the children of wealthy and well-connected parents is now the launching pad into the stratosphere of big money.

Elite colleges are doing their parts to accelerate the trend.

At a time when the courts have all but ended affirmative action for black children seeking college admission, high-end universities provide preferential admission to the children of wealthy alumni –“legacies,” as they’re delicately called.

Some prestigious colleges have even been known to make quiet deals with wealthy non-alums – admission for their kids with the expectation of a large donation to follow.

Jared Kushner’s father reportedly pledged $2.5 million to Harvard just as young Jared was applying. The young man gained admission, despite rather mediocre grades.

About four in 10 students from the richest one-tenth of one percent of American families now attend an Ivy League or other elite university, according to a recent study based on millions of anonymous tax filings and tuition records.

At some upscale campuses – including Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn, and Brown – more students now come from the top 1 percent than from the entire bottom 60 percent put together.

By contrast, less than one-half of 1 percent of children from the bottom fifth of American families attend an elite college. Fewer than half attend any college at all.

A worse scandal is K-12 education, where geographic segregation by income is leaving poor school districts – partly reliant on local property taxes, which don’t generate much revenue– with fewer resources per pupil than richer districts.

Race is involved. School districts that are predominantly white get $23 billion more funding each year than districts serving mostly students of color.

When it comes to early childhood education – which education experts agree is vital to the future life chances of the very young – the gap has become a chasm.

Wealthy parents spare no expense stimulating infant and toddler brains with happy human interactions through words, music, poetry, games, and art. Too often, the offspring of poorer kids do little more than sit long hours in front of a television.

The monstrous concentration of wealth in America has not only created an education system in which the rich can effectively buy college admission for their children. It has distorted much else.

It has created a justice system in which the rich can buy their way out of prison. (Exhibit A: money manager Jeffrey Epstein, who sexually abused dozens of underage girls, yet served just thirteen months in a private wing of a Palm Beach county jail.)

It has spawned a political system in which the rich can buy their way into Congress (Exhibit B: Reps. Darreill Issa and Greg Gianforte) and even into the presidency. (Donald Trump, perhaps Starbuck’s Howard Schultz).

And a health care system in which the super-rich can buy care unavailable to others (concierge medicine).

Meritocracy remains a deeply held ideal in America. But The nation is drifting ever-farther away from it. In the age of Trump, it seems, everything is for sale.