If both are allowed to compete evenly, then both may succeed - perhaps at somebody else's expense - or both may fail. It's not a winner-take-all competition for their father's patrimony.
I'm trying to compare the aspects of merit vs. birthright, i.e. selection methods. So for this it is a winner take all. Don't conflate methods with outcomes. First just address the issue of whether merit (i.e. potential mobility) vs. birthright makes any difference assuming the actual outcome is only effected by who is selected, with the merit has no bearing on the quality of outcome afterwards. In order to do that consider that the merit metric is something totally worthless, like jumping through hoops, or balancing pencils on your nose. Something of no use other than to be selected. Does it make any difference if the one selected is selected simply by being the 1'st born vs being the best at a worthless metric?
The other issue is the functional relationship between merit and reward. IMO, the ideal is a linear relationship, and I think many people assume this is what the American system produces. At the lower end, it might approach this. But for the overall system, it is very non-linear. This is what produces the highly skewed wealth distribution we see. Winner takes all, as in the 2'nd son issue, is never going to exist in America. But the nonlinear curve might approach it pretty well in a statistical sense. So saying the USA is a long ways from winner takes all is not the point. The question is what does a very nonlinear merit/reward curve do to the long term social and economic status of a country? That is the sort of question, framed the way it should be framed, for reasonable discussion. I didn't see anything like that in that interview. |
