Meritocracy+fluid capital=disaster?

Originally posted by Carol We have gone from being assimilated into organizations threw personal contacts and on the job training, to having a college degree, and proven merit, before we can even get through the door.

The old way had some inefficiencies (everyone started at the bottom, seniority system slowed the advance of other talented people etc.)   But... the old way also had a social safety valve. It gave meaningful employment to millions who would not normally been able to compete.

 

Originally posted by Carol   In away this hurts our democracy, which is much more personal than we are today.

Around the world and throughout history, the most important thing a pharaoh, king and president must do is, keep people employed and assure their needs will be met.  The military provides jobs not only for the soldiers, but those who supply the military.  Now when the military is farmers, the shoe, candle stick and soap maker, they want to get back to their families and their family business.  Indeed when Roman has a citizen army, its citizens lost their farms while off to war.  This would make war a terrible thing, that no one support unless it really was a defensive war that could not be avoided.  But when we turn to a mercenary army, what the government needs is revenue to pay for the soldiers, and now we need an army defending our economic interest.   Now a fully employed, tax paying adult population is needed to support the military,  that is defending the citizens economic interest.    Is there come concern about socialism?    Humans acting like a horde of bees, mindlessly fighting to survive, because it is not them in control, but circumstances outside of their control, and even outside of their consciousness.  They know about their personal lives and motivates, not the forces that dictate what happens.     

This thread focuses on merit.   At what point does merit become necessary?   I don't think the Spartans, Huns or Mongols were particularly concerned with merit.  All these would have grown up from birth, in cultures that prepared all males to be warriors.  Spartans like Athenians, had public education, but Spartan education was all about physical fitness, and enduring discomfort, and being a warrior.   To be really brief, Athenians had something like a liberal education.  Another thread asks the difference between Alexander the Great the Genghis Khan.  I hope that difference is made clear here.  But I have not answered the question, when did merit become important.  Hint it has something to do with technology.   Something to do with needing more than just an armed body in the middle of battle prepared to be a killing machine.     

As a girl, I get really excited about the social implications of all this.  I get excited by the moral implications.  I really hope this thread does well.   

What is social democracy?  I know Germany had that, and I know Germany experienced hyper-inflation and then evolved into Hitler's Germany.   I think this happened to Germany because of Prussian control.  I think the same is happening to the US because we have adopted the German model for bureaucracy and education (meritocracy).  Now we are really on topic.    Does meritocracy+fluid capital+disaster?  I don't know enough to answer your question.  I hope more information comes out here.  

Someone said something about it being good to have a female point of view, in the typically male discussions.  I hope everyone might appreciate my off the wall thoughts, that could unfortunately take every discussion off topic.   

We were families living together, and then we became industrialized, and God said, that is a good thing.    Well, it is good in some ways, because there is no way an agricultural society, such as Jefferson's agragarian democracy could support the masses we have today.  We need the jobs industry creates, to meet the mass of human needs.  However, the industrial revolution took the father out of the home.  Then we evolve into a high tech society and have removed the mother from the home as well.  A family that only shares a house, is not the family of the past.  We are not turning to each other to meet our human needs, as families once did, and we are not bonded by social organizations as we once bonded.  We are not the democracy Tocqueville wrote of when he visited the US in 1800.  We can't do anything without government permission today, and have become excessively dependent on government, while the family is almost meaningless.   My point is, the socialist issue is a matter of one of authority and power isn't it?  That has shifted from the individual to the state hasn't it?  That is our young can get so much government help, what is their motivate for cooperating family?   The loyalties are to industry or at least the money system, not to family.  Is this socialism?