I like this forum, its causing me to hold my myself to a higher standard and if I could give a single piece of advice it would be – Dont alter your argument to make it seem more appealing to others or fit in, stay true to your core message. This isn't political or intended to offend, I just thought it a concept that I could make that wasn't already in the discourse. 🙂
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” – Emma Lazarus
The exploitation of desperate disadvantaged people to harvest the “surplus value” of their labour by a class of people who's ancestors had material wealth bestowed to them is gentrified capitalism. In the case of the US, tory landowners from Britain sold their bestowed possessions to pay for passage to the new world along with an indentured workforce who built plantations which in combination with slavery, guaranteed an income that allowed them to more than meet the cost of living and education.
It also allowed for the exchange of wealth for other forms of guaranteed income like government contracts, bonds or rental properties which increases their income exponentially but causes today's various inequalities, economic deficiencies and fallacies.
Merit based capitalism is about equality, efficacy and sustainability, which is fundamentally tied to democratic principles and requires some form of system to allow all people to access higher education and join the market on equal footing at least with regards to qualifications.
This system allows intelligent, talented and meritorious people access to positions which is more effective than people who just have qualifications because the concept of going to a posh school equating to its allumni having automatic merit is an association fallacy, modern education exists to supplement natural ability not recognise it and is tied to the fallacious justification of the continued enriching of the autocratic complex, representative democracy requires you to act in the interests of the people not getting away with autocratic interest on a technicality.
I watched an interview of a American “economist” complaining that people didn't understand budget deficiency and expecting the government to pay was an ignorant position but what he clearly didn't understand was that the gentry who own inherited wealth are a bad investment. The idea that the ceaseless subsidising and bailing out of people/institutions who are “too big to fail” is just as fiscally irresponsible.
The systems ability to misconstrue enabling merit with tropes (discrimination, denial of individual reward etc.) to scare people is so infuriating because it works so well and throughout history has made progress very slow. but if anyone actually made a comparison between great achievers and the gentry rather than the destitute, they would see there is no contest. but any sort of rational debate is impossible because you have to overcome misinformation, slander and pre-emotive hypocrisy at the start before you can even make the point but this is the defence mechanism to anything that is perceived as a threat the system.
I dont see a way forward as people are alienated by tyranny yet advancements in technology and organisation means we have never been in this situation before, if the instruments of honour, wealth and authority continue to exist solely to maintain the distinction between the classes all of history would point to an inevitable collapse.