Quote (inkanddagger @ 23 Aug 2020 05:42)
It's so amusing to me that the government and major Party in control of the government says "don't wear a mask, it's a hoax, reopen everything for the benefit of capitalists!" while the technocratic class who earned their reputations through merit say "wear a mask and flatten the curve!" -- yet the "merit should be the main basis of our society, fuck the government! 1984!" screaming crowd are quite literally sucking the dick of the Party, rejecting masks and flattening the curve, and shitting on the meritocratic class. Because feelings.
Aside from obvious nonsense like "tt's just a hoax", the true conflict lines are two-fold: 1. between young and old. 2. between those who have white collar jobs that are well-suited for teleworking as well as those with safe government jobs who dont have to worry about their paycheck, versus all the others whose livelihood is really endangered by long lockdowns or strangling corona-regulations.
Those are all distributional conflicts, the struggle is about which group of society has to bear which share of the burden caused by corona. For example, reopening a bit earlier, but without being totally reckless, will mitigate the economic damage somewhat at the expense of a higher death toll. The lower economic damage will benefit the young and healthy, whose careers are derailed for a shorter amount of time and whose wealth will be slightly less evaporated by the impending inflation, while the higher death toll will predominantly fall on the elderly. Conversely, if we keep everything radically shut down, we are effectively protecting the old while adding to the bill the younger generations will have to pay for over the coming decades.
Quote (Thor123422 @ 23 Aug 2020 05:47)
"Merit should be the basis of society"
So if somebody from a disadvantaged background has equal test results to somebody of a privileged background, clearly they're more meritorious since they had to work harder?
"NO THAT'S FASCISM. RACIST REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Including a wobbly, subjective measurement of "difficult life circumstances" into the definition of "merit" is peak liberal mindset.
Note that in a ton of cases, it wont be crystal clear which person actually had the more difficult life circumstances. Also note that these debates are mostly not about two persons with equal test results, they are about the question if someone with a lower test score should nonetheless be preferred due to external circumstances.