> In general, it pays dividends to take a hard look at any selection process to see if it's selecting for the things we actually want
Before even doing that, I think we should be looking at whether there even needs to be a "selection process" at all. For example, there is no top-down "selection process" for which grocery store people shop at. Everyone makes their own individual choice based on quality and price. And the owners of the stores would find it pointless to worry about whether their store being successful--popular with shoppers and making money--is due to their "merit" or luck or something else. The only thing they have any incentive to care about is giving customers what they want.
The author of this article appears to have completely missed this type of scenario. But it seems to me that the best way to "fix" society, to the extent it needs "fixing", is to make scenarios like this, where "merit" vs. "luck" doesn't even come into play, as common as possible, and to make the opposite type of scenario as rare as possible. But this kind of thinking is completely off the author's radar.
And the owners of the stores would find it pointless to worry about whether their store being successful--popular with shoppers and making money--is due to their "merit" or luck or something else.
Wait, what? You don’t think there’s underhanded tricks in the grocery business?!
The only thing they have any incentive to care about is giving customers what they want.
The only thing they have incentive to care about is making money. Sometimes that’s giving customers what they want. Sometimes that’s using psychological tricks to influence shoppers’ behavior. Sometimes that’s good ol’ fashioned buying out the competition.
> Sometimes that’s using psychological tricks to influence shoppers’ behavior.
Which means shoppers have an incentive to look for such tricks and ignore them, or go somewhere else to shop.
> Sometimes that’s good ol’ fashioned buying out the competition.
Which in a free market basically doesn't happen unless the competition is genuinely failing to compete.
The reason such things happen when the competition is genuinely competing is governments messing with the economy on the theory that top-down dictation of policy is necessary. For example, big box stores and chain restaurants have access to cheap loans using government printed money that smaller mom and pop stores and restaurants don't. And then we argue over whether we should use "merit" to give out the cheap loans using government printed money, or something else, when what we should be doing is preventing the government from messing with the economy in the first place.
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> In general, it pays dividends to take a hard look at any selection process to see if it's selecting for the things we actually want
Before even doing that, I think we should be looking at whether there even needs to be a "selection process" at all. For example, there is no top-down "selection process" for which grocery store people shop at. Everyone makes their own individual choice based on quality and price. And the owners of the stores would find it pointless to worry about whether their store being successful--popular with shoppers and making money--is due to their "merit" or luck or something else. The only thing they have any incentive to care about is giving customers what they want.
The author of this article appears to have completely missed this type of scenario. But it seems to me that the best way to "fix" society, to the extent it needs "fixing", is to make scenarios like this, where "merit" vs. "luck" doesn't even come into play, as common as possible, and to make the opposite type of scenario as rare as possible. But this kind of thinking is completely off the author's radar.
Wait, what? You don’t think there’s underhanded tricks in the grocery business?!
The only thing they have incentive to care about is making money. Sometimes that’s giving customers what they want. Sometimes that’s using psychological tricks to influence shoppers’ behavior. Sometimes that’s good ol’ fashioned buying out the competition.
> Sometimes that’s using psychological tricks to influence shoppers’ behavior.
Which means shoppers have an incentive to look for such tricks and ignore them, or go somewhere else to shop.
> Sometimes that’s good ol’ fashioned buying out the competition.
Which in a free market basically doesn't happen unless the competition is genuinely failing to compete.
The reason such things happen when the competition is genuinely competing is governments messing with the economy on the theory that top-down dictation of policy is necessary. For example, big box stores and chain restaurants have access to cheap loans using government printed money that smaller mom and pop stores and restaurants don't. And then we argue over whether we should use "merit" to give out the cheap loans using government printed money, or something else, when what we should be doing is preventing the government from messing with the economy in the first place.