Never reading a book written by a modern Marxist ever again

From The Cult of Smart by Freddie DeBoer. I actually like this guy's writing and agree with him on most things, but citing a "breadtuber" (when you could have skipped them and gone directly to the source) is a bridge too far for me. In fact, I googled freddie deboer "breadtube" to try and find a quote from his Substack where he makes fun of them offhandedly, but instead found multiple entire articles written about how retarded "breadtube" is. And yet he cites "Cuck Philosophy" in an actual published book. Mad

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PaJeetOneal e/acc We went to a musical called "Oh Africa, Brave Africa". It was a laugh riot. 6mo ago #6564185 Edited 6mo ago

Scott Alexander reviewed this book and gave both positive/negative critiques

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-cult-of-smart

I've complained about this before, but I can't review this book without returning to it: deBoer's view of meritocracy is bizarre. The overall picture one gets is of Society telling a new college graduate "I see you got all A's in Harvard, which means you have proven yourself a good person. To reward you for your virtue, I grant you the coveted high-paying job of Surgeon." Think I'm exaggerating? He writes (not in this book, from a different article):

Fred:I reject meritocracy because I reject the idea of human deserts. I don't believe that an individual's material conditions should be determined by what he or she “deserves,” no matter the criteria and regardless of the accuracy of the system contrived to measure it. I believe an equal best should be done for all people at all times. More practically, I believe that anything resembling an accurate assessment of what someone deserves is impossible, inevitably drowned in a sea of confounding variables, entrenched advantage, genetic and physiological tendencies, parental influence, peer effects, random chance, and the conditions under which a person labors. To reflect on the immateriality of human deserts is not a denial of choice; it is a denial of self-determination. Reality is indifferent to meritocracy's perceived need to “give people what they deserve.”

At the time, I noted that meritocracy has nothing to do with this. The intuition behind meritocracy is: if your life depends on a difficult surgery, would you prefer the hospital hire a surgeon who aced medical school, or a surgeon who had to complete remedial training to barely scrape by with a C-? If you prefer the former, you're a meritocrat with respect to surgeons.

More meritorious surgeons get richer not because "Society" has selected them to get rich as a reward for virtue, but because individuals pursuing their incentives prefer, all else equal, not to die of botched surgeries. Meritocracy isn't an -ocracy like democracy or autocracy, where people in wigs sit down to frame a constitution and decide how things should work. It's a dubious abstraction over the fact that people prefer to have jobs done well rather than poorly, and use their financial and social clout to make this happen.

:marseyhesright:

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Pelican they/them PaJeetOneal 6mo ago #6564985

I don't know why SA would read a book by a Marxist and be surprised when it has Marxist views on how resources should be allocated. FDB is pretty clear that he thinks jobs should be assigned based on skill and that blank slatism is a lie, he just doesn't like what happens in capitalist societies when reality proves that blank slatism is a lie. You can think its r-slurred but its the result of accepting the exact same bits of true information as SSC readers do but through a Marxist instead of internet neoliberal rationalist lens.

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Tomato he/him Tc:$30,000 PaJeetOneal 6mo ago #6564346

I agree with SA's criticisms but in practice most people arguing for "meritocracy" in, e.g., college admissions (against affirmative action) really do seem to have the view that the Asian kid who works hard and gets As in high school should get to go to Harvard (instead of a black B student) as a reward for his virtue. More generally I think the real "meritocracy" argument (and not the "reward for virtue" argument) against affirmative action in college admissions is a lot harder to make than people seem to think.