Not really. I am too bored to provide pointers into the archive, but Joanna made the mention of meritocracy in response to which Andie confessed that he is a bourgeois liberal who thinks there is nothing wrong with some people being better at things than others and being rewarded for it, etc.
What the hell, I looked it up for you...
Here's Joanna's post, when this thread was still titled "wanna feel old?". Here's what she wrote:
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of- Mon-20070820/015706.html
Joanna:
> I've never been able to get through a Harry Potter book. How is it
> subversive. To me it just looks like prep school with magic brew.
> There's still the meritocracy.
No mention at least in her post about reward for excellence, unless you fall into the trap of assuming that is what the meritocracy accomplishes flawlessly (or even with flaws but significantly) everywhere.
Quoted below is Andie's response (directly quoting Joanna's post, part of which is reproduced above), three or four posts further down the thread:
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of- Mon-20070820/015721.html
where the word "Reward" makes its first appearance (as far as I can tell, though to be honest, I haven't searched through all the intervening messages). Andie writes:
Andie:
> If I am not
> mistaken, and I may be, Joanna object to the idea that
> some people are especially deserving or or entitled to
> reward, whether material or moral (like praise and
> honor) merely because of their skill, diligence, or
> accomplishments. <...>
>
> However, one might think, and maybe Joanna does, that
> reward and honor should be completely disconnected
> from talent, diligence, or accomplishment, that the
> good things in society should distributed based solely
> on need...
>
> Me, I'm a thoroughgoing elitist and inegalitarian.
> <...> But I think that accomplishment
> deserves honor, contribution deserves material reward...
While I quote only the above for its relevance, I must note that Andie writes much more pointing out the limits of rewards and so on (none of which is disagreeable to me).
Some things stand out almost immediately, logically speaking: (a) the meritocracy, as noted already, does not necessarily reflect what Andie is talking about regarding reward... in fact, I contend, it does not even approximate it in various areas (I gave some examples), (b) inversely, being opposed to a meritocracy does not imply that accomplishments should not be particularly rewarded, especially in light of (a).
I will not rehash my own post regarding the nature of "accomplishment" and how it is described and rewarded in the real world.
> And I am beginning to resent your insistence on this -- you are
> claiming
> that YOU, YOURSELF, are superior to the rest of us in that you can
> take
> proper satisfaction in your achievement in isolation while we weak and
> silly others want someone to admire our mud pies.
>
> Come down off that high horse.
Bollocks, old chap. Go read the thread again... not just Joanna but others (including me) pointed out that people *do* get rewarded for their accomplishments (and the implication is that there is nothing wrong with that fundamentally).
If you want to talk about the real meritocracy (which IS what this thread is/should be about) then lets talk about it, how it exists in the real world, who gets credit for "accomplishments", what that credit translates to in terms of rewards, and so on. What we *are* surrounded by is a culture of individualism and aggression that attributes all credits to a few (at times marginally involved) individuals based on criteria that are not central to the product ("accomplishment"), and then abundantly and exclusively rewards those few. That's what's its about ... not about whether some of us despise or distrust talent, etc!!
--ravi