Tropes and AC

[BlaneckW]

A true meritocracy sounds great, but how would one go around establishing it? I eagerly await Blaneck's answer.

Any leadership that attains sufficient strength will try to establish a meritocracy as an advantage.  Even the Bolsheviks might have advanced in it if they had been more competent, and some old states like Byzantium and China had it in some degree.  An incompetent oligarchy is afraid of men of merit, and will not advance them; only an established sovereign can do that, not having to fear threats from inside the state, but on the contrary needing to establish it against partisans.

To quote Lord Shang, "An ordinary prince cultivates the system of rewards and penalties in order to support his teaching of uniformity of purpose, and in this way his teaching has permanency and his administration is successfully established. But he who attains supremacy, succeeds in regulating those things which are most essential for the people, and therefore, even without the need of rewards and gifts, the people will love their ruler; without the need of ranks and emoluments, the people will follow their avocations; without the need of penalties, the people will do their duty.

If a people are not orderly, it is because their prince follows inferior ways; and if the laws are not clear, it means that the prince causes disorder to grow. Therefore, an intelligent prince is one, who does not follow an inferior way, nor causes disorder to grow, but he establishes himself, by maintaining his authority and creates order, by giving laws; so that he gains possession of those, who are treacherous towards their ruler; thus for all officials respectively rewards or penalties are fixed, so that employment will have a fixed standard.

The princes of the present time do not act thus. They relax the law and keep to knowledge; they turn their backs on merit and keep to people of reputation. Therefore, soldiers do not fight and farmers are migratory. I have heard that the gate through which the people are guided depends on where their superiors lead. Therefore, whether one succeeds in making people farm or fight, or in making them into travelling politicians, or in making them into scholars, depends on what their superiors encourage. If their superiors encourage merit and labour, people will fight; if they encourage the Odes and Book of History, people will become scholars. "

The question of meritocracy is merely whether the ruler feels secure so as to be able to advance talent without endangerment; that is, without suffering partisan malformations and the deception of ministers taking advantage of circumstantial chaos - as modern corporate lobbyists do (though one can't blame them at this point for wanting to abandon ship).  Any state that tries to advance talent without first having sufficient strength or order is simply deceived, couped or dismembered.  Even a talented administration would simply be impotent without an orderly state; neither can a  "meritocracy" exist without a state of order.

"Those whom the world calls virtuous are men whose words are upright. the reason why they are regarded as upright in words is due to their partizans. Hearing their words, one takes them to be capable, and on asking their partizans, one thinks that they are indeed so. Therefore, one prizes them without waiting for them to acquire actual merit, or one punishes them without waiting for them to commit crimes. In these circumstances, vile officials are given precisely the opportunity to accomplish their wicked and dangerous acts, and small-minded men have an opportunity to apply their dexterous and crafty tricks. If in the beginning a basis for wickedness and craftiness is provided for officials and people, then if finally one tries to make them correct and guileless, even (a great sage like) Yu could not succeed in causing as many as ten men to be like that.

Those people who form parties with others do not need Us for obtaining success, and if superiors pull one way with the people, then the latter will turn their backs on the ruler's position and will turn towards private connections. When this is the case, the prince will be weak and his ministers strong, and if the ruler does not understand this, then if the country is not annexed by the feudal lords, it will be robbed by the people. Both stupid and wise will, alike, try to acquire that power of eloquence, and if scholars study with those eloquent speakers, then people will lose touch with reality and will recite empty phrases. Should this be the case, then their strength will decrease and wrong-doing will increase; and if the prince does not understand it, in battle he will lose his generals, and in defence his cities will certainly be sold.

Therefore, if there is an intelligent ruler or a loyal minister born in this age who wishes to lead his country, then he should not for one moment be forgetful of the law, but he should conquer and destroy cabals, control and abolish eloquence, and relying on the law, the country will enjoy order. If a condition is brought about where, for government servants, there is no other standard maintained than the law, then, however tricky they may be, they will be unable to commit wickedness."

If you've interest in political method then you should read Han Fei.
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/saxon/servlet/SaxonServlet?source=xwomen/texts/hanfei.xml&style=xwomen/xsl/dynaxml.xsl&chunk.id=tpage&doc.view=tocc&doc.lang=bilingual

[Nexii]

University faction is pretty close to a meritocracy.

[BlaneckW]

University faction is pretty close to a meritocracy.

If they survived the first year they'd be couped by professional politicians.

[JarlWolf]

The problem with the system you prescribe Blaneck,  is that old hereditary systems of the past were less of meritocracies and well, more hereditary. Old kingdoms, including China even under the most hardcore legalist rulers had vast incompotence, and it was the bloated ministry and administration of China and their arrogance that led them to discount and underestimate both peasant rebellion (such as with the Qin dynasty) or later with the Mongols or Manchu's (the latter especially.) And I don't even need to touch European kingdoms or other places, besides saying one family name: The Hapsburgs.


I could mention others too but the Austrian Hungarian empire was so incompetent in its management that it wasn't men of high merit that got into power, it was family relations. Meritocracy sounds nice but its even more idealistic then pure communism is: The true rise to power in ANY society is the social links people form with each other and who gets who's favour, and essentially, popularity. In Capitalism if you are suck up to your boss and use that sociopath opportunism you will rise. In more Socialist minded states generally impressing superior's at the right time and at the right moment or getting the majority on your side will see you rise.

Merit doesn't define leadership. Social skills does, and social skills isn't always about being a competent leader. Just one people will follow. Yang is less of competent as he is authoritative- he has great authority behind his words, he has some charisma to bend people to his will and he ultimately is paranoid and ruthless enough to root out any objection that would otherwise weaken him. That does not mean he is a competent leader who manages his colony any better than others- it just means he has more control over it.


And as for a ruler in our present age taking such control- they often end up dead because said cabals and corrupt bodies kill them. I can name many men who have met this fate.

Fidel Castro though, is a man like this you describe; and its one of the reasons I greatly respect him. He's controversial, but he's controversial because he did the things he needed to keep his country running and without the control of a party who did not care for its stability and progress.

[BlaneckW]

The problem with the system you prescribe Blaneck,  is that old hereditary systems of the past were less of meritocracies and well, more hereditary.

The Chinese themselves obviously did not believe in hereditary system and progressively abolished it with every dynasty.

Old kingdoms, including China even under the most hardcore legalist rulers had vast incompotence, and it was the bloated ministry and administration of China and their arrogance that led them to discount and underestimate both peasant rebellion (such as with the Qin dynasty) or later with the Mongols or Manchu's (the latter especially.)

If anything, China was under-administrated.  The Qin fell for adopting simplicity where they needed complexity and superiority; abandoning variation in penalties, and abandoning any intricacies in the system of production in favour of a mass sent to build the wall.  Administration was reduced where in fact it needed to be developed.

The Han fell to landlordism and Confucian policy, and every dynasty thereafter ended in decentralization (the fatally flawed Song perhaps an exception); aristocratic privegage made a temporary return in the Tang, though opposed by the Emperor, and the capital become disconnected from the effectively fiefdom provinces.  On the contrary system could have been much more thoroughly implemented.  By the time of the Ming and Qing it was highly decentralized, the Ming, like the Qin, having taken a route of simplification.  Articulation progresses by attack, and not merely by retreat.

The true rise to power in ANY society is the social links people form with each other and who gets who's favour, and essentially, popularity. In Capitalism if you are suck up to your boss and use that sociopath opportunism you will rise.

It's better to crush opportunism and corruption even at the cost of replacing it with a more backward system.  You can always make up the losses in the conditions of order gained thereby.  On the contrary one makes no profit by allowing corruption to accumulate.  Even a mass of simpletons are more valuable than a kleptocrat (including those of the corporate variety) if the latter is allowed to develop.

Merit doesn't define leadership. Social skills does, and social skills isn't always about being a competent leader.

However you want to define merit.  But nothing is gained if the worthies in question are corrupt.  Leadership is only of any value if it is applied to something profitable in any case.  Simply attaining the position by way of "leadership" capability does not thereby imply that either the leadership or the position will be applied to anything publicly profitable, but may instead simply develop parasitism, in which case even peasantry are more valuable and profitable. 

Yang is less of competent as he is authoritative- he has great authority behind his words, he has some charisma to bend people to his will and he ultimately is paranoid and ruthless enough to root out any objection that would otherwise weaken him. That does not mean he is a competent leader who manages his colony any better than others- it just means he has more control over it.

That is a contradiction in terms.  If one has more control then one is better managing and vice-versa.  One can say with regards humans, that one can over-manage or over-control, but this is a misunderstanding.  In decentralizing there is either the same amount of control or management is inferior.  It is just "self-control", one aim of the law.

[JarlWolf]

The problem with Yang is that while he has control, he himself is not immune to fallicy, to failure, to mis-judgement and mistake. The problem with specialization of management and administration is that it both takes time, effort and a lot of resources to maintain such levels of specialization and having a system broad enough to support it. Highly specialized and acute administration is hard to maintain and if anything becomes bloated and too complicated to manage- decentralization is actually what managed to keep a lot of things running more efficient as locals knew how to deal with their local problems and conditions much better then any minister or lord from a far away province or city ever could. When you had mass administration it led to huge, backward and stifling results where often large amounts of people suffered- like with the agricultural reforms in my own country or with the mass migrations in the United States, or in Britain in how their management of colonies led to disconnection between them and the mother country, which resulted in rebellion and a legacy of colonial disparity.

Control does not equal better management. Chairman Mao of China had complete control of his country's agricultural sector, but his lack of education led him to destroy natural protections against parasites to crops such as sparrows and allowed insects and other pests to ruin crop yields in his country. Capitalist kleptocrats in Africa who had complete domination over their markets told their farmers under their employ to grow this specific crop, but it led to massive economic failure due to the fact the abundance of crops led to less demand.

Or how management in many corporations leads to many talented and skilled workers to be wasted in low skill jobs and not reach their full potential, and squander their abilities while favoritism leads the way to let favourites of higher ups rise in power and prestige, the company not being as efficiently run as it could.

Centralization is what actually caused so much management issues to occur- deriving attention away from regions and neglecting them to focus on sole regions, China being a prime example of this even to this day. China neglects its western provinces horribly, and there is huge ethnic tensions and economic disparities because of this- and its DUE to their highly intricate, bureaucratic administration that is both over specialized and too focused on the central regions.

As for defining merit, merit is defined by how well you do a particular job. But that does not guarantee you will advance in rank and status in society, merit only determines how well you do the job. What determines you becoming a leader or advancing rank is your connections to people higher up then you or who have the means to get you that position- and you don't even need to be more competent then your competition if you have that. And this is a truth that everyone in life discovers, and I am sure you know this yourself. It doesn't matter how hard you truly work at a job, it can help with forming reputation of course- its more so how well you befriend and ally yourself with the right people.

As for the Qin, they failed because yes, they adopted simplicity where they could have approached the problem much better- but this is the problem with control. Humans are fallible, and trying to manage such a large scale project is a logistical nightmare and one that quite frankly the effort to develop such intricate systems and approaches you propose would have taken too much time and effort. Humans are lazy when it comes down to it and thats an undeniable fact- we can achieve great things when we work together but when it comes down to it when there is too much bureaucratic specialization and control given to a single centralized bureaucracy, things become inefficient. You need things to be decentralized in order for the whole "self control" thing to apply, and for workers and others to properly apply solutions to problems that they perceive on their level, and let management and other levels of organization handle more wide affairs. The moment when you get administration meddling with the affairs of the entire front/nation and dictating it to a specific that may not work in some locality you are going to run into problems and the system will not be adaptable.

[BlaneckW]

I wouldn't expect the United States or British regimes to be able to handle anything.  Regarding the inability of a sovereign to know everything, Han Fei certainly understood this and recommended a passive role, and allow law to select candidates.  It is certainly true that in corrupt countries, work comes to a standstill as all positions are filled with the families of psychopaths.  But this is not how a sovereign leaves affairs.

I don't think your criticism of a developing country which, in spite of a large degree of growth and equalization, nonetheless has ended up with more important regions more developed, is particularly valid or notable.  If anything the situation would be further exacerbated if more capitalist.

Some states are healthy and others unhealthy, but not all states are unhealthy all the time.

[JarlWolf]

This problem is evident in so called "first world" nations as well in Europe, North America and Australasia as well. Australia, Canada, the United States, France, the Netherlands and many other nations have HORRID disparity between regions, and centralization is a huge problem. Take the Netherlands for instance, where Frisia and other rather outlying districts are neglected in economic and infrastructural growth due to the cultural differences it has between the central Dutch administration in Amsterdam, or how most of the northern stretch of Canada is inadeqautely supplied for its reservations and communities. If anything socialist state planning would help China develop ALL of its nation, rather then a mere front of capitalist decadence on its coastline with Shanghai. I've been to China and its coastline is ultra modern, full of corporations and thousands upon thousands of cars. Beijing alone has at last 13 circular highways around it. But drive westward into the countryside, to the north and far west... the story is remarkably different and you literally go back in time. The fact is disparity has shot upwards ever since China went with a more capitalist regime- if anything I'd say they are a corporate backed police state, the very definition of what Communism opposes. When you have a state where corporations, the bourgeoisie exploit the worker that's BACKED by their government, this is the very essence at what the communist ideal is to destroy. 

And while China is an economic power, they have severe problems due to their bloated administration and their corporate ties. The thing is with corruption my friend is that the MORE administration you have, the more specialized, and hence elitist it becomes, the easier it is to corrupt. The simpler, and more local the system you generally have less corruption as its people working for their own home regions, rather then just overseeing a large area they have no real connection or loyalties to.
Neglect and disparity, as well as corruption is bound to happen when a "lawful, highly administrated" regime takes over. Upholding of the law is not the same as over-administration and specialization of administration with otherwise useless branches. I may be a socialist, a communist even, but I am not in favour of over complicated government administrations and bloated bureaucracy. Its the very thing that contributed to destruction of the Soviet Union, and its what is and has killed many nations in the past. The Chinese dynasties allowed feudalism because their corrupt ministry and bloated bureaucracy was corrupted enough to allow local warlords and princes to reign over their own lands and even squabble and feud- all for the sake of boasting reputation, money and power.

You need your administration to be adaptable and versatile when you have a large nation or state of affairs. Let locals settle their own specific issues and don't impede their ability to do it with bureaucracy and specialized ministers- rather focus on nation wide issues with your ministry that local focus cannot hope to meet.

Han Fei was more passive- as he allowed men of experience in particular areas to take over for him in certain regions, while he could focus more on bigger tasks at hand. But the moment you have an invasive bureaucracy try to subjugate everything under its focus, things become horribly inefficient. You need bureaucracy to the point to run your offices and government, but when it gets so big as to dominate everything and impede things... then you stagnate. And it doesn't matter if you are socialist or capitalist that's the truth of the matter.

[BlaneckW]

I don't grasp your argument.  The capitalist coastline exists for such purposes as trade.  I don't imagine that the typical Stalinist state would have carried out as well said function - or if it did, that this would be well-tolerated. My understanding is that there is planning in the central regions; it shouldn't be surprising if the state takes awhile to catch up the outlying regions. 

I can't speak on police matters without statistics, and really I'm more familiar with older Chinese history, but I could easily say it's probably less of a problem than in the United States.  I don't consider the CCP as corrupt as that of many western countries, despite ownership in the private sector and the concerns of socialist idealists, no offence. if the CCP didn't have ownership, then someone else would.

the bourgeoisie exploit the worker that's BACKED by their government, this is the very essence at what the communist ideal is to destroy.

The socialist goal of socialized means of production is not necessarily linked explicitly to the means called strikes, which are usually done only for an increase in wages.  If this diverts capital from a multiplication of said means, then the strike only harms said goal by diverting development from the actual means of equality.

The thing is with corruption my friend is that the MORE administration you have, the more specialized, and hence elitist it becomes, the easier it is to corrupt. The simpler, and more local the system you generally have less corruption as its people working for their own home regions, rather then just overseeing a large area they have no real connection or loyalties to.

Now you're making my argument.  But specialization is ultimately required in any case.  A country can't keep up without it.  An example of an unspecialised country would be the old agricultural China, but this was necessary at the time for manpower to fight Mongols (and partly because Chinese terrain was unsuitable for machinery).  Han Fei has the amusing addage of not letting ministers talk to eachother to avoid any kind of conspiracy, but such isn't really the sort of real-world example of system that I prefer.

I may be a socialist, a communist even, but I am not in favour of over complicated government administrations and bloated bureaucracy.

No one is in favour of a bloated bureacracy.  Even Stalin wasn't.

The Chinese dynasties allowed feudalism because their corrupt ministry and bloated bureaucracy was corrupted enough to allow local warlords and princes to reign over their own lands and even squabble and feud- all for the sake of boasting reputation, money and power.

The Han lost out to landlordism.  The Tang bureaucracy was unable to sufficiently develop so as to overcome disconnection with the regions and tendency toward feudalism.  The Ming were light on government.  The Qing beauracracy was autonomous.  Again, these aren't examples of over-centralization.

Let locals settle their own specific issues and don't impede their ability to do it with bureaucracy and specialized ministers- rather focus on nation wide issues with your ministry that local focus cannot hope to meet.

Specialization reduces bureaucracy.  The Qin were under-specialized.

You need bureaucracy to the point to run your offices and government, but when it gets so big as to dominate everything and impede things... then you stagnate.

I wasn't arguing for bureaucracy.  But in considering the lessening of government you seem to desire, corporations don't lessen the degree of administration or bureaucracy, other than for purposes of private profit at public expense.  It simply "privatizes" said administration. 

But you're probably arguing for workerism, with workers managing own administrative affairs etc, which in Europe didn't go anywhere.  Not that I'm against it, but I don't favour it where it's less effective.  I don't think the workers will win where they are less effective.  They would require "dictatorship of the proletariat" to manage needed specialists inorder to remain effective, or the society would simply revert to capitalism.  But that's giving the workers a lot of credit.