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Feb 23, 2013StarGladiator rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
"the existing social order, a meritocracy geared to reward the best and the brightest, is doomed to failure." Where in perdition is this "order"? I've yet to come into contact with it? Is he talking about hereditarily connected political types like Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, Diana Farrell, Robert Gates, Robert Mueller III, et al., which Bush, then Clinton, then Obama keeps reappointing? I'm not too sure about that premise of an "elite meritocracy" arising - - there's certainly nothing meritocratic about crooks and super-crooks, whether they thought up that "Prohibition" thingy (to corner the market on alcoholic products and smuggling), endless monopolies, or their many other nefarious crimes. Was John Boehner a winner, because he failed at almost everything he tried (washed out of US Navy boot camp in 1968, then falsely and fraudulently claimed military service during Vietnam when he first ran for the House of Representatives)? Or John McCain, who only could get into the Naval Academy due to the influence of his daddy, Admiral McCain. George W. Bush never succeeded at anything, except for being born in the "right family." You often hear the claims that superior grades and performance have little to do with financial success (true !) but you never hear the second part of the logic, that the greatest predictor of financial success in America (and many other countries and societies) is what family you are born into! A recent sociological study by a sociologist/statistician in Scotland reveals this sort of thing doesn't just exist for several generations, but goes back for hundreds and hundreds of years; many generations! The "myth of meritocracy" is certainly correct! (Hayes' record is none too impressive - - he was rewarded with his show on TV thanks to his covert kowtowing to Wall Street: writing a so-called debunking piece of trash, claiming that the NAFTA superhighway never existed - - against all the extant data from the Council on Foreign Relations' web site, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce web site, Cintra and the Macquarrie Group, etc. and the actual deepwater port built on the Pacific coast of Mexico - - clearly contradicts all of Hayes' lies.) How almost predictable that the author of those Horatio Alger stories turned out to be a pedophile.