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[heydude6]

I originally intended Joe to be a doctor but I felt that would make Bob less sympathetic. Becoming a doctor who saves lives takes a lot of hard work and self-sacrifice.

[Neonivek]

Becoming a doctor who saves lives takes a lot of hard work and self-sacrifice.

If that is the kind of doctor you are of course

[Orange Wizard]

I feel like the point/idea of meritocracy is that you get competent people making informed decisions in government, not you reward the people who appear most skilled.

Or you hold tournaments, and whoever survives may rule.

"Competent" is a nebulous concept, even when compared to "apparent skill."

Here's what we do.

Hopeful political leaders sign up to the Government Academy (run by an independent commission with as many layers of arbitration and quality control as the state can afford). They get training in How To Govern, managing priorities, organising development, all that stuff. Side classes on political history, debating skills, pros and cons of different ideologies.
After they've graduated through all that, they get appointed to some random town or district for a year or so to prove their skills. They get a grade based on how various demographics have changed during their term (with allowances for things like legislation changes, disasters, and so on).
Candidates who can reduce commuting times, improve safety, grow businesses, and plan development effectively get higher grades than people who faff around. Approval rating is more or less a modifier, people who fuck everything up but are loved by the people get kicked out immediately, people who are generally hated but achieve a great deal get put on a PR course.
Eventually, the people with the best grades make it to the top, and nobody realises the real government is actually just the Commission.

[heydude6]

How do you stop corporations from bribing the commission?

[Neonivek]

Better yet how do you stop what happens in real life...

Which is that there are "Sciences" that are basically a load of nonsense and bullock such as Eugenics?

And before you go "Well they have to have an appreciable effect" I should add that they are the ones who make up the effect as well...

Once again... Non-contemporary psychology... Which was a "Science"...

[heydude6]

I thought Eugenics was dead?

[Baffler]

Here's what we do.

Hopeful political leaders sign up to the Government Academy (run by an independent commission with as many layers of arbitration and quality control as the state can afford). They get training in How To Govern, managing priorities, organising development, all that stuff. Side classes on political history, debating skills, pros and cons of different ideologies.
After they've graduated through all that, they get appointed to some random town or district for a year or so to prove their skills. They get a grade based on how various demographics have changed during their term (with allowances for things like legislation changes, disasters, and so on).
Candidates who can reduce commuting times, improve safety, grow businesses, and plan development effectively get higher grades than people who faff around. Approval rating is more or less a modifier, people who fuck everything up but are loved by the people get kicked out immediately, people who are generally hated but achieve a great deal get put on a PR course.
Eventually, the people with the best grades make it to the top, and nobody realises the real government is actually just the Commission.

Eh, I dunno. It seems like it'd be a little too easy for someone (or multiple someones) to go all Comrade Index Card on it, or for the various ideological groups represented to coordinate to paralyze the system with calls of biased treatment (or just not doing their jobs properly) to get what they want/crash the government with no survivors.

Better yet how do you stop what happens in real life...

Which is that there are "Sciences" that are basically a load of nonsense and bullock such as Eugenics?

It would presumably be drilled into the heads of pupils by the non-Eugenics groups that Eugenics are bad. The idea would be that they'd be able to entertain the thought and understand the reasoning behind it while not necessarily accepting it.

[Neonivek]

I thought Eugenics was dead?

It was an example that wasn't controversial (as I don't want to drag this into a different argument over "What is a legit science")

It would presumably be drilled into the heads of pupils by the non-Eugenics groups that Eugenics are bad

Unless of course... you don't have non-Eugenics groups.

[Frumple]

How do you stop corporations from bribing the commission?

Regular application of fire.

Well. More accurately in that case any organization caught attempting to bribe the commission could just have all their assets seized. Maybe keep it running but give a share of the stock to every citizen or somethin'. It wouldn't prevent it outright but it'd make it a fair bit less likely.

I thought Eugenics was dead?

Nah, not entirely. Certainly not in non-human fields, heh, where it's as thriving as it ever was. But there's the occasional bit of varying degrees of discredit of the human sort, too, I do believe. Not like there's not enough money in groups inclined towards that sort of thing to get it some funding.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

I thought Eugenics was dead?

Sadly some of the eugenics laws haven't been repealed.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

I originally intended Joe to be a doctor but I felt that would make Bob less sympathetic. Becoming a doctor who saves lives takes a lot of hard work and self-sacrifice.

And a follow up to that, just because one person is put into a position to become a job that we consider to be prestigious and another isn't, doesn't mean that they don't still have equal value as sentient sapient beings. A problem with meritocracy and capitalist society is that the idea that people have a right to live and have access to food and shelter regardless of their ability or inability to work is regularly ignored or shut down altogether.

The solution is to establish that former idea and make sure that people have access to food, shelter, and medicine regardless of whether or not they are able to or decide to work or contribute production. Once people are guaranteed to not have what they need to live taken from them, the rest of local governing becomes about maintaince, regulation, and permissions, which doesn't seem that bad to me. Then it just becomes a question of how to decide who does the governing.

[Frumple]

And in the continuing adventures of paper crane man, he has now set himself on fire, ate a self-combustion plant to catch himself more on fire, jumped into a lake and hung out at the bottom for a while, still on fire, then climbed out, walked home clothed in nothing but a rain cloud, and had the size of his dick laughed at by a giant goose.

Ho yez, dot's th'good stuff. This is the gift that is apparently going to keep on giving. Shame I really need to go to sleep now...

[Orange Wizard]

I thought Eugenics was dead?

Sadly some of the eugenics laws haven't been repealed.

What? Where?

[NJW2000]

Ugh, terms as indistinct as "meritocracy" always get on my nerves.

We use "meritocracy" in England to justify the fact that our country is a shithole of inequality and its only getting worse. Bit like, "aspirational", or "I pay my taxes", though the latter is a general term of disgust and self-righteousness.

[Eric Blank]

I lost the better part of a day to reading a new webcomic I found out of the blue.

This just keeps happening to me...