Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> Mind, top down solutions do have one benefit... Eventually the effect is 
> to actually land more and more of the people who where *not* in the 
> category being discussed in the same boat, until nearly everyone is 
> equally poor, uneducated, and prospect-less. We see that starting to 
> happen too now, in the US. And, obviously, you no longer need "racial" 
> equality opportunity laws, if everyone is screwed equally by the system 
> anyway, and the problem is purely one of *no one* having good schools, 
> college, or any chance at a job paying more than poverty levels.

  One could even make the argument that a society actually *benefits* on
the whole in the long term from inequality (in terms of education, job
opportunities and such), from some people being part of an "elite".

  Why? Because not everybody can be an astrophysicist, an electronics
engineer, a surgeon, or the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. We
need people who make and cause progress (the "elite"), and we need people
who make that progress possible (the "workers"), and we need people to
direct and lead other people (the "bosses").

  If everybody is forced to always stand on the same line as everybody
else, that will stagnate and inhibit progress. The brilliant people are
actually stopped from achieving innovation because they are forced to
stand back. No matter how "unfair" it might be, but some people just are
naturally more talented, intelligent and capable than others. This is just
a fact of life and we have to live with it. Rather than complain about how
unfair this is, the society as a whole benefits if these "elite" people are
given the opportunity to thrive, to innovate, to drive progress. Moreover,
they should actually been given incentive (eg. monetary) to do so.

  This is the reason why I think pure socialism is bad for a society:
In pure socialism nobody owns anything, and the government forces everybody
to the same line. This stagnates progress and removes incentive for
people to improve because there is no reward. While pure capitalism
might be bad for other reasons, it at least motivates and rewards
innovation (so the best solution might be somewhere in-between the two
extremes).

  Things like government-imposed hiring and enrollment quotas fail for
that same reason, because while trying to fight perceived discrimination,
as a side-effect some of the truly brilliant people might get shunned.
Granted, actual discrimination can shun brilliant people among the group
of people being discriminated against, but hiring quotas are not the
solution to that problem. They only cause more problems than they solve.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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