tilt! <tilt@???> writes:

[...]

> Rainer Weikusat wrote on 04/08/2015 at 12:57 CEST:
>> tilt! <tilt@???> writes:
>> [...]
>> I nevertheless have to disagree with this somewhat: To a degree,
>> everything is a fad and people never intentionally further a bad
>> cause. That's why open discussion of ideas is important and open
>> discussion of ideas can only happen in an environment where the
>> people championing them are not discussed[*]. Otherwise, it degrades
>> into a possibly entertaining but ultimatively useless spectacle
>> of the kind yellow press and TV companies make money from.
>>
>> [*] With more than three decades of exprience as everybody's favourite
>> punching ball, I claim to know a little about this :-)
>
> One point I was trying to make is, that a meritocracy can add momentum
> into a positive as well as into a negative direction. I did not intend
> to rule out that it can add momentum into a positive direction.
>
> I still feel uneasy about the concept of a meritocracy,

I completely get your point. I'd actually go one step further and state
that 'meritocracy' is obviously bullshit because people are neither
omniscient nor do they make objective desicisions. Further, large-scale
attempts at making it work nevertheless conducted in the 20th century
have failed spectacularly (that would be what people wrongly refer to as
'communism' or 'socialims') however, while this has a certain value for
provoking thought or (more likely) mindless rage, it doesn't get anyone
anywhere: It comes from the perspective of a historian chronicling and
interpreting things he cannot and would not want to affect. For the
given example, the interesting thing is really systemd itself and not
how it got where it is today.