Since the Great Recession, the Fed has transformed itself into an entity more and more responsible for asset prices. This was the stated goal since 2009 as the Fed adopted a new philosophy called the "Wealth Effect." The thinking behind it was simple: growth in asset prices would translate to an increase in consumer spending and hence demand itself. It was a 'trickle down' economic philosophy an increasingly financialized economy.
This backdrop has defined our post-2009 era which stirred certain pathologies that were reflected in the greater culture and politics. It was the time when 'finance became a culture' and actual-productivity plummeted across most developed economies, especially the United States. But somehow in spite of the accumulating dysfunction across most key areas, everything kept trudging along, partly thanks to investors being satiated with record returns.
While the near-zero interest rate regime may now be ending, it is worth considering how much of the water we were all swimming in excused poor state capacity, distorted economic fundamentals, and how it even kept a lid on the dysfunction potentially blowing up in our faces. Now that we have to reckon with these realities, it may be wise to ask how many worldviews were simply products of the the cheap money regime - which is now, in a shock to many, coming to a close. Whether or not it will easily be let go, however, is another matter.
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Notes -
I mean, I know that historical context. What I meant was how this is meant by meritocracy when the major thing being valued is “person is doing thing”, rather than “person does thing well”. Seems to me more a necessary precondition than the thing itself.
In any case, I don’t think it necessarily holds that “distrust of meritocracy is a cultural universal” holds so strongly. Imperial China famously had a civil service that mostly drew from degree holders who took written examinations (of a particular sort, granted) for some 1.3 thousand years. This was often less meritocratic than it ideally should’ve been, because you could bribe examiners and construct some elaborate method to signal that it’s your paper, sometimes high officials would unfairly intervene for their own reputation or to aid their children, etc…but it’s very clearly an attempt at trying to separate people based on ability, and there were cases of peasants who managed to score well and gaining high posts in the government as a result.
In fact, the Europeans (and Brits in particular) were impressed enough that they copied it in the 19th century!
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