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I think you may be conflating the trappings of merit with "meritocracy"
The prioritization of "the rat race", of wealth power and privilege over every other consideration is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. You know you can just not do that right?
I would contend that every single person posting on this forum today lives a life of abundance that would've been the envy of anyone from their great grandparents' generation. When a middle class striver posts something on the internet about how they can't afford kids it not because they literally don't have the resources, it is because they have higher priorities.
I'm afraid contemplating NEETdom as spiritually superior is the sole (and reserved) domain of the Aristocrat. Centuries of Liberal revolution has, fortunately or unfortunately, not changed this tendency.
I'm not talking about "contemplating NEETdom". As @JTarrou's parable of the "skint Mexican" aptly illustrates, there are other options. I'm talking about prioritizing things other than personal autonomy and "number go up".
If doing so goes against the liberal striver ethos, that only reinforces my point that the liberal striver ethos is simply not conducive to forming families.
The problem is that anyone who wants you to prioritize things other than personal autonomy wants to run your life for his own benefit, and anyone who objects to "number go up" wants to impoverish you, again for his own benefit.
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I was half joking, but the fads of the middle class are a reflection of their nature. If it was prestigious to have a million kids, all self respecting bourgeois would do it. But as soon as you put these people in charge of everything, which Liberalism certainly did, the mammonism becomes the whole of the law and we naturally gravitate to looser sexual mores that don't allow family formation.
It's that same tendency that prevents those same people from contemplative idleness. It takes another man than the bourgeois to prioritize legacy, and unfortunately the goal of Liberal society is to turn everyone into bourgeois man by any means. We must distribute college degrees and contraceptive pills to all Afghanis, otherwise they're not truly free, etc.
I think the "liberal striver ethos" is written deep in the hearts of a certain kind of men, and that it may be easier to remove those men from some positions of power they are ill suited for than to disabuse them of their tendencies. Tendencies which I should say, are tremendously useful if directed to productive pursuits.
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I very much agree. This is how skint mexicans can afford to come here and work for pennies on the dollar and raise a dozen kids. They value different things and are willing to live differently.
As to the trappings of merit versus its reality, that's the question isn't it? We target things that seem to be part of merit, but every proxy creates an incentive to game it. Everyone likes a meritocracy until it's time to define what merit actually is.
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