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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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That's perfectly reasonable from an individual perspective. I suppose my concern is more with the "layabout poet son of a hedge fund manager" who ends up being handed a sinecure sort of job, or worse, one of actual importance. If that person gets paid $200,000 a year to be worthless, they have already had a worse impact on society than almost any petty criminal. The impact is double if their lineage somehow gets them into a position they're less-than-capable in.

I am much more okay with garbage humans living garbage lives than with mediocre ones rising above their deserved station unfairly, if only because I believe that "who sits at the top" has immense downstream effects on basically everything.

Another relatively common issue is that they actually are competent but still chooses the sinecure because it's comfortable, not contributing anything of value at best.

Exactly. It's bad any way you slice it.

If that person gets paid $200,000 a year to be worthless, they have already had a worse impact on society than almost any petty criminal

Individually, sure. But in aggregate, petty criminals have a worse impact than sinecures.

I flatly disagree with this, though I'm sure data is hard to find.

I see your point, and certainly the idea of idiots at the top is infuriating. But, this is to class-HBD as "what about this one Black guy who is real smart and stuff" is to Race-HBD, right? We're talking averages, so the hypothetical to include bloodline as a valid basis for discrimination goes something like: do you think that on average the children of hedge fund managers are more intelligent than the children of truck drivers? IQ gap among children for SES runs between 6 and 20 depending on which study you like.

That means that anywhere from 5% to 30% of children born to completely average parents are equal to a member of the upper class. Given the massive population difference, it won't take long in any system with significant upward mobility and low downward mobility for the upper class to be heavily comprised of underperforming children-of-statistical-anomolies.

Bloodlines are great ways to discriminate, but only after multiple generations succeeding in a row. High social downward mobility is a must.