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cinch
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Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Jul 2002
time: 22:33
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
Thankfully, you having an 88% means nothing to anyone else-everyone can have an 88% in class, if they work hard enough.
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Him having 88% does mean something to his classmates if the class is graded on a bell curve, where the success of other students directly affects one's own grade. There are always losers on an unmodified bell curve, as I'm sure you know.
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mrmitchell
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quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara
The exception being that students who did the best were required to help struggling students. |
The USSR is oppressing the smart, hard-working students! They are being enslaved to help their no-effort classmates!
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The Templar
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People's Republic of the East Village
Oct 2001
time: 00:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Patroklos
So people that are naturally good at philosophy Templar, have something called talent in the subject. Same thing holds true for every job. Some people just find their niche, whatever it is, and do well because the enjoy it or are just blessed with the gift for it.
Some people don't find their subject, or do but willingly try their hand at something else for whatever reasons. I don't know how many people I know who couldn't do math but struggled their way through an engineering degree because they wanted to be a pilot or an architect or whatever else. But what they couldn't make up for in talent, they made up for in hard work. |
Again, the point I was making is that grades measure mastery of a subject (ideally) - not how that mastery is achieved. Yes, talent can compensate for a lack of work (and vice versa). The reason why I was making this point was to demonstrate that there is no proper analogy to be made between redistributing wealth and imposing a single grade on all. The difference is between distribution and measurement of resources. I assume sucessful communism would require accurate measurements of resources. The issue in leveling grades would be inaccuracy - not "stealing what has been earned".
quote:
Is it necessarily fair that some people start out with more finacial means than most? Probobly not, but that is the way it is. |
But wealth is a strictly social creation (subject to the amount of actual existing resources). As such, there is no "natural" conception of how to divvy it up. Thus when a social justice argument is brought against an actual distribution there is no naturalistic defense to be made in favor of the existing distribution. I might argue that inheritance is in no way a fair method for determining distribution (the recipient has no labor based claim to the wealth for instance). Given that we know how to redistribute wealth - doing so is a possibility.
I have no idea how to distribute talent - I don't even know if talent does have a biologicla basis or is entirely a function of environment. If I could distribute talent equally, there might be an argument to do so.
In other words - inequity in the distribution of wealth may be addressed, whereas talent inequity cannot (at this point in time).
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14-01-2004 03:03
Some people here are overreacting a tad....
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