Vivek: If your SSN ends in an odd, you're out.

[jfz9580m]

87. Agreed

But they should be called out. They are leaning hard on “meritocracy”. So maybe we should start picking apart their so-called merit.

I saw earlier that Musk was posting inane tweets about govt waste (alcoholic rats doused with bobcat urine*!). But it actually demonstrates a lack of understanding of how science works which is either disingenuous or really stupid:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/stupid-reason-elon-musk-complaining-165009274.html

When the Laser was first invented it was described as a solution in search of a problem:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-14002-0_49

Some of this nonsense about govt efficiency, waste etc makes me think these guys don’t understand how science, society or anything works. It is really as if they take the world of likes, tweets and reality television seriously. (Winning! )
They have a rather flawed understanding of actual reality which is frequently harsh and unforgiving, but no more subject to the whims of the wealthy than it is to those of the poor. These are incurious simpletons.

Now I am all for keeping it simple where it is. But this is not efficiency..it is Idiocracy marketed as meritocracy. Real meritocracies are harsh or at any rate not subject to arbitrariness. They have some rules..you work within those honestly and there can be rewards though it is not a given.

This otoh is lies, trolling, crony capitalism without regulation and corruption but in the guise of waste cutting. It is corrupt bs, performative trolling etc. How far these two somewhat stupid men can take it remains to be seen.

There is a tendency to think that because someone is wealthy or Ivy League educated, those facts are reflective of their actual abilities rather than what is often a mix of ability and luck (including the birth lottery). And frequently just luck or knowing how to game the system as cliche as the latter sounds.

In these two specific cases I think it is also a lot of wheeling and dealing, cronyism, sleaziness..not raw talent or ability.
Tesla was not even invented by Musk, who was born into wealth. He piled on later. And Ramaswamy is an outright fraud.

The abilities these guys have are not really very respectable. Wheeling and dealing alone seems to be enough to get persons of this type ahead in life.
Shrug..we’ll see.

(*: As for the bobcat urine/alcoholic rats stuff-my guess would be studies related to substance abuse/ptsd with bobcat urine producing some sort of predator stress response. Probably not absurd if you consider basic research essential.)