Megan McArdle asks:
Most academics I know can rank-order everyone in the room at a professional conference with the speed and precision of a courtier at Versailles. Any competition, from looks to money to academic credentialing, both consumes a lot of resources and makes many of the participants feel bad about themselves. Why, then, does the literature on status competition always tell us that we should redistribute capital gains or inheritances and never tell us that we should redistribute academic chairs or book contracts?
Why? Because most academics believe they earned their success based on pure merit … but the success of those in most fields without tenure is based on inheritance, greed, fraud, and corruption.
or (ahem)”legacy”…