Wait - are you suggesting central planning would do a better job than the distributed, self organizing system we have today?
And of course the central planners would be selected on the basis of ...
Dear lord. You think the only two options are completely unguided self-selection or ... central planning? Really?
There are a whole slew of other low-level approaches in between those two extremes that we could implement that would help people better assess their skills and interests and get them into jobs that are good fits for them.
Can you elaborate on your alternative? I'm not sure what exactly what you're getting at, but it sounds like....uhhh....other people picking careers for people.
I continue to be amazed at peoples ability to read the exact same words and interpret their meanings in completely different ways. When I read that post I envisioned a career counselor sitting down with someone helping them analyze their skills and interests and suggesting a job that would fit said skills and interests. Now I'm curious what you envisioned?
Ha, well, look at the original text here, slightly edited for brevity and to emphasize what looks like the apparent idea at first blush (not intended to reflect poorly on Scantee, just highlighting what a Road-to-Serfdom Libertarian is going to see):
Rather than focusing on meritocracy, I think it makes more sense to focus on...matching people up with careers that best fit their innate skills and interests...(now) Basically people just self sort into careers...It's amazingly inefficient...
What's the alternative to people self-selecting? At a first read, this looks like a statement stating that people picking their own careers is bad, because it's inefficient.
There's not many communists anymore, so I figured there'd be some other thought going on than seizing the means of production and telling everyone where to work :P
It's tangential to thread, but I definitely think putting people into better fitting careers and not wasting their time/money is a better use of our time than worrying about meritocracy or inequality directly. It's win-win and I think the fruit is lower-hanging. Like, I have no idea how to make sure Bill Gates' kids don't have an unfair leg-up(or what "unfair" even means in this case), but I have a much better idea of how to make sure kids don't piss away 6 years of their lives earning a useless degree and racking up $80k in pointless debt.
Career counselors might help, but I think they run into the same problem as peer effects and parents: they operate based on out-dated information and it takes time for them to update. I see a lot of people here like Ask A Manager, and the general consensus is that many resume writers at universities have absolutely no idea how to write a resume. Or look for a job. Or...
So you're still stuck with a slow-to-update institution that gives kids some outdated advice.
I do know that my schools at least made attempts to steer us into certain directions. We all took personality tests, that provided us with suggested careers (it told me to be an accountant, which, hey, I am). The schools also put on Career Days with people from the community so we would get to learn a bit more about different jobs. I honestly cannot remember any of them besides the engineer, though. And I still don't know a damn thing about what engineers do on a day to day basis.
A lot of good information probably doesn't get to high school and college kids because they aren't in communication with the actual business world much. Like, there's a million different jobs in finance (either corporate or PE or IB), but we never learned ANY of it in our finance classes, and even less than nothing in high school. You wouldn't know unless you were talking to people actually in the field...and on a regular basis, because even the speakers who the school roped in did not really explain what "a day in the life" was like, nor the skill requirements, nor the career path, nor the education pedigrees expected, nor how to get your foot in the door, nor...
I mean, I can tell you what my job is, what it does, and what the challenges are. I am an A/R Accountant:
-What we do: yell at people to pay their bills
-How we do it: lots of computer work, emails, and time on the phone
-Biggest challenges: people arguing about their bills and messed up accounts
-What you need to be able to do: read a contract, know when to escalate something to your manager, know when to settle an account with an acceptable loss, basic MS Office skills, basic "how to write an email" skills, how to balance a checkbook (so you can reconcile a screwed up account).
-What education you need: A Bachelor's degree, from a low-tier to mid-tier university
-What it pays: 35k-60k depending on seniority, company, and location
-Basic style of work: solitary, sitting at a computer. Occasional phone calls with delinquent customers, which will usually involve lots of yelling (at you, you can't yell at them). Even more occasional internal calls with other departments. Mostly consists of monitoring reports to identify big balances and then following up on said balances.
-Career advancement: none, besides Manager and Director within A/R. Can laterally transition to other corporate departments, as you can prove competence and basic analytical skills here.
I can also tell you a bit about the other accounting fields at this point, too (in less detail). Would not have been able to give you this amount of detail if I were still in school. Had absolutely no idea. There was no attempt to feed this information to us at all. Couldn't tell you a damn thing about what nurses can do, even after working in healthcare and knowing that many firms employed a bunch of nurses in various support office roles (including accounting roles).
Probably this is best fixed by people just talking about their jobs more, especially with young people, and not zoning out when other people talk about their jobs.