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You’re arguing against a position I didn’t take.

"Give everyone what they need to max out their potential" is not "give everyone every opportunity". That’s a strawman.

Floor, not ceiling. We set a floor of real opportunity (nutrition, basic health, safety, functional education, accessible selection processes). It doesn’t promise bespoke elite tracks for all. Removing constraints is different from subsidizing every aspiration. By doing so, you lift the average, and allow the best to develop to their fullest, growing society's total output.

If the signal of ability is suppressed by early disadvantage, you’ll misallocate talent. Low cost, well aimed supports (early literacy, assistive tech, unbiased hiring screens) improve matching, which is exactly what meritocracy needs to place the brilliant mathematician in math and the gifted teacher in the classroom.

We have noisy priors shaped by wealth, networks, and bias. They need removed so that comparative advantage can actually surface. That raises both the mean and the max.

We're talking about true meritocracy: merit, not circumstances.

Funnily enough, we agree:

> giving extra resources to worse people (with lower potential) is a waste of resources (money, human)

That's exactly my point, currently we spend resources on a bunch of people that are only circumstantially better, remember pro-sports before black people were allowed?

Spend your resources to realize the best to be the best, and to make even the worse better. That gives you full global maximum.



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