Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Merit and Equality
The immediate challenge of society revolves around the construction of a society that is fair and just. The exact principles that allow society to do that is particularly difficult to define and initiate within the context of the existing framework of society. Two concepts that appear to be diametrical opposites are equality and merit. Individuals who invite society to be structured on merit suggest that the inherent inequalities in individual abilities should be the mechanism through which individuals are separated and even stratified. Others suggest that such a position ignores historical antecedents that privilege some groups above others and hence it is important to construct a society that is based on the equality of all the citizens. Equality is a concept that is difficult to define and more difficult to achieve. I agree that merit and equality are incompatible structuring society on one of the concepts negates the use of the other.
According to Kabanoff (1991) equality refers to the different members of a relationship having the same value as individuals. This promotes mutual self-esteem and tends to suggest a sense of solidarity among the individuals of a group. In this sense equality allows persons...
The concept of equality is usually generated in reference to the position of individuals before the law. This type of equality allows each person to have access to the same type of justice or judgment from the legal system.
Advocates of equality suggest that it is not only conceptually relevant but a necessary feature of societal organization (Joseph 1980). The push toward equality of all persons means that institutions within society are rendered blind and does not consider qualities such as sex, wealth and status when viewing individuals. Institutions treat persons the same without regard to their station in life or any other quality that may act to give one group an advantage above another group. These individuals often advocate that it is necessary for the state to engage processes that redress inequalities and create a more egalitarian society. This attempt to flatten the social structure and remove hierarchal stratification from the structure is often met with opposition from individuals from multiple positions within the social structure.
The advocates of a merit system suggest that individuals should be rewarded based on their…
References
Gosepath, S. "Equality"(2011) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/equality/
Joseph L.B. (1980). Some Ways of Thinking about Equality of Opportunity. The Western
Political Quarterly, 33(3): 393-400.
It is also unlikely that the UN will ever really have an aggressive standing army but will continue to be required to call upon others to be its arms in any given place. "Is it not true that the nation state and state sovereignty will be with us for some time? But in what form?" (Forsythe, 2006, 26) State sovereignty will be a universal application for many years to
Ethics in Purchasing/Procurement, Acquisitions (Contracting) Management This paper looks into the concepts of responsibility and accountability, and procurement beneficence, through a review of the challenges and principles, which are often faced in the procurement process, by purchasing managers, staffs and suppliers, in both private and public institutions. There are 2 basic definitions of ethics. The first is that ethics are moral principles that influence conduct, and the second is that ethics is
Under these circumstances, an ethical dilemma is born. Should society control its development or leave it to chance? And in the case that it should control it, which categories should it help? If the person in the above mentioned example is helped, we could assume that in a certain way, the person who was not helped because he or she already disposed of the necessary means, the latter one might
" In short, when it comes to the First Amendment, greater issues are at stake beyond the immediate interests of the corporations in question. There must be a compelling state interest to limit freedom of expression. Why doesn't it make a difference whether the corporate speech is about matters that materially affect its business interests? It is not the state's place to regulate when and if First Amendment rights apply in certain
Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens' "Cornerstone Speech" The Civil War was by far the most costly war in terms of human life ever fought by the United States, and the events that precipitated this conflict on U.S. soil included the succession of seven Southern states by March 1861 to form the Confederate States of America. With President Jefferson Davis leading the way, his vice president, Alexander Stephens, delivered a speech
Second Reconstructions One of the most dramatic consequences of the Civil War and Reconstruction was that the South was effectively driven from national power for roughly six decades. Southerners no longer claimed the presidency, wielded much power on the Supreme Court, or made their influence strongly felt in Congress But beginning in the 1930s, the South was able to flex more and more political muscle, and by the 1970s some