Our human imports are also exceptionally skilled at gaming our big, fat, lazy government targets like Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security disability. These giant, multi-trillion dollar systems are built on the assumption that everyone will play by the rules. They are exceptionally easy to skim from.

The flip side of “every system will be gamed” is that “every big job of gaming requires a giant pool of suckers and easy marks.” That’s YOU, whitey.

I think the solution is that we have to acknowledge that institutions and formalized rules are no substitute for a human judge or ruler with the authority to override the law/rules in the name of social order or amity. Good rules are not sufficient, we’re still left with the ancient problem of trying to find how to ensure a good man rules.

This seems good reason to compartmentalize authorities, some meritocratic via different mechanisms, others become traditionally aristocratic , and I would even favor small scale democratic authorities in some instances, for example small sub-localities. A good example of meritocracy in action would obviously be military structures, and I would also argue a similar principle on ecclesiastic authorities.

I would charge you to find any areana of human endeavor that has been free of “gaming”, where the spirit of honest competition surpassed the desire to win. To quote Lombardi, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”

Interesting that “gaming” only takes place in endeavors restricted by rules. Without the rules, these activities are “innovations”, not gaming.

I’m biased to think of “gaming” as a positive factor. Being good at working the system often requires more skill and intelligence than whatever activity is being engaged in, especially when such activities are designed to produce “equitable” outcomes as so many are in today’s fucked up world.

From a policy prospective, I don’t have the slightest clue how a government can enforce the “spirit” of academic achievement while avoiding widespread cheating and fraud. Perhaps they could actively promote a culture where academic achievement is tied to status and privalege while holding groups who promote anti-social activity accountable, both socially and economically.

Or

Teach kids they’re permanent victims because of their race/gender/orientation, flood schools with inbred illiterate third world immigrants, sue school districts that suspend violent blacks too much, hire and promote faculty entirely based on race/gender, deflate the value of basic education so the darkies can graduate, and then wonder, without a shred of self awareness or irony, 1) why these perma victims aren’t interested in the culture of acedemia established by their oppressors. 2) why simply threatening to cut funding to Americas most established entitled beaurocratic body could possibly be a good idea.