Meritocracy, Winner-takes-all and class

Great Debates
1

A meritocracy is a good thing. A meritocracy exists when the cream has the ability to rise to the top. In a meritocracy, if you have ability and the willingness to work hard then you will succeed. I submit that the establishment of a meritocracy should be the goal of society since it will be efficient and, more nebulously, appeals to our sense of justice.

Once upon a time, in around the 1960s, the western world almost achieved it.

You see, there is a problem with meritocracy. It isn’t very stable. The citizens that succeed have kids. And by the nature of parents they want those kids to succeed too. Furthermore, these parents are the people that are nature’s winners. What they want, they tend to get. So the children of the winners of the meritocracy already have the advantage of a success-orientated home life with “managers” that know what they are doing.

Then we have inheritance. These winners can pass on their winnings to their as-yet unproven children. The children at some point are going to succeed regardless of their own merit.

There are other advantages conferred on the children of the meritocratic winners. In our society, health and education are for sale. The advantaged children are more likely to be fed nutritiously by parents that understand the benefits of nutrition and can afford nutritious, fresh food. They will be cared for by the best private medicine. They will be afforded the best education that money can buy.

Ask any expert in child development. If you’re well-fed and healthy, understand the importance of education, are supported by your parents and are being educated in an environment conduicive to education then, frankly, you have to try to not succeed. Especially when your fellow competitors have little if any of these advantages.

In short, in the 100m race of life these children are starting several dozen metres ahead of their less fortunate contempories.

So from a position of true meritocracy, within one generation we have already begun to establish a class structure.

And there’s worse.

In society, some will do well. They will do well because they happen to have the aptitudes required to do well. In our society, these skills include (but are not limited to) a willingness to work hard and, possibly, sacrifice some family life, an organised approach, problem-solving and an ability to play politics. (Note that in previous societies it may have been physical strength and/or speed that dominated - there is nothing “natural” about the current set of success-guaranteeing attributes).

However, some will not do well. For whatever reason - nature and nuture - they do not possess the required skills.

We need to ask ourselves to what extent the winners need to win relative to the losers.

The way things stand right now, if you win then you win big. Our society centres around wealth generation. If you have the right combination of skills, you will be capable of generating considerable wealth. If you do not have the right combination, you may not be able to generate anything.

In other words, meritocracy easily degenerates into a winner-take-all society.

Winner-takes-all is not good. Because Joe Schmoe is dumb, does he deserve to end up destitute? Why? Maybe Joe is hard-working, but because he doesn’t have specifically wealth-generating talents, he is on the scrap heap. This strikes me as inhumane.

Because of my skill-set, I am capable of demanding a vast salary. In terms of value-adding, I am worth this. As a working human being, however, I simply cannot see why I get to live a lifestyle that my grandfather could only dream of just because my skill helps companies make money wheras his was “merely” spending 10 or 12 hours a day working on the railway.

The market sets prices and I have no problem with that. But there are inequalities of experience that result that I do have a problem with.

My submissions for debate, then, are as follows:

  1. We need meritocracy to encourage success. But we need to think carefully about what we do with those who don’t succeed. Winner-takes-all is bad. Noone deserves poverty just because they don’t have the skills that happen to be the current set needed to win.

  2. There is a problem with the fact that the winners of the meritocracy are able to establish a class structure to pass that success onto their children at the expense of other children.

Thankyou

pan

2

I agree, although the “problem” aspect only arises when the winners have so much that the losers have too little to acheive some minimum level which is considered “enough” by the electorate.

There will be some who argue that the winners don’t merely “generate wealth” (ie. become wealthy) bu * actually create it from nothing *, and so should be allowed to keep it * all *. As discussed in the “How is wealth created” thread, this is ony ever true of a small fraction of any personal fortune, and in any case almost any transaction, regardless of the financial status of those involved, can “create” new wealth.

Whilst I think it is unfeasible to “ban” private health care and education, inheritance tax could certainly be increased, and a progressive income tax system could be introduced.

3

I’d also add that even if you could conclusively show that the wealthy create 100% of their wealth from nothing then it still doesn’t get around the central issue: the fact that just because a person is not lucky enough to have the skill-set that is in accordance with that valued by society, it shouldn’t mean that we simply abandon them. And vice versa.

Also note that even the wealth-creators rely on the surrounding societal infrastructure, otherwise their wealth-creation would be (a) impossible; and (b) meaningless. But being part of that infrastructure is not valued, to the extent of being compensated. The market doesn’t recognise mere existence as a good.

Which leads us on to externalities, but I’d hoped to avoid that discussion, since I don’t think that an economic argument is central to the philosophical problem with winner-takes-all.

The difference between reward and taking the pot is a subtle but important distinction and one that I don’t think we have right.

pan

4

I agree too, and it’s depressing.

Is what you’re suggesting kabbes a particular case of the idea that the success of a social system undermines the reasons for its success? According to Nobel prize-winner Douglass North, institutions atrophy. They are refreshed somehow or they are replaced.

As for your questions:

  1. Rewarding success doesn’t have to mean winner takes all. If, as Robert Frank suggests (I assume you’re referring to him) relative success counts as much if not more than absolute success, a society that rewards merit can nonetheless involve considerable income-equalising measures. AFAIK there is no good evidence that moderately progressive taxation entails disasterous incentive effects.

  2. I don’t know that you need to appeal to the establishment of a class structure. The children of the lucky and somewhat worthy get all sorts of advantages that don’t rely on the meritocracy being undermined by formal or informal networks of privilege. Just having access to security, self-confidence and the experience of one’s parents is one hell of an advantage (in my experience). This obviously puts a limit on what can be achieved through maintaining an “open” society and income smoothing. But what applies to societies applies to families - remember the old saw “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations”. There is in the end, a limit to the degree to which you can substitute advice and advantage for your own striving in a meritocracy.

5

I ask a slighlty more controversial question: Why is it considered axiomatic that every man should have a chance to survive and procreate no matter what charecteristics he posseses?

Why is it “inhumane” that people with bad genes or bad luck should be got rid of?

6

Excellent points and very well stated, kabbes. My take on your points:

  1. We don’t exactly have winner take all. Our progressive tax structure, minimum wage laws, and welfare all provide for some wealth redistribution. It is true that nobody deserves to be in poverty, but can poverty be eliminated? We can, as a society, tweak the three items I mention in order to slightly improve the plight of the imporverished but we cannot eliminate poverty altogether.

  2. We can address the issue of the children of the wealthy posessing unfair advantages by raising the inheiritance tax.

Unfortunately for the poor, the gap between rich and poor will only increase because Congress is dominated by the interests of the privileged. Tax rates have become less progressive over time and the inheiritance tax is under attack by “conservatives” who call it the “death tax”. Positive change can only come when the poor begin to vote in larger numbers and for candidates who represent their interests.

7

I would ask, so what? Why are intrinsic advantages valued more than an old-boy network, a sizable amount of cash, etc?

8

I think the latter is fairly definitional. “Humane” means “Marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans” (Merriam-Webster). There’s not much compassion in getting rid of those weaker than average.

As for the former - those who struggle in society do so because they have difficulty with this particular brand of society. Maybe if society was built on strength they would have been at the top. Who knows. But as one who has done well out of this type of society, I feel some guilt towards the fact that the system works in my favour and not theirs. For me to succeed is fair enough, but for them to essentially be wiped out goes deep against the grain.

In other words, from a dispassionate perspective I don’t see that I have any more right to survival than they.

pan

9

I don’t understand this. Valued by who? And when?

A meritocracy has the advantage of rewarding those who help society, thus improving that society. An old-boy network allows the incompetant to flourish and keeps down those who may have been great. I know which I prefer the sounds of. A meritocracy also intuitively seems “fairer”.

pan

10

Some wealth distribution, true, but I frequently see arguments in favour of scrapping even this attempt to level the playing field. One of the points of raising this is to counter the anti-welfare state rhetoric I so often see.

Poverty cannot be eliminated? It may not be desirable to eliminate poverty from an economic perspective but it certainly isn’t technically impossible. We need to constantly review just where on the line we want to stand and what balance we want to strike.

Agreed, and another significant reason why I raised this. I am philosophically deeply opposed to inheritance. Economically, it is disasterous. Meritocratically, it is disasterous. I want people to grasp why inheritance causes such problems.

This I couldn’t agree with more, though my country a politicians may be different. Establishment is establishment the world over.

pan

11

I didn’t want hawthorne to be the only person I hadn’t addressed. But, hawth, I can’t think of anything I take issue with or want to elaborate on! All I can say is “well said”.

pan

12

I do not take this as an axiom. Yes, we do need for people to feel they can rise and fall on their own.

However…

The author of the ‘Peter Principle’ (a person rises to their own level of incompetence…you keep getting promoted until you do poorly then never promoted) made a case for a pure meritocracy being less efficient.

His case went like this…

If you force a certain population to have a limit to how much they rise (women, minorities, whatever), then you stop promoting capable people into a position where they are not capable. They get paid less, have less status but they are * good * at what they do. Women teachers of the past and other examples.

He also made an example that today we have such a situation in regards to a college degree. If you don’t have a college degree, your options are limited.

Picture the extremely competent secretary. She should be promoted but she won’t be because, well, she’s a secretary with no college education, she is not * qualified * to be promoted to VP. Thing is, she may very well be qualified but is forced to stay in a position in which she does a great job.

I imagine there are many of these lines…college degree, Ivy league degree, sex, race etc.

Not ‘fair’ but may actual make society more efficient.

13

Kabbes, you seem to argue for a meritocracy, and then say that all of the attributes that determine wealth are randomand arbitrary, and we have no control over them, therefore meritocracy is silly because nobody “deserves” to be rich or poor. If I’ve misunderstood, please enlighten me.

I see a problem, though, with lamenting those who don’t have the “luck” of possessing a strong work ethic, or intelligence, or a propensity for learning, or whatnot. When you start to question why someone who has the good fortune to be a hard worker deserves to be wealthy more than somebody who’s unfortunately lazy and shiftless, you pretty much throw accountability out the window. You could question, with just as much validity, why we should punish someone who was born with the ability to murder and rape innocent people. After all, it’s not their fault they were born with the murder-and-rape gene, right? Or that their parents didn’t hug them enough, and they turned out bad, or whatever? How can we punish them? Why should we favor those who are lucky enough to be good, kind people with our praise and company, while we shun those who have the misfortune of being unpleasant diskwads?

I suppose from a philosophical standpoint, those are entertaining questions, in the same way you can ponder endlessly whether or not I perceive green in the same way that you do. But in the end, the “answer”, if there is one, is fairly academic. Does it matter? Is it immoral for me to prefer the company of nice, funny, insightful people over the mean, boring, and stupid? Is it wrong of me to prefer to hire someone competent, effectively rewarding him with money, because he has the good luck of being brilliant and talented, while I relegate the incompetent applicants to the unemployment line? That’s the way life works. Those who are smart and able will be able to work the system better than those who are inept and incapable. And here’s the kicker: those smart and able people will be able to work any system that possesses even a modicum of fairness. Why? Well, because they’re smart and able.

You mention that in times past, physical fitness and brute strength were more desireable than raw intellect, and here I only partly agree with you. We have a natural advantage over the other beasts of the world. It’s not because we’re stronger, or faster, or hardier than all the other animals. A human versus a tiger will lose just about any contest of raw physical prowess. We’re superior because we’re smarter. It’s that wit that allowed us to kill mammoths and bears and boars and feast upon them. It’s that wit that allowed us to survive just about anywhere, and populate the earth. And as human society became more advanced, that wit came to play a greater and greater role in our survival. There isn’t some intricate system of arbitrary skills that allows people to succeed, there’s really only two: intellect, and motivation. With those two things, any person can achieve just about anything. True, intellect and motivation alone won’t make you an NBA star, or a world-class pianist, but by and large, the world is your oyster, pardon the cliche.

So to address your specific questions directly:

1.) As has been pointed out, our society is not winner-takes-all. There’s a very broad spectrum of success levels, from the very poor to the very wealthy. If it was truly as polarized as you claimed, we would not have the huge middle class that we do. And while I don’t know if I would go so far as to say that the incapable deserve poverty, I don’t think there’s really anything wrong with the current system that has poverty as a side-effect for those who don’t possess the skills to play the game.

2.) I really don’t see too much problem with the passing of wealth from one generation to the next. It may be less than fair that Bill Gates Jr. gets to start life out with countless riches, but it would be more unfair to deprive Pappa Gates the right to give his money to his children. But whether he gives that money to his kids, or has it usurped by the All Kind and All Knowing Government, it doesn’t affect my ability to achieve success. I think a good rule of thumb for government involvement in our lives is: When in doubt, leave it the hell alone.
Jeff

14

I’ve always sided with Rawls with his “Justice as Fairness” argument WRT wealth distribution, namely that a “fair” amount of wealth distribution would be one to which everybody could agree while in the Original Position, that is, while they had no knowledge of their current amount of wealth or their ability to generate additional wealth (which Rawls contended was knowledge that was irrelevant to helping one determine what was “fair” or “just” or whatever brand of poison you prefer). Granted that this is only useful as a hypothetical construct, but IMO it’s a laudable ideal – those with merit will be fairly rewarded for merit, while those born with “bad” genes (or the right genes at the wrong time) or bad luck aren’t fated to be destitute.

Shalmanese: kabbes already noted that getting rid of those with bad genes/luck is definitively inhumane, but I’ll add that it is also definitively unjust – it is not their fault that they were born with bad genes or experienced bad luck*, so they do not deserve punishment for their bad genes/luck.

*I’m using bad luck to mean misfortune that could not reasonably have been foreseen/avoided/whatever. If somebody falls down an open manhole because they just weren’t paying attention to where they were going, then that’s not “bad luck” in my book, it’s “stupidity.”

15

“Meritocracy” is a non-concept. The only purpose of the existence of this non-concept is to justify the privilege of the privileged.

Clearly, it has never been the case that the “best” rise to the top. Quite the opposite, in fact. In a capitalist system it is exactly the worst kinds of people who rise to the top. It’s sort of an inverse meritocracy.

16

Why do you say the worst people rise to the top? A person goes to medical school, graduates, and earns a large salary. Is he bad? Why? Take Bill Gates. He had a brilliant idea of how PCs should operate, he started a company, and made scads of money. What about that makes him “the worst kinds of people?” You could argue whether he should be allowed to pass his fortune to his heirs untaxed, but I don’t see why rising to the top makes you a bad person.

17

Just ignore him…he adds very little to these discussions other than unsubstantiated anti-capitalist rhetoric.

  1. We need meritocracy to encourage success. But we need to think carefully about what we do with those who don’t succeed. Winner-takes-all is bad. Noone deserves poverty just because they don’t have the skills that happen to be the current set needed to win.

What you are really asking is “what is the minimum living conditions we shuold accept in our society”. If you want a meritocracy that rewards successfull behaviors then you will always have those who do not posess the skills or exhibit the behaviors necessary to succeed.

You might also want to define what ‘winner takes all’ means. Is it anyone who can:
graduate high school
graduate college
graduate grad school
land a professional job
become a middle manager
become an executive
become a super-billionare executive?

And at any of this levels of society, there aditional hierarchies within each level.

Personally, I feel that our society should be able to prevent people from starving on the streets or loosing their homes due to temporary financial woes and that there should be a certain standard for HS education.

  1. There is a problem with the fact that the winners of the meritocracy are able to establish a class structure to pass that success onto their children at the expense of other children.

Being born with money (apparently making over $50,000 a year is considered “money” by poor people) does not garantee an instant ticket to Ivy League State and wealth beyond your wildest dreams. Why are some people from poor backgrounds able to achieve great things while some people from wealthy background unable to do anything?

18

What would happen if we did away with inheritance? People would spend everything they have on stuff they don’t need leading to an increase in inflation and a lack of capital for investment. If I know that I can’t leave anything to my children I will either gift all my property to them inter vivos, or I will spend every last penny on wine women and cheer before I die. I will not leave anything to the government to take. What if I own a small business that I have built from scratch, should I not be able to devise it the way I see fit when I die? What would you do with the small business, family farm, family heirlooms etc. Your idea sounds ok at first, but when you look down the road you will see that it doesn’t produce any real benefits.

19

A person who goes to medical school and contributes greatly to society will never make it to the top. She will become part of the upper middle class.

When I say “make it to the top” I am talking about the capitalist class, those who make it into the super-rich. The Bill Gates types. These types make it because they are shiftless, greedy and ruthless. They are the worst types in society, basically parasites. Bill Gates, for example, has never contributed anything to society.

Bill Gates is an exception in that he is highly visible. Most of the capitalist class is invisible. They operate totally in secret, completely unaccountable to the public. They make their money by siphoning off the labor of the poor and the working class.

It is a peculiar aspect of capitalist theology that reality must be inverted. The very worst types of people must be transformed into those of “merit.” There is nothing new here. The old Roman ruling class justified their rule by claiming that they were of “higher quality” than the common man. The medieval aristocracy jusfitifed their existence by appeals to a religio-political state of nature. And so on.

We should recognize this kind of racket when we see it. The capitalist class has no merit. They did not earn their position, they took it by force and guile.

20

Chumpsky, capitilism doens’t say that Joe Moneybags is better qualified to have/spend 100 million then you. It just says that it’s his damn 100 million, and if you don’t like it, you’re free to start a company and make your own damn 100 million.