Why *would* an actual meritocracy be bad?

Great Debates
21

I think there’s still a lot of assumptions in this framing.

Every time I have worked somewhere where there is a big announcement of a new CEO, and his (it’s always been a white male) impressive resume of prior companies, I take a look at the profit, turnover and stock price history of those companies. At best, their previous organizations were pretty flat, and in some cases they absolutely tanked during their tenure.

It doesn’t seem to matter; once you’ve been a CEO of a big company, you’re in the club, you’re set for life.

I guess in theory you could have a struggling company, and a new CEO that makes great decisions and therefore earns millions for the company. I am just saying that the fact that they earn so much is not in itself proof that they are always (or usually) worth so much. We’re very far from an ideal market.

22

I don’t think anyone really hates the idea of a meritocracy. We all appreciate, at least conceptually, that we should value those who do a an exceptional job.

You walk into a store and one employee can’t be bothered to look up from his phone, and another employee genuinely and competently helps you with your problem. If you’re asked which one of these employees deserves a bonus today, it’s not phone boy. The CEO whose decisions have huge impacts on the fortunes of a company deserves more compensation than the average worker.

Where we go wrong is how wide the spread is, how much more we value the exceptional, vs the typical. It’s the Bad News Bears effect. Should the 1st place team get a Taj Mahal sized trophy while the 2nd place team gets a thimble?

If the spread is relatively narrow, it’s hard to see a meritocracy as bad. We encourage people to work hard, take on more responsibility, etc. without brutalizing those who don’t.

23

Yes. And there’s a very great tendency to promote those skills for which we only need a relatively small number of people, and disparage the ones for which we need a large number of people.

The “merit” of a really good child care worker is more essential to the society than that of a lawyer. Though we do need some lawyers, because there are too many of us to do without them.

And, of course, having “merit” at one type of work has very little to do with whether one has “merit” at another. Somebody might be really good at coming up with inventions in computer tech, and utterly terrible at taking care of children. And both the inventor and the child care person might be terrible at plumbing. Or somebody might be good at more than one of those things, or at none of them, but good at something else entirely. And any of those people might make either a really good Congressperson/lawmaker, or a really terrible one. Sorting out an overall comparative “merit” is generally not possible.

You could, of course, try to sort out whether the person gives a shit about whether they’re doing the work right. But that’s difficult to do – plus which, if they’ve wound up trying to do the wrong work, or trying to do it under the wrong circumstances (such as bad working conditions/bosses), that in most people is going to affect how much they give a shit about it; so it can be really hard to sort out whether the person genuinely doesn’t have that kind of merit, or whether they’re just in the wrong job.

24

There are some good arguments against “meritocracy” but that doesn’t seem like a good one.

If there was a perfect numerical measurement of “merit” that could be objectively measured, and everyone could be trusted not to manipulate the results, sure there would probably be a bell curve with a “long tail”, but there are also a lot jobs needing merit, so you’d run out of people in that “long tail” soon enough.

The issue with meritocracy (or specifically claiming we are in one, or that we are prevented from becoming one by pesky government regulation and subsidy of the “non-meritorious”) is that there is absolutely no such thing as one precise numerical way of measuring “merit”, and no way of objectively measuring it, and humans, subconsciously (and consciously), cannot be trusted to objectively measure it even if such a objective measure existed (basically we think the most “meritorious” are the people that look and sound just like us).

IMO its fine to aspire to a meritocracy, in that positions of power in society should be given to people who are good at it, not people who know (or are related to) people in power. But if you think we are close to achieving that goal, just because we have a liberal democracy running a capitalist economy you are fooling yourself.

25

Or those who can’t.

Overall I like your framing a lot.

The problem whether under a theoretical meritocracy or the actual current greedocracy system isn’t that there are winners and losers. It’s that the system is so extremely winner-take-substantially-all, losers-get-substantially-nothing.

Even within a greedocracy a sufficiently motivated government could go along way to leveling the outcomes. If only the government didn’t sell control of itself to the winners first.

26

Plausibly, it’s most cultural but, at the moment, I would say that most people expect to go up in pay and respect as they age; they also will want to boost their own family and friends to the amount that they have the power to do so. A wealthy person thinks that they should be able to put their kids in the best schools, push to get their kids hired into the best jobs, etc.

In general, the idea of capitalism is that it’s more effective to harness and guide human instinct rather than to fight it. Part of human nature is the sense that things should be “fair” - i.e. that the economy should be a meritocracy. But the above items are exceptions to that. People don’t like to have 22 year olds as their boss and they might feel like their money is worthless if, for example, we forced everyone to attend the same public schools/banned outside money from schools/etc., and they can’t spend their money, effectively, on their kids. It would be like you give everyone free food, free entertainment, free vacations, etc. so that no one really needs anything more - but give more money to those who work harder. What are they supposed to spend it on?

A quasi-meritocracy is probably the best we can get.

From my own career, I’d say that there are people who are ~12x more effective than most others. I’d venture to guess that most careers will follow this pattern.

From that, you’d expect the distribution of wealth to make these individuals worth about 12x more than the others.

As a percentage, I’d probably say that in a group of 12 people, at least one of them will be ~4x better than the rest. In a group of 60 people, you’re likely to get one of the 12x types.

So we would expect that the top earners are roughly 1/60th (1.67%), middle tier are about 1/12th (8.33%), and the remainder of the population make up the rest. Obviously, we’d expect a smoother breakout than that, but it gives us a sense for the amount of centralization of money.

Now, I’d probably say that on the second criteria - how narrow the spike of higher income should be - our society might not be so far off. But in terms of the expected wage difference between the highest and the lowest, things are way off from what I would expect from a meritocracy. We expect a 12x difference in pay but we see multi-digit powers of magnitude of difference.

One problem with the above model, though, is that one skill in life is money management and another skill is salesmanship - convincing people to do things that make no sense. If a real world talent is “reducing meritocracy” then, in a meritocracy, we wouldn’t really expect things to follow the expected payout.

27

:big sigh: Economics. That’s why. Bear with me.

A meritocracy is an aristocracy, but built on explicit contempt for the “failures” and the “slackers,” rather than mere accident of birth. That makes it seem “fair” to those whom it promotes, and cuts way back on the common sense of noblesse oblige. Because the poor aren’t just “unlucky” according to meritocracy; they’re ostensibly “unworthy”–unworthy of pay, then unworthy of help, then unworthy of equality under the law.

So far, so horrible.

But it gets worse. As more & more revenue is denied to the “unworthy,” & concentrated in the hands of the “worthy,” the poor get poorer. First they can’t afford luxury items, than any frivolous purchase. Then they can’t even keep up their homes. Windows are covered with plastic bags, and glass cutters make less money. And so on with other skilled trades. People live in squalor because the meritocracy has no room for them. Consumer demand doesn’t keep pace with other aspects of “economic growth.” (Because they have “insufficient” merit, see? They “don’t matter.”) And the skilled laborers see their markets, whether for shoes or siding or roofing or artwork, collapse. This takes the economy down, slowly, surely, and into ruin.

So, yeah, economics.

Equality is better than meritocracy; because it’s better for general quality of life when “underperforming” workers are paid enough to live comfortable lives and support a large number of local tradesmen.

28

I don’t see why this would be the case. The way I see it, everyone living in our modern society requires a vast support network to maintain our lifestyles. That means that in a true meritocracy, we should have a large number of winners* and only a small number of losers. All those people who contribute to that network should be rewarded, and those better at it should receive better rewards.

The problem is that we don’t have an actual meritocracy. When Thurston Howell IV gets a high paying job somewhere because his father was rich even though he spends his day playing golf and drinking martinis, that’s not meritocracy. When the owner of the means of production reaps the vast majority of the rewards of what his workers produced, that’s not meritocracy (because let’s face it - it doesn’t take innate talent or hard work to sign your name to a check). But it also doesn’t benefit society to pay Joe and Bob (both of who work the same job) the same amount even if Joe works hard and Bob sits on his ass most of the day.

Given all that, I don’t see why it’s so controversial to pay the better and harder workers a larger amount, and to pay those whose job is more difficult to master a larger amount. And IMHO, that’s what a meritocracy is.

  • Assuming we define winning as earning enough money to lead a comfortable lifestyle, as opposed to making enough to buy a yacht, have a private airplane, own your own golf course, etc.
29

This is a classic case of “be careful what you wish for.”

First off, we need to give everyone the best chance possible to excel, so we have to start as young as possible. We test our children so we can segment them into schools that specialize in what they’re best for - music, math, athletics, whatever. The testing gets more and more rigorous as they age, and as some fall behind, they’re shifted to “schools for losers” - enough to give them basic literacy but no more.

Along the way they’re tested for their aptitudes in real-life occupations. People with organizational skills are put in management training programs, athletes go into elite training programs, etc. By the time you’re 21 we pretty much know everything about you and the only thing left to determine is how much additional training you need to be a lawyer, architect, musician, etc.

From then on, it’s strictly a winnowing process. Following Jack Welch’s model. The top 20% of performers advance, the vast majority are provided with some additional training to monitor their improvement, but otherwise stuck in the same position, and the bottom 10% are fired. That continues every year so that eventually the workforce turns over entirely except for the absolute peak performers. And I’m not even talking about the late bloomers who discover their passion in their late teens or early 20s.

As for where all those people go, the meritocracy doesn’t have an answer. Having been trained and guided into a particular area since you were in pre-school, being told at age 35 or so that you’re no longer an elite pretty much disqualifies you from continuing in the field you’ve been working all your life.

I suppose we can hope for a benevolent meritocracy which provides life’s losers with with lifelong retraining programs so they can be re-tested and re-educated into second careers. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

30

What are you proposing should be provided for “life’s losers”? A kick to the curb?

31

That’s one way of doing it. IMHO it’s a terrible way, but it is an option. My proposal is simply that the people who do a good job get paid better and promoted within their job type. The flip side is that we don’t put people in a position because daddy is rich and knows the CEO / donated a building to the university / whatever. We also don’t keep someone just because “they need the job.” If someone is bad at their job and demonstrates no ability or interest to improve, they get fired, and hopefully they find something else for which they are better suited. If they can’t find anything, we should have a social safety net to provide a basic standard of living.

32

It should also be pointed out that despite the “cracy” suffix meritocracy is a not a system of government its an attribute of a system of government, and something to be aspired to. Just a general principle that “hey wouldn’t it be a good idea if we choose positions of power and responsibility based on whether someone is good at their job rather from a small cliche of aristocratic families, wouldn’t it be better if say the person in charge of the sewage system was chosen based on a knowledge of how sewage systems work, rather than being related to inbred aristocratic descendants of some feudal warlord who successfully ingratiated themselves with the right contender to the throne half a millennia ago”

It says nothing about how that is to be achieved. Traditionally that answer (in the west for the past couple of centuries) has been “by a government bureaucracy (fed by a public run education system, and led by a liberal democratic system of government) combined with a capitalist economy”. But the communist systems of the 20th century also definitely set out meritocracy as a stated aim.

33

Exactly. Although I would add a willingness to work hard in addition to knowledge and talent to the attributes that contribute to overall merit.

34

I’d rather someone be promoted to manager because of their good work and fail rather than the other reasons people get promoted 90%+ of the time
I like them
They kiss my ass
They have a penis

35

At the risk of nitpicking, though, this means it wasn’t an actual meritocracy. A system where the father can cajole the admissions tutor into accepting an underqualified Toby is not an actual meritocracy, it’s a corrupt-and-less-than-meritocratic system. A real meritocracy wouldn’t allow this sort of thing (in theory.)

36

Right. Some of the objections in this thread seem to be objecting to what amounts to an aristocracy labeled as a “meritocracy” rather than an actual meritocracy where people who do a good job get promoted and people who do a bad job get fired.

37

Yes, that was my point (apologies for the sarcastic exclamation). The father had earned his distinguished place on merit, in part by writing a book which reflected on how in a meritocracy the elite would still conspire to keep themselves in power, and then used his position to ensure decidedly unmeritorious benefit for his son.

38

withdrawn

39

Did this actually happen to the janitors and secretaries and engineers and lawyers who were let go by GE under Jack Welch?

Doubt it. Having worked for GE probably looked good on a resume.

I was once in a high level software development class where the instructor mentioned than everyone he knew had been fired at least once. Didn’t stop them from getting another job.

Anything close to perfect meritocracy is as impossible as a society with anywhere close to perfect equity. I wouldn’t automatically say that just because something would pushes in a meritocratic or equity direction, that’s all you need to know to say it it is good or bad.

Special education classes reasonably have lower student-teacher ratios than regular classes. But Cal Tech also has low student-teacher ratios. Both seem justifiable to me.

40

Yes, but that actual meritocracy won’t be allowed. Because the people in power, however much they might laud meritocracy when explaining why they have power, are not going to stand by and let their less meritorious children lose out to actual talent. Its simply against human nature for someone in the top 20% of society to view the prospect of their child dropping to the third or fourth still less god forbid the fifth quintile with anything other than horror and a deep rooted determination to prevent this from ever coming to pass.

An aristocracy pretending to be a meritocracy is as good as it gets.