7 ms·

A belief in meritocracy is not only false: it’s morally wrong

23 points by foolrush 8y ago

blastbeat 8y ago
Belief in meritocracy is yet another version of the just-world fallacy. If you belief in a just world, you need to fight off any counter evidence. This leads automatically to discrimination. Same thing with merits and success. To not acknowledge happenstance and luck is a huge red flag for me.
- sharemywin 8y ago
  Also, it assumes one right answer. That everything can be converted to a number and combined into a rank-able scale. There's different perspectives and trade offs.
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    When people say things like that, what I hear is that "the scale on which things are ranked should be opaque and only understood by the elect, i.e. the people I prefer", not that there is an alternative to ranking things to choose between tradeoffs.
  - sebastos 8y ago
    Why does it assume that? It assumes that when _you_ make up a scale, the people that deserve to be at the top of it tend to be there. There's no reason for it to imply there's one universal scale of good people versus bad people. For instance, if you want to understand why some people make more money than others (a trait that _is_ well-ordered, and can be put into a list), then somebody who believes in meritocracy would say that the people who make the most money earned it. If you want to understand why different people hold different positions in a company, then the meritocrist would say that between all the people who wanted each position, the person who was best for it tends to be the one that gets it. Each of those scales may be more or less sympathetic to an explanation by way of meritocracy. But anyone who wants to make that argument doesn't have to construct an a priori global list of goodness for all people to give you an answer.
    - sharemywin 8y ago
      That's the thing nobody deserves anything. How do you prove one scale is better than another? GDP - arbitrary. GINI index - arbitrary. Violent submission? I guess at the end of the day there's your answer.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  I think talking about "the just world fallacy" is a tiresome straw man. It's one side of a false dichotomy, and not something that people should debate any more than "nature vs. nurture".
  - blastbeat 8y ago
    Can you explain this any more?
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      I'm not sure I want to, because I vaguely remember being downvoted for similar comments in the past. But what I am referring to with "nature vs. nurture" is that you can't separate them. Take away the physical basis of a person, all the DNA, and there would be no person. Put a newborn in a box, i.e. no nurture, a person would also not develop. So you can't assign a fraction to either one. Similarly, there is no separating randomness from selection/merit, in my opinion, because the latter acts on the former and both pervade everyone's life. That is what I mean by a false dichotomy. It's not just that life involves both randomness and selection, but that they are not opposed things.
      - blastbeat 8y ago
        > That is what I mean by a false dichotomy. It's not just that life involves both randomness and selection, but that they are not opposed things. Ok but I don't see why the just world fallacy is a false dichotomy. It is precisely a fallacy, because people don't acknowledge randomness and selection.
        perl4ever 8y ago
        The way a society organizes by merit is through the selection and ranking of qualities that arise randomly. So it doesn't make any sense to me to say the world is just rather than unjust, or vice versa. Thus, I reject the dichotomy, as applied to the world. Something specific could be just or unjust, of course.
onlydeadheroes 8y ago
Talk is cheap. Meritocracy is the new bad word for some political segments, but the day you need complex surgery and they bring in the janitor, you grow up real fast.
- vibrato 8y ago
  Or just die
  - onlydeadheroes 8y ago
    "It always seems a bit abstract, doesn't it? Other people dying" - Tyrion
  - blastbeat 8y ago
    Or just quit your job as a surgeon, when you realize that you're making much less then some bullshit-jobber.
- devoply 8y ago
  Heavily contrasted things such as a janitor and a surgeon are not what is meant a meritocracy. What is usually meant is within an organization of surgeons ranked based on talent, effort, and achievement. Fact is all of those things are based on politics, perceptions, and in some cases luck -- especially the higher up the hierarchy you go as individuals may get credit for efforts of people below them and all of that is attributed to their efforts. The most competent surgeon may seem the most competent because she only takes easier cases. A good surgeon might work 36 which might be worse for his patients survival than if he works 12 hour shifts. You might get individual surgeons that are very lucky in terms of their success rate, not for any other reason than survivor bias. You might get a team of surgeons where a leader takes credit but it's the juniors that are actually really good at what they do.
  - onlydeadheroes 8y ago
    > Fact is all of those things are based on politics, perceptions, and in some cases luck Says you. Even an average talent can identify an excellent talent. People who stand against meritocracy are the people who have never even reached average talent. > The most competent surgeon may seem the most competent because she only takes easier cases. That is the kind of trick you think works when you are a child, but actually doesn't work among peers.
benchaney 8y ago
This article (like so many others) inappropriately conflates believing that meritocracy is ideal with believing that meritocracy exists today. Given that, it’s hard to interpret its conclusions.
1787 8y ago
I am annoyed by the article's use of Bill Gates to exemplify the "fortuitous circumstances that figure into every success story". Bill Gates and Microsoft is not "every success story". I would be surprised to find even a hardcore believer in an ideologized meritocracy who thought that tail events like Bill Gates and Microsoft didn't have a huge luck component. Meritocracy-as-strong-just-world-hypothesis is a weak-man argument. I am a believer in meritocracy. But, I note, I'm not a believer in any ideological big-M Meritocracy. Rather, I think meritocracy is the best practical way we know to organize things. In a liberal society, rather than get everybody to agree on the latent virtues they love the most, I think it makes sense to have demonstrated capability as a common ground evaluation metric. As another poster in the thread suggests, what do you want from your surgeon if not demonstrated capability?
rmah 8y ago
As far as I can tell, that article should properly be titled "A belief that life is a meritocracy is not only false, it's morally wrong". Most of the author's problems seem to revolve around the fact that real life is not actually a pure meritocracy, not in the idea that meritocracy itself is a bad ideal. Even his examples where people show bias in assessment of others when they believe they are operating in a merit-based system are just examples that the system is not actually merit-based. What I find disappointing is that the author does not even bother to offer even a hint at an alternative.
- supercanuck 8y ago
  No true scotsman?
- ewzimm 8y ago
  The argument that it is morally wrong seems to hinge on the argument that meritocracy promotes selfishness. However, I find the examples used to be problematic. It's shown that when people are led to believe that their success in a game is based on their skill, they are less likely to support redistributing the rewards. This is an example of selfishness. However, what about all the other participants in the game? If they believe that they lost because of someone else's skill, are they less likely to expect redistribution of rewards? If this is the case, it could be shown that meritocracy promotes selfishness in the person at the top but selflessness in everyone else, and therefore a net gain in selflessness in society. As a thought expermiment, what kind of world would most people prefer to live in, one in which success and rewards can be gained by skill and hard work or one in which success is distributed randomly? This article seems to imply that most people prefer the former. If that's true, then meritocracy is an ideal to work toward, no matter how perfectly or imperfectly it exists today. The other subject discussed is people's perception of effort and skill in success. Most people seem to think that it's an important factor. But isn't this true even if luck and circumstance are large factors as well? It's a well known fact that people who win lotteries often lose their money and end up less happy than they expect. Anyone can be given the world and waste it. It's not wrong to believe that sustained success requires both effort and strong external support. Therefore, what I learned from this article is that most people want to live in a meritocracy, and I suspect that most people are happier with their lack of success and reward if they believe that their cicrumstances are somewhat under their control and there exists opportunity to better themselves through effort. We should work toward a more meritocratic world so that more people can realize these ambitions.
squozzer 8y ago
I would argue that as a way to describe a selection process, "Meritocracy", warts and all, works great. By warts, I mean that merit, as shorthand for "assessment of skill, talent, or capability", has other factors mixed in because flawed people decide who gets life's prizes. The Gates example shows the missing ingredient - not luck, but recognition of luck's role in success, what some might call humility. The article referred to gratitude research, which probably means the same thing. It's a missing ingredient because it doesn't seem too valuable anymore, especially when compared to other qualities, such as the ability to "talk smack." And it's associated with sackcloth and ashes, or being a "loser." Moreover, it's often called false. Coming back to meritocracy, what do we have as alternatives? Random selection? Suppression of individual differences (aka C.S. Lewis' "Parity of Esteem")? I don't know. Parity of Esteem ref = http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/Toast_CSL.pdf http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/Toast_CSL.pdf
shkkmo 8y ago
I would point out that the equal opportunity espoused in the quote that start that article is not at all the same thing as meritocracy. A balanced playing field doesn't mean that luck plays no role. It also doesn't mean that you can't provide a safety net and do some balancing of outcomes. It just means you have eliminated systematic biases.
gumby 8y ago
It seems most people don't realise that "meritocracy" was coined half a century ago as a sarcastic term for a possible dystopia. One in which many people now find themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Actual dystopia, surely? He was referring to major flaws of the two stream, grammar and secondary modern, school system in place in the UK at the time. That it led to "an obsession with quantification, test-scoring, and qualifications". So we still inhabit it. That two tier education was supposed to be a three stream system including technical schools for engineering and trades, except almost none of those were built. So the UK spent decades wondering aloud why our education couldn't turn out engineers and tradespeople like Germany. Subsequent UK attempts at school specialisation have been even worse.
joyeuse6701 8y ago
Is luck evenly distributed? If so, then at least on one level of abstraction, is not the world fair? If it is not evenly distributed, then by what mechanism is luck parceled out to individuals? Bill Gates may be lucky in that he had little choice over the circumstances in which he was born into, but did not his parents make decisions that led to a better outcome? His luck could be said to be the merit of his ancestors.
manfredo 8y ago
There's definitely proof that the world does respect hard work. Consider the fact that Asians, Whites, Hispanics, and Blacks spend time working on homework in that order: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/08/10/analyzing-the-homework-gap-among-high-school-students/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/... Asians spend twice as much time on homework as compared to Whites, and about three times as compared to Blacks. Kids of high income families spend more time working on homework than low income kids. So the fact that Asians comprise the student body proportionally larger than Whites, and whites more than Blacks is evidence that hard work pays off. I think these claims that meritocracy is false lack nuance. It's not that meritocracy isn't fair, it's that a pure meritocracy free of bias is too fair: it doesn't attempt to rectify the fact not everyone starts with the same resources and that certain groups have different attitudes towards thinks like education than others. Granted many of you are probably thinking that the fact that meritocracy doesn't correct for these things makes it inherently unfair, and many are probably thinking that the notion that our processes to allocate opportunitiea should correct for things like disparate time spent on study is itself an act of unfairness. And there's no one right answer to this. This is a kind of question where there is no answer, but rather society continuously develops and evolves a concensus about the right approach.
- Data_Junkie 8y ago
  Not true. We can see that there is no meritocracy. It's not true. No lack of nuance involved, he who has eyes to see let him see. There is nothing people are more blind to than their own advantages.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    Apologies if I'm not recognizing some sort of sarcasm, but saying "he who had eyes to see let him see" and "people are blind to their own advantages" cuts both ways in this debate. Whites are underrepresented at Yale, for example. Is it fair for them to shut down talks about affirmative action because they are underrepresented, and thus they are entitled to dismiss the arguments of others because "he who had eyes to see let him see"? That statement really rubs me the wrong way. In order to form the concensus that pleases society as much as possible (or put more cynically, the concensus that minimizes social displeasure) we need to hear how every group sees the situation. "He who had eyes let him see" is functionally not much different from saying "those who disagree with me shut up". Again, apologies if I'm not seeing sarcasm or reductio ad absurdum. It's hard to convey over text comments.
zzzcpan 8y ago
I kind of agree with the article. I think of meritocracy as just another way to promote exploitation of people, hard work, submissive attitudes, acceptance of inequality. Basically every capitalist's dream society. But it's pretty bizarre that people actually believe that being exploited is just hard work they have to do to get ahead and not being able to meet basic needs to live a normal life is just not working hard enough or not being talented enough to deserve a normal life. It's morally acceptable to believe in meritocracy only as long as everyone's basic needs are met and they can't be exploited.
forstdcli 8y ago
Its true people are not equal in thwir ambition, raw intellivence (people can be intelligent in many waya even not know math but be a creative genius and do well as say a self taught film artist. I kmow some) but its not true the inequality is calibrated by each layer of socioeconomic demographic. Some really smart people Will percolate up through layers of poverty or whatever socioeconomic status by being curious hard working dedicated and iterating on a non self deatructive attitude towards themaelves and the people and communities that will support their growth. In the same vein people born into the top can be lazy entitled not very smart and shuffled into good colleges by helicopter parents managing connections at admissions offices and babystepping and forcing their kids into having the resumes other people garner on their own accord without any authoritarian guidance. Therefore I think it is important to make sure that we minimise bias and othwr barriers as much as possible to help people who are naturlaly more ambitious experience less unnecessary setbacks. Because trust me as someone who spent the first half of their childhood on welfare there are plenty of barriers people will naturally face for the rest of their life without even considering financial barriers or others. A lack of social support and being born into self deatructive habits and thught processes can take a lifetime to reverse and if someone can do that when noone else is around to support them has already in my mind shown an extraordinary level of mental strength ambition and dedication, and ultimately theres not a single college degree or career that can be saved if someone doeant have atleast a healthy dose of these things. This article seems to address equality as if it exists by socioeconomic layer but we should consider it by trait. An easy way to do this is to track movement. Most famous economists Will tell you what they care about in wealth inequality isnt that there are poor and rich people. They seem to accept there will always be a bell curve (the extremeities of this curve and taxes for each bracket I understand are go for debate and im not saying they shouldnt be) but actually in their data analytics what they are teasing out is movement. They dont care/see an issue with someone beung poor what they care about is that economics allow for someone to be able to move from poor to rich and vise versa that rich people arent entrenched without any economic accountability to be moved around in the system, and it is particularly that, the fact that the upper echelon has the ability to exponentiate their wealth and that having a basic education in finance and education is mostly closed source and for the elite is what we should be worried about.
ObscureMind 8y ago
The article talks about morals, which by themselves are based on values and beliefs, therefore not defensible ethically and logically. Meritocracy is not ethically defensible under argumentative logic -- Hans Herman Hoppe has provided the framework for that.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Morals are not defensible ethically? That sounds... really bizarre. Could you explain why you think that is true? Or, could you explain why you think ethics are not based on values and beliefs?
rijoja 8y ago
"Perhaps more disturbing, simply holding meritocracy as a value seems to promote discriminatory behaviour" Of course it does, meritocracy is the process of discriminating good candidates from bad candidates. I'm so fed up with people attaching emotions to the word discrimination. It is not an inherent evil. "Yet Castilla and Benard found that, ironically, attempts to implement meritocracy leads to just the kinds of inequalities that it aims to eliminate." Then they haven't implemented meritocracy properly then, have they?

23 points by foolrush 8y ago

Belief in meritocracy is yet another version of the just-world fallacy. If you belief in a just world, you need to fight off any counter evidence. This leads automatically to discrimination. Same thing with merits and success. To not acknowledge happenstance and luck is a huge red flag for me.

sharemywin 8y ago
Also, it assumes one right answer. That everything can be converted to a number and combined into a rank-able scale. There's different perspectives and trade offs.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  When people say things like that, what I hear is that "the scale on which things are ranked should be opaque and only understood by the elect, i.e. the people I prefer", not that there is an alternative to ranking things to choose between tradeoffs.
- sebastos 8y ago
  Why does it assume that? It assumes that when _you_ make up a scale, the people that deserve to be at the top of it tend to be there. There's no reason for it to imply there's one universal scale of good people versus bad people. For instance, if you want to understand why some people make more money than others (a trait that _is_ well-ordered, and can be put into a list), then somebody who believes in meritocracy would say that the people who make the most money earned it. If you want to understand why different people hold different positions in a company, then the meritocrist would say that between all the people who wanted each position, the person who was best for it tends to be the one that gets it. Each of those scales may be more or less sympathetic to an explanation by way of meritocracy. But anyone who wants to make that argument doesn't have to construct an a priori global list of goodness for all people to give you an answer.
  - sharemywin 8y ago
    That's the thing nobody deserves anything. How do you prove one scale is better than another? GDP - arbitrary. GINI index - arbitrary. Violent submission? I guess at the end of the day there's your answer.
perl4ever 8y ago
I think talking about "the just world fallacy" is a tiresome straw man. It's one side of a false dichotomy, and not something that people should debate any more than "nature vs. nurture".
- blastbeat 8y ago
  Can you explain this any more?
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    I'm not sure I want to, because I vaguely remember being downvoted for similar comments in the past. But what I am referring to with "nature vs. nurture" is that you can't separate them. Take away the physical basis of a person, all the DNA, and there would be no person. Put a newborn in a box, i.e. no nurture, a person would also not develop. So you can't assign a fraction to either one. Similarly, there is no separating randomness from selection/merit, in my opinion, because the latter acts on the former and both pervade everyone's life. That is what I mean by a false dichotomy. It's not just that life involves both randomness and selection, but that they are not opposed things.
    - blastbeat 8y ago
      > That is what I mean by a false dichotomy. It's not just that life involves both randomness and selection, but that they are not opposed things. Ok but I don't see why the just world fallacy is a false dichotomy. It is precisely a fallacy, because people don't acknowledge randomness and selection.
      - perl4ever 8y ago
        The way a society organizes by merit is through the selection and ranking of qualities that arise randomly. So it doesn't make any sense to me to say the world is just rather than unjust, or vice versa. Thus, I reject the dichotomy, as applied to the world. Something specific could be just or unjust, of course.

onlydeadheroes 8y ago

Talk is cheap. Meritocracy is the new bad word for some political segments, but the day you need complex surgery and they bring in the janitor, you grow up real fast.

vibrato 8y ago
Or just die
- onlydeadheroes 8y ago
  "It always seems a bit abstract, doesn't it? Other people dying" - Tyrion
- blastbeat 8y ago
  Or just quit your job as a surgeon, when you realize that you're making much less then some bullshit-jobber.
devoply 8y ago
Heavily contrasted things such as a janitor and a surgeon are not what is meant a meritocracy. What is usually meant is within an organization of surgeons ranked based on talent, effort, and achievement. Fact is all of those things are based on politics, perceptions, and in some cases luck -- especially the higher up the hierarchy you go as individuals may get credit for efforts of people below them and all of that is attributed to their efforts. The most competent surgeon may seem the most competent because she only takes easier cases. A good surgeon might work 36 which might be worse for his patients survival than if he works 12 hour shifts. You might get individual surgeons that are very lucky in terms of their success rate, not for any other reason than survivor bias. You might get a team of surgeons where a leader takes credit but it's the juniors that are actually really good at what they do.
- onlydeadheroes 8y ago
  > Fact is all of those things are based on politics, perceptions, and in some cases luck Says you. Even an average talent can identify an excellent talent. People who stand against meritocracy are the people who have never even reached average talent. > The most competent surgeon may seem the most competent because she only takes easier cases. That is the kind of trick you think works when you are a child, but actually doesn't work among peers.

benchaney 8y ago

This article (like so many others) inappropriately conflates believing that meritocracy is ideal with believing that meritocracy exists today. Given that, it’s hard to interpret its conclusions.

1787 8y ago

I am annoyed by the article's use of Bill Gates to exemplify the "fortuitous circumstances that figure into every success story". Bill Gates and Microsoft is not "every success story". I would be surprised to find even a hardcore believer in an ideologized meritocracy who thought that tail events like Bill Gates and Microsoft didn't have a huge luck component. Meritocracy-as-strong-just-world-hypothesis is a weak-man argument. I am a believer in meritocracy. But, I note, I'm not a believer in any ideological big-M Meritocracy. Rather, I think meritocracy is the best practical way we know to organize things. In a liberal society, rather than get everybody to agree on the latent virtues they love the most, I think it makes sense to have demonstrated capability as a common ground evaluation metric. As another poster in the thread suggests, what do you want from your surgeon if not demonstrated capability?

rmah 8y ago

As far as I can tell, that article should properly be titled "A belief that life is a meritocracy is not only false, it's morally wrong". Most of the author's problems seem to revolve around the fact that real life is not actually a pure meritocracy, not in the idea that meritocracy itself is a bad ideal. Even his examples where people show bias in assessment of others when they believe they are operating in a merit-based system are just examples that the system is not actually merit-based. What I find disappointing is that the author does not even bother to offer even a hint at an alternative.

supercanuck 8y ago
No true scotsman?
ewzimm 8y ago
The argument that it is morally wrong seems to hinge on the argument that meritocracy promotes selfishness. However, I find the examples used to be problematic. It's shown that when people are led to believe that their success in a game is based on their skill, they are less likely to support redistributing the rewards. This is an example of selfishness. However, what about all the other participants in the game? If they believe that they lost because of someone else's skill, are they less likely to expect redistribution of rewards? If this is the case, it could be shown that meritocracy promotes selfishness in the person at the top but selflessness in everyone else, and therefore a net gain in selflessness in society. As a thought expermiment, what kind of world would most people prefer to live in, one in which success and rewards can be gained by skill and hard work or one in which success is distributed randomly? This article seems to imply that most people prefer the former. If that's true, then meritocracy is an ideal to work toward, no matter how perfectly or imperfectly it exists today. The other subject discussed is people's perception of effort and skill in success. Most people seem to think that it's an important factor. But isn't this true even if luck and circumstance are large factors as well? It's a well known fact that people who win lotteries often lose their money and end up less happy than they expect. Anyone can be given the world and waste it. It's not wrong to believe that sustained success requires both effort and strong external support. Therefore, what I learned from this article is that most people want to live in a meritocracy, and I suspect that most people are happier with their lack of success and reward if they believe that their cicrumstances are somewhat under their control and there exists opportunity to better themselves through effort. We should work toward a more meritocratic world so that more people can realize these ambitions.

squozzer 8y ago

I would argue that as a way to describe a selection process, "Meritocracy", warts and all, works great. By warts, I mean that merit, as shorthand for "assessment of skill, talent, or capability", has other factors mixed in because flawed people decide who gets life's prizes. The Gates example shows the missing ingredient - not luck, but recognition of luck's role in success, what some might call humility. The article referred to gratitude research, which probably means the same thing. It's a missing ingredient because it doesn't seem too valuable anymore, especially when compared to other qualities, such as the ability to "talk smack." And it's associated with sackcloth and ashes, or being a "loser." Moreover, it's often called false. Coming back to meritocracy, what do we have as alternatives? Random selection? Suppression of individual differences (aka C.S. Lewis' "Parity of Esteem")? I don't know. Parity of Esteem ref = http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/Toast_CSL.pdf http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/Toast_CSL.pdf

shkkmo 8y ago

I would point out that the equal opportunity espoused in the quote that start that article is not at all the same thing as meritocracy. A balanced playing field doesn't mean that luck plays no role. It also doesn't mean that you can't provide a safety net and do some balancing of outcomes. It just means you have eliminated systematic biases.

gumby 8y ago

It seems most people don't realise that "meritocracy" was coined half a century ago as a sarcastic term for a possible dystopia. One in which many people now find themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Actual dystopia, surely? He was referring to major flaws of the two stream, grammar and secondary modern, school system in place in the UK at the time. That it led to "an obsession with quantification, test-scoring, and qualifications". So we still inhabit it. That two tier education was supposed to be a three stream system including technical schools for engineering and trades, except almost none of those were built. So the UK spent decades wondering aloud why our education couldn't turn out engineers and tradespeople like Germany. Subsequent UK attempts at school specialisation have been even worse.

joyeuse6701 8y ago

Is luck evenly distributed? If so, then at least on one level of abstraction, is not the world fair? If it is not evenly distributed, then by what mechanism is luck parceled out to individuals? Bill Gates may be lucky in that he had little choice over the circumstances in which he was born into, but did not his parents make decisions that led to a better outcome? His luck could be said to be the merit of his ancestors.

manfredo 8y ago

There's definitely proof that the world does respect hard work. Consider the fact that Asians, Whites, Hispanics, and Blacks spend time working on homework in that order: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/08/10/analyzing-the-homework-gap-among-high-school-students/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/... Asians spend twice as much time on homework as compared to Whites, and about three times as compared to Blacks. Kids of high income families spend more time working on homework than low income kids. So the fact that Asians comprise the student body proportionally larger than Whites, and whites more than Blacks is evidence that hard work pays off. I think these claims that meritocracy is false lack nuance. It's not that meritocracy isn't fair, it's that a pure meritocracy free of bias is too fair: it doesn't attempt to rectify the fact not everyone starts with the same resources and that certain groups have different attitudes towards thinks like education than others. Granted many of you are probably thinking that the fact that meritocracy doesn't correct for these things makes it inherently unfair, and many are probably thinking that the notion that our processes to allocate opportunitiea should correct for things like disparate time spent on study is itself an act of unfairness. And there's no one right answer to this. This is a kind of question where there is no answer, but rather society continuously develops and evolves a concensus about the right approach.

Data_Junkie 8y ago
Not true. We can see that there is no meritocracy. It's not true. No lack of nuance involved, he who has eyes to see let him see. There is nothing people are more blind to than their own advantages.
- manfredo 8y ago
  Apologies if I'm not recognizing some sort of sarcasm, but saying "he who had eyes to see let him see" and "people are blind to their own advantages" cuts both ways in this debate. Whites are underrepresented at Yale, for example. Is it fair for them to shut down talks about affirmative action because they are underrepresented, and thus they are entitled to dismiss the arguments of others because "he who had eyes to see let him see"? That statement really rubs me the wrong way. In order to form the concensus that pleases society as much as possible (or put more cynically, the concensus that minimizes social displeasure) we need to hear how every group sees the situation. "He who had eyes let him see" is functionally not much different from saying "those who disagree with me shut up". Again, apologies if I'm not seeing sarcasm or reductio ad absurdum. It's hard to convey over text comments.

zzzcpan 8y ago

I kind of agree with the article. I think of meritocracy as just another way to promote exploitation of people, hard work, submissive attitudes, acceptance of inequality. Basically every capitalist's dream society. But it's pretty bizarre that people actually believe that being exploited is just hard work they have to do to get ahead and not being able to meet basic needs to live a normal life is just not working hard enough or not being talented enough to deserve a normal life. It's morally acceptable to believe in meritocracy only as long as everyone's basic needs are met and they can't be exploited.

forstdcli 8y ago

Its true people are not equal in thwir ambition, raw intellivence (people can be intelligent in many waya even not know math but be a creative genius and do well as say a self taught film artist. I kmow some) but its not true the inequality is calibrated by each layer of socioeconomic demographic. Some really smart people Will percolate up through layers of poverty or whatever socioeconomic status by being curious hard working dedicated and iterating on a non self deatructive attitude towards themaelves and the people and communities that will support their growth. In the same vein people born into the top can be lazy entitled not very smart and shuffled into good colleges by helicopter parents managing connections at admissions offices and babystepping and forcing their kids into having the resumes other people garner on their own accord without any authoritarian guidance. Therefore I think it is important to make sure that we minimise bias and othwr barriers as much as possible to help people who are naturlaly more ambitious experience less unnecessary setbacks. Because trust me as someone who spent the first half of their childhood on welfare there are plenty of barriers people will naturally face for the rest of their life without even considering financial barriers or others. A lack of social support and being born into self deatructive habits and thught processes can take a lifetime to reverse and if someone can do that when noone else is around to support them has already in my mind shown an extraordinary level of mental strength ambition and dedication, and ultimately theres not a single college degree or career that can be saved if someone doeant have atleast a healthy dose of these things. This article seems to address equality as if it exists by socioeconomic layer but we should consider it by trait. An easy way to do this is to track movement. Most famous economists Will tell you what they care about in wealth inequality isnt that there are poor and rich people. They seem to accept there will always be a bell curve (the extremeities of this curve and taxes for each bracket I understand are go for debate and im not saying they shouldnt be) but actually in their data analytics what they are teasing out is movement. They dont care/see an issue with someone beung poor what they care about is that economics allow for someone to be able to move from poor to rich and vise versa that rich people arent entrenched without any economic accountability to be moved around in the system, and it is particularly that, the fact that the upper echelon has the ability to exponentiate their wealth and that having a basic education in finance and education is mostly closed source and for the elite is what we should be worried about.

ObscureMind 8y ago

The article talks about morals, which by themselves are based on values and beliefs, therefore not defensible ethically and logically. Meritocracy is not ethically defensible under argumentative logic -- Hans Herman Hoppe has provided the framework for that.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Morals are not defensible ethically? That sounds... really bizarre. Could you explain why you think that is true? Or, could you explain why you think ethics are not based on values and beliefs?

rijoja 8y ago

"Perhaps more disturbing, simply holding meritocracy as a value seems to promote discriminatory behaviour" Of course it does, meritocracy is the process of discriminating good candidates from bad candidates. I'm so fed up with people attaching emotions to the word discrimination. It is not an inherent evil. "Yet Castilla and Benard found that, ironically, attempts to implement meritocracy leads to just the kinds of inequalities that it aims to eliminate." Then they haven't implemented meritocracy properly then, have they?