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As explored in the original book [0], it is hypocritical to both succeed because of a meritocracy and also support the idea that the meritocracy is just. The un
by Kednicma 6y ago
As explored in the original book [0], it is hypocritical to both succeed because of a meritocracy and also support the idea that the meritocracy is just. The underlying principle is that justice empathizes with everyone, not just those with merit, in determining a path forward. To quote the author,
> Educational injustice enabled people to preserve their illusions, while inequality of opportunity fostered the myth of human equality.
To get a glimpse at true justice, please consider the following thought experiment, which leads to what I call "algorithmic justice." There is a traditional game that children play where there are two children and a cake. The first child cuts the cake, and the second child selects which piece goes to whom. Let us do the same, but more broadly. Take the resources of our society, the raw inputs and the processed goods and the man-hours of labor, and apportion them to each person as seems fair and just, by asking each person to apportion them amongst each other, and going to the iterated minimization of disagreement and regret.
This is a game that many political ideologies have attempted, but they have all failed because they chose to take a shortcut and use some sort of heuristic rule for judging people. However, it turns out that people are too unique to be judged as a single collective group fairly by any single metric.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
- raxxorrax 6y agoI don't take the term as serious as the author of the book, nor do I have political ambitions to implement it. I think it was a rug that appealed to fairness. It was pretty ugly, but that is another story. How the author formulates the critique is specifically not how it is understood by adherents from my experience. Not only for justice, imagine access for disabled people in public services like extra ramps or similar facilities which society provides. Do they have "merit" under natural law? Perhaps not. Does that mean adherents want to just ignore them? No, on the contrary. There are different a priori assumptions by people that like meritocracy and its critics. What about social justice? Which metric do you use here to judge people. By frequency of occurrence by immutable characteristics? You can take both terms to mean the exact same thing. Doesn't mean you cannot have two groups endlessly fighting about who is correct about it. It is not a political ideology. Maybe it is now, but that is more reactionary. But normally it would get some laughs if propped up that much. What it certainly never meant is that you somehow need to earn your keep to receive justice and be treated fairly. But I understand the critique if it is conceived this way. edit: We currently need to earn our keep in society for economic survival. I think working towards changing that is preferable.