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Every elite in history has called itself a "meritocracy". Who defines "merit"? The elite. They will always look out for themselves in doing so. If anything, th

Every elite in history has called itself a "meritocracy". Who defines "merit"? The elite. They will always look out for themselves in doing so. If anything, the "dumb", brutal aristocracy of medieval Europe had more of a claim of innate superiority ("merit") than the current elite. Because of superior nutrition and better working conditions, they were half a foot taller, probably 20 IQ points smarter, and overall more physically, aesthetically, and intellectually fit than the peasants. If you're "in the know" about these sorts of things, you realize that raw intelligence isn't what's valued by our society. It's still about connections. More specifically, it's about adopting the behavioral patterns and attitudes of well-connected people. What we actually have in the US is some degree of social mobility within the middle class. The parasitic upper class is still a problem, and resistant to improvement. The lower class (which is about half) is still screwed. But it's relatively easy to move from the 50th percentile to the 95th percentile either through unusual talent or extreme sacrifice.

bingobangobongo 14y ago
Whether or not the term "meritocracy" is thrown around as propaganda is a separate issue from whether or not we should want to live in a meritocracy, which is what the article was about. In fact, most people don't want to live a pure meritocracy, as that would for example preclude the freedom to give gifts to others (as gifts are by definition unearned). I think one property that our economy ought have as we head into a future of machines increasingly displacing human workers is this: If all human work in the economy stopped, wealth should converge to an approximately fair distribution, preferably within a small number of lifetimes.
- svachalek 14y ago
  And in a world without work, what is "fair"? It will almost certainly go to those who own the machines.
  - bingobangobongo 14y ago
    I almost wrote "uniform", but that seemed simplistic since it didn't take into account factors like age, number of children, etc. But if the majority of the wealth goes to the few owners of the machines, then the economy certainly doesn't have the property I'm talking about.
Uchikoma 14y ago
"What we actually have in the US is some degree of social mobility within the middle class." The article seems to contradict that: "Using one-generation measures of social mobility—how much a father’s relative income influences that of his adult son—America does half as well as Nordic countries, and about the same as Britain and Italy, Europe’s least-mobile places."
- svachalek 14y ago
  Michael is saying people within the US middle class can do better or worse than their parents, but children are unlikely to rise or fall to a completely different class. This is orthogonal to any comparison with Sweden.
arethuza 14y ago
"What we actually have in the US is some degree of social mobility within the middle class." That pretty much describes the situation in the UK - very few people describe themselves as working class these days, you can't really become proper upper class (although your grandchildren might) so we're all left debating the silly distinctions between lower, middle and upper middle class! [NB I usually joke to my wife that the easiest way of spotting "proper" upper middle class men is their trousers - nobody else seems to wear cords in quite those distinctive colours of pink and startling bright green.]
api 14y ago
Also: merit is not one-dimensional. Which merit is being measured? Merit at what? I've noted for a while that a significant fraction of those successful in business, especially in certain sectors, are basically glorified street hustlers. They're very good at rapidly building social networks, smoke and mirrors, and shell games that create the illusion of value. The game they play could be called "lie, leverage, flip." Is this the merit that we want? I would argue that all societies are meritocracies for some value of "merit." Defining merit in any objective sense is not easy. In fact, it's probably capital-H Hard and reduces to the same effectively-infinite-dimensional search problem solved by evolution itself. I think meritocracy is a great example of a simple idea that is incredibly appealing but wrong in a way that creates pathologies. Economics and biology are just chock full of that stuff.
- pdonis 14y ago
  I've noted for a while that a significant fraction of those successful in business, especially in certain sectors, are basically glorified street hustlers. Exactly. The Economist article lost me at the point where it said this: The top 1% have seen their incomes soar because of the premium that a globalised high-tech economy places on brainy people. No, the top 1% have seen their incomes soar because they have been allowed to game the system in order to siphon wealth from other people's pockets into their own. Exhibit A: Wall Street investment banks.
  - clarkmoody 14y ago
    The top level comment mentioned extreme sacrifice as a way to move to the 95th percentile. I argue that investment bankers also make extreme sacrifice to stay where they are, in the form of 80 hour weeks, horrible family life, etc. Anger and jealousy toward the "1%" is a dangerous road for a country to go down. Besides, without investment banks and private equity firms, an essential part of the economy -- namely, buying and selling companies -- would be missing and we would be worse off. The place where you should direct your ire is toward corrupt government policymakers who allow corporate interests to override the basis of our civil society, which is equal protection under the law. Corporations do not want free markets; they want government-sponsored monopolies. We the people should hold our government responsible for succumbing to corporate special interests instead of blaming the companies once they are granted such privilege.
wamatt 14y ago
>Every elite in history has called itself a "meritocracy". Who defines "merit"? I'd concede that the word itself may have been used questionably to capitalize on the associated ideological goodwill. However, simply stating it may have been abused, does not automatically preclude an actual meritocratic group from existing. For example, while many generally dishonest individuals (eg sociopaths) may profess to being totally honest, it does not follow that a generally honest person, does not exist. Similarly, it's quite possible to build something close to a true meritocracy. How do I know? Because this happened at my previous company. Merit, at it's core, was defined by outputs. Nothing more. Was it perfect? No, but we are dealing with messy humans, and subjectivity obviously occurs, but the point is to actively and continually encourage a culture of objectivity. Over many years the track record bore this out. There were those that started in 'serfdom' and yet over time, rose up. Actually, not always "up", as in traditional line management sense, but certainly in responsibilities assigned to them. Hence they received associated increases in compensation, benefits and peer respect. Many know the theory, but how well it works in practice, depends on the ability of those leading, to truly believe and continually act in a way that promotes and entrenches the behavior, so that it becomes the culture. An example, we had (and they still do), employees on the exec management team that started their professional journey's as junior call center agents. Conversely, those persons that partook in politicized self promotion, tended to enjoy a rather brief tenancy at the company. Either they were actively pushed out by peers and managers, or they passively drifted apart on their own accord, as their natural skills of manipulation and politicking, bore scarce fruits. In summary, while perhaps uncommon, it is possible to for a meritocracy to flourish given excessive care and thoughtfulness is spent designing fair and useful incentives and metrics. Shallow or ill-conceived incentives and insincere leadership, could set the organization on a ruinous path over the longterm.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  In summary, while perhaps uncommon, it is possible to for a meritocracy to flourish given excessive care and thoughtfulness is spent designing fair and useful incentives and metrics. When I get back to blogging (probably in a week or so) one of the topics I want to hit is Smart People x War. War is the stupidest thing imaginable: a negative-sum slugfest. It's inhumane, unjust, and wrong. So, naturally, most Smart People hate it. However, what is the best thing for Smart People? For an irreparable fissure to occur within the Elite, splitting it into two or more pieces that want nothing more to destroy each other. (This tends to result in War.) If you look at history, the times of greatest meritocracy are also times of war. When was the golden age of American scientific and technological R&D? The Cold War. If you let the Elite function as one, they collude to keep Smart People down. They take all the resources and society stagnates. If you rip them in two and put the halves in mortal conflict, it creates jobs for Smart People. So there is a weird symbiosis going on. War itself is horrendous, but the only thing that gives Smart People a chance (opportunities to ascend, rather than being preemptively shot down by a defensive Elite) is severe crisis, which War tends to produce. Capitalism is supposed to have this effect (fissures in the Elite, creating competition and opportunity for middle-class talent) but corporate capitalism doesn't, because even if firms compete economically, they collude on who's cool and who's not. See also: VC-istan, which is more like a postmodern corporation (with founders as semi-independent PMs) than what it claims to be.

bingobangobongo 14y ago

Whether or not the term "meritocracy" is thrown around as propaganda is a separate issue from whether or not we should want to live in a meritocracy, which is what the article was about. In fact, most people don't want to live a pure meritocracy, as that would for example preclude the freedom to give gifts to others (as gifts are by definition unearned). I think one property that our economy ought have as we head into a future of machines increasingly displacing human workers is this: If all human work in the economy stopped, wealth should converge to an approximately fair distribution, preferably within a small number of lifetimes.

svachalek 14y ago
And in a world without work, what is "fair"? It will almost certainly go to those who own the machines.
- bingobangobongo 14y ago
  I almost wrote "uniform", but that seemed simplistic since it didn't take into account factors like age, number of children, etc. But if the majority of the wealth goes to the few owners of the machines, then the economy certainly doesn't have the property I'm talking about.

Uchikoma 14y ago

"What we actually have in the US is some degree of social mobility within the middle class." The article seems to contradict that: "Using one-generation measures of social mobility—how much a father’s relative income influences that of his adult son—America does half as well as Nordic countries, and about the same as Britain and Italy, Europe’s least-mobile places."

svachalek 14y ago
Michael is saying people within the US middle class can do better or worse than their parents, but children are unlikely to rise or fall to a completely different class. This is orthogonal to any comparison with Sweden.

arethuza 14y ago

"What we actually have in the US is some degree of social mobility within the middle class." That pretty much describes the situation in the UK - very few people describe themselves as working class these days, you can't really become proper upper class (although your grandchildren might) so we're all left debating the silly distinctions between lower, middle and upper middle class! [NB I usually joke to my wife that the easiest way of spotting "proper" upper middle class men is their trousers - nobody else seems to wear cords in quite those distinctive colours of pink and startling bright green.]

api 14y ago

Also: merit is not one-dimensional. Which merit is being measured? Merit at what? I've noted for a while that a significant fraction of those successful in business, especially in certain sectors, are basically glorified street hustlers. They're very good at rapidly building social networks, smoke and mirrors, and shell games that create the illusion of value. The game they play could be called "lie, leverage, flip." Is this the merit that we want? I would argue that all societies are meritocracies for some value of "merit." Defining merit in any objective sense is not easy. In fact, it's probably capital-H Hard and reduces to the same effectively-infinite-dimensional search problem solved by evolution itself. I think meritocracy is a great example of a simple idea that is incredibly appealing but wrong in a way that creates pathologies. Economics and biology are just chock full of that stuff.

pdonis 14y ago
I've noted for a while that a significant fraction of those successful in business, especially in certain sectors, are basically glorified street hustlers. Exactly. The Economist article lost me at the point where it said this: The top 1% have seen their incomes soar because of the premium that a globalised high-tech economy places on brainy people. No, the top 1% have seen their incomes soar because they have been allowed to game the system in order to siphon wealth from other people's pockets into their own. Exhibit A: Wall Street investment banks.
- clarkmoody 14y ago
  The top level comment mentioned extreme sacrifice as a way to move to the 95th percentile. I argue that investment bankers also make extreme sacrifice to stay where they are, in the form of 80 hour weeks, horrible family life, etc. Anger and jealousy toward the "1%" is a dangerous road for a country to go down. Besides, without investment banks and private equity firms, an essential part of the economy -- namely, buying and selling companies -- would be missing and we would be worse off. The place where you should direct your ire is toward corrupt government policymakers who allow corporate interests to override the basis of our civil society, which is equal protection under the law. Corporations do not want free markets; they want government-sponsored monopolies. We the people should hold our government responsible for succumbing to corporate special interests instead of blaming the companies once they are granted such privilege.

wamatt 14y ago

>Every elite in history has called itself a "meritocracy". Who defines "merit"? I'd concede that the word itself may have been used questionably to capitalize on the associated ideological goodwill. However, simply stating it may have been abused, does not automatically preclude an actual meritocratic group from existing. For example, while many generally dishonest individuals (eg sociopaths) may profess to being totally honest, it does not follow that a generally honest person, does not exist. Similarly, it's quite possible to build something close to a true meritocracy. How do I know? Because this happened at my previous company. Merit, at it's core, was defined by outputs. Nothing more. Was it perfect? No, but we are dealing with messy humans, and subjectivity obviously occurs, but the point is to actively and continually encourage a culture of objectivity. Over many years the track record bore this out. There were those that started in 'serfdom' and yet over time, rose up. Actually, not always "up", as in traditional line management sense, but certainly in responsibilities assigned to them. Hence they received associated increases in compensation, benefits and peer respect. Many know the theory, but how well it works in practice, depends on the ability of those leading, to truly believe and continually act in a way that promotes and entrenches the behavior, so that it becomes the culture. An example, we had (and they still do), employees on the exec management team that started their professional journey's as junior call center agents. Conversely, those persons that partook in politicized self promotion, tended to enjoy a rather brief tenancy at the company. Either they were actively pushed out by peers and managers, or they passively drifted apart on their own accord, as their natural skills of manipulation and politicking, bore scarce fruits. In summary, while perhaps uncommon, it is possible to for a meritocracy to flourish given excessive care and thoughtfulness is spent designing fair and useful incentives and metrics. Shallow or ill-conceived incentives and insincere leadership, could set the organization on a ruinous path over the longterm.

michaelochurch 14y ago
In summary, while perhaps uncommon, it is possible to for a meritocracy to flourish given excessive care and thoughtfulness is spent designing fair and useful incentives and metrics. When I get back to blogging (probably in a week or so) one of the topics I want to hit is Smart People x War. War is the stupidest thing imaginable: a negative-sum slugfest. It's inhumane, unjust, and wrong. So, naturally, most Smart People hate it. However, what is the best thing for Smart People? For an irreparable fissure to occur within the Elite, splitting it into two or more pieces that want nothing more to destroy each other. (This tends to result in War.) If you look at history, the times of greatest meritocracy are also times of war. When was the golden age of American scientific and technological R&D? The Cold War. If you let the Elite function as one, they collude to keep Smart People down. They take all the resources and society stagnates. If you rip them in two and put the halves in mortal conflict, it creates jobs for Smart People. So there is a weird symbiosis going on. War itself is horrendous, but the only thing that gives Smart People a chance (opportunities to ascend, rather than being preemptively shot down by a defensive Elite) is severe crisis, which War tends to produce. Capitalism is supposed to have this effect (fissures in the Elite, creating competition and opportunity for middle-class talent) but corporate capitalism doesn't, because even if firms compete economically, they collude on who's cool and who's not. See also: VC-istan, which is more like a postmodern corporation (with founders as semi-independent PMs) than what it claims to be.