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The Two Problems with Meritocracy
Meritocracy has two major problems. The “merit” part and the “-ocracy” part.
Most people unwittingly use “merit” to conflate two different ideas. While “merit” can be used to denote any admirable quality, “merit” is also typically opposed to “luck” — that is, “merit” is what you “deserve” after luck is factored out of the equation.
That explains why people say, “He got ahead by luck, not merit,” or “I got ahead by merit, not luck.”
To oppose “merit” and “luck” in this way is truly ridiculous when you think about it. Many of our admirable qualities are windfalls we reap by accident of birth or circumstance. Yet opposing “merit” and “luck” in this way also seems to be something humans are innately wired to do.
Given the way most people contrast “merit” with “luck”, it’s not surprising that many people conclude that meritocracy – or rule by merit – must involve factoring “luck” out of the equation. I don’t know about you, but most of my leftist friends aren’t anti-meritocracy. Rather, their pro-meritocratic sentiments prompt them to call for government intervention in order to factor out the role that luck plays in shaping people’s lives, so that people are rewarded only for what they “deserve” and not for unearned “privileges”.
But factoring luck out of the equation is impossible – and also stupid, since another name for luck (or at least good luck) is “opportunity.”
If you really believe in an opportunity society, then you cannot honestly believe that luck can’t or shouldn’t play a role in people’s success. Luck is opportunity. Fortunately, acknowledging the substantial role luck plays in success isn’t the same as claiming that hard work plays a negligible role. Indeed, since hard work is under our control and luck isn’t, it’s only prudent to bank on hard work in hopes that when good luck comes our way, we’ll be ready for it.
Many of our raw talents – a high IQ, a musical ear, a naturally beautiful face, or innate physical prowess – are traits we didn’t choose to have. We cannot claim to have “deserved” them merely because we were lucky enough to be born with them. They are not achievements in themselves. Rather, they’re merely opportunities, different from many other opportunities, perhaps, in that we tend to carry them around with us wherever we go, but still only opportunities. That said, opportunities are wonderful. As conservatives, we should neither begrudge people their opportunities nor mistake opportunity for “deserved” achievement. Rather, we should celebrate opportunity and be glad to see people benefit from it.
Moreover, conservatives shouldn’t be ashamed to admit the role luck has played in their success – because there’s nothing shameful about it. There’s nothing shameful about having opportunities. Indeed, the synergy between hard work and luck is a beautiful thing: seizing the opportunities that happen to come your way and working hard to make the most of them tends to increase the likelihood of future opportunities – future good fortune – which in turn gives you more motivation to work hard. This is awesome! People who insist, “Oh no, I succeeded purely on my merits, luck had nothing to do with it,” unwittingly denigrate the value of opportunity — which is sad.
So much for the problem of “merit”. The other problem with “meritocracy” is “-ocracy”. As genferei astutely pointed out in Sal’s thread, conflating a society that rewards achievement with a society that gives high achievers the right to rule others is bizarre, sloppy thinking and also dangerous. Meritocracies throughout history have typically been heavy on civil-service examinations: excellence on an exam gave some people a right to rule others. Obviously, this isn’t what most conservatives have in mind when they advocate “meritocracy.” Nonetheless, it’s a commonsense and historically valid interpretation of the term. Moreover, “rule by highly-certified civil servants” is what many liberals have in mind when they talk about “meritocracy.” And, to be honest, given the word’s literal and historical sense, I think the liberals have a more defensible definition of it than we do.
Our opportunity society does not have to be a meritocracy to be worthwhile. It does not have to neatly separate the “wheat” of humanity from the human “chaff.” It does not have to rank people according to some univocal scale of success. Rather, an open, opportunity-oriented society simply helps people to specialize in something they happen to be good at, whether or not they’ve “earned” that talent and whether or not that talent is “outstanding” in the larger scheme of things.
We don’t need to defend meritocracy at all. Only opportunity.
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The word “deserve”.
The advantages of sorting by excellence need not be framed in terms of deserts, and I think to do so is a distraction. It’s perfectly normal for a human being to look at the people around him and think, “Some of these people have gotten better than what they deserve and some have gotten worse.” Convincing people that any system “really gives people what they deserve” is simply a non-starter.
Complicating matters, everyone has their own idea of excellence, which also influences the perception of who deserves what. This is why people (men especially) get into such heated arguments about what’s over- or underrated, even when the “what” is fairly trivial (like soccer or baseball).
A free market does a wonderfully efficient job of sorting people by ability, and that benefits everyone. Efficient isn’t perfect, though, and doesn’t have to be. Nor need people agree on a scale of excellence or a morality of deserts.
Midge- I’m a bit suprised that this hasn’t been raised yet, but I see that it really hasn’t. What criteria do you think should be used in assesing the aptitude of a person to govern if not ability?
A lack of hubris, perhaps? Not being as bad as the other alternatives? I’m pessimistic about any one person’s ability to govern.
Intelligence seems valuable – up to a point. Having spent a lot of time around people well within the top 1% intelligence-wise, it never ceases to amaze me how stupid smart people can be.
Other than that, I suppose there’s the general “ability to be a politician” which embraces both good and bad qualities. Also, naturally, I associate “agreeing with my politics” with good governance – if I didn’t, I’d change my politics to something I thought was better.
I admit politicians tend to baffle me.
Hi again Sal,
I think there might be advantages to be governed by the first 200 people in the phone book and not the faculty of Harvard. Murray suggests that bright men and women achieve and advance by acquiring and using information skills. Also that these people through marriage and associations have increasingly segregated themselves. It may be true that in the upper class, men and women are substantially more educated and brighter than the average citizen, but the breadth of their knowledge is meager. In “Coming Apart” Murray has a chapter of questions titled, “How Thick Is Your Bubble?” He asks, have you ever walked a factory floor, have you ever gone to a Kiwanis Club, Rotary, or local union meeting. In a similar fashion it once was common for our more average leaders to have served in the military, now among the leadership class military serve would be rare if not disqualifying. I am concerned that the leaders from Harvard or Yale or Oxford or Cambridge would have less practical knowledge and would over estimate their own ability to make government work.
If we were to lump “to error is Truman” and Ford together as mediocre and FDR and Bush the 1st as representing the brighter crowd, I would pick the mediocre with all their faults.
I’m sorry to be blunt, but that really isn’t much of a substantive answer. The pool of people from which we choose our leaders is, almost by definition, limited to people who think they are qualified to lead us. As far as intelligence goes, I don’t think that America has yet been led by a person who has not been of markedly above average intelligence. I can’t help but conclude that you would prefer to be governed by people who are mediocre and proud of it.
I agree I didn’t give a substantive answer in comment 67. I’m one of those weirdos who, though profoundly interested in politics, is profoundly uninterested in sorting politicians any more than I absolutely have to. I’d rather advocate for ideas.
What do you consider “marked intelligence”, anyhow? To me, it’s probably 150+ in terms of IQ (and boy are some of those people messed up), but perhaps you mean more like 120+?
I’m on my iPhone again (still travelling) so I very well may have missed it, but I don’t think I used the term “marked intelligence,” certainly not as the sole criterion for assessing merit. In the event that I did, I would respond that I’m comfortable with a definition of the term which encompasses about the 97th percentile (which corresponds with about the proportion that can be characterized as the “new elite,” though the categories are not strictly coterminous.) About 129 or so on the IQ scale. Not genius, but just about smart enough to join Mensa.
But meritocracy is an idea. One which you have been very critical of without explaining what you think it inferior to. You mentioned an “opportunity society,” but I don’t see how an opportunity society is at all different in substance from a meritocratic society.
Worrying about the role merit plays in success (your own success or other people’s) is inferior to not worrying about merit and simply doing the best you can with what you have.
Objection, non-responsive.
Sorry to get all lawyerly, but really? If you say you’re interested in ideas and you’re highly critical of the idea of meritocracy, I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable for someone to ask, “What would you prefer?”
Okay, so “most engineers” do not have IQs “around 135.” That’s bubble talk, John.
Many do, but most do not. Though that type of figure is common at the higher end of the distribution for engineers.
See: Hauser.
Next, 150+ as opposed to 129+ is almost meaningless unless we agree upon which scale to use. Based on the “97th percentile” comment, I’m presuming that Sal is looking at Wechsler, while Midge is almost certainly using Stanford-Binet.
Finally, Sal are you actually in favor of restricting our political leadership to only 3% of the population… based on a number derived from a test?
That seems like a really bad idea to me (and I’m hardly Captain Populist). Most obviously it seems almost designed to separate the led from their leaders. IOW, it seems like the type of concept that will not necessarily, but will probably, in fact, cripple subsidiarity or “local control.”
Look, the people who assert IQ has little-to-no relationship to ability tend to be either morons or liars. Still, an attribute can be significant without being dispositive, and while Howard Gardner and Stephen Gould might be outliers, they aren’t obviously liars.
Of course not. I didn’t use the term “marked intelligence,” nor did I ever advocate restricting access to our political leadership based on any criteria, let alone intelligence. I haven’t been advocating excluding anyone from the political process (even based on merit) and I haven’t strictly equated merit with intelligence. Intelligence is one of many factors to consider when picking our leaders.
Y’know, now that Claire is back maybe she can get Bill Walsh to reappear.
He had interesting things to say regarding elitist/ populist splits… and everything else.
Sal is right he didn’t say “marked intelligence”. He said “of markedly above average intelligence”. Apologies.
Also, I was ballparking with Stanford-Binet.
We have different definitions of meritocracy – different conceptions of merit. That you find my answer non-responsive probably follows from that.
Sal, you grew up in Catholic schools. In all likelihood, you have a better grasp of the Catholic idea of merit than I do. Setting the explicitly supernatural aspects of merit aside, Catholics believe that merit must be freely chosen, no? What is unchosen is not meritorious. The unchosen aspects of our personality – our raw talents and compulsions – would therefore not be meritorious, no matter how excellent they may be.
I gather this isn’t how you view merit, and I don’t claim it’s the most practical definition of merit. But it does seem to be the way many people perceive merit. And many people worry about merit in this sense. Do they have enough of it? Has failure at a task translated into loss of merit in this specific sense – into loss of moral worth?
Those worries quickly reach a point of diminishing returns. I’m guessing that part of your personality, Sal, is naturally having fewer of these worries than average. In all likelihood, that’s a productive trait. Perhaps others can learn to become more productive by idolizing merit less.
I’m not sure precisely where the lines of this debate are drawn. since on some points we’re misunderstanding each others’ terms. I am still uneasy with the -ocracy part, and I am not certain that the distinction between -ocracy and -archy is really all that clear in English in practice. I have been moving towards an ideal of government in which we really do elect one of our own number to represent us in the legislature for a short time, at which point he resumes his former place in society. To that end, I want a mix of types of people in Congress, not merely drawn from the intellectual high end (though that is preferable to a similar deviation to the low side of the mean). On the whole, I’d like someone a bit above average, intellectually, though where that is I’m vague on. Anyway, I want him there not to *rule* me, but to *represent* me. He is to be “one of us,” not one of even a meritocratic elite, howeverdeservedly he came by his success in life.
Does someone know much about the French system? I remember reading in Commoentary some years back about their elite national colleges. It is very competitive to get in, very few are accepted, and you really learn your stuff there. And when you successfully graduate, your position as a member of the elite is secure. You will rule, either in the civil service or foreign service, I gather. The former IMF head who was accused of sexual assault a while back was described as an exemplar of this system and its expectations. He apparently was framed of the crime, but the reaction to the charges by him and French society was not of his personal innocence, but it seemed to me, that he was above being treated like anybody else under the law.
I’m probably exaggerating and crudely simplifying how this system works in practice, but I’m interested to know what its real weaknesses are.
Anyway, this seems more like the “rule” part of the -ocracy that I don’t want in a republic like ours.
You’re right. I’ve since checked, and it isn’t.
Misunderstanding or simply disagreeing. Neither conceiving of merit as a freely-chosen moral good nor simply considering merit to be a synonym for individual excellence is incoherent. The two ought not be confused, though, which they often will be if “merit” is bandied about as if its meaning ought to be obvious.
That’s why I started this conversation. That problematization is way too trendy with leftists and abhorred by many conservatives doesn’t make it automatically wrong.
I did attend a number of Catholic educational institutions, but I honestly have very little idea what the specifically Catholic view of merit is (I’m a lapsed Presbyterian). My view of merit has very little to do with being chosen or earned. In this context, I view merit as a question of ability, regardless of how the ability came about.
Edit: I’d like to clarify that I do not consider ability to be the sole criterion for assessing merit. My point is that innate, “undeserved,” ability is a factor in assessing merit which should not be discounted.
And for your view of merit, this makes eminently good sense. Sensible people shouldn’t discount achievement simply because they have misgivings about whether it’s deserved or not. Rather, they should be happy to make use of achievement (for example, when hiring) whatever the source, and be grateful that the achievement exists. I advocated for this in the OP, though admittedly using peculiar language.
Do you see, though, how people who have the other view of merit – the view that focuses only on what’s perceived to be deserved – might misinterpret what you say if you use the word “merit” rather than a more neutral word like “achievement”?
I do understand how that could be the case, but I don’t think I should be expected to alter my lexicon because some people who disagree with me about the meaning of “merit” are uncomfortable with the concept of meritocracy. I don’t expect Catholics to refrain from using the word “justice” simply because I disagree with the concept of social justice. I just recognize that when a someone is talking about social justice they are not using the word “justice” to represent the idea I generally use it to.
I just have to ask, even though it’s off topic: Do *you* know what “they” mean when they talk about social justice? I don’t. I lean toward suspecting that Jonah Goldberg was correct when he said that “social justice” means “whatever I’m in favor of” (that’s a paraphrase, of course) … but if someone actually knows what it means, I’d be grateful for the education.
Great. That’s the main point.
Do I think you have a moral duty to alter your lexicon? No.
Do I think it sometimes might be to your advantage to counter populist outrage by selecting words that are less likely to be misunderstood than “merit” is? Yes. For one thing, it could save you the obligation of re-explaining that not everyone defines merit the same way, and your definition, contrary to many other people’s definition, doesn’t concern itself with what’s deserved and what isn’t.
Social Justice really does have a specific meaning, though Goldberg is right that many people who use the term don’t know what it means. I took jurisprudence from a professor whose area of legal expertise is the application of catholic principles of social justice to the law. It’s interesting, but misguided.
To the extent that your argument is that Republican politicians will be more persuasive if they talk about an “opportunity society” than if they talk about “meritocracy” we are in complete agreement. Where we differ is that I think the two words are synonymous. “Opportunity society” is a euphemism just as much as “affirmative action” is a euphemism for racial and gender discrimination.
I had hoped, but it’s nice to have it confirmed.
And I think they may or may not be synonymous, depending on one’s conception of merit (and parsing of “-cracy”).
Is it just euphemism? Or does it have valid descriptive content?
Many people are born so fixated on perceived right and wrong, and taught from an early age that “opportunism” means “bad opportunism”, that I think opportunity and opportunism (that is, taking advantage of opportunity in the morally-neutral sense) still go unappreciated, even by most conservatives.
Allusions to “merit” tend to, for many people (particularly religious people), drag in unnecessary, distracting moral baggage. Less of this baggage helps conservatives get along better. (I say this as someone who knows from personal experience how stupid and not-very-moral moral baggage can be.)
They really should have a “Love( )” label. Please continue. How did the French politician react?
That reminds me of something I read … if I remember correctly, in a Paul Johnson history of the U.S. (did he write only the one?) … And I also paraphrase: ” rapid technological advancement was at least partly due to the fact that, in America, the ablest tended to devote themselves to making money rather than entering politics”
You get the gist, I’m certain.