Down with meritocracy (2001)
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
So, you get a government full of people who are brilliant test-takers.
The first Men-in-Black movie when Will Smith's character is being tested for induction was kind of a commentary on this, in that Smith was the outsider candidate, non-conformist, street-wise but perhaps not big on theory, and his competition were all hyper-competent well-educated civil servant types; and Smith's unique perspective was key to passing that battery of tests! A triumph against the meritocracy.
But then again, was it? At the end of the day, Smith got his "MiB" badge of Merit, and no doubt he would someday proctor the self-same test that got him into the organization.
I am still confused.
Important sub-assumptions: 1) In Great Britain we believe people can be roughly said to fall in 'classes' 2) Nobles of the past were aware their position was a bit random, and they felt an obligation to the classes below them. AKA "noblesse oblige".
The points the author tries to make are: 1) We lose "noblesse oblige" because the successful people are now taught that they're successful because they deserve it, and unsuccessful people are unsuccessful because of their faults. 2) The lower classes lose the ability to speak for themselves, because their natural leaders or people of talent are recognized in school, and bumped up a class instead of being forced into the positions and careers of their parents regardless of aptitude.
Sure, the people in power today believe they deserve what they have, but so did the people in power before. If you're worried about that sort of arrogance, at least we don't have kings believing they rule by divine right and nobility believing they're carrying out God's will through their king.
Don't be fooled. Those things only exist because the people have an avenue of influence through the government.
Typically, people had to die in their fight for concessions and recognition of rights from the upper classes.
Both state sponsored healthcare and public education are actively fought against by the rich.
If you look back, you'll see public education became a thing partly because the wealthy pushed for it. They understood they would benefit.
I'm not really seeing heavy handed oppression by a cruel upper crust.
Why bother being overtly oppressive when the vast majority go into massive debt to get a college education, enriching banks in the process; while the upper crust use pocket change to get the same because, afterall, their family is so deserving of this merit.
Guaranteeing that debt costs the US government quite a bit of money, which means there is an overall transfer of wealth from rich to poor through taxes. Again, it seems more like this has to do with American political ideas, rather than not wanting the poor to be educated.
Incidentally, it would appear that you are out of date, as they started lending directly in 2010, instead of lending through banks.
Honestly there is no much actual difference for those who are not in privileged position. They don't care what kind of story people above keep saying to justify their status. I'm not convinced that new rationalization of why someone is 'chosen' is any better than old fashioned 'god-will' way.
Also, I found some entries with the word "mediocracy" or "mordacious" giving false positives on the search (bad OCR I guess).
because honestly: duh.
Look at tech companies vs say law firms, one will employ you even if you've never been to university they only care what you can do, the other considers merit to be being a straight shooter from a young age getting into a prestigious university then grad program etc etc.
meritocracy is an ideal, it's something hard to achieve but something to continually strive for.
also this author does not clearly present an argument.
I'd be concerned about problems from having a sharper divide between "employable" and "not employable", and instead of people who struggle to find/keep a job you'd have (slightly fewer) people who can't get jobs at all. That seems likely to cause more social problems.
Assuming we discover a perfect way to measure merit, what do we do with people who lack merit? What alternatives do you offer them over crime or suicide?
That's not to say merit doesn't exist, it does, but meritocracy doesn't really value merit, it favours a certain specific type of success, and implies that lacking that type of success is because of a lack of merit. It's a subtle difference, but understanding this difference helps in seeing the downsides.
This might be to do with the ways humans consciously and unconsciously use proxies for complex things like merit.
you don't seem to be arguing against a meritocracy, you just seem to be saying that 'it's hard.'
as for your statement that "meritocracy doesn't really value merit" you'll have to explain that one.
I explained it before, but hopefully I'll do a better job this time...
How do you measure merit? You cannot measure merit without measuring success.
Success can be achieved by more than just merit alone, privilege is another key factor in success, yet there are no mechanisms to distinguish between success based on merit and success based on privilege. In most cases it'll be a mixture of the two anyway, it's hard to find successful people who were born into completely hostile circumstances, or find successful people who had every possible external advantage but didn't have some ability to convert this into success.
In short, meritocracies measure success, they don't measure merit, as merit cannot be measured directly, it can only be inferred by success, and success has multiple contributing factors, of which merit is only one.
Furthermore, meritocracies tend to favour certain types of success. For example, in school, the abilities of an academically gifted kid are more likely to be recognised compared to a kid that's good at telling jokes, even though they're both valuable traits.
In a meritocracy, success is correlated with "merit" (whatever that means).
It's contrary to Lockean political legitimacy which requires the consent of the governed. And it's also contrary to Paine's Rights of Man which expressly argues against aristocracy and hereditary government, which self-evidently a meritocracy would create because there's nothing to prevent it and every incentive to pass down such power only to ones progeny as the next generation of ruling class.
Let's start with two questions, if you can answer these it should help us understand why we're not seeing eye to eye:
1. How do you measure merit in a meritocracy?
2. Considering the answer to question 1, is it possible for someone to rise to the top of a meritocracy with an average level of 'merit'?
The entire point of meritocracy comes from the postulate that "merit" is some universal concept and that we should adjust our society so success is reached by merit. And then, and just then, we should contemplate those questions, for practical purposes.
It's indeed a much more complex idea than most people shouting "meritocracy" around entertain, but it's a meaningless idea. Our society has been less meritocratic on the past, and it's possible to make it more so in the future.
I agree, it's meaningless to follow a meritocracy if we can't explain what we mean by merit (even if it's different in every case, we should still be able to define it in a specific case).
The problem with meritocracy is that it implicitly depends upon a heuristic, and heuristics can always be gamed or inadvertently biased, no matter the industry.
I think this was part of what the author was trying to say, but I agree with you, it's a poorly written and wishy-washy op-ed.
Max could have lost to someone who has spent all their life as a social activist and has degree in humanism, womyns studies and various other bullshit with friends at Google. That's the point of what meritocracy is trying got avoid.
And really, who decides a career social activist with good soft skills who can save the company 50 million in lawsuits and bad press has less merit than the engineer who may work for years on a project that ultimately gets canceled?
The guy identified a problem and architectured a good solution for that problem. That already shows he has solid software development foundations, doesn't it? Even though he doesn't have a fancy degree.