How America's Broken Meritocracy Drives Our National Anxiety Epidemic | Hacker News Reader

How America's Broken Meritocracy Drives Our National Anxiety Epidemic

theatlantic.com

45 pointsFirebrand16 comments

The term "meritocracy" is one of those annoying words that appears to have a current common usage that is almost the opposite of what its originator actually meant.

Michael Young, in his satirical essay The Rise of the Meritocracy was actually warning about a managerial style where people are promoted based on a definition of "merit" that is exclusive and self-serving for those currently in power and not based on actual objective performance. Anyone who has had any contact with long-established bureaucracies (e.g. the UK Civil Service) will recognise this kind of "meritocracy".

Here is Michael Young righting fairly recently on the topic:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment

It's worth noting that the Wikipedia page on meritocracy describes Young's essay as:

"The essay was based upon the tendency of the then-current governments in their striving towards intelligence to ignore shortcomings and upon the failure of education systems to correctly utilize gifted and talented members within their societies."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy

I see what the author is getting at and agree. However we need to analyze this statement... "Far more important, he argues, is debunking the myth of meritocracy, harmful 'because it provides an incomplete explanation for success and failure, often mistakenly exalting the rich and condemning the poor.'"

It's important for people on the one hand to not feel too terrible if they don't achieve their dreams. But it's also important that people not become so self-obsessed with the impossibility of dreaming that we stop dreaming to begin with. There are people who always have a reason for why something didn't work out... you know those kinds of people. They never achieve their dreams. They've doomed themselves from the start.

We need to find a way to be a less anxious society that can still dream and accept failure.

Interesting article, but one quote from the sociologist was way off the mark:

"The historical decline in self-employment and the concomitant rise and dominance of large oligarchic corporations (including chains and franchises) have created barriers of entry for starting and sustaining small businesses and sharply reduced the entrepreneurial path to mobility."

I don't know what time period he's talking about, but self-employment has grown dramatically in the US between 1969-2006, by about ~244% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-employment

Maybe he means the rise and dominance of large oligarchic corporations are at the expense of self-employment, even though there's an overall increase in self-employment. Although if that is what he means, it's badly phrased.

I think what he means by 'historical decline' is that in centuries past the vast majority of people were either farmers or what would be considered small business owners. Only around the time of the industrial revolution did there start to be mass employers in the private sector.

Also it's probably a bit misleading to throw out the 244% statistic without giving the overall relation of self-employment to regular employment.

"In relative terms, the share of self-employed within the labor force grew from 14% in 1969 to 21% in 2006 in metropolitan counties, and from 11% to 19% in non-metropolitan counties."

So while there has been a 244% growth, the self-employed still make up around 1/5 of the total work force. Historically I'd assume more than 60-80% of the work force would have been considered self-employed. Ignoring certain circumstances such as slavery, the only historical mass employers would likely be governments/military. Perhaps in times of war a large portion of the work force would be conscripted into military service, but most of the time the majority of the population would be farmers or local tradesmen.

Agreed about the 244% - apologies. I glossed over the relative part which is kind of important here. There's still been growth, but it hasn't been that dramatic.

http://bls.gov/opub/mlr/2004/07/art2full.pdf indicates self-employment has fallen a lot over the last few decades.

It doesn't have any data after 2003, so maybe there was a massive spike in self-employment, caused by casualization (fake self-employment, to avoid giving benefits to workers) and retrenched workers setting out as "consultants".

The article claims that the US is "near the bottom in terms of actual social mobility", but only supports this with some points about how social mobility in the US isn't that good.

The US is still one of the most meritocratic countries in the world.

>The article claims that the US is "near the bottom in terms of actual social mobility", but only supports this with some points about how social mobility in the US isn't that good.

They clearly reference several books by the people quoted in the article. I assume that their claims are quite thoroughly discussed within said books. You may not believe or agree with them, but it's not as though they are pulling them from nowhere, sort of like this:

>The US is still one of the most meritocratic countries in the world.

And you base this claim on...?

The US is still one of the most meritocratic countries in the world

Looking at the US from the outside, it doesn't really seem that way any more. And I live in a country (UK) that is far worse.

> The article claims that the US is "near the bottom in terms of actual social mobility", but only supports this with some points about how social mobility in the US isn't that good.

Data that supports their statements is easily found:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_...

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/04/us/comparing-e...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to...

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1579981.html

> The US is still one of the most meritocratic countries in the world.

This is only a convincing argument against the notion that social mobility is low in the US if you already subscribe to meritocratic principles.

Quoted from the article, Obama's father and mother "passed some excellent genes to the current president."

I don't think the author knows what "meritocracy" means. Someone with good genes "making it" is what a meritocracy is.

He continues with "An April 2012 report out of UCLA provides further evidence that DNA determines intelligence, to a large extent"

And if you agree that intelligence is a large enabler of merit (I don't), then the connection between genes and meritocracy is blurred enough that you might be able to argue that good genes is correlated with more merit, or at least a larger potential for merit.

It's getting so that I'm running out of snarky things to say about some of these God-awful Atlantic pieces that keep showing up on HN. They're like cockroaches.

...In other words, as Hayes argues in his book, America isn't truly a meritocracy. Sure, the Civil Rights movement, feminism, and equal opportunity laws have helped to remove many of the barriers to success...

A meritocracy, by definition, is some sort of social hierarchy based on merit -- you take a test, you gather in the most bottle-caps, you beat your classmates at arm-wrestling. Whatever. Things like the Civil Rights Movement deal with correcting historical and societal injustices. Instead of something you do, you are being judged, at least partially, by something you are. This is done for the betterment of society.

Don't want to argue social engineering, but viewing somebody by what they are is 180-degrees away from viewing them by how they perform in some kind of merit-based system. For the author to juxtapose these two concepts in his mind as one being an example of the other is just.......sad. Perhaps his premise was more about the matter of how he felt various social ideas that are supposed to create a equatable social result such that more minorities or women succeed but instead create additional stress. That's fine, but that's not a meritocracy.

The article goes downhill from there.

This article is quite well-researched and argues that the meritocracy that you imagine doesn't exist in practice. As such you don't respond to the article at all, but for some reason feel compelled to use snarky tropes (whatever, sad, downhill) even when you admit the you have nothing to say. Why?

I believe I made my point that the author either doesn't understand or is purposefully misusing the term "meritocracy". Not really sure why you think I have nothing to say. Was my point not clear enough?

The reader is invited to make further critiques.

If you don't understand parts of your premise, no matter how well-reasoned and well-researched your article, it's going to tank.

By the way, this is an editorial problem, not a problem with the author, or perhaps even the thrust of the piece. I think in terms of content the author did a great job. It just needed another set of critical eyeballs to shine it up. It's a damn shame if you ask me: obviously a lot of work went into this. HN isn't the most author-friendly place in the world. If somehow my critique appeared facile, you have my apologies. I'm not going to further argue with you. I'm sorry if somehow a few colloquialisms threw you off the trail of my point.

Having said that, I still am getting tired of The Atlantic Article Of The Day appearing at the top of the page. They do some great long-form work every now and then, but in my opinion the amount of coverage it gets here is quite disproportionate to the value it provides the community.

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