
How to prevent a meritocracy entrenching itself - ekpyrotic
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21571417-how-prevent-virtuous-meritocracy-entrenching-itself-top-repairing-rungs
======
ap22213
Given the audience of this site, it's interesting that this topic has even
floated toward the top. And, it's also interesting (but hardly surprising)
that most of the comments are blindly for meritocracy.

Yeah - meritocracy sounds great in principle. And, we can agree that it's
leagues better than aristocracy. But, over generational scales, aristocracy
and meritocracy are very closely aligned.

Meritocracy begins first with a wave of smart, risk-taking, hard-working,
uncompromising, (perhaps immoral) people who usurp the establishment. And, we
certainly celebrate that. It brings a shift, and usually rewards many others.

But, it's when those same people put their children and grandchildren in
positions where risks nearly vanish that we worry about. They naturally give
their descendents their connections, secret knowledge, wealth, safety and
other benefits. And, they unconsciously change the rules to favor themselves.
And, they seem to dismiss all those elements when their spawns happen to reach
similar heights. And, slowly, they begin to believe that it's some genetic
component, or something innate in them, that has caused it. And, then the new
aristocracy is born.

I think the article is bringing attention to this, and it's good to do so. The
new rich should be allowed to let their children and grandchildren live great
lives. But, those descendents should not become the gatekeepers of the rest of
the world's amazing talent. There are just to many brilliant, hard-working
people in the world, who aren't connected, who need a chance.

~~~
betterunix
"meritocracy sounds great in principle. And, we can agree that it's leagues
better than aristocracy"

Meritocracy is a form of aristocracy. The word "aristocracy" comes from the
Greek words for "best" and "power," or in other words a system where those who
are most fit to rule will be the leaders of society. It sounds great in
principle, the only problem is the definition of "best."

~~~
sophacles
This may be true of the greek words, but language shifts. Now the word
aristocracy refers to a system by which a class of people is in charge, and in
which membership of said class is almost completely dependent on parentage. It
is also of note that in this class system, membership and genetics are more
important than any other factors such as wealth, intelligence, "merit" (as we
generally use the term: displaying high ability and accomplishment in tasks).

~~~
saraid216
Except that parentage was a critical concept in the Greek notion of the
"best". The necessity of membership was less important, but it was still
important.

------
kryptiskt
"For instance, standardised tests were supposed to favour the brainy, but the
$4.5 billion test-prep industry, which disproportionately caters to the rich,
indicates that this is being gamed. Intelligence tests should be more widely
used."

As if intelligence tests weren't gameable and didn't favor the prepared.
What's worse is that they test a very narrow definition of intelligence. That
cure would be worse than the disease.

~~~
Ilverin
The author might respond "They are less gameable than the 'standardised'
tests, and the 'standardised' tests are even narrower than the intelligence
tests".

------
drakeandrews
This, yet again, reinforces my view that funding schools through property
taxes is a perverse and ultimately damaging idea. I understand the ideals
behind it (schools are funded locally, playing into the strange american
fixation with avoiding distributing tax revenues). Affirmative action is
mentioned as outdated, but perhaps it is a sign that american society still
feels guilty over the fact that not sixty years ago large swathes were still
arguing against the integration of schools.

(As an aside, isn't there a thing where the titles of links are changed when
they don't match the content that everyone keeps complaining about? Wouldn't
this be a prime example of a link whose title should be changed to match the
article within?)

~~~
druswick
Definitely! This was the most line of reasoning in the article with the most
impact. Property taxes are often progressive, disproportionally affecting the
relatively wealthy. That's good. But when the benefits are collected and spent
too locally, it means areas with higher property values also get better
services. It takes away the progressive quality of property taxes.

Continue this to an extreme: property taxes that I pay are only spent on my
household. The city/county maintains my property, educates my children.
There's no more progressive distribution.

~~~
drakeandrews
I think you've gotten your definition of progressive muddled. Property taxes
are considered to be progressive because property values are widely considered
to correlate strongly with income and wealth. Spending those taxes locally (or
apportioning funds for local amenaties based on local tax revenue) is
regressive, because increased benefit is then therefore correlated strongly
with increased wealth and income. Therefore, your example represents a most
regressive distribution of tax distribution.

~~~
patmcguire
They originate from small New England towns where they would have been
progressive. Now that the rich and the poor don't live near each other they're
regressive.

------
stcredzero
An "entrenched meritocracy" is a contradiction. It's not a true meritocracy.
Instead, it's an aristocracy claiming to be one, which is a bit tautological,
since every such class claims it deserves its privileged position. People in
other times and places believed they deserved their privileges just as
sincerely as you do right now. Of course, the situation is different because
we're smarter than they are ;)

~~~
chime
I disagree. Except for the ultra-wealthy 0.0001%ers, it is as close to a true
meritocracy it has ever been because the ones with merit rise to the top. A
good surgeon can make 3-4x a poor surgeon. A good programmer can make 2-3x a
poor programmer. If you are a fantastic programmer and you make $50k/yr in US,
it means either (1) you don't care about money (2) you don't know how to
negotiate. There is no way a fantastic programmer is going to be stuck at 50k
in the US today. A poor programmer can end up with a 100k salary through
connections/seniority etc. but more often than not, most of them are in the
35k-65k range.

It is entrenched because only those on the top can afford to pay for good
education for their children so they can become good in their professions.
Doctors can afford to send their kids to top tier private-schools and Ivy
League universities, which means their kids have a better shot at being a good
doctor or engineer learning under Nobel Laureates compared to the kids of
auto-mechanics and park rangers, whose teachers might not have the best
credentials.

What I would agree with you on, is that this isn't too different from the past
when children of top ranking military generals got better training and ended
up being better soldiers and generals than the children of farmers and
blacksmiths. Nobody's saying children of farmers or auto-mechanics are any
less able. They just don't get the best training.

~~~
tnuc
>...it is as close to a true meritocracy it has ever been because the ones
with merit rise to the top.

And then;

>Nobody's saying children of farmers or auto-mechanics are any less able. They
just don't get the best training.

So it's a meritocracy but the training isn't available to all? Doesn't sound
like a meritocracy to me.

~~~
druswick
I think the article did a poor job of representing the recent efforts by elite
universities to open up access to the children of farmers and auto-mechanics.
<http://npc.fas.harvard.edu/> There's still more to be done, sure, but it's
important to mention that this isn't as bad as it was even 10 years ago.

~~~
BadCookie
Interesting. I'm the daughter of an electrician. I was admitted to Harvard in
2002, and at that time I believe they wanted my parents to pay about $12,000
for my first year. My parents couldn't afford it, and I did not attend. If
that calculator is to be believed, Harvard would now expect less than $3000
from my parents. I probably would have attended had that been the case back
then.

~~~
druswick
I think things changed a lot around 2009? I'm just going by memory... but I
think that's when a lot of the ivies drastically changed tuition assistance
based on income.

------
hakaaaaak
"Outdated affirmative-action programmes should give way to schemes to help
students based on the poverty of the applicant rather than the colour of his
skin."

Tell that to Harvard and look at Caltech's Asian student enrollment numbers:
[http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/339778/racial-
quotas-...](http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/339778/racial-quotas-
harvard-and-legacy-ibakkei-ron-unz)

Race should be left out of the qualifications for getting into university, but
be prepared for those universities' Asian student populations to grow
significantly, probably whether they are rich or poor. That's fine with me (I
dislike racial quotas), but it wasn't mentioned.

~~~
Evbn
If this distribution were considered problematic, controlling for family
immigration history could correct it -- a sort of perfect anti-aristocracy.

~~~
hakaaaaak
Discrimination based on immigration history sounds extremely unjust. At that
point you may as well base it on height.

------
larsonf
It seems some of us are missing the implication of the article.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that there _really were_ a way to negate
all advantages a person could be born into. No social networks, no additional
wealth, no additional opportunities, etc. A place where everyone is born at 25
at the exact same moment: no friends, no past, no parents, no money. We can
call this place 'Equalistan', population 1 million. Now, in Equalistan, there
is still random genetic mutation. Some people are taller, some people have
working memories that store more information, some have long-term memories
that store more information, some solve problems by simple heuristics, some
follow bodily signals for cues, etc. There's no such thing as 'smarter' or
'better' at birth in Equalistan, however, because these only make sense in
hindsight. Each person in Equalistan just has a _different_ , inherited
strategy at living. Everyone just showed up at the same moment, 25 years old,
no history, no buddies, but just an inherited genetic toolset.

Now, in Equalistan, there's a test to decide who gets the most resources.
However, no one in Equalistan designed this test because, remember, we are
making sure no one has any advantage; each person only has an inherited,
random strategies from birth. So everyone takes this test and there is then a
distribution of resource possession. But here is the upshot. Every person
completely _deserves_ the outcome they receive on the test. After all, the
only thing being tested was each person's 'merits'. Now the question is, does
it ever matter whether people "deserve" the amount of resources they possess?

The article isn't saying so much that meritocracy begets old-school elitism
after assortative mating as much as it's saying that meritocracy _itself_ is a
terrifying thing. That it may be 100% the truth that people deserve the
outcome they receive in life, but, who cares?

~~~
sophacles
There are many strange and not necessarily good assumptions in this post.

1) How is it "merit" is strictly about genetic variation, rather than a
combination of said genetic ability _and_ a record of the use of it
(achievement).

2) How is it that equality is strictly about starting position, rather than
starting position resource allocation protection? One can have a meritocracy
in which resource allocation is not about more-to better. It can in fact be
about responsibility and accountability being greater. Not saying I agree with
this, it is just a hole in the argument.

3) Resource distribution need not be 0-sum. There can in fact be more than 2
categories of "mine" and "not mine". There can be categories such as
"available to everyone", "available to no one", and variations on "available
to some". [1]

4) deserves is always and strictly a moral argument. There is no justification
of deserves that doesn't at some point refer directly to axioms (morals).
Therefore we again get to assumptions that need be discussed.

[1] Here in lies all the interesting stuff. Interplay between "some people get
access" and "mine" categories of resources are where all discussions like this
are really happening. How you define "some people get access" really can
change the end result of "mine" for various actors. Similarly, "everyone gets
access", in reality, is very tricky. For instance you could claim, and be
mostly right, that everyone gets access to computers (via public libraries
etc). Yet, not everyone gets access to training in effective computer use -
that is reserved for "some people get access", where the rules are 'has enough
money for proper training' (aka defining access rules on how much is already
in your "mine" resoures). It is a complicated interplay.

~~~
larsonf
Whoops, let me unpack.

1) That 'merit' is based on genetic variation was purely for the sake of
illustration. Of course this is not the case in reality. Yet to boil down the
problem to where we artificially limit the factors can help expose the real
issue. In Equalistan, the fictitious illustration, everyone showed up at 25
with no history or connections. They immediately took a test. The genetic
variation is just to show that random mutations can produce very varied
outcomes. In the real world, the situation is inconceivable worse. You have
genetic ability, mentorship, poetical power, network connections, wealth,
random physical events, etc, that all affect outcomes.

2) Although, again, the example given was purely artificial, it is not so
clear that personal 'accountability' or 'responsibility' is something that
someone can help. A person with a super-charged frontal cortex will be very
'accountable' or 'responsible' with their abilities. The knock-on effects of
stewardship of traits are very much the cause of other traits, whether
inherited genetically or contextually (via parents or social structures). But
I might be missing what you're saying here.

3) Resource distribution, you're right, is not zero-sum. In fact, on an
absolute basis, there is no reason why anyone should ever write an article
about injustice of outcomes given that overall standards of living are
unbelievable high for people at large, and relative to past ages, although
still very far form optimal. But this isn't the point of the article. Relative
distribution of resources is the issue. But here 'resources' isn't necessarily
physical things, it's anything limited. Power is zero sum, no matter what, and
is still a resource to be distributed.

4) Yes, 'deserves' is fully-loaded, and that was the point of mentioning it.
We somehow, for some bizarre reason feel that some people 'deserve' things and
others do not and we should try to make sure people only have what they
'deserve'. But, you're right, this is nuts, at what point could we possible
say that someone can really claim they did something independent of chance to
have some moral justification to some resource, power or otherwise? Never. If
you are hardworking--how can you separate that from genes plus context. If you
are smart, how are you anything other than your inborn ability plus
instruction. So I'm not saying some people don't deserve stuff, I'm saying
this _whole notion_ of deserving anything is ridiculous. Justification of
outcomes as anything other than randomness is just what elitism _is_.

------
monochromatic
This article isn't really about railing against meritocracy so much as it is
about promoting equality of opportunity. I ended up agreeing with much of it,
but based on the title I sure didn't expect to.

------
gyardley
_"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."_

Good, because _of course_ I would want my income to influence that of my
children. Yes, yes, I would want them to work hard and be curious and chart
their own path, etc., but because I'm their _father_ I'm going to try and
stack the deck in their favor as high as I can possibly stack it.

And let's not kid ourselves - everybody who cares about their children, no
matter what their political inclination or relative level of wealth, tries to
do exactly the same thing. From the hedge-fund billionaire to the immigrant
janitor.

~~~
npc
I don't think anyone thinks that it's wrong to try and give your children a
better position in life than they would be able to achieve through their
ability alone, just that it's beneficial to society as a whole to minimize
this effect. Prisoner's dilemma and all that.

------
brianchu
Most of the arguments over our meritocracy come down to a matter of semantics.
People seem to have wildly different definitions of a meritocracy. If you
define (as I do) a meritocracy as a society in which power is given according
to ability, then a society in which there are educational disadvantages for
the poor is nonetheless still a meritocracy, albeit an educationally-unequal
meritocracy. A society can be both a meritocracy and have poor social
mobility. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive (though in some cases
they can be).

Yes, it is true that today's society is by no means a pure meritocracy.
Connections matter. That is unlikely to ever change. The problem of "who you
know matters" is a problem of information - people would rather hire a
slightly-below-competent friend than a supposedly-competent stranger because
their friend is a known quantity.

------
mfsch
There are two parts to both “merit” and “cracy”. Merit can be thought of as
your abilities and talents or as your willingness to work hard. “Kratein”
means to rule (i.e. have responsibilities, make decisions), but in this
context it’s often seen as earning money (i.e. having a comfortable life
style).

I would say that in an ideal meritocracy, the people with the most knowledge,
abilities and intelligence should be the ones making the decisions and
carrying the responsibilities. The willingness to work hard, however, should
determine income, luxury and comfort.

The problem, of course, is that the powerful usually try to make themselves
and their friends wealthy, but maybe this separation of the idea of
meritocracy into (knowledge/ability = power/decisions) and (hard work =
wealth/comfort) is what we as a society should strife for.

Thoughts?

~~~
shawn-butler
I would consider spending some time with Plato's Socratic dialogue The
Republic if you haven't already.

The tension of a timocracy devolving into an oligarchy depends greatly on the
concept of justice in play at the time. I often hear in the valley "work hard,
play hard" as a justification of oligarchic excess, when it should actually be
"work hard, work harder" or "work hard, play less".

------
davidiach
This is really strange in my opinion. We should make it harder for rich
children to get a good eduction and easier for poor children? Really? Why not
make it harder for bright students to get good grades and easy for dumb
students to get good grades? That would lead to greater "equality" too.

~~~
CJefferson
The fact that someone on a site like hacker news (which I like consider are on
the more intelligent side) would make a comparison like this, deeply disturbs
me. We clearly have fundamentally different world views. (edit: I don't want
this to sound like davidirch shouldn't have that opinion, just that it's easy
to assume people will share your opinion)

I don't understand how you can be against what seems to be a completely
reasonable proposition to me, that everyone should get a fair chance,
regardless of where they start from.

I don't see any of this as making it harder for rich children to get a good
education, except to remove situations where they currently have an (in my
opinion) unfair advantage, like expensive tutoring aimed towards helping them
pass exams, which is not available to many.

In fact, the precise aim here is to help bright students get good grades, and
dumb ones get bad grades, which is the exact opposite of the comparison you
seem to be making!

~~~
davidiach
1\. Tutoring does not make a dumb person smart. Your IQ does not grow because
you have a good teacher.

2\. Complaining about people not having a fair chance in an age where
everybody has access to the internet (which is pretty much all human
knowledge) is just wrong.

3\. You don't need college to rise to the top - that's just a myth (check out
Thiel Fellowship website, they have lot's of materials on this topic).

4\. The fact that you don't agree with someone doesn't mean they lack
intelligence.

~~~
Livven
2\. How many students aged 6-12 do you know that are willing to voluntarily
spend time learning and studying? Zero?

Don't kid yourself. Just because knowledge and information is out there and
accessible for free doesn't mean a child will have the ability and motivation
to seek it out on their own. They're children, after all. What and how they
learn will largely depend on parents and school.

3\. You don't need a plane to get from New York to London. There are ships.
You can even sail across the Atlantic! (there must be a fancy Latin term for
this fallacy?)

------
yarianluis
While this article makes many good points:

"The other great unfairness has to do with the preferences that elite American
universities give to well-connected children, either because their parents
went to the university themselves or because they have given money."

"An educational institution should focus on attracting the best people, and
then work out how to finance the poorer people in that category."

====

Legacy admissions usually come with legacy donations. These donations can be
in the millions each year for an organization like Harvard, which in turn pays
the tuition of the poorer people in the category.

The issues of legacy admissions and affirmative action are pretty closely
linked. So to address one part of the issue without looking at the other is
not quite fair.

------
liber8
The premise of the article is faulty, and the problem overstated.

First, the author has to sleight-of-hand his way into his argument. He's
worried that the "elite" will use their money to ensure that their children
get such a leg-up on the non-elite children that the non-elite children won't
be able to compete and will become (I guess?) the modern equivalent of feudal
peasants. Of course, he doesn't present any evidence that this is happening.
He states that "the top 1% have seen their incomes soar", but this isn't a
statement of a problem.[1]

While it seems intuitive that privileged children will do better than non-
privileged children, and even that a cadre of privileged children could keep
the non-privileged children non-privileged for eternity, this just doesn't
jibe with reality.

For example, across just three generations, the complete loss of inherited
wealth is nearly 90%. That means the great-grand children of nearly every
founder who had a big exit will never see any of that money. (Note that this
same argument is often made with respect to corporations as a basis for
stringent anti-trust regulation. But, pick any 50 year increment of the DJIA
and see how many companies on the list in the starting year were on the list
at the end.) The "problem" of perpetual wealth a specter.

Sure, you can point to the Rothschilds as an example of dynastic wealth. But
(conspiracy theories aside) how many “wealthy” Rothschilds are there? Do they
wield any real power? What about some of the other richest people in history?
If dynastic wealth is a true problem, why aren’t the Hugheses, the Gettys, the
Rockafeller’s the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts, the Mellons, and the Fords
dominating world politics, finance or culture? (Interesting aside: many of
these titans were actually dirt poor themselves before building their own
fortunes.)

It’s easy to take a small, 30-year slice of history and claim that, if things
continue this way, surely the world will be hell in just a few more short
years. Fortunately, it almost never works out that way.

[1] See pg's article re "money is not wealth" here:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>)

------
contingencies
My first thought on the subject, as someone writing a history book on part of
China's borderlands was the (still-current) ancient Confucian government-
meritocracy's simple anti-entrenchment practice of forcibly posting leaders to
areas in which they were neither native nor had family, and shifting them
periodically. To this day, it's how China continues to operate. Totally
effective? No. But pretty good.

------
druswick
So I love this topic. This is a big deal now, and looking at trends in
demography, incomes, and wealth, it's going to be a yet bigger deal for many
years to come. But is there something that can be done? Is there a
tech/business solution that helps alleviate the mutual exclusive quality that
bingobangobongo mentions? If you could crack that, you could probably be make
a big impact for a long time.

------
hnal943
This article seems to misunderstand the definition of merit as something
related to education or money. In a true meritocracy your standing is based on
your value to others. If you do valuable work, the market rewards you. If not,
then not. In capitalism, the market decides what is valuable; it seems to be
pretty efficient at it.

------
officemonkey
As long as money and power give a leg up to the dumber children of smart
people, it's not really a meritocracy.

Exhibit A: George W. Bush

~~~
Evbn
Was HW notably smarter? W wasn't an academic, but that is diffferent from
dumb.

------
stcredzero
From other comment threads, I've come up with "A Modest Proposal" of my own,
largely derived from Aldous Huxley. I can eliminate all contradiction of
"meritocracy entrenching itself."

Meritocracies tend to lose their purity due to our propensity for passing on
advantages to our friends and relatives. Over time, this yields something less
like a meritocracy and more like aristocracy -- though it will perniciously
continue to identify as a "meritocracy." Eventually, the contractions give
rise to social upheaval. This is generally chaotic and bad, but the good news
is that we can now have both the technology and social engineering know-how
completely prevent this.

Simply engineer humans and human society such that the ruling classes really
are smarter, fitter, and in every way superior to the lower classes. Relocate
sources of fresh, nutritious food to big box stores in newly developed
neighborhoods only accessible by car. Re-price food generally, such that once
normal essentials like fresh produce are now luxury items. Furthermore, use
subsidies to flood the market with empty calories in the form of synthetic
starch, fat, and sugar, making it a concerted effort and additional expense
over market norms to afford nutritious food conducive to intellectual
development. (Not to mention subtle and complex gustatory stimulation.) In
fact, make it economically advantageous in the short term for a household to
buy food that makes its members sicker, fatter, and stupider. Use the media
and market forces, such that companies are motivated by higher margins to
aggressively market food -- both that of poorer quality to the less affluent
and that of higher quality to the more affluent -- so that market forces
directly reinforce the goals of the program, greatly leveraging (by orders of
magnitude) the government subsidy of raw ingredients with private money.

While doing this, flood the media with trash, to cut off lower classes from
excessive intellectual stimulation. Promulgate an ideology that attaches
attractiveness and desirability with anti-intellectual attitudes, with the
goal of raising the value of subconscious and tribal signaling over actual
intellectual accomplishment. Close libraries, eliminating them as a source of
unregulated intellectual stimulation. Also put additional pressure on the
remaining libraries as locations for ad-hoc social work by eliminating funding
for alternative places for underclass adults and children. Grant de-facto (but
deniable) media monopolies to create market forces conducive to more trash
content produced for the biggest audience at the lowest cost while
discouraging the production of competing intellectually stimulating content.
Certainly suppress, where it is possible to do so deniably, any media which is
not subject to the above market forces. (Public radio and television, for
example.)

Also recognize that such a program will succeed in suppressing a large
proportion of the population, but additional measures will be needed to
suppress the excess population of dangerous intellectually competent persons
which will still crop up. Again, market forces can be leveraged with the aid
of the right societal manipulations. Push a "nerd-culture" which is
misunderstood by (and therefore isolated from) the mainstream, but which
(outwardly) welcomes intellectuals. Manipulate this nerd culture, such that
its population either largely discounts politics, or is attracted to fringe
politics of no consequence. Also attach "coolness" in this segment of the
populace with obsessive attention to technical and otherwise misunderstood
esoteric pursuits which take up time and energy and act to distance this group
from the mainstream. Realize also, that such persons are economically
valuable, and further harness their economic potential by promulgating
workaholic tendencies in the form of a "work hard, play hard" ideology. Create
a norm of long hours, and provide on-site facilities to encourage this. Also
promulgate the idea of "side projects" with the idea that the only worthy
programmers are passionate enough to have such, and so create social pressures
to dissipate yet more time and energy. Market forces can again be harnessed
through the mechanism of a "startup scene" which keeps the youngest and most
energetic intellectuals working long hours. Synergistic to such a scene and to
the overall meritocratic ideology, also establish a nerd underclass sharing
the same outward cultural trappings, but stuck in underpaid dead-end jobs or
overpaid corporate dead-end jobs.

Note also that the promulgation of a nerd underclass means that many of the
nerd/mainstream bifurcation strategies can also be applied within the nerd
segment itself, further increasing the control of dangerous excess
intelligence. Do this by also promulgating anti-intellectual attitudes within
the nerd segment itself. Glorify the unquestioned parroting of memes from
certain nodes on the Internet as indicators of cleverness and coolness. For
whichever segment of the nerd populace that will buy it, place greater status
to faster access to such memes over true skepticism and creativity. Also
promulgate ideologies which elevate unquestioned ridicule as a kind of magical
ultimate good, so long as it's funny, and which are easily applicable to
suppressing complex and controversial topics through noise. Similar effects
can be attained with the notion of the intellectual transcendence erroneously
placed on a hazy notion of "irony," thereby causing susceptible persons to
insulate themselves from reality and issues of social consequence in a bubble
of their own smugness.

By throwing up so many dietary and socially engineered cultural barriers/traps
working against actual personal development, the overall effect will be
twofold. On one hand, the moneyed elites will have the resources to easily
escape and side-step most of these traps, resulting in their population
actually being largely superior, thereby placing the truth on their side. On
the other hand, any individuals who manage to escape all of the above traps
are likely to be superior individuals as well, making it easy for the existing
elite to co-opt their talents, additionally bolstering the truth of the
meritocratic ideology.

I think I have shown that the above scheme is not only extremely robust, but
possesses other striking beneficial qualities, some of which may be
unprecedented in human history. The scheme can be thought of as a disguised
aristocracy which maintains the trappings of meritocracy through the use of
numerous disguised and subliminal barriers to personal and intellectual
advancement. Most uncontrolled intellectual and personal advancement is
handily suppressed, and the remaining advancement is channeled in ways which
produce considerable economic gain for the good of society as a whole. For the
proportion of the population for which these barriers to personal advancement
fail, absorption into the elite diffuses any potential for social upheaval
while bolstering the power of the elite and its strength within its stated
meritocratic ideology. In particular, this scheme has considerable advantages
over a naive meritocracy, in that it successfully suppresses most social
mobility while avoiding the ideological and actual contradictions that arise
in following generations. By deliberately but deniably engineering the actual
inferiority of the lower classes, ideological contradictions are eliminated.
In this way, it's "the best of both worlds" -- achieving the social stability
of aristocracy while avoiding its long term diffusion of talent and sustaining
the ideological cover of "meritocracy" indefinitely. I hope the "merits" of
such a system are self evident, and that such a system is adopted by our
society in the near future.

(Addendum - This system is not without flaws. For one thing, it can be easily
distinguished from a true meritocracy from its lack of social mobility.
However, dissent resulting from this information can be readily suppressed by
the same mechanisms outlined above.)

------
michaelochurch
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.

~~~
api
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
_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
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.

~~~
yukoncornelius
You cannot simply blame the government policymakers. Civil servants make the
policies based on Congressional direction. Congress develops laws due to
public pressure which is often led by lobby efforts. Who funds the the
lobbyists?

The entire society is guilty for the current state of economic affairs as
civil servants don't stand up to Congress, Congress wants to get re-elected,
the public is easily distracted, and the 1% or .001% fund the lobbies.

------
youngerdryas
When I first read the title I thought this would be an article about
governments impeding meritocracy not a screed against it. I guess we are
running out of problems if meritocracy is one. Lots of immigrants come here
work hard and are very successful. Virtually anyone willing to work hard will
succeed but people have different priorities. As for always comparing the US
to Nordic countries, if you compare them to Massachusetts they look bad, if
you compare them to California they look insignificant and then of course
there is the rest of the country.

~~~
maeon3
Meritocracy is not a problem with government, it is the solution. This
badmouthing of Meritocracy is a way for the ones who are in power but don't
deserve to be there as a way of maintaining that power.

On the other hand, if you make it too easy for a young person to climb the
ladder (working like a dog), than what's the point of getting to the top?
There are no benefits to being there except you will be living a life with
more hours at the office than ever before. The reason people work to climb the
latter is because there is a reward where you can work less and tell others
what to do, and they can't dethrone you.

Remove that reward, and you may find a population regarding climbing the
career latter as foolishness. Why would you want to take on a second job, for
no extra pay, where the workload increases exponentially with the new upstarts
out of college, and the right to take it easy is gone. Like a second job at
McDonalds, the moment you take it easy, you are replaced. Why strive to get
that?

~~~
stcredzero
Merit == effort? I don't think so.

~~~
hnal943
Merit == Value to others. Most of the time, that will require effort though.

~~~
stcredzero
Effort is a multiplier. It's not a term. That's why "merit == effort" is a
very bad idea without more elaboration. As mentioned in the recent Bitcoin
thread, getting 1000 people together to dig a hole is costly, but not
necessarily that valuable. The real trick is, exactly which hole, where and
when. Depending on those factors, the hole could literally be worth nothing or
worth millions.

All things being equal, effort can well be a deciding multiplier, however.

------
eriksank
Good academic training/education used to be inaccessible to the poor. This is
no longer true. The internet is busy changing all of that. Home schooling at
any level has now become feasible. The difference that remains, however, is
the difference in outcome for children due to family breakdown. That has,
however, nothing to do with income, and everything with the views on marriage
with which the person was educated. To the extent that keeping children away
from the often rampant depravity prevalent in the government-run education
system will preserve their home-instilled views on marriage, NOT expanding the
school system will contribute to improving the outcome for the demographic
that has less trouble with marriage breakdown and other social ills. In my
opinion, it is about time to remove the control of the depravity-encouraging
politicians from anything related to education.

