
The Problem with Meritocracy - asciilifeform
http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2009/05/the-decline-of-middle-america-and-the-problem-of-meritocracy/
======
etherael
The solution offered is offensive, amounting to randomly allocating power and
privilege amongst a given population rather than allowing the best and
brightest make their case through personal excellence.

All this supposedly so those that are incapable of succeeding in a meritocracy
are not sentenced to the terrible fate of believing themselves worthy of their
low station. I don't want to imagine a person so wretched they would prefer to
ruin the world rather than understand their position in it as below average. I
can think of little more depressing.

Feudalism died for a reason, let's not bring it back.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Imagine the state the world would be in if someone had put into practice his
proposed "solution" back in, say, 1500.

People who succeed do not just benefit themselves, they often benefit many
others, including future generations. And people are motivated to succeed by
desiring the rewards that come with success such as wealth, fame, etc. Without
such incentives, success and progress suffer. Art, architecture, literature,
music, and poetry suffers. The study and practice of medicine, physics, and
chemistry suffers. Innovation in industry suffers. Free enterprise suffers.
Everyone's quality of life is reduced because the automobile was never
invented, penicillin was never discovered, radio was never discovered, the
electric light bulb was never invented, the refrigerator was never invented,
etc, etc, etc.

Should we discourage the Newtons, the Shakespeares, the John Carmacks, the
Sergey Brins, the JK Rowlings, and the Steve Jacksons of the world because
there are so many other folks who are perfectly content to spend their lives
working at the Try N Save and watching 5 hours of TV a night and some of those
folks find their lives dissatisfying in comparison? Quiet down! You're being
unruly! You're making everyone else look bad with your success! Here, come
slum with us, it'll make everyone happier in the end, honest.

Time and time again history has shown that unfettered individual liberty
maximizes progress, both for individuals and for society as a whole. There
will always be inequality and tragedy, that's the nature of life. Trying to
pretend that we can make everyone identically equal and erase everything that
makes people different from one another is a distopian vision, very Borg-like
and anti-humane.

~~~
drunkpotato
I'm surprised to see such a high number of points for this canned mad-libs
response unworthy of the thoughtfulness of the original article. You fail to
acknowledge issues raised in the article and narrowly argue the solution in
the most trivial and trite way.

I would like to find a way to combine the best of the technological brilliance
and economic powerhouse that meritocracy and social mobility have provided,
while also looking for a less disconnected, community-focused and
psychologically healthier nation. Any discussions that help pinpoint problems
in our current system, and propose solutions, are welcome to me. I do not
agree with the author's proposed solution, but I do agree that there are
problems inherent in the extreme selfishness and greed in our society that we
have not adequately addressed.

~~~
timwiseman
I think part of the question is what you mean by _less disconnected,
community-focused and psychologically healthier nation._ and specifically how
you define connected and community focused. Most people who use those phrases
are talking about their geographic area, but that means little to me.

The community of SQL Server DBAs I participate in is important to me, but that
includes members both physically close and around the world. My church group
matters to me, and that one is somewhat centered around my general geographic
area, but it has people from all over the city. My coworkers are very
important in my life, but none of them live anywhere near me (I live in the
South part of Las Vegas, work in the North, most of my coworkers live
relatively close to the office.)

The people who live in my neighborhood do not play a significant part in my
life. They are thankfully all very nice people, and I wish them the best and
say "Hello" when I meet them while walking my dog, but I have very little in
common and little reason to interact with them. If you mean this group by
connected and community focused, then why would we want that?

~~~
jimbokun
Because you have self selected yourself into a mono-culture of people very
much like yourself. You have no reason, no incentive, to understand and
empathize with people different from you. The essay makes that point with
respect to the rich and poor kids in the Breakfast Club, who were at least in
the same school, vs. the modern high school in the O.C., where everyone is
uniformly spoiled and out of touch with other people's reality.

This leads to the increasing political polarization we see today. A relative
handful of people taking society's spoils for itself and isolating themselves
from the rest of society. If unchecked, do you think this will end well? The
end effect is something like the Feudalism rightly decried elsewhere in this
thread.

~~~
timwiseman
I don't know why this was downvoted, I disagree with you, but this does show
reasoning.

I do not think I am in a mono-culture though. I am rather focused on few
subsets that share some interests with me. That interest is what makes them
important to me, but within those communities of importance I am exposed to a
variety of viewpoints outside that particular interest.

I do not think that this leads to political polarization. Now, if the only
"interest communities" were by political party this may be true, but for
someone with non-political party "interest communities" you are likely to be
exposed to a wide variety of politicals views. I have both major parties and
some independents in my workplace for instance.

 _A relative handful of people taking society's spoils for itself and
isolating themselves from the rest of society._

This is a non-sequitor from your other points. Greater political polarization
does not imply a greater divide between rich or poor.

As for how it ends, that depends on how people get their wealth. If they get
it by creating new wealth and innovation, then yes it will end well. Yes,
there will then be enormous division between the wealthy and the poor, but the
wealthy will become wealthy precisely by improving the world for everyone,
including the poorest. Also in such a society the poor have at least a chance
to become wealthy (perhaps not a statistically good one, but a genuince
chance).

If they become wealthy through taking of taxes, wealth redistribution, or
outright theft, then the end will be predictably horrible.

One place to look for a well thought out reasoning of this is
<http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html> .

~~~
drunkpotato
_If they become wealthy through taking of taxes, wealth redistribution, or
outright theft, then the end will be predictably horrible._

There is trouble in rhetoric like this. You have asserted an equivalence class
of taxes, wealth redistribution, and theft, which are three different things.
Taxes are the dues you pay to the society in which you live. In a democratic
society, you get _one_ vote in how those dues are spent, and a voice to
convince others that your way is right. Of course, money talks, and this
process can be corrupted in innumerable ways.

Wealth redistribution happens on a large scale through a pattern of market
forces, governmental intervention, and other economic and psychological
factors. The last forty years have seen a massive wealth redistribution in the
U.S., and it's not in favor of the lower 80%. For many reasons, the ethics of
which are fervently debated, this wealth redistribution has been one-way.

Theft is a crime involving the unlawful taking of physical goods.

By asserting this equivalence class, you have already partaken in massive
rhetorical fraud which is harming our ability to engage in reasonable debate.

~~~
timwiseman
You are misinterpreting my intent. Perhaps I was not clear, though I thought I
was.

What I was saying is that if someone becomes rich through any of those means
than it is almost certainly immoral (note the almost) and that it will most
likely lead to problems in society. (Again, note I am talking about people
beocming rich this way. Using wealth redistribution to say gauruntee a certain
minimum income is a much more complicated situation. Having The government
step in and take vast amounts of wealth from some people in order to hand it
to one or two people specifically to make them rich is almost certainly going
to lead to ruin.)

Taxes are necessary. Not good, but necessary, and I have no hesitation paying
a reasonable amount of taxes to provide for necessary functions of government.
But, if people are being taxed specifically to make some noble rich then it is
both immoral and will lead to problems for society.

Wealth redistribution for the purpose of making some wealthy is tantamount to
theft, just government authorized. There are some examples of this that have
been in the news lately from Afghanistan were public lands are simply handed
over to friends of high government officials either completely free or for a
pittance.

To summarize and be completly clear: In the context of being done specifically
to make a person or small priveleged group wealthy, taxes, wealth
redistribution, and theft are effectively the same. This was a pattern that is
mostly seen in ancient feudalisms or some modern third world countries. In the
case of being done in an attempt to legitimately improve society then taxes,
wealth redistribution, and theft are three very different things.

~~~
drunkpotato
Thank you for the clarification.

------
grellas
Semi-bizarre ruminations about why kids from the midwestern U.S. leave home
when they grow up and don't come back. As someone who did just that many years
ago, I can sum it up in a much shorter way: _because there is nothing going on
there_.

Maybe I could have succeeded at the local meat packing plant, or in my local
4H club, or at the smokestack plant down the road but I doubt that I or anyone
else would want to be told, as we look out at the world of possibilities, that
someone had decreed that this is what we were stuck with for our life's
opportunities.

A kind of reverse snobbery atypical for the midwest (where people are
generally as friendly and easy-going as one might imagine). Very strange.

~~~
jerf
You raise in passing a very good point to consider when someone proposes grand
social engineering plans: What does it mean for a given person?

It's all very well and good to promote "equality" uber alles, but that means
that you're going up to a talented person and telling them that they will not
be allowed to shine, or that there is no point as there will be no reward for
it. Or to open another potential firestorm, when we talk about getting more
women into computing that may very well manifest for a particular person as
basically saying to her "Look, I know you _think_ you want to study biology,
but you _really_ want to study computer science." (At the point where women
are the majority of college students, I think there's a certain arrogance
involved in telling this mass of women what it is they want to study.)

Basically what I'm getting at is that the micro can't be separated from the
macro. If you want to tell your children they can be anything they want, you
_can't_ end up with a perfectly egalitarian society as a result. If you want a
perfectly egalitarian society, you _can't_ tell children they can be whatever
they want because egalitarianism will do a lot of choosing for them. (Or
perhaps rather you _can_ tell them that, but you will be _lying_.) And that's
just one example. A lot of other "things everyone believes" about the macro
and the micro can't be reconciled, and trying to force it won't make things
any better.

 _You can't have it all_. Ever.

~~~
Kisil
>If you want to tell your children they can be anything they want, you can't
end up with a perfectly egalitarian society as a result.

Perhaps an easier solution than the author's don't-let-anyone-excel would be
to de-stigmatize lower-talent positions. Tell your children they can be
whatever they want, and then let them follow whatever they're good at. Even if
it's plumbing or retail. Fundamentally, I don't think meritocracy is
incompatible with mass happiness. (More technically, I believe there exists
some value system in which pursuit of excellence is encouraged without
associating a sense of shame to "lower" professions.)

> when someone proposes grand social engineering plans: What does it mean for
> a given person?

We have to be very careful here to view imbalances as potential indicators of
underlying problems, and find and treat those problems rather than the
symptoms. To use your example, we have to determine whether systematic
pressures are keeping women from choosing CS, and correct those pressures,
rather than adding new pressures _to_ choose CS. This point gets made
frequently around here, but the mistake is made often enough that it bears
repeating: adding different counter-pressures that fix the statistics may mask
the problem, but often also exacerbate the underlying issues.

~~~
billybob
Yes. Let me make it personal. Why have I not invented cold fusion, written an
operating system, or cured cancer? Answer: because I'm not smart enough.

OK, I don't want to be too defeatist - I should try my best to do what I can.
But I realize I have limits, and that I am more able than some and less able
than others.

Does that make me unhappy? No. And if it did, I think the fault would be mine.
Like everyone else, I try to look on the bright side of things. Nobody is
perfectly happy, and studies show that beyond the point where you have enough
not to worry all the time, more money doesn't make you happier.

We don't need to stop telling people 'you should try to excel.' But it would
be good to add 'in whatever makes you happy.' If you love cars, be a great
mechanic, not a sullen one who wishes he was an executive. And if you want to
be a scientist but don't have what it takes, well, learning to be happy in
something else is part of life. We all have to deal with that sort of thing.

~~~
paulgerhardt
[http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.htm...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html)

Stick with it...(especially in the middle and towards the end)

I'm still very much trying to digest the contents of this article rather than
regurgitating the usual flippant answers.

Not everyone can get a job in at their local Google datacenter, even if they
train for 2 years. (There was an amazing NPR story recently to this effect.)
And while I have moved multiple times, and across two hemispheres to get to
Silicon Valley (and yet still can't call myself local to _anywhere_ ) I feel
some obligation to satiate something I which appears as burgeoning _task_
vacuum in rural America.

That is, there is a tremendous amount of idle "Turking" power going to waste
in the heartlands - lifetimes of mechanical acuity being thrown away on
television rather than say another Wikipedia/Github for rapid-prototyped goods
.

~~~
protomyth
Mr Rowe was pretty much right on. There is a certain class-ism that seems go
along with manual labor. I have heard people call plumbers and carpenters
"unskilled labor". That is so much crud, it is unbelievable.

------
Kisil
Shorter version of the article: Meritocracy, when it even works, makes the
winners smug and the losers depressed. Economic gains do not equal what we
lose in community. We should discourage some necessary conditions for
meritocracy (e.g. mobility) to promote traditional symptoms of
community/culture (e.g. immobility).

I don't agree with the article, but I enjoyed the cognitive dissonance. I
think economic gains more than make up for whatever we've lost, and society is
adapting to preserve the things that really matter in new ways. But even
accepting that personal accountability negatively affects happiness, it seems
easier to try reshape attitudes about personal value, rather than restructure
society to make everyone feel included.

~~~
DenisM
It's easy to prove as well - meritocratic societies seem to have survived and
won over communal societies.

------
sethg
It occurs to me that one of the effects of meritocratic mobility is that
school systems in less-desirable places get caught in a downward spiral.
Public schools in Kansas, for example, get the bulk of their revenue from
Kansas taxpayers. But if someone rises through the Kansas school system, does
extremely well, and ends up with a high-paying job in New York, that person’s
taxes will be going to support public schools in New York, not Kansas.

------
Sukotto
Wow, I never thought about things from this perspective before. Quite a lot of
things I find weird about American culture -- in particular the politics here
-- make a lot more sense viewed through this lens.

I'm not sure I agree with the conclusions, but I do find the various points
raised to be really thought provoking.

~~~
billybob
I thought it was interesting too. I would sum it up as "local culture and
equality are important, and are being destroyed by an ideal of individual
aspiration. Current policies push us toward the latter; they should be made
neutral or to favor the former."

An interesting point. It's true that our scholarship system tends to pull
talent from small towns to large ones, and maybe that has negative
implications. But to actively discourage people from their ambition seems
wrong. Let THEM decide whether local culture, traditional community, etc, are
valuable to them.

Another point: is a government-enforced local culture as good as a naturally
developed one? Can you ever regain the attitude "that's the way life is around
here, just like in great-grandpa's day" by making policies? Or will you just
have festering resentment by those with stunted talent? To me, this is part of
the inherent flaw of communism.

------
proemeth
Long but worth the read, because insightful, well researched and written. It
questions a value that can be so deeply rooted in our paradigms that i got a
bit of a "shock" myself. I love to read something so refreshing.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_Revolution>

------
pragmatic
Bogus. Lowest unemployment is in "flyover" country:
<http://www.bls.gov/web/laummtrk.htm>

These parts of the country have been booming for 10(20?)+ years.

Yes, the parts of the country he visited (especially the Black Hills) are full
of the same crappy towns that have always been there. The Black Hills region,
although naturally beautiful, is covered by a blight of ramshackle old
buildings and trailer homes. And so it has been for some time.

~~~
pragmatic
Rapid City, which is in the Black Hills Region of South Dakota is #10 lowest
unemployment in the Nation. It's also the nastiest part of the state with
gangs, crime, etc. I'm making no judgments, etc, just giving you some info.

However, It is IMHO no worse than the outskirts of Philadelphia which I
visited for the first time as a high schooler. I won an essay contest and was
sent to Valley Forge. I couldn't believe what a sh*thole Philadelphia was and
the surrounding area. People sleeping on the streets inside the city. People
sitting on rocking chairs on the porch of old ramshackle cabins outside the
city.

Again, what do you make of that? People are the same all over. I'm really
tired of this "people who live in X are Y" crap. Whether it's America vs China
vs Europe or Red State vs Blue State. It's mostly bunk generated by our own
biases.

~~~
chadgeidel
As a Rapid City native, I am surprised to hear this. I have not lived there in
about 5 years, but I grew up there and my parents and brother still live
there.

Sure, there are people on "tough times" but I can't believe that it's the
"nastiest part of the state."

Of course, these are just my personal observations. I lived on the "good side"
of town and my father (who owns a construction company) did fairly well.

------
marciovm123
I see these situations as people being forced to confront the trade-offs
between Equality and Freedom. The prevailing sense in America is that Freedom
is the most important value, and that Equality is pretty important too.
However, attaining Equality often involves infringing on Freedom and vice-
versa. Maximizing economic freedom is one of the core principles of America,
which has resulted in amazing wealth and technology, but also means that
Equality is inevitably de-emphasized - we have to accept that.

The OP thinks that this is a problem, and that Americans should become more
local. However, he fails to realize that America is made up of people who were
fed up with staying local. That is why they packed up their bags, left their
jobs, friends and family and traveled far to come live here. Why would their
offspring be any different?

~~~
arethuza
I think you'll find that pretty much all of us are decended from people who
were fed up staying local. Otherwise we'd all still be in Kenya.

~~~
marciovm123
touche

~~~
arethuza
Interesting fact that I learned from Time Team recently: the UK has apparently
had 7 completely separate waves of human habitation, with the population being
completely wiped out by Ice Ages in between.

------
junklight
The author of this has clearly never worked in the UK civil service where
promotion is not based on merit but according to arcane rules of how long you
have worked there and what you "deserve".

What you end up is a slow lumbering mess. Unable to achieve much (except
maintain the status quo - which in fairness seems to be the purpose of the
civil service), the cost of doing anything tends to be immense and people
spend more time worrying about whose fault it is going to be than making
things happen.

~~~
arethuza
The civil service _is_ a meritocracy - they just don't use sane metrics for
what merit is.

~~~
junklight
Well yes - one metric might be characterised as "how well you are able to work
in the civil service".

Something I have to say I was pitifully bad at

------
sgoranson
That Vonnegut short story is the first thing that comes to mind for the
author's solution:

<http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html>

------
DanielBMarkham
When the premise is that flyover country is rotting because all the really
smart people leave and never come back? I'm bailing out of the article.

If anything, I believe high-speed internet will give rise to a new agrarian
society based on technology workers.

~~~
ovi256
I wish it were so, but I do not think it will be for some time. First, even if
the technical means for remote work exist (and the means have existed for some
time), inertia delays their adoption. Second, even if business switches to
remote work, people will still move to business centers for a while, again by
inertia. These two delays are considerable enough that I think it is more
likely for us to see another paradigm switch than current trends coming to
completion.

Near futureshock: change so fast we barely have time to comprehend current
developments until the next shift.

------
ojbyrne
Currently, the lowest rates of unemployment are in flyover country. The
Dakotas, Wyoming, Oklahoma...

------
DenisM
tl;dr: When judged on their merit stupid people get upset. However if wealth
and status are allocated randomly every loser has an excuses in randomness of
luck. Author believes the latter is a better world.

------
azgolfer
The book 'The Big Test' explains the rise of intelligence testing and the
origin of the word 'meritocracy'. Prior to intelligence testing, college
admittance was very influenced by whether your father had gone to that
college. The hierarchy was determined by the status of your school and the
senior society you were a member of. The senior George Bush he uses as an
example - a Yale man and member of Skull and Bones. He mentions another
remarkable fact - until around 1910 or so, 90% of corporate CEOs were
Episcopalian. A very interesting book.

------
eplanit
Not sure at all why this article is this particular forum (neither Hacking nor
News is contained). It's socialist proselytism, laced with logical fallacies,
pseudo-intellectualism, and bizarre non-sequiturs regarding societies vs.
organizations.

It probably works on 16-22 year-olds.

~~~
eplanit
Oh - sorry, comrades, to offend the 'collective'.

------
igorhvr
Who is John Galt?

