

The Meritocracy Myth - absconditus
http://www.ncsociology.org/sociationtoday/v21/merit.htm

======
Dilpil
As I see it, there are two components of a meritocracy: does merit imply
success, and does success imply merit.

Many of these arguments are meant to prove that success does not imply merit.
This may be true, there are plenty of rich people who did not work hard to
earn their wealth.

These arguments should be removed.

We should be more worried about whether hard work implies success or not.
After all, this is what will determine if people decide to work hard or not.

~~~
zdw
There's also the element of chance. A technical acquaintance of mine has a
daughter who went to school for TV and film writing, and managed to land a job
writing for a popular show a few years back (Ugly Betty), and make a
considerable amount of money in the process.

His take on her success was as follows - in that career even if you were
really good, you have a small chance (2-5% he estimated) at being in the right
place at the right time (had writing credits on a show that didn't get
canceled, and became popular) in which case you could make a very impressive
income.

On the other hand, you could go get an engineering degree and get a job at an
engineering firm. You'd have a much better chance (85-95%) at getting a job
that paid well provided you did the job properly, although possibly not as
well as the wildly successful writer mentioned above, and it may not be what
you wanted to do. The implication is that he would have rather had her get
that kind of job, but considering the outcome was quite proud of her.

I tend to think of internet startups like the TV writer gig - it's a way to
have a small chance at hitting the goldmine, but less of a sure thing.

Similarly, my father is a pediatrician. He often sees kids for physicals who
want to get into professional sports because they really dig
soccer/basketball/football/etc. He does a math exercise with them, going over
how many people are drafted a year, and basically it comes down to "Are you
the best person this year in the entire state?", which the answer is usually
no. Not to crush their dreams, but it's an honest dose of reality

So, in short, people should look at the chances of success before pursuing a
field. Internet startups are a pretty good chance, especially considering that
doing them often involves a lot of technical and business self-investment that
can carry over into other jobs if it doesn't work out.

------
absconditus
"First, we suggest that while merit does indeed affect who ends up with what,
the impact of merit on economic outcomes is vastly overestimated by the
ideology of the American Dream. Second, we identify a variety of nonmerit
factors that suppress, neutralize, or even negate the effects of merit and
create barriers to individual mobility."

~~~
zdw
And the conclusion:

"Rather, we argue that meritocracy the idea that societal resources are
distributed exclusively or primarily on the basis of individual merit is a
myth. It is a myth because of the combined effects of non-merit factors such
as inheritance, social and cultural advantages, unequal educational
opportunity, luck and the changing structure of job opportunities, the decline
of self-employment, and discrimination in all of its forms."

In short, because the universe already has an economic "state" and is changing
independent of what any one individual does, the value you may derive from
your own individual merit is extremely variable.

------
Andrew_Quentin
The article fails to define merit, perhaps, because, it is extremely hard to
define in practical and objective ways.

Failing such definition, any arguments can be made, but they will not
necessarily be about merits, but maybe about agendas or thoughts or beliefs or
simply opinions that the author has.

Let me take education as the only example. It states that people "tend to" get
the education of their class, that is rich people private and ivory league,
middle class public and public universities and the poor inner cities schools
and no university. Now, the word "tend to" is extremely important. It
acknowledges that it is not a rule or anywhere close to it, but somewhat the
norm. So that, most people, say 80% do so. Why do the 20% not however? Might
it be because the inner city poor kid is intelligent enough and has the right
attitude to focus on his studies and go to university? And might it be that
the rich guy does not and drifts off into a world of drugs and depression?

Merit is a quality which we define almost to be a prerequisite for success. We
know it when we see it, but, to define it, is hard. In the absence of such
definition, then, I really can not criticise the article because many of the
points it makes may be correct in one view, but quite wrong in another.

Lets take inheritance. Of course a rich person has many benefits, money, the
right attitude, the culture as the article defines it, or, nowing the rules of
the game. So, seeing as this kid has all of this, then, does not whatever he
acquires means that he did so because of merit? Or are we trying to define
merit in the way of inherent intelligence, that is, we are all born with a
certain equal number of merit, thus, there should be an equal number of poor
people in each state. Or is merit a highly complex phenomena, blind indeed to
your environment at times, and quite susceptible to it at other times.

I think, for me, merit is this certain quality which does contain ambition,
intelligence, high self awareness, and perceptive attitude, a tendency to use
reason and logics, as well as environmental factors such as a warm and loving
family and others. The combination of this all is that you have these certain
attitudes which make you competent and able and willing to do certain things
which may lead to achievement and higher earning potential and above all, it
gives you the ability to be in control of your environment and control it when
things go out of control or try your hardest to do so with all your might and
ability and get back on your feet.

------
dannyb
Sometimes life is unfair, but I hold as an article of faith that almost
anything can be made better by getting off your butt and working hard. For me
personally, there's almost nothing of value in that study. It wouldn't change
my approach to life.

~~~
JoelSutherland
This article isn't so much about individuals and their decisions but society.
The claim isn't that "hard work doesn't pay off". The claim is that "hard work
pays of more for some than others based on non-merit factors."

Even if they are correct, this shouldn't affect our behavior. We should still
try to climb to the peak of our local maxima. Even if hard work pays off more
for others, it makes sense economically for me to work hard if it pays off
some.

This doesn't mean we should ignore the study either. It is important as a
society to continually self-evaluate to ensure that the systems we have in
place are moving us toward our ideals. The purpose of a paper like this isn't
(necessarily) to push a set of ideals, but to help us self-evaluate.

~~~
gnosis
_"We should still try to climb to the peak of our local maxima."_

Why?

~~~
klochner
The presumption is that people like to be happy, which I believe is a
tautology.

~~~
gnosis
Happiness doesn't necessarily come from climbing to the top. Some people find
the whole ordeal to be rather nasty, for a variety of reasons.

~~~
klochner
You're free to define your own objective function, it doesn't have to be fame
or monetary success.

------
mattmcknight
People aren't paid according to their merit, they are paid according to the
market value of the good or service they produce. A history major might have
"merit", but they might have to go to law school to leverage it in the market.

The social policy conclusions are thrown off by this assumption that people
should be paid well because they are smart.

------
sosuke
I believe that there are some factors that I do not have control over that
restrict me from moving up. The things I was born with, inheritance, social
status, race and the things I can't directly control such as luck or the
discrimination of myself by others are just challenges to overcome or
circumvent so that I might merit the success I seek through hard work and
perseverance.

Whether the article is right or wrong I will not accept that I cannot get
ahead through my "individual merit, which is generally viewed as a combination
of factors including innate abilities, working hard, having the right
attitude, and having high moral character and integrity" which are all things
that I can and do control.

~~~
gnosis
_"'a cobination of innate abilities, working hard, having the right attitude,
and having high moral character and integrity' which are all things that I can
and do control."_

Do you really control those?

Let's take them one at a time:

\- _innate abilities_ \- Do you control your _innate_ abilities? The whole
point of them being innate is that you're born with them. Do you control what
abilities you're born with? If so, I'd sure like to learn that trick.

\- _right attitude_ \- If you're depressed that could put a damper on your
attitude. And no, seriously depressed people can't just "snap out of it". And
it's not their fault they're depressed. Much the same could be said about
various other emotional and psychological issues that could hamper having a
"right attitude". And this doesn't even get in to the question what the "right
attitude" is, or in to the phenomena of "learned helplessness".

\- _having high moral character and integrity_ \- Much of this is due to the
environment you grew up in, and your family and friends. Not much you can do
about any of those except your friends. And to spurn anyone who wants to be
friends with you usually takes a whole lot more consciousness and "character"
than most kids have. And if they do have it, it's likely due, again, to the
influence of their environment, friends, and family.

Finally, there are other, more philosophical issues such as whether anyone has
free will at all. If we don't have free will, then (by definition) we have no
control over what we do.

~~~
sosuke
You're right that you can't change the abilities you are born with but if you
do use the skills that come easy to you then you can learn new abilities or
work around your inabilities with those you had from birth.

I've been depressed and suicidal and if you believe that genetics contribute
to it then it runs in the family since my father and brother also suffered
from it. One of the most wonderful things about depression though for me was
with the help of medication I was able to overcome it. Depression is just one
medical issue that can effect your "right attitude" but with the right
assistance you can work through those problems. You have control over your
attitude. (Up to a point, there are cases where the brain as magnificent as it
is will not function normally and can result in a permanent inability to have
the "right attitude")

I don't believe that we are a sole product of our environment, we aren't what
society made us. I haven't always had "high moral character and integrity" but
I've change how I think over time about my life. You can change how you think,
I believe we aren't set in stone completely.

Ah and then free will comes into play. I believe we have free will and thus we
have complete control and responsibility for what we do.

------
miked
The article is largely trying to, in effect, refute the usefulness of HN. If
merit counts for little, i.e., if reading about and doing all the things that
are discussed on HN is a waste of time, then why is this site here and why are
you reading it?

If you save and invest $40 a day for the next 35 years you can retire
comfortably, though you won't normally be rich. Deferral of gratification will
conquer a lot in a reasonably free society. That's harder now, as inflation
punishes those who save and we're seeing rising prices everywhere except
housing prices.

~~~
A1kmm
> The article is largely trying to, in effect, refute the > usefulness of HN.
> If merit counts for little, i.e., if > reading about and doing all the
> things that are discussed > on HN is a waste of time, then why is this site
> here and > why are you reading it?

I don't think the article is trying to say that work (or entrepreneurship) is
independent of wealth, just that it is not nearly are correlated as people
would like to think.

The article is probably not useful to an individual trying to optimise their
own wealth; it is, however, useful when it comes to the evaluation of public
policy (which is a duty of all citizens in democratic countries).

------
viggity
_"We suggest four ways in which American society could be made more genuinely
meritocratic.

First, current forms of discrimination could be reduced or eliminated. Second,
the wealthy could be encouraged to redistribute greater amounts of their
accumulated wealth through philanthropy in ways that would provide greater
opportunity for the less privileged. Third, the tax system could be redesigned
to be genuinely progressive in ways that would close the distance between
those at the top and the bottom of the system. Fourth, more government
resources could be allocated to provide more equal access to critical services
such as education and health care. "_

The "North Carolina Sociological Association" sounds socialist. Color me
surprised.

A system doesn't have to guarantee results in order to be fair. Some people
work a lot harder or smarter than others and that is the ultimate source of
any wealth discrepancy.

~~~
yequalsx
If the conclusions they've draw are illogical then you should point out why.
Perhaps the methodology is bad. If so then state why. If you are unable to
point out any of these things then why do you not agree with the conclusion?

~~~
shasta
I found the article to be weak, throughout. Shoddy analysis dressed up with
citations of marginal importance. It starts by just asserting that the
American dream is that America is a meritocracy. The section with with tables
showing American wealth and income distributions concludes with this bit of
"reasoning":

> The highly skewed distribution of economic outcomes, however, appears quite
> in excess of any reasonable distribution of merit. Something that is
> distributed “normally” cannot be the direct and proportional cause of
> something with such skewed distributions. There has to be more to the story
> than that.

Right, so the American Dream is a perfect meritocracy AND that doesn't just
mean wealth caused by merit, but it means wealth is supposed to be directly
proportional to merit (e.g. contains no winner-take-all dynamics).

It's a long article and I'm not going to address everything it contained, but
the facts it cites weren't new or surprising and the analysis wasn't
insightful.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_...it means wealth is supposed to be directly proportional to merit (e.g.
contains no winner-take-all dynamics)._

And that merit is assumed to be normally distributed. They also seem to make
some fairly strong independence assumptions:

 _If poverty were exclusively due to individual differences, we would expect
rates of poverty to be randomly distributed throughout the county._

This of course makes the implicit assumption that individual differences are
neither correlated with location, nor do individuals of high merit _change_
their location. The latter is certainly false...

