
The problem isn't the 'merit' it's the 'ocracy' (2019) - exolymph
https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-problem-isnt-merit-its-ocracy.html
======
evdev
There is a sleight-of-hand in "meritocracy" evinced by the Scott Alexander
quote--we ask "who should do surgery, the best surgeon or the worst?" and
agree that surgeons should be chosen by "merit", or better yet, by their
instrumental value to the task at hand.

The trick comes in when we switch without acknowledgement to describing _the
system for the distribution of wealth and status_.

This kind of "meritocracy" is more like if we held an arm-wrestling
tournament, declared the victor to be our new feudal lord, the next 6 runners
up to be knights, and everyone else to be peasants. Our position in this new
society was based on "merit", but that can't _necessarily_ justify the
difference between nobles and serfs.

We could even re-run the tournament every year. We could make sure no child
gets extra time in the weight-room because of her noble parents. We could
decide that arm-wrestling is stupid and brutish and so, in a glorious
revolution, switch to speed chess. None of it would address the question of
justice.

~~~
nshepperd
> This kind of "meritocracy" is more like if we held an arm-wrestling
> tournament, declared the victor to be our new feudal lord, the next 6
> runners up to be knights, and everyone else to be peasants. Our position in
> this new society was based on "merit", but that can't necessarily justify
> the difference between nobles and serfs.

Isn't that because the aspect of merit which is measured by an arm wrestling
contest isn't the same as that which is relevant to running a feudal society?

A tournament for selecting a feudal lord would need to measure economic and
strategic literacy, intelligence, moral compass, etc.

~~~
evdev
It begs the question to just assume there is a "feudal society" that needs to
be "run". For instance, why not have a "first citizen" who is selected to
manage internal coordination and external strategy, but must live in the worst
house in the village and wear a hair shirt.

You _can_ say, well that wouldn't work! But now the idea is that _the
structure_ of this model feudal society is justified by reasons like "people
won't follow someone if they don't have a gold hat and a scary sword" and not
by any process that led to selecting the _particular_ feudal lord.

~~~
takinola
This analysis is incomplete. Assume I am the best (objectively) at "managing
internal coordination and external strategy" but I don't want to live in the
worst house and I am allergic to hair shirts. Then I won't sign up for the job
and the society is worse off for it.

------
collegeburner
I figure maybe I can offer some perspective on the ivy league comments, as I
just went through the admissions process. No ivy I've seen claims to evaluate
on objective criteria. Rather they've all switched to extolling their
inscrutable "holistic admissions process". This is what allows them to frame
their classes to fit what they want on a brochure. I had a asian friend who
took seven AP classes in one year and was a valedictorian who was rejected
from Harvard. When I toured, the guide was a farm girl from rural Oregon with
precisely zero credentials (according to her) who said she applied on a lark
to frame the rejection letter. Ivies are a terrible example because they don't
even pretend to be objective any more.

The reality is there's a lot outside the bubbles of ivy league institutions
and silicon valley, and this author clearly writes from inside them. I've seen
meritocracy almost everywhere I go, even though I'm not from the sort of
background the author described. I got hired at my current job because I was
the best person for it, though it was un-conventional. I earned scholarships
through merit, not because of a particular background. The list goes on.
There's a whole world outside of this author's, full of mostly good people who
just want good people to do good jobs.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I think you're missing part of the point of the article. Of the current nine
Supreme Court justices, how many went to an Ivy League school? All nine.

Out of the last 10 presidents, how many went to an Ivy League school? Seven.
(The exceptions are Reagan, Carter, and Nixon. If I had asked how many of the
most recent 5 presidents, the answer would be five.)

How many of the current US Senators and Representatives went to Ivy League
schools? I'm not going to do the research to answer that, but I bet it's at
least the majority, and probably the overwhelming majority.

As the article said, it's the "ocracy" part. We want merit in those who run
things. But in those who rule, we _also_ want that they understand where the
rest of us are coming from.

~~~
wincy
I recall George W Bush tried to appoint a woman who had gone to community
college to the supreme court and she didn't get appointed. Right, it was
Harriet Miers. So instead Samuel Alito was appointed.

~~~
ponker
Harriet Miers didn't go to an Ivy League school, but she also never served as
any type of judge, and had no other background in constitutional law like
litigation or academia. Now, in previous generations people with no direct
judicial experience were appointed to the Supreme Court and served well, like
Earl Warren, but this has not been customary for quite some time, and Miers
did not have massive outside accomplishments like Warren (3-time Governor of
California).

Miers was just tremendously unqualified for the job and was nominated because
she was really close buddies with GW Bush and GWB lived his whole life based
on personal loyalties and relationships.

------
juped
"Meritocracy" always works backwards in practice - the "crats" are anointed as
being the ones with "merit". Credentialism is just the most obvious expression
of this - e.g., you get a Harvard degree mostly by being in the social class
that goes to Harvard - but it happens at every level in every way, and nearly
everything which purports to assess merit in fact launders social class.

This hits me, personally, hard, because my tribe is the thoughtful, the
curious, the problem-solvers, &c., and so many such people take the stated
aims of the prestige launderers at face value, only to be disappointed when
being smart and dedicated means nothing in reality. To plagiarize a bit, I see
the best minds of my generation destroyed by what amounts to a lack of class
consciousness combined with the unforgivable sin of hoping that something in
the world is fair.

------
ummonk
“The Ivy League admissions system is designed to select the most intelligent
and studious students in the world. Even with legacy admissions and related
scandals, the Ivy League has largely been successful in this. ... Has there
ever been a higher concentration of raw intelligence and studious industry
than exists right now in America's top 15 universities (and the few industries
that selectively pull from them)?“

Ehh, the universities with the best concentration of talent are not the Ivies
but MIT and Caltech.

~~~
analyst74
> The Ivy League admissions system is designed to select the most intelligent
> and studious students in the world

If intelligence can be measured, whether using IQ or SAT scores, I don't think
this is true.

If intelligence cannot be measured, then this is just some grandiose
perception that ivy schools have been successful at projecting.

~~~
wpietri
My money's on the latter. A familiar example for me is the "Certified Scrum
Master" racket. The only actual requirement for those was the ability to keep
breathing throughout a short course. But they undeniably had an economic
benefit for the holders, in that it made them more hireable by companies that
needed some sort of blessing for their top-town control apparatus.

~~~
horsawlarway
But I genuinely enjoy folks who put that crap on their resume. It's
immediately a black mark.

Then again I'm mostly interviewing for the startup/small business scene, and I
need people who can actually do things other than just "follow the rules".

I've had the pleasure to work with some truly talented folks, and I can
promise none of them had the patience with bureaucratic bs to do certified
scrum training.

------
blobbers
This article has inspired me to read Andrew Yang's book.

As a silicon valley person, I have become part of this bubble. A lot of the
things he said apply to me.

I've recently tried to understand what it looks like to leave Silicon Valley,
but it is certainly not a simple thing to do. To somehow exit this so-called
meritocracy and move to a place that is more focused on a holacracy (not in
the Zappos way).

I'd like to go to a place where a person is not defined by the size of their
paycheck, how many hours they work and how big their start-up exit is.

That said, I don't know how I can fit into that society; I don't know how I
can move there. I don't even know where _there_ is.

~~~
vzidex
I've often felt like I'm somewhere in between worlds - I'm studying at the
"top" university in my country, working at a Fortune 500, etc., and on the
other hand I know how to use a chainsaw, have done my fair share of home
renovation, own a few guns, and hit the range on weekends.

 _There_ is pretty much any activity or community that doesn't exist within
your sphere. If yours is anything like mine, the people around you play
Ultimate Frisbee, rock climb, "hike", do photography, and are "foodies". Pick
an activity or community that you don't see represented in your sphere, and
that's probably what you're looking for.

As an aside: my girlfriend and close friends have commented that I speak
differently when around, e.g., old boomers at the range. You can use whether
you feel like you "fit in" as a litmus test, and if you don't fit in, rest
assured you will in due time. In my experience, people outside of
"meritocratic" (read: finance, tech, law, etc.) bubbles are very kind and
welcoming.

~~~
karatestomp
> If yours is anything like mine, the people around you play Ultimate Frisbee,
> rock climb, "hike", do photography, and are "foodies"

Hahaha. I can spot a "tech worker" (not even just developer—manager, sales,
whatever) hiker at half a kilometer (yeah there are plenty I don't spot, but
there's definitely a "look" that exists in clothing and affect and is fairly
common and non-tech-workers _do not_ have it). If you tasked me with finding
as many people as I could with rock climbing gym memberships but I wasn't
allowed to go to such a gym to do it, I'd hit the coffee shops in our
"startupy" district around lunch time on a weekday (well, not right now, but
you get the idea). But I've been told I'm being ridiculous and that these
activities don't have a class component to them because quite a few
participants aren't involved in software companies or software development.
Well yeah, but something doesn't have to be absolute to be a noticeable trend.
Lacrosse, crew, skiing, squash—not technically limited to a certain social
class _but I bet you 'd find some class-related trends_ among their
participants, especially people who do or have done two or more of those
activities with any frequency.

We like what we like in no small part they're the "right" things to like,
among "our" people.

~~~
sfink
Heh. I have a lousy sense of direction. Once I was in the middle of San
Francisco, utterly lost (this was in the days before ubiquitous cell phone
maps), trying to make my way to a tech developer conference. I tried and
failed to use a paper map. I tried asking people for directions and failed to
understand or follow them.

Eventually I gave up and just _looked_ at the people around me. Then I moved
backwards along the techie gradient, which took me straight there on the
shortest possible path.

(No lanyards at the time, either. Or I was new enough at the game to not know
to look for them? I don't recall.)

------
praptak
The argument from surgeon is so bad that it's borderline eristic. Surgeon has
a very clearly defined objective while politics is the total opposite.

Politics is about deciding what to optimize for - "what should be" which just
cannot be "meritocratically" derived from "what is". If somebody claims they
have some special "merit" that makes them fit for this kind of decisions, you
should ask them to walk on water or something.

~~~
FeepingCreature
Politics is also about deciding how to optimize for it. I don't know if it's a
good idea that those are the same job.

~~~
gizmo686
In theory, they are not the same job. The actual decision making is supposed
to be deferred to civil servants, who are (in theory) hired or appointed based
on their technical qualifications.

~~~
zozbot234
Except that politics involves plenty of decision making. And the buck has to
stop somewhere. So I'm not sure that there's a real distinction.

------
DangitBobby
Even this article misses the root injustice of meritocracy. Meritocracy is
just another way to grant those born with advantages yet more advantages. The
most fortunate people in a meritocracy are those born smarter and with greater
capacity to learn, or those born into an environment to foster a mental
framework that lends itself to success. Meritocracy rewards the fortunate with
wealth and success just as much as a system that provides power by default to
those born into wealth or beauty (though arguably the recipients of the
benefit are more diffuse). The real difference on which to select such a
system is not a matter of _justice_ then, it's a matter of which one provides
better outcomes. Here, I agree with the article. The merits we select for in
our version of "Meritocracy" are a poor proxy measurement for a measured and
just leader.

~~~
zozbot234
Meritocracy does not "reward" wealth, beauty or other social advantages
(except to the extent that humans will tend to reward those things under any
social arrangement whatsoever); it rewards people who make consequential
decisions, and are thereby held responsible for those choices. The ideal is
that there _has_ to be some sort of flip side to every "reward", so that the
arrangement is socially beneficial to all parties.

~~~
DangitBobby
Again, many are born with inherent advantages such as innate intelligence,
health, mental stability, and an environment that fosters success. The merit
they are capable of developing is made possible by a combination of these
things. That being the case, it is inevitable that Meritocracy rewards the
fortunate for being fortunate. The difference between Meritocracy and other
frameworks to select the powerful is that the people born with the advantages
listed above tend to win instead of simply those born into
wealth/power/beauty/etc. (Though those with wealth/power/beauty/etc. do
actually tend to win anyway because this provides them ways to develop merit
or proxies for merit or ways to circumvent merit).

There is simply no framework that does not provide someone with certain
characteristics systematic advantages to gaining power.

------
jariel
"Today, thanks to assortative mating in a handful of cities, intellect,
attractiveness, education, and wealth are all converging in the same families
and neighborhoods. I look at my friends’ children, and many of them resemble
unicorns: brilliant, beautiful, socially precocious creatures who have gotten
the best of all possible resources since the day they were born."

Yes this. I remember when nerds were outcasts, that really colours the
situation. Maybe there's a dark kind of 'fairness' in that! No more! The cool,
good looking popular kids now get the best grades! That's the most 'unfair'
thing I can imagine!

And this: " Our specialty is light-commitment benevolence. We will do
something to help but not enough to hurt us or threaten our own standing. We
know better than to do that...."

This is brilliant.

------
mcguire
" _The remarkable thing about these numbers (and Yang provides lots of them)
is that four of the six industries (consulting, law, finance, and_ academia _)
are easily described as parasitic or predatory, secondary adornments to the
actual business of human activity on the Earth._ "

One might suggest that one of these things is not like the others. (One might
also suggest that a glance at the right column would be one reason why.)

------
6510
The problem is the complete lack of goals. (The meaning of life if you like)

Thus far people with this merit did a wonderful job subjugating the rest of
humanity to their will. (I'm no doubt guilty for a wild share of this.)

The best part is where I convince you that I did you a favor! The challenge of
it is in trying not to laugh.

So yeah, I have merit and you do not. It means you should trade everything you
own and your labor for these mirrors and glass beads. You wont know why but
you'll thank me later. You will just have to trust me. I mean, don't I look
sophisticated with all this stuff I've traded for the beads from other folk?
How could you think they all made the wrong choice? Look how many of them are
working in my field?

Why do all of the other animals have such fun and interesting lives without
any of those intellectuals? If people are poor enough there are no rent
collectors. Dogs can still be fooled into employment. Cats are doing the exact
opposite! With luck you can convince them not to do things. I conclude cats
have more merit than people.

Now go for the down-vote button!

------
TheOtherHobbes
The problem is the "meritocracy" is thinly disguised "aristocracy."

There's some minor inward movement towards the core for certain kinds of
ruthlessly narcissistic clever types. But you're never going to be president
of the US without significant aristocratic money backing you, no matter how
good your SATs are.

The deeper problem is you can't define "merit" unless you know what your goals
are as a culture. What are the long-term goals of the US? How about the planet
as a whole?

It's fairly obvious that the US is caught up in a surreal game called "Make
and keep as much money as possible." But what happens outside of that? Does
anyone have a long-term plan?

If you don't know where you're going, how are you supposed to pick the right
people to help you get there?

------
friendlybus
Too many black and whites statements left to stand. I don't see 'class' in
America as being the saving grace of the workers.

------
troughway
Very good example of Facts vs. Truth, especially in the quote from Yang's
book.

------
commandlinefan
The term "meritocracy", like the term "capitalism", was originally coined
strictly as a means of criticizing the concept, yet the people doing the
criticism don't really say that meritocracy is necessarily bad, just that they
don't think we really have one. I have yet to see any suggestions on what to
replace the current system with, though. Usually when somebody criticized
meritocracy, they suggest stratifying everybody into a few broad categories:
race, gender, sexual orientation, and then it seems to be implied that the
meritocracy competition occurs within those categories.

------
Booktrope
The main point about -ocracy is a really good one, but the article makes so
many blanket statements without any real evidence that seem way off base. The
Ivy League schools (and quite a few other liberal arts colleges that should be
included in this argument) historically were playgrounds for the rich, with
academics being one of the games. No, Texas elite weren't shooting for Baylor
(unless they were of a particular religious stripe), the super-elites in Texas
were shooting for the big Ivy's, and next category was Rice. (Or Vanderbilt in
Tennessee, etc.) Stanford has been an important elite institution in the US
for a long time.

Meanwhile, the Ivy's have moved in a dramatic way to be more inclusive with
lots more minorities and scholarships. To the point about meritocracy, who
cares? If you pick an -ocracy on a less discriminatory basis, it's still an
-ocracy. I would argue that a less discriminatory -ocracy that's more socially
mobile is somewhat better than a more racist one that's based more on accident
of birth. Still possibly not good, but not as bad.

I'm sure there are companies where your job 5 years out of college still
depends on where you went undergraduate, but really, you don't get a shot if
you're not from one of the Ivy's? Hah. Most people are well aware that many
public universities in this country offer great education to some or all of
their students. Let's just mention UC Berkely, UCLA, Rutgers, Michigan,
Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas (Austin) and so forth. Degrees from these and
many, many more institutions can be an entry to very lucrative and powerful
positions. And please don't forget Cal Tech, Purdue, West Point or Anapolis,
etc. etc. (Oh, and maybe include YC) Yeah, there's something of a pecking
order -- for several decades all of our presidents came from Yale, for example
(well they were Bushes and Clinton) and certainly there's a gradient of
prestige. My point is, all this stuff about the "Ivy's" is overstated and
weakens the argument, which actually depends in no way on the assumption that
the country is run by graduates of the institutions designated as "Ivy's".

Someone said that the Ivy's developed their "holistic" admissions policy in
the 30's to prevent the schools from being overrun by Jews. That's a stretch.
My uncle, a Jew, actually managed to be admitted to one of the two (2) spots
open to Jews at MIT at that time. (Remember, open discrimination was perfectly
legal back then) He turned it down, incidentally, and went on to build a very
large chain of stores. It was quotas and open racism and of course raw
exclusion of women that were used to keep people out in the 30's, actually.
Today's concepts of diversity were set up to avoid letting the Supreme Court's
Bakke decision exclude large parts of our society from the elite academic
world, not to exclude those people.

I mention this because the Ivy League institutions are less discriminatory
today. You can equate the admission policy today to the 1930's but it's just
not the same. Yes there are still biases, but purposefully much less. No the
perfect system isn't at all perfect. But going for perfection usually leads to
disaster. As Voltaire said, "The perfect is the enemy of the better."

There are definitely problems with being ruled by an -ocracy, but what
alternative is actually being proposed, other than doing what's practical and
sensible to open the -ocracy to broader participation and trying to limit its
inevitable excesses of power?

------
fxtentacle
TLDR: In a Meritocracy, the "most talented" rule over everyone else. But
talented != good person. In other words, it may be the dictatorship of
intelligent sociopaths.

But go read the article. It's easy to follow along, yet argues well.

~~~
commandlinefan
> talented != good person

But we don't have any better measure of a "good person" than we do a talented
one (outside of specific talents like playing piano or juggling chainsaws). We
do have an imperfect way to measure intelligence, via performance on written
tests and assignments.

~~~
scollet
Why are these talents and their adjacents excluded?

> playing piano or juggling chainsaws

~~~
mcguire
I would certainly vote for the person who can play the piano while juggling
chainsaws for King of Earth.

------
zajd
Never forget that Meritocracy the term was created to mock the idea of it even
being possible, now it's become a mainstream accepted thought. Usually the
tragedy comes before the farce, I guess this time is different.

~~~
exolymph
Dunno why this comment started dead, so I vouched it.

~~~
srl
Comments typically start as dead because the poster is "shadowbanned", for
some string of particularly unconstructive comments in the past. (I don't know
if enough vouches can cause a user to be un-banned.)

------
alexashka
This article looks one one tiny aspect of society (ivy league school
attendance) while ignoring society at large, and tries to draw conclusions
about _meritocracy_ from it. There is an ancient tale about a dozen blind met
each touching parts of an elephant and describing it, some say elephants are
long like a tube, others round like a ball, etc...

If you don't have a big picture view, it is best to be aware of it :)
Meritocracy is just a politicized term for 'competence'. We want competent
people running things, that's obvious.

What we also want is for people who _were_ competent but no longer _are_ , to
be replaceable - that's the real issue. If idiots from ivy league schools who
cheated their way through school or were only good at taking tests got found
out afterwards, attendance wouldn't be so hotly contested.

This works in sports - the minute LeBron can't play well, he will be replaced
by somebody else who can and it doesn't matter that he _was_ the best player
of his generation.

This doesn't work in politics and many other fields because the people
evaluating their _competence_ are largely selfish idiots. If it is in your
selfish interest to promote less competent people some of the time and you
value your selfish interest above most things - we have a problem.

If it were a matter of intelligent people having trouble decoding what
competence meant in various fields, it is something we could improve upon as
time goes on as we get better at science. Our current problems, are problems
of idiots being capable of attaining decision-making power (becoming wealthy,
becoming high ranking officials in government, business, academia) _and_
holding on to it, regardless of their competence over time.

This is what people are usually mad about - they call it being a parasite,
being the 1%, being a wasp, etc and they are right, while also being too dumb
to know what to do about it :) People want to work hard to give their kids a
better future, while not realizing that other people wanting their kids and
_their_ friends to have a better future, is the same mechanism that leads to
their kids' future being shitty!

People are so dumb - they think they're upset about
corruption/inequality/whatever while the vast majority of them are simply
wishing the power dynamics were in their favor :)

If you want competence over time, you need to abandon the idea of _anyone_
having power over others _regardless_ of their competence level. Georgism [0]
is an economic movement that was aware of this problem in regards to land
ownership - I'd go on to say it has to cut across all spheres of life - anyone
getting to hold on to power regardless of their competence, is something most
should agree upon, is a mistake. In order for most to agree upon this - they'd
need to not be idiots. It always boils down to too many idiots folks :)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism)

------
carapace
That was really weird.

TL;DR: "If smart people govern they will do it badly."

I don't think I get it.

~~~
colinmhayes
We have created a system that allows ivy graduates to truly believe they are
the best humanity has to offer and therefore know what's best for everyone.
Yet most of these graduates were raised in sheltered environments and
therefore don't understand the thought process of the average person. Not only
does this make it hard for them to solve the problems of average people, it
also makes them less likely to care about those problems. While everyone
chosen to be in the meritocratic upper class is patting themselves on the back
for growing the stock market the vast majority of people aren't seeing the
gains from that growth.

~~~
alexashka
I didn't create this system, did you? :) I was born into it.

This subtle self-blaming via alignment with group-identity over self-identity
is a dirty mind-virus.

Ivy league kids were _born_ into a system of their parents pushing them to go
these schools and think a specific way. Solving the problems of average people
is an impossible task, because an average person is a selfish moron that is
largely interested in winning zero-sum games at the expense of those around
them.

This is manifested as wanting to get laid among ages 15-30, wanting to make
money, wanting power/fame. At ages 30-death it is manifested as 'a better
future for my children' which is always measured up against other children,
again a zero sum game.

How do you solve a zero-sum problem so that everyone wins? The answer is, it
is impossible.

Sorry to burst that 'rich evil folks are the problem' bubble - the problem is
much deeper - most people are morons who do what's best for them, without much
thought for what's best for others. This worked in small tribes because the
feedback mechanisms for being a selfish asshole were almost immediate and as a
result, selfish desire to not get your ass beat by the tribe forced out
obvious bad behaviour and aligned everyone to a common goal. Now that we live
in big cities - the feedback mechanism is broken - we're living among Gordon
Geckos of the world.

Only non-idiots like me who actually think about the big picture can even see
the problem, the rest will forever be stuck playing zero-sum games without
knowing it, until people like me either re-educate them, implant their brains
to make them less idiotic, etc, or make them go extinct :)

~~~
mcguire
" _I didn 't create this system, did you? :) I was born into it._"

But you do benefit from it, no?

" _Only non-idiots like me..._ "

It is the beginning of wisdom to realize you're an idiot, too. :-)

~~~
alexashka
function unkownPersonOnTheInternetBenefitsFromSystemHeSheWasBornInto(person:
Person) -> Boolean

Please provide the body of the function and a description of the type Person
you're using to ask such a question. Is the body of your function equal to
'return true' by any chance? I shudder at your description of type Person.

Please provide your qualifications for making wisdom claims, other than
presumably having read a bumper sticker you thought was clever that had words
'wisdom' and 'idiot' in it?

