Meritocracy
What's it good for . . .? A brief sketch of some difficulties in answer that question.
Reading
‘s essay about Paul Graham and YCombinator made me think that I should try to organize my thoughts about the idea of Meritocracy1.Broadly speaking I understand Meritocracy as the idea that money, power, and prestige should be awarded based on some combination of ability, demonstrated success, and ability and willingness to rise to various challenges. That’s a fairly vague definition because the idea can include a wide range of concepts (awarding entrance at selective colleges primarily based on prior grades and test scores; awarding job opportunities based on educational credentials; promoting based on job success, etc . . .).
These are all intuitively reflect some sense of fairness and dessert (the idea that people should, broadly, receive things they deserve). But, I would argue, that intuitive sense can be misleading. Because it seems so straightforward we can easily think that any difficulties can be resolved in a common sense way. However, I think there are some inherent tensions within the idea of Meritocracy and that different critiques can suggest very different possible solutions.
It’s worth thinking through some of those complexities to be able to talk more clearly about what we actually want to accomplish and how meritocratic ideas fit into that.
What Problems Does Meritocracy Address
People invoke the idea of Meritocracy for a few different reasons. First is a conservative sense of, “you eat what you kill.”2 For example Hamish McKenzie’s comment, “For those on the right, Substack is … capitalism distilled. … Let the best minds win!” highlights the “sovereign author” model as a way of identifying the best minds. From another perspective meritocracy offers a path towards equality by reducing the advantages of privilege and social position. The idea of a level playing field specifically suggests that fair competition is a way of equalizing opportunity. From a social perspective Meritocracy can be seen as way to best make use of scarce resources — given limited opportunities it makes sense to identify people who can make the greatest use of them. This is a motivation for offering valuable educational opportunities to people who have demonstrated an ability to learn or capital to business leaders who will be most likely to succeed. Finally, there is a sense that it is only fair to make judgements based on visible, understandable criteria — measuring success on the basis of achievements which can be standardized and compared.
These different perspectives are often in tension and contradict each other.
Dave Karpf is, implicitly criticizing YCombinator for offering the appearance of meritocracy without satisfying either of the last two goals — it doesn’t offer a path to success broad enough to reduce inequality and we can’t tell if it is a way to distribute resources effectively because we don’t have a good point of comparison.3 Making this explicit rather than implicit makes it easier to see some of the fault lines
Internal Contradictions
Within the very brief sketch that I have offered it’s easy to see some obvious dilemmas. Should meritocratic rewards be based on past achievement or projected future ability? The former is easier to measure but can entrench existing inequalities. The latter is hard to define and measure.
Should meritocracy prioritize objective standards or subjective assessment. The former sufferers from the problem identified in Goodhart's Law, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." The latter suffers from the problem of legitimacy; on what basis are the decisions supposed to be made and how do we trust the decision makers?
Does meritocracy become a defense of inequality? This can happen for two reasons; first constructing ways to measure success can often produce tournament systems in which a small number of people reap large rewards (for example professional sports, or Substack). Second, the belief that talent is being correctly identified and rewarded can lead people to not examine the resulting inequalities.
Critiques of Meritocracy
Given the tensions described above, it’s easy to look at real world systems that purport to be meritocracies and identify ways in which they fall short. Nothing will perfectly match up with all of the intuitive standards. However I think there’s a difference between arguments in which the implicit solution is trying to build a better meritocracy — clearer standards and fairer competition — or the argument that meritocracy claims something which it can’t actually deliver and that we should be more humble in our judgements. The second case sees all of the ways in which “merit” is poorly defined or hard to measure and sees that as the rule not the exception. The important thing is to build systems which offer respect and treat people in a humane way rather. We see a world in which, over and over again, some people succeed in ways which far outstrip notions of earned or deserved reward and it’s hard to say that the biggest problem is trying to measure “merit” more effectively.
My own uncertainty
I think both of those arguments have real power. I don’t think it’s desirable to get rid of competition and inequality and, therefore, I think we should want fairer competition. On the other hand, I don’t think everything should be a competition.
The best I can say is that meritocracy is often a good way to identify improvements that can be made to the status quo, but that it shouldn’t be a goal in and of itself. We should recognize the ways in which the playing field is not level and seek to balance that, but not think that Meritocracy can or should be a general organizing principle for society.
But however individual people would try to strike that balance, it’s worth thinking about the underlying complexity (both in theory and practice) and paying attention to what specific critiques are being offered.
I’m going to be inconsistent in my capitalization but, broadly speaking, I’m using Capital-M Meritocracy to refer to the broad set of ideas that fall into that category and lowercase-m meritocracy to refer to specific claims or specific examples.
The phrase is often used to refer to salary structures in which people are rewarded for bringing in business and generating revenue. This article about the problems of commission-based service illustrates some of the tensions I’m talking about: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmarotta/2021/08/25/sixteen-problems-with-the-eat-what-you-kill-model/
“Notice the self-reinforcing nature of this model. If you have a ton of resources, and you get to pick first, it’s a lot easier to pick winners. Peter Thiel is a good example — much of Peter Thiel’s vast fortune comes from having been the first guy to invest in Mark Zuckerberg. Good for him, but he was also basically the first guy given the opportunity to invest in Mark Zuckerberg. Declaring that this wealth is due to a unique capacity to identify the special qualities of founders is a bit like saying the San Antonio Spurs are a uniquely well-run basketball franchise because they drafted Victor Wembanyama. We can recognize their good fortune without constructing a whole mythology around ‘Spurs mode.’”
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I keep getting into conversations on substack, and want a place to store longer thoughts.
I think you might be underestimating how entirely the concept of "merit" is a function of who gets to define it; and who that definition will serve.
This is mostly why I trust no system that purports to based upon "merit".
Hi Nick, interesting and thoughtful piece.
Here are some other thoughts:
There is no shortage of resources on this extraordinarily bountiful planet. We can see that when we look at past civilizations or our own. Competition is a false construct to institute a status hierarchy and a system for control by those who would dominate and don't want to collaborate or co-exist. As many people have said for years, this planet could easily feed and house everyone (and many sources of cheap/no cost fuel have been identified), and beyond that we could all have an incredible amount of leisure time. But as I found when living on a small island in the Pacific, people get bored with life if there isn't ongoing drama to keep them entertained. If it doesn't exist, they will create it. Anthropologists found the same thing with African tribes. They had to have regular tribal wars because otherwise the young men would cause trouble within the tribe, so it was better to have battles with neighboring tribes and lose a few warriors instead. Boredom and meaninglessness are a big driver in human behavior and how our systems are constructed. It's a way to create meaning and drama.
In terms of fairness and equality, studies have shown the only way that can happen is if you remove all identifiers, as people will reward those like themselves (even those who think they have no bias). When applied, the composition of a group can radically change. But that upsets the existing status quo and triggers backlash, as we're seeing now with significant backlashes against DEI and gender equality.
My third point would be around standards and rewards. I think the existing ones are being widely questioned as they were imposed by a privileged system focused on what you might call elite vs common, or classical vs modern, or some sort of hierarchy which decided whose efforts were worthy of reward. The question now being asked is, who made this in-group the ones to decide what is worthy, what counts, and who gets rewarded -- and why are we always the odd man/woman out. Massive questioning going on, with the BRICS alliance leading the charge in overturning western dominance and assumed superiority. Very interesting times.
So great questions. I think someone has thrown a handful of straws in the air and we'll see where they land!