This is the definition I am using:
a system, organization, or society in which people are chosen and moved into positions of success, power, and influence on the basis of their demonstrated abilities and merit.
It’s a good idea in theory, but there’s a few problems:
- Wealth and power above a certain level tends to become generational no matter how meritorious the origin
- People who are less capable through disability, ilness, generational poverty or anything else not their fault would still be left behind
- A lot of jobs and other functions can benefit from several different skillsets, some of which aren’t mutually inclusive
- Who decides who’s best? Who decides who decides? Etc ad infinitum.
Regarding wealth, it doesn’t have to with a heavy enough estate tax, AKA anti-aristocracy tax.
I believe in a theoretical meritocracy but I think there are some pitfalls. We have a market that’s very efficient at rewarding incredibly unproductive people. The correlation between money and skill in the modern world just… isn’t. So we’d really need a better evaluation system… if we had that I think it’d be achievable.
Love the idea, though.
I agree, there would have to be measures in place to prevent the “promote to the level of incompetence” style of meritocracy that is prevalent already. There needs to be a system of recognizing that the person in any given position has the skills and abilities that make them awesome at that specific job, and rewarding them appropriately without requiring them to justify it by taking on tasks that they’re not suited for.
The idea that workers should always be gunning for a promotion is one of the worst parts of what people think a meritocracy is. But how else do you determine how much they should be paid?
Hell, I only consented to management because the company stopped listening to frontline developers. We’ve got a serious problem in the west with title fixation.
No.
Who gets to determine what counts as merit? If it’s the people with merit already, it’s trivial to corrupt such a system. Think billionares.
And then, is everyone even given the opportunity to display their merit and if they are, is their merit recognised? I’m concerned esp. about people perceived by society to have inherently less merit. Think disabled people, old people, young people, women, people of colour, queer folks, etc.
And then, how does the system ensure that merit wasn’t faked or even just exaggerated, how does it investigate and how does it respond? Does a sufficient amount of merit allow someone to cover up such things? If implemented, can and would this investigation power be used to punish people with low merit, those that are the most vulnereable?
And then, why do people that are not constantly being useful to the system deserve less and esp. if meritocracy is the only system in place, do some people not deserve to live at all? Here I’m talking about people that want to have a hobby or two or want to spend time with their friends and family, basically anything that doesn’t give merit. I’m also talking about people that can’t or don’t want to be useful to society.
Beyond all this, meritocracy aims to replace the people’s purpose in life with “being useful”. And that’s just a really miserable mindset to live with, where you feel guilt if you’re not being useful all the time, where you constantly have thoughts like “am I good enough” or “am I trying hard enough”.
This is one of the reasons a free market is important. The collective feedback of a lot of customers is a better signal for real merit than a boss’s evaluation. A free market is a place where a person who fails to kiss enough ass to get good ratings from their boss can instead prove directly to those being served that they can help.
The “free market” conditions for this particular avenue of choice is a situation where an individual can go into business for themselves without too much artificial hassle. Like yes, maybe you’ll need a car for your own pizza delivery business, so there’s some startup cost, but at least you don’t need a special pizza delivery tag from the government, which can only be gained by … you guessed it … kissing more ass.
As an autistic, weird person who can get things done well but who always has personality conflicts with bosses, I feel safer in a place with something resembling the freedom to engage directly with customers, to be judged by the market instead of by a boss.
I often fail at jobs. But I often succeed when out on my own. Whenever someone proposes adding more permission slips to the process of starting a business, it makes me feel afraid, because being in business for myself is how I’ve survived.
I totally agree.
IMO the notion of merit is an illusion. It hides the assumption that people can be ranked and compared, but do we truly want to live in such a society?
Also, is that even feasible?
It’s impossible to objectively compare humans of similar “skill level”. For example, think of Plato and Aristotle, they have been dead for thousands of years and their work has been studied but millions of not billions of people, yet people still argue who was the best philosopher of the two. How can we have a meritocracy if we cannot evaluate merit? You may be able to distinguish experts from beginners for a certain skill, but, when considering roles of influence/power, there are multiple skills and attributes to be considered, and the same principle applies.
It’s easier to cheat a merit metric than to evaluate it. Any algorithm that makes a decision based on merit will need to either evaluate or compare it. Both are going to depend on the presence of absence of features that once known to a cheater they will be able to fake them. That makes evaluation and cheating a competing game, where the evaluator and the cheater contiously adapt to one another, with the cheater being much able to adapt much faster.
Any meritocracy will have to be open about it’s evaluation process. If it’s not participants with merit cannot know how to demonstrate it and the process is prune to corruption.
Personally, I believe making decisions based on trust is much better. It’s hard to build trust and it cannot be cheated. Of course, cheater may try to influence decision makers with bribes or blackmail. But, once this is found trust is destroyed and they get rejected.
It hides the assumption that people can be ranked and compared, but do we truly want to live in such a society?
I do. I just had a surgery and I’m very glad we have ranking and comparisons, and rejection of those who don’t rank and compare well, from the pool of available surgeons.
There would be no feeling of safety in that surgical theater, as I’m going under, if I thought that anyone was operating on the assumption that surgeons cannot be ranked in terms of merit. That would scare the shit out of me.
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Meritocracy is a dogwhistle white supremacists created to justify their position of power over people of color.
Every ‘ocracy’ is some kind of meritocracy. It’s just a matter of what the merit is and how it’s measured. They all suck because manipulators break them all.
Aristocracy says people who are in power are there because their fathers did too.
Which they think is some kind of merit, and it’s not really too outlandish. There’s a pretty good chance that you’re awesome if your dad is awesome.
Institution by natural selection
Sounds right until you realize the system invalidates itself by making selection unnatural. 🤣
Which is the basis of their merit, in an aristocratic system.
Like eugenics, it’s just another way for racists to push their racism under the guise of “science”. It’s not “corruptible”, it comes pre-corrupted.
Why would merit be a dog whistle for racism? Couldn’t the non-racists just be like “uh nope we’re considering merit here not race” when a racist tries to do that?
Absolutely not. Demographic data shows it’s shit, income distribution data is best explained by a random walk process (neat graphic explainer here), and all the data on startups and investing show that there’s no free lunch; capitalism actually does ensure everything gives the same steady return on average.
Every rich person won some sort of lottery. Even the bona-fide engineers are never the only ones that could have invented whatever thing - as technical person myself.
The word was coined as satire. Brain-dead
liberalscentrists took it seriously and, here we are.I have been sadly disappointed by my 1958 book, The Rise of the Meritocracy. I coined a word which has gone into general circulation, especially in the United States, and most recently found a prominent place in the speeches of Mr Blair.
The book was a satire meant to be a warning (which needless to say has not been heeded) against what might happen to Britain between 1958 and the imagined final revolt against the meritocracy in 2033.
Edited because too many people don’t know what liberal means.
DiCtIoNaRiEs aRe DeScRiPtiVe
I’m confused about the definition. They are moved? Forcefully if needed, or they are offered the position? Also what kind of position are they moved to you mean? Like the person best in the world in welding, they will atrificially be placed in a position of influece? Influece over what, policy? Culture? Or they will be the boss of other welders? How is the demostrated ability measured? Do people take exams in like welding to compete on who is better than someone else? If so, is the test the only thing that matters? If the best welder in the world is also a complete asshole, they still get the position of power? If not, where is the trade-off on how good a welder do you have to be to be a certain amount of asshole?
The issue will always be reality. In theory, meritocracy and even geniocracy sounds promosing but so does our current system.
The reality is that incompetent or malicious people will always find ways to corrupt the idea.
At this point, I‘m pretty sure the only way to go forward is to think in new ways. Maybe general AI will work, or anarchy (more like anarcho communist probably).
We tried and broke everything:
- representative democracy - politicians lie to get into office and do their thing after
- autocracy - the person in charge freaks out and becomes a lifetime ruler
- communism - people starve while the politicians become rich
- monarchy - the bloodline will produce some idiot who breaks stuff - also no reason to be this rich
- multiparty system - will get little done and devolves into populism as well
- two party system - devolves into hating the other party
The real problem imo is that a few people just cant make decisions for the masses over an extended time. Its too much power and responsibility.
I‘m pretty sure a more direct democracy represents this day and age more since the majority sees how our world goes to shit.
or anarchy (more like anarcho communist probably).
I’ve come to a similar conclusion, however I still have some hold ups on how anarchism currently being implemented across the world.
It still relies on organizers and extra attention being diverted to certain individuals who give an agenda for what needs to be done next. This allows co-opting these movements to be a lot easier than if we could work past that.
Exactly. If anarchy (or a real, local, direct democracy to be precise) was to be born, it would take a long time to prepare. People need to be educated enough to lead their own lives and make decisions for themselves and their peers. Thats something that hasnt happened for centuries. People are born into worshipping hierarchy.
The most crucial thing is education in my book. Even the last person living under a rock should be able to get quality education without any cost or strings attached.
I still have some hold ups on how anarchism currently being implemented across the world.
If you think there is someone implementing anarchism around the world, you have completely misunderstood anarchism.
It’s like when the alt right tried framing antifa as an organisation.
The whole point of anarchism is that you do what your community needs you to do, and let other communities do the same.
Yeah I agree that should be the ideal however, like you have said, it hasn’t ever really been implemented yet.
There are a bunch of groups around the world that follow similar anarchist principles, like Rojava, Zapatistas, or even Temporary autonomous zones, but all of them have some unofficial/hidden/weak form of organizer that can be targeted by people with the right resources.
My point being that since systems tend to sustain themselves if we don’t start building systems that can function without the need of an organizer or something of a similar sort then there will still be that place where the power can be misused.
communism - people starve while the politicians become rich
making it, by definition, not communism.
https://medium.com/international-workers-press/misconceptions-about-communism-2e366f1ef51fWell, again theory vs reality.
Every iteration of communism so far was an absolute nightmare, made by the people for the people.
I agree that most theories are great if taken seriously but I dont see how we keep incompetence and malice from corrupting it.
My logic says weed out malice and educate the incompetent but no idea how to do this.
The SU was pretty great until it came apart due to outside interference and ultimately illegally dissolved. People like to shit-talk the censorship (and to be fair under most circumstances I would be against it as well) but things didn’t get bad until they started loosening up on it; once the citizens had no protection from the lies specifically created to destabilize their society it all came crumbling down.
Also China for all of its flaws is fucking killing it right now. They’re genuinely on the path to full blown communism, with their strategy being to build up as much power as they can while they wait for the US empire to collapse. Once they’re out of the picture, expect huge moves.
A direct democracy can be corrupted via social engineering, see brexit.
Brexit happened because the bri’ish are all a bunch of subhuman fascists. They all deep down wanted brexit because they hated foreigners more than they cared for themselves. All trolls had to do was bring that to the surface and give them the chance to actually act upon it.
And they are rather smelly
And they eat beans on toast
[didn’t you have beans on toast like a week ago] (shut up, mom that doesn’t count)
I‘m not saying direct democracy cant be broken but britain isnt a direct democracy. Its like giving someone a bike who drove a car all their lives. They crash and hurt themselves and someone says „look! Bikes are dangerous!“
There are no direct (or mostly direct) democracies in the world afaik. Feel free to prove otherwise.
I believe Switzerland has direct democracy, no?
In part, but not fully. They still have full time reprenstative offices. Direct democracy would get along without those afaik.
That makes sense
Thanks. I‘m glad I explained it ok. :) have a good one.
Nobody is able to speak for other people. This just doesnt work.
Its just laziness if people prefer to have others speak for themselves.
Anarchy is the only system where nobody can hide because “it was not their decision” and where nobody has the right to “decide for other people”.
I mean, are you good at gifts? If you dont know what a person wants to get as gifts, how do you want to know exactly what decisions they would make?
Do I believe it could work? Maybe.
Do I believe it’s been seriously tried to a significant degree? Nah.“Wherever you go, there you are” also applies to the human condition and any kind of whatever-cracy. At the end of the day, people are people and a lot of people suck, there’s no fix for that.
Wildly untenable concept in modern society…
I’m sure it would work great in a video game or something, but In the real world, this shit goes crony AF guaranteed.
We don’t measure aptitude or ability in our society, we absolutely suck at it. A person’s ability is measured by what pedigree they purchased at degrees R us, or worse, by how articulate and verbose they were when typing a resume. Occasionally, ability is measured by how well someone likes a person even…
Competence is valued in a very select few enterprises. Trades, IT, and at higher echelons, math nerds… That’s about it…
Why not? The people most qualified should have the positions. The amount of qualified people and said positions probably don’t always match and people may not want the jobs they qualify for though, But I think it’s an ideal to strive for.
This is a copy of a reply to @[email protected] :
Just to make it clear the definition that I used does not talk about choosing people for tasks they are suited for, but rather putting them in positions of power, success, and influence.
What’s the difference? The people most deserving of power, success, and influence would be the most qualified to handle it.
Yes, but being good at something does not necessarily correlate to being good at managing others doing that thing.
This is especially pronounced in sales, where good salespeople get promoted to management, before immediately discovering that it requires a totally different skillset and they’ve basically changed fields entirely.
Halo effect
Managing people is “something.”. It’s a skill. In an ideal meritocracy, managers would be good at managing.
Ok, I just wanted to make sure if that is what you were saying.
