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Meritocracy Is Bad

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Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#21

Post by jgwil2 »

hervature wrote: post #16

I'm conflicted about this essay. I agree with many of the points but fail to see how it relates to and ultimately disagree with the thesis that meritocracy is bad. Taking the tennis example, sure, it would be beneficial for the top players to have a flatter payout structure. But this ultimately leads to the ATP tour being solidified and newcomers being barred from entry as now the player ranked 250 is now earning an…

> But this ultimately leads to the ATP tour being solidified and newcomers being barred from entry as now the player ranked 250 is now earning an income that they can afford much better training than outsiders.

No, it would make it more worthwhile to invest in promising players, who now would have the prospect of making a decent living as a top 250-ranked touring pro, rather than needing to be in the top 50 or 100 in order to do so.

I think more generally the idea is that we should focus on equality rather than equity: people should be able to live well even if they "lose" the meritocratic contest.

Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#22

Post by Miner49er »

bberrry wrote: post #15

For some reason this idea that meritocracy is undesirable has been making the rounds recently. I haven't heard any proposed alternatives that would be at all viable in a society where we want critical roles to be performed by competent people. Do we really want incompetent people running things because they will botch their attempts at being unethical? It certainly seems like the author is making that argument. Yes,…

I think the best proposed alternative is to spread out power. You can't have incompetent people running things if no one (or everyone) is running things. Is this viable? I'm not sure, but I think we could distribute power at least somewhat more then we currently are.

Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#23

Post by zzbzq »

tines wrote: post #14

In one portion of the article ("Smart people do bad things"), it seems like the argument isn't really against Meritocracy, it's against using intelligence as the only metric powering your meritocracy. If your meritocracy rewards a combination of ethical and intelligent behavior, you still have a pure merit-based system, you've just picked a particular merit function that you like more. I felt that that part of the ar…

I was thinking the exact same thing. The article falls into what may be the most immediate danger befalling discussion around meritocracy: an artificially narrow definition of "merit."

The essay bemoans private equity firms increasing death rates in retirement homes to increase profit, because of how "smart" and therefore allegedly "merited" they are. But any proper definition of "merit" would include them behaving ethically.

Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#24

Post by michaelpb »

meheleventyone wrote: post #17
michaelpb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, maybe not all types of jobs, but to be fair he does say "in the political realm" at one point in the article, and it did occur to me that many people often take the opposite as an a priori assumption, that "meritocracy is good thing for all types of jobs" (myself, sometimes, included!). I'm not a fan of this author, but I did find this little polemic a needed "push-back" (That said, I also think the article cou…

Surely it’s not that the idea of meritocracy is necessarily wrong just that the concept of what constitutes merit for a job is complex. The article begins essentially conflating merit with intelligence which is clearly pretty one dimensional for all sorts of ideas about merit for a job role. Let alone merit as a part of broader society. So it’s not really that meritocracy is bad but the definition of merit is. Which…

I generally agree with you here, and don't think this article is particularly well researched or argued. I'm no fan of Matty's argumentation in any of his articles in fact... I don't think he "merits" the popularity he has ;)

That said, I don't really think there is any sort of useful distinction between "necessarily wrong" and "impossible to define". That is, I believe many meritocracy-enthusiasts to be "necessarily wrong" since they often imply or casually argue for achieving a meritocratic society, while, as you put it, "a stable, shared view of merit doesn’t really exist". So, seeking something that doesn't exist (like the tooth fairy, or a profitable MLM scam) is necessarily 100% wrong... not 20% wrong, or 50% wrong. All we got is this boring cave :(

So, I guess I welcome any "meritocracy considered harmful" posts, despite who wrote it and how it's written.

Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#25

Post by bberrry »

Miner49er wrote: post #22
bberrry wrote: post #15

For some reason this idea that meritocracy is undesirable has been making the rounds recently. I haven't heard any proposed alternatives that would be at all viable in a society where we want critical roles to be performed by competent people. Do we really want incompetent people running things because they will botch their attempts at being unethical? It certainly seems like the author is making that argument. Yes,…

I think the best proposed alternative is to spread out power. You can't have incompetent people running things if no one (or everyone) is running things. Is this viable? I'm not sure, but I think we could distribute power at least somewhat more then we currently are.

How many surgeons do you want operating on a patient? How many pilots should hold the stick? Politics might be particularly suitable for more distributed power but I'd say that's an exception.

Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#26

Post by adamrezich »

luizfelberti wrote: post #6
lalaland1125 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matthew Yglesias, the author of this piece, went to Harvard.

Yet despite having gone to Harvard, doesn't seem to be able to distinguish credentialism from meritocracy. But hey! At least he went to Harvard right?...

this is exactly what I came here to say. it took a lot of effort to find work a few years ago because I'd dropped out of college, yet had plenty of personal experience under my belt. I know many other people are in this same boat and it's endlessly frustrating to be rejected from entry-level job after entry-level job when your skillset and experience is above what is being asked. when this is happening to you and at the same time you see articles about how meritocracy is bad and should be abolished, it's hard to see how meritocracy is supposedly working for you when your (self-evaluated) merit (for an entry-level position, possibly doing something fully outside of your intended career trajectory) outstrips your credentials.

I don't understand why everyone trying to tear down "meritocracy" doesn't start by focusing on credentialism instead.

Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#27

Post by AnimalMuppet »

bberrry wrote: post #15

For some reason this idea that meritocracy is undesirable has been making the rounds recently. I haven't heard any proposed alternatives that would be at all viable in a society where we want critical roles to be performed by competent people. Do we really want incompetent people running things because they will botch their attempts at being unethical? It certainly seems like the author is making that argument. Yes,…

> ... we want critical roles to be performed by competent people.

Yes. Over the last few years, we've seen the problems caused by having critical jobs performed by less than competent people. (I'm sure you can fill in your own examples.)

The problem is that there are (at least) two kinds of "fake meritocracy". There's credentialism: "This person must me competent; they graduated from Elite Institution". And then there's elitism: "This person must be competent, their parents are rich and famous". Neither tells us much about their actual competence at any specific role. (All right, credentialism tells you that they were competent at graduating from Elite Institution, but we aren't hiring them to have them do that over and over.)

I wonder if part of the reason for the criticism of meritocracy is because of the failings of fake meritocracy. (I suspect that another part of it is a complaint that those who win the meritocracy game get too much of the rewards, which I think is a fair criticism.)

Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#28

Post by deilline »

hervature wrote: post #16

I'm conflicted about this essay. I agree with many of the points but fail to see how it relates to and ultimately disagree with the thesis that meritocracy is bad. Taking the tennis example, sure, it would be beneficial for the top players to have a flatter payout structure. But this ultimately leads to the ATP tour being solidified and newcomers being barred from entry as now the player ranked 250 is now earning an…

> Very few individuals are responsible for key advancements of civilization.

Is this true? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_theory_of_invention_and...

Another example is the Finnish education system aiming to raise the floor instead of increasing the ceiling.

I can think of counterexamples in Hungarian mathematicians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)

A lot of them knew each other growing up, but you could argue they would've succeeded anywhere.

If this question were more carefully explored I think it'd do a lot for the author's argument as a whole.

Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#29

Post by wmf »

bberrry wrote: post #15

For some reason this idea that meritocracy is undesirable has been making the rounds recently. I haven't heard any proposed alternatives that would be at all viable in a society where we want critical roles to be performed by competent people. Do we really want incompetent people running things because they will botch their attempts at being unethical? It certainly seems like the author is making that argument. Yes,…

There's a brief discussion of that: "Harvard political theorist Michael Sandel suggests that the most exclusive colleges should move away from tournament-style admissions. Instead, he’d like to see them set a minimum competency bar and then accept everyone who clears the threshold." You could apply this thinking society-wide: if you're competent enough to do your job then that's it; there's no rankings.

Re: Meritocracy Is Bad

#30

Post by meheleventyone »

michaelpb wrote: post #24
meheleventyone wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely it’s not that the idea of meritocracy is necessarily wrong just that the concept of what constitutes merit for a job is complex. The article begins essentially conflating merit with intelligence which is clearly pretty one dimensional for all sorts of ideas about merit for a job role. Let alone merit as a part of broader society. So it’s not really that meritocracy is bad but the definition of merit is. Which…

I generally agree with you here, and don't think this article is particularly well researched or argued. I'm no fan of Matty's argumentation in any of his articles in fact... I don't think he "merits" the popularity he has ;) That said, I don't really think there is any sort of useful distinction between "necessarily wrong" and "impossible to define". That is, I believe many meritocracy-enthusiasts to be "necessarily…

Yeah I think the idea of meritocracy is dangerously utopian. It’s beguiling because as a principle it’s succinct to express and hard to argue with on casual acquaintance. Which is why I describe it as not necessarily wrong. A specific enough definition at a narrow enough view might yield meritocratic results but is useless as a general organising principle even though that isn’t easily obvious.

Your single paragraph also holds a much stronger argument that meritocracy is bad than any of those in the article.

Which is a really long way to say I agree.

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