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.
Depends what you mean by “believe in”. Could it work? Sure, why not. Do we live in one? Hell fuck no.
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.
Yes, but it doesn’t last for long. It just takes a few bad apples on top for the system to quickly go corrupt, which is why the powers on top need to constantly fear being changed by the people
“No! You can’t change me!”
“Yes we can”
::: changes him :::
“Well, I guess that does feel better”
“Told you”
What do you mean by doesn’t last long? Also if the society was a complete meritocracy what accountability would the people have?
Well, human judgement is not perfect, and eventually a snake would be able to climb the ranks and corrupt the whole system.
This is why democracy is the only system that can allow for “constant revolution” and if the current system is broken or corrupt, it’s the only way that allows for a consistent peaceful transfer of power. It is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but as Churchill once said “ Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”
And for when the people in charge decide they’re not going to hand over their power despite being elected out, we have rules about it not being allowed to clear out people’s weapons.
Basically we do our best to ensure there are no circumstances where those in charge get to ignore those they’re ruling over. It’s a way of solving the agency problem given humans’ tendency to ignore the rules when they want to.
Another way to put it is that a politician might decide “oh this system of democracy isn’t going to keep me in power, so I’ll just step outside of it to the world of anything goes” and then an armed populace can say “nope, we’ve got moves there too, and they’re way worse for you than getting voted out”.
It makes the attractiveness of that step outside the system go way down.
Meritocracy just means you’re rewarded proportionally to your contribution. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re rewarded with authority over anyone.
Actually the “cracy” suffix does refer specifically to the distribution of authority. Democracy is a system in which people decide; not just one in which people do well. Aristocracy is where those people are the deciders, not just where they’re the most wealthy.
A fair point. I guess I’m used to it being used incorrectly then.
As a general rule, yes. People who are able to better perform a task should be preferentially allocated towards those tasks. That being said, I think this should be a guiding rule, not a law upon which a society is built.
For one, there should be some accounting for personal preference. No one should be forced to do something by society just because they’re adept at something. I think there is also space within the acceptable performance level of a society for initiatives to relax a meritocracy to some degree to help account for/make up for socioeconomic influences and historical/ongoing systemic discrimination. Meritocracy’s also have to make sure they avoid the application of standardized evaluations at a young age completely determining an individual’s future career prospects. Lastly, and I think this is one of common meritocracy retorhic’s biggest flaws, a person’s intrinsic value and overall value to society is not determined by their contributions to STEM fields and finance, which is where I think a lot of people who advocate for a more meritocracy-based society stand.
a person’s intrinsic value and overall value to society is not determined by their contributions to STEM fields and finance
I don’t think anyone who views contributions in STEM fields as the most valuable to society has any respect for finance.
All of my encounters with individuals who feel liberal arts are useless and STEM is the way seem to, at their core, feel that way because of earning potential, and I’ve never heard one of them bash Econ/finance/investment as a career path. But 🤷♂️
All of my encounters with individuals who feel liberal arts are useless and STEM is the way seem to, at their core, feel that way because of earning potential
You were saying a group of people believe that value as a person is determined by their contributions to STEM fields and finance.
Now you’re saying that this group of people believe that value as a person is determined by earnings potential. Those are not the same things.
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.
Well you need to clarify further then. Are you saying we should make the best scientist the president, or the person with the most aptitude for politics and rule to be president? I don’t see how this is functionally different than what I said.
Well the way I interpret it is that people who demonstrate their ability are put into a position where they are rewarded more relative to their peers and/or have control over what their peers do.
So for example if I was a engineer and based on some metric was considered highly valuable then I would be paid more than other engineers and I would be put into a position where I can give other engineers directions on what needs to be done.
Then no, I don’t agree with this specific implementation of the system, at least the second half. I do think more productive/effective workers should be compensated more. But being a good engineer does not make you a good manager, and the issues associated with promoting an excelling worker into management (a job requiring a substantially different skill set) are so common there’s a name for their inevitable failure, The Peter Principle
which is where I think a lot of people who advocate for a more meritocracy-based society stand.
Why do you think this is?
If I was guessing, in general, I think people who advocate for a pure meritocracy in the USA feel the world should be evaluated in more black and white, objective terms. The financial impact and analytic nature of STEM and finance make it much easier to stratify practitioners “objectively” in comparison to finding, for instance, the “best” photographer. I think there is also a subset of US culture that thinks that STEM is the only “real” academic group of fields worth pursuing, and knowledge in liberal arts is pointless -> not contributing to society -> not a meaningful part of the meritocracy. But I’m no expert.
I don’t think the idea of meritocracy only lives in the U.S.
I didn’t say it did, but I am a citizen of the USA and the vast majority of my cultural experience and knowledge, and therefore what I can intelligently comment on, are centered on the US.
That’s fair.
I think there is also a subset of US culture that thinks that STEM is the only “real” academic group of fields worth pursuing, and knowledge in liberal arts is pointless -> not contributing to society -> not a meaningful part of the meritocracy.
Yeah I agree with this quite a bit.
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.
Don’t organisations already follow this? Atleast for their workers.
People getting into a public or private job have to show that they are eligible.Regarding meritocracy at level of society:
I think it’s going to be difficult in reality.- Who appraises the merit of people? Who defines, maintains and updates the standards/methods used for the appraisal?
- Is there a system for continuous quality check? It’d be needed to maintain the system as a meritocracy.
- How is the quality check system preserved in the system?
- Who appraises those who appraise?
In the case of an organisation, the leaders/owners of the org can choose workers with merit. But the owners themselves are not appraised, right? Unless they are in some co-operative org or so.
Perfect meritocracy seems very difficult to implement for the whole of society.
I think democracy(which gives due importance to scientific temper and obviously human life) is a decent enough system. We can iterate on it to bring up the merit in the society and its people as a whole
SO LONG AS IT IS ACTUAL MERITOCRACY,
and not just privilege’s gaslighting about it ( via making-certain that the poorest have inferior-nutrition, inferior-air-quality, worse-pollution, inferior-education, inferior-healthcare, etc ),
then yes, I hold it is The Proper Way.
However, it REQUIRES a truly-level playing-field, and not a 2-tiered “level” playing-field.
The Scandinavian system of ONLY public-schooling, so there is only 1 tier of education-quality, is a required component.
Student nutrition needs to be guaranteed.
Healthcare needs to work properly, for all.
Livingwage needs to be for all full-time work, and companies that try to hire only part-time for the real-work, have to have the profit-benefit of such hamstringing-of-many-lives cut from them all, permanently.
Fairness requries careful systematic, & openly-honest enforcement, because the DarkHexad: narcissism/machiavellianism/sociopathy-psychopathy/nihilism/sadism/systemic-dishonesty ALWAYS seeks to enforce abusive-exploitation, and it is underhandedly aggressive, and natural in our human nature.
Not mitigating it == accommodating it.
Salut, Namaste, & Kaizen, eh?
_ /\ _
But what is merit exactly? Who decides the criteria we use to measure it?
No.
Currently: “meritocracy” has nothing to do with “merit” and is just a word to make “white supremacist patriarchal cis-heteronormative abled supremacist bigotry” sound less terrible than it is.
In general: because hierarchy is bad for society, since someone always ends up at the artificial “bottom” and treated badly or at the very least as less worthy or deserving (of life, dignity, freedom, access, and so on). The only reason anyone would want/believe in a “meritocracy” is because it makes them feel superior to others.
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.
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.
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 @godzillabacter@lemmy.world :
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.
Ok, I just wanted to make sure if that is what you were saying.
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.
Managing people is “something.”. It’s a skill. In an ideal meritocracy, managers would be good at managing.
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?
For anyone interested, Wikipedia provides some arguments against meritocracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_meritocracy
Meritocracy is argued to be a myth because, despite being promoted as an open and accessible method of achieving upward class mobility under neoliberal or free market capitalism, wealth disparity and limited class mobility remain widespread, regardless of individual work ethic.
I believe in meritocracy so much I think we should distribute all the wealth because they wealthy are so much better than everyone else that they will just be wealthy again. /s
There is a meritocratic aspect to reality. There are also meritocratic aspects to capitalism. So it’s partly real, for sure.
A real meritocracy would nurture merit. In terms of policy that would manifest as socialist policies that create a level playing field.
Hiring based on identity is fiercely anti-meritocratic. Expensive degrees and high interest student loans are also anti-meritocratic.
A pure meritocracy is not possible with humans. Not everyone agrees on what “success” and “merit” look like. Whatever person or group of people doing the “choosing” will be corrupted, it’s just a question of how long it takes. And even before intentional abuse of their power, humans have their own biases that will prevent them from being perfect judges of merit and success.
And no, not a job for AI. Someone has to program the thing and teach it what “merit” and “success” mean, so same problem there.
