Meritocracy and The Wire

Craig Jerald observes of the fact that Namond, who seemed like the Wire kid least "deserving" of rescue turns out to be the only one who makes it through the minefield:

If America were a true meritocracy, one that rewarded talent—and developed talent for the common good—Duquan would attend an excellent school with a great math teacher, not a rookie who has no idea how to help him, let alone teach him. If it were a true meritocracy, budding and innovative capitalist Randy would be treated like the next Michael Dell, or at least someone who might actually own a store of his own someday. And in a true meritocracy (heck, even just in a halfway rational society) a kid with Michael’s practical smarts and immense leadership skills would be treated as a future business or civic leader—even a future mayor of Baltimore—and educated accordingly.

But for children in West Baltimore, making it has far more to do with luck than with merit. If The Wire is right, it has nothing to do with merit at all. How can we live with that?

It's a good question. But consider this. Suppose the United States had a school system that wasn't just non-dysfunctional, but actually almost magical in its properties. Kids who came into this school system with talent and ability lurking under the surface would be catapulted to success, notwithstanding their socioeconomic background or other problems. Randy, Dukie, and Michael all in their different ways become important successful people. And what happens to the others? What happens to people of merely average ability? Worse -- what happens to people of less than average ability? What if you're just dumb? Not anymore crooked or dishonest than anyone else, but less able. Do people like that just sink into the ghetto, into lives of poverty and despair? Is that really justice? Is the problem of the underclass in contemporary America really just that we've assigned the wrong people to live that way, and need a better system of sorting the able from the non-able?

That seems badly wrong to me. Yes, one problem with the condition of the underclass is that it prevents talented underclass children from being able to take full advantage of their talents. Another, deeper problem, however, is that in a prosperous society people simply deserve better living conditions than that. It's unjust that living conditions of the sort portrayed in the show exist. Unjust that people live in neighborhoods that unsafe and that deprived of basic civic service. Unjust that people -- even people without noteworthy talents and abilities -- lack the opportunity to obtain a reasonable standard of living through legal means.

Comments

This is pretty Manichean. To stipulate meritocracy is not to imply that the less-able are left to starve in the streets. I suppose that in a radically meritocratic order a version of that could exist, but no one has any interest in creating such a thing -- to push the less-able into conditions of desperation will ensure that the able are targets of crime, social dysfunction, etc. We can still desire to reward Duqie, Randy and Michael for their abilities while providing basic, and even generous social protections for Zenobia and Darnell.

Posted by Spencer | December 11, 2006 12:18 PM

We can still desire to reward Duqie, Randy and Michael for their abilities while providing basic, and even generous social protections for Zenobia and Darnell.

Indeed we can. But "if America were a true meritocracy" we wouldn't.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | December 11, 2006 12:32 PM

Well, some of us have been asking for 20 years what was going to happen when all the good, solid, lower-middle-class steel mill, auto plant, furniture factory, etc. jobs disappeared and were "replaced" with college professor and C++ programmer positions (the latter now being sent to India anyway). Jerry Pournelle (considered by most liberal SF readers to be one step away from a fascist) wrote about this repeatedly in the 1990s and early oughts: one of the great things about the US was that there was a wide variety of decent jobs for the people who didn't want to go to college and don't want to (or can't) work with purely abstract skills. Now we have made all those jobs go away in the name of efficiency and ... what? Wal-Mart greeter for everyone?

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | December 11, 2006 12:33 PM

> Indeed we can.

Well, as I get older it is my observation that the ruling class is pretty satisfied with the current situation: it gives them the best of all possible worlds. And the upper- (and even middle-) middle class isn't too unhappy, as it allows them to compartmentalize all the "bad people" as being "over there in the city" while benefitting from the reduction in competition for jobs.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | December 11, 2006 12:35 PM

This post is addressing separate things. Its not just the absolute level of economic poverty that leads to situations like West Baltimore. And even aside from that, being dumb in America does not prevent you from earning a living wage doing semi-skilled labor. What makes it difficult is having poor parents so that you don't get going in the right direction from the start. And you can aim to reduce income inequality, but you also need to look at how you can close that performance gap b/w the rich and poor. But I don't like the idea that wellfare exists for dumb people. I don't think that's the right approach.

Posted by mpowell | December 11, 2006 12:39 PM

Yeah, I keep thinking-- "You know, even not-smart people have the right to live." I think all this meritocracy talk is saying that some people "deserve" a good life, and no one else does. And that "no one else" are real people, and especially when you're talking about kids, well, really, do WE have the right to write them off?

It takes all kinds, and who are we (or God forbid, the wealthy and socially/politically powerful) to say that one kind of kid deserves a good life, and others don't?

Posted by lister | December 11, 2006 12:42 PM

This is absolutely right, and it's a point often overlooked by smart people.

There's this entitled notion among "smart" people that it's morally just for them to have more than "dumb" people. (Interestingly, most smart people don't have this attitude towards being pretty, and often they express frustration that pretty people get treated better than ugly ones. But for all their supposed smartness, they fail to notice that a lot of being smart, like a lot of being pretty, is being BORN that way.)

There's a real sense of noblesse oblige that's been lost in this generation because we've let too many kids read Ayn Rand, and we've turned econ 101 into a secular religion. There's this pervasive notion that economic injustice is per se a MORAL thing, because economist-priests have convinced us to accept as an article of faith that it's what drives growth, and "a rising tide lifts all boats."

But that's not a MORAL argument, it's a utilitarian argument. It is, in fact, per se immoral that some people should have more while others have less. The economic argument that inequality stimulates growth that benefits all is only a mitigating utilitarian counter-argument to this moral crime inasmuch as one can actually PROVE it.

There's a great line in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where someone says to her that she doesn't automatically deserve to be in charge just because she has superpowers. The argument boils down to "That doesn't make you better than us. It makes you luckier than us."

Comic book morality is actually instructive here. You have people who are able to do things that others cannot. In a meritocracy, they should demand to be in charge, right? But overwhelmingly, the difference between the heroes and villians is that the good guys don't think their powers entitle them to live better than other people, and the bad guys do.

There's a reason that the heroes and villians in the comic book universe shake out that way--it's an extreme example that lets us see the underlying injustice in pretending that meritocracy is moral. Frankly, throughout human history, most of our attempts to justify the rationing of material comforts away from the "undeserving" and toward the "deserving" have been rather self-serving attempts for the haves to justify why the have-nots do not deserve some of what they have. The myth of the moral meritocracy is yet another one.

Posted by anonymous | December 11, 2006 12:44 PM

I don't know if racism or tribalism or what is the correct term, but comparing the US to European countries, the US really seems to treat the "have-nots" very poorly. It seems that in the more homogeneous European countries ( Sweden, etc ) they tend to treat their countrymen more like "extended family", which is not that surprising because in some sense, they are. The U.S. seems much more Darwinian and willing to treat the less fortunate as somewhat less than human. The people at the top seem to have no guilt or reason to choose to share. It's sickening really.

Posted by fasteddie | December 11, 2006 1:53 PM

Indeed we can. But "if America were a true meritocracy" we wouldn't.

How is meritocracy defined? Is it just that all positions in society are ranked according to merit? That implies those with the least merit are the worst off, but it says nothing about how bad off they are, right?

For that matter, one could imagine a sort of interspecies meritocracy in which intelligence and consciousness would merit different levels of protection. In which case the problem is not that we have assigned the wrong people to terrible circumstances but the wrong animals--having people living like rats might.

Posted by Consumatopia | December 11, 2006 1:56 PM

Indeed we can. But "if America were a true meritocracy" we wouldn't.

I don't think this is right. It doesn't stretch the definition of "meritocracy" at all if the "better" get more than the "worse," but the worse are still ensured some reasonable level of support. To put it another way, you seem to understand "meritocracy" to rule out any kind of safety net, but I don't think it has to.

Posted by ogged | December 11, 2006 2:02 PM

Kids who grow up in places like West Baltimore are not just "less fortunate." They are first and foremost victims of the apparently unintended consequences of a series of policy decisions, the largest of which is the so-called war on drugs. And it is unquestionably racism that allows more comfortable citizens to avert their eyes from the consequences of this ruinous policy. Further, no one who puports to represent the interests of these children should be taken seriously unless he or she makes ending the war on drugs a priority.

Posted by henry evans | December 11, 2006 2:05 PM

Suppose, for a second, The Wire was just a TV show, instead of real life. That would be something.

Posted by Anonymous | December 11, 2006 2:10 PM

Suppose, for a second, The Wire was just a TV show, instead of real life. That would be something.

Yes, nothing to see here, move along. Upton Sinclair just wrote novels...

Posted by Pooh | December 11, 2006 2:17 PM

BTW, it's worth looking into the origin of the word . It's changed quite a bit.

Posted by Wade | December 11, 2006 2:20 PM

I hate HTML. Google Michael Young meritocracy for the article.

Posted by Wade | December 11, 2006 2:25 PM

Yglesias is, as usual correct.
There is some value in a meritocracy being placed on top of a societal system that provides properous and meaningful lives for all its members, as others have pointed out, but it is crucial that you understand that it is only in the sense that it is instrumental in creating a better life for everybody - a meritocracy is not a goal, it is a tool.

Posted by theCoach | December 11, 2006 2:33 PM

To take issue with the underlying premise of this post, how is Namond the least sympathetic, given the season as a whole? He's just a kid, trying to play a role, like everyone else. The "real" Nay is no more the one on the corner or the one trying to bully Dukie then the one playing Halo or eating dinner at the Colvins' for the first time.

Randy and Michael may have been more charismatic but upon reflection, how sympathetic are they? Randy is a schemer who is used to sweet-talking his way out of trouble. Michael is hard but broken (I'm reminded of a line from "Collateral" were Jamie Foxx tells Tom Cruise that he's lacking "standard equipment" that most people are born with). Yes, Dukie's story is heartbreaking, but he chooses not to go into the high school. On his own. It may be an understandable choice, given the givens, but he had opportunity. Was Michael really going to kick him out if Dukie didn't work the package?

Posted by Pooh | December 11, 2006 2:34 PM

Pooh,

I think you missed Matt's point. At least the way I interpreted it being sympathetic had nothing to do with it. He was talking about purely an intelligence/talent merit.

Namond really showed nothing.

Posted by Eric | December 11, 2006 2:51 PM

The linked post said "least sympathetic."

Posted by Matt Weiner | December 11, 2006 3:17 PM

a meritocracy is not a goal, it is a tool.

I think you could easily flip it around so that rather than meritocracy being a tool for bettering the lot of all human beings, bettering the lot of all human beings becomes a tool for treating all intelligent, conscious life with the respect that it deserves.

Posted by Consumatopia | December 11, 2006 3:26 PM

What stinks about being poor in modern America is not that you can't buy enough stuff, but that you have live around other poor people and their destructive behavior.

Posted by Steve Sailer | December 11, 2006 3:40 PM

Back in 1999, I wrote a series on "How to Help the Left Half of the Bell Curve" along these same lines:

http://www.isteve.com/How_to_Help_the_Left_Half_of_the_Bell_Curve.htm

Posted by Steve Sailer | December 11, 2006 3:42 PM

The linked post may have been talking about sympathic but that isn't the point Matt was making above.

Posted by Eric | December 11, 2006 3:43 PM

With all due respect, we're all too taken with the meritocracy: US News & World Report top colleges and white collar (analytical) jobs.

There are still plenty of opportunities in the small business, working class realm: consider that bail bond reality show also on HBO, or my barber, who runs an empire of about 15 positions, or a good plumber's hourly charges. A lot of the non-college, non-metirocracy population is doing VERY well, thank you very much: go to Nascar or a drag race, and check out the fans, their vehicles, their accessories etc.

Dukie could get into (or be) the West Baltimore equivalent of the Geek Squad. Randy could get a start as a numbers runner or something else leading to a position in the gaming industry. (Michael and Namond could have futures that would emerge later: their manifested skill sets don't present obvious careers just yet.)

The problem is that, for them and for their real-world equivalents, there are too many potholes, too many sand traps, too many cow pies, too many wrong choices in easy reach--and not enough good support.

Posted by dell | December 11, 2006 3:46 PM

Gee, I guess you guys don't appreciate Matthew's wicked sense of humor.

The idea that the K12 system could HELP someone succeed is one of the most hilarious jokes I've heard lately.

WAKE UP, PEOPLE! K12 sets you up to go to college -- where you get to spend 4 years of your life, a lot of hard work, and $160,000 for a piece of paper which can't even get you a decent job.

Of if it can, it's a short lived stint in the corporate rat race where you compete with the peasants of India and China in a race to the bottom. Of course, if you lack a sense of ethics, you can always go into management, where you con fools into believing that if they work themselves into the ground, make you look good, and kiss your ass occasionally, then they too can succeed.

Or at least pay off that big educational loan they have hanging over their head. Assuming that they have anything left over after paying into "their Social Security/Medicare "accounts". Ha ha hah

Hopefully they pay off their college loans before you lay them off because they're getting wiser and you need to replace them with someone more naive.

We spend $Trillions on K12 and produce some of the most ignorant people on the planet. People that have no idea of who has power --military, economic, industrial, or technological. No idea of who really owns this country and what they want to do with it.

People who believe George Bush when Bush said 19 Saudi Arabians committed suicide on Sept 11 because "they hate our freedom". People fucking stupid enought to send their kids off to be killed in Iraq in order to seize non-existent WMDs.

It never even occurs to our college graduates to wonder why the most successful people -- the billionaires on Forbes list -- are college dropouts.

Posted by Don Williams | December 11, 2006 3:54 PM

As mentioned the defining work is Michael Young's "The Rise of the Meritocracy", a 1956 or so sociology work (short - 100p or so) describing a future where all the best and brightest of the working class had merit-risen to the ruling class, all the trade-union leaders etc.

I think you are really on the point here. In what way is a meritocracy really a better system. Why is inhereting srt genes from your parents inherently fairer than random selection based on class of your parents?

Posted by Flapple | December 11, 2006 5:39 PM

The only place this world has for you if you're just stupid is the bottom. I'm not really sure how to change that, I mean they shouldn't have to suffer just because they really are "less" than other but I don't want stupid people in positions of political power and responsibility because who knows what might--oh.

Wait.

Dammit!

Posted by MNPundit | December 11, 2006 6:10 PM

Well, Flapple, one could argue that society as a whole benefits by harnessing the potential brainpower of the entire population rather than promoting some based on their parents' social class while holding back smarter kids who happen to have come from worse backgrounds.

Which still leaves the question of how to make sure that everyone has access to a decent life, but in a meritocracy at least you'll be operated on by someone with high test scores instead of simply a rich dad.

Posted by Hank Scorpio | December 11, 2006 6:17 PM

I don't know why "meritocracy" and "the most intelligent get the rewards" are considered one and the same here. Meritocracies reward intelligence, yes, but they also reward dedication, hard work, the ability to put off enjoyment today in order to succeed tomorrow, etc. And even "intelligence" itself is not wholly innate; if the average American put as much time into reading as they did into watching primetime TV, they'd certainly be much smarter.

I, for one, do think that we should structure a system to reward "good" habits in a meritocratic manner, while acknowledging that sometimes luck and genes play a role.

As for The Wire, I don't read the final episode as "3 kids screwed by the man." What I take away is that Dukie (by forgoing high school) and Michael (by turning his back on Cutty) are going to wind up where they wind up largely because of their own choices. As for Randy - well, what can you say.

Posted by cure | December 11, 2006 6:44 PM

One final note: the problems of the poor can't be solved with money. The problem is that the poor tend to live in areas filled with other poor people, at least a fraction of whom are responsible for their own poverty. Who do you think is more likely to succeed: a child from a US ghetto with p.c.i. of $15000, or a Kenyan child from a village with PPP p.c.i. of the same? I think it goes without saying.

Posted by cure | December 11, 2006 6:47 PM

Well, one improvement in an actual meritocracy would be that certain career choices would be unavailable for those who are "just dumb". For instance, President of the United States.

Posted by Alex | December 11, 2006 6:47 PM

I thought the point the show made about Namond went a little deeper than luck. It wasn't just that he was the least talented member of the group and got lucky, but that of all of his friends, he was, essentially, culturally-speaking anways, a middle-class American. Unlike his friends, he knew what it was to have things, eat well, and live with a net. He wore nice clothes, played video games, and was tapped into the popular American cultural experience. Heck, his Lady Macbeth mother couldn't pick him up from the police station because she went to NYC to shop and see "The Color Purple." It was little wonder that Bunny felt a special bond with him - Namond was most like Bunny or, at least, most like Bunny's kids. The lesson of "The Wire" isn't just that success of a corner kid is a crapshoot, but that that success has much more to do with how much you are like those who could help you get out than it is about luck or ability. He was very literally Eddie Haskell, not just a charmer, but a middle-class charmer. It was also why, of all his friends, he was least suited for the corner.

Posted by Ryan | December 11, 2006 8:13 PM

Ryan,

I think that is correct. Also I think Namond's more or less middle class (albeit very unconventionally so) upbringing left him better able to accept the help when it was offered. I made this comment last week about Michael. His life experience made him unable to recognize that Cutty genuinely cared about him, in his experience an adult male would only be interested in him as a pedophile, so he assumed Cutty was one. He goes to Marlo and Chris for help becasue he knows that they want him to join their gang, he can respond to a relationship that is based on mutual gain.

Namond is used to interacting with adults and having them interested in him and giving him things. Dysfunctional as it probably was, he still had a middle class home. Which meant interaction not just with his own parents but with other adults as well. So yeah there was a little bit of an Eddie Haskell factor, but there was also a comfort with the concept of adults being interested in him and what he has to say.

I had a friend in college who recognized this as a difference between he and I, a basic optimism factor that us middle class kids brought. Coming from a middle class background with educated parents I grew up expecting to do well, expecting to go to college etc. My friend was the first person in his family to even attend college let alone graduate.

Ultimately though I think the fundamental point is luck. Bunny Colvin is such a strong and charasmatic individual that if he ahd happened to have been involved with Randy, Dukie or Michael they would be the ones in good shape now. It is pure random chance that Namond ended up with him instead of say Carver.

Lets not forget also that Colvin is a pretty smart and talented guy, he rose to the highest levels of the Police Department, the equivilent of a senior exec in the private sector and he clearly got there on talent not politics, while Carver is a Sgt who is just starting to "get it" about the whole community policing thing, so it is the quality of the mentor at play as well, if Carver were savvier he would have kept Randy out of the system.

Posted by Eric | December 11, 2006 8:50 PM

As for The Wire, I don't read the final episode as "3 kids screwed by the man." What I take away is that Dukie (by forgoing high school) and Michael (by turning his back on Cutty) are going to wind up where they wind up largely because of their own choices. As for Randy - well, what can you say.

That's awfully apologetic. Wouldn't it be nice if we could ignore miserable outcomes in this world because bad shit only happens to bad folks.

The point is not that Michael and the rest didn't make objectively bad choices. It's that the choices they were presented with were those that none should have to face. I don't know about you, but I never had to choose between getting an education but living in utter poverty like Dukie, and slinging drugs and having a place to live and food on the table.

Posted by StJoe | December 11, 2006 9:10 PM

Re; The U.S. seems much more Darwinian and willing to treat the less fortunate as somewhat less than human. The people at the top seem to have no guilt or reason to choose to share. It's sickening really.

To be a bit fair to the US here, we also have a much larger population than Sweden and other successful social democracies, and since there are inevitably "frictional costs" (translate: "waste, fraud, abuse") in administering social programs and these increase geometrically proportional to the population, from a US perpective such programs can therefore appear to be wasteful and inefficient, providing too little help (and creating too many unintended consequences) for their cost. I am not making a legitimate argument for doing nothing (I don't believe that myself) but rather than knee-jerk moralizing about what a dreadful people we are, we might want to consider that at least some things that work in Sweden might not work very well here because of our size.

Posted by Jonf | December 11, 2006 9:25 PM

Matt,

Is thisn't the problem with an serious reform? The powerful think its the natural order of things for people like them to be on top and other people to be on the bottom.

Look at empires that have risen and fallen (Kevin Phillips' Wealth and Democracy compares our society to the Spanish, Dutch and British empires), the natural course of events is for power and wealth to flow to political and economic elites, and no one with the wisdom to see the need for reform has the power to enact them.

For example if the present campaign finance system produces the Congress that it does, why would any congressman be motivated to reform a system that has been so good to them? Likewise, the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) economic sector consumes entirely too big a percentage of the GDP (to the detriment of manufacturing, R&D and infrastructure), but has too much political clout to be reformed in any substantial way.

Posted by beowulf | December 11, 2006 10:21 PM

Some level of inequality is unavoidable in advanced human societies. Attempts to eliminate inequality altogether have not been successful and have had severe, deleterious side effects. However, it is possible to reduce inequality far more than the United States has done. Western Europe manages to strike a fairly good balance, IMO.

It's to the benefit of society that smart people be encouraged to work at high-value jobs, and some level of inequality is probably an unavoidable result of that. (The free market isn't always the best way to do this, though; witness how it channels many smart college kids into jobs like lawyer and investment banker, which are primarily parasitic. Ideally, most of these people could really be put to better use in other, more socially important fields.)

However, it is morally unacceptable that anyone should work 40 hours a week and still be stuck in poverty. That we have a class of people known as the "working poor" is an indictment of our society. Setting a floor is more important than setting a ceiling, though the latter also needs to be looked into, primarily because beyond a certain point wealth is no longer about personal luxury and instead becomes a method of exercising power and control over others.

Posted by Josh | December 12, 2006 1:47 AM

Isn't the concept that life is meritocratic shattered the minute you can point to a real world situation in which someone failed to succeed due to efforts outside his control (neighborhood, parents, school, death)? "Life is Fair" is not an easy concept to uphold.

It seems this would be a much stronger context than the storyline of a fictional HBO television series.

Posted by DRR | December 12, 2006 8:07 AM

You're correct, Matt. The main culprit isn't meritocracy, but our tendency, as a society, to reward certain things (such as Matt's writing, or computer programming) more than others. Those things, of courses, have changed with time. Previously one was rewarded more on one's birth, now we tend to put more emphasis on someone's "innate ability".

Unfortunately there's not much we can do about it. Meritocracy, true or not, is here to stay. Still, capitalism's not a zero-sum game, so hopefully, more and more fields to achieve "merit" come up. But a safety net is essential. Even more important, I think, is Mickey Kaus's idea of the public sphere (his inspiration is Michael Walzer's Spheres of Justice) -- a sphere where successful and unsuccessful both will be able to mingle and mix, and get the same treatment, especially where health, and death are concerned.

Posted by shreeharsh | December 12, 2006 8:59 AM

Maximin, baby.

John Rawls is the answer.

Posted by Shiva | December 12, 2006 9:28 AM

apparently, it's entirely fair that people sink to the bottom for absolutely no reason while Matt Ygelesias gets to make lots of money...

Seriously, why should we even listen to what this guy has to say? It's self evident that a system that rewards merit and punishes failure is better than a system that rewards wealth and punishes poverty. Unless you're Matt Yglesias and have wealth, in which case you act like every other reporter and pretend not to see any problems. We'd be better off if everyone who thought like him were thrown into a river.

Posted by soullite | December 12, 2006 9:29 AM

People here seem to think that because a system isn't perfect, that we shouldn't even bother improvment. That's insane, and I'd imagine if I opened up your wallets I'd find quite a bit more in there than most of you would actually merit.

Posted by soullite | December 12, 2006 9:30 AM

> "Life is Fair" is not an easy concept to uphold.

As I say to my kids and mentees, life isn't fair - but that is no excuse for deliberately making it less fair for others.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | December 12, 2006 9:35 AM

We can still desire to reward Duqie, Randy and Michael for their abilities while providing basic, and even generous social protections for Zenobia and Darnell.

Indeed we can. But "if America were a true meritocracy" we wouldn't.

The message of The Wire is not that the Darnells and Zenobias of the world are people lacking in innate ability who would be unable to make it in a true meritocracy. If anything, it's closer to the opposite. As Colvin says, “These kids don’t know our world, but they know theirs, and they’re not stupid. They see right through us”.

In fact Zenobia actually struck me as having a keen pretty keen social intelligence…

When I think about the cohort of friends and acquaintances I grew up and went to school with, what strikes me is how similar we were to the kids portrayed on The Wire, except for the fact that all of us came from upper middle class backgrounds. Some of the kids I knew were exceptionally gifted, just like Randy and Dukie and Michael. Some weren’t dumb, but had social problems that got in the way, like Zenobia. Some were more interested in getting drunk and high than in going to class, like Darnell. Some were reckless and compulsive risk takers, like Donut. Some sold drugs. Some were sexually abused and had all kinds of mental problems as a result. Some got close to perfect scores on their SATs, while others struggled to pass algebra.

All of these people are in their late 20s or 30s now, and some of them have grown up to be wildly successful, while others have suffered a myriad of personal, professional, and legal problems. But at the end of the day, 99% of them are gainfully employed in a white collar profession.

The lesson I draw from this is that as long as you’re lucky enough to be born into the right social class, the meritocracy works reasonably well.

The problem isn't one of innate abilities. It's the class structure.

Posted by RC | December 12, 2006 3:14 PM

To Shiva:

Proving myself a true political geek, I have to say I find Rawlian ideas incredibly sexy.

Posted by MNPundit | December 12, 2006 3:57 PM

I guess one has to start from a justification: why meritocracy?

The rule of the best. aristoi, is called aristocracy. Aristocracy is based on the assumption that what is good is defined by what is good for the best ones, and thus the exact determination of it can be left to the best. The inferiors do not have to worry their little heads.

Meritocracy, the rule of the able ones, is postulated in the context of democracy, so what is good is defined by what is good for all. It is presumably good for the "all" to elect the "able" to make more precise determination (what is good for all, how to achieve it), but the able ones are managing the affairs at the suffering of "all", for the benefit of "all".

One can argue that increasing the wealth of the able ones is good for all, as it creates an incentive system. After all, the able ones are not geniuses to figure out what is good without having incentives to guide them. But the danger exists that what starts as incentives becomes the goal by itself, and meritocracy becomes aristocracy.

Plutocracy, to me, is a variety of aristocracy, in which the determination of who belongs to "the best" is made on the basis of wealth. Once you amass enough wealth, you can nominate new "best" by bestowing them with chunks of wealth. In this fashion, while offering larger social mobility than aristocracy, plutocracy has a similar kind of hierarchy and a style of personal allegiance.

To conclude, if "meritocrats" let the welfare of the less able to decline, they cease to be meritocrats of democracy and become one of the "hanger-on" casts of plutocracy. (To compare, aristocrats would let bards, clowns and/or midgets to partake in their feasts, but it was not bardocracy, or clownocracy or micro-cracy.)

Posted by piotr | December 13, 2006 12:31 PM