Debating Meritocracy: A question of justice or pragmatism?

     

Is meritocracy working, or is it a fundamentally flawed idea, just a veiled way promulgate the existing elites?

The answer isn’t so simple. To paraphrase Hamlet, meritocracy is neither good not bad, but thinking makes it so. Depending on your experience of the world, you might inherently value merit-based judgement one way or the other, but the answer is undoubtedly both important and lacking a consensus viewpoint. Moreover, belief in the value of meritocracy doesn’t split along political lines: both the left and the right express a deep-seeded skepticism of elites.

The Capitalisn’t podcast, hosted by Economist Luigi Zingales and Bethany McLean through the Stigler Center at U. Chicago, recently had a series of discussions on the idea of meritocracy, covering three different books:

• Jul 29, 2021: Episode with Adrian Wooldridge on his book “The Aristocracy of Merit: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World”
• Aug 12, 2021: Episode with Michael Sandel about his book “The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good”
• Jan 20, 2022: Episode with Kathryn Paige Harden about her book “The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality”

These discussions provided a glimpse into the trade-off’s involved in meritocratic society compared to the alternative. I want to briefly highlight some of the primary arguments, although I will review each book independently in the future.^[1]Using a different format, the Intelligence Squared debate on “Is Meritocracy Overrated” (Nov 2021) also featured the same topic, in a debate between Adrian Wooldridge and Daniel … Continue reading

Axes of Disagreement: Equality of opportunity, inequality, and the veil of ignorance

None of the discussants believed that our current meritocracy was working well, although they disagree about the solutions.

One of the primary causes of anti-meritocrats is a dislike of inequality, which is intimately tied to a question of fairness. There used to be a clear political distinction within the West between those who valued “equality of opportunity” (less regulation, smaller government, “level playing field”) versus “equality of outcomes” (more redistribution, greater “fairness”). This distiction has become increasingly problematic, as “equality of opportunity” inexorably leads towards greater inequality.

One major mechanism for why meritocracy leads to inequality is in the debate around our education system, whether it be admissions to elite institututions such as Harvard or the usage of testing for admissions to specialized public schools. David Brooks’ recent Atlantic article “How the Bobos Broke America” (Aug. 2021) provides a nice example of this concern:

The bobos—or X people, or the creative class, or whatever you want to call them—have coalesced into an insular, intermarrying Brahmin elite that dominates culture, media, education, and tech. Worse, those of us in this class have had a hard time admitting our power, much less using it responsibly.

The idea of a meritocracy is that our system should discover the best people regardless of their backgrounds, and those people should be rewarded. Advancement is based on achievement rather than personal attributes.

One of the most famous recent arguments against meritocracy was made by John Rawls in his famous book “A Theory of Justice” (1971), and it is sometimes referrred to as the original position or alternatively as the veil of ignorance. In the original position, you are asked to imagine structuring society not based on knowledge of your actual situation, but rather as if you went behind a “veil of ignorance” and didn’t know who in society you would end up being. This puts us in the position of Adam Smith’s impartial spectator, setting aside all our current biases (a form of Epoché).

The morality of meritocracy

This question about the justice of meritocracy was taken up by Michael Sandel in “The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?“. From Sandel’s standpoint, the dark side of meritocracy is that it rationalizes inequality. Merit itself is a flawed idea, because we don’t deserve what we earn.

Sandel is a communitarian^[2]This is to say that Sandel believes that political life within democracy should be directed towards the common good, rather than strictly towards individual soverignty as in strict liberal … Continue reading philosopher at Harvard University. I first encountered him through his popular lectures on Justice from 2009: https://justiceharvard.org/justicecourse/. Sandel is famous for his critique of Rawls’ original position, in that it is impossible to go completely behind the veil of ignorance: we are embedded in the world, including important attachments to values and people such as our families.

As Charles Murray wrote about Sandel’s book, “Sandel has given us an important meditation, starting from first principles, on how to think about human merit and a meritocratic society.” For Sandel, one of the most important shifts that we should aim for in society is not specifically related to redistribution or a “leveling down”, but rather a change in our internal value system: all work should be viewed with dignity.

Sandel reflects this from the very start of his book:

…it is doubtful that even a perfect meritocracy would be satisfying, either morally or politically. Morally, it is unclear why the talented deserve the outsize rewards that market-driven societies lavish on the successful. Central to the case for the meritocratic ethic is the idea that we do not deserve to be rewarded, or held back, based on factors beyond our control. But is having (or lacking) certain talents really our own doing? If not, it is hard to see why those who rise thanks to their talents deserve greater rewards than those who may be equally hardworking but less endowed with the gifts a market society happens to prize. (Sandel, p.25)

In the light of the lottery of birth and fortune, we must above all hold onto humility around both our successes and failures.

Not equality of opportunity, but equity

The basic question underlying the Rawlsian calculus is how much of our success is predetermined. This question of agency is a combination of both genes and environment.

Anyone who doubts the importance of genetics in determine success might start with David Epstein’s book “The Sports Gene”. But what about intellectual activities? How much of our success in school is dependent on nature and nurture? This is both a fundamentally important question, but also one of tremendous controversy, as evidenced by the reaction to Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (1996) “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life”.

Enter Kathyrn Paige Harden and “The Genetic Lottery”. Harden (twitter, homepage) is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas. She has always taken a realistic view of genetics: our genetic inheritance explains a lot about our performance in the world, so let’s consider that when designing systems.

During her discussion with Zingales, she describes an example from the book of eyeglasses:

As the economist Art Goldberger quipped in the late 1970s, your genetics caused your poor eyesight, but your eyeglasses still work just fine. That is, eyeglasses don’t just help with the envirtonmentally caused portion of bad eyesight. They help with all of your eyesight, regardless of whether it is genetically or environmentally caused. In so doing, they serve as an outside intervention that severs the association between one’s myopiaa genes and having functional vision. (Harden p.154)

Eyeglasses are a wonderful example of a solution to a genetic problem that no one would dispute. This leads Harden to argue that should take genetic difference into account when trying to create a level playing field, as she distinguishes between equality of opportunity and “equity”.

Ultimately, Harden is pushing back on both the Left and the Right. Against the Left, she is acknowleding the importance of human difference:

If social scientists are collectively going to rise to the challenge of improving people’s lives, we cannot afford to ignore a fundamental fact about human nature: that people are not born the same.

Against the Right, she is emphasizing along with Sandel that human difference should not necessarily lead to “hierarchy”: the lottery of birth does not have a moral value associated with it. Someone’s high IQ is not make that person “better”.

A Pragmatic Viewpoint: Meritocracy works when we try it

Adrian Wooldridge has provided the principle defence of meritocracy. Wooldridge argues that we shouldn’t simply consider meritocracy in a vacuum. Look at the history of how actual societies have been organized.

One reason why the current debate about meritocracy is so frustrating is the lack of historical perspective. Meritocracy is not an abstract idea that came into the world, like Minerva, fully formed from the head of Jupiter. It is a way of thinking about the world — and indeed organizing the world — that has evolved over time in the light of economic pressures and political agitation. (Wooldridge, p.10)

Throughout history, most socieities have been klan based, and success was allocated on the basis of personal attributes such as nepotism. ^[3] A good discussion can be found in Joseph Henrich’s books, especially his recent “WEIRDest People in the World”

Wooldridge discusses the “ideal of meritocracy” throughout his conversation with Zingales and McLean, emphasizing that what we need is not less, but more meritocracy. The elite have become too introverted, such that there is an excessively high relationship between wealth and elite education, and meritocracy has become corrupt (what he calls pluto-meritocracy). When it comes to education, he rails against anti-meritocratic aspects such as preferential admissions for alumni children. “The problem with Harvard is that it’s not a meritocracy.”

He highlights two very different critiques of meritocracy:

• Rawls’s position is entirely about inheritance; he is an extreme hereditarian
• The opposite is that all of our abilities are socially determined; wealth will determine outcomes

But in actual fact, our abilities are a mixture of genetics and environment. Turning our abilities into achievement is a matter of “hard work”. In order to encourage hard work and innovation, “you will need to have differential rewards”.

Criticism of meritocracy is now widespread and is having real impacts. Universities are starting to “introduce much more game-able systems such as essays, which are much more socially biased.” The solution is “more academically focused schools, more use of objective tests”.

“The original meritocratic revolution in Britain was a moral revolution against cronyism.” In the 20th century, we had a demoralization of meritocracy. Wooldridge argues that we need to move back in the direction of attaching a proper sense of duty, morality and service, along with an emphasis of the good things in meritocracy that emphasizes objectivity.

The Merit of Meritocracy?

The debate over how to structure meritocracy, especially through the education system is of immense importance. We can imagine any number of important decisions that society must make, such as:

• Should we use standardized tests for college admissions?
• Should a parent be able to buy a better education for their children, or should it be earned?
• How should scarce resources such as early vaccines be allocated?

When it works, meritocracy is a system for allocating benefits across society based on a perception of value. This system is intended to incentivize innovation, which in turn leads to growth, and thus provides benefits for society as a whole.

One way to think about this debate is to go back to viewing intelligence along the same lines as we might view artistic or athletic talent. Is it fair that you need to be tall to play in the NBA? Or that the best musicians are born with special vocal abilities? The brain is a physical system, and we must face reality as Kathryn Paige Harden argues, that genetics plays an important role in intellectual ability as in many other aspects of human life. But ultimately no one wants to watch the NBA if it doesn’t include those who are the most physically gifted, and it’s difficult to craft a system that gets the best basketball players into the NBA without rewarding those people proportionally for their luck of birth.

At the end of the day, meritocracy should be about what someone can do rather than who someone is. While arguments about the justice of a system that is tied to promoting people based on the “luck of birth” are important, we should thread carefully: history tells us that meritocracy might be the best working social order that is not based on personal attributes. The alternatives may be far worse.

References

• Michael Sandel (2020) “The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?“
• Adrian Wooldridge (2021) “The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World”
• Kathryn Paige Harden (2021) “The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality”
• Daniel Markovitz (2019) “The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite”
• David Epstein (2013) “The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance”
• Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (1996) “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life”