A belief in meritocracy is not only false: it's bad for you

[Newest Reality]

What is a bit ironic is that we are now seeing individuals who have floated to the top in our society who clearly have little or no real merit behind their proposed success, but rather, a penchant for manufacturing a convincing facade that stands in place of substance and seems to continue to hold sway in the media and for vulnerable, easily manipulated blocks of voters as an indicator of success itself when it is merely a spectacle or simulation on further investigation. I think that is demonstrated by how they react to being investigated and how important it is to prevent us from peering into the cracks in the facade.

So, while the basic ideas of the propaganda of merit still hold sway, they heap coals on the heads of the downtrodden masses while they are simultaneously used as props of justification that support confidence men and grifters who rely on such suppositions to prop up their pretentious claims of capability and superiority to the point that it has the same impact on the unsuspecting and unwary as the claim of Divine Right of Kings. Obviously, repeated, boisterous hubris should be a major warning sign to any vigilant population.

It is a failure to look carefully into the very social and political paradigm itself for the causes and answers to our predicament and how certain presuppositions support and encourage its continuation as the Status Quo. When we look to the processes themselves and the context of any situation rather than simply yielding to a myopic view of the variables of the contents that occur within them, we can actually shift from being limited to who, what, when or why, to an emphasis on context and the HOW of it and that's where we hit the mark that is so often missed in the complexity of the bigger picture.

Clifton Mark writes about political theory, psychology, and other lifestyle-related topics. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Meritocracy has become a leading social ideal. Politicians across the ideological spectrum continually return to the theme that the rewards of life – money, power, jobs, university admission – should be distributed according to skill and effort. The most common metaphor is the ‘even playing field’ upon which players can rise to the position that fits their merit. Conceptually and morally, meritocracy is presented as the opposite of systems such as hereditary aristocracy, in which one’s social position is determined by the lottery of birth. Under meritocracy, wealth and advantage are merit’s rightful compensation, not the fortuitous windfall of external events.

https://aeon.co/ideas/a-belief-in-meritocracy-is-not-only-false-its-bad-for-you

Most people don’t just think the world should be run meritocratically, they think it is meritocratic. In the UK, 84 per cent of respondents to the 2009 British Social Attitudes survey stated that hard work is either ‘essential’ or ‘very important’ when it comes to getting ahead, and in 2016 the Brookings Institute found that 69 per cent of Americans believe that people are rewarded for intelligence and skill. Respondents in both countries believe that external factors, such as luck and coming from a wealthy family, are much less important. While these ideas are most pronounced in these two countries, they are popular across the globe.

Although widely held, the belief that merit rather than luck determines success or failure in the world is demonstrably false. This is not least because merit itself is, in large part, the result of luck. Talent and the capacity for determined effort, sometimes called ‘grit’, depend a great deal on one’s genetic endowments and upbringing.

This is to say nothing of the fortuitous circumstances that figure into every success story. In his book Success and Luck (2016), the US economist Robert Frank recounts the long-shots and coincidences that led to Bill Gates’s stellar rise as Microsoft’s founder, as well as to Frank’s own success as an academic. Luck intervenes by granting people merit, and again by furnishing circumstances in which merit can translate into success. This is not to deny the industry and talent of successful people. However, it does demonstrate that the link between merit and outcome is tenuous and indirect at best.

[unblock]

1. people have a particular time recognizing that both merit *and* luck matter

people figure they can't do anything about luck, but they can control some aspects of merit, so merit is often more salient.

to use a baseball analogy, bill gates was on 3rd base and stole home. and people are all amazed that he stole home, because that's a hard thing to do and he worked hard to accomplish that and so on.


but he was also lucky as hell to be born on 3rd base in the first place.

[Farmer-Rick]

2. The book Freakonomics pretty well explains why most everything is controlled by shear luck

From top all star football players to Sumo Wrestlers to teachers with top students to top corporations and business leaders it is mostly pure Luck if you are successful or a miserable failure.

And because so much of our life is out of our control, it is even more important to have a democratic and fair economic system and a democratic and fair government (level playing field). So that luck can be put to a useful purpose when you get some.