Idea of meritocracy
“All Americans have the right to be judged on the basis of individual merit, and to go just as far as their dreams and hard work will take them,” Ronald Reagan proclaimed in 1984. “We believe that people should be able to rise by their talents, not by their birth or the advantages of privileges,” Tony Blair said fifteen years later and an ocean away.
Why meritocracy is not evolutionary
The meritocratic idea is necessarily fragile: humans are biologically programmed to favor their kith and kin over strangers.
Until the pre-modern era
The pre-modern world was founded on the basis of the very opposite assumptions from meritocracy: lineage rather than achievement and willing subordination rather than ambition.
Jobs
Jobs were allocated on the basis not of individual merit but through three great mechanisms: family connections, patronage and purchase.
Women and the minorities
The application of “open competition” to men inevitably raised the question “what about women?” And the contradiction at the heart of America’s founding document couldn’t last forever: if men were naturally born equal how could you keep black people in chains? Hitherto marginalized groups seized on the meritocratic idea to demand a fair chance for success in life.
Impact of meritocracy: Growth, immigration and companies
Women now make up more than half of Britain’s university students and ethnic minorities perform better at school than whites. Meritocratic countries grow faster than non-meritocratic countries. Public companies that recruit people on merit are more productive than family companies that make room for favoritism. Mass migration only flows in one direction: from countries that haven’t made the meritocratic transition to those that have.
Need to reinvent meritocracy, not dismantle it
We clearly need another great push to revive and reinvent the meritocratic idea for a new age. But what we are getting instead is an attempt to dismantle it.
A players hire A players. B players hire C players.
It will also be self-reinforcing: one of the most reliable rules in life is that second-rate people will always appoint third-rate people in order to protect themselves from being shown up.
History of meritocracy in China
The war on meritocracy would be self-destructive even if the West ruled supreme. But it is happening at a time when the West is facing its biggest challenge to date — from the rise of China and authoritarian state capitalism. China was in many ways the pioneer of meritocracy: for more than a millennium it was ruled by a mandarin elite that was selected from across the entire country by the world’s most sophisticated examinations.
Why dismantling meritocracy will hurt
It will rob the West of its economic dynamism while simultaneously encouraging interest groups to compete for resources on the basis of collective rights and group resentments.