Is Meritocracy A Sham?

[saveliberty]

The American Interest:

July 1, 2012

Is Meritocracy A Sham?

 

Walter Russell Mead

 

 

I review books on the United States for Foreign Affairs; that means every couple of months a huge box of books arrives at the stately Mead manor and I go through piles of books trying to decide which ones to read for review. It’s a lot of work for not much product; the “capsule” reviews are about 200 words each. That’s much the same length as the book reports I used to write for Mrs. West back in the third grade; if I’d known how important this literary form was going to be to my future career, I might have tried harder back then.

 

There are times when this seems like an intolerable burden; between blogging, teaching, keeping up with the news and reading books for review, I don’t have as much time for free reading as I’d like. There are all kinds of books on 17th century French and Spanish history piling up on my iPad these days — full of insights and juicy ideas that would deepen my understanding of early modern history and generally refresh my soul, but I don’t know when I’ll get to them. (And that’s saying nothing about the literary and genre fiction I’d like to read this summer. More Hilary Mantel, more Neal Stephenson, and more Allen Furst, please.)

 

********

 

H/T Instapundit

[pollyannaish]

FANTASTIC article @Geee! First one to really challenge my assumptions and make me look at things in a different way in a long time! It also puts words to somethig that has been bothering me for awhile but I couldn't quite articulate.

 

Thank you for posting it. It's a must read for anyone who wants to truly understand the metamorphosis we are involved in.

 

@Valin this is definitely worth looking at in terms

of the "big structural changes" we face

Right now.

[pollyannaish]

There is a commenter who notes that the "company" as a concept is interesting as it replaces individuals direct competition in the marketplace and thus reduces the effectiveness of the meritocracy. He is on to something. I believe that the concept of working for a "company' or institution will become less of the model for the country and the way we compete in the marketplace will change significantly. I haven't gotten my mind around exactly what that will look like...but I have a pretty good idea.

[NCTexan]

I haven't gotten my mind around exactly what that will look like...but I have a pretty good idea.

 

[Valin]

FANTASTIC article @Geee! First one to really challenge my assumptions and make me look at things in a different way in a long time! It also puts words to somethig that has been bothering me for awhile but I couldn't quite articulate.

 

Thank you for posting it. It's a must read for anyone who wants to truly understand the metamorphosis we are involved in.

 

@Valin this is definitely worth looking at in terms

of the "big structural changes" we face

Right now.

 

Thank you. I am very pleased to see people here reading Walter Meads work.

 

One of the books I’ve been reading for review is Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy by Christopher Hayes. I’ll save the review for Foreign Affairs, but for Via Meadia readers, this is an interesting book because it represents an effort by a talented and thoughtful left thinker to grapple with the nature of contemporary American populism. Hayes (who I’ve never met, but would like to) is an interesting guy and his perspective a few steps to the left of the center-left technocratic consensus of the mainstream media allows him to make some interesting observations about where things stand in the United States today.

 

I get the impression he’s still in the group that thinks we could preserve the blue social model if we just willed hard enough; that was my view for maybe 15 or even 20 years after I first started writing about the unraveling of post-war American liberalism and what I now call the blue social model back in the 1980s. The old system worked so well for so many people that it seemed to a great many people who cared about progress and democracy that we just needed to keep tweaking this model to approach an almost ideal society through a smooth and gradual process of incremental social change.

 

The failure of that social democratic future to materialize, and the set of changes which have made capitalist society much more competitive and riskier pose a huge set of challenges that the left is still trying to master. Intellectually it is looking for a theory and programatically it is looking for a workable political program. So far in my view there is no real sign of progress on this front; rather than trying to resuscitate a political vision whose economic, historic and moral foundations are irretrievably lost, the left (like everybody else) has to come to take on a much more difficult task. We all need to understand how the new global information economy works, and think our way through to some kind of understanding of what kind of free, just and sustainable social organization can be raised on these still-emerging and still poorly understood foundations. That has to happen, in my view, before either the left or the right can offer meaningful political ideas about how the new society and new world should be governed.

(Snip)

 

A couple of quick (very quick) points

 

A. Looks like this book might be worth the time.

B. The Elites will always be with us, it's just different Elites.

C. The term "The Elites" has become a negative term today. I think this is because, the term has become synonymous with Rich and Famous, I mean who cares what (say) Lady Gaga, George Clooney, have to say about anything out side their narrow area of expertise. Far to many of The Elites spend so much of their time denying they are.

 

More later I'm sure, if anyone is interested

[Valin]

There is a commenter who notes that the "company" as a concept is interesting as it replaces individuals direct competition in the marketplace and thus reduces the effectiveness of the meritocracy. He is on to something. I believe that the concept of working for a "company' or institution will become less of the model for the country and the way we compete in the marketplace will change significantly. I haven't gotten my mind around exactly what that will look like...but I have a pretty good idea.

 

The days of the large (once again) top down corporations as we know them are going away. One model that is emerging is the Wal-Mart model where a department is run like a small business in many ways. the manager is given a set of goals then given the freedom to run the Dept the way they want. This was happening in the last place I worked at (the Donaldsons co. inc) was doing something like this. We'd all sit down the boss would tell us the goals the budget, then ask us how can we get this done...we'd break up in smaller groups and thrash it out.

 

 

[Valin]

Well it does sound interesting. You can tell he is definitely from the Left (writes for the Nation). And like so many he is searching for perfection...heaven on earth.

[pollyannaish]

I think one of the keys to this, is what we base meritocracy on. I believe the only thing it can be based in is character. Those are things we can all work towards and achieve, no matter what our heritage.

 

None of this will create perfection, but it does knock down barriers quicker than almost any other criteria.

[Valin]

@pollyannaish

 

I think it depends on what we mean by meritocracy.

 

We can I'm sure both cite examples of people who reached the top of the meritocracy, and had the character of a rattlesnake. LBJ comes to mind. Like it or not having good character may not necessarily be a positive in getting to the top.

 

Of course we could be talking about two completely different things.