Double Edged Sword of Meritocracy | Peter Banks

Meritocracy is complicated. On one hand it allows for the efficient allocation of incentives and resources. On the other it also produces extreme feelings of despair as we all fall short of an ideal.

INTRODUCTION

I’m going to try in this essay something I rarely see done. First, I will discuss my perspective on Meritocracy in the traditional manner. Where I clearly articulate a thesis and then – hopefully – pay off on that promise by convincingly arguing the evidence for why I think it is true. Second, I’m going to present a more personal perspective on what it is like to grow up in a world of dazzling Meritocracies. 

The last century has destroyed most of the external – exogenous – barriers to success. Largely, what this has revealed is that ability is much less evenly distributed than people could ever have imagined and, for most people, a failure to live their dream life is not because of institutional frictions but instead because of internal – endogenous – characteristics of who they are as a person. 

As a result of this, people have grown disillusioned with the concept of Meritocracy itself. Attacks on the ideal are rarely couched in terms that denigrate the ability of systems to live up to some meritocratic ideal, but instead attack the very desirability of a Meritocracy itself. In particular, in the West, the result of increasingly global Meritocracy has been a weakening of inherited privileges and a realization that very little of the average American’s wealth is built on the fruit of their own labor and instead an inherited position they did nothing to earn. 

We cannot allow the sting of our own failure to blunt the blade of Meritocracy. The major tension within all human societies is the need to reward the capable and temper the emotional sting of failure. As a society we must move past assigning value to people exclusively based on what they accomplish. Instead, we must also learn to celebrate the spectacular in all of humanity. Because each and every one of us carries a spark of divinity and represents a unique reflection of the most beautiful thing that has ever happened – life. Only an ethic that can glorify the strong and the weak, the powerful and the powerless, the deserving and the undeserved, can allow us to face the challenges of the 21st century. Because whether we like it or not, Meritocracy is a permanent feature of human life – all we can do is temporarily repress it. 

THE REALITY OF MERITOCRACY:

The internet opened Pandora’s box of human potential. Through social media websites like TikTok and Twitter we each have access to billions of eyes. Applications like soundcloud and spotify have shattered control of our music industry by a small number of producers. Characters like Juice WRLD were able to bootstrap a real music career out of literally nothing. The vast majority of my entertainment is the creation of independent people expressing themselves online. No longer does an up and coming rapper need to be taken under the wing of someone already on the scene like Dr. Dre famously did for Eminem. Instead each of us has a window to the entire world at our fingertips. If we make something beautiful or interesting people will notice. The algorithm is like a blind judge assessing only on the likelihood what was made will entertain. 

The internet has more than YouTube and movies though. Any subject you want to learn about is only a Google search away. MIT OpenCourseware hosts entire courses; almost every college including Stanford has a YouTube channel where they post lectures and talks. After listening to Bloodlands (for free on YouTube) by one of my favorite historians, Timothy Snyder, I realized I still didn’t think I knew enough. Within 30 seconds I was able to watch a lecture he gave on that very book at UT Dallas. 

Everyone today has access to material at any level of complexity in any domain. You can find lectures on subjects as diverse as abstract algebra and gender theory with no need to enroll in school. All of this is ignoring Wikipedia; a website that I truly believe is one of the most spectacular creations of humanity. Access to information is distinct from choosing to use it but anyone with the ability to speak English – not a trivial obstacle – and access to the internet has at their fingertips the culmination of 10,000 years of civilizational progress. 

This great leveling extends beyond the internet; across the world legal systems have made real and important progress in tearing down the walls of inherited privilege. In India the caste system – which stretches back 4,000 years – rather than being enshrined by the state is subject to aggressive dismantling pressure from both sides of the political system – although they disagree about the right way to accomplish this task. 

All across the world women have slowly acquired legal privileges ending a crime against humanity that stretches back at least as long as recorded history – and probably much further. Finally, over the last 100 years the dual racial and colonial citizenship system which blocked the vast majority of humans from legal equality have been – largely – crushed. There is undeniably work still left to be done, but the progress has been brisk and thorough. 

To see this in action simply look around your own workforce. What percent of your coworkers would have been excluded from the work you do because of exogenous fictions a century ago? For the first time in all of human history a human of any social class born anywhere in the world has a chance at shaping their world. It should not simply be taken for granted that people like Ma Huateng – the co-founder of Tencent – would have been able to influence the world like they did. If he had been born just 50 years earlier simply for the crime of being Chinese he would have been boxed out of the global system. Imperfect as this transition to Meritocracy has been, it represents a tectonic shift. 

THE EFFECTS OF MERITOCRACY:

The effect of these institutional and cultural changes has been much more muted than expected. To many of the 20th century Utopians there was a perspective that merely removing institutional obstacles would be enough to abolish all differences. I touched on this some in my prior article on Western Sacred Cows, but this belief is so deeply baked into our society that we view all on-average differences as the result of discrimination. 

You will often find a sort of Motte and Bailey tactic at play here where supporters of this worldview will quickly retreat from the framing I presented above to attributing it to what I refer to as the long shadow of history. What is clearly true though, is that on average, across the world – at the tasks we assign economic value to – ability is both highly heritable and concentrated among the historical elite of that society. In the article I just cited, Gregory Clark using British data from 1600-2022 shows that interventions like compulsory primary education or the post war expansion of social safety nets did not “change in any measurable way the strong familial persistence of social status across generations”. Even in China where the Maoist Cultural Revolution did everything within the scope of human ability to crush the inherited inequality of man, the descendants of the pre-revolutionary elites had reasserted themselves at the top of the social pyramid. “Persistence Through Revolutions” by Alesina et al. shows that the cultural values of the pre-revolutionary elites – namely a focus on individualism, free markets, and hard work – all worked together to undermine the equality of the Cultural Revolution. 

Advocates of the Blank Slate worldview must reckon with these facts. If Maoism is not extreme enough of a break from the past what would be? Freedom and equality are not only not synonyms, they are incompatible objectives. Freedom implies the ability to make important choices that matter. Since there is an autoregressive character to success – failure breeds failure and success breeds success – in any system where people can make choices, outcomes will diverge – even on the aggregate level. 

Despite our failure to abolish all inherited differences there should be no confusion; the reduction in exogenous barriers to success has led to a massive reduction in inherited inequality. 

According to a review of the Black-White racial wealth gap published in late 2022 by the NBER the wealth gap has closed significantly – although the scale that remains is stark. In particular during the period of 1960-1980 as the barriers of legal racism were torn down the rate of convergence accelerated. It has reversed somewhat in recent years – for reasons no one fully understands – but there are without a doubt more Black millionaires today than at any other point in American history. Similarly, an analysis of the gender pay gap by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows that “over the last 20 years, [the gender pay gap] has narrowed 17 percentage points to an average of 80”. Since the article was written in 2017 the progress has continued. 

None of this though compares to the progress the developing world has made in the last 30 years. In 1994 according to the world bank GDP/Capita in 2015 dollars was ~$630 in South Asia, ~$1,200 in Sub-Saharan Africa, ~$4,200 in East Asia, ~$27,000 in the modern Euro Zone, and ~$40,000 in North America. Today those numbers are ~$2,000 for South Asia, ~$1,600 for Sub-Saharan Africa, ~$12,000 for East Asia, ~$38,000 in the EuroZone, and ~$61,000 in North America. What is excluded from this is the migration of 10s of millions of people from the developing world to wealthier countries. Simply walking into an engineering department at any company in the Bay Area will highlight the degree to which Meritocracy has expanded the pool of talent. The gap between the West and the Rest may never fully close but the crushing poverty that has defined the overwhelming majority of human experience is fading. The hands dealt to a British and Bengali child have begun a long and tenuous process to convergence.

However, like all things there are two sides to this story. At home in America this has unleashed a form of unarticulated terror. If the endogenous barriers to success for non-Americans and immigrants are as weak as the boardrooms of Google or the GSB faculty would suggest, little protects an American worker from a life of grinding poverty beyond the privilege of their birth. Because of extensive redistribution in America even the poorest person lives a life of global luxury; there is significant resistance to even stating this fact, but people know it on a deep emotional level. Like everything else in America, the reaction to this fact has bifurcated along the traditional lines of American politics, but even among the most liberal people I know there seems to be little desire to dismantle all of their institutional privileges. 

Abroad there is also increasing frustration at the lack of immediate convergence. If you spend any time on the internet it is not difficult to see the seething resentment much of the non-White world holds towards Whites. The shadow of colonialism is long and symbols of it litter every society on earth. The fact that places like China have not been able to within one generation transform themselves into developed countries appears to be a source of real discontent within their society. Beyond this important obstacles remain for most of humanity. Look no further than the vast caravans of people risking everything to live illegally and tenuously within America to appreciate the level of inherited privilege each American has. 

BACKLASH:

The slow pace of convergence and the stubborn persistence of group-level differences has begun to show its effect on the modern mind. A real backlash against the Meritocratic reforms of the last 100 years is brewing. The shape it takes – post colonial resentment or White fear – will be an important historical note but the social process is in swing as the developing world realizes that Western wealth is not only the product of inherited privilege but also cultural traditions which emphasize an important basket of characteristics. And ironically in the West, the young realize on average that very little differentiates them from the global poor.

Even excluding the international dynamic, websites like Twitter are a bitter reminder of the originality of one’s own thoughts. Since the algorithm shows no preference but towards the content it believes will entertain its users most completely. The weight of failure rests on no shoulders but your own. Whatever appetite existed for radical social upheaval against restrictions of inherited privilege will reverse if not resisted. From the vantage point I have it is impossible to say if the response will be Jacobin or Thermadorian so both flanks must be watched closely. 

At the core are two truths. First, without the walls of privilege little but the sweat of their own brow can maintain a man’s standard of living. Second, man would prefer to be chained in hell than given a path to heaven and fail. People across all of history have always grown tired of the pressure created by Meritocracy. The rich want to ensure success for themselves and their children. The poor want to protect their emotional reality from the bitter taste of their own ability. In Western society, the transvaluation of moral virtue from the strong to the weak and from the capable to the incapable is splendidly documented in Nietzsche’s 1887 book “On the Genealogy of Morality”

AND YET….

There is something undeniably special about life in general, but human life in particular. Often, in the daily comparisons of life, it is easy to lose sight of this fact. Earth is so spectacularly interesting simply by existing; each of us has already won a lottery of immeasurable value. Even the most evil or incapable person is still more fascinating and important than any celestial object. As a thought experiment, imagine running a simulation of our entire universe with the goal of recording everything unique that happened. You can even imagine that the operator of this simulation had no inherent preference for humans. Then think of what fraction of the book would be devoted to Earth; this is even more true if you assume that we are alone in the universe.

In addition to this, even on a more focused scale, yes, ability is largely heritable; yes, outcomes are largely driven by ability; yes, this is unchangeable and can only be repressed at great social cost. But “largely” is doing an immense amount of work here. The random walk of cultural and genetic inheritance means we have no idea where the next spectacular human will come out of. Ensuring equal opportunity for everyone is the only way to not exclude the exceptional. Each of us is walking around with both immense personal potential and immeasurable potential in our children. Each newborn child holds in its curled fingers a web of outcomes stretching out into infinity.

All human life has value, not because of God, but because of how spectacularly unique it is, both on the micro and macro level.

PERSONAL:

I have since I can first remember dreamed of being a writer. As a child who grew up struggling to read, words have always held a certain magic to me. The first book I ever read front to back was “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” in 4th grade after being enrolled in a therapy for Dyslexic children called the Davis Method. I remember the feeling of finishing that book like it was yesterday. Suddenly a whole aspect of the human experience that I had previously been unable to access was unlocked. I felt like Prometheus stealing fire from the gods. 

Over time this passion has come and gone. Like most people new to a skill, my writing for years was atrocious. Even today it is hard for me to write more than a paragraph or two without making some insane mistake – part of the reason I empathize with LLMs so much. But gradually I’ve improved as a writer. I have never had any illusions that writing novels or essays would be a real career so like most “reasonable” people I put my dreams in a box and moved on. After college I proceeded to take a job as a research assistant at the University of Chicago working for an accounting – basically economics – professor. This period – during Covid – was one of the darkest of my entire life. I would be lying if I didn’t honestly say I flirted with killing myself, only really not doing it out of some misplaced egoism and self importance. But the dream of writing hung around my neck like an Albatross slain by my sanity. 

One morning in a fit of euphoria I sat down and without pausing wrote the script to a YouTube video. The original is now private but an unaltered version can be found here. Anxiously I posted it, knowing it would go nowhere, but hoping – secretly – it would be picked up by the algorithm and ascended. It got something like 40 views, most of them from friends and family I shared it with. Slowly the euphoria from the act of creation mixed with disappointment. Rather than simply a dream I had finally made something but clearly the algorithm hadn’t appreciated it. I jumped from script to script writing quite literally 10s of thousands of words and never landing on something I thought would “work”. Eventually, as even the impressions on the video trended to zero and no new views filtered in, I moved on. Rather than writing during my – ample – free time from a job I hated, I embraced the warm embrace of inaction. 

Life slowly improved along with the weather and during the late summer of 2022 I moved out to California in order to enroll in a PhD program at the GSB where I currently live. As anyone who has taken a PhD will know, the first year was brutal. But during the summer as coursework receded and “research” became more important I realized once again I had plenty of time on my hands. This time I set myself two tasks: First, I wanted to try again to make content. Second, I wasn’t going to be so easily influenced by whether or not people consumed the content I created. In a euphoric sprint after I had completed my summer research expectation I created and released two videos – both of which I’m actually quite proud of. My first video is currently at 24 views and my second video sits at a grand total of 5 views. The watch time data is even more brutal. For my second video I’m fairly sure only one person other than myself watched it – a friend I shared the video with. Despite my second objective, this was actually quite stinging since I was convinced the perspective I was sharing was not only unique but quite true. 

Of course, with some distance, I can be aware of the extremely low production quality. Both videos essentially consist of a single looping reel over an essay read – poorly – with too much affectation. 

What hurt more than anything though was how convinced I was of my own merits. I would never have articulated this normally but I had this deep sense that “of course I’m smarter and more deserving of success” than the YouTubers I watch. This of course is false and cringe but I share it for a reason. 

Later as the whole Twitter debacle unfolded I was drawn to the app – at first to laugh at Elon but then later by how truly enchanting it is. There for the first time with writers like Noah Smith and Matt Yglesias, I was presented with a career I would salivate over. Clearly, an audience existed for a style of overconfident White boi writing – something I specialize in –  but the memory of my experience with YouTube held my hand. Just as I had known the lack of algorithmic response was largely due to the quality of my videos I feared that the lack of response to my essays would be the result not of frictions, but instead my own low ability. 

In many ways, this project is to me a rejection of that framing. It is an investment in myself and a statement that I believe I can be a writer who is worth reading. Perhaps not for years but eventually. 

Because in my mind this is the true poison of Meritocracy. It isn’t just that it creates a system where the successful win socially and materially, but also that it scares many of us from even trying. Unlike in the 1980s where if my writings never took off I could vaguely gesture at the publishing houses just not “getting it”, people were doing exactly what I wanted to do and making a career out of it. In fact my success was directly tied to my ability and that made the whole endeavor terrifying beyond belief. 

I cannot even begin to imagine how much more deeply this world view is held by the sort of conscientious and careful young people I once was. It is difficult to look at people like Mr. Beast and not realize that their story means the only obstacle is will. Being forced to live an agonized office life because of who you are stings in a way being forced to by the system never can. 

I have no idea where Voyagers Log will go. If nothing else I’m loving how it feels to finally bet on myself. Whatever happens, even if no one reads this, at least I wrote it. To paraphrase a character from the show Community: Life is a game of chance. You either roll the dice or you lose your turn. Thank god those chances are at least somewhat under my control. 

CONCLUSION:

Meritocracy is like everything, multifaceted and complicated. But our social obsession with the successful has polluted what could otherwise be a moment of maximum human flourishing. Too many young people are trapped in a worldview where to try simply reveals the limit of your ability and that is worse than any punishment. Since we all benefit from the efficient allocation of incentives and resources we have to find a way to preserve Meritocracy as a social tool, but dull its ability to measure our worth. Many hierarchies of human life simply can not be repressed and will spring back whatever we do. But our attempts to repress them could do immeasurable harm and we must resist the natural human instinct to invent new privileges of birth as the old ones are destroyed. 

Human life is not defined by economic value or even creative value. Human life is valuable simply because it exists. Consciousness alone is such a spectacular miracle that no human requires anything else to approach perfection.

The only way we can preserve Meritocracy is by celebrating those who tried regardless of their success. Our hero must be the businessman whose store failed or the college student who dropped out. What makes a Meritocracy work is not the success but the thousand invisible steps that led to the success. It’s the thousand local minima on our slide down the universal gradient which should be celebrated. We cannot forget that rights belong to men, not means.