Cultural Resources
Meritocracy / Elitism
Articles/Essays/Op-eds
How America Fractured Into Four Parts, George Packer.
“Nations, like individuals, tell stories in order to understand what they are, where they come from, and what they want to be... After the 1970s, meritocracy began to look more and more like (a) dark satire. A system intended to give each new generation an equal chance to rise created a new hereditary class structure... This hierarchy slowly hardened over the decades without drawing much notice… Meritocracy seems like the one system that answers what Tocqueville called the American “passion for equality.” If the opportunities are truly equal, the results will be fair… But it’s this idea of fairness that accounts for meritocracy’s cruelty. If you don’t make the cut, you have no one and nothing to blame but yourself… The social-justice movement is a repudiation of meritocracy, a rebellion against the system handed down from parents to children. ...
A way forward that tries to evade or crush them on the road to some free, smart, real, or just utopia will never arrive and instead will run into a strong reaction. But a way forward that tries to make us Equal Americans, all with the same rights and opportunities — the only basis for shared citizenship and self-government — is a road that connects our past and our future.” [read more]
Rules for the Ruling Class, Evan Osnos.
“How to thrive in the power élite—while declaring it your enemy.
The élite became whoever is peering down on us, judging us, manipulating us.... Even identifying who is eligible for the élite has grown more complicated.... The greatest gap was the one separating Americans who could protect themselves with money from those who could not....
The deepest drive is not for stuff but for the social rank that stuff conveys.... We are hardwired to pursue status, because it delivers a steady accretion of esteem, benefit, and deference....
It’s hard to envision a thriving society in which no one is allowed to aspire to status. But, instead of continuing to exhaust the meaning of “the élite,” we would be better off targeting what we really resent—inequality, immobility, intolerance—and attacking the barriers that block the “circulation of élites.”
Left undisturbed, the most powerful among us will take steps to stay in place, a pattern that sociologists call the “iron law of oligarchy.”... Democracy is meant to insure that the élite continue to circulate. But no democracy can function well if people are unwilling to lose power—if a generation of leaders, on both the right and the left, becomes so entrenched that it ages into gerontocracy....”
What Is Rankism and Why Do We “Do” It? Robert W. Fuller Ph.D..
Rankism is an assertion of superiority. It typically takes the form of putting others down. It's what ‘somebodies’ do to people they think are ‘nobodies.’ It turns out that rankism is the source of most manmade suffering. So, if we could get rid of it, we would be a lot happier. Let me explain [. . .]”
How Ivy League Elites Turned Against Democracy, Stephen Marche.
“Some of the best-educated people in the country have overseen the destruction of their institutions…. What the Ivy League produces, in spades, on both the left and the right, is unwarranted confidence. Its institutions are hubris factories.... America’s less-educated and less-productive citizens drive anti-government patriotism, both in its armed and elected wings, but they mostly, despite themselves, pick their representatives from the ranks of the Ivy League and other similarly elite institutions around the country. Even in their rage against elites, the anti-elitists fall back on the deep structure of American power. [. . .]” (COMMENT: But why do they submit?)
"The Aristocracy of Talent" Review, James Marriott.
“Wooldridge calls for private schools to offer half their places to poorer students and advocates the creation of a “highly variegated” school system consisting of technical and art schools as well as academically selective ones. He also says we need a “moral revival” in our values to counteract our society’s obsessive celebration of intelligence. He points out that many members of the cognitive elite (such as bankers and journalists) are generally despised by the ordinary public, who revere the caring professions instead.”
Who Can Win America’s Politics of Humiliation?, Thomas L. Friedman.
"Trump or Biden?... many Trump supporters are not attracted to his policies. They’re attracted to his attitude — his willingness and evident delight in skewering the people they hate and who they feel look down on them."
Meritocracy on Trial, Win McCormack.
“It undermines equality and the common good.”
Books
The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?, Michael J. Sandel.
"Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind,..."
Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's 50-Year Fall -- and Those Fighting To Reverse It, by Steven Brill.
Brill’s book is a critique of “meritocracy” and the “knowledge economy.” Brill argues that in recent decades we’ve had “liberal lawyers who were coming out of liberal law schools going to liberal law firms and doing the legal engineering” that caused many of the problems we face today.
According to Brill, those lawyers persuaded courts to establish legal precedents for how to fight unions and “promote arbitration clauses that are keeping the middle class out of the courts” when they have a job discrimination claim or a a consumer rights claim. One such lawyer was Ralph Nader, who fought for the right of discount drug stores to advertise their discount prices.
Nader now says, “That was the biggest boomerang of all time." Brill summarizes the effect:
The Supreme Court said, "The First Amendment is for listeners as well as it is for speakers. [. . .] We shouldn't discriminate on the basis of who the speaker is. So if the speaker happens to be a corporation, why should we care?"
That precedent led to the Citizens United case, which opened the floodgates to campaign spending. (see review)
Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton.
“This is a book about an almost universal anxiety that rarely gets mentioned directly: an anxiety about what others think of us; about whether we’re judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser. This is a book about status anxiety.
We care about our status for a simple reason: because most people tend to be nice to us according to the amount of status we have (it is no coincidence that the first question we tend to be asked by new acquaintances is ‘ What do you do?’). With the help of philosophers, artists and writers, the book examines the origins of status anxiety (ranging from the consequences of the French Revolution to our secret dismay at the success of our friends), before revealing ingenious ways in which people have learnt to overcome their worries in their search for happiness. It aims not only to be entertaining, but wise and helpful as well.”
Quotes
A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in their health and genetic endowment; luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement, and, probably, income; luckiest in their educational and career opportunities; and luckiest in so many other ways difficult to enumerate—these are the folks who reap the largest rewards.