Meritocracy is not the same as merit-based employment.
As they say in hokey pokey . . .
This comes up all the time. People point to a field occupied by well-placed and incompetent nepo-babies and they say, Hey, why can’t we have a meritocracy!
And the thing I want to emphasize is that meritocracy is not the same as merit-based employment.
Merit-based employment is that people with merit get the jobs. Meritocracy is that people with the merit get the power (that’s the “ocracy” part).
A few months ago we discussed how the news item, “Howard Lutnick gives top Cantor Fitzgerald jobs to his sons Brandon and Kyle,” is a very clean example of meritocracy. Howard Lutnick has merit (in the context of Wall Street trading), meritocracy means that he gets to run things, and one way you get to run things is to get jobs for your kids. The kids don’t need any merit at all! The “merit” part of meritocracy applies to their dad!
I came across another example more recently. After seeing the news story about the Cornell president who ran over some students in his car, I was curious how that university fared in the Epstein sweepstakes.
And . . . here it is:
And the followup:
You can’t blame Karp Jr. for this: he wanted to make movies and he took the opportunities available to him. No evidence here that he had any knowledge of Epstein beyond that he was one of his dad’s well-connected pals.
My point here is not to cast blame or to get on a moral high horse; it’s just to point out that this is what meritocracy’s all about: Karp Sr. has merit and he uses this merit to run the world (“ocracy”), which includes helping out his rich criminal friend and getting a job for his kid.
It’s meritocracy, which is not the same thing as merit-based employment.
If you want merit-based employment, say so. Don’t call it “meritocracy.” Meritocracy implies that the people who have merit run things, and then don’t be surprised when they use that power to get extra things for themselves and their friends and family.
As they say in hokey pokey, that’s what it’s all about.
P.S. Just after writing this post, I came across another example, an article by Noam Scheiber from today’s paper:
In April, six months after Amazon began a wave of layoffs that ultimately wiped out 30,000 jobs, a former employee went on the social media site Blind to rant about the end of meritocracy: “What’s the point of getting a good performance review if you can still be laid off anyway?
To which I reply: Sorry, but bosses laying off employees without warning, while at the same time handing out fat bonuses to their friends, is not “the end of meritocracy.” It is meritocracy. Tech founders had merit, and they used this merit to be in charge (“ocracy”), and they’re using their power however they please. That’s what meritocracy’s all about. Merit-based employment, that’s another story altogether.