Why Meritocracies Are Evil

First, what is a meritocracy?

Our first stop, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, does not have an article on the subject. However, nestled within the article on "Equality of Oppurtunity", we find a section called "Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy". This is how a meritocracy is defined: "A meritocracy [...] is a society in which (a) equality of opportunity obtains and (b) rewards and remuneration gained by individuals are proportional to their individual desert." Desert, as far as I understand it, is a measure of how deserving one is. In a meritocracy, this desert is decided on the basis of one's merit, which would ideally be dependent on how hard one works. In my understanding, this is the defining characteristic of a meritocracy.

If we look around, we can see that the world is definitely leaning towards meritocracy. Some countries, like Singapore, unashamedly proclaim themselves as meritocracies. Others, like most Western European countries, attempt to find a middle position where some provision is made for those people who are merit-poor. Yet other countries, most of which are, unfortunately, dictatorships, reject the meritocracy altogether and propose some alternative basis on which one's worth is judged.

I have had a problem with meritocracies for a long time. I know what my problem is. It is that I believe that all human beings are equal, and that people should not only get equality of opportunity but also equality of distribution. This is at odds with the meritocratic way of thought. In order to disprove meritocracy (if only as a mental excercise) I must prove my belief. Unfortunately, I do not know how my view is philosophically defensible.

If we re-examine what a meritocracy is, it boils down to this: each person gets rewarded on the basis of merit, or how hard they work. This is the ideal meritocracy, for it disregards people's inequalities. If this was all there is to a meritocracy, it would be a much more indefensible position. There exists, however, the added factor of one's endowments. It makes no sense to speak of hard work without any mention of one's endowments. If the person with the highest IQ in the world and a person with average IQ were to work equally hard on something, there would obviously be a disparity in the results. This understanding of meritocracy must be further reconsidered because it does not take into account one's upbringing and other factors. In the above example, if the two people were working on a maths problem and the person with the highest IQ had never studied maths, there would once again be no question as to who would solve the problem faster (or at all). So, finally, as far as I see it, merit depends on (a) hard work, (b) one's endowments, such as IQ and (c) one's background.

The obvious problem with a meritocracy, then, is that it can never accurately judge people's merit in a way in which all people are considered equal. Therefore, it seems to be flawed, at least as long as one accepts that people should be equal at all.