I don't entirely disagree, but there's some definitional smuggling going on here...
"1. A situation 2. In which any two people with the same natural talents and work ethic. 3. And a common ambition 4. Have as close as possible the same chance of achieving that ambition, regardless of their background, events beyond their control, etc"
That's not meritocracy, that's equality of opportunity! They're often pushed forth by the same people (conservatives of about 10-60 years ago arguing against affirmative action, etc.) but they're not the same thing.
Meritocracy is the idea that elite positions are held by the best people for the job ('ability and talent' if you take Dictionary.com). You're smuggling the equity part in there! It's entirely possible that the children of the people with the jobs are taught how to do the jobs from a young age and may actually be the best for the job in many cases. (If you're really un-PC, there may be genetic factors!) Of course in real life it turns into nepotism more often than not, because people are people, including the original generation of meritocrats, who want to make sure their kids succeed even if they're not the best.
You then go on to kind of make the argument that equalizing opportunities will uncover 'hidden merit', which was the idea behind older meritocratic ideas like standardized tests. I would tend to agree, and while I'm not familiar enough with Confucian philosophy to know if that was the precise idea back then when they developed these things, but from the little I know it seems to have at least been a factor.
You then make an argument for avoiding winner-take-all situations because then you have a few positions and they tend to go to the well-connected, which I agree with.
As for meaningful work being underproduced relative to social utility...to some extent I agree. Medicine's kind of a weird case because of the doctors' cartel, and I agree that one has all kinds of negative externalities. The others, though...
Intellectual work? We have a massive overproduction of grad students who then can't find jobs. I'm not sure better sociology (or philosophy) would be produced by expanding the current university system.
Artistic work? That one's tricky because you get into questions of 'what is the best art.' (I happen to think modern and contemporary art is kind of crappy and Rockwell is better than Pollock. I'm sure all your buddies would disagree.) Is it the most popular (i.e. supported by the free market?) The most long-lasting? The art people with degrees from fancy colleges like? (This seems to be the operative definition in most cases.)
We definitely need more nurse's aides and nurses, so I'm all behind that. (We probably need more doctors too, on account of the cartel.)
As for transformative work like community organizer and NGO worker...you mean we should support Moms for Liberty and America First Legal so they should help deal with leftist indoctrination in schools and the DEI complex, right? ;) No, of course not, I'm being facetious. I just think the idea of what counts as 'transformative work' is going to be even more subject to personal subjectivity than everything else. Most people may not agree with you on what needs to be subsidized!
> A lot of egalitarians have made the point that genuine equality of opportunity- understood as giving everyone as-close-to-feasiable-equal chance-relative to talents and not just a formally-equal-chance-relative-to-talents requires a general program of redistribution.
This is backwards. True meritocracy can only exist when there is no redistribution whatsoever; when no parent can give their child a head start, when nobody can give their friend a loan, etc. Meritocracy is fundamentally at odds with freedom, because it turns out that people frequently want to give advantages to specific other people.
The care you give to these arguments is pretty superb. I believe you are a real philosopher (whatever that means coming from a stranger). I think the article (system of explanation) lacks/wants God in it however. For only God can see, understand and weigh all motives (which as you confess are opaque to the human eye). What God brings to the equation is that He claims to manage and provide "justice". He is the balance. The pusher down, when this is needed. The lifter up at other times. He is the one who can not only provide an individual what they need, ask for, or deserve in a situation. He can also decide when for his purposes an actor is the "momentary main character" of his intentions and interest and when one is momentarily more of "living prop" or "tool" in maybe the highest form of the word. He alone even knows how to judge posterity. He alone knows when it is proper or even beautiful that someone's children, grandchildren and greats live sweetly off the fat of prior "good choice making", obedience, discipline etc ... I think we muck things up as humans too much (not all the time) when we try to lord to much these matters. We are blinded by all sorts of affection and bribery and joy for proximity to people, places and things. There are numerous places in the Bible where God says to one "don't worry what I do with them, you focus on your life/assignment", or to another "It is my fortune and resource supply to do with as wish, whether to be generous or to withhold, and I do not lie to a man if I pay him certain agreed upon wages for a task, and provide to another under different arrangements what I deign to pay them". I think if we were each free and freed others to make their best choices under and before heaven to do what we would with what we've been given, knowing there was a grand and awesome account required of us in the future, we would do better. But certainly, some of us encounter very obvious and grotesque grievances and should do something about it, and even others of us have been actually handed a commission and title to arbitrate human justice in the world. It does get confusing for many of us who live in places like American, where we do feel in some degree that we are all sorts of kings. But even then ... we should know our smallness and intimate corruptions.
Your definition seems totally back to front. That would be satisfied by a society in which everyone got precisely equal outcomes, which is as far from a meritocracy as you could imagine.
The important thing about a meritocracy is that all the people doing jobs are actually good at doing them. Not that all people capable of doing a certain job well actually have that job. Or, more concisely that the successful are competent; not that the competent are successful.
I can't speak about opportunities available in eg. the music industry, but my sense is that the main thing stopping academic opportunities from being more plentiful is that universities just don't have the ability to hire more professors. There's only so many students who want to study at that university, and only so many classes that you can reasonably offer. (Maybe there should be more research-only postdoc positions, though, possibly paid for through government funding?)
In a real sense, it might be easier to create more opportunities by having stricter regulations against nepotistic hiring (thus freeing up "nepo baby slots" that would otherwise be closed off to meritocratic hiring) than it is to actually create more new job opening.
But I should temper this with the note that I think we're very far away from anything that resembles a true meritocracy, so whatever solution we arrive at will still be horrifically biased. Still, it's worth trying, if only to make it a tiny bit less biased.
I do think there are some ways existing universities could boost the number of academics somewhat, but this is not primarily what I am thinking about. I am thinking about the government acting directly to correct market failure by altering demand for workers between sectors based on the positive and negative externalities of those sectors through the use of subsidies and taxes.
Oh, yeah, I totally agree that subsidizing/otherwise incentivizing education is good. Brazil has free university and I'm told that it's very easy to be a professor there.
I don't entirely disagree, but there's some definitional smuggling going on here...
"1. A situation 2. In which any two people with the same natural talents and work ethic. 3. And a common ambition 4. Have as close as possible the same chance of achieving that ambition, regardless of their background, events beyond their control, etc"
That's not meritocracy, that's equality of opportunity! They're often pushed forth by the same people (conservatives of about 10-60 years ago arguing against affirmative action, etc.) but they're not the same thing.
Meritocracy is the idea that elite positions are held by the best people for the job ('ability and talent' if you take Dictionary.com). You're smuggling the equity part in there! It's entirely possible that the children of the people with the jobs are taught how to do the jobs from a young age and may actually be the best for the job in many cases. (If you're really un-PC, there may be genetic factors!) Of course in real life it turns into nepotism more often than not, because people are people, including the original generation of meritocrats, who want to make sure their kids succeed even if they're not the best.
You then go on to kind of make the argument that equalizing opportunities will uncover 'hidden merit', which was the idea behind older meritocratic ideas like standardized tests. I would tend to agree, and while I'm not familiar enough with Confucian philosophy to know if that was the precise idea back then when they developed these things, but from the little I know it seems to have at least been a factor.
You then make an argument for avoiding winner-take-all situations because then you have a few positions and they tend to go to the well-connected, which I agree with.
As for meaningful work being underproduced relative to social utility...to some extent I agree. Medicine's kind of a weird case because of the doctors' cartel, and I agree that one has all kinds of negative externalities. The others, though...
Intellectual work? We have a massive overproduction of grad students who then can't find jobs. I'm not sure better sociology (or philosophy) would be produced by expanding the current university system.
Artistic work? That one's tricky because you get into questions of 'what is the best art.' (I happen to think modern and contemporary art is kind of crappy and Rockwell is better than Pollock. I'm sure all your buddies would disagree.) Is it the most popular (i.e. supported by the free market?) The most long-lasting? The art people with degrees from fancy colleges like? (This seems to be the operative definition in most cases.)
We definitely need more nurse's aides and nurses, so I'm all behind that. (We probably need more doctors too, on account of the cartel.)
As for transformative work like community organizer and NGO worker...you mean we should support Moms for Liberty and America First Legal so they should help deal with leftist indoctrination in schools and the DEI complex, right? ;) No, of course not, I'm being facetious. I just think the idea of what counts as 'transformative work' is going to be even more subject to personal subjectivity than everything else. Most people may not agree with you on what needs to be subsidized!
> A lot of egalitarians have made the point that genuine equality of opportunity- understood as giving everyone as-close-to-feasiable-equal chance-relative to talents and not just a formally-equal-chance-relative-to-talents requires a general program of redistribution.
This is backwards. True meritocracy can only exist when there is no redistribution whatsoever; when no parent can give their child a head start, when nobody can give their friend a loan, etc. Meritocracy is fundamentally at odds with freedom, because it turns out that people frequently want to give advantages to specific other people.
by the way, the philosophy bear is such a great "branding"!
The care you give to these arguments is pretty superb. I believe you are a real philosopher (whatever that means coming from a stranger). I think the article (system of explanation) lacks/wants God in it however. For only God can see, understand and weigh all motives (which as you confess are opaque to the human eye). What God brings to the equation is that He claims to manage and provide "justice". He is the balance. The pusher down, when this is needed. The lifter up at other times. He is the one who can not only provide an individual what they need, ask for, or deserve in a situation. He can also decide when for his purposes an actor is the "momentary main character" of his intentions and interest and when one is momentarily more of "living prop" or "tool" in maybe the highest form of the word. He alone even knows how to judge posterity. He alone knows when it is proper or even beautiful that someone's children, grandchildren and greats live sweetly off the fat of prior "good choice making", obedience, discipline etc ... I think we muck things up as humans too much (not all the time) when we try to lord to much these matters. We are blinded by all sorts of affection and bribery and joy for proximity to people, places and things. There are numerous places in the Bible where God says to one "don't worry what I do with them, you focus on your life/assignment", or to another "It is my fortune and resource supply to do with as wish, whether to be generous or to withhold, and I do not lie to a man if I pay him certain agreed upon wages for a task, and provide to another under different arrangements what I deign to pay them". I think if we were each free and freed others to make their best choices under and before heaven to do what we would with what we've been given, knowing there was a grand and awesome account required of us in the future, we would do better. But certainly, some of us encounter very obvious and grotesque grievances and should do something about it, and even others of us have been actually handed a commission and title to arbitrate human justice in the world. It does get confusing for many of us who live in places like American, where we do feel in some degree that we are all sorts of kings. But even then ... we should know our smallness and intimate corruptions.
Your definition seems totally back to front. That would be satisfied by a society in which everyone got precisely equal outcomes, which is as far from a meritocracy as you could imagine.
The important thing about a meritocracy is that all the people doing jobs are actually good at doing them. Not that all people capable of doing a certain job well actually have that job. Or, more concisely that the successful are competent; not that the competent are successful.
nicely put and well-argued.
I can't speak about opportunities available in eg. the music industry, but my sense is that the main thing stopping academic opportunities from being more plentiful is that universities just don't have the ability to hire more professors. There's only so many students who want to study at that university, and only so many classes that you can reasonably offer. (Maybe there should be more research-only postdoc positions, though, possibly paid for through government funding?)
In a real sense, it might be easier to create more opportunities by having stricter regulations against nepotistic hiring (thus freeing up "nepo baby slots" that would otherwise be closed off to meritocratic hiring) than it is to actually create more new job opening.
But I should temper this with the note that I think we're very far away from anything that resembles a true meritocracy, so whatever solution we arrive at will still be horrifically biased. Still, it's worth trying, if only to make it a tiny bit less biased.
I do think there are some ways existing universities could boost the number of academics somewhat, but this is not primarily what I am thinking about. I am thinking about the government acting directly to correct market failure by altering demand for workers between sectors based on the positive and negative externalities of those sectors through the use of subsidies and taxes.
Oh, yeah, I totally agree that subsidizing/otherwise incentivizing education is good. Brazil has free university and I'm told that it's very easy to be a professor there.
That and also spending additional resources on funding academics directly to spend time researching.