Meritocracy

[Anomalocaris]

First we need to identify what is the most desired merit, enterprise?  Competitiveness? Sense of justice?  Scientific acumen?  Good looks?  Charity and Piety?   before we can discuss what is a better measure of it, and how to being about a meritocracy where that form of merit rules.

It is the lack of clarity about what are the most desirable virtue or merit from societal point of view that, I think, leads to flippant statements like wealth and influence denotes merit.   In that case almost all societies are meritocracies because in almost all societies someone gets rich and influential. That’s like saying goodness is whatever the outcome happen to be, rather than goodness is the abundance of a specifically desired quality. 

---

Is your/our/a society equal or egalitarian enough, fundamentally, to be an effective meritocracy? Meritocracy can mean treating people with fundamentally unequal backgrounds as superficially the same which ignores and even conceals the real advantages and disadvantages that are unevenly distributed to different segments of an inherently unequal society. What would it take to make your society more meritorious in it's reward system. At what threshold of egalitarianism could a move from elitism of person to meritorious structure be a better step? Would it be a better step? Just open for thoughts and discussions.

I think people are (ideally) entitled to 100% of the fruits of their labor. But no one seems to be able to be figure out how to do things without some exploitation. It's like exploitation is some kind of constant that makes production possible. I think Marx had a pretty good idea of a meritocracy, but all the attempts to realize his vision are worse (in the exploitation department) than capitalism.

To me, elimination of all exploitation is essential if you are aiming for a "meritocracy." I mean, you can't call it a meritocracy if your "merit" can be claimed by those to whom it does not belong.

One thing I think we could do is implement free education (all the way through grad school) to students who demonstrate mastery. Scholarships and such do this to some degree, but they are more like a lottery (much of the time) than a functionary system that rewards merit.

It should be added the reason why all attempts to realize his vision are worse is because unlike his vision, attempts to realize it actually needs to deal with reality of human psychology and organizational behavior, which Marx blithely assume will just not hamper his utopia.

It is not a coincidence that the Soviet Union took early and strong interest in not only eugenics, but actual large scale human breeding experiments.   Very early on with its attempt at implementation  of Marxism, it became clear to those involved that the operation of the eventual communist world envisioned by Marx would be incompatible with the basics of human psychology, thus humans must be modified if utopia is to be utopian. 

This is also why Soviet Union rapidly backtracked from its early adherence to classless egalitarianism to Implementing systems of heritable privileges and rewards analogous to those in stratified societies.  It needed to do this to get anything done.   It continues to fool its citizens by pretending this is an temporary aberration necessary on the way up true communism.  But like Marx, it has nothing to say about how this could be made unnecessary some time in the future, besides signing communist version of  kumbaya, that is.