Meritocracy

[Anomalocaris]

Marx.  He assumed an end state where all is fair and yet motivating, all good, no bad, and does not investigate why such fantastic obviousness had never occurred to another to propose.

I have problems with Marx's ideal too. He thinks greed will disappear with capitalism... in fact, he thinks capitalism is the cause of greed. I think he is partially correct here... or (it might be more accurate to say) capitalism exacerbates greed.

But I wholeheartedly disagree with Marx that greed will disappear with capitalism. Greed and desire are inseparable from our natures. But that doesn't mean we need to live in a system centered around our greed and desire.

I agree with Marx that living in a system centered around greed and desire (capitalism) is stupid... it's abusive and parasitic to most of the people who live under it. It isn't moral. Period.

According to Marx (and I agree with him here) people innately want to produce and create. It is a part of human nature. This human propensity to create and produce, left untouched by the exploiters, could feed and clothe the world ten times over. But the extremely wealthy won't let that happen. They want their "cut." And since the system is centered around them getting their cut, the world isn't fed and clothed even ONCE. AS IT EASILY COULD BE!

Capitalism twists the creative and productive aspect of human nature into avarice. So (while I disagree with Marx that greed will disappear with capitalism) I also see where he's coming from when he says capitalism causes greed.

There is a reason why capitalism appears to exacerbate greed.  Greed has always existed and had always been a dominating motivational force since the development of money.   There is little doubt money is essential for the sort of economic and social development that pushed us into urban Iron Age culture and beyond.  But capitalism is the the first system which has been able to channel greed into greatly enriching the society.   So where as previously greed can be said to benefit some at the expense of other with relatively little gained by the society overall. Under capitalism greed definitively made it possible for the society overall to gain a lot.  Hence the society overall now has reasons beyond fulfilling the self-interests of the greedy to reward greed.

Under capitalism, greed of the most greedy may not promote fairness, but it does tend to enrich even those who were not in themselves that greedy, if only to a small degree compared to the greedy.


Regarding Marxism, Marxism postulate a meritocracy somehow exists without describing why it would develop, and when you look it closely you would find the alleged meritocracy is largely devoid of incentives for being meritorious. 

So it is a meritocracy where eventually the meritorious will likely have no merit.