Meritocracy, Capitalism, and the Perception of Diminished Rights
[I wrote this about 3 and a half years ago in 2016, but came across it today, and it’s still got some oomph, so decided to publish it!]
In a capitalist system where everything can only be valued as a commodity, rights and freedoms end up viewed through the same lens. This is one way to understand why many Persons of Some Privilege get so angry when Others of Lesser Privilege attain additional ‘rights’ and ‘freedoms’ without appearing to have done anything to earn them.
Under closer examination, the fallacy of this becomes apparent. We do not earn rights and freedoms like an hourly wage. We are born into a certain milieu, and that milieu comes with an automatic allocation of rights and freedoms. The degree to which this exceeds those guaranteed by law (though how solid these are is also associated to mileau) can be referred to as privilege.
We can humorously illustrate the notion with M&Ms. If you are born rich, white, and male, you are handed a one-pound bag of M&Ms at birth. If you are white and male, you are handed a regular-size bag of M&Ms. If you have the misfortune of being born female, non-white, or of lesser economic means, you are handed a portion of a regular-size bag — maybe one of the snack-size ones if you’re among the preferred groupings, those missing perhaps just one of the idealized affiliations.
The above is admittedly a gross generalization. You can be born rich, female, and white, and likely get 75% of the one-pound bag of M&Ms at birth, with your Dad or a brother keeping the other 25% for investment purposes. You can be born poor, white, and male, and get maybe two snack-size packs. You can be born poor, transgender, and mixed-race and end up with one or two individual M&Ms, slightly melted, and with your hands coated in oil before you receive them, so it will be really easy to drop them early in life.
Let’s say, continuing the analogy, that you really work your ass off in school. You get a decent job shortly thereafter, but it’s always more of a struggle than it seems like it should be. You walk into a bank to get a loan for a house. A rich guy slaps his pound bag of M&Ms down on a loan officer’s desk, providing only modest evidence of earnings, and is automatically given a low-interest loan sufficient to buy a house. You slap down your snack pack and another snack pack in slightly newer packaging (the one you earned through hard work), and you’re eyed with suspicion, grudgingly offered a high interest loan that must be paid off in a shorter time, and your budget can just barely afford the monthly payments.
But, I digress — this isn’t supposed to be about understanding privilege, though understanding privilege is key to understanding the irrational resentment those of lesser means express when those of even fewer means are automatically doled out additional rights and freedoms. The American mythos is strong on the idea that this doling out of M&Ms at birth doesn’t exist. Everything we get is earned, and if we earn nothing, it’s because we align to any number of unsavory character traits: lazy, unrealistic / idealistic, lacking willpower, ugly, violent (the wrong kind, apparently, as violence in the service of power is just fine), selfish, unmotivated, stupid. These are all our fault — the mythos is also very strong on the notion that we have ultimate control over our destinies, that we were all born with the same number of proverbial ‘talents’ (the Bible’s version of my M&Ms analogy), and that those who are less fortunate simply wasted theirs through bad choices or improvident living.
Understanding that all we have is earned by meritorious performance, the government can be a problem. The government, when in the hands of those pesky liberals, has this obsession with handing out M&Ms, often referred to as ‘leveling the playing field’. The government hands out ‘free stuff’ to the undeserving. The government hands out free stuff to a lot of persons and non-persons alike, but they have done their meritorious duty. The have been ‘job creators’, or fueled the economy, or invested in other ways. They have served the interests of power and privilege, which is rewarded by bestowal of additional power and privilege. Help the holders of many M&Ms get even more M&Ms, and they will make it easier for you to get a few more for yourself.
In a time when many groupings (LGBTQIA individuals broadly, a black President, a female candidate for the next President, to name but a few) previously afforded very few rights and freedoms are risking life and limb to get a couple of more M&Ms than was their birthright (we can call this attainment of ‘social justice’), those the next rung up see a diminishment of their rights and freedoms. They have bought into the mythos, which defines their value as a human being by the M&Ms doled out at birth. ‘Those people’ — a common reference to the groupings considered inferior through the intertwining calculus of meritorious ‘worth’, belief systems, and emotions — are now worth more, which must mean that the ‘value’ of being a person who got two snack packs at birth has been diminished.
Capitalism’s insidious logic is that human beings are also commodities. We are intrinsically worth nothing within that framework. We deserve nothing, have no inalienable rights. We are empty and worthless, becoming value-added only by means of our decisions and actions. That is the mythos. As long as we continue to accept this — and it’s hard to avoid when it’s the message shouted from a bullhorn at each one of us from the day we emerge from the womb — we will continue to fight like animals over scraps from the master’s table, willing to savage those next to us to either get one more M&M, or preserve our ‘worth’ by denying them one more M&M.
