The Myth of the Meritocracy and the Palace of Thieves
This is part three of a six-part series in response to the lies propagandized by our capitalist society. Part one, The Capitalist Lie — Welcome to the Slaughterhouse has been followed by part two, Shop ’til You Drop — the Unsustainability of Capitalism that can be found here https://medium.com/coping-with-capitalism/shop-til-you-drop-the-unsustainability-of-capitalism-aba90fba59cf
We have been told that capitalism creates what has been called a “meritocracy” or creates a society where the hardest working, smartest and most deserving rise to the top and accumulate the most abundance of wealth (…and, as follows, power…).
This seems to be another claim that is hardly challenged or closely examined.
We must ask, what does it mean to be “most deserving”?
To merit the rewards of the economic system and to be “most deserving”, does this mean that someone leads a particularly moral life?
It seems not. Although certain moral precepts seem to be more-or-less perennial through various religions or other moral frameworks, the notion that a capitalist economy rewards those who exhibit moral behavior seems problematic to say the least.
One might consider that capitalism encourages a degree of materialism and that those seeking success in a capitalist economy may distort moral living through the pursuit of material gain.
In general, the competitive nature of the capitalist economy benefits those who “help themselves” in their pursuit of the rewards and merits of the system. This focus on the individual and his/her personal gain seems to smother any inkling that capitalism somehow encourages and rewards altruistic behavior and the moral life.
At the other extreme, one can look to legality. So, instead of considering whether those who “merit” the rewards of capitalism are behaving morally, we can instead consider whether they are acting within the laws established by the political system the capitalist economy works within.
The answer, of course, while a bit fuzzy, does give us some insight. While a criminal might find rewards, even great rewards, operating beyond the laws in a capitalist economy, they have placed themselves at risk and the system itself denies them true “merit” by condemning their behavior as illegal. So, while some cheat to achieve “merit”, when this cheating is illegal, they are at risk of punishment and in this way not truly meriting the rewards of the capitalistic system.
It seems that while we can state that criminals who manage to escape justice are demonstrating their “merit” in the system, the idea that “crime pays” is checked when perpetrators are brought to justice to “balance these books”.
When we examine that middle ground between morality and legality with what we’ll call ethics, things are even more complicated. For the sense of ethics we are attempting to address, this is about the relationship between the individual and the community and about what a society might deem just and fair contrasted with what a society might argue is unjust and unfair.
As we begin to dig deeper into the question of ethics, this notion of the meritocracy begins to lose much of its veneer. Indeed, it could be argued that capitalism, as it is currently practiced, is more apt to reward unethical behavior and punish ethical behavior.
Put in the common vernacular, we would say, “nice guys finish last.”
Examples of this counter argument proliferate our society, really, to the point that we may be entirely unaware of how this force completely demolishes any notion that capitalism rewards the most deserving.
We might begin by touching upon a couple of examples such as how “America” and its “meritocracy” came into being. It seems, the America we wish to examine began when Europeans began to colonize the lands of indigenous peoples who populated North America.
Wealthier white Europeans used their power to displace poorer white Europeans westward. These poorer white Europeans in turn displaced (exploited, murdered, oppressed) the poor brown and indigenous people who had lived in these lands for generations finally exploiting black slaves imported from Africa to work these now blood-soaked lands.
This, it seems, is what “merited” the rewards of America’s early history and the beginnings of American-born capitalism.
One might recognize that exploitation really was a key component of the behavior that “merited” the rewards of our society.
On the other hand, one might argue that America, in pursuit of its ideal, has taken strides to eliminate the legal exploitation of entire bodies of people. This argument, like the real struggle for ethical ideals in our society, has, at best, very mixed results often failing entire portions of our society.
Can we say that all Americans, despite their race, creed, sexual orientation, gender identity, or economic class enjoy a fair society with equal opportunity and justice for all?
No, we can’t. In large part, the truth is that capitalism doesn’t seek justice or fairness particularly when one looks at economic status. Inequity, or the dependence on dependency, is “baked into” the capitalist cake.
Inequity is actually a defining characteristic of merit. What we mean is those who merit the rewards of capitalism, earn these rewards that are distributed to them. Those who don’t merit it, do not enjoy the same rewards. This is not a system striving for equity, but for “meritorious rewards” and the distribution of wealth and of power based on purported meritorious behavior.
While one may become overawed by various, mainly disingenuous, claims of equity, fairness and justice, the actual rationale for this capitalist inequity is the argument that those most deserving “merit” the better results of this inequity. Conversely, one might quickly deduce, the “dependents” of this system, such as those born disadvantaged or disabled, are deserving of what they get as much as those at the top of the economic pyramid deserve their riches and power.
When the system is supposed to reward meritorious behavior, but does the opposite in practice, we must question these claims. Unfortunately, these real-life examples are all too common.
During the 2008 financial crisis created by Wall Street operating in deregulated neoliberalism, executives who sold investors and the country a hallucinatory financial boom involving complicated schemes of fraud and theft were enriched by taxpayer bailouts, platinum parachute payoffs and with corporate bonuses largely paid for with taxpayer backed loans.
Banking and investment company executives responsible for this and who made truck-loads of cash were discovered to have hid billions in loans from investors, to have lied about billions of dollars in bonuses, and to have hid how they put together toxic mortgage deals that were certain to fail.
Instead of being held accountable, these wealthy Wall Street bankers and investors pocketed billions in government loans and company bonuses. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens lost their homes, their retirement futures and, too often, their jobs.
As capitalism works to deregulate, particularly the financial sector, what we often see is “legal” behavior that one might argue is entirely unethical, unjust and unfair. Consider how many wall street figures ended up in jail after the 2008 financial collapse.
Possibly more demonstrative of this issue is the recent opioid crisis and the role of pharmaceutical enterprises such as Perdue Pharma and the Sackler family who ran this firm. Perdue Pharma, as a company, was found guilty of intentionally misleading physicians and federal regulators for years. The Sacklers themselves maintain that they broke no laws and criminal charges have yet to be brought against any members of this wealthy and powerful family. Despite this, many argue, these people are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths due to addiction to the opioids their company produced and aggressively marketed as somehow safer than other highly addictive opioids.
These and too many, often relatively banal, examples demonstrate that enterprises regularly cause social ill, social division, environmental destruction, individual disease and even death for the sake of profit. In most cases they do this within the deregulated bounds of what has been determined to be legal.
Indeed, these efforts often do not come with malicious intent, but an insatiable drive for profits that blinds corporations from other considerations. The impacts of these behaviors can go so far as to weaken, erode and even outright destroy the fabric that holds our societies together including our political system itself — the very laws that are designed to promulgate behavior that was once deemed “ethical”.
Laws seem to have been created to protect corporations, their owners and directors from criminality. While corporations are treated by our justice system as people as it is convenient, this is quickly discarded as it becomes inconvenient — for example when one wants to prosecute individual corporate leaders for blatant criminality.
To use the example of the Sacklers, while a street dealer may get a dozen or so people hooked on opioids and be thrown in jail for a number of years, the directors of Perdue Pharma can get hundreds of thousands hooked on dope and not only escape justice, but greatly enrich themselves in so doing.
It truly seems that capitalism, in its current highly deregulated and neoliberal form, encourages cheating as long as one doesn’t pay a price — either by getting away with it because the cheating is actually considered legal, or by simply not getting caught.
What has our critique of the Meritocracy revealed? Well, while crime may not pay, it seems clear that cheating and unethical behavior most certainly do. Indeed, we may wish to conclude that those deserving of “merit” in a capitalist economy as it is practiced in the world today, are most often the unethical who “game” the system to their own benefit while cheating, lying, sowing discord, creating sickness and addiction, illness and eventually death.
Europe in the early Middle Ages was a rigid and hierarchical “gift-giving” society. Around 85% of the population were peasants living in poverty and squalor while the rest were the landowning families. When Europe became profit-taking, it became somewhat less rigid with a more prosperous middle class; nevertheless, much of the existing hierarchy remained in place.
To a large degree, the “meritocracy” of today’s capitalism is among the inheritances from this more archaic class-structure. As in the past, the “rewards” of our capitalism today is largely a matter of the arbitrary happenstance of familial connections. Indeed, something like 60% of wealth in America is inherited wealth and not “earned” through the school of hard knocks.
Opportunity has never been equally distributed. Is this feature something we can call “merit-worthy” when those who have been traditionally oppressed start the race from a disadvantage? Are we to claim that black and brown people in America are less worthy of merit because of the inequities of historical colonialism, white supremacy and enslavement? What of retributions? How has this factored into our meritocracy?
As we have mentioned, how should we consider the disadvantaged? Does it mean that if one is disabled or severely disadvantaged, that one no longer merits security, or power and agency in our society?
Certainly, contemporary society can make claims of social (class) mobility, but this mobility wasn’t just impossible for medieval peasants, it was impossible for far too many of us in our very recent past.
Even if class, race or other historical disadvantages can be shown to be a feature of our problematic past, it seems unlikely that one can argue the past doesn’t impact our present when so many advantages stem from the historically privileged portions of our society.
With our profit-taking social order, which global capitalism neatly fits within, the reward of the purported meritocracy is cash. All must participate in this form of exchange to participate in society and its economy.
The structure of the system requires all to strive for money to provide themselves with basic human needs — healthy food, clean air and water, shelter, clothing, reasonable health care and, one would hope, an education.
For those seeking the rewards of being a “success”, as the meritocracy defines it, they must strive for more than these basic needs. This incites the ambitious to better their own financial standing.
Yet, we have seen this success has little to do with being a moral person or even someone who behaves in a strictly ethical sense. Further, it seems most obvious, unethical behavior is more likely to be rewarded than to be punished by this system.
Even the social stigma built around a lack of ethics seems to have been lost to us in this age where wealth and affluence creates a most worshipful reverence among those desirous of achieving a similar status.
In a real sense, there really isn’t such a thing as ethics today.
When a society encourages its citizens to walk over the weakest members of the community to achieve success, this society has lost all sense of morality and justice. The drive to line our own pockets becomes a portal to crime and criminal-like behaviors that may have formerly been viewed as unethical and even predatory.
Like colonizers of the “wide-open” western American lands, we gain through exploitation, but can be counted among the “losers” when we lack the initiative to “exploit” the opportunity to profit. We must exploit not to be exploited.
In the end, this is where capitalism seems to lead us — to a real kleptocracy with crooked politicians, crooked cops, crooked judges, crooked tyrants, crooked business leaders and crooks in every nook and cranny of our society.
As everything revolves around profit, we are like the corporations and their leaders who we emulate and worship — laser-focused on increasing our own wealth without consideration given to others, to workers, to consumers, to community or to the environment.
Finally, we must ask, “is this worthy of merit?”.
Capitalism, like a foot race, is competitive. Some of us arrive at the meet with advantages while others come with disadvantages. Importantly, we can see that it is those who nudge aside their competitors that most often end up on the podium.
In Part Four: Endgame Competition — Heads We Win, Tails You Lose we will consider how Capitalism relies on competition and what this means.
