Combining Meritocracy and Upward Mobility
They are like peanut butter and jelly
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In a previous article, I argued that Equality of Outcome (a common goal of the Left) is impossible to achieve, and any attempts to achieve it will lead to negative outcomes for society. In another article, I argued that Equality of Opportunity (a common goal of the Right and Center-Left) is not enough.
So if we dismiss two of the most common goals, what is left?
To achieve a better and more prosperous society, I believe that we need to promote the following:
Material progress (closely related to long-term economic growth)
Upward Mobility for working class and poor (in other words, the increased material standard of living of an individual over the course of their adult working lives).
How do we combine those values?
Since I have already written many articles on policies to promote long-term economic growth and Upward Mobility , in this article I will focus on Meritocracy.
First, let me start with a definition:
Meritocracy - When the bulk of institutions in society make decisions related to hiring, firing, and promotion based on how well a person has demonstrated a job-related ability or has made job-related accomplishments. Meritocracy specifically rules out other factors that are not associated with success in that job.
In other words, merit is using a person’s past results in a specific job or occupation to attempt to predict the likelihood that they will show similar results in a related job or occupation.
Why Merit matters
Meritocracy is important for two reasons:
Meritocracy puts an individual with the best chance to contribute to the organization and society in the best possible position for them to do so. These contributions benefit:
the organization that is making the decision
their customers who get a better product or service
the co-workers of the individual who need to deal with the person day-to-day
(if they are a manager) their staff
society in general
Meritocracy gives each person an incentive to:
work hard
cooperate well with others within the organization
learn new hard and soft skills that enable greater contributions in the future.
Because modern societies are composed of institutions competing against each other in non-violent, transparent competition for financial resources for survival, Meritocracy is an essential component of an institution being competitive. To remain competitive, institutions must hire, fire and promote based on Merit.
Without Meritocracy, institutions cannot win the competition to acquire financial resources for survival. The organization will gradually atrophy and collapse. The only way to overcome this is to:
Establish monopolies that do not need to compete for financial resources. They can remain uncompetitive forever with much fewer consequences for those within the institution. The only victim is the rest of society.
Force all institutions to adopt the same non-Merit-based hiring, firing, and promotions. This is effectively what DEI is. With DEI, all institutions become less competitive, but they this does not change their competitiveness compared to each other. The only victim is the rest of society.
Meritocracy is not credentialism
Let me make it clear that meritocracy is not credentialism. In fact, credentialism today often undermines meritocracy.
Educational credentials were an important means for breaking down non-meritocratic decision-making in past generations. However, we must never forget that educational credentials are just one means of measuring merit, and today many four-year college degrees are often not very focused on the specific skills needed for a specific job. And much of what is now taught in universities is not particularly relevant to the workforce. Some of it is just plain ideological garbage that undermines competency in the workplace (cough, DEI).
Academic credentials were an important step forward toward a more merit-based society, but today we can do better. In an era of computers and the internet, there are far greater number of methods to learn new skills and knowledge. There are also far better ways of validating the fact that a candidate has mastered those skills and knowledge. Having a specific degree, no matter how prestigious, should not be enough. Nor should it substitute for other means of showing merit to employers.
Upward Mobility…
Upward Mobility - The increased material standard of living of an individual over the course of their adult working lives. Living in a society that is experiencing material progress is an important precondition of Upward Mobility, but a society cannot give you increased material standard of living. You still have to work, and to work you need to have the proper skills and live in a geographical location where employees covet those skills.
This means that individuals have to make conscious choices to participate in the progress that surrounds them and adapt to society’s needs. Typically, this involves making wise Life Choices in their teenage years and twenties so they increase the chances of earning a higher standard of living in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.
Not Economic Populism
Some people believe that what the working class needs is some form of economic Populism. Typically, the person making the statement is very vague as to what “economic populism” actually means, but it typically consists of:
Playing on resentments against rich people during the campaign
Focusing the campaign on Rust Belt cities with once great but now declining manufacturing sectors
Increasing income and wealth taxes for rich people
Increasing government regulations to balance the power of the rich
Using the extra revenue to finance increased spending for social programs to benefit the poor and near-poor.
Typically, those who make the claim are white professionals who think that they know what is best for the working class. The problem is that this economic populism:
Is most popular with the white college-educated professionals, not the working class.
Will likely have very negative effects on long-term economic growth
Will fail to create much greater Equality, just like all the other reforms from the Left.
Will undermine Upward Mobility for the working class.
See more articles on Upward Mobility:
I also will be writing a significant number of excerpts from my forthcoming book: Upward Mobility: A Radical New Agenda to Uplift the Poor and Working Class. Most of these excerpts will only be available to paid subscribers.
A better option
To understand how we can combine Meritocracy and Upward Mobility, let’s take a look at how I conceive of the American class structure. If you want more details, you can read the article where I introduced it:
Our current welfare state tries to lift up the material standard of living of the Lower Class via government social programs regardless of their employment status and other Life Choices. Unfortunately, this creates the perverse incentive of undermining the material incentives for youths to make wise Life Choices that result in entering the Working or Professional class. By seeking to elevate the Lower Class, we are unintentionally expanding it. And the Working Class gets little to nothing.
Let me make a few sweeping assumptions about the people in these three large categories:
Those who can potentially make substantially greater contributions to society in their work lives than the average person.
Those who can support themselves and their families but are unlikely to contribute as much as the group above.
Those who cannot support themselves.
We do not know ahead of time, which of the three categories an individual falls into, but society has an incentive to sort them into the correct category. It is only a guess on my part, but I believe maybe 25% belong in the first group and less than 10% belong in the third group. That leaves a solid majority that fit in the middle group.
I admit that “can potentially make substantially greater contributions to society in their work lives than the average person” is a bit on the vague side, but I am trying to acknowledge that some people can potentially make far greater contributions to society than others.
It is for the benefit of society that those people are:
Encouraged to make reasonable efforts to do so
Rewarded materially with higher income after taxes for having done so
Rewarded socially with higher status for having done so.
Any who believes in Equality of Outcome will have a hard time with the above statements, but I do not see any alternative. If the institutions in society do not give material incentives for talented people to work hard, the economy will grow at a much slower rate. This hurts everyone.
We are not born equal
We need to face the fact that all individuals are heavily constrained by the genes that they are born with, particularly their levels of:
Intelligence (critical for success in professional-class jobs)
Conscientiousness (critical for success in working-class jobs)
Physical health (critical for avoiding major health issues in their high-earning middle-age years)
Mental health
Their base-line level of happiness
All of the above have powerful effects on a person’s long-term life outcomes. That is the primary reason why equality between individuals within a society is an impossible dream.
We love to offer our youths platitudes such as “You can be anything that you want to be,” but it is not true. Those born with below-average levels of intelligence are unlikely to be successful in professional-class jobs. Even those with average intelligence may struggle at many professional-class jobs, although those with high levels of conscientiousness will help them partially make up for that through sheer work effort.
Some people on the Left claim that genetic inequality dooms us to poverty, but that is not true. The vast majority of people are capable of supporting themselves and their families at a standard of living that is very high by the standards of the past. And the higher the material standard of living for overall society, the higher the material standard of living for typical working-class families. That is why long-term economic growth matters so much.
Working a 9-5 working-class job, getting married and raising children together is not a glamorous life, but it can still be a good life. Just as important, by supporting themselves and their family, the working class maintain the infrastructures that make it possible for professionals to make even greater contributions to society.
And some people cannot support themselves
It is also important to acknowledge that some people cannot support themselves. A very unlucky few will have a very difficult time keeping even a working-class job because they are genetically predisposed to:
Violence
Very low intelligence
Poor physical health or physical disabilities
Mental illness
Serious addictions
A lack of self-discipline that enables a sacrifice in the short-term to benefit themselves in the long-term.
Most likely, those unlucky few will always have significantly lower income and material standard of living unless they are lucky enough to have a family who can take care of them. Fortunately, I believe that less than 10% of people fall into that category. My goal is to help the other 90+% maximize their chances of material success and happiness and minimizes the negative effects on society from the rest. I will leave it to others to determine the best course of action for the <10% who cannot support themselves in a way that does not undermine the incentives of the other 90+%.
Goals for each class
Obviously, we cannot recreate society based on philosophical principles. I believe that we can reform our social programs and tax system based on the principles that I sketched above. Most importantly, we need to keep the focus on:
Promoting long-term economic growth
Promoting a prosperous working class
Promote a clear pathway that enables youths from low-income families to enter the prosperous working class (rather than being trapped in the Lower class).
Professional class
For the professional class, we should have a fairly ruthless meritocracy where each individual must compete to acquire and hold onto jobs that are significantly higher paying than others. Ideally, the competition should be based on transparent metrics that measure results (such as sales for a salesperson), but this is often not possible.
In return, members of the professional class should be:
Not be taxed to such an extent that their total marginal tax rate is over 50%
Rewarded for higher social status for their work efforts, and most importantly, for the results of their efforts.
Those in the professional class should not be endowed (or endow themselves) with moral superiority because they are more intelligent, as that trait is largely due to genetics. Society should have an attitude of “you were blessed by the genetic lottery, so you therefore must contribute more to society than others. If you do so, you will be rewarded. If you do not, then you cannot claim to be better than the rest of us.”
So we must have a Professional class based on Meritocracy.
Working class
For the working class, we should expect a reasonable work effort to construct and maintain the critical infrastructure that the professional class needs and provide a positive environment for their children.
A reasonable expectation for the working class should be:
Have at least one full-time worker in their family
(if you have children) Get married and stay married.
Class cooperation
While the Left, and particularly Marxists, believe that class conflict is the norm, we should acknowledge how much the professional class and working class need each other.
The professional class needs the working class to “keep the lights on” by:
Growing and distributing the food
Extracting and distributing energy and electricity (electricity generators, pipelines, electrical power lines, etc.)
Maintaining the:
Transportation infrastructure (roads, highways, tunnels, railways, airports, train stations, air traffic control, driving trucks, etc)
Communication infrastructure (internet, satellites, mobile network towers)
Water/sanitation infrastructure (water main lines, wells, pumping stations, sewage treatment plants, landfills, levees, etc)
Recreation facilities (public parks, beaches, parking areas, etc)
Constructing all the above, plus housing and commercial buildings.
The working class needs the professional class to innovate technologies, skills, and social organizations that lead to future economic growth. The professional class needs the working class to maintain the infrastructure.
So, both the Working class and the Professional class need each other to create long-term economic growth. That long-term economic growth enables both classes to experience a higher material standard of living. But individuals in each class still need to make wise Life Choices.
Lower Class
A reasonable expectation for the lower class would be that we should expect no socially destructive behaviors and punishment by the justice system if they do so. In particular, violence, crime, sexual abuse, and physical abuse should not be tolerated by society.
In return, society should support them at a moderate standard of living via:
or some other program like it.
I am not going to go into great detail on SSDI/SSI, but I will say that for society to function well:
The benefits from these programs should be low enough that individuals who can support themselves will not want to apply for benefits
The eligibility for benefits must be quite high and constantly tightened as technological innovation makes it easier for individuals to support themselves via employed labor.
The goal should not be to constantly increase their material standard of living. The goal should be minimizing the number of people who fall into this group over time. We have already made great strides in limiting the negative impact of physical disability through the innovation of new technologies (eyeglasses, wheelchairs, prosthetics, more accessible computers, etc).
Unfortunately, we have made far fewer strides to assisting those with mental disorders, substance abuse, and violence. My hope is that changes in the future.
See more free articles on Upward Mobility:
I also will be writing a significant number of excerpts from my forthcoming book: Upward Mobility: A Radical New Agenda to Uplift the Poor and Working Class. Most of these excerpts will only be available to paid subscribers.
Other books in my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
