this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
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You touched on a really important point here: when humans are judging skill, it’s subjective and not really meritocratic.
One of my favorite psychology professors says that people really like the idea of meritocracy, when it’s actually present. He gives the example of sports, and how people aren’t bitter about a particular team winning, or that there’s big inequality between the players, and that the reason people are okay with that inequality is the presence of the playing field and the high speed cameras and whatnot means meritocracy is the actual basis for reward, not personality politics.
In business, government, etc it’s all people judging other people, and on an individual basis. A group of people evaluating is better, like star ratings for an uber driver are probably more trustable than performance evaluations from someone’s boss. The latter can be so heavily distorted by that one person’s judgment.
The ideal is using measurable performance as the measure of “merit”. Like when people run a marathon. As long as the course is visible to confirm nobody’s cheating, that marathon time is yours in a way your degree or your job or your salary isn’t.
It’s also why people are so in favor of free markets deciding resource allocation rather than people: the free market is at least a large crowdsourced combination of everyone’s needs, instead of just some mental image of those needs in the mind of a few committee memebers.
I truly appreciate your contribution to this long dead conversation. It is to my regret I didn't respond sooner, but I cannot seem to withhold my desire to share. The following could be summed up as, "Everything wrong with sports. Merit is ambiguous. People abuse ambiguity for their own gain."
Cheating in this context might be summed up as: Violating rules, unsporting. Possibly underhanded, deception, fraud, or trickery. A disparity or unfairness through action.
Sports being a meritocracy is absolutely true on a small scale. However, with a macro view some disparities come to light.
Disparities:
Exempted due to applicability: (read low or protracted defensibly and a vague determination of where "the game" begins and ends; philosophical)
Back to the first half of my original point. People do really like the idea of meritocracy... when it aligns with their own views. "Merit" is founded on virtue, worth, or value. And all three depend on the evaluator.
For instance, a football fan at a baseball match may not find the players very worthy, because it isn't football.
Another instance, is cheating meritorious? A superior strategy requiring exceptional ability to successfully sabotage your opponent. (Devil's advocate, and a very Chinese sentiment. I'll not be defending this point, but it is wise to consider the biases inherent in personal culture determining what merit is.)
Alternatively honor and respect determine merit. Also highly subjective, just look at Jihad contrasted to The Crusades.
This leads to the other half: Anything subjective is subject to abuse, because generally humans are selfish and tribal. It's how our ancestors survived. Any permanent governing system must account for, incorporate, protect, benefit from, and forcefully constrain or alter the governed's nature as necessary for the benefit or balancing of the governed and the governing system's continued future. Anything else eventually leads to revolution or collapse.
In truth, I believe a perpetual motion is impossible. Something must continually power and correct the machine running the humans but humans aren't capable of doing so. We will likely continue to have revolutions and disparities caused by revolutions until our collapse. The best we can hope to do, is make living on this rock less miserable for our fellow inhabitants.
Please have a lovely day.