So....how do I really feel about the idea of meritocracy? Well, in short, my opinions on it mirror that of my views on capitalism in general. Basically, meritocracy to some extent is a good idea and is necessary. The most functional mechanism to motivate people to do the work that is necessary in society is meritocracy, rewarding those who work, and not rewarding or punishing those who don't. The idea that people are paid in accordance to their contributions is actually quite fair and logical. If anything, we arguably need such a system to motivate people. One of the reasons why communism never succeeded over capitalism was because it replaced the implicit rewards system with one that give people no rewards and merely motivated people by force. You cant inspire excellence with those kinds of attitudes. Anyone who participates is gonna do the bare minimum and try to get out of doing all that they can. You need positive motivation, such as through meritocracy, in order to positively motivate people to work and do great things within capitalism in my opinion.
However, at the same time, just like everything else capitalism, we focus on it too much. I swear, the big problem with many modern ideologies is they treat things as all or nothing. Either we subject everything to a meritocracy, or we subject nothing to it. We cant just acknowledge that a system is useful while also having limits.
The problems with meritocracy come in when it is overapplied, and when everything is subject to meritocracy. When the resources you need to survive are held over your head, and you are punished through resource denial for not working hard enough or not being good enough. The bare minimum should be excluded from a meritocracy debate. You do the bare minimum, or nothing at all, and you get the bare minimum (basically a UBI and universal healthcare in my system). Work is to reward people BEYOND that level.
If we just subject meritocracy to everything, including basic needs, we make our economic system too darwinistic. What people sometimes miss about the invisible hand of the free market is it operates under the same principles as natural selection. This is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. It is a strength, because that system motivates people to strive for excellence in order to survive and thrive. It is its greatest weakness because let's face it, meritocracy applied to everything LITERALLY leads to social darwinism, and the system just isnt set up to allow everyone to survive. Nor should people really be subjected to that anyway involuntarily, as it threatens their freedom under capitalism. It is the iron cage that max weber talked about when discussing the problems of capitalism and the work ethic. it forces people to work by subjecting them to intense survival strategy where they are forced to expend all of their energy working constantly in order to survive. Capitalism, the work ethic, and meritocracy, subject people to that in its natural state constantly, 24/7, with no end. It is hell on earth, and at some point, we need to go back to my understanding of human centered or humanist capitalism in order to understand what our economy is about. The economy exists for people, not people the economy, and work is a means to an end, not an end in itself.Applying too much meritocracy to society risks violating these principles. We start caring more about the economy, or the system, more than we do about the people within it, forgetting that the whole point of said system is the people. We subject people to an inhuman process that enslaves them into working for the economy constantly and subjecting them to constant survival anxiety. That isn't good.
The point of meritocracy is, ultimately, to motivate people to do good things and to do the labor we need to survive. However, we need to remember that the purpose of the labor is to serve humanity. Meritocracy is useless on its own. if we could live without a meritocracy, and live well, then meritocracy as an idea would be useless. Meritocracy is a means to an end, not the end. Just like with work. Our institutions only exist to serve humans. And when they fail to do that, they become unjust and should be changed.
There is a lot of room for meritocracy to exist in society. I do believe that capitalism and meritocracy do, to some extent, in some ways, provide positive benefits to society. I do not want to kill the golden goose that lays the golden eggs here. I do not want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. But at the same time, meritocracy has limits in terms of its usefulness, and beyond a certain point, we need to just understand that maybe not everything in life should be subjected to such a system. There will always be people motivated to compete. The problem is subjecting them to social darwinism, where people are forced to compete and act in a cruel system that deprives them of resources and subjects them to hellish anxiety all of the time forcing them to work to survive. We need to move beyond that crap. Ultimately, it's a balance. It's just about getting the balance right.
Going back to my ideas on ideals vs reality, my ideal is a world where we dont have to do that crap to survive. My reality is that such a system is probably the best way to motivate people. The balance comes in when we apply meritocracy to the levels needed to motivate people to do the work that has to be done, while giving people as much freedom as is possible. So that's my final answer. it's a balance. To me meritocracy is a tool that is to be used to motivate people to do what needs to be done, but it should not be overapplied, and we should never forget WHY it exists. People have this all or nothing idea that we either make all of life one big hellish darwinistic fight to survive, or we have literal communism with no positive motivation at all, and the proper balance is somewhere in between those two extremes.
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