So...I read more of the meritocracy book (the tyranny of merit by Michael Sandel in case anyone is curious), and I just read a chapter on how markets and most liberal theories of justice don't even lead to meritocracy a lot of the time. They talked about how Hayek admitted that the free market doesnt always reward merit, and that it represents conformity with market values and what the market needs. To me, this is like a "no crap". It also discusses how Rawls believed that we needed to have redistribution from rich to poor because obviously merit doesnt track with a market economy and that the rich should be humbled and recognize their success isnt all about them, and the poor should be recognized of not being the immoral reprobates the work ethic and meritocracy arguments imply they are.
Again, to me this is like a no crap. I dont value meritocracy for its own sake, I fully admit, like Rawls, that work ethic and meritocracy isnt about the virtues of those things in and of itself. The entire point of having such ideas govern economies is to have a motivation to do the socially necessary work that people need done. That's the entire point of having a system of unequal rewards. And it just so happens markets are the most functional approach to creating a working division of labor and rewards. it isnt PERFECT, and I'd advise against ANYONE being a market fundamentalist, but the point of these systems isnt existing isn't their morality, it's their practicality. I would literally argue without markets, that work incentive would have to come from even more coercive economic arrangements like slavery, feudalism, or whatever the heck communism was. All societies must address these economic questions, and markets are just what works. And the pretense of meritocracy isnt there for people to take it literally as the end all be all of anything, but to motivate people to work.
Even the coercion aspects of markets and meritocracy/the work ethic are about motivation. Tied to those systems is the inherent idea that the poor are unmotivated, and need work ethic beaten into them so that they may produce for the economy. I do not believe, based on my research, that such beliefs actually hold true. Work ethic and motivation is far more complex. Like, if you gave people a UBI, the amount that would determine motivation to some degree is "how much?" If you give people $1, no one is quitting their jobs. $100? Ditto. $1,000, probably not. $10,000, maybe a little. And then it goes up and up and up. Most studies into UBI have looked at amounts up to the poverty line, and there is not much work disincentive there. The same applies to taxation. There is a laffer curve of taxation where eventually you can tax at a high enough level where you start losing revenue, but that amount is probably somewhere around 70%. And again, that's a matter of motivation. Where there is no financial reward tied to a lot of tasks in our economy, no one will do those tasks. But you can have a UBI up to a certain point where most people would still work, and you can have a tax rate up to a certain point where most people would still work.
And that's purely for tasks that are undesireable, and that people undertake specifically for money. A lot of people dont wanna just sit around. They wanna do things with their lives, and they do buy into the idea that they want to do something that gives them purpose. Even a lot of lottery winners still work, you just wont see them working at 7-11 when you go in for a pack of smokes or a slushie. People wanna do things. They might wanna do something like create and do art and crap, but they'll still do things. No one just wants to sit around doing literally nothing. Or next to no one. The point is, it's a relatively small and largely insignificant minority. Even I have my work...on these topics. Researching, writing blog posts, etc.
So, the reason I reject the functionalist reasons for forcing people to work in the first place is because they LITERALLY dont hold up. Peoples' motivations are more complex than this theory offers. ANd heck, I'll go further, UBI probably would have fewer welfare traps that discourage work than traditional welfare does.
But I do accept some level of meritocracy, or at least the pretense of one, in my own take, for purely functionalist reasons. I acknowledge, like Hayek, the market may not reward all merits and talents. I also acknowledge, like Rawls, that just attributing market fundamentalism to everything leads to oppressive outcomes for the poor, and that the range of outcomes should be reduced, simply because it's the right thing to do.
The fact is, markets are simply utilitarian to me. They work. Any theory of morality or justice based on them should be more practical, rather than moral. Remember what I say with human centered capitalism, the economy exists for people, not people for the economy. People get so wrapped up in their little theories of justice that they seem to justify crappy outcomes that dont serve humanity simply because they end up taking the ideas of things like merit or people getting just deserts to their logical ends, leading to just world fallacies that can justify a lot of screwed up crap.
In my ideology, the entire purpose of all of these ideas is to serve humanity. We need work done, we need a system that gets it done, this system gets it done. But let's not romanticize it, its mechanisms, or its morality. All of those things exist not as ends, but as a means to an end.
The same applies with all of the weird liberal philosophers who kept getting brought up in this chapter going on about trying to make the meritocracy actually meritocratic. And trying to separating the deserving poor, from the undeserving, and coming up with all sorts of tests to determine who is deserving and who is not. It reminds me of a lot of the weird ideas van parijs grappled with that led me to eventually say "why bother?" Like really, i dont want to discuss things like whether people who are disabled deserve more resources than someone who is able bodied, and how much and blah blah blah. Because at the heart of these ideas is an underlying moral idea that some are more deserving than others, and at the end of the day, these people still take these traditional ideas of meritocracy and who "earns" what so seriously they miss the point of those ideas in the first place.
Like, they have this idea, but then they acknowledge the world doesnt always work the way their idea says it does, so they try to make the idea work more in line with their idea, and because they dont wanna give up on a core premise of their idea (in this case that people who dont wanna work should be coerced to do so), they keep coming up with more and more complexity to develop this perfect theory of justice in which those who they dont deem deserving dont get, and those who are deserving get. Even in this book, Sandel acknowledges that most would agree with the idea that those who choose not to work deserve poverty. Heck, when Van Parijs expanded on Rawls' idea with his real libertarianism, Rawls felt forced to clarify that he did not agree with Van Parijs' applications of his theories and that of course someone who voluntarily chooses not to work shouldnt get resources from the productive.
And this is where I differ. Keep in mind, to me, all of this talk of inequality, and meritocracy, and work, is all about need. I have a nuanced enough take to acknowledge the value of an idea, without overcommitting to it. It's a skill I wish more people learned. I acknowledge we need some work done, and support underlying ideas functionally in helping accomplish that, but let's be honest. NEED is what drive these things.
If we could have a system where no one had to labor, and the need for human labor was completely eradicated, under my ideals, I'd say everyone should get an equal share of resources and the need for inequality and meritocracy would completely disappear. In some ways, I am a socialist at heart. I just understand that reality and "material conditions" (as MLs would frame it) kind of dictate that we behave differently, and I kind of am advocating the best system for this current point in time.
I would argue that as soon as the material conditions to stop forcing people to work have been achieved, we should do that, and let the market decide the rest. I think we should give people a basic income of the highest sustainable level, and if people choose not to work, they choose not to work. Like Karl Widerquist, I seem to have a disdain for all of these weird do gooder authoritarians who come up with their perfect theories of justice and try to enforce them on others. Rather, we should create a system that gives people freedom to say no to said do gooder authoritarians and let people live according to their own theory of justice. And that, to me, is the higher theory of justice. The only reason why coercion is justified at all is NEED. If it's no longer NEEDED, then the social structures should be updated to refect that, which is what my own reforms are trying to accomplish. Transitioning us into the 21st century and shifting away from a system that both forces people to work when it's no longer necessary, and prioritizes growth over freedom. I feel like modern society is tyrannized by the ideas of dead people from past generations, and that yes, the material conditions have changed. ANd our system is full of contradictions that make no sense. And its like we're only doing this, because we always have, and because the social structures are self replicating in ways that dont allow an off ramp unless we actually force one to exist, which I am trying to do here.
I kind of acknowledge the old ways are dated, I dont think they work. I dont think they lead to optimal or maximal human flourishing. They keep people enslaved long after these structures have stopped serving their actual purpose.
And yet, even with my own ideas im a pragmatist. If I took my ideas to the extremes philosophers do in justifying crap like work ethic and meritocracy, you would have an idea that would not function. Because we dont live in a world where no one has to work, and robots can do everything, and if we TRIED to create a fully workless society right now, society would collapse just as conservative types would say it would.
And thats the problem with ideologues. They dont see the nuance and shades of grey. It's "we have these ideas, lets take them to the furthest possible extremes because logic dictates" and then they get crappy ideas that dont work. We need to be pragmatic and live somewhat within the reality we live in. We need to have ideals. Yes. And my ideals of being "anti work" are just that, ideals. But, I also acknowledge that the material conditions may not fully support those ideals. So I offer compromises for how we can partially accomplish those ideals, while leaving further room in future generations.
And that's kind of how I view things like meritocracy and work ethic. My ideas are very counter to such things. I would say I full on reject such things in a sense. But in practice, do I? No. Because I recognize that my ideas have practical limitations. And that if anything to SOME degree the functional applications of these old ideas still apply. We DO need some people to still work. We DO need a system that motivates people to do so. So I acknowledge the practical application of such ideas. But i dont romanticize them. Because I dont think those ideals are really "good" in the first place. They're just needed and practical. Again, if you took my ideas to their furthest extremes, you'd get something akin to what a conservative who doesnt know what communism is, calls communism, a society in which no one works, everyone is lazy, everyone earns the same, and there's total stagnation and inefficiency. Im not advocating for that. I'm just acknowledging that the rejection of one extreme does not mean embracing the other.
It's fine to have conflicting ideas in society balancing each other out. If anything, it's somewhat healthy. If ideas arent counterbalanced, that leads to extremism and that in itself can lead to society being destabilized. Like, back in my old discussions of what the overton window should be, I may or may not have written about this in 2016, but I felt like we needed a society balanced of progressives and conservatives. We need half the country bringing ideas forward, and we need half the country saying no that isnt good and providing a check on people. What isnt healthy about our current society is its currently governed by democrats being conservative, and republicans being regressive. I argued we need the overton window to be brought left so that the real conservatives are the right, and the progressives are the left, rather than the far left. This would mean in my ideal party realignment, the debates would be between clinton style liberals who largely like the status quo and always has the hard questions like "how ya gonna pay for that?" and progressives like bernie who have good ideas that bring society forward.
It's the same thing here. We need a side of the argument that actually does defend a view that says "well what if meritocracy isnt actually a good idea?", while also having a side that says "well this is why we need it".
What we have right now is conservatives who are like MERITOCRACY IS THE GREATEST THING EVER AND YOURE AN UNAMERICAN COMMUNIST IF YOU THINK DIFFERENTLY, and then you got liberals who are like "well meritocracy is good, but you have to acknowledge that reality doesnt always live up to it and blah blah blah'. Meanwhile Im more like, yeah meritocracy does to some extent have a practical purpose but maybe we should take it less seriously. Like, much like Sandel, I kind of want to offer the viewpoint that maybe we SHOULDNT be obsessed with this? Or work ethic. Maybe we should have a system in which we DONT force people to work, that we DO value their freedom and autonomy. But at the same time maybe we also shouldnt go to far with it where the material conditions dont match our ideals. We can strive to push things that way, but even i acknowledge the scale of time that it would take to get there is beyond my lifetime, and maybe those who value growth and work to some extent still might find value in those things where such ideals are never fully realized, but at least my ideals influenced things enough where at least people arent coerced to participate any more. I would be fine with either outcome, honestly. I dont know what direction things would go long term. It's kind of up to future generations to figure that out themselves. I really dont wanna be that dead guy who 300 years later ends up tyrannizing future realities where people feel a need to cling to my 21st century ideas when in the 24th century they no longer work.
Kinda like how I resent that we have built up this system based on literal FREAKING CALVINISM.
But yeah, that's my thoughts on this matter.
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