Totally agree. Another issue is that retaining incompetent, underperforming, or unpleasant workers makes it hard to retain top talent in fields where such talent is rare--not just sports but science and the arts too. People who have special skills and are extremely good at their jobs will lose patience with a work environment in which incompetent people are coddled, and they will vote with their feet.
Your last paragraph took the air out of my comment.
Baseball gave me a chance to become a major leaguer. As a youth, I was given the coaching and venues to take my career as far as it would go. It was quickly obvious to everyone, including me, that I wasn't going to get very far down this path. But I got the chance and learned the truth. I can't ask for anything more than that.
Back in the 80s, someone wrote that Dennis Connor, of America's Cup fame, might be the greatest sailor in history. I thought, how do they know? Maybe I'm the greatest sailor in history. I was never given the chance to test that.
Baseball let me take the test. I failed, but I got to take the test, and that made moving on much easier.
Meritocracy gets a lot of hate, in part because people are not used to the real thing, they are used to something that's been corrupted by Goodhart's Law. Indeed, many people give the idea of "real meritocracy" as much credence as your average conservative gives the idea of "real communism", as in the saying "real communism has never been tried" - they think it's impossible and a fool's errand due to both technical barriers and human nature.
Baseball is unusual in that (it seems to me) they really do have it down to a science - all the metrics measure what they're supposed to and, taken together, form a virtually complete picture of whether a player is good. There's no credentialism, for example, no Ph.D. in batting theory that can substitute for a high batting average.
As for why meritocracy is unpopular on the left - well, in hiring it's kinda mutex with "equity". You can't give jobs to the most-qualified and still use hiring as welfare for the less-qualified.
I can see an argument for meritocracy being conservative, in the sense that employees are selling their labor, and meritocracy allows those with the best "product" to benefit. But my base assumption is that the main thing that divides "left-wing" from "right-wing" is a desire for change, and I'm arguing that meritocracy enables outsiders to displace incumbents. And I'm responding to the fact that many on the left have turned against the concept of meritocracy in recent years.
You know where meritocracy in baseball is not manifesting? The fucking Bronx. Yet I keep tuning in like some kind of masochist to watch the worst goddamn season the franchise has had since I was in kindergarten.
I'd take the soft cushy workplace over the ruthless meritocracy any day of the week, and it's not just because I was born incredibly privileged. In professional baseball it's considered perfectly normal to sacrifice player's physical and mental wellbeing to ensure that 5% more bases get balled. On the other hand, it's absolutely not worth sacrificing employees' health and wellbeing to ensure that 5% more burgers get flipped.
OTOH, the customers get irritated if 5% fewer burgers get flipped and so they have to pay 5% more for a burger. (Witness the effects of inflation in the recent US elections.) ... There's a grim tradeoff between protecting people's roles as *producers* and protecting their roles as *consumers*. The US system is the latter, whereas the Japanese system is the former (with lifetime employment but much lower standard of living as measured by physical consumption). ... And that has consequences, because immigrants tend to move toward societies with the latter system, since the standard of living is higher.
Appreciate the article, but doesn't it ignore the entire premise of Moneyball, that the way we measure players for the meritocracy is subject to bias? Moneyball worked not because there was no meritocracy before that, but because the way they established merit was flawed, and there was a better way.
In a cutthroat environment like professional sports, there is incentive to find the flaws in the measurements in order to gain an advantage, but in the short run, any given individual being selected based on merit could be measured using improper values.
I'd say that the point of Moneyball is that they found a better way to measure value and dramatically overperformed until the rest of the league caught up. That is: They did meritocracy better.
There’s this, and then there’s the New York Mets. Ownership paid the equivalent of the GDP of several small countries to sign two aging pitchers, and here we are: pitchers gone, team record 54-66.
I'm late to this article but it hits home. I played baseball up through college, where I was an average at best pitcher (DIII, so this barely qualifies as a humblebrag). It became painfully obvious, as in line drives ricocheting off my body, that I was approaching my performance ceiling and the end was near. It was really hard to refocus since playing baseball had been a core part of my daily routine for almost my entire life. But in some ways it was good to be presented with the objective facts. I have a family member who wants to be an actor. I'd say he is the equivalent of a DIII pitcher. He gets minor jobs but struggles to pay bills and also pursue the dream. He's in his 40s now and I wonder about the lack of an objective reality in that pursuit. It seems like slowly pulling off the world's biggest band-aid.
wow. a very difficult choice. perhaps there is a way to measure performance and include interpersonal relationships in a way that uses the objectivity of choice 1 versus the communitarian spirit of choice 2. a ruthless meritocracy distorts group function into superstars and expendables, that doesn't work in fostering group cohesion (society cohesion, not team cohesion). the other extreme leads to complacency but with sufficient group vision, the group can still accomplish great things. why be a dualist, one or other ?
There are always tradeoffs between the alternatives, you can have some of both. But of course, that means you have some of the downsides of both alternatives as well as some of the upsides. ... I think the problem Maurer points to is deeper: you want to have group cohesion, but that usually requires privileging those who are *already in the group* over those who are not. But replace "people who are already in the group" with "children of affluent white people" and the "some of the downsides" business starts to become clear. ... I think Musa al-Garib was correct that increasing diversity inherently increases we should just get on with it. After all, the late 1800s in the US were a time of rapidly rising diversity (from immigration) and rapidly rising social frictions and yet it's what put the US on top of the world, economically, militarily, and eventually culturally.
IMO this article presents a strawman version of peoples' arguments against meritocracy. It's not that people want option B - it's that meritocracy never works as intended (except maybe in baseball?).
For example, many companies will use the label of "meritocracy" to cover up a bunch of bad practices. If you got fired, it wasn't because of bias against women, or because you rejected the advances of the boss - it's because you weren't meritorious enough!
Look into the "myth of meritocracy" for way more info on why people actually dislike the idea.
I feel like you (and "The Myth of Meritocracy", which I read) are arguing that the problem with meritocracy is that it's not meritocratic enough. In which case: We're agreeing that meritocracy is good, yes?
I think it's more like we're arguing that meritocracy simply does not work in most contexts. It's kind of like a "spherical cow" from physics - in theory it works, but in reality it always falls apart.
There are certain contexts where you can judge solely on merits - highly objective, quantifiable situations, such as baseball (or video games). But in situations that are subjective and qualitative, you can't really achieve a meritocracy because luck, bias, error, etc. plays too much of a role.
Here's the point of confusion I will try to clarify: *Rejecting meritocracy does not mean rejecting judging merits!* I believe in firing the failing worker and promoting the successful one. I just think you can't call it a meritocracy afterwards because it's certainly not always the case that the right workers are fired and the right ones are promoted. Meritocracy implies that you can view a company org chart and say "ah yes, these people are in the exact correct order based on their merits" which is absurd to anyone who has actually worked in a large company.
Point taken. I don't think we're that far apart here; I think I'm articulating what's desirable, and you're pointing out that the Platonic ideal of meritocracy is very difficult (if not impossible) to achieve. And I would agree with you. Though I'd also argue that in most cases, a less-than-perfect evaluation system will be better than no system at all.
Well. What are merits? This is the issue I have. People love pretending. They all pretend they do the same job.
For instance two people in a firm do the “same job” (whatever that means). But the person who on an objective test did a worse “job” (strictly defined” got promoted.
Well we are leaving out pretty much the stuff that makes humans humans. For instance I had this complaint from a coworker that someone who was worse at their job got promoted over them. I had to explain “no one likes you. You’re mean. Grumpy. You don’t go to work events. You don’t make friends here. Your criticize everyone and you’re unpleasant to be around.” Merit isn’t just input:output.
Every time I see a story about people complaining about people leapfrogging them for promotions I ask all of these questions. Like:
1. Is this person full of shit?
2. Is this person doing the bare minimum?
3. Are they fun to work with?
Etc etc.
Meritocracy works if you expand the definition or merit to include more than a very educational vision of “did you get a 95 on your advancement test”. To “did you get an 85.m but bring donuts everyday and organized everyone’s birthdays out of the kindness of your heart. “
Think of it like money all for meritocracy. What is a persons donuts:work ratio multiplied by their output divided by their assholeness.
Of course then there’s people shameful dishonesty where they won’t admit any of that. No one has the courage to say “joy got the promotion because joy is nice. And you’re not.” They just come up with some excuse that some other people can’t read between the lines on and think is honesty. Like “joy is an excellent employee with years of service” when they really mean.”joy is nicer”.
You write "And I don’t understand why “meritocracy” has become a dirty word in many lefty circles in recent years.". The latest batch of statistics says that in the latest US elections, the Democratic voters were both more educated and better paid than the Republican voters. That might indicate why the current crop of "lefties" wants the people who have good jobs to keep them.
Totally agree. Another issue is that retaining incompetent, underperforming, or unpleasant workers makes it hard to retain top talent in fields where such talent is rare--not just sports but science and the arts too. People who have special skills and are extremely good at their jobs will lose patience with a work environment in which incompetent people are coddled, and they will vote with their feet.
Loved this one Jeff. Just the right mix of sports nerd and politics nerd.
Your last paragraph took the air out of my comment.
Baseball gave me a chance to become a major leaguer. As a youth, I was given the coaching and venues to take my career as far as it would go. It was quickly obvious to everyone, including me, that I wasn't going to get very far down this path. But I got the chance and learned the truth. I can't ask for anything more than that.
Back in the 80s, someone wrote that Dennis Connor, of America's Cup fame, might be the greatest sailor in history. I thought, how do they know? Maybe I'm the greatest sailor in history. I was never given the chance to test that.
Baseball let me take the test. I failed, but I got to take the test, and that made moving on much easier.
“I was as useless as FDR’s tap shoes”...A+ metaphor Jeff, I am dead now
Meritocracy gets a lot of hate, in part because people are not used to the real thing, they are used to something that's been corrupted by Goodhart's Law. Indeed, many people give the idea of "real meritocracy" as much credence as your average conservative gives the idea of "real communism", as in the saying "real communism has never been tried" - they think it's impossible and a fool's errand due to both technical barriers and human nature.
Baseball is unusual in that (it seems to me) they really do have it down to a science - all the metrics measure what they're supposed to and, taken together, form a virtually complete picture of whether a player is good. There's no credentialism, for example, no Ph.D. in batting theory that can substitute for a high batting average.
As for why meritocracy is unpopular on the left - well, in hiring it's kinda mutex with "equity". You can't give jobs to the most-qualified and still use hiring as welfare for the less-qualified.
"I think meritocracy benefits outsiders, and therefore should be considered left-wing."
Why does meritocracy have to be left or right? Can't it be neither?
I can see an argument for meritocracy being conservative, in the sense that employees are selling their labor, and meritocracy allows those with the best "product" to benefit. But my base assumption is that the main thing that divides "left-wing" from "right-wing" is a desire for change, and I'm arguing that meritocracy enables outsiders to displace incumbents. And I'm responding to the fact that many on the left have turned against the concept of meritocracy in recent years.
Or better still, both
You know where meritocracy in baseball is not manifesting? The fucking Bronx. Yet I keep tuning in like some kind of masochist to watch the worst goddamn season the franchise has had since I was in kindergarten.
Now you know how the rest of us, who grew up in the 50’s and 60’s, felt, when the Yanks were always at the top of the heap.
I LIKED IT BETTER THAT WAY
I'd take the soft cushy workplace over the ruthless meritocracy any day of the week, and it's not just because I was born incredibly privileged. In professional baseball it's considered perfectly normal to sacrifice player's physical and mental wellbeing to ensure that 5% more bases get balled. On the other hand, it's absolutely not worth sacrificing employees' health and wellbeing to ensure that 5% more burgers get flipped.
OTOH, the customers get irritated if 5% fewer burgers get flipped and so they have to pay 5% more for a burger. (Witness the effects of inflation in the recent US elections.) ... There's a grim tradeoff between protecting people's roles as *producers* and protecting their roles as *consumers*. The US system is the latter, whereas the Japanese system is the former (with lifetime employment but much lower standard of living as measured by physical consumption). ... And that has consequences, because immigrants tend to move toward societies with the latter system, since the standard of living is higher.
Appreciate the article, but doesn't it ignore the entire premise of Moneyball, that the way we measure players for the meritocracy is subject to bias? Moneyball worked not because there was no meritocracy before that, but because the way they established merit was flawed, and there was a better way.
In a cutthroat environment like professional sports, there is incentive to find the flaws in the measurements in order to gain an advantage, but in the short run, any given individual being selected based on merit could be measured using improper values.
I'd say that the point of Moneyball is that they found a better way to measure value and dramatically overperformed until the rest of the league caught up. That is: They did meritocracy better.
Absolutely that's the point, but then we have to ask how well are we currently doing meritocracy as a society?
There’s this, and then there’s the New York Mets. Ownership paid the equivalent of the GDP of several small countries to sign two aging pitchers, and here we are: pitchers gone, team record 54-66.
HA. Thanks for reminding me the Yanks aren't the worst team in New York.
I'm late to this article but it hits home. I played baseball up through college, where I was an average at best pitcher (DIII, so this barely qualifies as a humblebrag). It became painfully obvious, as in line drives ricocheting off my body, that I was approaching my performance ceiling and the end was near. It was really hard to refocus since playing baseball had been a core part of my daily routine for almost my entire life. But in some ways it was good to be presented with the objective facts. I have a family member who wants to be an actor. I'd say he is the equivalent of a DIII pitcher. He gets minor jobs but struggles to pay bills and also pursue the dream. He's in his 40s now and I wonder about the lack of an objective reality in that pursuit. It seems like slowly pulling off the world's biggest band-aid.
wow. a very difficult choice. perhaps there is a way to measure performance and include interpersonal relationships in a way that uses the objectivity of choice 1 versus the communitarian spirit of choice 2. a ruthless meritocracy distorts group function into superstars and expendables, that doesn't work in fostering group cohesion (society cohesion, not team cohesion). the other extreme leads to complacency but with sufficient group vision, the group can still accomplish great things. why be a dualist, one or other ?
There are always tradeoffs between the alternatives, you can have some of both. But of course, that means you have some of the downsides of both alternatives as well as some of the upsides. ... I think the problem Maurer points to is deeper: you want to have group cohesion, but that usually requires privileging those who are *already in the group* over those who are not. But replace "people who are already in the group" with "children of affluent white people" and the "some of the downsides" business starts to become clear. ... I think Musa al-Garib was correct that increasing diversity inherently increases we should just get on with it. After all, the late 1800s in the US were a time of rapidly rising diversity (from immigration) and rapidly rising social frictions and yet it's what put the US on top of the world, economically, militarily, and eventually culturally.
IMO this article presents a strawman version of peoples' arguments against meritocracy. It's not that people want option B - it's that meritocracy never works as intended (except maybe in baseball?).
For example, many companies will use the label of "meritocracy" to cover up a bunch of bad practices. If you got fired, it wasn't because of bias against women, or because you rejected the advances of the boss - it's because you weren't meritorious enough!
Look into the "myth of meritocracy" for way more info on why people actually dislike the idea.
I feel like you (and "The Myth of Meritocracy", which I read) are arguing that the problem with meritocracy is that it's not meritocratic enough. In which case: We're agreeing that meritocracy is good, yes?
I think it's more like we're arguing that meritocracy simply does not work in most contexts. It's kind of like a "spherical cow" from physics - in theory it works, but in reality it always falls apart.
There are certain contexts where you can judge solely on merits - highly objective, quantifiable situations, such as baseball (or video games). But in situations that are subjective and qualitative, you can't really achieve a meritocracy because luck, bias, error, etc. plays too much of a role.
Here's the point of confusion I will try to clarify: *Rejecting meritocracy does not mean rejecting judging merits!* I believe in firing the failing worker and promoting the successful one. I just think you can't call it a meritocracy afterwards because it's certainly not always the case that the right workers are fired and the right ones are promoted. Meritocracy implies that you can view a company org chart and say "ah yes, these people are in the exact correct order based on their merits" which is absurd to anyone who has actually worked in a large company.
Point taken. I don't think we're that far apart here; I think I'm articulating what's desirable, and you're pointing out that the Platonic ideal of meritocracy is very difficult (if not impossible) to achieve. And I would agree with you. Though I'd also argue that in most cases, a less-than-perfect evaluation system will be better than no system at all.
Well. What are merits? This is the issue I have. People love pretending. They all pretend they do the same job.
For instance two people in a firm do the “same job” (whatever that means). But the person who on an objective test did a worse “job” (strictly defined” got promoted.
Well we are leaving out pretty much the stuff that makes humans humans. For instance I had this complaint from a coworker that someone who was worse at their job got promoted over them. I had to explain “no one likes you. You’re mean. Grumpy. You don’t go to work events. You don’t make friends here. Your criticize everyone and you’re unpleasant to be around.” Merit isn’t just input:output.
Every time I see a story about people complaining about people leapfrogging them for promotions I ask all of these questions. Like:
1. Is this person full of shit?
2. Is this person doing the bare minimum?
3. Are they fun to work with?
Etc etc.
Meritocracy works if you expand the definition or merit to include more than a very educational vision of “did you get a 95 on your advancement test”. To “did you get an 85.m but bring donuts everyday and organized everyone’s birthdays out of the kindness of your heart. “
Think of it like money all for meritocracy. What is a persons donuts:work ratio multiplied by their output divided by their assholeness.
Of course then there’s people shameful dishonesty where they won’t admit any of that. No one has the courage to say “joy got the promotion because joy is nice. And you’re not.” They just come up with some excuse that some other people can’t read between the lines on and think is honesty. Like “joy is an excellent employee with years of service” when they really mean.”joy is nicer”.
I’m an NFL fan. Cutting players is like trimming your toenails-if you don’t do it, it will be a lot uglier when you are finally forced to!
Another terrific column from an underrated talent.
You write "And I don’t understand why “meritocracy” has become a dirty word in many lefty circles in recent years.". The latest batch of statistics says that in the latest US elections, the Democratic voters were both more educated and better paid than the Republican voters. That might indicate why the current crop of "lefties" wants the people who have good jobs to keep them.