In this topic, I want to take a more philosophical approach and address the issues of meritocracy and absolute equality in the sense of what we each think is so-called ideal. Of course, perfection doesn't ever really exist. But an economy can be meritocratic or not in the practical sense the way a ball can be round or not in the practical sense such that a basketball is round and a football is not especially a football with an air-leak. In any case, we first need some definitions. In the economic sense, I use absolute equality to refer to an economy in which all people each have roughly the same amount of wealth/money. The word 'absolute' in that sense doesn't mean the implementation of such a system is necessarily unrealistically perfect, but rather means the people are literally equal in the simple sense of practically having the same amount of money/wealth as opposed to a more abstract equality based on some other merit-based or non-merit-based discrimination. In contrast, in the economic sense, I use meritocratic economy to refer to one in which presumably there is not absolute equality because some people accrue more wealth than others but also in which there is not inequality from non-merit-based discrimination. Meritocracy might be described as equality of opportunity or equality in the ratio between each person's respective merit and respective wealth, which is why I use the word absolute to distance it from the simpler, less relative concept of equality. For instance, if 5 people crash land on an island, and for the sake of argument all have roughly the same level of physical strength and health and all have the same IQ and general intelligence, but 1 of the 5 is very lazy and non-materialistic and the other 4 are hard-working people who enjoy personal comforts, and they divide the viable farming and tree-cutting land up evenly between the 5, and the 4 work very hard and each build themselves a little mansion and feast every night and become fat and the last 1 lazily sits about barely working up a shed to live in and eating only meager amounts to stay alive and avoid the worst hunger pains living on the border of poverty, that would seem to be a meritocratic economy. In contrast, if the 1 lazy guy took out a gun and said he wants everyone to be equal, and maybe even 2 of the other 4 agree in the principle of equality to give them a majority and turn into a democracy, but in any case they split up the wealth so that all 5 divide up the food-growing and mansion-building work of the 4 so that the original 4 each have slightly less than before while the lazy guy has more than before so they are all equal in result; that gives us absolute equality but takes away the special equality of a meritocratic economy.
Simply by those definitions, it seems clear to me that a meritocratic distribution of wealth is very preferable to absolute equality (but both absolute equality or a meritocratic distribution would be preferable to what we have now). The example makes it even more clear, but that is because it isolates every factor except for laziness, work ethic and materialism (i.e. the desire for comforts and luxuries), and the difference in personal productive output associated with working more.
This brings us to the question of what is merit? If merit is simply defined by fairness or desert, i.e. what one deserves, then that makes it very subjective and perhaps relative. We know discrimination based on race, gender, eye-color, etc. is not meritocratic. But what is it that we shall discriminate based on that isn't unfair or undeserving? Martin Luther King said to judge a man by his character, but what is that and how does it apply to economic distribution. If you look at the example previously of the lazy man on an island with 4 people roughly the same in every other potentially relevant way besides laziness, work ethic and materialism, and you feel as I do, then we agree already that one aspect of merit is work ethic versus laziness. So now we know one thing that is merit (laziness/work-ethic) and several things that aren't (race, gender, eye-color, socioeconomic class of birth), which in and of itself gives us a rough idea of the categorical dichotomy. Nonetheless, now we need to look at more complicated things that could potentially be considered merit:
- (1) education
(2) intelligence
(3) natural physical strength and physical abilities
(4) strength and physical abilities gained through practice, training or similar personal effort
(5) previous work ethic
(6) the results of previous work ethic (e.g. academic achievement)
(7) natural physical beauty in inter-subjective sense
(8) achieved physical beautification (e.g. having healthy teeth from brushing daily as opposed to being toothless and morbidly obese from overeating)
(9) relative behavioral popularity in an inter-subjectively judged sense (e.g. being trustworthy, having good credit, being the kind of person people like where determined by behavior, etc.)
Insofar as we can't agree on merit, we will have multiple different forms of meritocratic wealth distribution to decide between. But I wonder if anybody really wants absolute equality or if it's simply an issue of choosing between different versions of allegedly meritocratic distributions of wealth none of which would give absolute equality.
My answers
Firstly, let it be known I would prefer a society in which nobody unable to avoid poverty is in poverty. However, I wouldn't exactly consider it an instance of poverty if someone lives in poverty conditions via their own laziness or non-materialism or otherwise voluntary choice to live below the poverty line, just like I wouldn't consider anorexia to be an instance of world hunger. For instance, if we tie merit to desert, we might say that nobody deserves to be poor -- at least in the sense of someone involuntarily stuck in poverty not someone who chooses to live in poverty-like conditions. We might say that, even if the Little Red Hen deserves more pie than the lazy people who didn't help her make the pie but could have helped, the crippled hen down the street who couldn't help make it still doesn't deserve to starve.
Anyway, noting that I prefer what I see as merit-based distributions, I would judge how meritocratic I think the distribution of wealth in an economy is by expecting to see inequalities in results based on these traits of the previous 10:
(1) education
(4) strength and physical abilities gained through practice, training or similar personal effort
(5) previous work ethic
(6) the results of previous work ethic (e.g. academic achievement)
(8) achieved physical beautification (e.g. having healthy teeth from brushing daily as opposed to being toothless and morbidly obese from overeating)
(9) relative behavioral popularity in an inter-subjectively judged sense (e.g. being trustworthy, having good credit, being the kind of person people like where determined by behavior, etc.)
(10) laziness versus work ethic (which correlates in many but not all contexts to productive output, subtracting certain natural severe disability)
I would hope not to see any significant inequalities of distribution based on these traits, noting that we can not expect anything to be perfect like the roundness of a real live ball:
(2) intelligence
(3) natural physical strength and physical abilities
(7) natural physical beauty in inter-subjective sense
If we don't exclude these three, I think that is like saying that the Little Red Hen's crippled neighbor who was unable to help make the food deserves to starve to death. The word 'deserve' may be equivocal, subjective and/or relative, but no matter what it means, I can't say that the crippled hen deserves to starve even if the other lazy animals who declined to help make the bread deserve to go hungry until they learn to pull their weight. (Incidentally, in real life humans, we might keep in mind that disability is not so black-and-white. Consider the success of Stephen Hawking whose brilliance makes the rest of us look mentally disabled in comparison.) Moreover, we might consider the fact that we all start off as babies, and failure to fulfill the basic needs of babies on grounds of their universal disability would make the species go extinct. Luckily, the family structure and voluntary charity seem very good at eliminating this kind of poverty and starvation. Rather, poverty seems to be more of a macro-community problem in which entire communities, nations or oppressed groups become poor with no regard to merit or disability, which has little to do with the debate between equality and merit. In other words, it seems to me that in real life people don't ever starve to death simply because they individually are unable to support themselves since it is so common for us to charitably take care of such people (while still refusing to give charity to those who do not need it but are trying to abuse the would-be charity -- like a spoiled, lazy 23-year-old finally getting kicked out of her parent's house for not paying rent or doing chores but yet her disabled 93-year-old grandmother doesn't get kicked out). Rather, it is because the entire community gets poor such that they can't take care of each other when needed, e.g. the working father loses his job when the big plant closes down and he, the lazy daughter, and the dependent grandmother all starve to death, maybe her a little quicker unfortunately. The point is I think perhaps the idea that the disabled or otherwise naturally unlucky might be at risk in a meritocratic economy is misplaced and can easily become a red herring or strawman.
Another issue that might come up is that of the preferred and/or most effective political system at bringing out whichever economic results we would like to see. In some ways, this is a separate issue since two people can agree on what qualifies as merit in terms of wealth distribution and thus agree on which inequalities in the absolute sense they would find tolerable or supportable and which they would oppose, but then these same people may disagree on which political system and state-enforced policies they want to allegedly lead to those results. But the two separate issues can also overlap insofar as one might allege that the desired economic results couldn't be made to come about even in the practical sense in which a ball is round or that the politics required would be a solution more undesirable or destructive in some way than the problem it fixes. In any case, I will run down quickly the politics I would prefer that I believe would lead to practical meritocratic economic results. On the issue of the dependent, e.g. those so disabled and lacking in previously gained wealth that they are unable to survive comfortably without charity, I personally am opposed in principle to forced charity by which I mean a state or national government requires people give to charity or taxing the working to give to charity. While as I said before that I do not think the starving crippled hen deserves to starve, I also don't think the Little Red Hen deserves to be routinely mugged by the state. However, in practice, I think such forced charity effectively can lead to the same results since I believe people would take care of the dependent anyway, so my opposition is moot and I would find these kind of policies tolerable even in theory (like if you put a gun to my head and order me to eat a delicious piece of cake I was going to eat anyway). (And, even more, in the real life less philosophical sense, I would be adamantly opposed to, say, the sudden abolition of social security or state-funded welfare for the truly needy due to the many complications of the government and economy we have today and the simple fact that that would hurt all those poor people in a way that is completely and utterly intolerable in my analysis and opinion.) Moving on, in theory overall I support a truly free-market system. By truly free-market, I mean one in which the masses can't be exploited by the few via the appropriate of natural resources (as addressed in this forum topic, this forum topic, and this blog post. Ironic as it may be, I believe the free market best meets the goal of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Although, after basic needs are met, I also think it happens to provide for a meritocratic distribution. That's not to say that productive output is merit. You'll notice I did not include it in the list of 10 above. I don't, because it would seem to say the dependent such as some severely crippled people deserve to be poor or starve. Rather, politically speaking, I think as a rule giving people the right to the fruits of their own labor leads to a meritocratic distribution based on the qualities of merit listed above, and either the tendency of humans to take care of the dependent voluntarily or the tolerable -- although philosophically contradictory -- institution of state-forced ways of making this charity occur. A middle-ground, where applicable, is forced insurance such as is done in the USA in various ways with disability insurance, car insurance, unemployment and retirement and now the private health care insurance mandate. Why does giving people the right to the fruits of their labor lead to people with qualities I have listed as merit having more? Of course, laziness versus work ethic is heavily tied to output with the difference mainly dealing with the disabled and extremely unlucky. Also, academic achievement and strength training as the result of personal effort are valuable in the free-market leading such people to more success. I do think methods need to be in place to slightly help prop up those with slight natural disadvantages, particularly say at the grade school level, e.g. kids with slight learning disabilities getting extra attention in school, but where the disability is extreme then the person would be included in the dependent disabled whose welfare has already been addressed. Again, many so-called disabled people or cripples needn't be lumped in to this category of dependent people. Consider the amazing Stephen Hawking's success -- a man who's amazing not because of or in spite of his so-called disability but regardless of it. And, again, let's not forget that it goes without saying that we all get help needed to succeed when we are babies and dependent young children which nobody including myself would argue be taken away, so that removes any argument such as 'well Hawking would have never been successful in your system because he wouldn't have been given the opportunity or maybe he would have starved to death before he became successful' because if that was the case then we would all never make it out of childhood. If a man like Hawking isn't successful in an economy, it isn't meritocratic.
Also, please note, the politics themselves aren't necessarily meritocratic because in the old, strict sense that might simply mean a government run by people with high IQs or a dictatorship in which the dictator is the person with the highest IQ. Rather, the politics lead to a meritocratic distribution of wealth. Of course, insofar as wealth represents power and particularly political power, which in the borderline anarchism of a free-market it seems to, then indeed that happens to also be one form of meritocracy in the political sense.
So what do you think? Assuming you don't want absolute equality, which of those 10 things do you include in merit? Do you include anything else? If you actually prefer absolute equality, please address that thought experiment with the lazy man and 4 hard-working, productive, mansion-building, excessive food-gathering people who live on that island.