A: All life on the planet is bound by the rules of nature (yes, even us); B: Nature can never be made perfectly fair (yes, we can bend the rules but we can't remake them); C: Most of the country is scientifically illiterate or close to it so A and B are meaningless; all of which leads to D: A fairness issue wherein everyone is half right and everyone is simultaneously full of shit, thus creating the perfect framework for an American argument.
I think lucky is a tricky one. It isn’t necessarily fair. Yeah if two people spin the wheel, and the wheel isn’t rigged, they both have the same shot at winning the prize. But the other factors you list impact how often you get to spin the wheel. Unless the odds are astronomical, more songs usually means more winning.
I'd replace "rich parents" with MARRIED parents, given the huge evidence of the correlation between that and outcomes. I am unconvinced that the "rich" aspect of "rich parents" is not a proxy for inherited versions of the other factors.
"Location of birth" is the missing factor. Being born in modern America is a huge advantage over being born in other settings.
I think this argument might be mushy to the point of being meaningless. Lots of confounders. I'd say luck, charisma, and work ethic are all about as socially determined as how rich your parents are.
Luck is pretty well covered by other commenters.
It's a lot easier to have work ethic if you have time for it and don't come from a background where you have to spend a lot of time working on things that aren't considered "work" (eg: taking care of sick parents who don't have the means to hire caregivers, longer commutes because you can't afford to live near your job, difficulty focusing because you are hungry, etc etc)
"Charisma" depends a lot on socially constructed notions of what is considered likeable. For randomized-controlled-trial evidence of this see audit studies of discrimination in employment.
So by my reckoning, that leaves raw inborn intelligence (but not as measured by educational achievement or any of the other ways we traditionally do it, since those are just as imprecated into the above as any of the other criteria) as the only measure that could be described as meritocratic by your standards.
Which leads to the whole fairness obsession. If meritocracy as a concept worked, we would presumably see high levels of intergenerational income mobility in the US, but we don't.
So when we use the "life isn't fair" argument, we are basically just arguing for a return/continuation of the aristocratic model, which I think most Americans don't want to admit to, hence the desire to couch it in meritocratic terms.
Damn I think I'm starting a blog, in the comment section of your blog.
I think you've fallen into the same trap described in the article, thinking that socially determined things can't be meritocratic, confusing meritocracy with fairness. And most of the truly wealthy lose their wealth within 2 generations so we must at least have some mobility.
I do think that conservatives overstate mobility, but I think liberals understate it.
I think maybe the confusion is over the word "merit," which doesn't really mean anything to me. I don't want to put words in your mouth, so can you tell us what you mean by the word? I don't see it defined anywhere. To me, merit is just sort of a way of saying "nothing succeeds like success!"
Two basketball players with identical skill level and work ethic. One is a foot taller than the other. The taller one gets picked first on the playground because he has more merit. It is not fair to the shorter one that he's not any taller than he is.
Merit is the ability to produce value. Meritocracies are not always fair.
Excellent piece, BJ! Thanks for the food for thought. Let's say every citizen possessed at least one of these traits -- do you think there are enough opportunities here for everyone to live well? Perhaps that level of merit would create all the necessary opportunities.
Does society on the whole have a responsibility for people who possess none of these traits? I guess some of this will boil down to individual beliefs on free will. I, too, suspect work ethic is to some degree heritable, and luck is really at play in the acquisition of any of the traits in the grid. Don't get me wrong, it seems like a good grid. I just wonder if we shouldn't be doing more for people who are unable to help themselves, even when they seem unwilling.
Two basketball players with identical skill level and work ethic. One is a foot taller than the other. The taller one gets picked first on the playground because he has more merit. It is not fair to the shorter one that he's not any taller than he is.
So meritocratic means picking the best regardless of whether they presonally did anything to deserve it.
It's not obvious why one person being taller is unfair but one person being luckier is fair; i suppose it could be if everyone has as much good luck over their lifetime as everyone else, but I don't think that's the case.
To a certain extent people make their own luck, and someone with more intelligence, charisma, hard-workingness and rich parents can both put themselves in more situations where they might be lucky, and exploit those situations better.
Also, I suspect there's a significant genetic element to work ethics (and other personality characteristics).
Hard work is hard to define but the closest well studied factor, conscientiousness is ~40% heritable
A: All life on the planet is bound by the rules of nature (yes, even us); B: Nature can never be made perfectly fair (yes, we can bend the rules but we can't remake them); C: Most of the country is scientifically illiterate or close to it so A and B are meaningless; all of which leads to D: A fairness issue wherein everyone is half right and everyone is simultaneously full of shit, thus creating the perfect framework for an American argument.
I think lucky is a tricky one. It isn’t necessarily fair. Yeah if two people spin the wheel, and the wheel isn’t rigged, they both have the same shot at winning the prize. But the other factors you list impact how often you get to spin the wheel. Unless the odds are astronomical, more songs usually means more winning.
I'd replace "rich parents" with MARRIED parents, given the huge evidence of the correlation between that and outcomes. I am unconvinced that the "rich" aspect of "rich parents" is not a proxy for inherited versions of the other factors.
"Location of birth" is the missing factor. Being born in modern America is a huge advantage over being born in other settings.
I think this argument might be mushy to the point of being meaningless. Lots of confounders. I'd say luck, charisma, and work ethic are all about as socially determined as how rich your parents are.
Luck is pretty well covered by other commenters.
It's a lot easier to have work ethic if you have time for it and don't come from a background where you have to spend a lot of time working on things that aren't considered "work" (eg: taking care of sick parents who don't have the means to hire caregivers, longer commutes because you can't afford to live near your job, difficulty focusing because you are hungry, etc etc)
"Charisma" depends a lot on socially constructed notions of what is considered likeable. For randomized-controlled-trial evidence of this see audit studies of discrimination in employment.
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/09/11/1706255114
https://economics.mit.edu/files/11449
So by my reckoning, that leaves raw inborn intelligence (but not as measured by educational achievement or any of the other ways we traditionally do it, since those are just as imprecated into the above as any of the other criteria) as the only measure that could be described as meritocratic by your standards.
Which leads to the whole fairness obsession. If meritocracy as a concept worked, we would presumably see high levels of intergenerational income mobility in the US, but we don't.
See the Economist:
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/14/americans-overestimate-social-mobility-in-their-country
or the Economic Policy Institute:
https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/
So when we use the "life isn't fair" argument, we are basically just arguing for a return/continuation of the aristocratic model, which I think most Americans don't want to admit to, hence the desire to couch it in meritocratic terms.
Damn I think I'm starting a blog, in the comment section of your blog.
Reference for the claim in the other reply.
https://money.com/rich-families-lose-wealth/
Fwiw, intergenerational poverty is definitely a thing, and I'm not saying it's not.
I think you've fallen into the same trap described in the article, thinking that socially determined things can't be meritocratic, confusing meritocracy with fairness. And most of the truly wealthy lose their wealth within 2 generations so we must at least have some mobility.
I do think that conservatives overstate mobility, but I think liberals understate it.
I think maybe the confusion is over the word "merit," which doesn't really mean anything to me. I don't want to put words in your mouth, so can you tell us what you mean by the word? I don't see it defined anywhere. To me, merit is just sort of a way of saying "nothing succeeds like success!"
Two basketball players with identical skill level and work ethic. One is a foot taller than the other. The taller one gets picked first on the playground because he has more merit. It is not fair to the shorter one that he's not any taller than he is.
Merit is the ability to produce value. Meritocracies are not always fair.
Excellent piece, BJ! Thanks for the food for thought. Let's say every citizen possessed at least one of these traits -- do you think there are enough opportunities here for everyone to live well? Perhaps that level of merit would create all the necessary opportunities.
Does society on the whole have a responsibility for people who possess none of these traits? I guess some of this will boil down to individual beliefs on free will. I, too, suspect work ethic is to some degree heritable, and luck is really at play in the acquisition of any of the traits in the grid. Don't get me wrong, it seems like a good grid. I just wonder if we shouldn't be doing more for people who are unable to help themselves, even when they seem unwilling.
It would be interesting if you expanded on what you mean by "meritocratic" and "fair".
Two basketball players with identical skill level and work ethic. One is a foot taller than the other. The taller one gets picked first on the playground because he has more merit. It is not fair to the shorter one that he's not any taller than he is.
So meritocratic means picking the best regardless of whether they presonally did anything to deserve it.
It's not obvious why one person being taller is unfair but one person being luckier is fair; i suppose it could be if everyone has as much good luck over their lifetime as everyone else, but I don't think that's the case.
To a certain extent people make their own luck, and someone with more intelligence, charisma, hard-workingness and rich parents can both put themselves in more situations where they might be lucky, and exploit those situations better.
Also, I suspect there's a significant genetic element to work ethics (and other personality characteristics).