Beyond meritocracy

Meritocracy V: The solution - unscored lives

What would it mean to transcend meritocracy? Would it require rejecting the best candidates for jobs?

No. Moving beyond meritocracy means transitioning from a reductive sorting mechanism to an expansive one; from narrow to holistic human criteria. It means placing each job in the context of the society which it is intended to serve, and understanding humans in the fullness of their contributions to society through the adoption of a particular role.

To illustrate this, let’s consider the example of a multi-generational family farm. Upon the retirement of one generation, the time will come to select the next stewards of the land. In this selection process, should our conception of merit not recognize that it is desirable for candidates to be descendants of the previous generation?

Should we not recognize the shortcomings of a deracinated, global search for whomever has relevant but generic credentials or has demonstrated profit maximization at other farms? Should we not see that in this search, viewing family and distant strangers as interchangeable cogs loses something of great value?

Only the owners’ descendants will be able to continue a story, a history, a continuity, a place, a culture, and a community. Their ascension would reaffirm the moral requirement for one generation to care for the next. It would recenter the importance of family, loyalty, love, and the charitable need to elevate those whom we have responsibility for.

These children, in turn, will understand that the land represents not the next step in the development of their personal careers, but in the inheritance of a responsibility which must subsume them in an economy of self-sacrifice. These children alone would naturally look beyond short-term profit maximization to a multi-generational journey; a deep future of care for land and people. They will know that, in time, they must ultimately make the same loving sacrifice of having and raising children of their own.

We must recognize that our narrow but totalizing meritocracy, as it stands today, is neither ethical nor sustainable. Its powerful efficiencies maximize short-term profits but preclude the reproduction of society through crushing effects on fertility. These are not minor flaws - they are existential and must be addressed.

Correcting this reductive approach must not be reductive in the opposite direction. We should appreciate that the credentialed meritocratic economy is an effective mechanism for ensuring that capable people are matched with demanding jobs. We don’t want to lose the ability to distinguish technical merit.

It may be, in our family farm example, that the next generation of this particular family are fundamentally unfit in some way to assume responsibility. And that’s okay: our post-meritocracy still concludes that each person should take up the role that they are most suited for - it just asks that we consider expansive factors in our determination of merit.

How, then, do we intelligently move beyond meritocracy? Our family farm example is, of course, quite small and neat. But there are principles which emerge out of it which are applicable to the wider economy. I suggest that our strategy will be built upon the following pillars:

1. Solve for pattern;

2. Connections over nodes;

3. Work in time;

4. Passion is agency;

5. Externalize capital;

6. Value values.