The Myth of Meritocracy
The United States is a nation obsessed with superiority. Being the best at something is truly admirable in America, along with making money. And if you’re the best at making money, well, the average American will worship you like some kind of god of the free market.
Most people think this is normal because we live in a meritocracy. A place where talent and effort determine who succeeds and who doesn’t, a totally fair and egalitarian way of structuring society. Those who work hard are rewarded, and those who don’t suffer. For hundreds of years, the American dream and the idea of “meritocracy” have been indoctrinated into our brains by the ultra-wealthy, mainstream media, and our government. There’s only one problem with this analysis. The U.S. isn’t a meritocracy, and meritocracy isn’t something we should strive for in the first place.
Now you might be thinking to yourself, “how could the idea of a meritocracy be bad”? I’ll delve into that in the second part of this article, but first I want to focus on the first myth: The U.S. isn’t a meritocracy.
Most people who are wealthy have been afforded a complex series of privileges their entire life, such as not having to work a part-time job while in school, not having to take care of a sick family member, the list can go on and on. Successful people have a tendency to feel like they’ve earned their success and they deserve it. As a natural consequence, they also feel that poor people deserve their situation.
Most wealthy people justify their success with their supposed good choices, intelligence, and hard work. While these things can definitely play a role in success, the correlation between these things and privilege is well established and shouldn’t be overlooked.
So what does this have to with meritocracy? The common claim is that just like Monopoly, everyone starts out on equal footing, and it's only through cleverness and hard work that anyone comes out ahead. Everyone has the same opportunities, and it’s up to them to take advantage of them. On the surface, this sounds like a good idea, but it has some real problems. First of all, it should be obvious that modern capitalism is nothing like a fair game of Monopoly (fun fact, Monopoly was originally created to critique capitalism, but of course over the years it's lost its original meaning).
The truth is if you’re poor in America, no matter how hard you work the deck is completely stacked against you. The most expensive thing in America is being poor. If you live in poverty, you actually have to spend more on daily necessities in the long run because you can’t afford to buy in bulk. You don’t see many homeless people with Costco memberships.
They also have to spend a larger portion of their income on basic necessities. Up to 70% of a poor American's income is spent on food, housing, and transportation. After basic necessities are covered, poor Americans making $15,000-$20,000 per year are left with just $30 per month to save in the bank. This makes it impossible to save money to start a business, get a college degree, or even look for a better job.
If you can’t save money, even a small unexpected expense can have disastrous consequences. Right now, 46% of Americans say they can’t afford to pay a surprise bill of just $400. Any surprise medical bill, vehicle repair, or home maintenance is enough to plunge someone working a minimum wage job into poverty.
So now that we know America isn’t a meritocracy, who benefits from perpetuating this myth? The ultra-wealthy. By convincing people that all their money is earned as a result of hard work, they’re able to justify exploiting millions of people for their labor, while also being able to blame poor people for their own problems.
Meritocracy is one of the foundational pillars of modern capitalism. It’s most likely the only thing preventing full-out revolution, as the American working class doesn’t see themselves as an exploited group of workers, but rather temporarily embarrassed billionaires. The notion that we could one day become a billionaire is deeply ingrained in our heads from years of propaganda. This is because deep down the only way someone could logically support capitalism is if they believed that one day they could exploit their fellow human beings and join the ultra-wealthy.
Now for the second point of this article, meritocracy is a bad idea and isn’t something we should strive for. The main function of a meritocracy is that some people will win and some people will lose, according to whatever your definition of “winning” and “losing” are.
Instead of encouraging winners and losers, we should structure society in such a way that everyone is afforded a decent quality of life. Where life isn’t seen as one big antagonistic competition like it is under capitalism, but instead a collaboration of individuals expressing their creative talents. Where everyone contributes however they’re able to, and everyone benefits from societal advancements.
In modern capitalism, almost everything is seen as a competition. High schoolers are inoculated with an exaggerated competitive spirit, where they’re trained to worship academic success as preparation for getting into the best universities. In university, college students compete amongst one another to get the best internships so that they can have the highest paying jobs out of school. Once they’ve graduated and are in the workforce, they compete to have the biggest houses, the newest cars, the most expensive suits, etc.
Capitalism and the idea of “meritocracy” cripples the individual. While competing with others, people involuntarily become prisoners of their own ego, causing them to feel increasingly insecure, lonely, and deprived of the simple naive enjoyment of life they had when they were children. This leaves people longing for their childhood, a time before they had to worry about adult responsibilities such as finding a job and taking exams.
This antagonistic competitive atmosphere also creates a society full of individualistic, selfish, and hypercompetitive individuals. This is because our economic system forces people to compete with one another for jobs in order to survive, causing humans to see each other as competition, essentially stripping others of their humanity. Under capitalism, people essentially compete with one another to deprive each other of joy.
Meritocracy might have sounded like a good idea in feudal times, but there's no need for it today. Let’s leave the idea of meritocracy behind and work together to build a more equitable society, one that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few. A society where people work not to enrich a small few but to benefit all of humanity collectively. A society where everyone is rewarded for their individual talents and skills and life is viewed as a collaboration instead of a competition.
