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meritocracy

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Does Anyone Deserve Anything?

image of ladder with multiple rungs affixed to Twitter cloud

Elon Musk buying Twitter displays the incredible power – economic, political, and social – wielded by the super-rich. Did they earn their place?

In 1998, Charles Kushner donated 2.5 million dollars to Harvard.  In 1999, his son Jared – apparently with mediocre grades and mediocre test scores – started college there. At 19, he served as a corporate vice president – within the umbrella of his father’s company. He is now worth several hundred million dollars. Jared Kushner, one might argue, did not achieve financial success based on merit but was largely the beneficiary of parental largesse. What about Jeffrey Bezos, the founder of Amazon? His family was less wealthy, his personal academic skills more apparent. Did he deserve to go to Princeton? Does he deserve his fortune of over 100 billion dollars? These are extreme examples. Take a studious college student who, when everyone else was drinking, would study. Do they deserve to go to medical school?

Meritocracy is a political and economic system that aims to award people based on personal merit (e.g., skill, talent, and diligence).

The United States is, ostensibly, meritocratic. One question to ask is whether this is a good way to organize society.

Merit has some obvious advantages. Given any societally important job – plumber, teacher, nurse, construction worker, artist – there are benefits to having people good at that job do that job. Similarly, internal to the logic of a market economy, companies should want capable, talented people fulfilling specific roles. Although we should not assume that compensation is a metric of the societal value of a position, nor that meritocracy automatically serves the public interest. The ethicist Michael Sandel contrasts the poorly compensated high school teacher with the successful meth dealer. Likewise, it is in the economic interest of ExxonMobil to hire excellent lawyers, but perhaps not in the public good.

There are then broader considerations of what kind of merit should be rewarded in a society. Is it purely about the capacity to deliver shareholder value, or do we want a society that awards moral virtues like kindness, justice, and compassion as well?  Meritocracy is also challenging to implement.

How does one construct an effective meritocracy that prevents the caprices and injustices of society from interfering in the assessment of effort and achievement?

The concern is especially acute as it is in the personal and family interest of those who succeed to attempt to warp and distort that system to secure further success. Many would deny the United States is a functioning meritocracy at all. Would Jared Kushner have achieved his level of personal financial success if he had been from a poor family in a hollowed-out mining town?

But there is a different question to ask about meritocracy, regardless of how well it happens to be functioning. Do those who succeed in a meritocratic system deserve their success? In a widely circulated tweet, political scientist Sarah Liu asserted: “Academics who announce their accomplishments should disclose their privileges. Do you come from an academic family? Are you white? Are you a man? Are you straight? Are you cis-gender? Are you able-bodied? Are you a citizen of where you work? All of the above?”

Liu is making at least one obvious mistake. As Elizabeth Williams recently argued here, privilege is not about some set of personal checkboxes, but about structural injustices.

We can accept that racism is a societal factor that, on average, benefits white people and harms those of other races without taking it to be the determining factor in the life of every white person and every black person.

But let’s follow Liu’s logic for the moment. If society eliminated problems of wealth inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism, would success then be earned? Presumably not, for we can always extend the list. Did people come from family money, go to a private school, have fortunate mentorship? Alternatively, do they struggle with mental health, family responsibilities, or just straight-up bad luck?

What about intelligence, hard work, and diligence? Can we claim credit for these? Hardly.

Our natural gifts are as arbitrary as parental wealth. One does not deserve to be smart, good-looking, or even hard working ­­– they simply are.

It does not matter whether or not these traits are genetic, or if they are a result of good schooling and parenting. In no case are they truly self-made. Iterated out, while choices may matter, everyone’s life is impacted by a thousand and one things that they had no control over. Ultimately, our success is not our own, but due to our family, our friends, our colleagues, institutional support, and just plain luck. If we accept such logic, what are the implications?

It does not tell us whether meritocracy is a good or bad system of political organization. Awarding merit may be instrumentally valuable, and far preferable to aristocracy or nepotism. One still can judge Kushner’s success a failure of meritocracy. What the above argument denies is that anyone “deserves” anything based on their merit, for ultimately that merit itself stems from good fortune. And if we deny the position that there is an inherent logic such that the successful deserve their success, we can think more clear-headedly about meritocracy and what we, as a society, want it to do for us. Do we want the studious college student to be able to attend medical school? Do we want billionaires to run Twitter?

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Celebrity, Wealth, and Meaning in Life

Color photograph of reality star Paris Hilton sitting on a throne in front of a green screen while many cameras point at her.

People love celebrity and, in particular, they love rich celebrity. Reality TV makes a fortune by playing on people’s voyeuristic desires to see how rich people live. Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, and the Jenners are noteworthy simply for being rich and famous. “The Real Wives” franchise has been so successful that it has launched iterations of its brand in at least 10 different states. Many people admire and hold a high opinion of the capacities of Donald Trump simply because he’s perceived as being wealthy. Our culture is less likely to convict or to require the rich and famous to do any hard time for their criminal behavior. We live vicariously through them; we don’t want for them that which we wouldn’t want for ourselves under the same circumstances. After all, each one of us may be inclined to reason, “I myself am just a temporarily embarrassed billionaire.”

This is an attitude that people have long taken toward the rich, and it is one that we would do well to reflect carefully upon. The 18th-century philosopher Adam Smith is a figure that people often associate with capitalism, but Smith was not impressed with the ways in which people in his day viewed wealth. He wrote not only about markets, but also about moral behavior and the kinds of things about which people are inclined to express approval and disapproval. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he writes:

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and despise, or, at least, to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary to both establish and maintain the distinction of ranks and order in society is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.

Though there may be much to criticize in the idea of necessary distinction in terms of rank, Smith speaks to our times when he points out that while we venerate the wealthy, we are more likely to engage in what we might today call attribution bias when it comes to the poor. We seem inclined to attribute bad behavior on the part of others to their enduring personality characteristics (for example, their laziness, their self-indulgence, their lack of vision, etc.), and might be contemptuous of them for those reasons, but that same person would attribute similar bad behavior on their part to the various particulars of their circumstances. So, for example, Jane engages in attribution bias when she blames the fact that Tom got nothing done on the weekend on what she views as his laziness but explains the fact that she got nothing done on the same weekend on the fact that she had a long hard week at work and needed a rest.

A similar phenomenon occurs when people consider the behavior of the poor. We are more likely to say that a person who is out of work, addicted to drugs, or finds themselves homeless is in one or more of those circumstances because of their vicious traits of character than we are to say that they find themselves where they are due to bad luck, poor treatment, or ill health. Society tends to be contemptuous of such people for that reason, and often even passes retributive legislation that makes these social problems worse. These sentiments prevent us from viewing poverty and its attendant consequences (for example, addiction, criminal behavior, and incarceration) as public health and safety challenges that should be dealt with in compassionate ways.

When it comes to the wealthy, on the other hand, we tend to attribute success to work ethic, talent, innovativeness, and worthiness. Those who rise to the top do so because they deserve to be there; surely there could be no flaws with the system of merit that ensures that anyone with the right set of traits gets where they deserve to be. We admire such people, even when, in fact, they have vicious characters and manipulated and exploited people to get where they are.

The explanation behind how we view the wealthy probably has much to do with how we are encouraged to think about meaning in life. Here in the United States, the “American Dream” is often presented in a way that focuses on the value of material success. People live this dream to the extent that they are able to find work which allows them to purchase an impressive house and fancy cars to store in a large garage. Young people often plan their lives in ways that are focused on maximizing profits, or, at least, they are often encouraged to do so by their parents or their peers and made to feel like failures if they don’t. At some point, many come to believe that this kind of meaning can be theirs if, and only if, they work at it, and those who have not achieved such success must simply not have worked hard enough. Contempt ensues.

As Adam Smith points out, people frequently make the mistake of confusing material success and social status for virtue. He says,

The respect which we feel for wisdom and virtue is, no doubt, different from that which we conceive for wealth and greatness; and it requires no very nice discernment to distinguish the difference. But, notwithstanding this difference, those sentiments bear a very considerable resemblance to one another. In some particular features they are, no doubt, different, but, in the general air of the countenance, they seem to be so very nearly the same, that inattentive observers are very apt to mistake the one for the other.

Similar as they may feel, wealth and status are not the same thing as virtue. If we want to live flourishing lives, it would be wise of us to change our attitudes toward the rich and famous. Philosophers have long engaged in debate regarding meaning in life, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, no philosopher of note has concluded that meaning (or, absent that, a good or virtuous life) consists in attaining wealth and power. Our moral sentiments on this point are increasingly important as oligarchs gain more and more control over the planet. When our attitudes are distorted by the seductive powers of wealth and status, we aren’t in a position to recognize that the things we value most (for example, autonomy, self-respect, the well-being of the planet etc.,) are being bought and sold in a way that recognizes no greater good than the dollar.

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Great Man Syndrome and the Social Bases of Self-Respect

black and white photograph of David statue with shadow on wall

“Am I good enough?” “Was someone else smarter or more talented than me?” “Am I just lazy or incompetent?” You might find these thoughts familiar. It’s an anxiety that I have felt many times in graduate school, but I don’t think it’s a unique experience. It seems to show up in other activities, including applying for college and graduate school, pursuing a career in the arts, vying for a tenure-track academic job, and trying to secure grants for scientific research. This anxiety is a moral problem, because it can perpetuate imposter syndrome – feelings of failure and a sense of worthlessness, when none of these are warranted.

The source of this anxiety is something that I would like to call “great man syndrome.” The “great man” could be a man, woman, or non-binary person. What is important is the idea that there are some extra-capable individuals who can transcend the field through sheer force of innate ability or character. Gender, race, and other social categories matter for understanding social conceptions of who has innate ability and character, which can help to explain who is more likely to suffer from this angst, but “great man syndrome” can target people from any social class.

It functions primarily by conflating innate ability or character with professional success, where that professional success is hard to come by. For those of us whose self-conceptions are built around being academics, artists, scientists, or high achievers and whose professional success is uncertain, “great man syndrome” can generate uncertainty about our basic self-worth and identity. On the other hand, those who achieve professional success can easily start to think that they are inherently superior to others.

What does “great man syndrome” look like, psychologically? First, in order to continue pursuing professional success, it’s almost necessary to be prideful and think that because I’m inherently better than others in my field in some way, I can still achieve one of the few, sought-after positions. Second, the sheer difficulty and lack of control over being professionally recognized creates constant anxiety about not producing enough or not hitting all of the nigh-unattainable markers for “great-man-ness.” Third, these myths tie our sense of well-being to our work and professional success in a way that is antithetical to proper self-respect. This results in feelings of euphoria when we are recognized professionally, but deep shame and failure when we are not. “Great man syndrome” negatively impacts our flourishing.

My concept of “great man syndrome” is closely related to Thomas Carlyle’s 19th century “great man theory” of history, which posits that history is largely explained by the impacts of “great men,” who, by their superior innate qualities, were able to make a great impact on the world. There are several reasons to reject Carlyle’s theory: “great men” achieve success with the help of a large host of people whose contributions often go unrecognized; focusing on innate qualities prevents us from seeing how we can grow and improve; and there are multiple examples of successful individuals who do not have the qualities we would expect of “great men.”

Even if one rejects “great man theory,” it can still be easy to fall into “great man syndrome.” Why is this the case? The answer has to do with structural issues common to the fields and practices listed above. Each example I gave above — scientific enterprises, artistic achievement, higher educational attainment, and the academic job market — has the following features. First, each of these environments are highly competitive. Second, they contain members whose identities are tied up with that field of practice. Third, if one fails to land one of the scarce, sought-after positions, there are few alternative methods of gainful employment that allow one to maintain that social identity.

The underlying problem that generates “great man syndrome” isn’t really the competition or the fact that people’s identities are tied up with these pursuits; the problem is that there are only so many positions within those fields that ensure “the social bases of self-respect.” On John Rawls’s view, “the social bases of self-respect” are aspects of institutions that support individuals by providing adequate material means for personal independence and giving them a secure sense that their aims and pursuits are valuable. To be recognized as equal citizens, people need to be structurally and socially supported in ways that promote self-respect and respect from others.

This explains why “great man syndrome” strikes at our basic self-worth — there are only so many positions that provide “the social bases of self-respect.” So, most of the people involved in those pursuits will never achieve the basic conditions of social respect so long as they stay in their field. This can be especially troubling for members of social classes that are not commonly provided “the social bases of self-respect.” Furthermore, because these areas are intrinsically valuable and tied to identity, it can be very hard to leave. Leaving can feel like failing or giving up, and those who point out the structural problems are often labeled as pessimistic or failing to see the true value of the field.

How do we solve this problem? There are a few things that we as individuals can do, and that many people within these areas are already doing. We can change how we talk about the contributions of individuals to these fields and emphasize that we are first and foremost engaged in a collective enterprise which requires that we learn from and care for each other. We can reaffirm to each other that we are worthy of respect and love as human beings regardless of how well we perform under conditions of scarcity. We can also try to reach the halls of power ourselves to change the structures that fail to provide adequate material support for those pursuing these aims.

The difficulty with these solutions is that they do not fundamentally change the underlying institutional failures to provide “the social bases of self-respect.” Some change may be effected by individuals, especially those who attain positions of power, but it will not solve the core issue. To stably ensure that all members of our society have the institutional prerequisites needed for well-being, we need to collectively reaffirm our commitment to respecting each other and providing for each other’s material needs. Only then can we ensure that “the social bases of self-respect” will be preserved over time.

Collective action of this kind itself undermines the core myth of “great man syndrome,” as it shows that change rests in the power of organization and solidarity. In the end, we must build real political and economic power to ensure that everyone has access to “the social bases of self-respect,” and that is something we can only do together.

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Felicity Huffman Sentencing: Justice and Fairness in Punishment

photograph of Felicity Huffman and William H Macy

The college admissions scandal has come into prominence once more this week with the conviction and sentencing of “Desperate Housewives” star Felicity Huffman. In attempting to get her daughter into college, she paid $15,000 to a “charity” controlled by William Singer, a now notoriously corrupt admissions consultant, to have him bribe an SAT proctor to correct her daughter’s answers before submitting the test. For committing “honest services fraud,” Huffman was fined $30,000 and sentenced to 2 weeks in prison, 1 year of probation, and 250 community service hours.

The Washington Post quoted Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School, as saying “Both those who think the conduct here shouldn’t have been prosecuted and those concerned about special treatment for the privileged are bound to be dissatisfied.” And how could they not? On the one hand, the American criminal justice system is already overfull and overworked. The jails and prisons, too, are near their capacity. Essentially, some say, we are wasting resources prosecuting a first time nonviolent offender who has confessed her guilt and shown remorse.

Indeed, this is the attitude people have toward a variety of “white collar” and “victimless” crimes. However, they are only labeled as such due to the invisibility of the consequences, not due to the consequences actually being nonexistent. Every spot taken by a rich person who arrives there unmeritocratically is potentially a spot that could have been given to someone whose life could be changed by the chance. Those people, though, do not even realize a crime has been committed against them, blaming instead their own supposed insufficiency rather than a corrupt system.

Others dismiss these sorts of crimes because they seem inevitable. If they do not illegally bribe their kids into elite colleges, some say, they will do so through legal donations. But, this is a case of whataboutism. “What about kids getting into college because their parents are donors? Isn’t that unmeritocratic too? We’re not prosecuting those people so why are we prosecuting this woman?” However, we need not choose one or the other. They can be separate discussions, considered consecutively, not simultaneously.

Perhaps those parents getting their kids in via legal donations are doing something immoral too (for discussion see A.G. Holdier’s “The Ethics of Legacy Admissions”). The fact that there are multiple problems to consider does not entail that we may only try to solve all of them or none of them. Each can be considered in its own time. Thus, let us consider the fact that, for her crime, Huffman received what amounts to not even a slap on the wrist due to her wealth. Indeed, the punishment Huffman was given by Judge Indira Talwani sheds light on the disparity of punishment between the extremely wealthy and the rest of us.

The median American’s wealth (not average because that value is skewed by billionaires), according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, is $97,300. Even among those above 75, who have accumulated wealth for the longest, that value is only $264,800. In comparison, estimates for the wealth of Huffman and her husband, William H. Macy, each fall in the range of $20-50 million. Even assuming that minimum value, a $30,000 fine only amounts to 0.15% of their wealth. For that median American, the same fine would encompass 30% of all the money they ever made.

Certainly, this is an “equal” punishment, if “equal” is taken to mean the same numerical value, regardless of place or station. However, the impact on Huffman’s life as compared to some ordinary person is drastically different. A fine of 0.15% of that ordinary person’s wealth would amount to only about $150. That is the impact Huffman feels from the fine she was given. The same goes for her prison sentence and community service requirement. Most Americans have to work for a living and need a clean record to get a job. Huffman and her husband have enough money to live the rest of their lives without acting again. A prison sentence like that and so many community service hours are just annoying for the very wealthy, not life-ruining as they can be for many people of ordinary stature.

“So what?” says the cynic, “College admissions are already corrupt and have little to do with real ability. Huffman did not do anything particularly wrong. The only difference between her and the rest of the upper class is that her bribe happened to be illegal. Donors’ kids get into prestigious universities without the requisite ability all the time. There’s no good reason to waste the government’s time prosecuting cases like these.” The cynic may very well be correct, and, in fact, the judge in the case seemed to agree, saying that the college admissions system “has cracks in it with or without what these defendants have done.”

Regardless of how bad the action was, however, a fair justice system demands that justice be proportional to the crime committed. In Huffman’s case there are two possibilities: either her actions were not of any significance, in which case she need not be prosecuted, or her actions were of significance, in which case she need be punished proportionally. What actually occurred was that Huffman was prosecuted, but given what amounts to no punishment for a minor, but significant, crime. At the very least, a fair punishment for a minor, but significant, crime is a minor, but significant, punishment. However, the nature of sentencing guidelines is such that it does not allow for fines to enact any significant punishment and the alternative, time in prison, seems excessive.

Indeed, it seems inappropriate to put a person such as Huffman behind bars for years for trying to help her daughter get into college with bribes, an action for which she has shown remorse. But, there really is no punishment besides time in prison which can create the same impact of punishment regardless of class. In the case of the crime she admitted to, “honest services fraud,” the maximum fine is $250,000, only 1.25% of her wealth. Now, that percentage of the median wealth actually seems substantial, about $1,200. However, this judgment does not account for another difference between the upper class and the rest.

When a person has millions of dollars, her living expenses are a minuscule portion of her wealth. For most others, living expenses (rent, car payment, gas, food, etc.) take up a much larger portion. In essence, most people cannot pay such a fine without sacrificing some of their basic needs. A proportionally-sized fine for the ultra-wealthy, though, has no impact on their lives. Either fines must be able to cause a proportional impact on the very rich, not simply a flat percentage, or something else valuable must be taken away. For this class of people, the only truly valuable thing they cannot get more of is time. A long prison sentence, regardless of class, has a truly significant impact on one’s life.

As Oren Nimni puts it in Current Affairs, this sort of disparity in punishment,

“fundamentally delegitimizes the entire legal system, by severing the relationship between punishments and their purpose. It makes a joke out of the ideas of both the punishment fitting the crime and equality under the law, two bedrock principles necessary for  “law” to command any respect at all.”

There is plenty of room for discussion about what sorts of crimes ought to be prosecuted, about whether crimes deserve more fines or more prison time, and about the purpose punishment is supposed to serve. However, it seems clear that, regardless of what comes of these discussions, it can be agreed that the impact of a just punishment cannot vary based on class.