MeritoCRACY?

This is a contribution to the discussion Will Wilkinson started last month on Tech Central Station.

Americans don't object so much to wealth in its public sphere of display or its private one of self-multiplication, as to the grab for power it so often underwrites--the alchemy of cash into influence and rule.

Jack Beatty in Collosus:
How the Corporation Changed America

One of the more confusing things about this very confusing word is the '-cracy' part. Is it 'rule of the meritorious' or 'rule of merit itself'?

If the former than is it 'rule of those who have the merit to rule'? Or is it rule of those who have some amorphous general 'merit'? If that last is the case, then what in the world is that stuff and what does it have to do with ruling?! And how is this different from 'aristocracy'?

But I'm obviously barking up the wrong tree. (Hint: It's for rhetorical purposes.) 'Meritocracy' does not mean rule of the meritorious. Rather, the word's function is to subvert the meaning of 'rule', as commonly understood. So it DOES mean something like 'the rule of merit itself'.

And what is merit? It's whatever any given person thinks it is. So meritocracy turns out to be something like Nozick's anti-Marxist slogan:

'to-each-according-to-how-much-he-benefits-those-who-are-in-
a-position-to-benefit-those-who-benefit-them'

On this understanding of meritocracy, it is quite easy to see why it appeals to libertarians. It does away with the idea of rule entirely and replaces it with an institutional process (referred to, in all its complexity, as "the market") for determining what merit is and who has it.

Of course there are other readings of meritocracy in which the meaning of merit is given actual content (rather than just being a place holder for values fixed by a market process). This explains why there are some apologists for meritocracy who think that "the market", if one such thing there be, fails to reward merit.

If I were forced to choose between one camp or the other, I personally would go with the market-skeptic meritocrats. But I choose rather to reject the concept of "meritocracy" entirely--except insofar as it refers to people getting positions because of their merit rather than connections, etc. Merit is always for a more or less specific end and it is always an open question whether that thing is valuable. Merits are thus plural and to be conceived on the model of virtues, albeit virtues of a more techne-like kind.

The overall point that I want to make with this message, however, is summed up as follows:

The concept of meritocracy, especially if it is to be contrasted with aristocracy, is of a piece with the broadly 'market liberal' ideology of the social order. So I can understand why Will and other libertarians are gung-ho about it. But the problems with 'meritocracy' are as numerous and (to my mind) as decisive as the closely related critiques of Nozick and, for example, Richard Posner.

If I were to recommend one article it would be Ronald Dworkin's 'Is Wealth a Value?' in the Journal of Legal Studies. Every thinking person should read that.