Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the best possible society to live in, would be a meritocracy. Such a system would have no idle hands. The people that implemented it would soon be the richest nation on the planet, due to the efficient use of labor and production, this type of system creates. People would vote with their feet, flocking there from around the World, to participate in the prosperity and freedom a meritocracy would necessarily produce. If you agree when you have finished this page, that meritocracy is the best societal system, bar none, then meritocracy should be your goal for every government program and societal initiative. To do anything less would be to do violence to our own self interests.
Meritocracy refers to a system that is organized by the merit of the people that make it up. Those with the most merit get the best jobs. Everything is distributed by merit. Meritocracy is not however the system that Aristotle would have said it was. His vision of the meritorious man was far different from our definition. Our definition is; Merit is the just ownership of something. If a person picks up a stick. Then takes out a knife and whittles a flute. The flute is that persons property because they merit that item. The source of their merit is the labor they expended fabricating the item.
The free market is a form of meritocracy. Unfortunately, modern society has so broadened the definition of free market, the term has no real reference to the fact anymore. What I mean by free market is, a lasses fair economic system that forbids any form of monopoly, crony capitalism, oligopoly, price fixing and has strong incentives against negative externalities, with rewards for positive externalities. These bans would be accompanied with real teeth to back them up, a NUMA, else the Elite will bypass their own rules and enrich themselves at the cost to the country, as has been done so often.
The other systems of organization that have been dreamed up, have stumbled along, or failed outright. The feudal system was one. Being aristocratic in nature it stifled innovation by anyone but the aristocrat. Such a system seeks distributive justice by aristocratic fiat. The Sovereign owned everything… even the bodies and labor of others. The feudal system stumbled along in Europe for hundreds of years, but eventually gave way to the free market, and now, the free market has given way to the welfare state, or simply put, capitalistic socialism. This new incarnation of “free market,” is bankrupting the whole of Europe and the US, but that is another blog…
Socialism, or distributive justice by political favor, is another system dreamed up by men to control men, pretending to be compassionate. It is a system that necessarily contains negative incentives. Many things have been tried to contain these negative incentives but they have all failed. This is because, in the absence of personal self interest as a motivating factor, the only thing left is fear. Stalin’s chicken was how he motivated people, and has always been the fall back of socialists, everywhere and every time. Fear is, of course, an unhuman hearted method of marshaling human beings. Not only is fear unhuman hearted it is inefficient. People seek the easiest path from the fear and seek mediocrity as the means. Stand out, whether for good or bad, and you are executed… eventually.
So we see that it is meritocracy, and the free market that is it’s natural outgrowth, that is the best system ever devised. If you think about it, it was God himself who devised it… aren’t environmental incentives all merit based? Take Darwin’s theory, if an organism is unsuccessful, it is quickly replaced by an organism more able to compete… Meritocracy mimics Maya. It is then self evident that we seek to make society as meritorious as possible. It follows then, that if we do, our economy will rebound, our societal ills will diminish and our angst with the state of affairs will ebb away. What do you suppose your government could do… to make your country more of a meritocracy?
Sincerely,
John Pepin
