Dear Friends,
It seems to me, one solution to our societal ills, the elite carefully steer us away from is… meritocracy. The elite despise meritocracy despite their pretended love of it. Preferring letters to actual merit, they believe the more education (and therefore expertise), the better suited to rule with unchecked power. A perversion of the idea of philosopher kings, but in this case they would be, expert bureaucrats. There can be nothing more dangerous to a narcissistic incompetent elite than the threat of a meritocracy. Can you imagine, if the child of a single mother were able to compete, with those of the elite? Why else do you think the elite so love racial quotas, because they are a perversion of the Peter Principle, and therefore are the antithesis of meritocracy. Undermining real meritocracy.
Have you ever heard from any TV pundit, that meritocracy is the answer to our societal ills? I have only heard the term on the radio once or twice… usually with animosity to the idea. Typically the press excites us about the possibility of politics to “help us solve our problems.” Which means the media prefers we think that government has, “a legitimate role in helping us improve our lives,” or in other words, politics can solve all our problems. I already disproved that notion in an earlier article. Nevertheless that is the only solution to any problem we are allowed to consider by the punditry. This is because, when politics is the solution to every problem, political favor becomes the yardstick. Any solution then is measured by its effect on the political class, the elite… instead of society.
Merit, or the idea that one’s advancement should depend on one earning it, benefits all of society, at the cost to those that believe, advancement should come from political favor. History is rife with examples proving meritocracy far more efficient than political favor in every endeavor. In war, the example of WWII, will do. The Wehrmacht versus the Italian army illustrates the point. Advancement in the officer corps in the Wehrmacht was mostly merit based, while advancement in the Italian army, was politically based. The results of both doctrines on the battlefield were stark. Regardless of the quality of the weapons, soldiers or logistics, an army run by fools will flounder, as the Italian army did in Greece… holding up Operation Barbarossa, and probably causing Germany to lose the war.
There is an old saying, “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” This is based on the understanding that the person who became rich, did so by earning it… by merit. Their children may get the best education, but grow up in some form of want, because people who get rich don’t start that way… by definition. Giving the first generation of the wealthy a grounding in the real world. The grandchildren however, grow up in luxury, decadence and completely out of touch with reality, and so they become idiots. Foolish, stupid and willful… so they get a trust fund that they don’t squander their inheritance (which they surely would), get defrauded out of it or starve. Nations are no different. Those that become rich and powerful in virtue, collapse in decadence, a few generations later.
In a true meritocracy, if the child of a sharecropper, welfare cheat or NYC lawyer would compete on the same playing field. The privilege of the privileged wouldn’t matter. Can you imagine that? Instead of getting shot down in cold blood, on the mean streets of Chicago’s south side, a poor kid could become anything they wanted and had the aptitude for. The progressive economist Veblen once said, in America people don’t hate the rich, because everyone thinks he could become rich. The elite eradicated that attitude along with the meritocracy that fostered it. Restore meritocracy, and the hopelessness that fuels so many of our societal ills would vanish, like so much mist on a summer morning. Else we could allow the elite to establish political favor as the measure of who gets what… as an impenetrable fog.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
