A 100% Meritocracy Is Flawed. How It Relates to Society, Capitalism, Darwinism

Latest update: February 1, 2022. Page URL indicates original publication date; meanwhile, times change and the updates continue.

Meritocracy - Society - Politics

The Sociological Definition and Results of a 100% Meritocracy, i.e., Societal Darwinism

Why a 100% meritocratic society can never work as a standalone system; the pros and cons. For democrats, republicans, liberals, conservatives, and anyone else who is interested. A blended meritocracy is what seems to work best.

Darwinism - Another Word for Meritocracy

A Meritocratic Society

Meritocracy is a good thing. In addition to rewarding those who can compete, it generates lots of extra money that can be used to help those who cannot. Unfortunately, meritocracy can never work as a standalone system. This is due to the fundamental nature of meritocracy and, of all things, the basic laws of mathematics.

What is a meritocracy? For the purposes of this article, meritocracy is defined as one's survival and success being solely contingent upon one's ability to compete and contribute to society in such a way as to prosper.

Meritocracy and capitalism have a lot in common. In a "perfect" system, the concept of money could be defined as the method used to quantify one's success.

The Scenario – What would happen if a society were to convert to a 100% meritocracy? The sociological implications...

In a meritocracy there will always be winners and losers. In many cases the loser worked just as hard as the winner, but the winner was just a little bit better at it. The winner thus gets more and the loser gets less. So far, no problem. And the loser can always try again.

However, resources are finite. For the bottom 10%, there will always not be enough. There will not be enough shelter. There will not be enough food. There will not be enough health care. There will not be enough of a lot of things. It is inevitable, due to the lack of even the basic necessities of life, the "losers" will sooner or later lose the ability to compete. Now what with this being a 100% meritocratic scenario, what happens to them?

It is already abundantly demonstrated in our present society one of two alternatives will occur...

Alternative One – The Person Dies

In our present society, homeless people unnecessarily die all the time. Everyone knows living on the streets will eventually destroy most people through attrition: a continual decline of health, the eventual and inevitable being a victim of successive crimes, and finally the loss of ability to defend or survive, and then death.

However, we are not talking about our current society. We are discussing a 100% meritocratic society. Therefore: there are no free job-training programs; there are no homeless shelters; there are no food banks or food programs; there is no affordable health care; there is no type of charity or handout whatsoever.

Needless to say, this greatly accelerates the attrition, leading to death or the second alternative.

Alternative Two – A New Criminal Is Born

Steal, rob, kill; or die. That pretty much sums it up.

Of course the number of criminals will continually be reduced for the usual reasons: competition among same; attrition through street-living; "eradication" by society via imprisonment, etc.

As the number of criminals are reduced, others will take their place.

The Brutal Mathematics

What happens when the bottom 10% gradually dies; whether it be through Alternative One or Alternative Two? The answer is simple; they will gradually be replaced by a new 10%. It is a brutal mathematical fact; there will always be a bottom 10%.

Recursion comes into play. As the bottom 10% shrink through death, new lowest 10%'ers will take their place. Along with an expanding criminal element and a shrinking population; riots and other civil unrest could very well become commonplace. 100% meritocracy is equivalent to 100% Darwinism. Both are good, but not at the 100% implementation level.

Conclusion

A 100% meritocracy is not only brutal and full of misery, it is destined to fail.

An 80% to 90% meritocracy, however, could be a good thing. We pretty much have that now. We just need to get better at it.

It should also be noted that a meritocracy below 80% will more than likely lead to a country's bankruptcy. This apparently is already happening in some European countries.

- End of Article -

Here is an interesting, related article from Vox: The problem with America’s semi-rich. It also relates to meritocracy and society.

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