Merit is Not a Real Thing

Whether they use the word or not, both sides of the political aisle want a meritocracy. The Right claims that the addition of DEI principles has resulted in an overlooking of talent and outcomes, eroding our ability to assure that the best person gets the position, the promotion, the award, the advancement, etc. The Left believes that without DEI principles, we overlook talent and outcomes, eroding our ability to assure that the best person gets the position, the promotion, the award, the advancement, etc. 

Newsflash from the Middle: 1. We have never had a meritocracy. 2. We will never have a meritocracy. 3. Merit isn’t even a real thing.

1. WE HAVE NEVER HAD A MERITOCRACY. The selection process before DEI ideals was skewed. A bell-bottom wearing hippie was not going to get the bank job even if he would have made the bank the most money if he had been hired. A woman wearing the most professional clothing available was not going to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company even if she would have made the company the most money. Tortured bright and talented black and brown men and women were denied admission to top colleges and countless categories of jobs and positions of power. Whole categories of people were left out of the selection process guaranteeing a broken meritocracy. Even when it worked as intended, hiring the best person actually only meant hiring the best person considered, who may or may not have been the best person out there.
2. WE WILL NEVER HAVE A MERITOCRACY. Since the Civil Rights movement and the advancement of DEI ideals, it is likely that more overall categories of peoples are hired for jobs, promotions, awards, positions of power, etc. Today, a gay man might not have to hide his lifestyle to get the job that best suits him. Today, a woman or black man who cannot hide their marginalizing quality probably has a better shot at a power position at work on in politics. Some of our brightest and most talented people who were once overlooked have entered the game. Some of our other brightest and most talented people have been left out–AS ALWAYS. We will never totally perfect the system of equality because we are fallible human beings. Whether we are talking 1955 or 2025, the “right”-college factor, the” right”-family-name factor, the charm factor, the tall factor, the attractive factor, the extroversion factor, the great-at-interviews factor, the friend-of-a-friend factor will always let some incompetents in and leave some super-competents out. We are social beings. We are never going to robot-it down to ignoring some totally unrelated factors when hiring, promoting, or rewarding people.
3. MERIT ISN’T EVEN A REAL THING. It would be nice, of course, to not waste human potential, to get the right people into the right positions. It makes sense to try to set up the playing field in a way that gets us close to utilizing our human resources in ways that have the best results.  But judging competency nor outcomes will help us get there. First of all, the concept of merit is subjective, and the tasks involved in most jobs are varied and complex. So, someone has to make up the criterial for measuring merit. Who decides how we measure merit? Does a doctor need to be good at diagnosis, bedside manner, stitch work, research, procedural operations? Does a doctor need to be equally good in every area or should some skills get more weight on the rubric than others? Does a person exist who excels at every aspect of the job of a doctor? Or any other job for that matter? Probably not, so you can see how we arrived at the idea of outcomes. What if we only consider outcomes? That seems fair. How many patient recover? Let’s just look at that. Or, in other fields, at test scores or profits. Wouldn’t such a look define merit? Actually, no. There are far too many factors involved in any outcome we choose to look at. And those factors are rarely, if ever, unrelated to countless environmental factors, or singly related to the actions of just one person. Perhaps the only essential factor in nearly every job is the social one. The human hive may look like single dwelling units, but it is far from it. It seems to me it would be much more beneficial to look for the worker bee that fits in with the existing company than to try to find the one with the best stinger or honey or whatever defines a bee’s merit-based outcome. Sports teams get this. They rarely recruit all-around players because 1. The definition of an all-around player is subjective and 2. There are so few all-around players, no matter how you define the term. Instead, on signing day, coaches look at their overall team, recognize its strengths and weaknesses, and then try to fill in the holes. 

If we ever get to a place where we don’t care what someone wears, how well they present at an interview, whether they’ve been to prison or college, or what their preferred pronoun is, we will waste far less human potential than we do now, but merit? The concept itself is too murky to have any merit of its own. Defining criteria for greatness is subjective and reductionist to the point of being meaningless. Besides, few of us are good at all of it–no matter what the job. Humans have jagged profiles. So, the best we can do is see what our team is missing, and try to fill in the holes as best we can.