Our Caldari friends are organizing a conference to sing the praises of meritocracy, for their Union Day. Those not born and bred Caldari cannot participate, not even based on merit. Nevertheless, I felt inspired to write my thoughts on the subject.
First, the shield: a defense of our own system.
I note that State detractors of our Amarrian Holder system point out that a hereditary aristocracy is not “fair”, as it is based on the randomness of birth, whereas a meritocracy rewards one on one’s capacities and abilities. This has always seemed somewhat silly to me. On the one hand, people have acceded to nobility based on their achievements and work. On the other hand, one’s intellectual capacities or physical strength is also strongly influenced by one’s set of genes.
Smart people or Holders, both are part of a kind of lucky sperm club.
Second, the sword, for the offense against meritocracy.
Meritocracy assumes in its essence that value can be narrowed down to a point where people can be ranked, placed in an ordered list according to their worth. But is the successful CEO who does not see his children superior to the lowly laborer who is an excellent father? Worth, merit, value: like beauty they all contain so many incomparable dimensions that creating a universally accepted ordered set out of a population is not possible.
Nevertheless, meritocratic corporations insist on selecting people from ranked lists. So how do they judge merit then? Typically, there will be a panel of meritorious men and women who will set up the criteria. In order not to run into a contradiction, the panel members must assign a high score of merit to these traits that they themselves possess. After all, it can only be a panel of meritorious people that is qualified to decide what is merit. And that's where it goes wrong.
Those that started out as meritous will by there definition only strengthen their merit, concentrating power to them and their favorite circle. Those that are not born talented -according to the panel's criteria- are deemed not to deserve success and growth in a meritocracy. Moreover, it's their own fault. The unmeritous are more irredeemable than our lowest slaves.
Many in today's State now protest their corporate leadership, decrying corruption and nepotism and yearning for a return to merit-based leadership. They fail to see that this concentration power in corrupt entitled leadership is the necessary outcome of a callous unrestrained meritocracy.
[[ooc comment: the term "lucky sperm club" to describe a talent-based aristocracy was, to the best of my knowledge, coined by Michael Young in his book "The Rise of Meritocracy". I found the book itself somewhat long-winded, but the author's short introduction to the transaction publisher's edition is brilliant]]
