Meritocracy and Disability
Meritocracy:
A society where merit (talent and hard work) are rewarded with a higher societal position.
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Do we live in a meritocracy?
In America? No.*
-Peoples zip code at birth is a far better predictor of socioeconomic welfare than academic record
-Your ability to get into and go to an elite college is largely influenced by your financial background
-Race and gender discrimination mean people of minority backgrounds need to work twice as hard to get ahead
-Starting a business to compete in the free market requires capital which minority groups have been systemically and historically denied
-Investment income is taxed at a far lower rate than earned income favoring the already successful and wealthy.
*most of these points apply just strongly across the world but interventions like universal healthcare, paid maternity leave, free college and university, etc can move us closer to a meritocracy
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Should we live in a meritocracy?
Most people think so. Why?
-It seems fair, those who work harder should be rewarded
-We want to encourage successful people like inventors and scientists
-We want our leaders to be intelligent and charismatic
-We want to live in a society where we control our own destiny (ie. Wanting to believe your hard work will pay off.)
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Flaws in the reasoning
-Meritocracy doesn't reward hard work, it rewards merit (which we defined as talent and hard work combined)
-What is talent?
-Talent is generally thought of as a natural ability.*
-Natural ability is not based on hard work. By definition, it is how much better you are at something despite working just as hard or less than someone else. Someone is naturally talented at math if they don't have to study and ace the exam.
-So a true meritocracy does not just reward hard work. It rewards ability. It is by definition ableist.
*In reality talent is also highly dependent on the environment one is raised in, for example, musical prodigies growing up in musical households, etc. But this is less ideal to the idea of meritocracy so we will dismiss this caveat.
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So is meritocracy bad just because it's ableist?
I argue if you believe that having your fate determined at birth is bad, meritocracy is not an answer to our flawed system.
-You have no control over your abilities at birth.
-Much of your shaped ability and skills come in childhood, a period of time most people do not control their own lives.
-Your life is therefore largely dictated by a random roll of dice. In the modern day, it might be race, gender, class, etc. In a perfect meritocracy, it would simply be your genes. Got a genetic disability? Sucks to be you.
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So how do we reward hard work?
I argue it is impossible. Because hard work is predicated on the idea of laziness. But we have no evidence laziness exists. In almost all cases where children or adults are accused of being lazy underlying mental or physical invisible disability is at play. Thus we have no reason to believe anyone actually works harder than anyone else. Any reason besides the myth of hard work of course.
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So what do we do instead?
I argue that we should divorce ourselves the idea that it is ethical to determine people's quality of life-based on ability. Aka we should stop believing in ableism. What does this look like? Here are some starting points:
-Universal Basic Income
-Universal Healthcare
-Accommodations of Everyone's Needs
-A Strong Social Safety Net
-Not Viewing Benefits Negatively
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Why would anyone do anything anymore?
-People are naturally creative, artistic, curious, and inventive! Look at what hobbyists and artists create today even when complete commercial failures. Imagine how much that creativity would be enhanced in a society where pursuing invention didn't lead to homelessness and starvation.
-Automation is quickly making massive numbers of jobs obsolete. Less people looking for work would make this a positive thing rather than negative.
-Just because we provide a comfortable living for all doesn't mean that rewards would have to be non-existent. Things like Noble Prizes, Fields Medals, and monetary rewards could still exist to encourage those with a sudden burst of ingenuity to pursue their ideas.
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What do you think? Is meritocracy worth trying to protect? Is there any way for a meritocratic system not to be ableist? How have you internalized the ideals of meritocracy and ableism?
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Meritocracy at its core depends on ableism, and for that, I can no longer defend it.
I grew up fully believing in a meritocracy. Not that we lived in one, I was always aware of the fact that my family's stability and wealth gave me an advantage in life, but that we should live in one. The idea is that an ideal world is one in which the smart and talented are rewarded and the lazy and dumb fall by the wayside.
I went to a top 10 high school in the US followed by an elite university. Scholarship students were seen as the truly best among us, those who were proving the American dream still existed. That if you were smart and talented enough it didn't matter what your background was, your gifted brain could open the doors to a whole world of opportunity. I was close friends with a girl who grew up with every disadvantage in the world. Yet she was excelling at Wellesley due to her hard work and incredible intelligence. That is until she got sick.
Suddenly every door that was open was conditional, "if you get better" and "if you can still study full-time" and "if it's not permanent" were all being tossed around. I got sick at the same time. For me, accommodation was available. My dad flew out to help support me. I had the option to just take time off or study abroad to give my body time to heal. Not my friend.*
Meritocracy is based on ability. When we think of that ability as our built-in character traits from birth it can be easy to see this as just sorting people based on "who they are". But disability and chronic illness crack this myth wide open. My friend didn't become any less special when she got sick, she just got unlucky. But really, why is the unluck of getting MS in college a more "valid" reason to fail than the unluck of being born dyslexic? Why is the unluck of suffering a stroke different from the unluck of being born blind or deaf? To me, MECFS highlights this more than most disabilities, an illness that takes people and stops them from doing. From expressing any sort of talent or hard work. Is it any wonder that this illness is seen as such a threat to the myths our "meritocracy" is built on?
