Meritocracy

I

I’ve been spending the last few days with smart, economically successful people. It’s been an eye-opener to the sheer amount of wealth there is in the United States if you go to certain areas. We played cricket on Saturday on a pristine and huge baseball pitch area in Bellevue, in the suburbs of Seattle. It was my Dad’s birthday party and a number of my sister and brother in law’s friends came to play. It was a really fun day and though I felt sore afterwards, it was totally worth it. I almost got my Dad out twice in an over but I’m glad I didn’t because he went on to hit a six, which was great to see. I didn’t bat that well in the match myself although the caveat was that I was up against a bowler who was really steaming in. As well as cricket, we went to visit a very affluent area called Kirkland and saw a very big house, surrounded by a lovely garden in a gated community. We also visited an office in a skyscraper in downtown and went to an Indian restaurant in Pioneer Square. On the way there and back, we walked past a few mentally ill homeless people. The juxtaposition between opulent wealth and success and the downtrodden life of the street people in Seattle prompted me to think about the nature of meritocracy. Is meritocracy defensible? It certainly seems to those who benefit that a meritocratic society like what the USA claims to be is fair but what about the people who don’t have the ability to compete? I think there’s an idea on the right in America that if you just work hard enough you can somehow make something of yourself, but this is a fallacy. There are a lot of people who are incapable of even holding down a job no matter how hard they try, not to mention their inability to think creatively. It’s true that meritocracy is better than say nepotism but the marginalized in society need to be looked after by the state and paid for by taxing those at the top of the hierarchy. When I really think about it, my personal views tend to social democracy if not outright socialism. I, for example, have a serious mental illness and an artisitic temperament. My mental illness means I can’t physically work full-time and my art has little economic value. As a resullt I am looked after by the state and my parents. If I didn’t have my parents, I would be very poor in Switzerland but still looked after enough by the state to live in a flat etc. In the USA, I would be most likely on the streets. Meritocracy is fine for those who benefit from the system but there needs to be a large safety net for the majority. 

II

The people I’ve been spending time with work overwhelmingly in tech. It’s given me the opportunity to learn more about AI. It seems as though my current job, doing incoming mail will be a casualty of the AI revolution. Robotics is also developing at such an alarming rate that the service economy, which employs the working class is also at threat. One person I met thinks that service jobs will be protected by the government so that even if AI is capable of doing these jobs, the government will regulate so as to make sure humans have enough work. Somebody else pointed out that the capitalist system needs consumers who can pay for goods and services so if AI stops the demand side from functioning, the whole system will collapse. My personal view is that if the AI works, the people in control will use it to their own ends. Perhaps, we will all be given soma and live in a leisure society. I think that’s unlikely. They need us to have some money and limited choice, like now so that we don’t rebel.