Should Society Reward Merit More?

One of the things that is interesting about society is that we do reward merit, but often in informal ways. Someone pays less interest on loans if they have good credit, not because they *deserve* a lower rate but because the risk model says they are a lower risk and are more likely to repay the debt.

Someone more intelligent and hard working doesn?t get special consideration because they deserve it - but because people pay them for the value they generate.

In basically all ways, merit is rewarded through happenstance as opposed to specific policy. One could also argue that merit is actually penalized via public policy by subsidizing people who have made poor decisions and progressively taxing those who have made good decisions.

What would it look like if government actually decided to reward merit? Give specific benefits for people who have never been convicted of a crime? Rewarded people based on how they score on aptitude tests? Gave funds and rewards to those who helped prevent crime or saved someone drowning. Never filed for bankruptcy? Never defaulted? Avoided causing auto accidents?

As a libertarian minded person, my preferred government would not do this. But I don?t have my preferred government, if the state is going to put their thumb on the scale anyway - why not reward the best and most deserving of people instead of the worst?

If society really cared about merit, it would have a 100% inheritance tax. Most inequalities arise at birth. You will never have $10 million because your parents didn't "lend" you a million. You're never getting a top computer science job because your parents didn't send you to private school (or buy a house in tje district with the best school), which kept you from getting into a top 10 college. You're not getting a top corporate job because your parents didn't help you develop your social network in your 20s.

So what kind of a meritocracy do we have when a vast majority of the people in top political and economic (and increasingly, cultutal) positions were born with a silver spoon in their mouth?

Rewarding merit, as I outlined has nothing to do with ?leveling the playing field? like what you are proposing.

Part of any parent?s desire is to give their children a better life. Taxation of inheritance runs completely counter to this. Not only that - it would introduce all sorts of crazy distortions. Do you want to outlaw gift giving too?

Merit isn?t about trying to give everyone an equal start - that?s literally impossible. Even if everyone had the same level of wealth, physical traits and intelligence aren?t equally distributed.

If you work twice as hard at getting good at basketball compared to Lebron James, do you deserve his spot? Fuck no. That?s a child?s view of fairness.

What I clearly mean is rewarding proper behavior more. Don?t break the law. Pay your bills. Excel at something. People act upon incentives, for the same reason why taxing inheritance lowers incentives to create more value - we should look to provide additional motivation for people to do the right things.

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

Rewarding merit, as I outlined has nothing to do with ?leveling the playing field? like what you are proposing.

Part of any parent?s desire is to give their children a better life. Taxation of inheritance runs completely counter to this. Not only that - it would introduce all sorts of crazy distortions. Do you want to outlaw gift giving too?

Merit isn?t about trying to give everyone an equal start - that?s literally impossible. Even if everyone had the same level of wealth, physical traits and intelligence aren?t equally distributed.

If you work twice as hard at getting good at basketball compared to Lebron James, do you deserve his spot? Fuck no. That?s a child?s view of fairness.

What I clearly mean is rewarding proper behavior more. Don?t break the law. Pay your bills. Excel at something. People act upon incentives, for the same reason why taxing inheritance lowers incentives to create more value - we should look to provide additional motivation for people to do the right things.

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How are we rewarding merit when people born into better circumstances than you will beat you out for jobs, houses, etc. even if you outwork them?

What motivation do the kids of the rich and powerful face? Probably not a coincidence that many of them end up on drugs or doing nothing but "philanthropy".

It's because he's lying to himself and doesn't understand the words he uses. He doesn't want to reward merit. He wants to make sure anyone who isn't successful (or inherited others' success) to be stuck on the bottom "where the lazy belong."

I've been around some very "successful" people. Most were able to pursue their passions because their parents both encouraged and funded them. Most went to top colleges. Most got their big break in their 20s either because of their families or because of the social links they made at the top colleges. Some indeed work harder than most (though if you doubled my salary and told me to work an extra 10-20 hours per week, I'd be happy do it). Quite a few are average in every way though. And yet they're in super important and/or well-paid positions, and got those positions at least a decade earlier than those who had to work for them.

Then you have housing markets in major cities that make it all but impossible for normal people to buy a house because of all the housing being bought by old money or corporations whose executives got to the top thanks to old money.

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

It's because he's lying to himself and doesn't understand the words he uses. He doesn't want to reward merit. He wants to make sure anyone who isn't successful (or inherited others' success) to be stuck on the bottom "where the lazy belong."

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There's an LBJ quote just for people like him.

Deeply conflicted abt this question bc in a true meritocracy - ie. not the weaksauce participation trophy version proposed but one where merit would be rewarded and being useless would be punished - Lewk would starve to death within a week.

To answer the other big question, equality and equity are essential if you want to discern merit and true potential rather than just find out who showed up first with the biggest moneybags or the most annoying parents. Morals and ideology aside, you don't wanna invest in useless mediocrities.

A quote from the famous communist Adam Smith, “A power to dispose of estates forever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fullness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural."

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Originally Posted by Aimless

To answer the other big question, equality and equity are essential if you want to discern merit and true potential rather than just find out who showed up first with the biggest moneybags or the most annoying parents. Morals and ideology aside, you don't wanna invest in useless mediocrities.

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Society wants and should recognize and utilize merit and ability, and support them with training to enhance them. That's fine. Lewk wants a societal sorting system. To him nature (which we can call hereditary though it's way more complex) plays a very large role in success while nurture and chance (which he thinks have no hereditary components at all) play very small roles rather than the other way around, and so to him, he is encouraging high social mobility and improving the total physical and cultural productivity of society. Just coincidentally this would also allow it at basically zero cost to anyone which should have been a clue that it's got things mixed up. TINSTAAFL. Perpetual motion is a myth. But his postulates are wrong and he's actually producing caste.

?Outwork? 🫥

If I grant two individuals the tools needed to create widgets and each person has a month to create x number of widgets - the one who creates the most has the most merit.

Person A creates the most efficient way to use said tools and works 3 hours a day and creates 100 a day. Person B just works and works and works and does a 12 hour shift and created 50 a day. Person B worked harder but in what way does that matter? What matters is the result.

Let?s take two children in school. One child is disciplined and follows the rules. The other does not, often acts out and doesn?t turn in their work. Which child has more merit?

Obviously the first one. The fact the 2nd one comes from a broken home does not in anyway change the end-product and their ultimate value.


Now - how does this mesh with public policy? The idea is straightforward - when you provide positive rewards for doing things, you get more people doing those things. When you penalize (over-tax) you get less of it. Life has a zillion variables so it isn?t a linear byproduct but it would make changes around the margins.

Just wrong on my views. I think nurture > nature. That?s why rewarding merit has virtue because it changes the nurture equation and provides additional incentives to improve personal behavior.

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

?Outwork? ��

If I grant two individuals the tools needed to create widgets and each person has a month to create x number of widgets - the one who creates the most has the most merit.

Person A creates the most efficient way to use said tools and works 3 hours a day and creates 100 a day. Person B just works and works and works and does a 12 hour shift and created 50 a day. Person B worked harder but in what way does that matter? What matters is the result.

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Except that the reason Person A developed that method is because his father taught it to him. Or perhaps paid for a tutor to help him develop it. Person B was too busy with their second job to even think about changing anything. And if Person A's new method failed, their father would buy the 100 widgets to ensure their future employment (assuming Person A wasn't working for their father to start with).

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

Person A creates the most efficient way to use said tools and works 3 hours a day and creates 100 a day. Person B just works and works and works and does a 12 hour shift and created 50 a day. Person B worked harder but in what way does that matter? What matters is the result.

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Just for starters, Person A is incentivised to keep their way of widget creation a secret, instead of teaching it to Person B, thus resulting in fewer overall widgets. They're actually also incentivised to actively sabotage Person B's efforts, though I feel like this could be mitigated to an extent by the law.

In either case, they will be handily outcompeted by Team 2, which does not have this system, where Person A, having invented their superior method of widget production, is then incentivised to help Person B become the best possible widget producer they can. Co-operation is pretty much always a more effective strategy than competition, to the dismay of teenage edgelords everywhere.

Also, more concretely, this would be corrupted within about 7 minutes of the legislation passing. What's worth more, 75 widgets or 60 gadgets? Who decides? Well, the comparative utility of a gadget vs a widget is debatable (and essentially impossible to measure objectively since they do totally different things), but I'm sure the donations from the powerful Widget Lobby won't sway the legislators either way. How do we account for the fact that in order to create a widget, you need a gadget and widget production has only increased because new innovations in production methods in the gadget industry have eliminated gadget-based production bottlenecks? Conversely, what if major failures by the gadget industry caused by faulty gadget inductors cripple production in the widget industry, through no fault of their own?

Incidentally, if the goal is to incentivize work, we should decrease income taxes and increase taxes on land, rent (received), and capital (i.e., capital gains). It doesn't require "hard work" to already have property. If anything, having high taxes on existing property would incentivize people to work harder to keep that property.

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

?Outwork? 﫥

If I grant two individuals the tools needed to create widgets and each person has a month to create x number of widgets - the one who creates the most has the most merit.

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No. Merit does not mean the same thing to you as it does to me or (I hope) to most people.

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Originally Posted by Loki

Incidentally, if the goal is to incentivize work, we should decrease income taxes and increase taxes on land, rent (received), and capital (i.e., capital gains). It doesn't require "hard work" to already have property. If anything, having high taxes on existing property would incentivize people to work harder to keep that property.

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What, in your opinion, would be the effect of income tax on working being eliminated all together, and excess wealth above a certain threshold being taxed on an ongoing annual basis at a fixed percentage?

You'd need to account for people moving their wealth abroad to make this work. Especially if the wealth taxes are high enough to offset current income taxes. There's no real good way to do that (capital controls backfire).

You'd also have to account for people who can't work (retired or disabled), who'd see their wealth drained without being able to replace it.

Realistically, I'd go for higher capital gains taxes (make them equivalent to income tax rates) and much higher estate taxes (plus get rid of loopholes, even if new ones will open up). Maybe treat loans that use certain kinds of collateral (e.g., stocks) as income and tax them accordingly.