Beyond Contest

Meritocracy is supposed to be a push back on Hereditary Privilege. The idea of social mobility where you can still make a success of life and “climb” even if you are born into difficult circumstances, “if you deserve it”. Money and consumption as a measure of personal worth. One of the mistakes made during the European Colonial era was a pissing contest revolving around Civilising Missions. Different colonial pretenders trying to spread their world view faster as a superior form of civilisation. Simplifying our drive down to a road from savage to sage. Progress. Development. Upliftment. A linear step ladder. Assuming we know the goal. Meritocracy says it is still okay to divide people into groups of better and worse, as long as there is a path to move between them. We obviously want the people we care about, and ourselves, in the best container. Incentivising us to create more than just for ourselves. Barriers to entry and exit protect people from instant and true meritocracy. This constant weighing and measuring stops us from seeing. Money is made with Capital in Containers that solve Problems. But the good things in life aren’t problems, and personal worth isn’t measured.

Manneken Pis

Reverse Darwinism

Homo Economicus is the imaginary human with an infinite ability to make rational decisions. This character doesn’t exist, but is useful in models of how real people make choices. Behavioural Finance focuses on painting a better picture of the more complicated ways we really engage with the world. The idea that businesses focus only on profit is also imaginary. Partly because incentives are complicated. Partly because businesses are imaginary models too. Businesses are collections of real people with real behaviours. The future is unknown, and the consequences of our actions are unknown. “Reverse Darwinism” is the idea that people hire people slightly less intelligent/more controllable than them so that their place is secure. People get promoted till the hit their level of incompetence, or a political ceiling. If someone promising threatens to leave, let them. There is always another promising, less demanding, person to fill their place. This all sounds cynical. My point isn’t that people are bad. It is that merit and profit aren’t clear. People are complicated with inconsistent goals to match an uncertain world.