Meritocracy Is Not The Problem

Jon Corzine, former CEO of MF Global

Ross Douthat wrote a column for the New York Times this weekend in which he attempted to explain the reckless overconfidence that has caused some of the greatest disasters of the past decade—among them, the Iraq War, the financial crisis, and, most recently, the bankrupty of financial firm MF Global.  He lays out the flaws he considers characteristic of three sorts of government:

In hereditary aristocracies, debacles tend to flow from stupidity and pigheadedness: think of the Charge of the Light Brigade or the Battle of the Somme. In one-party states, they tend to flow from ideological mania: think of China’s Great Leap Forward, or Stalin’s experiment with “Lysenkoist” agriculture.

In meritocracies, though, it’s the very intelligence of our leaders that creates the worst disasters. Convinced that their own skills are equal to any task or challenge, meritocrats take risks than lower-wattage elites would never even contemplate, embark on more hubristic projects, and become infatuated with statistical models that hold out the promise of a perfectly rational and frictionless world.

I’m skeptical of sweeping claims like this, but let’s say for the sake of argument that his first two claims are correct.  The third claim, though, presents a funny argument.  Essentially Douthat is implying that meritocracies—societies that choose their professional and political leaders on the basis of intelligence and skill—produce overconfident and reckless leaders.  He never explains why this is the case, though.  Would Douthat defend the claim that selecting leaders on the basis of merit always and everywhere leads to recklessness?  I doubt it.  Few people are comfortable making such absolute claims.  But that translation of his argument seems implicit in this op-ed, and it’s surprisingly unnuanced (aren’t there some meritocracies that produce leaders of moderate confidence?).

Douthat concludes with a plea for the “best and the brightest,” but only those who “have somehow learned humility along the way.”  Douthat is obviously still a proponent of meritocracy, but the key word here is “somehow.”  He lays out a problem without suggesting any solutions, and the result is to suggest that meritocracy is inherently flawed.  Again, I don’t think that’s what he’s getting at, but the way he argues in this column is ultimately misleading and irresponsible.  Rather than throwing out a powerful claim that isn’t much more than a hunch, he should restrict himself to more modest claims that he can back up with more extensive arguments and evidence.  Perhaps, without realizing it, Douthat is dabbling with simplistic models and overconfidence himself.

By: Aaron Bekemeyer

(Photo by Tony the Misfit under a Creative Commons license)