There are certainly programmers nearly as skilful as Gates who nonetheless failed to become the richest person on Earth. However, it does demonstrate that the link between merit and outcome is tenuous and indirect at best.Īccording to Frank, this is especially true where the success in question is great, and where the context in which it is achieved is competitive. This is not to deny the industry and talent of successful people. Luck intervenes by granting people merit, and again by furnishing circumstances in which merit can translate into success. In his book Success and Luck (2016), the US economist Robert Frank recounts the long-shots and coincidences that led to Bill Gates’s stellar rise as Microsoft’s founder, as well as to Frank’s own success as an academic. This is to say nothing of the fortuitous circumstances that figure into every success story. Talent and the capacity for determined effort, sometimes called ‘ grit’, depend a great deal on one’s genetic endowments and upbringing. This is not least because merit itself is, in large part, the result of luck. While these ideas are most pronounced in these two countries, they are popular across the globe.Īlthough widely held, the belief that merit rather than luck determines success or failure in the world is demonstrably false. Respondents in both countries believe that external factors, such as luck and coming from a wealthy family, are much less important. In the UK, 84 per cent of respondents to the 2009 British Social Attitudes survey stated that hard work is either ‘essential’ or ‘very important’ when it comes to getting ahead, and in 2016 the Brookings Institute found that 69 per cent of Americans believe that people are rewarded for intelligence and skill. Most people don’t just think the world should be run meritocratically, they think it is meritocratic. Under meritocracy, wealth and advantage are merit’s rightful compensation, not the fortuitous windfall of external events. Conceptually and morally, meritocracy is presented as the opposite of systems such as hereditary aristocracy, in which one’s social position is determined by the lottery of birth. The most common metaphor is the ‘even playing field’ upon which players can rise to the position that fits their merit. Politicians across the ideological spectrum continually return to the theme that the rewards of life – money, power, jobs, university admission – should be distributed according to skill and effort. Meritocracy has become a leading social ideal. ‘We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else …’ Barack Obama, inaugural address, 2013 ‘We must create a level playing field for American companies and workers.’ Donald Trump, inaugural address, 2017
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