is meritocracy a good idea?

Ideas that are taken for granted tend to worry me. One idea that is certainly taken for granted by most right-leaning people is that meritocracy is a good thing. Within the dissident right meritocracy is increasingly linked with IQ fetishism. People with high IQs are regarded as being better than people with low IQs, so therefore when it comes to areas such as employment, university admission, immigration, recruitment to the bureaucracy and even politics it is assumed that if we can select the best and the brightest the results will be as close to optimum as it is possible to get.

Mainstream conservatives are reluctant to talk openly about IQ but broadly speaking they share the assumption that rule by the best and the brightest is a very good thing. Believers in meritocracy do not necessarily see it purely in terms of IQ of course. They will talk about hard work and possibly even thrown in terms like creativity and talent although they probably won’t be able to give a satisfactory definition of those terms. But it’s clear that they see meritocracy as a system that rewards the best and the brightest and it’s clear that they see intelligence as a very major component of being the best and the brightest.

Most people on the Right see meritocracy as being one of those sacred values, along with freedom and democracy, that should never be questioned.

But is meritocracy really such a great idea?

For one thing there is no actual connection between freedom and democracy and meritocracy. Imperial China was to a large extent a meritocracy. The key to advancement was to pass the civil service exams and the better your result in those exams the better your chances of advancement. And the exams were extremely fair. Imperial China was a very successful advanced civilisation with a high degree of stability and social cohesion. But Imperial China clearly was neither democratic nor free.

Meritocracy probably is a good idea in some fields. It’s reasonable to assume that a nuclear physicist or a mathematician with an IQ of 160 will achieve more than a nuclear physicist or a mathematician with an IQ of 120. But is meritocracy a good thing in other fields? Will a bureaucracy made up of the best and brightest produce a successful society? Would we necessarily be better governed if our politicians were selected from among the best and the brightest? Will selecting immigrants on a meritocratic basis give us immigrants more likely to make a positive contribution to society?

I’m not convinced. In most areas of life it seems to me that there are other qualities that are at least as important as being among the best and the brightest. It’s nice to have bureaucrats who are honest. It’s desirable to have immigrants who are prepared to show some kind of loyalty to their adopted homes. It’s a good thing to have a society in which broadly speaking those who hold positions of power and influence are more concerned with the good of society than with their own wealth and personal advancement. I’d rather have a prime minister of average intelligence who sincerely wants the country to be a good place to live than a brilliant prime minister who puts his own career first. I’d prefer to have honest policemen than smart policemen.

Meritocracy may in fact be something that tends to dissolve social cohesion rather than enhancing it. To me it seems to be part and parcel of the cult of individualism that has done so much harm to our society. Maybe meritocracy isn’t so great after all.