Could it be that poor Americans think they will be rich at some point - either through hard work, divine providence or the lottery (the American dream)? So they care less about structural change - their poverty is only temporary. But I'm not an American (let alone a poor American) and could be completely wrong.
No, it's not that. Rather, Americans are committed to the idea of "meritocracy".
Meritocracy requires a hierarchy; it requires winners and losers. Meritocracy wouldn't make sense if everyone had the same merit, if everyone was equally worthy.
Meritocracy allows people in the middle, people who are average by definition, ordinary, not special, to feel better about themselves by looking down at the poor. "They made poor choices, that's why they're poor. I made better choices." The point of meritocracy is to undermine sympathy and solidarity, to turn everything individualistic. Divide and conquer.
The economics of competition, supply, and demand is amoral: it's just a method for determining the prices of products and transactions, without any judgment about whether the outcome is morally good. What we've done is turn our economic system into an ethical system: you are judged worthy, meritorious, based on your economic value. It's almost as if the so-called Invisible Hand of the market is God distributing punishment and reward.
> The economics of competition, supply, and demand is amoral: it's just a method for determining the prices of products and transactions, without any judgment about whether the outcome is morally good. What we've done is turn our economic system into an ethical system: you are judged worthy, meritorious, based on your economic value.
That argument looks like it is based on equivocation between different meanings of 'merit'.
On the contrary, for meritocracy proponents, 'merit' is explicitly amoral quality as it is clear that it has significant pure luck factor. Fundamentally it says that economic outcomes (both positions in economic structures and personal incomes) should depend just on ability to create economic value (which is in this context called 'merit'), not on other factors like moral worth.
> for meritocracy proponents, 'merit' is explicitly amoral quality as it is clear that it has significant pure luck factor.
This is a strange argument. Luck is the opposite of merit, and meritocracy proponents are at pains to deemphasize the luck factor, to the extent of claiming, "you make your own luck". Persistence, making the most of your opportunities, hard work, yadda yadda.
> This is a strange argument. Luck is the opposite of merit
I think it is pretty clear. Merit is just ability to create economic value, regardless of where this ability come from (which is clearly based on many factors, some a luck, some are your good decisions, some are good decisions of other people). There are obvious examples of luck factors, like genetics and accidents. If your merit is based on ability to think deeply, and after a hit to a head by a robber you end with concentration problems, then your merit is lowered, by bad luck.
> to the extent of claiming, "you make your own luck". Persistence, making the most of your opportunities, hard work, yadda yadda.
These are not really descriptive statements about merit, these are advice how to behave to maximize your merit. If you want to maximize your merit, then it make sense to focus on aspects you can change and not on that you cannot.
By analogy, getting hit by a car has significant luck component, but if you want to give someone advice how to avoid getting hit by a car, you would focus on things like 'look around before crossing' and not 'have good luck'.
> Merit is just ability to create economic value, regardless of where this ability come from
This is in danger of being a tautology. How do you distinguish one's actual economic value created from one's "ability" to create economic value?
> These are not really descriptive statements about merit, these are advice how to behave to maximize your merit.
How can you tell whether someone has "maximized" their merit? Especially if "merit", according to you, includes luck? You could always have more luck.
From a previous comment:
> economic outcomes (both positions in economic structures and personal incomes) should depend just on ability to create economic value (which is in this context called 'merit'), not on other factors like moral worth.
I think you're misunderstanding. According to meritocracy, the ability to create economic value is moral worth. Meritocracy is a moral (or immoral) system. That's my point. Economic value itself has no inherent moral/judgmental component.
>> Merit is just ability to create economic value, regardless of where this ability come from
> This is in danger of being a tautology.
Well, that is an definition of a term, so it is tautology.
> How do you distinguish one's actual economic value created from one's "ability" to create economic value?
That is a hard question for real societal structures, but not relevant for the idea of meritocracy itself, which is just a societal aspiration, not some explicit criteria.
So yes, in some sense idea of 'meritocracy' is a value system, but a value system about societies (saying that society should aspire to be more meritocratic), not about individuals.
The concept of 'meritocracy' is pretty clear on specific examples. I guess that few people would disagree with idea that e.g. surgeon positions should be occupied by people with better outcomes when doing surgery (even if we do not know how effectively evaluate that) than some other criteria like class origin, loyalty to the regime, or based on whether their parents were surgeons. But also i guess few people would consider 'have better outcomes when doing surgery' as factor of moral worth.
Using terms like 'creating economic value' is just universal term (and kind of simplification) for merits in specific positions.
> That is a hard question for real societal structures, but not relevant for the idea of meritocracy itself, which is just a societal aspiration, not some explicit criteria.
It's not just an aspiration. We wouldn't be talking about meritocracy so much if were some pie-in-the-sky utopian ideal. What makes the idea of meritocracy so pernicious is that many people believe that our society is in fact more or less a meritocracy, albeit imperfect. We do judge people in our current society based on their so-called merit in the capitalist economy. That's the whole point of this discussion, going back to how we view poor people, as having "made bad decisions" and thus "deserving" their predicament.
> few people would disagree with idea that e.g. surgeon positions should be occupied by people with better outcomes when doing surgery
You've chosen the least controversial question to answer. But this says nothing about, for example, how much money surgeons should get paid, or who gets admitted to medical school, when surgical outcomes are definitely unknown at that point. And it says nothing about what social services we should or shouldn't provide to the poor, again going back to the original issue.
Meritocracy views poverty as a personal moral failing, deserving blame rather than sympathy. It doesn't view poverty as a natural, predictable side effect of the economic system that needs mitigation.
You are somewhat right: Americans do see people who give more to the society than they take as more worthy than ones who take more than they give. But the market is not a moral measure in itself but is the measure of the value one gives and takes from the society. If you give more than you take you accumulate wealth and vice versa, if you take more than give you are getting poorer.
Alice grows an apple and sells it to Bob for a dollar. Alice now has a dollar more because she gave her labor and services and the dollar is the value of these given. Bob took Alice's labor and services and Bob is now poorer a dollar because he has taken a dollar worth these. There is no moral judgment here and nothing is oxymoronic.
I have no desire for this giver/taker credo to be justified to me, so please don't bother. However, I would say that the example given is overly simplistic, almost childishly so, and ignores many critical details, such as how Alice acquired land and an apple tree, why Bob doesn't have land or an apple tree, how Bob got a dollar, etc. Not to mention that everyone needs to eat food, including Alice. (It's unlikely that Alice could survive on an all-apple diet.) Thus, if buying food makes you a "taker", then we're almost all takers. Certainly the wealthiest people in the world aren't farmers, and I'm pretty sure they don't grow their own food either.
It's a simple explanation and not a justification. From your comment I figured you don't seem to understand but it appears you don't want to accept it, that's fine too.
Someone who works 3 jobs for a pittance, while raising a family, is IMHO giving a lot more than they take, but will not accumulate wealth. Conversely you can become fabulously rich running a private equity company, while definitely taking more than you give.
Is someone digging trenches from dusk to dawn giving a lot to the society even if nobody asked for that and pays nothing for it? From the perspective of "hard work is always great" she or he does, from the perspective "the market determines what labor is worth to the society" - no, there is no benefit from that work even though the person gets tired much more than, say, somebody who writes code for a lot of money.
Ok, so a private equity fund manager can easily make 100x what a nurse makes. Are you saying that this is because the fund manager contributes much more to society?
I believe you are now trying word games, with going from value to some undefined quantities. Evidently the society values the fund manager's contribution more than a nurse's. If it's "more" or "less" depends on whatever measure you are now thinking about outside the market value.
The stratification comes from primate brains, not capitalism. It remains even without capitalism, except no amount of effort gets you out of it in other systems.
Growing up in Eastern Europe, you could be extremely hard working and honest and the second you reach even minor success there would be a strong man (mafia muscle or political/government corruption) knocking on your door to trim you down a bit and take your everything if you fight back. If you were born in a village, you were not allowed to move to the city and had your destiny sealed as the farmer to feed the privileged citizens.
There is a Bulgarian Book called “To Chicago and Back” where the author travels to America for the world fair. One of the highlights mentions that in the bus or train in America, even low level workers can wear a suit. Unlike the rest of the world, in capitalistic countries your money and effort is just as green, regardless of your parentage, color, proclivities, etc. You can make what you are willing to work for and the rest is a matter of choice. At least you have a choice. The rest of the non-capitalistic world mostly doesn’t.
I'm sure the opportunities for poor people in the US are much greater than they were for a poor person growing up in late 20th century Eastern Europe. But I think it is wishful thinking to say that any poor person in the US can become rich if they work hard enough. Of course, it suits the rich people to have everyone believe that.
> The stratification comes from primate brains, not capitalism. It remains even without capitalism, except no amount of effort gets you out of it in other systems.
I think you missed my point. I didn't say that our social values come from capitalism. Quite the opposite. I said that capitalism is nothing more than an amoral economic system. The problem is that we've imposed a bizarre ethical system on top of capitalism.
I suspect that this unholy alliance is a result of trying to reconcile capitalism with the dominant American religion, Christianity, which originally was vehemently anti-materialistic: Jesus himself was exceedingly clear about this. But eventually the self-sacrificial ethos of Christianity morphed into the Protestant work ethic, and wealth became God's earthly reward for "hard work".
> in America, even low level workers can wear a suit
Do you really think it is as black and white as that. That the only choices are the failed system of the Soviet Union or the unfettered capitalism of the United States?
We are all extremely fortunate to be able to move to countries and states that for our beliefs and moral compass. That’s what I did. The important part is seeing all options available very very clearly. Please feel free to list more so people are more informed. Each system stratifies (that goes back to Chimp and Gorilla societies too). So your choice is to pick the ladder you want to climb:
1. US Capitalism uses money as priority for getting whatever you want. Those willing to spend more get first dibs at most legal things and the more money something costs, the faster you’ll see resourceful people find a way to make more of it - so if something is in shortage, that doesn’t last long and eventually everyone who wants it can afford it (assuming the scarcity is not deliberate like a rare location) . You have many legal and some illegal ways to make money and once you make a surplus of that, you can have the stock market grow your nest egg for you, so the older you get the more likely you are to have money. In countries without a stock market, seniors can live in misery and barely afford food on government rationed pensions.
2. Communism/socialism - point system is political connections. If you have them you get nice things, if you don’t you are assigned to
where you can live and where your kids can study and punished if you complain. Government rations to you whatever it hasn’t spent on frivolous stuff, while its officials can be partying every weekend with shared resources. You can get whatever is available, whenever it is available - cars in 20 years, for example, because everyone works as much as they want and is equally poor. Rich or educated/higher class people get fleeced or imprisoned. You can prioritize what you want with connections or money (corruption thrives after all).
3. The stuff in between gravitates to one or the other because your system either prioritizes getting more stuff supplied to its people or more people restricted to meet the available eternally lesser supply. If your birth rate goes up or you get immigration gets higher, the process accelerates.
Take your pick, or offer more currently available societies with different point systems.
> We are all extremely fortunate to be able to move to countries and states that for our beliefs and moral compass.
Which all did you have in mind here? All the top 10% of HN contributors? Or all the people in whichever country you are in? if it is the latter I can assure that it is most certainly not the case that "We are all .. able to move to countries .." unless they are EU citizens proposing to move to another EU country.
A substantial fraction of all people wouldn't be able raise the money for the flight, let alone have the necessary qualifications to satisfy the visa and residence permit issuing authority of most western countries.
From what I've seen those at the bottom are too busy surviving to be politically active. Exceptions do exist, though most of those I knew still worked as much as they could to secure a less stressful life for themselves and family.
The middle class is sold on the dream that two cars, a house, and kids make you rich. And any day now you'll get bigger/more of all of that -- if you just work harder and more. Just don't look behind the curtain, that's above your station.
The stereotype is that all Americans are just temporarily impoverished millionaires.
This is why they vote against their own interests and support less taxes for the rich. They'll join the rich as soon as their hustle and long hours of work pay off
