Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science: Meritocracy won't happen: the problem's with the "ocracy"

Meritocracy won't happen: the problem's with the "ocracy"

I was reading something the other day that referred in an offhand way to "meritocracy", which reminded me of a wide-ranging and interesting article by James Flynn (the discoverer of the "Flynn effect", the steady increase in average IQ scores over the past sixty years or so). Flynn's article talks about how we can understand variation in IQ within populations, between populations, and changes over time.

At the end of his article, Flynn gives a convincing argument that a meritocracatic future is not going to happen and in fact is not really possible.

flykoo

IQ is not worth believing. It doesn't give you the level of your real abilities, it just shows how you can count.
flykoo

Ned

It would seem to me that the question of whether US society has been getting more meritocratic or not has been largely settled empirically in the last ten years or so. Take a look, for example, at Harvard class of 2006 vs one of 1936. Or statistics on where the income of the top 0.1% earners comes from (mostly return on human capital, not on physical one). I think that the fallacy in Flynn’s argument is of the type: “Perfect markets are not possible in the real world, therefore markets cannot work in the real world.” – i.e. although US society will never be perfectly meritocratic, is can become and has became *more* meritocratic.

Andrew

Flykoo,

Hey, counting is a real ability!

Ned,

Point taken. Perhaps, though, the meritocracy is hard to sustain, since the "ocracy" part of "meritocracy" is that these meritocrats get prime spaces in life for their kids, who don't need to have the merit to get there.