From unfortunate to loser in a meritocratic age

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But this sense of justice has brought one big problem with it, for if you genuinely believe that the successful merit their success, you have to believe that the unsuccessful deserve their failure. In a meritocratic age, a sense of justice enters into the distribution of bad jobs as well as good ones. A lowly job comes to seem not merely regrettable, but also deserved. Those in the boardroom are not only wealthier than their counterparts in the post room; they could also be plain better.

The harsh attitude that a belief in meritocracy brings can be felt in language. Three hundred years ago in England, those at the bottom of society were called "unfortunates". Nowadays, they are liable to be referred to as "losers" — this harsh word suggesting a belief those who fail have only themselves to blame.

Yet let's remember that it's probably as unlikely today that you could become as rich and powerful as Bill Gates as it was unlikely in the 17th century that you could become as rich and powerful as Louis XIV of France. But the key thing is, it doesn't feel unlikely. In fact, the suggestion out there is that if you have energy and talent, if you know a few things about software, if you have a garage, you too could in a short time start a multi-billion-dollar software company.

The great cruelty behind the idea of meritocracy is that it's crazy to imagine that we'll ever build an office culture where you'll be able to rank everyone in order of goodness and reward them accordingly, the bosses being the best, the short-term cleaning staff the worst.

A wiser course might be to be inspired by the traditional Christian idea that the merit of others is, in fact, so hard to judge that only God is up to the task, and even He can only start work on the Day of Judgment with the help of a thousand angels and a large pair of scales — a crazy idea from a secular standpoint but a useful corrective to the view that you can just look at someone's CV and judge how good he or she happens
to be.