Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

Merit

“It’s hard to make a case for victimhood when you’re living in a meritocracy.”

That’s one of my favorite quotes. I just which I knew who said it first. If only it were true. Or perhaps, we’re simply not living in a meritocracy?

Although they never said it quite that way, the society left to us by the founders was a meritocracy. It’s based on the notion that we are all created equal, and that we all have the right to liberty and the right to pursue our own happiness. Let’s read them again shall we?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Look at how carefully Thomas Jefferson worded that. He didn’t say “Life, Liberty, and Happiness”. He specifically said “the pursuit of Happiness”. In other words, happiness isn’t handed to you, you have to go after it. When President Roosevelt later tried to redefine these rights for a more modern society he ignored that distinction entirely, saying that the right to Life meant that we had the right to earn a comfortable living.

What a transformational idea. In a single speech we go from meritocracy, where you earn your happiness to a society where it’s handed to you.

It would be nice if we could all earn a comfortable living. Roosevelt’s notion is that we all have a right to a job. It just doesn’t work that way in a meritocracy though. In a meritocracy, you earn a job. You sell your labor. How much you earn and how comfortable that living you earn is depends on the quality and consistency of your work. It also depends on whether that work is needed.

Having a job seems like a wonderful thing, for the most part, especially for people who have been out of work so long that unemployment compensation has run out. You go somewhere, slave away at a task, complain about it, and later get paid. This is where the notion of “wage slaves” probably comes from. In fact, here’s one of the big complaints that I hear about the capitalist system – that it turns us all into wage slaves for “the man”.

Let me disabuse you all of that Rooseveltian notion that you have a right to a job. Nobody has a right to a job. Nobody. Not a single person anywhere. You have a right to pursue happiness – but not a right to a job. Where the Hell do you think jobs come from if you believe that you have a right to one? Jobs ultimately only come from one place. A job only exists when somebody has work that needs doing and they are willing to pay someone to do that work. The only jobs that government creates are government jobs. No government has ever actually created a single private sector job. Not one.

But, there are other ways to earn a living. Those other ways are also more work, but they are the true heart of the capitalist system. In fact, I believe I can go further than that and say that they are the true heart of the American revolution (but explaining that would require a trip through John Locke’s works and a good understanding of where property really comes from). Of course I’m speaking about entrepreneurship. That’s right – providing a good or service that other people want enough to pay for, and in numbers large enough to offset the costs of the good or service as well as your need to survive to continue providing it.

This is the root of the capitalist system, and it only works in a meritocracy. If you don’t provide decent quality, you won’t get repeat customers – and word of your poor quality will spread. Soon enough you’ll be out of business and looking for another way to survive. On the other hand, if you provide high quality, you’ll likely get repeat customers – and free advertising through word of mouth. Your chances of earning a comfortable living will be higher.

Oh, and that extra that goes above and beyond the cost of providing the good or service? The part that lets you survive? Well it seems that it has an evil name – and it marks the entrepreneur as “greedy” – it’s called “profit”. But I’m here to tell you – despite what you may have heard from the morons occupying the parks in our cities demanding free food from the restaurateurs, free tuition from the colleges, and forgiveness of the “crushing” debt they suffer under because of their own bad decisions – profit is not evil.

The opposite of profit is loss. Lose enough and survival will be more than a struggle. It’ll be painful as well. But – that’s the way things go in a meritocracy. You either put in the effort to improve what you provide to others and hope to profit by it, or you fail and end up living in a tent in some city park, or huddled under newspapers and cardboard boxes in an alleyway or under a freeway overpass blaming the “rich” for your problems.

Either that, or you go out and get a job. In other words, you sell your labor for profit, your own profit. Of course, in order to actually be able to sell your labor, someone has to be willing to buy it. That means, you have to have the ability to do what someone else wants.

For those of you  occupying our parks and protesting in front of our businesses, I know that this is a shock. But, if you truly believe you have a right to a job and that those greedy rich people are to blame for your lack of work, you made the wrong choices when you were preparing to face the world. You should have looked to see what entrepreneurs actually needed to have done and chosen a field of study that would prepare you for it. Claiming that business people aren’t “fair” to you is just another attempt at making a case for victimhood – and it doesn’t wash. If you want to avoid the meritocracy take a job in government service.

Now I’m not saying that government service jobs are all bad. Some are necessary. We need police and firefighters. We need our military to defend us. There are many other government service jobs that are truly of benefit to us all. But – a lot of government jobs have nothing to do with merit – and that does a disservice to us all. When the incentives of the meritocracy are lost the quality of products and services suffers.

In a capitalist meritocracy it’s fairly certain that some entrepreneurs will do better than others. Either they produce better quality, or their prices are more reasonable, or they are able to produce equal quality with others but more efficiently. Darwinists should be able to appreciate that. It’s simply “survival of the fittest”. There’s really only one thing that fouls this up. That’s when “government” gets involved. When government imposes regulations on business it’s almost always done in a way that favors one entrepreneur over another. That stacks the deck and works against meritocracy. It also opens the way for corruption. About the only thing I have in common with the “occupiers” is my dislike of “crony capitalism”.

Yes, sometimes it’s good when government regulates what a business may do. But I’d be willing to bet that most of the regulations businesses have to struggle under aren’t really about protecting the consumer or the employee. But with the horrendous volume of regulation out there it’d be pretty hard to give real facts and figures. This is one reason I’m in favor of less regulation.

Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware. If we’re responsible for ourselves and living in a meritocracy then it should be up to us to decide what we want to buy and from whom. Do we really need the government to do it for us? Isn’t that the antithesis of liberty?

This principle should apply anywhere goods or services are sold. Even when it comes to the labor market. If you want to sell your labor to someone that has a job that needs doing then they ought to have the right and even the duty to examine the quality of your labor. After all, why should they buy your services when someone else is willing to provide similar services for the same price (wage) – and that person is know to be reliable? Does a degree in cultural studies really make you more qualified to work in a technical field than a technical degree does?

And let’s face it – in today’s economy with 9% unemployment (or closer to 16% out of work or underemployed) we’re really talking about a labor market, and not a job market. There are damned few jobs out there and a glut of people willing to sell their labor. If you’re not prepared to face the meritocracy then you’re likely to remain on the market.

Lastly, unions. Yes, they’ve done some good. But on the whole I don’t like them. For the most part they’re based in that Rooseveltian notion that we all have a right to a job – no matter how well we do it. They’re based in the idea that time in service counts more than the quality/price ratio that the person who has a job to be done is interested in. Where an employer truly is unfair and unethical a union is useful. Everywhere else it’s a drag on business and quality and ensures that whatever business is saddled with it is less competitive.

I leave you with another thought. Consider the leaf on the tree. The tree cannot survive for long without leaves, which manufacture all of its food through photosynthesis, and which also provide it with the oxygen that it uses to consume that food or to turn it into structural material. Yet every year as the weather turns colder and the hours of daylight lessen trees everywhere start shedding their leaves as the leaves become less productive and it becomes harder and harder for the tree to support them. Then, after winter passes and the hours of daylight increase and warmth again soaks into the trees loosening up the sap the tree sprouts buds, which become new leaves – nourishing the tree and ensuring its survival.

How is this any different for a business? As workers gain tenure and their wages increase while their productivity wanes does it make sense for the business to continue to support them? Especially in times of declining economic fortune? If the light of profit decreases how can the business not shed it’s more expensive, less productive workers? And is it really an outrage when the next generation comes in full of energy and willing to work for less that the business hires them rather than the aging, less productive, more expensive applicants?

In a meritocracy if you want to avoid the fate of the leaf, you have to continue to be productive. As the cost of keeping you on the payroll increases with time, if the return on the business’ investment doesn’t also grow then you should expect new leaves to replace you. Either that or be ready to retire.

For many, the purpose of the union is to provide job security. The exact opposite of a meritocracy. To me, that’s perverse. And just to be clear and to avoid that “workers of the world unite” nonsense – when you sell your labor, in other words, when you take a job, your labor, and the fruits of that labor do not belong to you. They belong to the person that purchased it from you. The notion that the workers control the means of production is a lie. Without the entrepreneur there would be nothing to produce – and nobody to purchase the workers’ labor.

Ultimately this is why socialism and communism fail. Because the only way to be sure that things get done in a society where we cannot profit from our labors is to force us to labor. In other words, ultimately, socialism and communism make slaves of us all – and if we’re not willing to be slaves then there’s only one answer. Whatever did happen to all those millions under Stalin anyway?