Meritocracy was always a myth spread to allow capital to operate freely. If you failed then it was your fault, nevermind that the deck was stacked heavily against you.
Capitalism is designed to give power to the few at the top. Nothing about it is a meritocracy, its a funnel of money straight to whoever can exploit the system more than the rest. Has nothing to do with merit, but to "get yours" through whatever means necessary, including crushing those employees who actually do the hard labor that they then extract wealth from.
Both. It's kind of like asking if monarchy is the problem or if the problem is just evil kings. Theoretically even a dictatorship can work out well for the people given a benevolent dictator. The issue is with the vulnerabilities inherent in the system. For capitalism, it's that those with more money have more influence and thus it creates a feedback loop where those with more money have more power to get themselves more money and therefore more power and so on.
Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production (there is a less marxist term about top level economic property I'm totally spacing on here so take some Marx and quit yer complaining, it's the same thing) and has nothing to do with merit.
That has always been capitalist propaganda. The ability to participate in capital has nothing to do with merit.
Bracing for downvotes here...
Capitalism is good when properly regulated. Capitalism is an incredible tool for raising living standards, which should be the ultimate goal of any aociety. Disfunctional capitalism produces inequity.
Now I know someone is going to say that capitalists tend to accrue power, to which I say that is EVERY system. They ALL need to be kept in check. Socialism, feudalism, anarchy, oligarchy, it doesn't matter. Someone will try to accrue power. The economic system MUST be subordinate to the government, and ideally that government should represent the will (or at least the best interests) of the people.
I am FIRMLY in the "the system is broken and needs to be fixed" camp. Regulatory capture is a result of disfunctional capitalism. Monopolies are a result of disfunctional capitalism. Cronyism is a result of disfunctional capitalism. Capitalism as a system is not inherently bad except in the way that any system when allowed to run unchecked is bad.
A strong government hand, when wielded by empathetic and civic-minded people, is a requirement for any economic system. Given that, capitalism is the best economic model the world has ever seen.
Edit: pleasantly surprised. Shitlibs assemble?
I earn more than most medical doctors in my home country. They save lives, while I write software that could disappear tomorrow and no chaos would ensue. But I do earn my employers more money than the doctor does.
The only world in which this is right is a world where you only care about yourself and being rich. Meritocracy is inherently subjective and depends largely of what you value to give people merit, and in a lot of cases that's "we fucked over two dozen tiny companies with patent troll lawsuits and made millions".
Deregulation is the problem.
- allowing companies to merge until they become “too big to fail”
- allowing companies to poison our environment and our bodies without fear of substantial repercussions
- allowing companies to make false product claims without fear of substantial repercussions
- allowing companies to lobby and contribute to political campaigns even though they can’t vote
If you think capitalism and greed go hand in hand, as I do, then it's capitalism. Netflix, for one, was a great service and it's been profitable for decades but the price hikes, account sharing crackdowns, and increasing promotion of own content really turned it into shit, all in the name of more profits.
Why do you think Capitalism has meritocracy as a core component?
Capitalism is a system where capital needs to be converted into more capital via economic action (reinvestment) rather than just sat upon.
Capital will always find ways to grow, if there are laws - they will be lobbied against. Or those with main market share will work together to stabilise the market and squash competition.
The issue with pure capitalism is that it reduces people's interactions to their economic value but some people do not have economic value, or have little economic value and no power to redress it. So capitalism can be efficient but can also be efficiently cold hearted.
Nepotism is only an issue where owners define it as an issue. Obviously the workforce at large stands to benefit from meritocracy but so do shareholders. In a free market, inadequate appointments due to nepotism should put a company at a disadvantage. But compare that with a family farm where the owners (shareholders) might prefer nepotism (appointment of a son/daughter to management) rather than opening the role to the job market. Few people object to this small scale nepotism, but should they object if shareholders of a large corporation wanted to do the same? Isn't it their money after all? The chief issues with nepotism are when it's done against the wishes of the owners of the company. But this is increasingly difficult with shareholder approval of board members and so on.
Obviously nepotism into monopolistic companies is a problem because of lack of competition but this only joins all the other problems already caused by monopolies.
In a healthy capitalism, competition is maintained. And if that's done then the risks presented by nepotism are diminished because poor appointments ought to lead to poor results.
Ironically, it's in extensive socialist state monopolies that nepotism is most dangerous primarily because of the decreased market competition.
You should define what you think is capitalism, cronyism, and meritocracy, because you seem to have an answer in your head that you don't wish to divulge.
Capitalism is the idea that those that own the means of production own the profits from them.
Meritocracy is the idea that those with skill will prevail over those without.
I will argue that capitalism IS meritocratic, but the problem is that that which capitalism holds in high merits is that which generates capital at the fastest rate. Good products do not necessarily earn more money over bad products faster. Capitalism only cares about the fastest acquisition of capital through whatever barriers are present. This means it inherently does not care about labor that doesn't generate profit (immediately).
Those that hold capital get to choose what merits we look for. Software developers or teachers, which can make more money? Childcare workers or lawyers, which can make more money? We pretend like the difference in these jobs and their pay is skill, but we treat various labor differently because we assign a higher capital interest to some labor, like the ability to write a contract or write a program, and a lower capital interest to other labor, like taking care of a child or teaching someone valuable skills. We pretend like physical, emotional, and reproductive labor is less skillful than intellectual labor because it doesn't make as much money for capital, but the truth is that only capital gets to choose what is high-skilled and what gets to be paid like it's high-skilled.
Thus, while capitalism is meritocratic in a sense, it is not meritocratic for workers, and will always devolve into a class-based system by design. I could argue that by choosing what is worth more money, they create their own cronyism, but that is really more of a moot point.
Capitalism is a problem… along with a shitload of other problems.
Capitalism isn't the problem. Any economy run by human beings is going to have cronyism.
The problem is both. Certain people will always try to exploit regardless of the intent of the system. The problem then isn't that there are people that exploit. We need to accept that those people will always exist because it's just a part of humanity. We evolved to have a spectrum of personalities in our groups. And, we can't get rid of them because they have every right to exists like everyone else. I think the best solution is to create system accepting who we are as a species that prevents the ability for anyone to hoard massive amounts of wealth and power.
Democratize everything. Democratize the government, democratize the economy, democratize neighborhoods, democratize work places, democratize the world. Spread power equally amongst everyone. No one should be powerful enough to control the government. No one should be wealthy enough to control the economy. And, if we experience democracy in our local groups with which we have direct interactions on a regular basis, democracy becomes a universal expectation. We learn how it works through experiential lessons everyday. We learn what it feels like, we learn its strengths, and we learn its weaknesses. Universal democracy is the solution because it prevents the ability for anyone person to accumulate power and control over others.
The downside is that democracy is slow and disorganized. It cannot compete against a unified group with a strong leader because it's not as quick and decisive. Thus, to have democracy that is universal across all system levels, it must be universal across all of humanity as well. One place cant be democratic while another is not. Democracy is all-or-none, baby 😘
YES!
Some people are always looking for a free ride. Amassing power/influence/status/assets is usually a way to do that - basically get others to do the hard work and take 5/10/50% of the credit. This appllies under all systems due, most probably, to the natural diversity of humans.
The job of the "system" (legal, political, economic, even cultural and religious) is to mitigate excesses and especially abuses of power before it comes to extremes of bloodshed; but as those also sometimes concentrate power, they themselves need something to regulate the systemic abuses or the non-sytemic abuses of empowered officials.
Humans are the problem, some of them. But greed is also motivational (and sloth), so you can't get rid of it entirely.
If you can keep your society smal enough that basically everyone knows what most other people are up to, it doesn't take much regulation, beyond trust and reputation. But as if your society grows to where some people are effectively faceless and unknown, then it becomes more problematic.
I guess look around the world and see what's working? Unfettered capitalism wouldn't work, and cronyism isn't unique to capitalism.
Unfettered meritocracy doesn't work either. Say I'm born smart and ambitious and become a captain of industry. Why do I "deserve" to make 100x or 10000x more than someone who is working hard but not smart or ambitious, or someone who is wildly creative in a not monetizatable way? And how do you even ensure all kids get the same starting line to actually have a meritocracy, if you are enforcing capitalism? 100% inheritance tax maybe, and the money allocated out to everyone?
Maybe all these systems are ideas - capitalism, socialism, fascism, meritocracy, and none could be achieved in real life, because we aren't living in a controlled test environment.
On your specific question, I think cronyism and inheritance are problems that transcend capitalism, but if you could somehow magically disappear them, meritocracy would reveal its faults, there isn't a perfect system. All we can do is try to think about what we want to achieve (environmental restoration, a healthy population, a vibrant marketplace that serves everyone not just a few) and try to incrementally get there.
