Worldbuilding Realism Consultation Thread Mk. 4

[Absolon-7]

There is no such thing as a meritocracy.

That's to say, the word 'meritocracy' means 'advancement on merit'.

Every society believes it advances people based on 'merit'.

The problem is defining what 'merit' is, how to measure it, and what institutions should exist to measure it.

Well, I guess defining what those three things are would be good starting point for me.

[The Akasha Colony]

I've been thinking of retconning the way my country's government is run but I've been stuck at a impasse. I disfavor both monarchism since there's no guarantee your heir will be as competent has you and direct/representative democracy since the former is weak to the fickle desires of the potentially uneducated masses and the former for being to vulnerable to corruption and petty rivalries. So I've been thinking of how to come up with a feasible form of government where the ruler is chosen by merit. Before I make the decision to retcon, I sort of want a second opinion on how good or bad a meritocracy form of government could be.

A truly objective meritocracy is more or less impossible.

Because you cannot objectively define merit.

And it does not magically eliminate the factionalism, pettiness, and corruption of the others because these are not symptoms of the government's organization, but of people in general.

[Gallan Systems]

Make a new people.

[Austrasien]

I've been thinking of retconning the way my country's government is run but I've been stuck at a impasse. I disfavor both monarchism since there's no guarantee your heir will be as competent has you and direct/representative democracy since the former is weak to the fickle desires of the potentially uneducated masses and the former for being to vulnerable to corruption and petty rivalries. So I've been thinking of how to come up with a feasible form of government where the ruler is chosen by merit. Before I make the decision to retcon, I sort of want a second opinion on how good or bad a meritocracy form of government could be.

[Taihei Tengoku]

I've been thinking of retconning the way my country's government is run but I've been stuck at a impasse. I disfavor both monarchism since there's no guarantee your heir will be as competent has you and direct/representative democracy since the former is weak to the fickle desires of the potentially uneducated masses and the former for being to vulnerable to corruption and petty rivalries. So I've been thinking of how to come up with a feasible form of government where the ruler is chosen by merit. Before I make the decision to retcon, I sort of want a second opinion on how good or bad a meritocracy form of government could be.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

I've been thinking of retconning the way my country's government is run but I've been stuck at a impasse. I disfavor both monarchism since there's no guarantee your heir will be as competent has you and direct/representative democracy since the former is weak to the fickle desires of the potentially uneducated masses and the former for being to vulnerable to corruption and petty rivalries. So I've been thinking of how to come up with a feasible form of government where the ruler is chosen by merit. Before I make the decision to retcon, I sort of want a second opinion on how good or bad a meritocracy form of government could be.

[The Soodean Imperium]

I've been thinking of retconning the way my country's government is run but I've been stuck at a impasse. I disfavor both monarchism since there's no guarantee your heir will be as competent has you and direct/representative democracy since the former is weak to the fickle desires of the potentially uneducated masses and the former for being to vulnerable to corruption and petty rivalries. So I've been thinking of how to come up with a feasible form of government where the ruler is chosen by merit. Before I make the decision to retcon, I sort of want a second opinion on how good or bad a meritocracy form of government could be.

A truly objective meritocracy is more or less impossible.

Because you cannot objectively define merit.

I think people are conflating "meritocracy" as a categorical arrangement of institutions with "meritocracy" as a pure political ideal.

One could just as easily say that a true "theocracy" is impossible because there's no objective way to determine the will of God(s), or that a true "democracy" is impossible because there will always be institutions mediating the will of the people. Strictly speaking, these claims are perfectly true, but that doesn't stop Iran from calling itself theocratic or the US calling itself democratic regardless of how far their actual governments are from those ideals.

The real answer is more or less what Absolon-7 said in his second post: what matters is to first define what constitutes "merit" in a given political culture, then design institutions to measure it and promote people based on it. If you're Imperial China, scholar-gentlemen were held to be less corrupt as a class, merit meant understanding Confucian philosophy and classics, and a centralized examination was deemed to be the optimal way to assess this. In a modern society, merit may be defined as one's educational qualifications, one's ability to deliver on promises of economic growth, or even one's loyalty to the Party. It may be important that all people have an equal opportunity to succeed, or this may be irrelevant as long as the most qualified candidate gets recruited. Each of these will, in turn, shape the institutions that assess or measure qualifications. Perhaps it would be better to speak not of meritocracy but meritocracies, in the same way that there are any number of ways to organize democracy.

The resulting system will not be "objectively" meritocratic, whatever that's supposed to mean. But it might be subjectively meritocratic, in the sense that it seeks to align the selection of officials with the standards that its (political) culture associates with merit. Measured by another set of standards, it might perform as badly as, or worse than, the leading alternatives, and it may even fall short of its own goals, but that won't stop the government from confidently calling itself meritocratic.

If you (Absalon-7) are going about this with the aim of creating a perfect political system, then yes, the be warned that objective meritocracy is probably impossible. Also, be warned that NS nations that have "perfect" political systems based on their players' personal beliefs tend to be the most tedious for other people to deal with. But if all you want to do is write about the institutions in a fictional meritocratic government, none of this is any obstacle.

IMHO, the really intriguing question is what unintended impacts a given form of meritocracy will have for society at large, such as the way the education system is structured, the attractiveness of the private sector, the way common people assess how well the government is performing, and so on.

And it does not magically eliminate the factionalism, pettiness, and corruption of the others because these are not symptoms of the government's organization, but of people in general.

This is also a strawman argument and you know it.

Why write and enforce laws if crime still happens? Why improve on a tank design if it will always have weaknesses?

The arrangement of institutions in any government - both for selecting officials specifically, and managing affairs more generally - has profound qualitative and quantitative effects on a country's functioning. Factionalism, pettiness, and corruption quite clearly exist in the United States, but they are much more pervasive in Venezuela, Pakistan, and Gambia. There are any number of countries in the world where police will pull you over and ask for a bribe rather than a speeding ticket, and they will do it because they're on six months' back pay and run no risk of being prosecuted. Historical trajectories and economic development matter too, but in large part because of the way they impact institutional forms and institutional capacity.

No form of government will ever "magically eliminate factionalism, pettiness, and corruption," and only the most fervent ideologues will claim that they can do so. But that shouldn't stop politicians and legal scholars from trying to design institutions that will reduce factionalism, pettiness, and corruption. Nor has it.

One can plausibly say that a meritocratic system which promotes politicians based on their score on a law exam will be less corrupt than a patrimonial system which promotes them because they have friends and family in high places. And one can plausibly say that a meritocracy where exam rules are strictly enforced will be less corrupt than one where it's easy to pay off exam scorers or hire someone to take the test in your stead. None of these will "eliminate" corruption, whatever that's supposed to mean. A crafty scholar can easily identify some context or measure in which patrimonialism performs better than meritocracy or bribery improves outcomes. And in either system, there are a vast number of other causal factors at work that impact levels and types of corruption, and that may influence how well or poorly a "meritocratic" system plays out. But comparative politics as a discipline is predicated on the notion that different systems of government will have objectively different effects, and meritocracy, however defined, is no exception.

The question, as above, then becomes what objective effects a given standard of meritocracy is likely to have, and whether they will reinforce or undermine its claims to legitimacy.

[Taihei Tengoku]

The most meritocratic system known to man was invented in Scotland in 1776, and required no exams.

[Gallia-]

Quantitative data is the most superior data.

[Austrasien]

The resulting system will not be "objectively" meritocratic, whatever that's supposed to mean. But it might be subjectively meritocratic, in the sense that it seeks to align the selection of officials with the standards that its (political) culture associates with merit.

You'd be very hard pressed to find a system of government that intentionally sought to elevate people who were subjectively unsuitable for holding power to positions of power.

It's not a useful category when everyone occupies it.

[Iltica]

Have you considered sortition? Just randomly picking citizens removes any corrupting influence from the selection process (assuming it really is random) as long as you don't mind their competency being random as well.
Alternately, non-consensual write-in only elections where nobody campaigns or even knows they are being considered could also reduce unwanted influence . It wouldnt be quite as fair as sortition but it has a higher chance of getting competent leaders and establishes a consent of the governed somewhat.

[EEC]

How many employees/citizens would a giant corporate state have? I have been just screwing around by including almost every single industry from Automotive Industry to Insurance and I got a figure around 5.5 million and I'm not sure if that is right for a country that can self sustain itself as well as export products.

[Iltica]

The number of employees a company has varies wildly in real life just as much as countries' do, there's no right or wrong answer. What you could do is find a country the size you want and multiply its population by its employment rate. For example the United Kingdom has about 60 million people, and an unemployment rate of 5% so 60,000,000 X 0.95 gives it a population of 57 million if it were a company.

[The Akasha Colony]

First half

These are fairly irrelevant because as Kyiv points out, practically every system considers itself a subjective "meritocracy" in which the most worthy individual according to prevailing criteria is selected to rule. This criteria may involve a personal claim to the rulership through relation to a previous ruler, a popular mandate from a national election, selection by the ruling party via internal vote, or outright seizure of power by an armed force. But in every case, the group selecting the leader believes that they are the best person for the job, a subjective determination of merit. The problem though is that this doesn't eliminate the aforementioned issues of varying competency between members of a ruling dynasty, the potentially destructive impulses of mass democracy, or the pettiness and corruption of a representative democracy.

And that is simply because all of these qualifications are subjective and there are broad swathes of the population that do not and will not agree on the subjective merits of an individual candidate or even of the merit criteria themselves. Any modern election in a Western democracy is a perfect example of how a broad swath of the population can see an opposing candidate's strengths as a weakness or disqualifying liability, and vice versa. And this applies regardless of the system of government in place.

The only solution would be to attempt to find some kind of objective merit criteria that could be used to select a candidate that would be objectively superior to others. To find some kind of criterion or criteria that would be universally acceptable and readily quantifiable in a way that can be compared between candidates. But this is impossible because the fundamental criteria are themselves a subject of disagreement and because in thousands of years of human history we have yet to have found any such objective criteria for selecting the best ruler.

This ultimately means that any attempt at meritocracy will fall prey to the same issues inherent in virtually every other form of government that's been tried. Because as both Allanea and Kyiv have pointed out, every government thinks it is selecting people based on merit, with the major differences being the selection process and the subjective criteria.

Second half

It wasn't a straw man until you made it one by seeming to imply I meant only absolute success in an endeavor makes it worthwhile. To use your own phrasing, this is also a straw man, and (I hope) you know it.

You seem to be operating under the belief that I arbitrarily plucked some inherent negative traits in human governance from thin air, but they are taken from Absalon's own post and they were the very concerns that he felt made several forms of government unsuitable.

And these in particular are complicated issues to solve. It would be one thing if he were proposing some kind of legal literacy standard for politicians, something that could be more easily measured and quantified. But here we are trying to eliminate such things as "corruption" and "pettiness," problems that have vexed mankind for its entire history. And the trouble is not in trying to build straw man comparisons between "good" and "bad" tests, but assessing which "good" tests are worthy of inclusion and who makes that determination. Which is why defining a "meritocracy" itself is a complicated endeavor.

A democracy is a "meritocracy" where the voters select the candidate they feel is most deserving of the position based on their own subjective criteria.

A one-party state is a "meritocracy" where the party selects the candidate they feel is the most deserving of leadership based on their own subjective criteria.

A theocracy is a "meritocracy" where the religious leadership selects the candidate they feel is the most deserving of leadership based on their own subjective criteria.

A dictatorship is a "meritocracy" where a group of followers controlling the threat of force put the candidate they feel is most deserving of leadership into power based on their own subjective criteria.

A bureaucracy is a "meritocracy" where a collective of employees promote leaders based on their internal subjective criteria.

All of these are "meritocracies" and loop back to the key question which remains unanswered in this case, which is who holds the power of selection? In a democracy, it is the people, while in a theocracy it may be a council of bishops or rabbis or imams or monks or what not. This is the most important question, because whatever "merit" criteria is used for the selection of a leader will be chosen by this group either explicitly or implicitly and thus is just as liable to fall prey to the whims of pettiness and corruption as any other system because in this case, it is no different from any other system.

[EEC]

The number of employees a company has varies wildly in real life just as much as countries' do, there's no right or wrong answer. What you could do is find a country the size you want and multiply its population by its employment rate. For example the United Kingdom has about 60 million people, and an unemployment rate of 5% so 60,000,000 X 0.95 gives it a population of 57 million if it were a company.

But that way you are including self-employed and small-business and a few questionable industries, Is looking at a S&P 500 list then adding the figures of top companies in their respective industries worse or better?

Also, would the revenue of all the companies added be my GDP?

[Allanea]

What's the difference between a state where all business is owned by a single giant corporation that is also the government, and a Marxist-Leninist state where all business is owned by the state?

Is it just the label 'corporate'?

[Hyggemata]

I can sense war on the horizon between two giants of NS realism: why not take this to II?

[Kouralia]

Have some crazy-ass test people take when they're eighteen, and like the GOAT in Fallout or that faction test in Divergent it determines your 'job' or role in society. Be some PMT nation that has nebulous PMT tech that doesn't affect much, like 100% clean energy and maybe guns that shoot blue bulets for coolness, but then explain that super duper loads of time and effort has gone into creating this assessment to decide people's lives.

Then gloss over the sheer impracticalities of it.

[EEC]

What's the difference between a state where all business is owned by a single giant corporation that is also the government, and a Marxist-Leninist state where all business is owned by the state?

Is it just the label 'corporate'?

The latter wouldn't focus on exporting products or head-hunting citizens worldwide to live in their state? I'm not too vested in history in communist countries but paying workers based on their productivity instead of an arbitrary equal wage as well? Other than that, IC EEC would have great stock-options on offer, so I guess most employees would own the means of production...

Any communist trade bloc interested in having me?

[Allanea]

The latter wouldn't focus on exporting products or head-hunting citizens worldwide to live in their state? I'm not too vested in history in communist countries but paying workers based on their productivity instead of an arbitrary equal wage as well? Other than that, IC EEC would have great stock-options on offer, so I guess most employees would own the means of production...

The Soviet Union had various measures to reward workers based on productivity. Stalin was deeply opposed to proposals of an arbitrary wage.

It also had various export products (timber, oil, weapons), etc.

From a True Believer perspective, the USSR was a capitalist society with all means of production owned by a state entity (thus, 'state capitalism').

In fact, during WW2 the USSR even introduced prizes for blowing up enemy tanks/planes, and even for quality maintenances. [Shooting down a fighter plane in 1941 gave a fighter pilot 1000 roubles - at a time when the average wage in the USSR was 354 roubles].

[Taihei Tengoku]

Have some crazy-ass test people take when they're eighteen, and like the GOAT in Fallout or that faction test in Divergent it determines your 'job' or role in society. Be some PMT nation that has nebulous PMT tech that doesn't affect much, like 100% clean energy and maybe guns that shoot blue bulets for coolness, but then explain that super duper loads of time and effort has gone into creating this assessment to decide people's lives.

Then gloss over the sheer impracticalities of it.

smh moderns

[Gallia-]

Just use IQ.

[Purpelia]

What's the difference between a state where all business is owned by a single giant corporation that is also the government, and a Marxist-Leninist state where all business is owned by the state?

Is it just the label 'corporate'?

The two, or rather three look alike on the surface but are fundamentally different.

In the case of a corporate-monopoly turned state the giant corporation is still a giant corporation and thus still has as its primary concern the progress and enrichment of its shareholders. What this means, not just in theory but commonly in practice, is that the leadership will be more than willing to take seemingly counterproductive moves that weaken the corporation in the long term but give the shareholders a short term benefit or payoff. Again, this is something commonly seen in business where corporations will even go so far as to bankrupt them self with short sighted decisions just to make a quick buck right now. After all, the business is irrelevant and worthless. The shareholder counts.
In terms of what this might translate in terms of a real state is a willingness to damage the state it self, break up its own monopoly or even perform acts which under any other system would be treasonous in order to increase the wealth and power of the current economic elite.


Contrastingly a realistic Marxist-Leninist state has as its chief interest the enrichment and progress of the state it self. This is because, unlike with a corporation, the wealth and life style of the ruling elites in such a system is not based off some form of internationally transferable currency but off their power. Stalin did not have the best vodka available because he could buy the best vodka. He had it because he could execute you if you did not give it to him. This means that fundamentally decisions which damage the state it self are anathema to such a system because it would be sawing on the branch you sit on.


Finally we get to the reason why I said that there are three things in this comparison. The third is the good willed benevolent Marxist-Leninist state. Now these have existed historically to varying degrees. Like its basically what happens when #2 decides to be nice. And honestly I think that they can best be seen as a corporate state where the people are all equal shareholders, just with some (the leadership) being more equal than others.

[Allanea]

There is any number of corporations that are famous for long-term planning (and that have existed longer than some states), and there's any number of stories of states destroying themselves through shitty short-term decisionmaking (indeed, arguably one of the reasons the USSR collapsed is the desire of its mid-tier leadership to 'cash out' and convert power into loot).

The problem is... if your citizen-shareholders can affect the course of the state (having 'voting' shares), what differentiates them from, uhm, voters? Is Citizen-Shareholder just a fancy title? And if they can't vote, why should the leadership listen to their opinion?

[Gallia-]

Just build an entire civilization on MBAs, ExecuSpeak, and Scrum Theory. Watch it die in like 50 years.

Oh...oh, wait.