Too Much Meritocracy?

I’ve previously noted how all western society is divided in three parts (Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres…). The first two are poor and powerless, the white rural lower class and the non-white increasingly suburban lower class. Then there is our aristocracy, the diverse global class.

A cursory glance at economic performance over recent years shows a sharp crash surrounded by moderate growth. Break this down across all of society however and we see that all the new wealth flows to the Starbucks class while everyone else undergoes a prolonged period of misfortune.

The modern era has brought substantial improvements to all of society, presided over by a rich elite. Today’s elite is failing to bring those improvements to the rest of society.

I have already noted how the Starbucks class is singularly focused on what it calls “success” and I have noted how this “success” does not refer to any great achievement but rather the relative security of upper class status paid for by constant pressure and work. Likewise among the elite substance abuse is down and hours working grow at the expense of sleep.

This all seems symptomatic of a widespread desire for a status which is increasingly tenuous and competitive. This makes some sense; more wealth and economic security is present in an upper class which by its diversity is increasingly open. The world is in a desperate competition for the qualifications that confer this desirable membership; thus we have the decline of sleep and substance use for the growth of work. Class membership determined by this hard fought competition is meritocracy.

This meritocracy is deleterious to virtue. The time and energy of our elite citizens maintains their position in the elite rather than being employed for the good of society. Furthermore in diverse Starbucks class society static metrics like parents and place of birth lose meaning while appearance and certain cultural practices lose their meaning since modern politics strive to make these open to everyone. This means that colloquial judgement of elite status rests heavily on a similarity of casual behavior and a similarity of thought process. More diverse people from more diverse backgrounds live in a society with more diverse options while living their lives and thinking thoughts more similar than ever before.

 Charity trips to the tropics while maintaining that homelessness is a lifestyle choice show an elite more selfish and stupid than ever before. Failure to submit to this regime risks one’s elite status. The result of this is that our elite is less capable and less willing to benefit the rest of society as a whole. The Starbucks class has not earned its lattes. We should be fired.