Thesis: We do not need to choose between equality and meritocracy. Historically, at least in the liberal tradition, they go together.

MERITOCRACY

Chapter 20 asked what egalitarianism has to do with humanitarianism and with resistance to political oppression. This chapter's complementary aim is to ask, what is the connection between equality and merit?

Very roughly, a regime is meritocratic to the extent that people are judged on the merits of their performance. A meritocracy will satisfy a principle of “equal pay for equal work.” Rewards will track performance, at least in the long run. A pure meritocracy is hard to imagine, but any regime is likely to have meritocratic elements. A corporation is meritocratic as it ties promotions to performance, and departs from meritocracy as it ties promotions to seniority. Note: No one needs to intend that rewards track performance. While a culture of meritocracy is often partially a product of deliberate design, a corporation (or especially, a whole society) can be meritocratic to a given degree without anyone having decided to make it so.

Paying us what our work is worth may seem like a paradigm of equal treatment yet it may lead to unequal pay. Norman Daniels says many “proponents of meritocracy have been so concerned with combating the lesser evil of non-meritocratic job placement that they have left unchallenged the greater evil of highly inegalitarian reward schedules. One suspects that an elitist infatuation for such reward schedules lurks behind their ardor for meritocratic job placement.”