The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World

This a good book, except for the conclusion. He seriously wants to reintroduce the IQ test and academic selection. As he writes, “The best way to discover future promise is to test raw ability [IQ] rather than either school-imparted achievement or ‘the whole human being’” (377).

This is not going to happen. The country [US] is going in the opposite direction.
The University of California has dropped the SAT (a good proxy for IQ) from its entrance requirements. Is that meritocratic?

A few pages later in the book, he cites Robert Plomin and twin studies to the effect that intelligence is 50 per cent or more heritable.

Charles Murray’s most recent book FACING REALITY (2021) discusses in detail with copious notes “. . . that American Whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians, as groups, have different means and distributions of cognitive ability” (IX). Everybody knows what that distribution is. An IQ test will only reveal this
distribution, as it has in the past. Nobody wants to publicize it.

How can introducing an IQ test save meritocracy in a system that is already
so meritocratic that we need to have affirmative action (since 1964) and the elimination of the SAT test as an antidote to meritocracy?

In my opinion, he needs to rethink his conclusion. His book also needs a reality check with some research from Richard Lynn, Charles Murray, and Arthur Jensen, none of whom is cited in the book.

PS Occasionally he makes some truly ridiculous observations. . .. For example, ". . . three intellectual giants who defined the modern world--Marx, Freud and Einstein--were all Jews" (86). Marx and Freud are historical fossils, and very few people can tell you what Einstein actually did to merit his reputation. How exactly did they "define" the modern world? He doesn't tell us.

If you believe that Obama deserved a Nobel Peace Prize -- or if you believe that Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve warrants being dismissed and disparaged, given bare mention in a brief page at the end of a work which purports to examine and analyze merit and meritocracy -- and wastes no time to trash and denigrate President Donald Trump -- then you might find this disingenuous rant to be right up your alley, you might even find that it has merit.

I quickly felt a gnawing and growing sensation of nausea -- and relegated it to the trash heap where it belongs.

...also chock full of dubious ideas & omissions.

Meritocracy is a deceptively ambiguous word and this author's own definitions only emerge in his final chapter--even then in poor focus. Until then the reader must infer from elusive clues what he means. An overlong discourse on the importance of Plato's "Republic" near the beginning is the first clue. Another is his tendency to dismiss personal traits like perseverance, deference of reward, integrity, or a strong work ethic as "mere training"--something to be academically separated from true "ability", i.e., doing well on IQ tests--which he seems to see as the essence of merit. And high merit is to be rewarded by an education fitting the student to join the "Aristocracy of Talent" in governing those who flunked the tests.

The expansive middle of the book, particularly his wonderfully amusing historical anecdotes about hereditary aristocrats' incompetence and how the rising ideas of the enlightenment reduced them from royal dictators to items of tabloid gossip is wonderful. And his warnings about abandoning merit just when it's ascendant in the rest of the world--especially China--is timely. Many will find some faults with some of the author's arguments but at least he can create an entertaining narrative in spite of some gaping blind spots.

For example: His focus on the problems of racial inequality of income and education in the U.S. has numerous taboo subjects, like the teachers' unions' strangle hold on inner city schools. Their rigid focus on lavish retirement benefits combines perversely with an ironclad tenure for lazy or burned-out teachers to create an Aristocracy of Incompetence where merit is most sorely needed. Unions also underwrite expensive political campaigns to thwart charter schools or any innovation that threatens union control. This contributes to a rapidly widening gap in educational attitudes between blacks & almost all other ethnicities (not just whites).

An ignored elephant in the room is the importance of culture to merit. Why do Jews or Asians rise so disproportionately to elite positions in academia and commerce? This happens all over the planet--often in spite of strong local prejudices and explicit legal discrimination. Such obvious facts once generated Jewish quotas in academia, and are today cited almost exclusively for reducing Asian student enrollments. The impact of culture--positive or negative-- on success deserves frontal consideration in any discussion of merit--not just as a gripe for identity racists.

Also taboo is mentioning the existence of numerous black intellectuals (Tom Sowell, John McWhorter, Jason Riley to name a few) who challenge "structural racism" as a cause of the failure of black families to rise after the fall of Jim Crow. Many point out that black families had been poor, but most were as strong and as committed to education and upward mobility as white families--until subjected to corrosive disincentives of welfare subsidies. The good intentions of the 60's were enacted in political haste and they backfired slowly but disastrously. Meritocracy--however you define it--cannot backfill this growing gap without a fundamental change of focus. The solutions currently contemplated--more white guilt, identity politics, and racial reparations will only deepen it.

Nor is there a credible plan in the "Conclusions" chapter for addressing it. No army of Meritocrats can solve problems that go unacknowledged. There are some worthy observations in that final chapter, but they're lost in a thicket of mediocre & outright bad ones. Lacking a unifying vision--or even concise definition--of his subject, he needs a long chapter to make his points. Mostly he backtracks to the vision of Plato's ideal of the lofty philosopher-king whose massive intellect and the ascetic ways in which he was groomed for absolute power make him invulnerable to the mob (people), the generals, and merchant interests--and to removal from office. He seems to be the author's ideal meritocrat, and he believes that Plato's vision can be adapted to the modern world.

This seems a poor choice of muses. As he concedes early on, Plato's vision is seen by many as a blueprint for the totalitarian state. Plato's republic seems an analog of Sparta's. The philosopher-king and his many subjects (and slaves) are not unlike Sparta's minority warrior caste and many helots (slaves). All are bound together in rigid rules of behavior and training. Everybody's place is defined by authority. Plato doesn't ask which ideas, opinions, or songs the king should censor, he asks which ones the king should permit. The Republic is the original formula for all Utopian plans to come: a top-down authority enforcing a rigid uniformity, a suppression of individuality, and an expectation of willing (or unwilling) obedience. Authority always trumps human nature. The only check on the philosopher-king is his early indoctrination. The inevitable corruptions of power were one of Plato's many blind spots.

So how can Plato's dream be civilized for the modern world? The author will need most of that last chapter and a maze of digressions to explain that. Better you should read it for yourself. But be skeptical.

The 'Merits'

Thorough history of the evolution to meritocracy its pluses and minuses in sorting - distributing 'assets' in the dialectic between efficiency, effectiveness & liberty versus fairness and opportunity

The De-Merits

The disproportionate examination of the right's anti-intellectualism (to merit) versus the left (no mention of woke and cancel culture as well - surprisingly he omits the seminal work by Hofstadter's Anti Intellectualism in the US (in examining the right)

It is said that we teach (and write) what we need to learn ourselves - Woolridge shows his bias (he has great respect for the truth which is why he shows it so sparingly by stated that Trump 'even suggested that people inject themselves with bleach'

a little bit of let me cut off my brother's head so I can be a better meritcrat than my liberal progressives friends and certainly Trump so I still have my creds with those I pummel?

A shame the demerits - that otherwise is a good history of sorting devices (be it hereditary privilege to primogenitor etc to merit )

Net-net this was a book I highlighted, reread, took notes and pondered. I can usually get through a book of this length in an evening. This took several.

It’s broad. Its got things in it I forgot about, things I never thought when I read the first time. Its insightful. Its engaging. It has meat. Best of all it gives renewed strength to the feeling I have that says what is happening in the last 5 years is but a fad without justification or reason. For all its appearance for empathy, the SJ movement is simply a means to power and reestablish a hierarchy the enlightenment ended.

I have no desire to return to feudal days. I have no desire to live as those do under an aristocracy without hope for upward social mobility. Let’s hope I see a return to meritocracy in my lifetime in western society.

Adrian Wooldridge certainly opened my eyes to the critical importance of maintaining a society where “an individual’s position in society should depend on his or her combination of ability and effort”. There is no better example than our political systems where people are elected more on race and/or personality versus proven intellect and ability. This book will make you think!