I recently had a political-philosophical conversation with a friend who informed me that he was simply too meritocratic to believe in any system other than Capitalism. While I acknowledged that Capitalism might (emphasis on might) be the best system anyone has yet come up with, to label it “meritocratic” at this point in our history seems like a bit of a misnomer. Sure, someone from a difficult background who works particularly hard may “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” But for every unique case like this, there are many more cases of socially advantaged people who work very little and do well and socially disadvantaged people who never stood a chance. Before someone labels me a Marxist, I am not advocating the end of the system, just suggesting that we see our current Capitalist apparatus for what it really is, flaws and all.
Pieces like Ben Franklin’s “Advice to a Young Tradesman, Written by an Old One” seem to serve as something like Creation Mythology for a nation that still desperately clings to the idealized notion of meritocratic Capitalism. In this piece, a successful old man gives a young man advice on how to succeed in the business world. The nuggets of wisdom sound a lot like what your grandfather might tell you about succeeding in life: “Time is money…credit is money…pay punctually…appear a careful as well as an honest Man.” The old man ultimately advises that the “Way to Wealth…depends chiefly on two Words, Industry and Frugality.” The reader is to believe that if you do these virtuous things and live a prudent life, you will find financial success. This may have been true in Colonial America where everyone was new to this hemisphere, and access to opportunity was essentially equal. However, a lot’s changed in the last 250 years.
Markets grow more complex, income inequality rises, and how well you do in the Capitalist system becomes increasingly about where you were born and to whom, as opposed to whether or not you stayed long hours at your corner shop. However, we as a nation can’t seem to get the picturesque economic image that Ben Franklin paints out of our collective consciousness. It is much easier to believe that such a meritocratic system, so ripe with American values, exists, as opposed to examining the mess we call our financial system in earnest.
