Justice and the Meritocratic State

Abstract

Like American politics, the academic debate over justice is polarized, with almost all theories of justice falling within one of two traditions: egalitarianism and libertarianism. This book provides an alternative to the partisan stand-off by focusing not on equality or liberty, but on the idea that we should give people the things that they deserve. Mulligan argues that a just society is a meritocracy, in which equal opportunity prevails and social goods are distributed strictly on the basis of merit. That gives citizens their just deserts.In addition to its novel conceptual approach, meritocracy is distinctive from existing work in two ways. First, it is grounded in research on how people actually think about justice. Empirical research reveals that people don't think that social goods should be distributed equally. Nor do they dismiss the idea of social justice. Across ideological and cultural lines, people want rewards to reflect merit. Second, the book discusses hot-button political issues and makes concrete policy recommendations. These issues include anti-meritocratic bias against women and racial minorities and the United States' widening economic inequality.Justice and the Meritocratic State offers a new theory of justice and provides solutions to our most vexing social and economic problems. It will be of keen interest to philosophers, economists, and political theorists.

Earning rent with your talent: Modern-day inequality rests on the power to define, transfer and institutionalize talent

“…Whereas we disapprove of the plutocracy of capital, we celebrate the meritocracy of talent (Littler 2018;Mijs 2019;Mulligan 2018b). The last decades have seen the rise of companies based on little more than great ideas, and a top one percent of athletes, pop stars, managers and executive officers, whose fortunes derive from their unique set of skills and abilities.…”

Why not be a desertist?

“…Tracy calls the fire brigade and waits, but when 13 There is, indeed, a small but lively discussion among desert theorists about how to measure social contribution. In addition to Miller (2001) and Mulligan (2018), see Dekker (2008Dekker ( , 2010, Hsieh (2000), and Sheffrin (2013). 14 The Burning House is similar in structure to examples considered by Dekker (2009), Eyal (2007, Moriarty (2018), Olsaretti (2009), Stemplowska (2009), and Temkin (2003.…”

“…So there is no need to insist, as opponents of desert often do, that virtue must ground one's distributive deserts. Indeed, the theories in both Miller (2001) and Mulligan (2018) could require that we reward the contributions of the vicious.…”

“…Or, even better, they should consider desertism as a superior alternative to their theory. 1 There are, of course, exceptions to the utter exclusion of desert from the distributive justice debate; these include, among others, the theories of Michael Walzer (1983), Wojciech Sadurski (1987), David Miller (2001), David Schmidtz (2006), Fred Feldman (2016), and Thomas Mulligan (2018). Nevertheless, we think that it is safe to say that the concept ''plays an unimportant role in most contemporary theories of distributive justice'' (Moriarty 2013: 537).…”

“…David Miller (2001), for example, in his pluralist account of distributive justice, says that people deserve on the basis of their contributions, where ''contribution'' is measured by aggregating the reservation prices of consumers. And one of us (Mulligan 2018) has advanced a monistic theory of desert-based justice in which people deserve income on the basis of their contributions, as measured by the amount of additional output they provide (and where Shapley value is used to disentangle joint production).…”