I have recently written a couple of articles about ‘meritocracy’, that educated people rule, in most countries and indeed in Europe. They give little space to ordinary people although they constitute the majority. Today, I shall give a few concrete examples of areas where meritocracy has failed, arguing that ordinary people might well have done better. In any case, it is undemocratic to limit leadership to a small fraction of educated men and women, as it would certainly be to say that leadership can be inherited. The latter is nowadays only happening in monarchies, where the king or queen has symbolic power, but little formal power, well, except for in Arab countries.
In the US, there are only two main political parties, the Democratic Party, which is slightly to the left of the centre and more liberal than the conservative Republican Party. The democrats put more emphasis on knowledge-based decisions, science, and education than the republicans. There are fewer ‘old-fashioned’ working-class voters as many have moved upward into the middle class, and the Democratic Party has adopted their values and it seeks their votes. Education is a key factor in upward mobility, but it can also lead to accusations of being elitist.
This situation has given room for populist groups, indeed for Donald Trump, who is the leading voice of the Republican Party. Such republicans are more lowbrow and folksy, speaking a more concrete language, with more practical concepts that ordinary people can relate to more easily. However, it is still true that the Republican Party is for the well-to-do, leaders of industries, multinationals, and the pillars of society in general. But many ordinary people think that Trump and the Republicans are on their side. In any case, the established political parties must focus on issues that concern ordinary people. The best way to do that is to have more ordinary people in key functions in their parties, not only the highly educated, allowing democracies to become meritocracies. America is the world’s richest continent. Yet, many people there live in poverty.
It is also true that educated people have failed in many fields of politics. Perhaps they have even made the world look more complicated on purpose so that only educated people can understand it. But then we get ‘sudden’ crises, too, which the educated and technocratic leaders should have been able to predict, considering all the experts and intellectuals that are involved in writing and analysing issues, attending conferences, and holding virtual and on-site debates.
Educated people sometimes don’t do as well as they should and could. We should be aware of that so that we don’t follow them blindly or give them credit when it is not deserved. I have written about it before, but I would like to repeat it here, namely that the West and Russia should have been able to avoid the war in Ukraine before it began. It is over 30 years since the Soviet Union collapsed, and all those educated politicians, diplomats, and military people have had a lot of time to develop cordial cooperation in trade and other fields between the two ‘systems’. Or rather, Russia should have become part of the more democratic Western European cosmology, as I believe many Russians, too, have wanted, all the way from the 1990s, and even decades earlier. The educated leaders in the West and Russia failed to do their work as well as they should have. One may even wonder if it was partly done on purpose, allowing peace and cooperation to drift away instead of taking positive and proactive actions.
Economists and politicians who specialise in economic fields often fail. For example, why did all the educated economists in the world not predict the terrible inflation that this year will make people everywhere poorer, indeed in the UK and other European countries? How come the global economic system isn’t better regulated, with safety nets that can protect the poorest people and the smallest companies? Individuals and companies are only partly assisted by their governments in times of crisis, but there ought to be systems in place because major problems, such as pandemics, military conflicts, and economic problems, can usually be predicted.
After all, politicians and experts, those who run the meritocracies, have one major task, namely to protect those at the bottom of the ladder, well, in addition to creating growth and economic expansion, as long as that is the prevailing global economic model. We should not accept that the educated economists, CEOs, CFOs, and their politicians, first of all, look after themselves, the multinationals, and the rest, letting ordinary people take the brunt and pay the bill. Meritocracy is minority rule, not a democratic majority rule. The leaders speak as if they have everyone’s interest at heart, including the last, the least, and the lowest. Strangely, the less educated people allow this to happen, at least thus far.
In the field of global warming, climate change, and other environmental issues it is clear that educated politicians and experts kept the truth from ordinary people, yes, from everyone. It wasn’t in the interest of the global capitalist system to sound the alarm. It was NGOs and green environmentalists that spoke first. Recently, a young secondary school student, Greta Thunberg, sounded the alarm loudest and she challenged the world’s highly educated leaders on environmental and climate change issues in a way that couldn’t be ignored. She has contributed to showing that educated leaders have spoken with a cleft tongue, at best, as they must have known that corrective measures are needed to stop the ongoing unsustainable development. They should have been better stewards and custodians of the world we all depend on.
The total world population just reached eight billion people. People live longer and more people live better lives than before. This is to a great extent thanks to educated people, more so than politicians. It is the progress in medical research, vaccinations, health systems, and so on, that has led to impressive results in the last two centuries. Alas, the progress has been lopsided since many people live in poor conditions or abject poverty, over two billion. Educated people and politicians have not been willing to find systems that guarantee that people everywhere can live reasonably good lives, especially not in developing countries, many of which are former colonies. Even in Norway, one of the world’s richest countries, ten-twelve percent live below the poverty line this winter due to high electricity and food prices, caused by the Russian war in Ukraine, as politicians say, but that war should have been avoided and has to end soon.
If ordinary people had ruled, not the well-educated upper middle class in Western meritocracies, I believe they would have done better on climate change and poverty reduction, because they are closer to poverty themselves and therefore able to understand its consequences. Educated people seem to side more easily with those who are higher up on the ladder. I hope that we realize this and include more ordinary people in politics and decision-making posts. Let them use experts as helpers, but let the ordinary common men and women make the decisions. Isn’t that how democracy is supposed to be? It is meant to be majority rule, not minority rule by a fraction of highly educated people.