As far as I can tell, nothing on earth is fairer—and closer to being something worth calling “meritocracy”—than competitive running.

True, people in different places have access to different coaches, nutrition, training facilities, etc. And all these differences influence (in ways that can seem unfair) who wins races and gets rewarded for it. At best, even competitive running is only an approximation of meritocracy.

Yet all participants in any given race run the same distance, start at the same time, are timed by the same clock, and are subject to the same rules of competition. Then those people get rewarded in order of their finishes (the first finisher gets the best medal, accolades, sometimes money, etc.). And it is a testament to the meritocratic nature of competitive running that talented, hardworking individuals from poorer circumstances often rise to the top, win prizes and money, earn medals, and garner sponsorships.

为了便于讨论，让我们假设竞技跑步真的是一种精英统治:it is an environment where reward and social standing flow to those who have ability, have talent, and put in hard work—rather than flowing to those who have well-known family names, are born into wealth, etc. (See Ray’s blog onmeritocracyfor a similar characterization.)

What I want to do now is question whether meritocracy within large-scale modern economies is even possible or close to it. And I want to do so by tweaking the ideal of competitive running to makeitmore like what economies are like in terms of their ability (or lack thereof) to approximate meritocracy.

Suppose competitive running for all distances involved the following rule:every time person A finishes ahead of person B bynseconds, A gets to start the next race against B 2nseconds earlier than B.

So say Sarah and Barbara run the 800 meter and are equal in ability and hard work. But say Sarah beats Barbara in their first race by 0.25 seconds—just out of normal variation. Not a big difference for the 800, and Barbara might have won on a different day. Yet on this scheme I’m suggesting, Barbara’s chances of beating Sarah will be reduced severely in their next race, because Sarah will get to start 0.5 secondsearlierthan her, due to what happened in the first race.

Now consider some consequences of this scheme over time: the advantages of small wins in the earlier races will snowball to the point where winnings in later races are grossly out of proportion to actual performance—and can eveninvertactual performance.

Imagine, for example, that Barbara runs the second race 0.1 seconds faster than Sarah. Still, Sarah finishes 0.4 seconds ahead of her, because Sarah got to start 0.5 seconds earlier (due to her win in the first race, plus the 2nrule). So even though Barbara performedbetter在第二场比赛中，她仍然比萨拉晚0.8秒开始第三场比赛，考虑到他们的能力是一样的，这几乎注定会再次失败。事实上，很容易看出，即使芭芭拉在她余下的职业生涯中跑得比莎拉快一点，她开始时仍然会越来越落后，永远不会超过莎拉。

Now, I submit that this alternate scheme of competitive running does not even come close to being a meritocracy, because we just saw that it allows for two people ofthe sameability and hard work to end up withwildly different随着时间的推移奖励。请注意，我并不是说这将是由于道德上有害的事情，如裙带关系或贿赂;这是体制结构的必然结果。

Connoisseurs ofchaos theory将认识到，在我所描述的系统中，由于对初始条件的敏感依赖(或“蝴蝶效应”)，我们看到了截然不同的结果，因为每一场比赛的结果并非独立于早期的比赛(不像正常的竞技跑步，每一场比赛都是一个重新设置)。Connoisseurs ofcomplex systemswill recognize a positive feedback loop, where the result of each race creates a disturbance in the next in the same direction as the result of the previous race. And, of course, both things are true, with the feedback loop explaining the tremendous size of the butterfly effect.

What I want to suggest here is thatreal modern economic life—where people have careers, advancements, successes, and failures—will always end up being (to a notable extent) like the case of competitive running with the 2nrule. I won’t argue for that here for reasons of space. But the point is fairly easy to see. In any sort of career trajectory one has, the starting position on the next phase of one’s career will be heavily dependent on the outcomes of the prior phase of one’s career, and there will always be small differences in early career performance that are not the product of ability or talent. Call these two features of advancement through human societieslinkingandsmall differences in early advantage.

My claim here is that any socio economic arrangement that exhibits these two features will inevitably fail to be meritocratic. But since, for all I can tell, any modern society will exhibit these two features no matter how hard we try to erase them (career advancement will be linked to past performance; early performance will be affected by variables not related to talent or hard work), any modern society will inevitably fail to be a meritocracy. Maybe limited portions of a given society can be mostly meritocratic—like competitive running—but those portions will be far from representative of the whole.

So myPandemic Puzzlefor this month simply amounts to this question:

Given that meritocracy as traditionally defined is practically impossible, is there any point at all to appealing to meritocracy as a social ideal?

And, of course, if the answer isno, then there is the further psychological question of why so many people find the ideal so appealing, given its impossibility.

My own answers to these questions will appear in next month’s blog!

Photo byMatt LeeonUnsplash