Abstract
Many people think that structuring at least some of our organizations in a hierarchical way is inevitable, even in modern liberal democracies. When trying to justify this practice, the notions of desert and merit have historically played a major role. However, in recent times, most philosophers have been deeply sceptical about these notions, instead attempting to justify hierarchies by referring to considerations of efficiency. I argue that this comes at a price. More specifically, I argue that although we neither need to nor should refer to merit to justify the mere existence of hierarchies, the notion provides important justificatory resources within hierarchies, i.e., regarding who occupies which position and how the people in a hierarchy should relate to each other. We thus have reason to be hesitant to discard merit altogether when it comes to the of justification of hierarchies.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Compare Wolff (2019) for an argument that we need to take the later hierarchies seriously as well. I don’t disagree in principle, but will not consider them in this chapter.
- 3.
Compare Rubin (2000).
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
Rawls (1971), pp. 103 et seq.
- 11.
Sandel (2020), p. 123.
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- 13.
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- 16.
Rawls does offer an argument of the first kind in A Theory of Justice and one can understand his later arguments in Political Liberalism as a version of the second argument. However, the argument at stake is independent of these further arguments. I follow Mulligan (2018), pp. 166 et seq. in this assessment.
- 17.
At least as pertains to the realm of distributive justice. Scheffler (2000) contends that Rawls’s sceptical argument does not generalise to the realm of retributive justice. I will gloss over this for the remainder since we are not interested in the later realm.
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- 19.
Indeed, Wolff (2019), pp. 8–10 considers it the liberal way of justifying hierarchies.
- 20.
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Kolodny (2023), p. 150.
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- 23.
Any similarity to actual persons is purely coincidental. For a more realistic example, compare https://time.com/5766186/jared-kushner-interview.
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- 25.
I discuss the issue of entitlement in the last section.
- 26.
Indeed, the Jared example is particularily interesting since his position is one, i.e. a high position in government with close access to those in power, where the public is often willing to grant much leeway, in the sense that people like Donald are regarded as justified in filling these positions with people they trust rather than others who have more direct experience in the relevant fields. However, as I am about to argue, there are limits to this.
- 27.
Compare Miller (1999), pp. 166 et seq. for a similar line of reasoning.
- 28.
For example, the fact that the subordinate person has proven to be especially meritorious might add to the duties a superordinate has, such as when it comes to assisting them in developing special talents.
- 29.
- 30.
It is doubtful that either Tony’s teammates or the fans are ranked lower in a hierarchy than Tony, strictly speaking. Nonetheless, I hope that the reader will see how the message that follows from the example generalizes to actual hierarchies.
- 31.
This is a bit too quick. One’s future potential also factors in. Similarly, one’s past record might factor in when it comes to predicting how one will play in the future. The point here is just that one’s previous achievements aren’t relevant for their own sake.
- 32.
We might think that Tony is still owed esteem and thus a higher rank in a hierarchy of esteem, but that is not the kind of hierarchy we are interested in here.
- 33.
This is not contradicting the claim in the last section that jobs aren’t allocated as rewards or prices. While I agree with Miller (1999), p. 160 that past performance is not the basis for deserving, but rather a source of evidence for who might be best for, a job the situation changes when we consider people who have already occupied a posion for some time. Meritorious behavior can be the basis for deserving to keep one’s job.
- 34.
On an even more general level, one might also think that having (society- or industry-wide) rules in place that grant people some job security can be overall more efficient for an economy. Thus, what is efficient at the macro level might be different from what is efficient at the micro level.
- 35.
- 36.
Schmidtz (2006), pp. 40 et seqq. argues that we can sometimes deserve something for what we do after receiving it. However, even if this were true, it would only be so because we have subsequently behaved in a meritorious way, as Schmidtz himself acknowledges. The loyalty we owe our superior might thus stem not (only) from them deserving to be in the job in the first place, but from their later, meritorious, behavior. Thus, the point stands that the loyalty does not stem from the mere fact that the person has behaved kindly towards us, or any such thing.
- 37.
Hayek (1960), p. 95.
- 38.
Compare also Olsaretti (2004) for a critical assessment of Miller’s arguments.
- 39.
Compare Brennan (2017) for a recent discussion.
- 40.
Miller (1999), p. 141.
- 41.
The ‘ceteris paribus’ clause is important because nothing in the account requires that there shouldn’t be other considerations that come into play when we think about who should occupy which position in a hierarchy. For example, we might well think that considerations of need sometimes outweigh those of desert and the account is also neutral with regard to the idea that when certain historical injustices need to be corrected that can sometimes override considerations of merit.
- 42.
I am not sure how many people today actually defend this position. Mulligan (2017), p. 77 thinks that he is the only practicing philosopher who is fully committed to meritocracy, but I am not sure even he holds that we need hierarchies in order to give people what they deserve.
- 43.
Indeed, one might think that the connection between efficiency and merit is even more straightforward. A company is usually more efficient precisely because the people higher-up in the hierarchy are meritorious, in the sense of having the talents required and the willingness to work hard. A hierarchy based on other factors, such as an aristocratic hierarchy, presumably isn’t as efficient. This is true. However, one should not lose sight of the fact that Coase’s and Williamson’s arguments for the efficiency of firms are not in principle wedded to a specific principle of allocating the positions in the firm. Their general point is that organizing certain processes in a hierarchical way within a firm itself sometimes lowers transaction costs.
- 44.
- 45.
One might still think that Rawls could appeal to some other, justice-based reason(s), besides entitlement to account for the wrongness of the Jared example.
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Acknowledgements
I want to especially thank Alexander Andersson, Huub Brouwer, Willem van der Deijl-Kloeg, Eran Fish, David Miller and Toby Napoletano for valuable discussions, as well as my colleagues in Monika Betzler’s Bretznrunde and Research Colloquium, students in the CEPP-Talks at LMU Munich, the audience at the 10th Law and Economics Conference in Lucerne, and participants of the Research Colloquium at the Center for Ethics in Pardubice.
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Baumann, M.D. (2024). Hierarchy, Efficiency, and Merit. In: Mathis, K., Tor, A. (eds) Law and Economics of Justice. ILEC 2023. Economic Analysis of Law in European Legal Scholarship, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56822-0_13
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