Meritocracy, democracy and competition

The Tyranny of Merit? refers. This post is just a pointer to John Cochrane's blog Meritocracy, discussing Adrian Woolridge's essay "Meritocracy, Not Democracy, Is the Golden Ticket to Growth," advertising a forthcoming book; all via CH. I largely agree with what JC writes there; in particular that meritocracy has more to do with success than democracy; and continuing to his contention that even more fundamental is competition. And of course, democracy is a form of competition.

Looking at the comments there, "It is more likely that economic growth in all of these countries has had more to do with the success of the private sector than the merit of those who staff their governments" makes sense, in that if you're going to have govt, you need to make sure that it at least doesn't get in the way (non-corrupt); but you also have the option of making it small, which helps.

Update: 2024

Perhaps I'll make this a place to collect stupid views of democracy, for the purposes of contrast. We begin with Bruce Schneier who, while not stupid, has stupid views of democracy and a bias towards socialism, for which he continues to find excuses. The latest being the really-not-novel "We have accepted these costs of capitalism—and democracy—because the inefficiency of central planning was considered to be worse. That might not be true anymore. The costs of conflict have increased. And the costs of coordination have decreased." Fuck off, you twat. Sorry, did I say that out loud? We also have "More generally, the cost of our market economy is enormous. For example, $780 billion is spent world-wide annually on advertising." Notice his implicit, unstated - probably invisible to him - assumption that all the advertisting is wasted cost. This is more of the central-planner mindset. More generally, notice - if you can bring yourself to read the piece - that never does it occur to him that given all these flaws, perhaps it would just be a good idea to remove as many decisions as possible from the hands of the democrats, rather than giving them yet more.