January 17, 2017
Ivan Krastev, a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, had an interesting NYT column on the disenchantment of the European public with the meritocrats who have been largely running governments there for the last three decades. Krastev’s main conclusion is that the public doesn’t identify with an internationally-oriented group of meritocrats who possess skills that are easily transferable from their home country to other countries.
While this lack of sufficient national identity may play a role in the dislike of the meritocrats, there is a much simpler explanation: they have done a horrible job. Much of Europe continues to suffer from high unemployment, or low employment rates, almost a decade after the collapse of housing bubbles sent the continent’s economy in a downward spiral. The meritocrats deserve the blame for both the weak recovery and allowing dangerous bubbles to grow in the first place. In most countries, most of the population has seen declining incomes over the last decade in spite of the substantial technological progress we have seen over this period.
Incredibly, Krastev writes of this failure of the meritocrats as though it is just something that happened as opposed to something they did.
“But what happens when these teams start to lose or the economy slows down? Their fans abandon them.”
Of course the economy didn’t just slow down, the meritocrats mismanaged it. It is not surprising that the public would want to turn away from experts who perform badly in their area of expertise, even if they might be really smart. The fact that almost none of the experts acknowledge their failure and instead look to blame it on impersonal forces, like technology, is not likely to further endear them to workers who are used to be held responsible for the quality of their work.
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