Foundation 2

Merit and Desert

The framework separates “rewards track performance” from the stronger claim that rewards track performance attributable to a person’s own agency.

Weak meritocracy

Weak meritocracy means rewards respond to measured performance. It does not ask how the capacity to perform was produced.

Strong meritocracy

Strong meritocracy adds a provenance condition: the rewarded performance should, as far as practicable, reflect effort, cultivated skill, creativity, judgment, or other agency rather than merely antecedent advantage.

Is the framework opposed to unequal rewards?

No. Its stated target is not inequality as such. The target is the component of an outcome attributed to non-meritocratic provenance. Large rewards can remain compatible with the theory when they are tied to genuine contribution.

Where the idea sits in economic and political theory

The source manuscript compares MPS with neoclassical marginal productivity, Rawlsian justice, Nozickian entitlement theory, luck egalitarianism, the capabilities approach, Austrian market-process theory, institutional economics, and behavioral economics. The recurring claim is that provenance adds a historical and institutional layer to questions of contribution and desert.