Meritocracy: Fact or Fiction

The concept of meritocracy is centered on a system in which advancement in society is directly attributed to an individual’s achievement or ability. In meritocracy the better your ability, the better off you are. This only seems normal. Everyone is awarded fairly for his or her contributions. If one were to look at the United States as a meritocracy and see the massive amounts of wealth controlled by the few, it would appear as though this small group of individuals contributed vast amounts to society or had tremendous amounts of ability. However, this is not the case. Many of the richest people in America have had neither great contributions nor impressive abilities. In most cases, a billionaire’s success can be attributed to a number of exogenous forces such as the past achievements of others, special privileges, and plain luck. Through this paper, I will examine the success stories of two individuals and compare or contrast them to the foundations of meritocracy.

Bill Gates has accumulated a fortune worth over 50 billion dollars (McQuaig p75). By meritocracy standards, this amount of wealth would indicate that Gates, being one of the wealthiest people in the world, has contributed the most or has the most talent. I am in no way making the claim that Gates does not deserve his wealth nor am I saying that he has inadequate ability. The question I raise is how much of his wealth comes from his individual merit alone?

With nothing more than luck, Gates found himself born into a “well-to-do family.” His family’s success afforded him possibilities that lower-income families could have not. One of these possibilities came from his private school when it became one of the only schools in the greater area to own a computer where he would spend countless hours familiarizing himself with the new technology. His schooling also put him in touch with the right people to get him to work on computer programming projects at the University of Washington (McQuaig p76-77). At this time and for his age, Gates had some of the most experience with the growing technology of computers than the majority of his peers.

Later in his life, when he was developing Microsoft, Gates came across another streak of luck. Gates and his team of workers were operating within the relatively new desktop computer industry. This market was limited and growing, but dominated by Gary Kildall. At the time, Kildall created the most widely used operating system for desktops -even Gates used it. Harold Evans said, “Everybody in the computer field knew that Kildall had created CP/M-everybody” (McQuaig p79). However, when IBM began its work on the personal computer, they first contacted Gates for his operating system. Since Gates did not own the rights to the operating system, he referred IBM to Kildall. Still, IBM was intent on doing a deal with Gates largely due to the fact that the chief executive at the time was a friend of Gates’ mother (McQuaig