How luck can be used to justify inequality
What and how we think about the role of luck in life has implications for what level of inequality we think can be justified.
(It also affects our politics - research has shown that people with low social status who are believed to have failed the “merit test” tend to support populist parties.)
If most people think that we live in a meritocracy - where people's life chances and outcomes are mostly influenced by individual merit - then they will accept, and perhaps even demand, a society with high levels of inequality that reflect the inevitable gradations of merit between individuals.
By contrast, if most people suspect that factors outside people's control have a larger bearing than merit on people's lives, then high levels of inequality will be seen as unfair and morally unjustifiable.
This is a problem on its own terms. But it is a problem that is magnified by our assumption that it doesn’t exist (despite all the evidence to the contrary).
We act as though we live in a functioning meritocracy. For example, we reward people for their previous success, ignoring the role of luck in driving those successes.
This creates a virtuous (or vicious) cycle that reinforces the impact of prior good or bad luck - and exacerbates existing inequalities of wealth, income, status and so on. It also wastes talent by depriving people of opportunities.
The spillover consequences of how we think about luck
How it undermines social cohesion
When we downplay the role of luck in life, we lay the groundwork for division in society. The Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel argues that "meritocratic hubris" leads many to believe their success is their own doing and to look down on those who haven't made it, provoking resentment and inflaming the divide between "winners" and "losers" in the new economy.
How it undermines narrative change
Ignoring the role of luck locks in a meritocratic mindset in which inequality is excused as being the necessary by-product of a ‘fair’ society in which hard work and talent are rewarded, with individual ‘rags-to-riches’ stories of social mobility used to justify the status quo. And it locks out the importance of addressing structural factors such as dysfunctional labour or housing markets.
How it undermines policy change
Underplaying or overlooking the role of luck makes successful people more hostile to paying taxes. This in turn undermines investment by the state in physical and social infrastructure, including public services and a social safety net. And this makes life worse for everyone (including the wealthy), by undermining economic growth, social cohesion, democracy and a range of other public goods.