Critiques of the meritocracy have centered on its narrow definition and biased assessment of merit, its stigmatization of the unsuccessful, and excessive competition. This paper identifies a different mechanism that could have pernicious social and political consequences. Economic mobility sorts people based on certain ‘productive’ traits, separating them into classes, and thus alters social externalities. This sorting–separation–externalities mechanism can produce between-class polarization in social outcomes (e.g. alcoholism and drug abuse) and worsen aggregate outcomes over all classes, consistent with rising ‘deaths of despair’ in the United States (Case and Deaton, 2020, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. Princeton University Press). When traits are endogenous, transition out of a caste-based society produces an initial burst of economic mobility which dissipates over time. Thus, a dynamic meritocratic society devolves into a static class-based society. I set out an alternative model called the ‘experimental society’, which is less susceptible to these problems.

对精英管理的批评主要集中在其狭隘的定义和对优点的有偏见的评估、对不成功者的污名化和过度竞争。本文确定了一种可能产生有害的社会和政治后果的不同机制。经济流动性根据某些“生产性”特征对人们进行分类，将他们分成不同的阶级，从而改变社会外部性。这种分类-分离-外部性机制会在社会结果（例如酗酒和吸毒）中产生阶级间的两极分化，并使所有阶级的总体结果恶化，这与美国不断上升的“绝望死亡”是一致的（Case and Deaton，2020，绝望之死与资本主义的未来. 普林斯顿大学出版社）。当特征是内生的时，脱离种姓社会的转变会产生最初的经济流动性爆发，随着时间的推移而消散。因此，一个动态的精英社会演变为一个静态的阶级社会。我建立了一种替代模型，称为“实验社会”，它不太容易受到这些问题的影响。