Chapter Twenty-Six
The Fallacy of Merit
“As I said,” Mitchell said, as Fluky, Mitty and myself sat down at his table. “The irony isn't lost on anyone. But there is a certain inevitability to it, to our ignominious fate.” A waiter, discreet in the background, appeared to welcome us all. Mitchell ordered wine, the waiter bowed and quickly vanished.
“This hardly seems ignominious...” Mitty questioned, looking around. It was the beginning of a lovely, warm summer evening. The mountains rose majestically all around us. If there was a more perfect spot on the planet I didn't know of it. The fresh air and the smell of cooking food in the restaurants all around; people enjoying the evening sitting in the square beside the small fountain at its center; bicycles riding by, ridden by young, beautiful, dark-skinned women. It felt like paradise.
“Perhaps,” Mitchell shrugged. “But unsustainable. The cost, to run this town, for the value of the product that it produces. There will be a dark day soon when the cost and the value of Marmont must be reconciled,” Mitchell said hauntingly, then shifted, “But it is an honor that you gentlemen were able to see Marmont at its best. To have such celebrities as yourselves, here at my table...”
The wine arrived. The waiter presented the bottle to Mitchell for his inspection. Approved, the waiter proceeded to open the bottle and pour out a small amount for Mitchell to sample. He sniffed it, tasted it, and nodded his acceptance.
“We're not celebrities,” I said, expectantly watching my glass fill with red wine. “We're businessmen.”
“Yes,” Mitchell smiled. “And in this day-and-age, that means instant celebrity status. To be such a thorn in the side of the Concession, that pleases people no end – it please me no end. To be desperados, outlaws, for what you're attempting to do. That fires the imagination – invigorates people.”
I remembered the street in Shadrach. The line of dour faces on either side of the tracks. “We're just out trying to make a buck,” I said honestly.
Mitchell shrugged, tasting his wine. “Now-a-days, that's damn near sedition.”
I returned his shrug.
“Pursuit of the almighty buck has become a much maligned pastime by those of more refined sensibilities; but what is a dollar but a store of value – a metric to gauge the relative worth of one item compared another? Does a dollar, in itself, have any value greater than the value you assign to a product you wish to purchase with it? If the pursuit of a buck is reworded to indicate the buck's true roll as a unit of exchange, does it take on a more altruistic air? If you rephrased your comment to be: 'We're just out trying to create value', would you say it with such a sinister tone? No? Perhaps not.
“High-minded ideals might lead us to believe that money is the root of all evil, but if we pause to consider that the creation of wealth is merely the creation of value, we can see that money is at the root of very little at all except the value it represents, and the relative moral implications of that value, good or bad. That 'value' and 'values' are the same word, give or take a letter, is an illuminating coincidence: That our sense of value influences our values is a self-evident truth: We assign a higher value to things we value – we are willing to sacrifice more for that which we think is important. If money has little meaning beyond its store of value, then it's a simple translative operation to come to the conclusion that we assign a higher dollar value to things that conform to our values. To say that money is the root of all evil is a judgment call on the moral character of the pursuer of the money in question, not the money. The idiom never applies to one's own pursuit of cash – that's morally acceptable, of course, since it's obtained by a person of good moral character. Namely oneself.
“If, again, you rephrased your comment to 'we're just out trying to pursue our values', I think you might – again – say it with modicum of pride.”
The waiter returned to refill our glasses. Mitchell ordered without help of the menu: Hors d'oeuvres, a beef main course, a salad course for four and more wine. The waiter nodded and turned on his heels to vanish back into the shadows of the café.
“I've never heard money spoken of in that way,” I said.
“Misunderstanding value and money is at the center of all this,” Mitchell said, with a gesture to the town of Marmont. “That is why I have such an interest in it. That this town was a gift from the centralized government, paid for by the taxes of the people of the United States, greatly burdens the people who live and work here.”
“Wish I had your burden,” Fluky smirked.
“Perhaps. But with all this handed up to us as a reconciliation for past wrongs, presents itself as a terrible moral hazard to the good people who chose to take the gift. That it was done for the best and most honest of reasons limits none of the ethical impact – absolves us of none of the risks.”
“I don't follow.” I shook my head.
“A fiscal transaction,” Mitchell began, “has comparative advantage. Both parties profit from the interaction. One party gets the goods they purchased and the other gets money in proportion to the other party's value of the goods. It's a mutually beneficial situation because both parties profit: One in the goods they might not have otherwise been unable to obtain, the other in the difference between the value they assign to the good they sold and the value the purchaser assigns to them. Both parties profit, or the transaction would never have taken place.
“A charitable transaction, on the other hand, is not a mutually beneficial interaction. Ostensibly, one party is giving up something for the benefit of another – the giver is losing to the benefit of the receiver – but that's misguided. Charity is a double-edged sword. Look deeper, and you'll see that such a transaction proves itself to be a mutually detrimental situation. The giver loses the gift, correct, but the receiver also loses the value of the gift. Having not earned the gift, the receiver is unable to correctly value its worth – understand the gift in the context of its real cost. And, as I said, with value and values differing by only one letter...”
“Someone once told me,” I began, thinking back to the cowboy sitting beside the campfire, “That you can only decide right from wrong for yourself. That no one else can dictate that to you.”
“True,” Mitchell agreed. The hors d'oeuvres were here. Pâté. There was silence as everyone hungrily dug into the appetizer. After chewing and swallowing, Mitchell continued, “It is true that the human soul is the only moral actor. But that in no way implies there is no such thing as right or wrong, right thinking from bad, no correct solution to difficult problems.
“Right and wrong can only be weighed by the individual, it is true, but that does not make it a subjective act. Right thinking leads to right actions, which receive rewards; wrong thinking leads to wrong actions, which are punished – not by any higher authority, but by the circumstances of life itself. But no individual is born with an innate sense of right and wrong. That we learn growing up, and through experiences in our life. A misunderstanding of value distorts a person's sense of right and wrong, leading to suffering. One might conclude that it is a fickle, unjust universe, but that's simply the wrong thinking feeding on itself. Right thinking comprehends that right thinking leads to rewards, and that right thinking is based on solid values, and those values based on an honest, complex understanding of value.
“Take away the opportunity for people to make reasonable assessments of value for themselves and you take away the ability of people to change wrong thinking into right. Enter the government, with its unique power to redistribute wealth, and the misguided desire to build a better world, and you have a serious distortion to everyone's sense of value, as it shifts resources around, trying to help for the greater good.
“You can sympathize with their motivations – admittedly, even admire them. After all, it is incumbent on the runner who falls behind in the race to run twice as fast to have any hope of catching the leader. For the betterment of society – for the betterment of all – is it not the responsibility of th
e government to give the slower runner a helping hand?
“But the analogy is misleading, it implies that life is a merit based competition – the race being won by the fastest runner – but success in life is not so easily granted to the best and the brightest. Wealth and brains might be a great asset, but life is full with examples of the victory going to someone other than the most worthy. Why? Perhaps, because life is not a meritocracy.
“And a good thing too, for a meritocracy is simply another form of autocracy. Should we wish to live under the thumb of a self-appointed class simply because they are genuinely our betters? No, life rewards the maximization of value, not merit, and value is a truly democratic proposition.
“If right thinking leads to better decisions, which in turn lead to success; life is therefore predisposed to reward those with the best values – the keenest understanding of value – not those with the most money, or the best education, or the brightest ideas, or most powerful connections. And values are universal, both good and bad. A poor man can be true of heart just as easily as a rich man can be corrupted by his power. In fact, there's a predisposition for those conditions: Poverty teaching the harsh lessons and a sharp understanding of value, with wealth granting little but idleness and complacency.
“But government, with its munificence, is hell bent on helping for the wrong reasons. It is a poor student of the distinction between value and merit. Even at its best, progressive government is an attempt to reward merit – at its worse, it's an attempt to redefine it.”
The main course arrived: Beef medallions in red wine sauce. The aroma was intoxicating. The plates were placed on the table and I quickly picked up my knife and fork. The dish was as exquisite as everything else about Marmont. I ate hungrily, as did Mitchell, Fluky and Mitty. We all remained silent until everyone's plate was clean. More wine was poured and the waiter reappeared to clear the dishes.
“Then you're saying,” I said, picking up the conversation again after wiping my mouth clean with my napkin, “that you'd have been better off if the government had never given you this town?”
“No, of course not,” Mitchell replied, leaning back in his chair, satisfied with his meal. “But Marmont is symptomatic of the society at large: An unsustainable high ideal. To run Marmont at a loss has required the redistribution of many resources. That redirection has required austerity in other areas of society. To fund us – to pay for this meal,” Mitchell pointed at the table in front of us. Our salads came just in time to punctuate Mitchell's point. “Many other people have had to go without. Why? Because the government has decided that the merit of Marmont outweighs the cost to the society as a whole. But does its value? And has the government created the merit in Marmont that it was hoping to create? Has giving us this, without demanding its value in payment, taught the people of Marmont anything? Except how to be dependent on government?
“And that's the irony of Marmont: A grand experiment to foster merit in a world that does not reward it; a massive redistribution of wealth, only to manufacture the sedative to mollify the unfortunates whose wealth had to be redistributed to pay for it; a lesson in merit that's taught only dependence. That is Marmont, what you see around you. Why, I say that a dark day will soon come, when Marmont's value must be reconciled with its cost. It is this dark day that is coming, not just for Marmont, but for the whole nation. The bills that we've incurred must one day be paid in full. Mark my words.”