ABSTRACT
Meritocratic justice and libertarian justice are incompatible, in concept and in application. Meritocracy can do what other theories of justice cannot: appeal to the intuitions that drive people to libertarianism, intuitions about the value of personal responsibility, the benefits of markets, and the importance of giving people their just deserts. This chapter describes the conceptual foundations of meritocracy and libertarianism, and provides an example of their incompatibility. It explains the essential relevance of equal opportunity to meritocracy, and argues that the value of personal responsibility is better promoted in a meritocracy than in a libertarian state. The chapter discusses how libertarian markets fail to respond to merit and the injurious economic effects thereof. Meritocracy, like any desert-based theory of justice, requires significant conceptual elaboration. Formal equality of opportunity is thus tantamount to the meritocratic distributive rule. Libertarians have long been aware that markets may not track merit or desert.
