All of them. In the context of a political appointment, "merit" reflects ability to carry out the President's political agenda. Trump's appointees have been phenomenally effective at doing what Trump promised to do.
“Merit” can mean different things depending on the nature of the job. Juilliard using auditions instead of SATs is still merit-based admissions. But “merit” never means someone’s race or ethnicity.
Put differently, DEI is when you have double standards based on race. Colleges do think test scores = merit, because that’s the primary criterion for selecting among within the group of whites/asians. It’s DEI when they use other factors to try and achieve desired racial balancing.
1) DEI can be done badly, of course, and in an ideal world would be unnecessary, I think anyone on either side of any spectrum wants merit over anything else, but for various historical, systemic, as well as unconscious bias [1], this has not been the case, statistically. DEI on the ~interviewer~ side, not the interviewee side can and has addressed [1]. I fail to see the downside. The only way to claim it's unfair would be to confess that [1] is real, meaning some solution is needed, meaning DEI has done ~some~ good [2].
I agree that quotas are certainly bad in principle, and many times in practice, but I have seen no credible claim where the status quo is a meritocracy, leading to the blatant showing in the current admin.
2) Posit a merit-based test where any appointees of this administration would score better than their corresponding appointee of the previous (or any previous) administration.
It’s not only unnecessary, it’s illegal. If you think historic discrimination had negative effects, just target the negative effects among all people similarly situated.
> Posit a merit-based test where any appointees of this administration would score better than their corresponding appointee of the previous administration
Aggressively pursuing the President’s agenda: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. Political appointees are just that—political. The relevant standard of merit isn’t who is the best nerd, but who will best carry out the agenda the President campaigned on. The whole point is that voters can change the direction of the executive branch through electing the President, who in turn appoints like-minded cabinet secretaries.
> Speaking in an NPR interview in November, Kennedy said Trump had given him three “instructions”: to remove “corruption” from health agencies, to return these bodies to “evidence-based science and medicine”, and “to end the chronic disease epidemic”.
Do you believe political agenda to be a suitable merit here as opposed to education and field work?
It doesn’t matter what I “believe,” what matters is what kind of job the constitution creates. The appointment of department heads is an exercise in democratic and political accountability. The point is for people to vote for a president who will staff the administration with people who will carry out his agenda. The Supreme Court explained this function of the Appointments Clause in the Arthrex case: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-1434_ancf.pdf (see pp. 6-8 in particular).
Here, “education and field work” matter only to the extent voters care about those things. Obama voters cared about those things, so Obama appointing the best nerds is consistent with the constitutional design. But if voters have lost faith in Harvard Medical School, then education is actually contrary to “merit.”
In this context, RFK is the most qualified HHS Secretary in recent history. He campaigned with Trump talking about his kooky ideas and then people voted for the ticket. People voted for the guy who promised to do something different because they had lost faith in the nerds. The whole point of the constitution is for people to be able to do that. Trump moreso than any recent President got on stage with the people who was going to help run the country if you voted for him. That’s the constitutional design! That’s democracy!
> The whole point of the constitution is for people to be able to do that. Trump moreso than any recent President got on stage with the people who was going to help run the country if you voted for him. That’s the constitutional design! That’s democracy!
No one has argued differently. My argument stemmed only from your, to me previously unfamiliar, definition of merit.
> But if voters have lost faith in Harvard Medical School, then education is actually contrary to “merit.”
> In this context, RFK is the most qualified HHS Secretary in recent history
I take this to mean we agree that the current cabinet is the polar opposite of the previously historically stable definition of meritorious, but are wholly merited appointments under your clarified definition.
Though to be nit-picky, RFK Jr would not be the most qualified HHS Secretary in recent history, but rather ranked based on either voting results or approval rating as merit is then simply a function of the elected representative appointing them.
What distinction would you make between the terms democracy and meritocracy? Are they functionally the same under your definition of merit?
> My argument stemmed only from your, to me previously unfamiliar, definition of merit...
> What distinction would you make between the terms democracy and meritocracy? Are they functionally the same under your definition of merit?
I don't think I'm using "merit" in an unusual way. I think you'd agree that the specific criteria that constitutes "merit" depends on the nature of the job. You use different criteria for NFL players versus college professors.
I think the problem is that we're talking about political appointees, which because of the nature of democracy are very different from other kinds of jobs. In the political context, "merit" is a meta concept that depends on what the voters prioritize. In some contexts, voters want a traditionally credentialed person. This is true even in the Trump administration: Scott Bessent is a Yale graduate hedge fund manager. But in other areas, Trump voters have grown to distrust the institutions, like the medical establishment and the intelligence services, and "merit" in that context means someone that will upend those agencies.
Actually answering the question you quoted would inform whether or not you're using "merit" in an unusual way. How does "meritocracy" exist as a term when "democracy" already encapsulates the political representation of merit you describe?
That is not the definition of merit that I'm familiar with. You are welcome to your own set of definitions, of course.
The only thing the Trump appointees (including the supreme court ones) have been phenomenally effective at is deconstructing the USA. And they're not done yet.
