Self Made

I just read Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Outliers. His theme is personal success and the predominance of situation over ability. His opening section deals with the odd fact that most professional hockey players in Canada have birthdays in January, February, and March. The process of becoming a pro hockey player in Canada seems entirely merit based. All kids have the same access to school hockey programs starting at an early age, and kids are promoted based on athletic ability from the Pee-Wee leagues up through college into the professional level. The secret is in the cutoff date for participation: January 1st. An unfortunate kid with a December 31st birthdate will end up facing off against some kid with a January birthdate in the same year. He will be almost a year younger at an age where even six months means a huge difference in size, strength, and motor skills. The early year kids dominate the later year ones and advance to the higher level leagues, where they get more and better coaching, more ice time, and more support. The vast majority of late year kids never catch up.

Gladwell goes on to explore the birth years and unique high school experiences of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, the cohort of young men who ended up dominating the law firms of Manhattan, and the birth years of the robber barons of the 19th century. His conclusion is that talent is a necessary condition for success, but that the accidents of birth and youth are just as influential. His other observation is that pure intelligence or raw talent is less important than endless practice. Well, not endless – the number he cites is 10,000 hours, on average, to achieve mastery. The catch is that someone needs to have the opportunity to put in those 10,000 hours, unencumbered by other responsibilities and having access to the necessary facilities for 10,000 hours. You can’t become another Dave Brubeck if you can’t get your hands on a piano every day. Or, in the case of Bill Gates, access to a free computer terminal.

I now forget where I read it, but a poll showed that Democrats are more likely to believe that the circumstance of a person’s birth are a major determinant of success and Republicans are more likely to believe that personal ability is a major determinant of success. The more I read on the subject, the more it seems to me that circumstance dominates.

A number of researchers have done studies with duplicate resumes. In one study, resumes with African American sounding names on them got half the calls for interviews compared to identical ones with WASP sounding names. Another study used attached photographs to the same effect.

Your native country has an influence as well. Studies of social mobility, comparing changes in peak income by generation, show that a poor person in France has a better chance of out-earning his or her parents that a poor person in the U.S. or U.K. In fact, most European countries exceed the U.S. in upward social mobility.

This would all be just interesting fodder for sociological treatises, except that the belief in the triumph of individual talent informs government policy. The last thirty years of policymaking in this country has been based on an iron-fisted social Darwinism. Supply side economics, welfare “reform,” educational “reform,” tort “reform,” and the whole gamut of puritanical legalism we have endured assumes that personal virtue overcomes all. In a few spectacular cases it does, but for each John Edwards working his way up from poverty there are hundreds of George W. Bushes who got handed the whole package at birth.

The myth of pure meritocracy needs to be debunked, along with its partner, the myth of the self-made individual. We are all part of a deliberately structured society, restrained by it and dependent upon its benefits for our personal success. Understanding this, we need to set aside our egotistical American exceptionalism and observe how other countries structure their social, economic, and tax policies. We can pick the best cases and synthesize policies that allow all of us to achieve greater individual opportunity and social mobility.

A friend of mine told me how as a child he and his sisters would chorus “That’s not fair!” and his mother would respond “Life’s not fair.” At the time he thought it was a harsh thing to say, but now, he says, he realizes it was a blessing.