This column by Matt Miller looks at the current economic crisis as puncturing the illusions that people generally get what they deserve in material terms, that capitalism is meritocratic, that the rich deserve to be rich, and so forth. Without wanting to suggest that there are no meritocratic processes or sub-domains at all within the overall economic system as it is, I find it startling that anyone could believe - even before the latest crisis - that capitalism distributes material rewards according to desert. This claim is not one that even a 100-per-cent defender of free market capitalism (with minimal restraints) could make with a clear head. That the idea is entertained at all must be the result of confusing desert with entitlement.
These are not the same thing. If you win the race, then you are entitled to the prize, even though, as the runner who trained harder, ran better and was winning till just short of the finishing tape, when I stumbled and fell, I deserved it more than you did - since you spent the weeks beforehand loafing and overeating, and took things fairly easy during the race itself, not being too bothered about whether you would win or not. A feckless, unambitious, unloving good-for-nothing, I may not deserve to have my grandmother's vast fortune settled upon me, and there may be others who have deserved it more by the help they have given her and, prospectively, by the excellent use they would be likely to make of it, given what we know about their characters and their habits. But if she leaves the boodle to me, by the rules as they are I'm entitled to it and those virtuous others are not.
Capitalism, even under its own flag of justification, is more about entitlement than about desert. In terms of the distribution of wealth, nobody deserves what he or she inherits or doesn't inherit; but they may get what they're entitled to (under the prevailing rules) should their parents decide to pass it on to them. A nurse doesn't deserve to earn less than a professional footballer; but the market for their respective talents and services will fix what they may each expect and claim (under the prevailing rules) to be entitled to. This is not to say that nobody ever gets ahead by working hard, coming up with a good new idea, etc, and thereby deserving material success to that extent. Perhaps it's because these merit-and-reward instances are over-generalized to justify existing distributions of wealth and income that capitalism is seen by some as meritocratic. But instances is precisely what they are, and the claim that capitalism embodies them in a consistent and systematic way doesn't make sense of some of the other things - like its free-ness - claimed for the free market by its defenders.