鄭戈老師今天推薦了一本書，耶魯大學法學院教授Daniel Markovits（丹尼爾·馬科維茨）的The Meritocracy Trap（《精英主義的陷阱》）。但鄭老師同時提醒指出：
今天人們所說的精英主義，其實混淆了meritocracy和elitism。前者針對的是democracy（民主），後者針對的是populism（民粹主義或平民主義）。meritocracy是指擇優選拔的政治或賢能政治，會為平民留下上升空間。elitism就是精英政治，是精英階層壟斷文化、經濟和政治資源的政治，或者說是變相的貴族制。
2019年9月美國《大西洋月刊》登出節選自The Meritocracy Trap的文章Meritocracy Harms Everyone（《精英主義傷害所有人》）。普渡大學的一個頁面可以看到英文全文：
https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/TheAtlanticMarkovitsMeritocracyHarmsEveryone2019.pdf
在CNKI上查到，國內熊一舟在2019年10月的《社會科學報》上對《大西洋月刊》的這篇文章進行了選譯，並命名為《誰是精英主義的贏家》。
以下為文章的中英對照。英文來自purdue.edu網頁，黑色中文來自熊一舟的譯文《誰是精英主義的贏家》，紅色中文為我的補充譯文。為避免版權糾紛，本文只做小範圍交流學習之用。
讀完之後，會與近期的幾件事聯繫起來：
一是2019年哈佛2020年耶魯大學先後被起訴招生存在種族歧視（「應該以學生的性格、才能和成就來決定他們的入學資格，而不是由膚色來決定，」美國司法部民權部門助理檢察長埃裡克·德雷班德在一份聲明中說，「否則，我們的學校就會助長成見、怨恨和分裂。」）
二是近期關於「內卷」的討論，引發青年對奮鬥、過勞、沒有時間、階層固化等問題的新的關注。
三是教育部官員稱擬在基礎教育中大量增加體育和藝術分值，引發家長對校外培訓經濟壓力和社會不平等的擔憂。
很讚賞美國知識分子對自身「體制」的反思。但是，我對Daniel給的從歷史中尋找藥方的可能性並不樂觀。20世紀中葉的美國雖然令人懷戀，但那段輝煌的成功有特殊的歷史和全球經濟背景。拿前朝的劍打今朝的怪，是一種想像力的限制。要解決問題，還是得像抗疫一樣，人們對理想社會有共識，就會盡一切所能去實現，不管手段是姓資姓社姓精英姓大眾姓傳統還是姓未來；行動的困境，根本原因在於撕裂的社會不存在共識。
——張蕾
How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition
Meritocracy prizes achievement above all else, making everyone—even the rich—miserable. Maybe thereʼs a way out.
生活如何成為一場無休止的、可怕的競爭？
精英主義將成就看得高於一切，使得每個人——即使是富人——都很悲慘。也許存在一條出路。
Daniel Markovits September 2019 Issue
Professor at Yale Law School and the author of The Meritocracy Trap
Meritocracy Harms Everyone - The Atlantic 11/26/19
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/meritocracys-miserable-winners/594760/
In the summer of 1987, I graduated from a public high school in Austin, Texas, and headed northeast to attend Yale. I then spent nearly 15 years studying at various universities—the London School of Economics, the University of Oxford, Harvard, and finally Yale Law School—picking up a string of degrees along the way. Today, I teach at Yale Law, where my students unnervingly resemble my younger self: They are, overwhelmingly, products of professional parents and high-class universities. I pass on to them the advantages that my own teachers bestowed on me. They, and I, owe our prosperity and our caste to meritocracy.
1987 年夏天，我從德克薩斯州奧斯汀市的一所公立高中畢業，前往東北部的耶魯大學就讀。然後我花了將近 15 年的時間在不同的大學學習——倫敦政治經濟學院、牛津大學、哈佛大學，最後是耶魯大學法學院——在這期間我獲得了一系列的學位。如今，我在耶魯大學法學院教書，我的學生與年輕時的我驚人地相似：他們中絕大多數人的父母都是專業人士，曾就讀於一流大學。我把自己老師曾賜予我的優勢傳遞給他們。我們都把自己的成功歸功於精英主義。
Two decades ago, when I started writing about economic inequality, meritocracy seemed more likely a cure than a cause. Meritocracyʼs early advocates championed social mobility. In the 1960s, for instance, Yale President Kingman Brewster brought meritocratic admissions to the university with the express aim of breaking a hereditary elite. Alumni had long believed that their sons had a birthright to follow them to Yale; now prospective students would gain admission based on achievement rather than breeding. Meritocracy—for a time—replaced complacent insiders with talented and hardworking outsiders.
20 年前，當我開始寫關於經濟不平等的文章時，精英主義似乎更像是一張藥方而非病因。精英主義的早期倡導者領導了社會流動。例如，在20世紀60年代，耶魯大學校長Kingman Brewster將擇優錄取帶入大學，其明確目標是打破世襲精英階層。校友們長期以來認為，他們的兒子天生就有權利跟隨他們進入耶魯；現在，未來的學生將根據成績而不是血統獲得錄取。擇優錄取——一度——用有才華和勤奮的外人取代了自滿的內部人。
Todayʼs meritocrats still claim to get ahead through talent and effort, using means open to anyone. In practice, however, meritocracy now excludes everyone outside of a narrow elite. Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale collectively enroll more students from households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution than from households in the bottom 60 percent. Legacy preferences, nepotism, and outright fraud continue to give rich applicants corrupt advantages. But the dominant causes of this skew toward wealth can be traced to meritocracy. On average, children whose parents make more than $200,000 a year score about 250 points higher on the SAT than children whose parents make $40,000 to $60,000. Only about one in 200 children from the poorest third of households achieves SAT scores at Yaleʼs median. Meanwhile, the top banks and law firms, along with other high-paying employers, recruit almost exclusively from a few elite colleges.
今天，精英主義者仍然聲稱只要憑天賦和努力，任何人都能獲得成功。然而，在實踐中，精英體制現在將所有人排除在一個狹窄的精英群體之外。哈佛大學、普林斯頓大學、史丹福大學和耶魯大學從收入佔前 1%的家庭招收的學生總數超過了收入佔後 60%的家庭。遺產偏好、裙帶關係和赤裸裸的欺詐繼續給富有的申請者帶來令人不齒的優勢。這種傾向富人的原因可以追溯到精英主
義。平均而言，父母年收入超過 20 萬美元的孩子在 SAT 考試中的得分，要比父母年收入在 4 萬至 6 萬美元之間的孩子高出 250 分左右。來自最貧窮的三分之一家庭的 200 名兒童中，只有大約1 人的 SAT 成績達到了耶魯大學的中位數。與此同時，頂尖的銀行和律師事務所以及其他高薪僱主，幾乎都只從幾所精英大學招聘。
Hardworking outsiders no longer enjoy genuine opportunity. According to one study, only one out of every 100 children born into the poorest fifth of households, and fewer than one out of every 50 children born into the middle fifth, will join the top 5 percent. Absolute economic mobility is also declining— the odds that a middle-class child will outearn his parents have fallen by more than half since mid-century—and the drop is greater among the middle class than among the poor. Meritocracy frames this exclusion as a failure to measure up, adding a moral insult to economic injury.
勤奮的「局外人」不再享有真正的機會。根據一項研究，出生在最貧窮的五分之一家庭的100個孩子中，只有一個會進入作為社會頂層的前 5%。而出生在中間五分之一家庭的 50 個孩子中，只有不到一個會進入前 5%。絕對的經濟流動性也在下降——自本世紀中葉以來，中產階級孩子的收入超過父母收入的機率下降了一半以上——而且中產階級的階層滑落比窮人更大。擇優錄取將這種排斥定格為達不到標準，在經濟傷害之外增加了一種道德侮辱。
Public anger over economic inequality frequently targets meritocratic institutions. Nearly three-fifths of Republicans believe that colleges and universities are bad for America, according to the Pew Research Center. The intense and widespread fury generated by the college-admissions scandal early this year tapped into a deep and broad well of resentment. This anger is warranted but also distorting. Outrage at nepotism and other disgraceful forms of elite advantage-taking implicitly valorizes meritocratic ideals. Yet meritocracy itself is the bigger problem, and it is crippling the American dream. Meritocracy has created a competition that, even when everyone plays by the rules, only the rich can win.
公眾對經濟不平等的憤怒經常針對精英機構。「皮尤研究中心」的數據顯示，近五分之三的共和黨人認為，大學對美國無甚好處。今年早些時候的大學入學醜聞引發了強烈的不滿和廣泛的憤怒。這種憤怒是有道理的。但這種憤怒也是扭曲的。對裙帶關係和其他可恥的精英優勢形式的憤怒，隱含著對任人唯賢理想的推崇。然而，精英主義本身是一個更大的問題，它正在削弱美國夢。精英主義創造了一種競爭，即使每個人都按規則行事，也只有富人才能贏。
But what, exactly, have the rich won? Even meritocracyʼs beneficiaries now suffer on account of its demands. It ensnares the rich just as surely as it excludes the rest, as those who manage to claw their way to the top must work with crushing intensity, ruthlessly exploiting their expensive education in order to extract a return.
然而，富人究竟贏得了什麼？即使富人是精英體制的受益者，他們現在也對這種體制的過高要求叫苦不迭。它籠罩著富人，就像它排斥其他人一樣，因為那些設法爬到頂層的人必須以壓倒性的強度工作，無情地利用他們昂貴的教育來獲取回報。
No one should weep for the wealthy. But the harms that meritocracy imposes on them are both real and important. Diagnosing how meritocracy hurts elites kindles hope for a cure. We are accustomed to thinking that reducing inequality requires burdening the rich. But because meritocratic inequality does not in fact serve anyone well, escaping meritocracyʼs trap would benefit virtually everyone.
沒有人應該為富人哭泣。但精英體制對他們造成的傷害是真實而重要的。只有認真審視精英主義是如何傷害精英的，才能有改進的希望。我們習慣於認為，減少不平等會加重富人的負擔。但精英主義的不平等實際上並不能很好地服務於任何人，因此，擺脫精英主義的陷阱將使幾乎所有人受益。
Elites first confront meritocratic pressures in early childhood. Parents— sometimes reluctantly, but feeling that they have no alternative—sign their children up for an education dominated not by experiments and play but by the accumulation of the training and skills, or human capital, needed to be admitted to an elite college and, eventually, to secure an elite job. Rich parents in cities like New York, Boston, and San Francisco now commonly apply to 10 kindergartens, running a gantlet of essays, appraisals, and interviews—all designed to evaluate 4-year-olds. Applying to elite middle and high schools repeats the ordeal. Where aristocratic children once reveled in their privilege, meritocratic children now calculate their future—they plan and they scheme, through rituals of stage-managed self-presentation, in familiar rhythms of ambition, hope, and worry.
精英們在童年早期首先面臨精英主義的壓力。家長們有時很不情願，但又覺得他們別無選擇。讓孩子們接受的教育不是以實驗和遊戲為主導，而是以培養技能的積累或人力資本為主導，這些都是進入精英大學並最終獲得一份精英工作所必需的。在紐約、波士頓和舊金山這樣的城市，富裕的父母通常會申請 10 所幼兒園，進行一系列的論文撰寫、評估和面試——所有這些都是為評估 4 歲孩子而設計的。如果要申請優秀的初中和高中，這樣的經歷會不斷重複。貴族家庭的孩子曾經陶醉於他們的特權之中，而現在精英家庭的孩子卻在算計他們的未來——他們通過舞臺管理般的自我展示儀式，以野心、希望和擔憂交織的節奏來規劃他們的未來。
Schools encourage children to operate in this way. At one elite northeastern elementary school, for example, a teacher posted a 「problem of the day,」 which students had to solve before going home, even though no time was set aside for working on it. The point of the exercise was to train fifth graders to snatch a few extra minutes of work time by multitasking or by sacrificing recess.
學校鼓勵孩子們這樣操作。例如，在東北一所精英小學，老師貼出了一個 "當日問題"，學生們必須在回家前解決這個問題，儘管沒有留出時間來解決這個問題。這個練習的目的是訓練五年級學生通過多任務或犧牲課間休息時間來搶奪額外的幾分鐘工作時間。
Such demands exact a toll. Elite middle and high schools now commonly require three to five hours of homework a night; epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have warned of schoolwork-induced sleep deprivation. Wealthy students show higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse than poor students do. They also suffer depression and anxiety at rates as much as triple those of their age peers throughout the country. A recent study of a Silicon Valley high school found that 54 percent of students displayed moderate to severe symptoms of depression and 80 percent displayed moderate to severe symptoms of anxiety.
這樣的要求確實要付出代價。如今，頂尖的初中和高中通常每晚需要完成三到五個小時的家庭作業；美國疾病控制與預防中心的流行病學家警告稱，學業負擔可能導致睡眠不足。富裕學生吸毒和酗酒的比率比貧困學生高。他們的抑鬱和焦慮程度是全國同齡人的三倍。最近一項對矽谷一所高中的研究發現，54%的學生表現出中度至重度的抑鬱症狀，80%的學生表現出中度至重度的焦慮症狀。
These students nevertheless have good reason to push themselves as they do. Elite universities that just a few decades ago accepted 30 percent of their applicants now accept less than 10 percent. The shift at certain institutions has been even more dramatic: The University of Chicago admitted 71 percent of its applicants as recently as 1995. In 2019 it admitted less than 6 percent.
然而，這些學生卻不得不這樣做。就在幾十年前，精英大學的錄取率可達 30%，而現在錄取率不足 10%。在某些院校，這種轉變甚至更為顯著：芝加哥大學在 1995 年錄取了 71%的申請者。2019 年，它只錄取了不到 6%。
The contest intensifies when meritocrats enter the workplace, where elite opportunity is exceeded only by the competitive effort required to grasp it. A person whose wealth and status depend on her human capital simply cannot afford to consult her own interests or passions in choosing her job. Instead, she must approach work as an opportunity to extract value from her human capital, especially if she wants an income sufficient to buy her children the type of schooling that secured her own eliteness. She must devote herself to a narrowly restricted class of high-paying jobs, concentrated in finance, management, law, and medicine. Whereas aristocrats once considered themselves a leisure class, meritocrats work with unprecedented intensity.
當精英進入職場時，競爭會變得更加激烈。在這裡，精英只有加倍努力才能獲得更好的機遇。一個財富和地位取決於自身的人力資本的人，在選擇工作時根本無法考慮自己的興趣或激情。相反，他（她）必須把工作當作一個從人力資本中榨取價值的機會，尤其是如果他（她）想要有一份足夠的收入，讓他（她）的孩子能夠接受那種能確保自身精英地位的教育。他（她）必須把自己奉獻給一個極其受限的高收入階層的工作，基本上集中在金融、管理、法律和醫學領域。當貴族們一度認為自己是一個休閒階層時，精英們卻以前所未有的強度在工作。
In 1962, when many elite lawyers earned roughly a third of what they do today, the American Bar Association could confidently declare, 「There are … approximately 1,300 fee-earning hours per year」 available to the normal lawyer. In 2000, by contrast, a major law firm pronounced with equal confidence that a quota of 2,400 billable hours, 「if properly managed,」 was 「not unreasonable,」 which is a euphemism for 「necessary for having a hope of making partner.」 Because not all the hours a lawyer works are billable, billing 2,400 hours could easily require working from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. six days a week, every week of the year, without vacation or sick days.
1962 年，當許多精英律師的收入約為今天的三分之一時，美國律師協會（American Bar Association）可以自信地宣稱，「普通律師每年大約有 1300 個小時的收費時間」。相比之下，在2000 年，一家大型律師事務所同樣自信地宣稱，2400 小時的計費時間配額「如果管理得當」是「合理的」。這是「成為合伙人的必要條件」的委婉說法。因為律師的工作時間中有一些並不是按時間計費的，所以 2400 小時的計費很容易就需要每周工作六天，從早上 8 點工作到晚上 8 點，沒有假期或病假。
In finance, 「bankersʼ hours」—originally named for the 10-to-3 business day fixed by banks from the 19th century through the mid-20th century and later used to refer more generally to any light work—have given way to the ironically named 「banker 9-to-5,」 which begins at 9 a.m. on one day and runs through 5 a.m. on the next. Elite managers were once 「organization men,」 cocooned by lifelong employment in a corporate hierarchy that rewarded seniority above performance. Today, the higher a person climbs on the org chart, the harder she is expected to work. Amazonʼs 「leadership principles」 call for managers to have 「relentlessly high standards」 and to 「deliver results.」 The company tells managers that when they 「hit the wall」 at work, the only solution is to 「climb the wall.」
在金融領域，從 19 世紀到 20 世紀中葉，「銀行家時間」（bankers』 hours）指的是工作日從上午 10 點到下午 3 點的工作，後來被引申為任何工作時間短的輕鬆工作。現在，「銀行家時間」變成了工作日的「朝九晚五」，從第一天的早上 9 點一直工作到次日的下午 5 點。精英經理人曾經是「組織人」，在一個資歷重於業績的企業等級制度中，他們受到「終生僱傭制」的庇護。今天，一個人在組織架構上爬得越高，就越需要努力工作。亞馬遜的「領導原則」要求管理者「堅持不懈地高標準」，並「交付成果」。公司告訴經理們，當他們在工作中「碰壁」時，唯一的解決辦法就是「向上攀爬」。
Americans who work more than 60 hours a week report that they would, on average, prefer 25 fewer weekly hours. They say this because work subjects them to a 「time famine」 that, a 2006 study found, interferes with their capacity to have strong relationships with their spouse and children, to maintain their home, and even to have a satisfying sex life. A respondent to a recent Harvard Business School survey of executives proudly insisted, 「The 10 minutes that I give my kids at night is one million times greater than spending that 10 minutes at work.」 Ten minutes!
每周工作超過 60 小時的美國人報告說，他們更喜歡平均每周減少工作 25 小時。他們之所以這麼說，是因為工作讓他們陷入了「時間饑荒」。2006 年的一項研究發現，「時間饑荒」妨礙了他們與配偶和孩子建立牢固關係的能力，妨礙了他們維護家庭的能力，甚至妨礙了他們過上滿意的性生活的能力。哈佛商學院最近一項針對高管的調查中，一位受訪者自豪地堅持說："我晚上給孩子們的10分鐘，比花在工作上的這10分鐘要大100萬倍。" 10分鐘!
The capacity to bear these hours gracefully, or at least grimly, has become a criterion for meritocratic success. A top executive at a major firm, interviewed by the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild for her book The Time Bind, observed that aspiring managers who have demonstrated their skills and dedication face a 「final elimination」: 「Some people flame out, get weird because they work all the time … The people at the top are very smart, work like crazy, and donʼt flame out. Theyʼre still able to maintain a good mental set, and keep their family life together. They win the race.」
因此，優雅地或至少是冷酷地承受這些工作時間的能力，已成為精英分子成功的一個標準。社會學家阿莉·羅素·霍克希爾德（Arlie Russell Hochschild）在其著作《時間約束》（the Time Bind）中採訪了一家大公司的高管，她指出，「有些人會發火，變得古怪，因為他們一直在工作……但高層的人非常聰明，他們瘋狂地工作，而且不會發火。他們仍然能夠保持良好的心理狀態，維持他們的家庭生活。他們是贏家。」
A person who extracts income and status from his own human capital places himself, quite literally, at the disposal of others—he uses himself up. Elite students desperately fear failure and crave the conventional markers of success, even as they see through and publicly deride mere 「gold stars」 and 「shiny things.」 Elite workers, for their part, find it harder and harder to pursue genuine passions or gain meaning through their work. Meritocracy traps entire generations inside demeaning fears and inauthentic ambitions: always hungry but never finding, or even knowing, the right food.
一個從自己的人力資本中榨取收入和地位的人，毫不誇張地說，是把自己置於他人的支配之下——他耗盡了自己。精英學生極度害怕失敗，渴望傳統意義上的成功標誌，即使他們看穿了代表好學生的「金星」標誌（gold stars）和「閃亮的東西」（shiny things），並公開嘲笑它們。對於精英員工來說，他們越來越難以通過工作追求真正的激情或獲得意義。精英主義將整代人困在有損尊嚴的恐懼和不真實的野心之中：總是飢餓，卻永遠找不到，甚至不知道什麼是正確的食物。
The elite should not—they have no right to—expect sympathy from those who remain excluded from the privileges and benefits of high caste. But ignoring how oppressive meritocracy is for the rich is a mistake. The rich now dominate society not idly but effortfully. The familiar arguments that once defeated aristocratic inequality do not apply to an economic system based on rewarding effort and skill. The relentless work of the hundred-hour-a-week banker inoculates her against charges of unearned advantage. Better, then, to convince the rich that all their work isnʼt actually paying off.
精英們不應該——他們沒有權利——期待那些仍然被排除在高種姓特權和利益之外的人的同情。但是，忽視精英主義對富人的壓迫也是一個錯誤。富人現在不是閒著，而是努力地支配著社會。曾經打敗貴族不平等的那些耳熟能詳的論點，並不適用於以獎勵努力和技能為基礎的經濟制度。銀行家每周工作一百小時的不懈努力，使她免受不勞而獲的指控。那麼，最好說服富人，他們所有的工作實際上並沒有得到相應回報。
They may need less convincing than you might think. As the meritocracy trap closes in around elites, the rich themselves are turning against the prevailing system. Plaintive calls for work/life balance ring ever louder. Roughly twothirds of elite workers say that they would decline a promotion if the new job demanded yet more of their energy. When he was the dean of Stanford Law School, Larry Kramer warned graduates that lawyers at top firms are caught in a seemingly endless cycle: Higher salaries require more billable hours to support them, and longer hours require yet higher salaries to justify them. Whose interests, he lamented, does this system serve? Does anyone really want it?
他們比你想像的要容易說服。隨著精英階層的精英主義陷阱越來越近，富人自己也開始反對現行的制度。工作/生活平衡的平凡呼聲越來越高。大約三分之二的精英工人說，如果新工作需要他們更多的精力，他們會拒絕晉升。Larry Kramer在擔任史丹福大學法學院院長時，曾警告畢業生，頂級律所的律師們陷入了一個看似無止境的循環。更高的薪水需要更多的工作時間來支持他們 ，更長的工作時間需要更高的薪水來證明它們的合理性。他感嘆道，這個制度是為誰的利益服務的？有人真的想要這樣嗎？
Escaping the meritocracy trap will not be easy. Elites naturally resist policies that threaten to undermine their advantages. But it is simply not possible to get rich off your own human capital without exploiting yourself and impoverishing your inner life, and meritocrats who hope to have their cake and eat it too deceive themselves. Building a society in which a good education and good jobs are available to a broader swath of people—so that reaching the very highest rungs of the ladder is simply less important—is the only way to ease the strains that now drive the elite to cling to their status.
擺脫功利主義陷阱並不容易。精英們自然會抵制那些有可能破壞其優勢的政策。但要想靠自己的人力資本致富，而不剝削自己，不使自己的內心生活貧困化，是根本不可能的，希望有蛋糕吃的精英也是自欺欺人。建立一個社會，讓更廣泛的人群都能接受好的教育和好的工作——這樣，爬到最高階層根本就不那麼重要了——要緩解精英們維持地位的壓力，這是唯一途徑。
How can that be done? For one thing, education—whose benefits are concentrated in the extravagantly trained children of rich parents—must become open and inclusive. Private schools and universities should lose their tax-exempt status unless at least half of their students come from families in the bottom two-thirds of the income distribution. And public subsidies should encourage schools to meet this requirement by expanding enrollment.
如何才能做到這一點呢？首先，教育——其好處集中在由富人父母所養育的受過額外訓練的孩子身上——必須變得開放和包容。私立學校和大學如果沒有至少一半的學生來自收入分配底層三分之二的家庭，就應該被剝奪免稅地位。而公共補貼應該鼓勵學校通過擴大招生來滿足這一要求。
A parallel policy agenda must reform work, by favoring goods and services produced by workers who do not have elaborate training or fancy degrees. For example, the health-care system should emphasize public health, preventive care, and other measures that can be overseen primarily by nurse practitioners, rather than high-tech treatments that require specialist doctors.
一個平行的政策議程是，必須改革工作，支持由沒有經過複雜培訓或獲得高級學位的工人生產的商品和服務。例如，衛生保健系統應強調公共衛生、預防保健和其他主要由護士監督的措施，而不是需要專科醫生的高科技治療。
The legal system should deploy 「legal technicians」—not all of whom would need to have a J.D.—to manage routine matters, such as real-estate transactions, simple wills, and even uncontested divorces. In finance, regulations that limit exotic financial engineering and favor small local and regional banks can shift jobs to mid-skilled workers. And management should embrace practices that distribute control beyond the C-suite, to empower everyone else in the firm.
法律系統應該部署 "法律技術人員"——並非所有的人都需要擁有法學博士——來管理日常事務，如不動產交易、簡單的遺囑，甚至是無爭議的離婚。在金融領域，制定限制異國金融工程的法規，讓地方和區域性小銀行得利，可以將工作崗位轉移到中等技術工人身上。而管理層應該接受將控制權分配到高管以外的做法，賦予公司其他所有人權力。
The main obstacle to overcoming meritocratic inequality is not technical but political. Todayʼs conditions induce discontent and widespread pessimism, verging on despair. In his book Oligarchy, the political scientist Jeffrey A. Winters surveys eras in human history from the classical period to the 20th century, and documents what becomes of societies that concentrate income and wealth in a narrow elite. In almost every instance, the dismantling of such inequality has been accompanied by societal collapse, such as military defeat (as in the Roman empire) or revolution (as in France and Russia).
克服精英主義不平等的主要障礙不是技術性的，而是政治性的。今天的條件引起了人們的不滿和廣泛的悲觀情緒，近乎絕望。政治科學家Jeffrey A Winters在他的《寡頭政治》一書中調查了從古典時期到20世紀的人類歷史上的各個時代，並記錄了收入和財富集中在一個狹隘的精英階層的社會所發生的事情。幾乎在每一個例子中，這種不平等的解體都伴隨著社會的崩潰，如軍事失敗（如羅馬帝國）或革命（如法國和俄羅斯）。
Nevertheless, there are grounds for hope. History does present one clear-cut case of an orderly recovery from concentrated inequality: In the 1930s, the U.S. answered the Great Depression by adopting the New Deal framework that would eventually build the mid-century middle class. Crucially, government redistribution was not the primary engine of this process. The broadly shared prosperity that this regime established came, mostly, from an economy and a labor market that promoted economic equality over hierarchy—by dramatically expanding access to education, as under the GI Bill, and then placing midskilled, middle-class workers at the center of production.
不過，還是有希望的。歷史上確實有一個從集中不平等中有序復甦的明顯案例。20世紀30年代，美國對大蕭條作出了回應，採取了新政框架，最終建立了本世紀中葉的中產階級。至關重要的是，政府的再分配並不是這一進程的主要動力。這個制度所建立的廣泛共享的繁榮主要來自於經濟和勞動力市場，它促進了經濟平等而非等級制度，如《退伍軍人權利法案》大幅擴大了受教育機會，然後將中等技能的中產階級工人置於生產的中心。
An updated version of these arrangements remains available today; a renewed expansion of education and a renewed emphasis on middle-class jobs can reinforce each other. The elite can reclaim its leisure in exchange for a reduction of income and status that it can easily afford. At the same time, the middle class can regain its income and status and reclaim the center of American life.
這些措施的更新版本今天仍然可用；重新擴大教育和重新強調中產階級工作可以相互加強。精英階層可以重新得到自己的閒暇，交換物是可承受的收入和地位降低。同時，中產階級可以重新獲得其收入和地位，重新成為美式生活的中心。
Rebuilding a democratic economic order will be difficult. But the benefits that economic democracy brings—to everyone—justify the effort. And the violent collapse that will likely follow from doing nothing leaves us with no good alternative but to try.
重建民主的經濟秩序將是困難的。但經濟民主給每個人帶來的好處，是值得努力的。而什麼都不做很可能導致的暴力崩潰，讓我們除了盡力嘗試別無選擇。
This article is adapted from Daniel Markovits’s new book The Meritocracy Trap. It appears in the September 2019 print edition with the headline 「Meritocracy’s Miserable Winners.」 We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
本文改編自丹尼爾-馬科維茨的新書《精英主義的陷阱》。它出現在2019年9月的印刷版上，標題為 "功利主義的悲慘贏家"。我們想聽聽你對這篇文章的看法。給編輯提交一封信，或寫信到 letters@theatlantic.com。
Daniel Markovits is the Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School and the author of The Meritocracy Trap.
Daniel Markovits是耶魯大學法學院Guido Calabresi法學教授，也是《精英主義的陷阱》的作者。