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welcome to the best interest podcast where we believe Benjamin Franklin's advice that an investment in knowledge
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pays the best interest both in finances and in your life every episode teaches you personal finance and investing in
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simple terms now here's your host Jesse Kramer hello welcome to episode 47 of
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the best interest podcast my name is Jesse Kramer today we're talking about something pretty interesting it's called
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a meritocracy we're going to Define what a meritocracy is we're going to see if
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the American system of socioeconomics actually runs on a meritocracy I'll give
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you some of my opinions on it and then later in the episode we're bringing in
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an outside expert he's actually one of the best known personal finance bloggers
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in the world his name is Sam dogen you might have heard of him as the financial Samurai so later in the episode Sam and
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I are going to be talking about meritocracy and and he's going to talk about it from his point of view and and
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refer to a recent article of his that went viral but first let's just get into
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some of the basics what is a meritocracy well it's a government or a society
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where the holding of power or the holding of goods assets positions of leadership tends to be held by people
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where it's selected on the basis of a person's ability so in simple terms it
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means that the people who are better get more stuff more money more influence more power and on its face I think we
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all want or we all see some sort of sense of fairness from meritocratic policies in our lives if we do things
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better as individuals we want to be rewarded or compensated we certainly don't want to be punished for doing
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things better we don't want to be ignored for doing things better and it feels somewhat unfair if our neighbor is
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compensated better than us despite being quote unquote worse than us but of course that begs a very important
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important and hard to answer question what does better mean does it mean smarter is it stronger taller more
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athletic harder working nicer more confident it's hard to say better in one Arena might be worthless in another you
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know the Houston Rockets the NBA team they might not cut it at Nasa but the team of Engineers at Nasa they wouldn't
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cut it in the NBA they're all amazing at what they do their definitions of better
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are drastically different and I submit that our society is it's grotesquely meritocratic in some ways and it's
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obscenely unmar gratic in others so I want to explore those two ideas and give you some examples of why I think that
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and then we're going to bring in financial Samurai Sam dogen later to give us some of his opinions but for
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starters a meritocracy Cuts both ways the rich and Powerful they have their wealth because of their Merit and the
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poor the meek they have their poverty because of their lack of Merit right well I think that sounds a little bit
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callous so here are some stats 20% of us adults have a net worth less than $5,000 and 25% of American households
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earn less than $30,000 per year you're going to have to forgive me here listeners I live in New York Rochester
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United States I have an American bias America is what I know our culture is what I know our sta are what I know so
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again 20% of us adults have a net worth less than $5,000 25% of households earn less than $30,000 per year but meanwhile
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we have billionaires most billionaires in my opinion they have taken significant
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risks career risks personal risks risks with their own capital and they have provided huge benefits to Society on
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mass but someone with a billion dollars has 200 100,000 times more wealth than 20% of us adults so I've got this
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philosophical question sometimes I'm full of philosophical questions you'll
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have to forgive me the question is can one person have 200,000 times more Merit than another I certainly think some
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people have more Merit than others no doubt about it I don't want to live in a
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society where my individual Merit doesn't matter at all but 200,000 times that is a pretty big differ differential
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in Merit in other words the differential between billionaires and the impoverished it feels too meritocratic
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at least to me we've identified someone with a great idea a great business the
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willingness to take a big risk and we've rewarded them too much for it okay we'll
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come back to that idea because before we go on I want to talk about the proverbial poor kid from the tough
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neighborhood so picture a 5-year-old boy he's a bit malnourished because there
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isn't always food on the table he's unfamiliar with the alphabet with numbers colors all the basic stuff that
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some kids learn before entering kindergarten because maybe his parents work two jobs maybe they're addicted to
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drugs maybe they're trying hard maybe they're not trying hard enough all that
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matters in this particular scenario is that the boy the 5-year-old has not received the attention that he should
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have and because of that he's behind his peers he's behind the 5-year-old from
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the suburbs whose parents are very attentive to him so I hope you agree with me that the 5-year-old boy that I
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brought up first from the tough neighborhood he's not at fault for his circumstances for him it's just bad luck
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and all throughout school that pattern continues a substandard or broken home life means that our boy he falls further
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and further behind the pack and he's eight years old 12 15 years old he's
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failing at school and whether he knows it or not he's failing at becoming a successful adult so here's my
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hypothetical question that I've pondered and and I would ask you to ponder as
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well at 5 years old let's go back then we we've established pretty hard luck on
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the boy and I for one don't blame the 5-year-old for his shortcomings I hope
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you agree with me there but at eight years old do you blame him for shortcomings or is it bad luck how about
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at 12 years old or at 15 years old at what age do you start to blame this boy or young man or adult man for his own
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bad circumstances that he finds himself in so my line of questioning here points
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out an important logical inconsistency if 5-year-olds can't be blamed for their
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circumstances but at some age 20 22 18 adults can be blamed for their bad circumstances then at what age did the
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switch happen was it at age eight was it at age 12 age 15 because no matter what
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age you choose you have to reconcile the fact that you're taking taking a human
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being who you agree was a victim of bad luck their entire life but at a certain age you decide that they're now
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accountable for their own circumstances you say he's never had a chance it's just bad luck oh but at this
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age you've had all your chances you make your own luck and it's your fault you're
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in the position that you're in it's a little bit disjointed it's logically
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inconsistent and it shows some sort of fault in the way that a meritocracy Rewards people it ignores that bad luck
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all throughout the young boy's life personally I feel like my parents did a good job teaching me the ways of adult
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accountability throughout my childhood and and maybe your parents did the same so yes we should expect adolescence to
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show a growing personal maturity as they age but we have to remember that our poor 5-year-old boy he has no adult
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mentors his parents have failed him where is his growing personal maturity going to come from who's his role model
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this all comes back to the idea that in a meritocracy those who fail fail because they lack Merit that's why they
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fail but I just applied some simple logic to show how easily someone can slip through the cracks of our society
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and become by our standards a failure not because of their lack of Merit but because of their lack of luck because of
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their lack of good circumstances okay so let's go back to the billionaires for a minute we see
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Jeff Bezos Elon Musk opro Winfrey and a common formula appears before us a normal person with a cool idea plus some
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wild dedication equals Immortal success well I'm a normal person you probably
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are too we've all had cool ideas so if I apply wild dedication then I should
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expect to see Immortal success but the problem is that Bezos musk Oprah they are all survivors their ideas went
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through the creative destruction of the economy of supply and demand and those ideas have come out on top we don't see
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the victims of that system many of whom also had awesome ideas and extraordinary
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dedication what differentiates the survivors from the victims some people will claim there's an intangible virtue
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involved that it's some special sauce and X Factor maybe it's social IQ or
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Charisma the willingness to work in extra hour send that extra email make just one more cold call but my answer
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isn't nearly as popular yet I think my answer is much more true the differentiator is luck and if a
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meritocracy rewards the lucky for their luck and punishes The Unlucky for their lack of luck then I think a meritocracy
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kind of stinks the American ethos is anti-luck we make our own luck right we pick ourselves up by our bootstraps
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We're a nation of rugged individuals Jeff Bezos he was self-made and I'm
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playing devil's advocate here guys because I do think it's a good idea to
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try to make your own luck to be self-sufficient to work hard to make Society better for yourself and for
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others that's a really good thing but I want to offer the simplest personal anecdote as a means of countering the
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idea of a self-made man for as long as I remember I've excelled and this is me
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Jesse talking very personally I've excelled at pattern recog and memory I've always been a fast learner I've
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always been a good test taker and this goes back to Age 3 four five always and and these happen to be valuable skills
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in society I was good at school when I was an engineer I was a good Cog in the corporate machine know and wealth
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management I'm good at solving client problems I'm good at working quickly I
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can back up my answers with objective analysis I'm interesting and and sometimes quirky at parties because I
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know the answers to lots of random things and I could be quick and funny about it now that skill wasn't self-made
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you can't look at a smart three-year-old or four-year-old or 5-year-old which I
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was and see anything other than Good Fortune you know there was a combination of factors at play my parents genes a
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healthy home the right mental stimuli and then some sort of element of pure Randomness you know why does one kid
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like math which I did while other kids like eating crayons I didn't earn that
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brain and yet our meritocracy specifically rewards me for it of course my life isn't pure luck right I'd like
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to think that I work hard I'm making a choice to get behind this microphone and
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produce this podcast I'm making a choice to write the best interest every week
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but ignoring luck in my life it would be an obvious oversight and I think it would be a
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mistruth we all played that same genetic and environmental Lottery you played it
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too so through no actions of your own some of us have won that Lottery more than others that's just luck those who
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refuse to acknowledge that Lottery they have blinders on and a meritocracy at least in its purest form is blind to
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that idea I'm not purely self-made I'm not a rugged individual neither are you
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and neither is any billionaire so we'd like to think that Destiny should have
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nothing to do with where you were born how educated your parents are what elementary school you went to
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we'd like to think that you are in control of your destiny that idea would make social Mobility easily attainable
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there wouldn't be a concrete ruling class there would be a very fluid middle
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class mostly made up of working people Educational Systems they'd have their
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private schools but the elite colleges wouldn't dominate the higher education
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landscape and yet that's not how our system is set up Daniel maritz a Yale law professor an author of The
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meritocracy trap he offers up many Illuminating statistics in his book for example families in the top 20% of
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income distribution produce three and a half times more ivy league graduates than families in the bottom 40% of
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income distribution in light of that stat how can we claim that intrinsic skill will rise to the top do the
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wealthy have intrinsically different DNA than the rest of us of course not we all
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have the same human DNA marovitz has a simple answer to that question the children of rich people simply do better
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on the merits and what he means there is that wealthy parents they pay for things
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like private schooling for private lessons for private SAT test prep City Schools their goal often is just to get
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50% of their kids to graduate private high schools on the other hand they want to place all of their graduates at top
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25 universities it's such a big difference in fact the two leading indicators for a child's
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long-term success has nothing to do with their intelligence their social IQ their
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athletic ability their willingness to work hard or any other personal trait typically associated with Merit instead
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the two leading indicators for a child's long-term success are their zip code and
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their parents income in other words poor kids from or neighborhoods even if they
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rank highly in individual Merit are unlikely to do as well as their wealthier peers now that is not a
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meritocracy that's not the society we hope for it's not that the rich are
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cheating although in some cases like that college cheating scandal at USC a few years ago they are cheating instead
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it's that the system favors the rich even when everybody plays by the rules in some ways you know wealthy people
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were created by the system and therefore no know how the system works it's not
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some malevolent Puppeteer creating the system instead it's just people going
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about their daily lives and Society just tends to skew in certain directions if you're a doctor your spouse is a lawyer
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you've learned that working hard studying hard building a practice long hours being smart doing well on tests
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all these things have led to your good life and you're more likely to push your
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children in that direction whereas if a child's parents have none of that background if they have none of that
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knowledge if a child's parents instead are more concerned about what's on TV or
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their drug addiction or simply getting enough money to put food on the table that child is not going to learn
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anything about how to succeed in this Society they're not going to learn about
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how to become a doctor they're not going to have that same emphasis on doing well
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on tests the status quo sees students whose parents earn $200,000 or more score about 400 points higher on average
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on sats than students from families earning less than $20,000 per year rich kids do better on tests than poor kids
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it has nothing to do with their natural genetic intelligence instead it's that
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wealthier kids tend to have a better environment for learning growing up and by the time they're 18 taking that as a
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te test it really starts to show so do we want a system where a bright kid from a tough background still gets a chance I
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say yes I think most of you would probably say yes but as of now that's not really the way our system is set up
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so I've just discussed some ways in which our society tends to ignore people
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who happen to have Merit but are also from a tougher background how our supposed meritocracy tends to leave them
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behind but many of you might have heard of situations especially over the past few years years where different sort of
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bastardization of meritocracy is going on situations where those who do have Merit and those who don't have Merit are
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actually treated exactly the same where the playing field is leveled in such a way that those who are succeeding aren't
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given commensurate reward now it can be something as simple as a youth sports League where there are no winners no
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losers and everybody gets a trophy now I understand the idea of not wanting to hurt children's feelings totally get
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that I understand that there's a certain age at which we want to give kids a
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lesson in quote unquote real life right and we want to start to show them that the real world has meritocratic
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principles and the real world will reward you for things going well and you won't get a reward if things don't go
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well and so that's why we're bringing on Sam dogen here into the podcast to talk
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to us a little a little bit about some situations that he's run into in his experience dealing with meritocracy and
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uh Sam is going to shed his opinions which are noticeably different than mine but I think it's good to have different
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opinions and to hear all sides and to let some of you listeners decide what you [Music]
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think Sam has quite the incredible resume so let me hit some highlights here the Financial Samurai it's easily
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one of the most popular Finance blogs in the world attracting over 1 million monthly readers Sam retired from the
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corporate world in 2013 at age 36 his story and his writing was a major Kickstart to the modern fire or
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financial Independence Movement Sam's a massive proponent of passive income including residential real estate and
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dividend paying stocks and last year I believe it was last summer Sam published a best-selling personal finance book
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entitled bu this not that and I hope we can get into the details of that book in
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a few minutes Sam thanks for joining the best interest podcast hey thanks for having me yeah so let's get into some
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questions Sam you know we we kind of talked about this over email before hopping on the recording here I want to
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focus on one of your recent articles called how to survive the war on Merit when hard work isn't enough mhm you
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mentioned one thing in that article that one of your retirement passions you're a
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High School tennis coach so I was wondering how does meritocracy play a role on your team well meritocracy is
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super important in sports because everybody has different talents and work ethics and so if we want to win as a
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coach we need to position our lineup and our ladder as best possible to win you know you can't really win based on your
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good looks or your big smile you can only win if you beat your opponent based on your skills and a lot of it has to do
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with work ethic as well and so meritocracy is really interesting because I think all of us have grown up
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thinking oh if we work hard we're going to get commensally rewarded but it seems
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like there's been a change in the way we're rewarded nowadays as we are trying
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to strive for inclusivity equality for all and so I believe in equality for all equal opportunity but it's just
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impossible to have equal outcomes we can provide more opportunities for you know
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kids to compete and try to get ahead but I think it's a Fool's game to expect
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everybody to end up the same Gosha I I totally follow what you're saying there
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and and one thing I was talking about kind of before we hopped on the recording when it was just me
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monologuing and one thing I'm hoping to get into with you is that in some cases
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it seems like the way a meritocracy is changing is that it's kind of pushing
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everyone towards the Middle where it's kind of like you know the most excellent
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of us are are pushed to the middle and then you mentioned an article or a story in your article about Thomas Jefferson
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in high school that we can get into but in general I mean do you think should the rest of society be formatted in the
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same meritocratic way that say your tennis team is where it's just very clear that best tennis player is number
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one player on your team and the worst tennis player might get cut I mean what ways do you think the rest of society
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should kind of Follow that model you know I think it's really tricky right now because nobody wants to hurt
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anybody's feelings but the reality is about high school level you kind of realize there are some people more
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talented than you and you've got to accept that fact and if you are less talented or you have less intelligence
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or physical attributes the only way to kind of even out the playing field is to try harder but in my article I was
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talking about you know trying harder might not get you where you want to go so you have to actually have to be you
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know really tactical in terms of building relationships with The Gatekeepers the people who decide
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whether you're going to get in or not you're going to get paid or promoted or
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not going to share your work or not accept your book idea not all these things these are The Gatekeepers that
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have this advantage and the key is to recognize who those Gatekeepers are understand what their interests are try
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to assimilate with them even if you don't believe in everything they do if you're not financially independent yet
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and you want to be financially independent you've got to learn how to interact with Society in a way that'll
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put you in a favorable light because at the end of the day people are going to promote and pay and support people who
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they like more than who they don't and who they don't know so you're kind of
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saying in many cases it's not about what you know which what meritocracy would be
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it's more about who you know you know when I when I first heard about that phrase in my 20s you know I rolled my
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eyes like come on that's just such BS you know networking networking it's such
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a pain right who wants to do off his politics and all that but now that I'm 45 years old I clearly see the benefits
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of who you know and your Network so as a 45-year-old guy all my friends have over
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20 years experience now not all but like the vast majority right because you know
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we graduated high school 30 something years ago 35 years ago and you know we just have a lot of experience not 35
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years ago but 25 years ago and so the idea is that if you are able if I was able to stay in touch and keep
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friendships with all my childhood friends man I'd have a huge Network I don't think I'd ever starve again they
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would say hey Sam you know let me let me hire your son to join my company or hey
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let me make you an introduction to join this club or let me let me tell people about your book by this not that you
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know it's just like my network would be massive but I think all of all of us we
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fail to maintain our network over time because we get busy we're selfish you
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know life goes on and so yeah the network is so important I was just going to say that I mean for for some of us
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and myself included it sounds like you Sam like we get busy right we don't necessarily have the time to maintain
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Ain the hundreds if not thousands of relationships that we started at one point in our life so what kind of
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filters do you use I'm I'm going to skip ahead to you know one of the questions I
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kind of sent you in an email where you mentioned seven tips to survive what you call the war on Merit and one of them
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you already got into about knowing who The Gatekeepers are but I mean are there other tips that you have about which
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relationships which friendships you should maintain over time because it's hard to maintain them all so so where
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should we focus our energy and our effort yeah ideally it' be great to maintain relationships with only the
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people we like and and and want to hang out with and get along with but the reality is you probably need to be
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strategic in your relationship building again who are the people who control your
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destiny understand the backgrounds of your Gatekeepers because the thing is let's say you're
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Asian-American and you want to join an organization that has no Asian-American people on the board or in leadership
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roles you're probably going to be at at a disadvantage to your peers who have a
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better reflection of management and themselves in the workforce so one is really you have to identify like who you
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want to be a part of and who are the leaders and then you've got to assimilate with The Gatekeepers you got
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to understand who they are and then you should have a concurred backup plan where it's like even if you're
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assimilating great people like you don't believe everything people say you know
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when they're talking to you face to face because what people say in front of you
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and what people say behind closed doors can be very different so you have to have that backup plan where you're you
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know working on a side hustle you have your exactor you're building a business
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or you know you're networking with your competitors in a different fi at a different company in your field I mean
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very important but for me I think the best way to overcome this meritocracy decline reward system is by being so
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rich it doesn't really matter you know The Gatekeepers don't matter anymore and
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so that's the funny thing right you're so rich that it doesn't really matter if
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you don't have that job doesn't really matter if some school wants to suppress
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your kids chances of getting into a school whatever it is because you have the business to hire them into your
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business and you have the money to always take care of them so they can do whatever they want I'm just trying to
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think right now from The Listener side of things I mean that's a great solution
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right if it's right it's not easy and and my my one thought is you know so I'm an engineer
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by training so I always push things to the minimum and the maximum to understand if if they break at that
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point and then try to understand why right so if I push that idea to the maximum I ask myself can everyone out
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there achieve a status where they have so much money that it doesn't matter what relationships they maintain in life
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I'm not sure if that's possible I have my doubts but I'm curious I mean you're
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you've been writing to thousands millions of people for for many years I mean do you find that do your readers
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kind of start to internalize your messages to them and and start to kind of mimic the path that you've taken to
00:27:07
that point of kind of Fu money for lack of a better term sure I think you've got
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to use hardship as motivation to change and I pity the person who has everything
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given to them you know they're born into a super wealthy family I don't know they're just the
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right type of person that everybody loves CU they're so good-looking they don't work on their personality or their
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communication skills I pity them because it robs them of the opportunity to work
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hard and feel tremendous self-satisfaction from their hard work I think that's all anybody ever wants to
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see a correlation with reward and hard work I don't know anybody who wants a
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handout and I don't know anybody who feels good getting a handout I think deep down inside you just feel bad and
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you you just you want to prove yourself that's the way we are as humans so I
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think those people reading Financial Samurai are highly motivated highly intelligent not easily angered by things
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you know they can see other points of view and and they accept reality there's
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a great saying it's easier to wear slippers than carpet the world you know so it's like take care of
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your own self do what you can for yourself and your family and then work within the system to try to get ahead
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and so so I try to write articles on financial Samurai that kind of shine light on maybe touchy subjects but
00:28:32
that'll hopefully help people get ahead no matter what right okay one thing I
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like that you just touched on there Sam that maybe I've been guilty of before is
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so one thing you said was we all have this innate feeling that we want to see a correlation between the effort we put
00:28:49
in and the rewards that we get back out I mean that's meritocracy 101 right there right the harder we work the more
00:28:54
reward we want and and sometimes you and I both know that's not the case in this
00:28:59
world that's just not the way that the system works uh but one thing that I think I've done in my writing is I've
00:29:05
just said huh this is kind of backwards I don't really like it but one thing
00:29:10
that you've done you've probably taken a step further in a much better way which
00:29:13
is to say yeah that's just the way things are but here's how you make your
00:29:17
own slippers right here here's what you can do to actually apply some of this to
00:29:22
your own life so I was wondering maybe we can segue here Sam and and I want to ask you just a couple questions about
00:29:27
about your book buy this not that so I know that today we haven't been talking
00:29:34
about the actual nitty-gritty personal finance investing topics but in your book you do talk about that quite a bit
00:29:41
more but just in a nutshell if you had to give you know a one or two minute synopsis of why you wrote your book who
00:29:47
it's for who that ideal reader is or or what someone listening to this should
00:29:50
think if they're going to buy that book what would you tell them well buy This
00:29:54
Not That how to spend your way to wealth and freedom is for anybody who wants to
00:29:57
do just that and for anybody who wants to make more optimal decisions on some of life's biggest dilemas and the reason
00:30:07
why I wrote the book was one I was given an opportunity to write this book by portfolio Penguin randomhouse at the
00:30:12
beginning of the pandemic and I figured you know what if I'm going to get locked
00:30:16
down for who knows how long I'm going to just write a book and make lemonade out
00:30:20
of a difficult situation and that's always been my modus appari for as long as I can live spraying my ankle pH thank
00:30:28
God I didn't break my ankle let's go play some more tennis you know that's
00:30:31
just the way I I am the other thing is when I started Financial Samurai in 2009 there weren't many or any I didn't I
00:30:39
didn't know of anybody with a finance background writing about personal finance and so when I was offered this
00:30:45
book deal in 2020 I also didn't see people with traditional Finance backgrounds writing personal finance
00:30:53
books instead most of them were marketers and so it's really interesting to delineate between an online marketer
00:31:01
writing about personal finance and a person with a finance background writing about personal finance and I know I know
00:31:07
all about online marketing because that's just you can make a lot of money online if you want to right and so I
00:31:13
wanted to approach it in a fundamental Financial way that was also really interesting with storytelling and that
00:31:19
would also touch upon really big decisions in life such as when should you have kids should you send your kids
00:31:26
to private school or public school should you invest in real estate or stocks where should you live to boost
00:31:32
your career all these things that I've encountered and I think the large majority of people will eventually have
00:31:39
to decide an encounter as well and I thought that was very missing in in the book Marketplace and so that's why I
00:31:45
wanted to write it awesome I was just going to say that the topics that you tackle are hyper applicable right it's
00:31:52
these questions that a lot of us and and whether it's especially maybe folks in
00:31:55
my generation you know I'm I'm sitting here at 32 but a lot of these questions
00:31:59
are whether it's coming out of college starting my career building my career
00:32:03
buying that first home starting a family financial related questions yeah it's
00:32:08
like what's it's not just about let's make money for money's sake I wanted to
00:32:12
make I write a book that was very applicable to why you want to build wealth and how you can spend your money
00:32:21
towards better decisions and better life and more Financial Freedom awesome awesome so Sam I'm throw links down in
00:32:27
the show notes to both the article from Financial Samurai about meritocracy and also to what should I send people to
00:32:33
Amazon to buy a copy of buy this not that sounds good I'll send you the link
00:32:38
perfect sounds good Sam and one last question what is your deadliest weapon in your tennis
00:32:44
game My Mind oo I got to a 5.0 level in USDA tennis which is a top 1% right it's
00:32:52
where ex college players play everybody all my close friends would make fun of me because I know I don't hit with a lot
00:32:57
of power I'm not particularly you know I'm strong nothing right so I always
00:33:02
joke yeah you know maybe I have 4.0 skills but I got a 6.0 mind and so if you play me you're going to go through a
00:33:09
mind Bender you're going to get frustrated you're going to self out and I'm GNA make you beat yourself because
00:33:15
I'm not going to beat myself I'm GNA make you beat yourself a and I'm gonna
00:33:20
keep on going and I'm going to run down every single ball and then one day or
00:33:25
one point in that match you're going to be like ah screw it I give up so my mind
00:33:30
the war of attrition the long game hey that's that's what we're all playing
00:33:34
very cool Sam well thank you again for sitting down with us today on the best interest podcast oh thanks for having
00:33:41
me thanks for tuning into to this episode of the best interest podcast if you have a question for Jesse to answer
00:33:47
on a future episode send him an email at Jesse ATB bestin interest. blog again that's Jesse at bestter interest. blog
00:33:57
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on the next episode of the best interest [Music] podcast the best interest podcast is a
00:34:15
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00:34:20
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