ENGL 200 D: Reading Literature: Literature in the Marketplace

In Defoe’s text On Trade, merit plays a big role in whether or not you succeed. How would your business grow if you did not have merit? Defoe considers merit to be important for your trade to be successful. You have to work hard, attend to the customers, and sell goods that are of good quality. Then will you form a good reputation with the people which will benefit you in the long run. This idea is part of Alain De Botton’s idea on meritocracy. Meritocracy is the idea that those who work hard will be rewarded accordingly. Business nowadays are built on merit as well just as they were in Defoe’s text. Successful companies and businesses have a good reputation that satisfies the customers which brings them back to buy more goods from them.

However, having a meritocracy may be the downfall of your business and economy. If one person fails in their endeavor to make a business, he or she may feel that they deserved to fail because in a meritocracy, those who fail deserve to be at the bottom. The hope that ones hard work will bring them just rewards keeps the worker going but that may just be an empty promise. Defoe may emphasize the importance of merit but there is always two sides of the story. To Defoe, merit is your prestige, it brings about success and Button agrees that merit is a positive aspect of economics, however with merit comes envy and envy brings on conflicts. Just know that merit is definitely important in trade and that it has bigger implications than just in the business world.