"Fit and proper person" . . . a brief musing

In the society I've grown up and live in, "fit and proper" is a requirement for people in many public office positions - and, much as with "merit-based  employment", on the surface, it sounds reasonable. 

But, also as with "merit-based employment", dig a little deeper, and there  are  problems - most notably, in the context of this post, prejudice, including "unconscious  bias". 

The decision as to what is meritorious depends on the person making the decision, and thus reflects their worldview. To such a person, it may be acceptable to skip attending a child's birthday party in order to do some overtime, and that doing otherwise is not meritorious - thus, such a person's view of merit in that instance may actually be sexist, given that women are generally the ones doing the bulk of the child care. To put this another way, the view of "merit" is subjective. 

Another assumption around merit relates to university qualifications. 

Now, as a preliminary comment, my experience is that a lot of decisions around university degrees appear to be for convenience (managerial laziness, perhaps? Or human resources overload?), and without actually considering what is required for a position. In my case, for instance, because of decades of on-the-job training and experience (and some courses), I have a lot of skills that were not in my original degree. My experience of graduates - for some decades now - with the same degree is that they also may lack adequate competency in the skills I have, and in fact subsequent degrees have been developed that are what I would seek for someone to replace me (although they would be missing some other skills).
(There are other flaws associated with tertiary qualifications - see, for instance, here.)

More to the point, in terms of this post, is that such assumptions tend to rule out people  from  poorer  backgrounds, where lack of money and, in the worst cases, a forced focus on survival needs, means being able to attend uni (and this is without considering the costs of doing so [I would never go to Uni again, when I look at the debts courses leave students with] ) is not an option - but that doesn't mean the person is lacking in intelligence, application, or potential ability: they could well be capable of learning many of the skills on-the-job, and then perhaps do their degree study (with a little help) while they work. 

In fact, in my opinion one of the crimes of poverty is that it robs society of an enormous field of talent and human potential. 

The other aspect I will touch on here is straight out bigotry. 

Having developed a set of principles, there is plenty of evidence that they will be assessed unfairly - ranging from the historic reluctance to hire women on the false premise that they all want children or that having children will impede their potential to contribute to the company, to actions lumped together under "glass  ceiling". Some of the evidence includes people changing their names to seemingly Anglo names, which led to improved chances of being interviewed. 

So the flaws of "merit-based employment" include: 

• being subjective (perhaps arbitrary could apply?); 
• being influenced by cultural (things were not always this way, incidentally) and unconscious bias (perhaps that could be indirect  discrimination?); and 
• being potentially prone to bigotted implementation (e.g., see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). 

Those flaws also apply to the concept of "fit and proper", but what I particularly want to cover is an aspect of the second dot point - "cultural and unconscious bias": the focus of "fit and proper" on financial matters. 

My experience is that the most important factor (sometimes the only factor of any real world import) as things currently are seems to be the requirement for "fit and proper" people to be free of what the elites and some middle class of society see as financial "flaws" such as bankruptcy.

Now, there may be issues around unknown problems, such as an undeclared bankruptcy or undeclared prison sentences, in that the person becomes vulnerable to blackmail, but someone never having been bankrupted is no indication that they will not suffer from unconscious bias and similar problems. 

And as far as the prison sentences and other crimes go (even if they are in the areas of the position being considered), if they've done their time, they've paid society's imposed punishment and should not be subject to further punishment. And if people have concerns about whether jailing will prevent future crimes (and there are some areas I have such concerns - child abuse, violent misogyny, and violent extremism [including hate crimes] ), then society needs to consider whether it wants to consider punishment, or start moving more towards the Norwegian model of rehabilitation (where appropriate - the evidence suggests it may not be feasible with child sexual abusers, and doing so with the other two categories I raised my concerns about may also be difficult). 

In terms of those being considered for public office, I want to know that, for instance, police will not  be  biased, judges will not fail to recognise the death-dealing nature of misgendering, and legislators will not  favour  their  mates. 

Those are aspects relating to the character of the people involved - and they are flaws that are not necessarily going to be noticed by those who have the same flaws, unless those people become better people themselves. 

Properly acknowledging the importance of non-financial aspects of "fit and proper" would be an excellent first step towards that.