Meritocracy was always supposed to be a bad word. Michael Young put out "The Rise of the Meritocracy", and thereby coined the word, in 1958 to present it as a

Meritocracy was always supposed to be a bad word. Michael Young put out "The Rise of the Meritocracy", and thereby coined the word, in 1958 to present it as a dystopia. He satirised the then current tiered and selective UK education system, to show it as an alternative class system, just as problematic, just as corrupt. Just as likely to produce an unfit ruling class, and to create a lower or under class. Edit: I should add that it wasn't arguing against merit per se. In modern context, the evolution of selecting by skill into all the baggage we now have around it, like soft skills and the chasing and gaming of particular measures, or hiring by whiteboard algorithm recollection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy