The term "meritocracy", like the term "capitalism", was originally coined strictly as a means of criticizing the concept, yet the people doing the criticism don

The term "meritocracy", like the term "capitalism", was originally coined strictly as a means of criticizing the concept, yet the people doing the criticism don't really say that meritocracy is necessarily bad, just that they don't think we really have one. I have yet to see any suggestions on what to replace the current system with, though. Usually when somebody criticized meritocracy, they suggest stratifying everybody into a few broad categories: race, gender, sexual orientation, and then it seems to be implied that the meritocracy competition occurs within those categories.