Let's keep appealing to Wikipedia. In "Myth of meritocracy" [0]: > Rising wealth disparity increasingly undermines faith in the existence of meritocracy, as be

Let's keep appealing to Wikipedia. In "Myth of meritocracy" [0]: > Rising wealth disparity increasingly undermines faith in the existence of meritocracy, as beliefs in equal opportunity and social equality lose credibility among lower classes who recognize the preexisting reality of limited class mobility as a feature of the neoliberal version of capitalism. At the same time, the elite use their comparatively greater wealth, power, and influence to unequally benefit themselves and ensure their continued upper class status at the expense of lower classes, which further undermines beliefs in the existence of meritocracy. The myth of meritocracy has been identified by scholars as a tool of the elite of a society to uphold and justify the reproduction of existing economic, social, and political hierarchies. In "Equal opportunity" [1]: > Equality of opportunity is often seen as a major aspect of a meritocracy. One view was that equality of opportunity was more focused on what happens before the race begins while meritocracy is more focused on fairness at the competition stage. > There is general agreement that programs to bring about certain types of equality of opportunity can be difficult and that efforts to cause one result often have unintended consequences or cause other problems. > Efforts to achieve equal opportunity along one dimension can exacerbate unfairness in other dimensions. > Another difficulty is that it is hard for a society to bring substantive equality of opportunity to every type of position or industry. > The consensus view is that trying to measure equality of opportunity is difficult whether examining a single hiring decision or looking at groups over time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_meritocracy [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity