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Reminder that "meritocracy" came to prominence in a satirical essay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The

• throwaway2048 6y ago
  Pretty sure people see the first 5 letters, and then decide since they've earned everything in life, its a great idea.
• ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  From what I recall from reading it, the meritocracy part actually worked incredibly well, yielding tremendous technological advances. It was the secondary effects of pushing meritocracy to extremes that were the problem.
• Nasrudith 6y ago
  Well of course - his underlying thesis was weak and failed to show how it would be worse off than the status quo. No wonder it caught on when what was mocked is a better idea than the current system! The downsides again failed to be worse than a fixed caste system and relied upon bad extrapolations.
• jhbadger 6y ago
  But it would be a great idea if it were real. The problem isn't in the theoretical idea of a meritocracy. It's that the real world isn't nearly as meritocratic as assumed and a lot of people in high places got there by connections, being from wealthy families, and so on and not due to their own merits.