Personal hot take on meritocracy: I think that "talent" is a tricky thing. Meritocracy (which I might define as "how much you get/are paid/are given access to

Personal hot take on meritocracy: I think that "talent" is a tricky thing. Meritocracy (which I might define as "how much you get/are paid/are given access to is based on your talent and/or contribution to society") based on talent sounds maybe sort-of fair if "talent" is either innate or purely self-driven. If instead "talent" is (primarily) about the quality and extent of your training/schooling (and there's a lot of research to suggest that in most domains, it is) than even a very effective meritocracy is going to (IMO) perpetuate wealth and class disparities (5-year-olds don't decide to go to a great preschool and pay for it themselves, their parents do). If I were a wizard trying to make a society with lots of upwards mobility I'd make it a lot harder to transmit generational wealth/privilege and try a lot harder to make sure everyone has the same resources/opportunities. I'm sure that would come with a ton of its own problems (even outside of just pissing people off), but it does seem worth at least acknowledging that any kind of merit-based assessment of people is going to be super biased towards those with wealth and privilege. It seems very unlikely to me that an apocalypse scenario would lead to a _more_ merit-based society - rather that it would wipe out a lot of social protections & aids that _do_ exist (both from the government and civil society at large) for those currently at the bottom of the economic ladder. Whether we'd go feudal or just kinda-worse-than-we-are-now I certainly have no idea.