> That is a hard question for real societal structures, but not relevant for the idea of meritocracy itself, which is just a societal aspiration, not some expli

> That is a hard question for real societal structures, but not relevant for the idea of meritocracy itself, which is just a societal aspiration, not some explicit criteria. It's not just an aspiration. We wouldn't be talking about meritocracy so much if were some pie-in-the-sky utopian ideal. What makes the idea of meritocracy so pernicious is that many people believe that our society is in fact more or less a meritocracy, albeit imperfect. We do judge people in our current society based on their so-called merit in the capitalist economy. That's the whole point of this discussion, going back to how we view poor people, as having "made bad decisions" and thus "deserving" their predicament. > few people would disagree with idea that e.g. surgeon positions should be occupied by people with better outcomes when doing surgery You've chosen the least controversial question to answer. But this says nothing about, for example, how much money surgeons should get paid, or who gets admitted to medical school, when surgical outcomes are definitely unknown at that point. And it says nothing about what social services we should or shouldn't provide to the poor, again going back to the original issue. Meritocracy views poverty as a personal moral failing, deserving blame rather than sympathy. It doesn't view poverty as a natural, predictable side effect of the economic system that needs mitigation.