> “Bootstrap” is an imaged expression to point to the absurdity and impossibility of a task This is an archaic definition that I didn’t know, and it’s fairly i

> “Bootstrap” is an imaged expression to point to the absurdity and impossibility of a task This is an archaic definition that I didn’t know, and it’s fairly interesting. At the bottom of the opening section on the history of “bootstrap” is this comment: “Critics have observed that the phrase is used to portray unfair situations as far more meritocratic than they really are.[8][9][7] A 2009 study found that 77% of Americans believe that wealth is often the result of hard work.[10] Various studies have found that the main predictor of future wealth is not IQ or hard work, but initial wealth.[7][11]” Interesting (to me, anyway) because it used “meritocratic” which itself is a word that was coined with a somewhat different meaning than it has today. Meritocracy was originally used to point out that merit itself is an outcome of social advantages, not inherent skill. https://reagle.org/joseph/pelican/social/the-surprising-socialist-origins-of-meritocracy.html https://reagle.org/joseph/pelican/social/the-surprising-soci...