> A meritocracy is a system for centralizing authority in the hands of those who already have it, and ensuring that authority is only distributed to others like

> A meritocracy is a system for centralizing authority in the hands of those who already have it, and ensuring that authority is only distributed to others like them or those who aren’t but are willing to play by their rules. So the whole argument seems to be centered around this idea, but it seems horribly flawed. Let's assume for the moment that this theory is true. There really is an implicit homogeneous conspiracy that's in charge of distributing "merit", and they only give it to people who are "like" the existing members. Even if that's true, why in the world would you assume that this conspiracy is defining similarity by skin color or sex? It's very easy for somebody whose self-identity is defined by a certain characteristic to assume that others see the world the same way. That since I define myself primarily by being an X and secondarily by being a Y, others are treating me primarily as a member of groups X and Y. Which is clearly absurd since there are so many ways to categorize people, and since people are perfectly capable of building an identity around each of them. It could well be religion, sexual orientation, nationality, language, politics, age, occupation, school, sports team, a hobby, etc. And many of these categories have fractal complexity. AFAIK, my sense of identity isn't really tied up in race or gender. So why would I as an extremely prejudiced gatekeeper of meritocracy make decisions based on whether somebody is male of female, rather than whether they're a Java programmer (eew) or a CL hacker (yay!).