+1. Parent comment's argument is not great because, among other things, the exact same argument could be made right back at them.
Amongst almost everybody I know, "meritocracy" still means it's dictionary definition. If the definition is contested, I don't understand why other peoples' definitions of it take priority over the official one
I guess that's where we disagree. I don't think it's been used successfully and by design, meritocracy isn't for the benefit of everyone -- it encourages actions only for the benefit of the power-wielders because they're the ones who judge merit.
> ... we want critical roles to be performed by competent people.
Yes. Over the last few years, we've seen the problems caused by having critical jobs performed by less than competent people. (I'm sure you can fill in your own examples.)
The problem is that there are (at least) two kinds of "fake meritocracy". There's credentialism: "This person must me competent; they graduated from Elite Institution". And then there's elitism: "This person must be competent, their parents are rich and famous". Neither tells us much about their actual competence at any specific role. (All right, credentialism tells you that they were competent at graduating from Elite Institution, but we aren't hiring them to have them do that over and over.)
I wonder if part of the reason for the criticism of meritocracy is because of the failings of fake meritocracy. (I suspect that another part of it is a complaint that those who win the meritocracy game get too much of the rewards, which I think is a fair criticism.)
I don't understand this point of view. It sounds like, by calling it a lie, your real complaint is the ways attempts at meritocracy have fallen short of being an actual meritocracy. That being the case, isn't meritocracy still the correct ideal that we should be doing a better job of striving for?
If this is not how you feel, what is the word for the appropriate assignment strategy that we should be strive to use to decide who gets jobs and promotions?
> It seems to me you're indexing too heavily on the "merit" in meritocracy. When most people, myself included, talk about meritocracy they are simply referring to systems where people are ranked based on capability or performance in some task.
You were not talking about a "meritocracy", which would already be a problem considering that it doesn't hinge on merit[1], but a "pure meritocracy".
If you use "pure meritocracy" to refer to a system where neither pure performance nor merit are used to rank people, and call it "too fair", then you are twisting the meaning of the words "meritocracy" and "fairness" into something unrecognizable.
Such a system does not evaluate people based on capability or performance.
Such a system certainly does not evaluate people based solely on their merits.
Such a system cannot be called meritocratic, or fair. To do so is ridiculous.
[1] Because amongst the "initial resources" you speak of there are also wealth and connections, which do not improve "capability or performance in some task", which only improve the chances of someone obtaining and keeping the job.
Sounds like a tension between what is and what should be.
As it stands now, it seems like there are ways other to make lots of money other than merit. Is that an argument against meritocracy? It sounds like it's the opposite to me.
No, my argument is that people who claim to be operating a meritocracy need to be aware of a bunch of biases or they risk being sexist[1] whilst also dismissing any accusations of sexism.
This article (like so many others) inappropriately conflates believing that meritocracy is ideal with believing that meritocracy exists today. Given that, it’s hard to interpret its conclusions.
You may wish to examine this concept more closely before thinking it is a completely good idea. Specifically see the book The meritocracy trap by Markovits:
> It's amazing how much this misses the point of the conversation on meritocracy - that critics of meritocracy do not have a problem with merit itself
From what I've seen of the conversation on meritocracy, you could read through tweet after tweet after tweet (because let's get real, that's where the conversation is happening), without a critic once even acknowledging the idea that it's better to have do things better than to do them worse. It mostly gets lost in the noise of whether meritorious people "deserve" prestigious jobs that pay good money.
At the end of the day if you have 1 position and 4 applicants, the only way you can opt out of a meritocracy is selecting randomly.
It turns out meritocracy is like reason. You can't criticize reason without appealing to reason just like you can't criticize meritocracy without appealing to meritocracy. Notice how everyone who criticizes meritocracy is criticizing a specific meritocracy based on its unfairness (this essay certainly is). So why do they all use the universal form when they're talking about a particular one?
Also, something I don't understand here is the idea that meritocracy is bad because people don't have equal opportunities. It isn't good that people don't have equal opportunities but it doesn't really have anything to do with meritocracy. If John gets straight As, and aces his SATs, and comes up with a novel theorum by age 25 because he has good parents and Jim doesn't because his parents suck, sure that's unfair, but what does it have to do with meritocracy? Is our meritocracy supposed to punish John for having good parents and reward Jim for having bad ones? Is that somehow more fair than rewarding John because of his demonstrated ability?
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