No.

Currently: “meritocracy” has nothing to do with “merit” and more to do with eugenics, it’s just a word to make white-supremacist-patriarchal-cis-heteronormative-abled-supremacist bigotry sound less terrible than it is.

In general: because hierarchy is bad for society, since someone always ends up at the artificial “bottom” and treated badly or at the very least as less worthy or deserving (of life, dignity, freedom, access, and so on). The only reason anyone would want/believe in a “meritocracy” is because it makes them feel superior to others.

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In theory? Yes. But it not realistic. In reality being good at your job is less important than being good at networking and pleasant to be around when you’re at work.

It’s a good idea in theory, but there’s a few problems:

• Wealth and power above a certain level tends to become generational no matter how meritorious the origin
• People who are less capable through disability, ilness, generational poverty or anything else not their fault would still be left behind
• A lot of jobs and other functions can benefit from several different skillsets, some of which aren’t mutually inclusive
• Who decides who’s best? Who decides who decides? Etc ad infinitum.

Absolutely not. Demographic data shows it’s shit, income distribution data is best explained by a random walk process (neat graphic explainer here), and all the data on startups and investing show that there’s no free lunch; capitalism actually does ensure everything gives the same steady return on average.

Every rich person won some sort of lottery. Even the bona-fide engineers are never the only ones that could have invented whatever thing - as technical person myself.

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Nobody is able to speak for other people. This just doesnt work.

Its just laziness if people prefer to have others speak for themselves.

Anarchy is the only system where nobody can hide because “it was not their decision” and where nobody has the right to “decide for other people”.

I mean, are you good at gifts? If you dont know what a person wants to get as gifts, how do you want to know exactly what decisions they would make?

The word was coined as satire. Brain-dead liberals centrists took it seriously and, here we are.

I have been sadly disappointed by my 1958 book, The Rise of the Meritocracy. I coined a word which has gone into general circulation, especially in the United States, and most recently found a prominent place in the speeches of Mr Blair.

The book was a satire meant to be a warning (which needless to say has not been heeded) against what might happen to Britain between 1958 and the imagined final revolt against the meritocracy in 2033.

Down with meritocracy

Edited because too many people don’t know what liberal means.

No.
“American Dream,” was built on belief where workplaces are meritocratic environments where workers, regardless of their background, can, on merit and abilities overcome any deprived situation they may find themselves in and rise above.

Just like communism when the Wall fell, I think it’s safe to say this ideology, when tried and tested, has been proven a total and complete failure.

Yes, but it doesn’t last for long. It just takes a few bad apples on top for the system to quickly go corrupt, which is why the powers on top need to constantly fear being changed by the people

Why not? The people most qualified should have the positions. The amount of qualified people and said positions probably don’t always match and people may not want the jobs they qualify for though, But I think it’s an ideal to strive for.

As a general rule, yes. People who are able to better perform a task should be preferentially allocated towards those tasks. That being said, I think this should be a guiding rule, not a law upon which a society is built.

For one, there should be some accounting for personal preference. No one should be forced to do something by society just because they’re adept at something. I think there is also space within the acceptable performance level of a society for initiatives to relax a meritocracy to some degree to help account for/make up for socioeconomic influences and historical/ongoing systemic discrimination. Meritocracy’s also have to make sure they avoid the application of standardized evaluations at a young age completely determining an individual’s future career prospects. Lastly, and I think this is one of common meritocracy retorhic’s biggest flaws, a person’s intrinsic value and overall value to society is not determined by their contributions to STEM fields and finance, which is where I think a lot of people who advocate for a more meritocracy-based society stand.

I believe in the theory of a meritocracy, I even think it could work.

I don’t believe it exists anywhere in the world in practice where power and money are at play.

That’s too vague a definition. Like, if person A is an accomplished athlete, the best basketball player ever, I do not think his position of power or success should be, say, president. I think this is actually a very dangerous mindset derived from the capitalistic notion that success determines your–I’ll call it value. If you’re successful, you must be smart; If you’re smart, you can be anything, even the president. Success is equal to wealth in these talking circles, and it sort of ends up as a backwards meritocracy. You gain merit measured by your success (wealth) instead of the other way around

But if you define it as a place in which positions of authority are given to people who have proven themselves knowledgeable and capable in the field in which the position of authority is being granted, I do believe in it in principle. I say that because principle and practice are rarely the same in politics and sociology. There are countless other factors that will impact your “success” that are not actually based on your expertise in the field. Better people have designed public transport, electric cars, social media, and spaceships than Elon Musk, yet the man sits in a position of tremendous influence. In a just meritocracy, we would never have heard his name

Which brings about the point that we have certain ideas as a culture (or maybe system) that awards some merits disproportionately more than others. Some will say his merit is in being a ruthless business man. He’s good at that, I guess, so he should be the leader of the company. His “merit” of being a bad human being is being disproportionately rewarded compared to the merit of the scientists that actually design his spaceships, and the engineers that make them work. Meritocracy only really works in a closed system. The most capable archaeologist will be the head of the expedition. If you let the ideas go beyond that, and start comparing apples to oranges, you start seeing instead a system’s idea of what’s important, and by extension that of the society built in that system

Every ‘ocracy’ is some kind of meritocracy. It’s just a matter of what the merit is and how it’s measured. They all suck because manipulators break them all.