It is important to distinguish between meritocracy, and the ideology of meritocracy. The article fails to make this distinction when it says in int conclusion
> Despite the moral assurance and personal flattery that meritocracy offers to the successful, it ought to be abandoned both as a belief about how the world works and as a general social ideal.
when the evidence presented attacks the ideology of it, but not meritocracy itself. The former refers to
* Putting people with merit into positions of responsibility, or
* Rewarding people who have merit.
The ideology includes 2nd-order and nth-order effects like:
* believing that people who are rewarded have merit (including that one had merited the success/failure one has)
* believing that proxies for measuring merit are accurate
* believing that our present implementation of meritocratic principles is both widespread and fair
In my opinion, ideally, we should retain the first principle of trying to give responsibility to people of merit, but abolish the ideological notions that meritocracy is successfully being practiced to good moral effect. And because merit and capability itself is so greatly affected by chance, and so too its measurement, we should strive to reduce how much we reward those seemingly with merit vs. those without.
The issue is one of a philosophical kind.
Just aknowledge that there is a vast gap between acting in self-interest and acting in a philantrophic way.
The big game is played in the minds - this ideal or idea of meritocracy is a way to rule.
It is a plain sophistic ideology (sophists were those greek philosophers whom argued that everything in the outside was a projection of what you have on the inside, for expl. the medieval cosmic view is based on this).
On the other hand we have philosophers which believe the outside is what determines us as beeings and thus it's worth being analized and understood. Archimedes for example was one that promoted this way of thinking.
However, we can all be certain that it's neither just the one nor the other way of making sense of our reality that is absolutely 'right'.
It's most likely a mix of both (or more, love maybe apart) - but by 'believing' that every action has always to be in your very own self interest this may gets you rich but everybody else gets poorer in the process.
I'm going to be honest, this is stuff the ruling class knows and has known for millenials (may even before the greeks wrote it down).
They would not be granted such privileges if they didn't act in a philantrophic way (expl. Gates foundation). People would turn on them in a revolution that would harm anyone more than it would help a single soul. Thusfor the ruling class - through university and religion - gives us this self centered (sophistic) believe shemes so we would controll (ourselfs) one another.
And no, I'm actually not talking about rich people when I talk of the ruling class. What I mean by that are big rulers of land. Bcs. you can have as much money as you want - if you live on a certain soil you will have to obey the ruler in one way or another.
> Despite the moral assurance and personal flattery that meritocracy offers to the successful, it ought to be abandoned both as a belief about how the world works and as a general social ideal.
when the evidence presented attacks the ideology of it, but not meritocracy itself. The former refers to
* Putting people with merit into positions of responsibility, or
* Rewarding people who have merit.
The ideology includes 2nd-order and nth-order effects like:
* believing that people who are rewarded have merit (including that one had merited the success/failure one has)
* believing that proxies for measuring merit are accurate
* believing that our present implementation of meritocratic principles is both widespread and fair
In my opinion, ideally, we should retain the first principle of trying to give responsibility to people of merit, but abolish the ideological notions that meritocracy is successfully being practiced to good moral effect. And because merit and capability itself is so greatly affected by chance, and so too its measurement, we should strive to reduce how much we reward those seemingly with merit vs. those without.