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ICouldBeWrong's avatar

Meritocracies *always* crumble. Historically, aristocracies have always constructed elaborate systems of social signals, rather than merit-based criteria, to distinguish themselves from commoners, for a simple reason: such signals are far easier to pass on to descendants reliably than the kinds of traits--intelligence, talent, discipline, diligence--that would allow those children to attain elite status based on merit alone. Consider accent, for instance--long at the core of the British class system's social sorting process. The most worthless wastrel can be taught a posh accent simply by being raised among others speaking in it, while only a few talented mimics are capable of overcoming a childhood steeped in lower-class argot.

Americans, as it happens, aren't nearly as attuned as the British to the subtleties of speech--most Americans can't pinpoint a countryman's place of birth more precisely than, say, "South" or "not South", let alone his social status, by listening to his accent. So members of the American elite instead instill class markers in their children based on domains they're more deeply immersed in: pop culture and politics. Of course, America's upper-middle class *thinks* of itself as meritocratic--college-educated, industrious, talented and ambitious. And that was largely true of the high achievers of the postwar and baby-boom generations, most of whom climbed the ladder of success on their own merits. But much of today's upper-middle class is third- or fourth-generation, and regression to the mean is an awfully hard trend to combat, even with the best schools and neighborhoods. And that's why this aristocracy, like the ones before it, is finding itself forced to fall back on cultural signals--the stuff college admissions officers look for--rather than merit-based traits, as its class markers.

The flipside of this truth is that meritocracies, if maintained, actually provide plenty of social mobility--in both directions--because meritorious traits end up far more randomly distributed across the population, over generations, than our current fake-meritocratic aristocracy would like people to believe. And socially mobile meritocracies provide more Kausian social equality than aristocracies, because the next-generation elite could include anyone's child. So there's no need to solve the "problem" of replacing meritocracy with something more equalizing--on the contrary, the real solution is to protect meritocracy from being demolished and supplanted by a new gentry, comprised of the descendants of the last generations' meritocrats.

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Spencer's avatar

I think what is missed here is that this meritocracy is, largely, an organic organization of society. Skills and proficiency have always been valued and government, from inception, has worked to facilitate such, or regulated it depending on your point of view. Meritocracy wasn't some grand design, but a result of letting the people decide who and how to reward those who make their lives better in a world where better is entirely subjective. The issue arises when large groups of people are not capable (or allowed!) to provide services and products to make other people's lives better. When you attempt to solve this problem you run smack into the fact that people GENERALLY like how things are, and they especially like the freedom and choice that have led us to this road. So, those on the outs complain- but there will always be those on the outs and they will always complain. It IS worth noting, however, that those on the outs today have lives that are objectively easier to live than those who were part of the in group 200 years ago.

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