Revising class and social stratification in sociology, was reminded of this which I saw a couple of months back.
True meritocracy does not exist because true equality of opportunity does not exist.
We desperately want to believe that the system is fair and that everyone has an equal chance to get ahead. At the same time, we also emphatically endorse the right of individuals, with minimal state intervention, to dispose freely of their property as they personally see fit. But we simply cannot have it both ways. Inheritance and meritocracy are zero-sum principles of distribution; the more there is of one, the less there is of the other...
The meritocratic elite feels righteously superior to all those below it and holds those at the bottom of the system in utter contempt. The meritocratic elite, secure in its lofty status, exercises complete and total domination of society. Those at the bottom of the system are incapable of challenging the elite and are permanently deprived of the capacity to rise up against their oppressors...
This is why the myth of meritocracy is harmful: it provides an incomplete explanation for success and failure, mistakenly exalting the rich and unjustly condemning the poor. We may always have the rich and the poor among us, but we need neither exalt the former nor condemn the latter.
- Growing Inequality in the Twenty-first Century, McNamee and Miller (2009)
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