
Meritocracy: the great delusion that ingrains inequality - miraj
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/20/meritocracy-inequality-theresa-may-donald-trump
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cubano
The idea that human beings, with all of our evolved biases and social needs,
could ever fairly administer a system devoid of merit rewarding but not full
of other unsavory selection biases such as nepotism or "ass kissing your way
up" simple fails to realistically account for the underlying nature of
humanity.

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trishume
It seems that this article only really asserts that "meritocracy is a myth",
without much evidence. Most of the article is just saying "these people we
don't like support meritocracy, and these people we do like don't support it".

They give three examples: grammar schools, which use tests of academic ability
to determine which school you go to, this seems like a fair test of merit
unless you give evidence it isn't. A fair point about Harvard, but from 1920.
And an anecdote about Matt Damon insisting that something be based purely on
merit, which regardless of what you think of it, doesn't argue that
"meritocracy is a myth".

There's also some mentions of inheritance and ability to pay private tutors.
In the case of inheritance leading to wealth you could argue that is unfair,
but inherited wealth is one area where nobody pretends that it is a
meritocracy. For tutors, while they may affect grades, there's not much
evidence they affect the kind of aptitude tests that matter like the SAT and
grammar school tests. See
[http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/c...](http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/coaching.pdf)
where SAT prep courses are found to have very small effects, in a
_correlational_ study that is bound to be riddled with confounds like smart
students who care being more likely to take prep courses, so if anything the
effect is probably smaller.

Income on the other hand, many contend is a meritocracy, and there is some
evidence for this in the form of a large randomized controlled trial where
adoptees where randomly assigned to families of widely varying incomes (the
threshold for adoption was lower at the time). While the non-adoptees income
correlated substantially with family income, the adoptees incomes didn't. Many
studies have attempted to find differences in how parents treat adoptees, but
so far they've failed to find any difference, including for example how much
inheritance they get. See
[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/11/nat...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/11/nature_nurture_.html)

That isn't to say that their thesis isn't true, it may well be, this article
is just a bad argument for it. For example, there's good studies showing
discrimination in resume screening based on the gender/race associated with a
name, even with the contents the same.

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alistproducer2
This is a subject I am deeply ambivalent about. On the one hand, there is
merit in the concept. On the other, one has to be blind, willfully or not, to
the facts of implicit bias and generational advantage to be a true believer.

~~~
johndevor
The question is: what's the alternative to a meritocracy?

~~~
alistproducer2
It's pretty much what we have today but the veneer of meritocracy is what
makes it insidious. There is rarely anything more dangerous than people who
don't realize what they're doing because people can't change what they don't
realize they are doing.

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squozzer
Both "meritocracy" and "equality" exist as emotionally loaded terms that in
practice exhibit almost otherworldy malleability (Did you like that
polysyllabic flourish?)

What the author did essentially was reveal her opposition to Trump, May, and
British "grammar schools" (we in the States call it "tracking" or maybe a
three or four syllable word has since replaced it.) OK, so be it.

Maybe we have finally a good social use for AI -- as a social ombudsman -- who
at least hypothetically is not a "respecter of persons", i.e. does not take
markers of social status into account when slinging benefits. Maybe.

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reagle
[http://reagle.org/joseph/2016/myth/myth.html](http://reagle.org/joseph/2016/myth/myth.html)

> Because the word myth has multiple meanings, and the first sense (unfounded)
> tends to extinguish the second (an ideal), we are better served by speaking
> of a meritocratic ideal, imperfect implementations, and naive claims of
> meritocracy. We should never claim to have a meritocracy, only to aspire to
> have meritocratic methods; to claim any thing else is naive and inimical to
> progress toward the ideal.

