> This resonates with me, in my experience I think there's a fallacy in believing the world is a meritocracy when it's not.
This is a particular class of fallacy that I sort of disagree with.
"the world is a meritocracy" is only a fallacy in a very strongly worded version of that statement.
Saying something like, "talent is a factor in career trajectory" or "education is correlated to income" should be non-controversial.
The "fallacy" here is people assuming that the trend true in the broad case will also be true in all cases.
Yes of course, it's not true that more education will guarantee more income. That doesn't mean you should invest in education.
Based on my experience I would feel comfortable standing by the statement, "the world has a trend towards meritocracy" with the important caveat that merit can be particularly difficult to define, as OP is pointing out. It would be reductivist to assume the 'merit' of a tech entrepreneur is based solely on programming ability for instance.
I'd counter that for a definition of "merit" like "performs the duties of ones job exceptionally well", it's always a fallacy. I note that this definition of "merit" is what nearly all corporations consider when evaluating performance of employees and granting annual "merit increases".
In nearly all cases, merely performing ones work well, will not gain the employee anything but more work. Sometimes there are promotions or meaningful raises, but this is the exception, not the norm. It is not in a businesses interest to pay employees more than absolutely necessary. It's a true-ism in software development that to see meaningful increases in salary one must "job hop". This reality has given rise to aphorisms such as "I pretend to work they pretend to pay me" and Johnsons "Who Moved my Cheese?".
Of course merit can be hard to define, but if it's defined in a way other than performing a job well, well that's something else isn't it?
This is a particular class of fallacy that I sort of disagree with.
"the world is a meritocracy" is only a fallacy in a very strongly worded version of that statement.
Saying something like, "talent is a factor in career trajectory" or "education is correlated to income" should be non-controversial.
The "fallacy" here is people assuming that the trend true in the broad case will also be true in all cases.
Yes of course, it's not true that more education will guarantee more income. That doesn't mean you should invest in education.
Based on my experience I would feel comfortable standing by the statement, "the world has a trend towards meritocracy" with the important caveat that merit can be particularly difficult to define, as OP is pointing out. It would be reductivist to assume the 'merit' of a tech entrepreneur is based solely on programming ability for instance.