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Meritocracy

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

Meritocracy After seven decades of meritocracy, it's as unlikely for a lower-class child to be admitted to a top Ivy League university as it was in 1954. George Packer, Last Best Hope  [2021] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Meritocracy  After the 1970s, meritocracy began to look more and more like Young’s dark satire. A system intended to give each new generation an equal chance to rise created a new hereditary class structure. Educated professionals pass on their money, connections, ambitions, and work ethic to their children, while less educated families fall further behind, with less and less chance of seeing their children move up. George Packer, The Atlantic, July/August 2021 [Michael Young was the author of The Rise of the Meritocracy ] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Meritocracy American meritocracy has become precisely what it was invented to combat: a mechanism for the dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations. Daniel Markovits © 2019 Kwiple.com
Meritocracy The argument of the book is that if the soil creates castes the machine manufactures classes — classes to which people can be assigned by their achievement rather than ascribed by their birth. In so far as this has happened, social inequality can be justified, and, to avoid too blatant a contradiction, such justification is almost always needed in a democratic society which has bowed to equality as far as elections are concerned. Otherwise the people who exercise power are going to be undermined by self-doubt and people over whom the power is exercised become indignant and subversive because they deny that the others have any right to lord it. Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Meritocracy  Being a member of the “lucky sperm club” confers no moral right to advantage. What one is born with, or without, is not of one's own doing. Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Meritocracy  From each according to his abilities,  to each according to his abilities. David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Meritocracy No longer is it just the brilliant individual who shines forth; the world beholds for the first time the spectacle of a brilliant class, the five percent of the nation who know what five per cent means. Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy  © 2021 Kwiple.com
 
Meritocracy Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or to selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up. In other words: whoever says meritocracy says oligarchy. Chris Hayes, Twilight of the Elites © 2021 Kwiple.com