Meritocracy thus justifies and amplifies material inequality, by weakening the foundation of mutual respect needed for the funding of public goods,
Also justified by the modern Western fallacy of 'equity of opportunity' - if you fail, it's your fault, tough luck.
One, anticipated by Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Player Piano (1952), is by now all too familiar: the clever people make machines that put the less clever people out of work.
Does our modern definition of 'clever' people need to include compassion - people who wouldn't enslave or exclude the non-clever because they have a conscience? This website for example is read almost exclusively by 'clever' people in all likelihood, and we see lots of content that reflects on all aspects of human decency. Would such a meritocracy be any better I wonder? Would it be better than being hostage to the brutish and the stupid, who are currently being manipulated all over the western world into shouting for demagogues with cynically simplistic 'answers'? I realise 'brutish' and 'stupid' isn't exactly in the spirit of this article (!), but what would other readers call those who Clinton was actually talking about? Those who are seduced by the idea that it's all the fault of Mexicans/Polish/George Soros etc..
Let's break that down a little. Suppose Robinson Crusoe is tired of trying to scoop up fish with his hands and figures out how to turn a tree branch into a spear, increasing his daily catch tenfold. Can Friday, who never thought to make a spear, properly complain that Crusoe has received an "unfair distribution" of fish?
What a bullshit argument... to all intents and purposes, the amount of fish available to both Crusoe and Friday is infinite.. until a Spanish fishing fleet turns up and strips the waters surrounding their island of anything living. Does said fleet still enjoy the moral high ground their superior technology affords them, according to Rand, or are they in fact preventing Friday and Crusoe from providing for their most basic needs by taking more than what could be said to be a reasonable amount of - surprise! - a finite resource? Surely we can acknowledge/reward human ingenuity without pursuing Randian logic to it's ultimately harrowing and absurd end game? Followers of the 'might makes right' mantra are simply looking for a simplistic absolute that refuses to acknowledge the need for societal compassion, or the existence of justice. Simple people need simple stories: people driven by greed alone need justification.
But of course, insisting that those lacking the ingenuity to take as much as they can stuff into an offshore account deserve to live with dignity makes me a communist, right Ayn?
Regardless of the mixed research
Are there any metastudies?
by and large
Hello internet! Any teachers out there who count themselves among this 'by and large' and would be prepared to speak (via email if you'd prefer) to a journo researching the topic? I'm very interested in your classroom observations!