The tyranny of meritocracy
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Wide acceptance of equal opportunity as an ideal in politics and law has largely precluded criticism of the underlying assumption that fair contests for scarce opportunities will produce just outcomes.īut the concept has undergone fresh criticism during the past five years-especially since the 2016 presidential election made Young’s prophecy of populist backlash newly relevant to Americans. More recently, Barack Obama recited “You can make it if you try” like a personal slogan in more than 140 speeches during his presidency.įor much of the past half-century, in the form of “equality of opportunity,” meritocracy has enjoyed broad support: ensure everyone a fair place at the starting line, and see who can run the fastest. To Young’s dismay, he lived to see the notion of “meritocracy” enter common use as a term not of censure but of praise, used by leaders from Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Everyone else would have lost the chance for power and prosperity because of personal failings like laziness-which would fuel resentment among populists who felt shut out of the system. Young feared the new meritocrats he saw emerging in the post-World War II order would surmount multiple rounds of rigorous testing for intelligence and talent, then wield their authority over government and business with the assurance that, unlike the aristocrats of yore, they had earned their perch atop a hierarchy.
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The British sociologist Michael Young coined “meritocracy” in 1958 in the title of a satire, The Rise of the Meritocracy, which purported to look backward from 2034 at a dystopian United Kingdom on the brink of revolution.