by yesco | 2025-07-15 01:19:47+00:00
> I think corruption as a metric correlates a lot more to QOL than any of those

I see Meritocracy as a deterring force against corruption so I'm sensing some semantic discord here. A nation that starts to rot will be taken advantage of by external entities which will result in a drop on QoL. While GDP and such can somewhat approximate national power, they seem a bit tangential to the discussion imo, the point is rot invites parasites.

> What I am seeing is that the value system behind meritocracy is too close to my liking to self-appointed superiority. I am rich and powerful because I am the smartest, fastest, strongest, and worked the hardest. No one else deserves my position of power unless they too are rich, and if they are not rich, they are not smart and don't merit such position. The idea of merit I think can be subterfuged, old Egyptian leaders were thought to be Gods, so it was deemed they were the only ones that could merit to rule.

But that's the opposite of Meritocracy? Or rather, it's like you are confusing the cause and effort perhaps? It's an oppositional force to the default nepotistic hereditary nobility type systems, which will naturally emerge in every system that does not account for it, these are absolutes. Caveat being that the means of avoiding it are nuanced ofc.

The point is you design systems where positions of power are selected on (best effort) neutral criteria that at minimum narrows the candidate pool down in a way that the preserves a degree of instability, and through which helps prevent calcification of power structures. With a Meritocracy the criteria is via a demonstration of merit/qualifications/evidence you are the most capable for the position.

It does not give someone license to act as if their wealth justifies their position, that's just a simple narcissist. Meritocracy is just a good general principle to follow when designing the process of selection, it's not some complex ideology. Having power never implies you earned it, your merits do, and society is the judge of what exactly those merits are.

You also focus on wealth a lot so I'm wondering if you are primarily pushing back on the thought that having wealth qualifies as intellectual merit? Because if so I very much agree, but I also rarely see this from anyone but narcissists who don't even need a reason to think that in the first place, their conclusion came first. But maybe this is just a blind spot for me.

Money is power, and our modern economic system has made the liquidation of wealth into money easier than ever. It has helped shift power struggles from violent to competitive and allowed some innovative types of tax policy to become possible. But that doesn't make our economy a Meritocracy, what we have is closer to natural selection, where any snake can kill a lion and so on. The perks of capitalism are entirely from it's ability to parry these inevitable power struggles into something society can gain a net benefit from through the innovation that arises from healthy competition. It's impossible to eliminate the power struggles themselves though, those are human nature.

I can see how the concepts can be confused but fundamentally it's a brain (skills) vs brawn (power) thing. A meritocracy advocates for selecting for the most skilled not the most powerful. It's only practical to enforce on a institutional level though.