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Comment by michaelpb | Hacker News Reader

Sure, maybe not all types of jobs, but to be fair he does say "in the political realm" at one point in the article, and it did occur to me that many people often take the opposite as an a priori assumption, that "meritocracy is good thing for all types of jobs" (myself, sometimes, included!). I'm not a fan of this author, but I did find this little polemic a needed "push-back"

(That said, I also think the article could be much improved in terms of argumentation, it seems pretty off-the-cuff.)

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Surely it’s not that the idea of meritocracy is necessarily wrong just that the concept of what constitutes merit for a job is complex. The article begins essentially conflating merit with intelligence which is clearly pretty one dimensional for all sorts of ideas about merit for a job role. Let alone merit as a part of broader society. So it’s not really that meritocracy is bad but the definition of merit is. Which is one of the more widely held criticisms of meritocracy generally that a stable, shared view of merit doesn’t really exist.

I generally agree with you here, and don't think this article is particularly well researched or argued. I'm no fan of Matty's argumentation in any of his articles in fact... I don't think he "merits" the popularity he has ;)

That said, I don't really think there is any sort of useful distinction between "necessarily wrong" and "impossible to define". That is, I believe many meritocracy-enthusiasts to be "necessarily wrong" since they often imply or casually argue for achieving a meritocratic society, while, as you put it, "a stable, shared view of merit doesn’t really exist". So, seeking something that doesn't exist (like the tooth fairy, or a profitable MLM scam) is necessarily 100% wrong... not 20% wrong, or 50% wrong. All we got is this boring cave :(

So, I guess I welcome any "meritocracy considered harmful" posts, despite who wrote it and how it's written.

Yeah I think the idea of meritocracy is dangerously utopian. It’s beguiling because as a principle it’s succinct to express and hard to argue with on casual acquaintance. Which is why I describe it as not necessarily wrong. A specific enough definition at a narrow enough view might yield meritocratic results but is useless as a general organising principle even though that isn’t easily obvious.

Your single paragraph also holds a much stronger argument that meritocracy is bad than any of those in the article.

Which is a really long way to say I agree.

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