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Your first paragraph is betrayed by the reality in your second of what most kids don’t have.

We’ve never had a meritocracy in the US. It is a lie that is told to enable disequitable. treatment.

This absolutism assumes free will doesn’t exist.

I grew up in poverty, spent time as a child looking for dropped coins in McDonald’s drive-troughs, eventually graduated from MIT.

You could redefine meritocracy to not include my case, but that is left as an exercise for the reader.

The anti meritocracy argument goes, as it always does: meritocracy is not perfect => meritocracy is worthless and must be discarded.

It's an absolutely pointless argument that can be applied to any system that exists in the real world, instead of that of spherical cows.

It’s the same argument Republicans use against the welfare state. Some people will abuse it so we just as well scrap the whole thing.

The argument I’ve heard against it, is not that “some” will abuse it, but eventually the majority will abuse it.

I didn't say meritocracy is not perfect, I said that claims of meritocracy have no basis in reality.

Those are different. It isn't that meritocracy does or does not function - it is that it doesn't exist