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Comment by foverzar | Hacker News Reader

> Thus was the narrative of 'meritocracy' born in a world where there is obviously no possibility of such a thing.

How is it "obviously"? All the business relations between people are inherently meritocratic. Not only relations, the whole principle of "you reap what you sow" is inherently meritocratic: you have to put in some merit to generate value in return.

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> All the business relations between people are inherently meritocratic.

That is why there are precisely zero complaints about broken hiring processes and promotion schemes.

That's in fact why we can have a discussion about hiring processes and promotion schemes in the private sector. In the public sector that simply doesn't exist as it's all a monopoly (obviously enough), there's no alternatives to point to to say which one is a better model. That's what meritocracy is, meritocracy isn't that meritless things don't exist.

Because people have children who benefit from their resources without having done anything to earn it, because those in power (having wealth of one kind or another) can leverage that power to suppress the ability of others to attain it, because no one is free of biases, etc.

Honestly if you can't see how the ideal of a meritocracy is impossible you're just not trying. Surely, some elements of meritocratic ideas are useful, but it is folly to believe that people with wealth have 'earned' it purely on merit.

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