The meritocracy trap

sethgodin.typepad.com

17 pointszdw3 comments

He seems to be warning against falling into a localised optimum, thus missing out on something better. Fair advice, but I don't think that's what's commonly a meritocracy.

Sadly unrelated, the term meritocracy was coined by Michael Young - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy - and was supposed to suggest a strongly negative idea. It isn't really used like that these days.

> It describes as dystopian society in future Britain in which intelligence and merit have become the central tenet of society, replacing previous divisions of social class and creating a society stratified between a merited power holding elite and a disenfranchised underclass of the less merited

Actually, there are echoes of what he is railing about in the modern 99/1%, destruction of middle class society.

> A great idea, powerful work ethic and good design are rarely sufficient on their own.

This seems too pessimistic about Silicon Valley. Plenty of well-executed great ideas succeed, and plenty of bad ones fail.

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