In order to have an effective meritocracy you have to have universal education. You then pick the top 0.1% and invite them to join you and marry your son or daughter. The whole economic system is designed to identify the very clever no matter their background and bring them into the ruling class.

If we build upon your assertion ("to have an effective meritocracy you have to have universal education"), if some of those in power define universal education differently (which would seem to make any concept of universality in education void of such in practice), then it wouldn't be surprising to see a decline in the effectiveness of an economic system, which is what I would suggest is what we are seeing today.

Universal education is not the same as universality in education. If the aim is to identify the 0.1% it does not matter if the universal education is rather spotty in quality since the highly intelligent will manage to succeed no matter how poor the educational environment.

If you want to be really clever you just give those smart kids who had a bad school environment bonus marks at the university entrance stage and give full scholarships - say just like the elite universities do right now.

I should mention the aim of the rich is not to maximise production, but their share and status. It does not matter if the pie is smaller as long as the size of your slice is larger.

What would stop any of such highly intelligent from eventually co opting the structures of today and doing something short term orthogonal (maybe even beneficial to the "share and status"), long term oppositional to some of those in power, if say, they reject to continue attending an ivy/elite league university after they attend for a couple of years after getting a scholarship, and realize that they can pursue "other interests" with such forces of coercion in mind?

This is actually a very good question. There are really a few possible answer to this. The main one is that those clever people that can make it into the ruling class, but choose to reject it, are not a worry to the ruling class since these people are not going to organise a revolution from outside. If you are not interested in ruling then you are not a worry to those in power.

More fundamentally most very smart people realise that they are outliers and that their children are likely to regress to the mean. While the elite welcome the very clever into their club, they also use their power and status to benefit their not so clever children (e.g. legacy students).

I'm curious about the ideas that people have when they speak of such subjects, can you possibly enumerate on the other answers that you had in mind besides the main one you listed?

I am of course speaking as an outside observer to the ruling class, but I have some personal interaction with this class (Australia is not that big). The vast majority I have met are intelligent and decent people. Their one major flaw is they believed that they made it there on merit, when in fact they all came from very privileged backgrounds (both genetically and environmentally). If you believe that you are rich and powerful because of your own hard work then you are prone to dismiss people who aren't rich as just the people who have just not worked hard enough.

If you banish any of the smart/clever/etc to the underclass they might just start a revolution. Much easier to invite them to join the party.

Exactly right. The rich found this out early last century with the rise of communism. What they did was very clever; they basically introduced socialism in the 1930s by shifting the majority share of production to the masses to keep them quiet, introduced mass higher education with an emphasis on identifying the very smart (troublemakers if excluded) and brought them into the ruling class. Once this "decapitation of the masses” was in place (1970) they slowly took back their share of production. We are now back to the level the rich had in the 19th C. Impressive if somewhat depressing.

Democracy is the insurance premium the rich pay against the threat of pitchforks and guillotines.

Democracy only works if you have leaders. The non-rich no longer have leaders. We do at least have better bread and circus than the past.

Are you kidding?

What does a family line which has had uninterrupted, exclusive access to a personal library know?

I mean think about it--what is that family like? That family which has held on to the same chunk of physical space, with books and notebooks, for several generations.

"Equal footing in terms of ability to gain information", my ass!

My own toddler gets confused when he tries to describe his home--probably because he's moved three times in as many years.

I remember the encyclopedias I read as a child. But, I don't have them. I can't review them. I can't consult my notes, nor smell them and get connected to the concrete memory of the day I learned about phases of matter or dry cell batteries.

Those things are important. They change the slope of the playing field.

i don't understand the argument you are trying to make.

you cut off the the "more" to make it sound like my statement meant we are equal instead of relatively better than we once were in comparison to the upper class.

then proceeded to provide examples of your toddler being able to retain information and yourself retaining information. both are about memory and ability to recall those memories with accuracy.

I had to go looking for that 'more'. I guess I cut it off (didn't notice it to begin with) because it's a meaningless modifier when attached to an absolute-sounding phrase like "equal footing". I don't know the name of this writing style pitfall, but here is another example: "The boot hardly annihilated the flower." ...That's a terrible example?

Oh, in the first post, my examples are about "ability to gain information [learn]" but you were talking about "ability to gain information [access]". Okay, yes the internet and the public library system are truly wonderful. I do presume that the ruling class (and/or the rich) have some information that is not publicly available, and it's probably very important information, but yes, a poor man can walk into a library today and find treasure laying around. That has improved our footing. :)