I think most people put meritocracy and aristocracy on opposite ends of a continuum, in terms of strictly applied denotation. But in practice in America, they're two sides to the same coin because the aristocrats define what is meritorious and judge who has it, including ensuring their friends and family get access by lowering ladders. That's how meritocracy is a trap, because it inevitably ends up corrupting itself.

This scandal tells me is that a bunch of rich people are sad that the ordinary methods of a gamed system already highly in their favor isn't good enough for them. The privilege they have isn't enough, they needed different and additional ladders to get even more, as if this is innovation and is itself merit, that's how brazen it was.

Bill McGlashan, CEO of TPG private equity, was indicted in this scandal, charged with both the college entrance exam cheating scheme and recruitment scheme. As reported, even his son's exam answers would be changed (corrected) without his knowledge. How would meritocracy before this scandal have evaluated McGlashan? I think rather highly considering his actions and work with Bono, etc. And yet here he is saying that system isn't good enough for him and his son, he had to corrupt it, to get what he really wanted. It's a stunning indictment of the meritocracy we actually have.

We are in the process of building up a new aristocracy. This process has repeated itself over all of history.

Hell yea, look at our presidents, we got legacy admissions for the biggest job in America.

It would be nice if somebody like Truman got elected. Somebody who had real experience how the regular citizen lives.

You're right.

Now, if only we could agree on what the "regular citizen's" life looks like.

a) It's probably a woman, since they're the majority of the population and have a distinctly different life experience to men

b) It's probably someone who lives in a city, since that was 80% of Americans in the 2010 census.

I would be happy if that person didn’t come from an Ivy League school and whose parents aren’t multimillionaires.

Honestly they probably can't do worse.

Part of the way it survives is by setting up the system so that just enough people survive the gauntlet of meritocracy. They're held up as demonstration examples. Pointing out 16 self-made billionaires, for example, leads people to think it's common enough that it might happen for them, too.

An additional twist is that some of those who make it are the ones helping extant powers maintain their grip. WhatsApp and Oracle come to mind.