In Brave New World, it's only a meritocracy because they've engineered human embryos to produce the different castes. In the novel, they deliberately induce fetal alcohol syndrome to stunt the intelligence of the lower classes.

The modern reformulation would be genetic engineering or at least genetic screening. I'm sure we're not that far away from the wealthy classes testing their embryos and only implanting the ones that have the highest intelligence, least propensity for disease, etc.

You could interpret current system where people are made to be good unquestioning workers in schools.

Arrive on time, don't question authority, learn to follow what you are being told.

After that they are lead to believe living on dept and credit cards is the only way to be happy.

And they are stuck in shitty job that they cannot quit since they have interest to play. So they keep their heads down and just keep going.

> In Brave New World, it's only a meritocracy because they've engineered human embryos to produce the different castes. In the novel, they deliberately induce fetal alcohol syndrome to stunt the intelligence of the lower classes.

They also forgoed a lot of automation and engineered society to make use of the stunted lower classes. I recall a scene where they had elevator operators, even though automatic elevators had been invented when the book was written.

> The modern reformulation would be genetic engineering or at least genetic screening. I'm sure we're not that far away from the wealthy classes testing their embryos and only implanting the ones that have the highest intelligence, least propensity for disease, etc.

That's literally the backstory of the movie Gattica. Though I think the genetic engineering in that movie controlled recombination, so engineered children got all the best genes of their parents. IIRC, people who weren't engineered (like us) lived in slums and were only given menial jobs regardless of talent.

Meritocracy set out from birth, no? Are not all people in that book test tube children with specific selected genomes? I fail to see how creating a class of genetic garbage men, relegated to working with trash for their entire lives is "meritocratic," since advocates of the meritocracy concept generally rely on the system's alleged mobility.

Meritocracy - government or the holding of power by people selected according to merit.

Every single person in that world IS selected for their role in society based on merit. There is no asterics attached there with +1 conditions.

I am not saying that it is a good system as a matter of fact I call it dystopian, only that everyone in it was rather content with their lives.

Reminder that "meritocracy" came to prominence in a satirical essay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy

Unfortunately a bunch of folks read that and thought it was a great idea.

But it would be a great idea if it were real. The problem isn't in the theoretical idea of a meritocracy. It's that the real world isn't nearly as meritocratic as assumed and a lot of people in high places got there by connections, being from wealthy families, and so on and not due to their own merits.

From what I recall from reading it, the meritocracy part actually worked incredibly well, yielding tremendous technological advances. It was the secondary effects of pushing meritocracy to extremes that were the problem.

Pretty sure people see the first 5 letters, and then decide since they've earned everything in life, its a great idea.

Well of course - his underlying thesis was weak and failed to show how it would be worse off than the status quo. No wonder it caught on when what was mocked is a better idea than the current system! The downsides again failed to be worse than a fixed caste system and relied upon bad extrapolations.