Meritocracy is a concept that was invented to be critiqued. The word meritocracy was coined in 1958 by British sociologist Michael Young in his dystopian satire the Rise of Meritocracy. In his book, children are subjected to rigorous and highly accurate intelligence testing that selects their destiny among a set of highly unequal options. The fact that the ideal of meritocracy is widely lauded as an unqualified good is highly ironic given that Young's intention was to present us a stark warning. Prior to Young, people used the word "aristocracy" instead. Thomas Jefferson spoke of a natural aristocracy: "there is a natural Aristocracy among men; the grounds of which are Virtue and Talents".

There are a few great books written about this recently:

- The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good? by Michael Sandel

- The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite by Daniel Markovits

Both of these books examine how 20th century American society replaced a leisure-oriented capital-driven aristocracy with an extremely hard-working well-educated labor-driven meritocracy. Numerous factors propelled this transition, including the deployment of SAT testing and increased competitiveness at elite universities. This may sound like a good thing until you come to understand that we've created a modern American caste system. Caste is highly heritable, and upward mobility is at an all time low. 2/3 of Americans have no college degree, and the prospects for employment for them and their children look bleaker each and every day.

Furthermore, it's easy to confuse merit with value. With the pandemic, we have seen that our society is highly dependent on a set of essential workers, many of whom are in the lower castes. For example, a garbage collector could have an utterly mediocre existence in every dimension, and yet provide more value to society than a well-paid high-frequency trader in finance. Another good book to read about the negative value produced by well-paid jobs is Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. The danger of the myth of meritocracy is that these lower-caste workers don't receive the appropriate level of esteem that they are due in our society. This leads to a politics of resentment.