And then;

>Nobody's saying children of farmers or auto-mechanics are any less able. They just don't get the best training.

So it's a meritocracy but the training isn't available to all? Doesn't sound like a meritocracy to me.

Yes, but nothing made out of organized humans ever adheres to mathematically rigorous definition. (1)

Our lot is loads better than that of some poor orphan in Haiti, and our opportunities were distributed with tons more equity. That said, it's far from perfect. There are parts of our messy society that are close to meritocracy, and there's other parts that are headache inducing doppelgangers of it. It's a mess, but you can also think of it as opportunity.

((1) - In fact, whenever you think you are about to make a clever or skeptical point in a societally based intellectual discussion, tell yourself this first, then see if you still want to. Same goes for biology and software engineering.)

The article seems to contradict that:

"Using one-generation measures of social mobility—how much a father’s relative income influences that of his adult son—America does half as well as Nordic countries, and about the same as Britain and Italy, Europe’s least-mobile places."

It's also true, though, that to whatever extent that genetics influence relative income (and despite counter examples such as the Romney family, I'd like to hope that intelligence has _some_ correlation with income) that might explain some of the correlation between parental income and the income of their children. A proper study should try to study the correlation of parental income with the income of the income of adopted children (preferably adopted under the age of two). This is why sociological research is so difficult....

How? Please explain what magical elevator makes this happen, because VC-istan seems to be a combination of connections and luck, large organizations tend to be clueless and political, and academia has been dying for at least a generation and a half. What I've seen may be limited and atypical, but I haven't seen anything that looks like this. I've seen the same nonsense that humanity has been repeating for thousands of years.

A good programmer can make 2-3x a poor programmer.

That has more to do with the fact that the good programmers tend to gravitate toward high-COL places. Even those good programmers can't raise a family (in NYC or Silicon Valley) on what they make unless (a) they beat the VC-istan game (see above) or (b) they work for those large companies, in which case advancement is 90% political.

The closest thing to a meritocracy seems to be finance, which is seriously flawed but is more honest about its shortcomings.

The problem may well be the "human condition" as substrate. In addition to talent in whatever domain or particular desirable skill-set, a person also needs to negotiate other people. If a large project is to be accomplished, the talents and effort of large numbers of people need to be marshaled. Unfortunately, our heuristics for interaction were tuned to keeping together small bands of people primarily concerned with food and defense. ("Paleo" BS notwithstanding, but this much is certainly true.)

What we have isn't a magical elevator. It's more like our brains doing Boolean algebra and predicate calculus. On average, we humans are notoriously unreliable at logic. So much so, we have terms for dozens of dysfunctions which happen all the time. (Fallacies.) With proper training and attention, we can be quite good, however. So it is with "meritocracy" and all of its various doppelgangers. The "cream" does rise to the top, but so does the scum. Talent can help you. "Talent" in the form of attributes that let you sleep your way to the top also help you. You can make it on sheer talent, but the ability to wage subtle, deniable psychological warfare on your rivals to diminish their confidence and shine will help you too. So will realpolitik maneuverings or just being physically attractive.

Many will just put it down to getting older and bitter, but the older I get, the more I realize that we really are (mostly metaphorical) feces-flinging, screeching, long-legged savannah-apes that just so happen to have exceptional individuals and exceptional moments of godlike beauty, wisdom, and insight. Neal Stephenson: “The difference between stupid and intelligent people – and this is true whether or not they are well-educated – is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.” The muck and mess of human interaction is every bit as subtle as it is unsavory.

(And the older I get, the stupider I feel.)

So, "most people"?