Microblog Memes

The issue is how do you "meassure" merit? How do you decide who has earned what they have and who hasn't?

If you are a conservative it's very easy, the status quo defines merit. Those who have are those who deserve because the system is working as expected. So rich people ruling is meritocracy for them.

If you are a racist/xenophobe/etc then it's also very easy, those who are in the "good" (read white in the USA) group are the ones with merit, so they are the ones that should rule.

A few years back, when college degrees where just for rich people with connections, merit was having a college degree because that proved you where educated and hard working jajajaja. Now that a lot more people can get college degrees it no longer means that for some reason jajajaja.

Etc, etc. In general, people use meritocracy to justify their own biases and the decisions they make based on those biases. The USA is of course the current poster child of this, but by no means it's exclusive to them.

The reality is that when you think about it there is no such thing as merit in the general sense. For example, I get paid well by working as a programmer. And I'm the first one to say that I'm very good at it and deserve my pay. Yet, if my toilet is broken I need to call a plumber and defer to them. So, who says I deserve to earn more than a plumber? I do say so because it greatly benefits me of course jajajaja. But if push come to shove I would absolutely prefer to have a society without programmers than a society without plumbers. So who has more merit?

The simple truth is that we are all valuable in our own context and we should try to build a society where we all can participate and contribute as needed. Ideas like meritocracy are used by right wing people to justify the existence of hierarchies and social classes. If there are better people (with more merit) then of course they should be in charge and everyone else must obey. But the more you dig into the idea, the less it makes sense. Meritocracy is just a very easy trap to fall into because it's the kind of idea that sounds good to people until you really think about it, but in practice it's just a useless idea if you want to make rational decisions.

Absolutely. Words change, and it's not an unhelpful term, but we already had a word for 'ruled by the best', aristocracy. Over time it became very apparent that aristocracies did not promote leaders who were objectively 'best' or often even 'adequate', so it began to mean a small group of privileged people who used their power to keep that privilege for themselves and their peers.

So although meritocracy started as a joke, it could be used sincerely. But unless it's pretty clear how 'merit' is assessed its hard to take it more seriously.

What? You mean you don't want a Tournament Nexus?

But they aren't in a position of power to change anything. Maybe if we lived in a sarcastocracy though

Sarcasm and parody were tools used against corrupt oppressors for centuries. The problem is, it requires education, context, and the capacity for abstract thought to process and understand. If everyone requires we put “/s” after everything, then they are just taking everything at face value without any attempt at critical thinking or reading between the lines. Which I guess is why we are where we are today.

I'm really starting to feel that way lmao