Do you believe in meritocracy? Why or why not?
Do you believe in meritocracy? Why or why not?
This is the definition I am using:
a system, organization, or society in which people are chosen and moved into positions of success, power, and influence on the basis of their demonstrated abilities and merit.
Yes, but it doesn't last for long. It just takes a few bad apples on top for the system to quickly go corrupt, which is why the powers on top need to constantly fear being changed by the people
What do you mean by doesn't last long? Also if the society was a complete meritocracy what accountability would the people have?
Well, human judgement is not perfect, and eventually a snake would be able to climb the ranks and corrupt the whole system.
This is why democracy is the only system that can allow for “constant revolution” and if the current system is broken or corrupt, it’s the only way that allows for a consistent peaceful transfer of power. It is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but as Churchill once said “ Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”
“No! You can’t change me!”
“Yes we can”
::: changes him :::
“Well, I guess that does feel better”
“Told you”
Meritocracy just means you're rewarded proportionally to your contribution. It doesn't necessarily mean you're rewarded with authority over anyone.
It's a good idea in theory, but there's a few problems:
- Wealth and power above a certain level tends to become generational no matter how meritorious the origin
- People who are less capable through disability, ilness, generational poverty or anything else not their fault would still be left behind
- A lot of jobs and other functions can benefit from several different skillsets, some of which aren't mutually inclusive
- Who decides who's best? Who decides who decides? Etc ad infinitum.
Regarding wealth, it doesn’t have to with a heavy enough estate tax, AKA anti-aristocracy tax.
I don't.
The core issue: Who determines merit, ability, and position? The people who write the rules are the actual government, and governments secure their own power. Like every flawless paper-government system, it crumples as soon as the human element wets the paper.
However, assuming the rule book could be written flawlessly, with "perfect" selfless humans writing the initial rules and then removing themselves from power, there are unsolved issues:
- Popularity contests in determining merit. (I like Johnny Depp better than Amber. Who loses more status?)
- Comparing apples to oranges. (Are Athletes or Artists more worthy, what about the Plumbers and Mailmen?)
- Power corrupts.
- Do morals and ethics have a say in merit? (Save the entire planet, then start kicking cats. Still a hero?)
- How long does a merit last? (When a champion, or athlete, is no longer fit, are they de-positioned? Look at Rome.)
- Brilliant mathematicians get rewarded with what? (Better supercomputers, or political power? What qualifies them to make policy?)
All of these arguments try to argue that implementing meritocracy perfectly is impossible.
But ask yourself, what is the alternative? A system in which the most capable person isn't in charge? Should we go back to bloodlines, or popularity contests, or maybe use a lottery?
I agree it's very difficult to determine merit, and even more difficult to stop power struggles from messing with the evaluation, or with the implementation. But I would still prefer a system that at least tries to be meritocratic and comes up short, to a system that has given up entirely on the concept.
I'll try to answer some of your questions, as best as I understand it:
Who determines merit, ability, and position?
Ideally, a group of peers would vote for someone within the group, who is the most capable, with outside supervision to prevent abuses.
Popularity contests in determining merit
Popularity shouldn't factor into it. Only ability. (and there's no doubt Depp is the better actor :P )
Are Athletes or Artists more worthy
Each one is worthy within the scope of their domain of expertise, in which they have demonstrated merit.
Power corrupts
Always true in every system. That's why we need checks and balances.
Save the entire planet, then start kicking cats. Still a hero?
If kicking cats is wrong, it should be against the law, and no one should be above the law. All other things being equal, whoever has the most capacity to save the planet should be the one to do it.
How long does a merit last?
For as long as you can demonstrate it. If someone better comes along, they should take your place.
Brilliant mathematicians get rewarded with what?
More mathematical problems. And ideally, also lots of money and babes.
At the end of the day, it's a cultural problem. Meritocracy can only work if there's a critical mass of people who believe in it, understand it, and enforce it socially. The same can be said of democracy, capitalism, and basically any other social order.
Thank you for your insight. Please forgive me for the tongue in cheek responses on a few select thoughts.
system in which the most capable person isn’t in charge?
Every system since time immemorial. And which will continue until "most capable" is better defined, objectively determinable, and implemented by the greatest power.
popularity contests
The foundation of every democratic, republic, and individual choice based system today.
it’s very difficult to determine merit
Very true. Considering all people under any one governing system would never agree on what is virtuous, worthy, valuable, honorable, or respectable. Just try to convince people who believe, "If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying," to believe otherwise. Many Chinese believe if you didn't cheat to succeed, it's your fault for failing. Consider it a pitfall of cultural reconciliation.
a group of peers would vote for someone within the group
Each one is worthy within the scope of their domain of expertise, in which they have demonstrated merit.
How are resources distributed between groups? Equally? Every time a new group arrives a new slice of equal pie is collected piecemeal from the other groups and handed over? Do we compare apples and oranges to determine who gets more resources. Who sits in the "administration" group to judge merit between two disagreeing groups?
How long does a merit last?
For as long as you can demonstrate it. If someone better comes along, they should take your place.
What's a retirement plan look like? Or is this still an ownership system where you can hold on to any property indefinitely and determine it's ownership upon death?
Brilliant mathematicians get rewarded with what?
More mathematical problems. And ideally, also lots of money and babes.
A good workhorse is rewarded with more work. A never truer statement. Merit sounds exhausting today.
it’s a cultural problem. Meritocracy can only work if there’s a critical mass of people who believe in it, understand it, and enforce it socially. The same can be said of democracy, capitalism, and basically any other social order.
I'm 60% with you. Regardless of how detrimental a government is, culture controls most of how we think and feel, just look at government trust ratings by country. However, there's still more to be accounted for. Implementation and population still count for something. Keeping culture unchanged is futile, everyone comes up with their own ideals and injects them into the next generation, thinking it'll make things better. Not to mention corporate ideals, such as the diamond's are forever from jewelers, personal responsibility from tobacco, apple is a status symbol from Apple, and on and so forth.
Back to topic: Most people don't and won't care about the government, they just want the government to solve their problems or get out of their way. Getting a population to "believe in [government], understand it, and enforce it socially" is a much taller order than it sounds. For verification: the Americans, with the two most rubbish candidates you could possibly find, all seem to think voting for anyone other than rubbish R or rubbish D is throwing their vote away. Let alone the significant remaining percentage who think their vote doesn't count for anything at all.
Checks and balances entail compromises and disagreements, which individually prestigious people should be subject to. As you said, "no one should be above the law." If the meritocracy is not the law, who is the law?
Thank you for taking the time to read and think.
Brilliant mathematicians get rewarded with what?
More mathematical problems. And ideally, also lots of money and babes.
Bony fingers!
The core issue: Who determines merit, ability, and position? The people who write the rules are the actual government, and governments secure their own power.
You touched on a really important point here: when humans are judging skill, it’s subjective and not really meritocratic.
One of my favorite psychology professors says that people really like the idea of meritocracy, when it’s actually present. He gives the example of sports, and how people aren’t bitter about a particular team winning, or that there’s big inequality between the players, and that the reason people are okay with that inequality is the presence of the playing field and the high speed cameras and whatnot means meritocracy is the actual basis for reward, not personality politics.
In business, government, etc it’s all people judging other people, and on an individual basis. A group of people evaluating is better, like star ratings for an uber driver are probably more trustable than performance evaluations from someone’s boss. The latter can be so heavily distorted by that one person’s judgment.
The ideal is using measurable performance as the measure of “merit”. Like when people run a marathon. As long as the course is visible to confirm nobody’s cheating, that marathon time is yours in a way your degree or your job or your salary isn’t.
It’s also why people are so in favor of free markets deciding resource allocation rather than people: the free market is at least a large crowdsourced combination of everyone’s needs, instead of just some mental image of those needs in the mind of a few committee memebers.
I truly appreciate your contribution to this long dead conversation. It is to my regret I didn't respond sooner, but I cannot seem to withhold my desire to share. The following could be summed up as, "Everything wrong with sports. Merit is ambiguous. People abuse ambiguity for their own gain."
the presence of the playing field and the high speed cameras and whatnot means meritocracy is the actual basis for reward,
to confirm nobody’s cheating
Cheating in this context might be summed up as: Violating rules, unsporting. Possibly underhanded, deception, fraud, or trickery. A disparity or unfairness through action.
Sports being a meritocracy is absolutely true on a small scale. However, with a macro view some disparities come to light.
Disparities:
- Genetics.
- Environmental development. (Such as being trained from a young age, being able to afford a better coach, better nutrition, more opportunity, etc, etc.)
- Trickery. {An American football case, where the quarterback confuses the opposing team by standing up with the ball and walking toward the goal, comes to mind.)
- Undetected cheating. (Performance enhancing drug usage. Not illegal doping, but doping that hasn't been determined as such yet. Delaying select competitors before they get to the field. Etc.)
- Luck. (The wind blowing the ball. An opposing competitor stepping on an uneven spot of turf, or their gear malfunctioning,)
- Individual contribution and shared merit. (Do the players on the team who didn't contribute still gain merit?)
Exempted due to applicability: (read low or protracted defensibly and a vague determination of where "the game" begins and ends; philosophical)
- Player selection process. (Sure, the wisest managers would ideally select the best players, but offense and emotions may occlude foresight.)
- Who gets selected to be pulled off the bench? {A big can of worms.}
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- Depends on the coach, instead of the player.
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- The player not played gains less or no merit.
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- Argument to be had about the coach being the chess player of the game and merit based on strategies employed, sharing player's merit with the coach.
- Player trading.
- Corrupt judges/referees.
- Rigged games.
- Politics influencing decisions.
- Uncooperative players inhibiting success.
- Cultural biases.
people really like the idea of meritocracy
Back to the first half of my original point. People do really like the idea of meritocracy... when it aligns with their own views. "Merit" is founded on virtue, worth, or value. And all three depend on the evaluator.
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For instance, a football fan at a baseball match may not find the players very worthy, because it isn't football.
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Another instance, is cheating meritorious? A superior strategy requiring exceptional ability to successfully sabotage your opponent. (Devil's advocate, and a very Chinese sentiment. I'll not be defending this point, but it is wise to consider the biases inherent in personal culture determining what merit is.)
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Alternatively honor and respect determine merit. Also highly subjective, just look at Jihad contrasted to The Crusades.
This leads to the other half: Anything subjective is subject to abuse, because generally humans are selfish and tribal. It's how our ancestors survived. Any permanent governing system must account for, incorporate, protect, benefit from, and forcefully constrain or alter the governed's nature as necessary for the benefit or balancing of the governed and the governing system's continued future. Anything else eventually leads to revolution or collapse.
In truth, I believe a perpetual motion is impossible. Something must continually power and correct the machine running the humans but humans aren't capable of doing so. We will likely continue to have revolutions and disparities caused by revolutions until our collapse. The best we can hope to do, is make living on this rock less miserable for our fellow inhabitants.
Please have a lovely day.
I believe in the theory of a meritocracy, I even think it could work.
I don't believe it exists anywhere in the world in practice where power and money are at play.
As a general rule, yes. People who are able to better perform a task should be preferentially allocated towards those tasks. That being said, I think this should be a guiding rule, not a law upon which a society is built.
For one, there should be some accounting for personal preference. No one should be forced to do something by society just because they're adept at something. I think there is also space within the acceptable performance level of a society for initiatives to relax a meritocracy to some degree to help account for/make up for socioeconomic influences and historical/ongoing systemic discrimination. Meritocracy's also have to make sure they avoid the application of standardized evaluations at a young age completely determining an individual's future career prospects. Lastly, and I think this is one of common meritocracy retorhic's biggest flaws, a person's intrinsic value and overall value to society is not determined by their contributions to STEM fields and finance, which is where I think a lot of people who advocate for a more meritocracy-based society stand.
which is where I think a lot of people who advocate for a more meritocracy-based society stand.
Why do you think this is?
If I was guessing, in general, I think people who advocate for a pure meritocracy in the USA feel the world should be evaluated in more black and white, objective terms. The financial impact and analytic nature of STEM and finance make it much easier to stratify practitioners "objectively" in comparison to finding, for instance, the "best" photographer. I think there is also a subset of US culture that thinks that STEM is the only "real" academic group of fields worth pursuing, and knowledge in liberal arts is pointless -> not contributing to society -> not a meaningful part of the meritocracy. But I'm no expert.
Just to make it clear the definition that I used does not talk about choosing people for tasks they are suited for, but rather putting them in positions of power, success, and influence.
a person's intrinsic value and overall value to society is not determined by their contributions to STEM fields and finance
I don't think anyone who views contributions in STEM fields as the most valuable to society has any respect for finance.
SO LONG AS IT IS ACTUAL MERITOCRACY,
and not just privilege's gaslighting about it ( via making-certain that the poorest have inferior-nutrition, inferior-air-quality, worse-pollution, inferior-education, inferior-healthcare, etc ),
then yes, I hold it is The Proper Way.
However, it REQUIRES a truly-level playing-field, and not a 2-tiered "level" playing-field.
The Scandinavian system of ONLY public-schooling, so there is only 1 tier of education-quality, is a required component.
Student nutrition needs to be guaranteed.
Healthcare needs to work properly, for all.
Livingwage needs to be for all full-time work, and companies that try to hire only part-time for the real-work, have to have the profit-benefit of such hamstringing-of-many-lives cut from them all, permanently.
Fairness requries careful systematic, & openly-honest enforcement, because the DarkHexad: narcissism/machiavellianism/sociopathy-psychopathy/nihilism/sadism/systemic-dishonesty ALWAYS seeks to enforce abusive-exploitation, and it is underhandedly aggressive, and natural in our human nature.
Not mitigating it == accommodating it.
Salut, Namaste, & Kaizen, eh?
_ /\ _
But what is merit exactly? Who decides the criteria we use to measure it?
Every 'ocracy' is some kind of meritocracy. It's just a matter of what the merit is and how it's measured. They all suck because manipulators break them all.
For anyone interested, Wikipedia provides some arguments against meritocracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_meritocracy
Meritocracy is argued to be a myth because, despite being promoted as an open and accessible method of achieving upward class mobility under neoliberal or free market capitalism, wealth disparity and limited class mobility remain widespread, regardless of individual work ethic.
No one single "-ocracy" applied exclusively can result in a well functioning society.
IMHO, you need bits from multiple different approaches blended together to get closer to a society that works well for the majority of people.
The word was coined as satire. Brain-dead
liberalscentrists took it seriously and, here we are.I have been sadly disappointed by my 1958 book, The Rise of the Meritocracy. I coined a word which has gone into general circulation, especially in the United States, and most recently found a prominent place in the speeches of Mr Blair.
The book was a satire meant to be a warning (which needless to say has not been heeded) against what might happen to Britain between 1958 and the imagined final revolt against the meritocracy in 2033.
Edited because too many people don't know what liberal means.
DiCtIoNaRiEs aRe DeScRiPtiVe
Like eugenics, it's just another way for racists to push their racism under the guise of "science". It's not "corruptible", it comes pre-corrupted.
Why would merit be a dog whistle for racism? Couldn’t the non-racists just be like “uh nope we’re considering merit here not race” when a racist tries to do that?
No. Meritocracy is a sham - it is a nice shield to demean and belittle others below you. Meritocracy overlooks several factors, like for example, the economic and social status of an individual. Meritocracy is a justification for Nazi-like ideology with respect to how deeply it is rooted in racism and blood supremacy. One fine example is how some radical and orthodox upper castes in India justifying their reason for being successful as not being privileged, but because they're simply the chosen people.
In theory it's how things should work (put the most competent person willing to do the job in the position), in practice it would again lead to even more white men (disclaimer: I'm one) in better positions because of the advantages they tend to have growing up just from their skin colour and sex.
The only way a meritocracy works is if everyone starts with the same possibilities in life and even then, as time pass you still end up with a system where a person that was at the top when they were young will tend to always be at the top since they always get the best opportunities.
That's too vague a definition. Like, if person A is an accomplished athlete, the best basketball player ever, I do not think his position of power or success should be, say, president. I think this is actually a very dangerous mindset derived from the capitalistic notion that success determines your--I'll call it value. If you're successful, you must be smart; If you're smart, you can be anything, even the president. Success is equal to wealth in these talking circles, and it sort of ends up as a backwards meritocracy. You gain merit measured by your success (wealth) instead of the other way around
But if you define it as a place in which positions of authority are given to people who have proven themselves knowledgeable and capable in the field in which the position of authority is being granted, I do believe in it in principle. I say that because principle and practice are rarely the same in politics and sociology. There are countless other factors that will impact your "success" that are not actually based on your expertise in the field. Better people have designed public transport, electric cars, social media, and spaceships than Elon Musk, yet the man sits in a position of tremendous influence. In a just meritocracy, we would never have heard his name
Which brings about the point that we have certain ideas as a culture (or maybe system) that awards some merits disproportionately more than others. Some will say his merit is in being a ruthless business man. He's good at that, I guess, so he should be the leader of the company. His "merit" of being a bad human being is being disproportionately rewarded compared to the merit of the scientists that actually design his spaceships, and the engineers that make them work. Meritocracy only really works in a closed system. The most capable archaeologist will be the head of the expedition. If you let the ideas go beyond that, and start comparing apples to oranges, you start seeing instead a system's idea of what's important, and by extension that of the society built in that system
I believe in a theoretical meritocracy but I think there are some pitfalls. We have a market that's very efficient at rewarding incredibly unproductive people. The correlation between money and skill in the modern world just... isn't. So we'd really need a better evaluation system... if we had that I think it'd be achievable.
Love the idea, though.
I agree, there would have to be measures in place to prevent the "promote to the level of incompetence" style of meritocracy that is prevalent already. There needs to be a system of recognizing that the person in any given position has the skills and abilities that make them awesome at that specific job, and rewarding them appropriately without requiring them to justify it by taking on tasks that they're not suited for.
The idea that workers should always be gunning for a promotion is one of the worst parts of what people think a meritocracy is. But how else do you determine how much they should be paid?
Hell, I only consented to management because the company stopped listening to frontline developers. We've got a serious problem in the west with title fixation.
I think that when we do things we should generally listen to the person who best understands how to do it.
I don’t think that your position in life should be determined by it
Why not? The people most qualified should have the positions. The amount of qualified people and said positions probably don't always match and people may not want the jobs they qualify for though, But I think it's an ideal to strive for.
This is a copy of a reply to @[email protected] :
Just to make it clear the definition that I used does not talk about choosing people for tasks they are suited for, but rather putting them in positions of power, success, and influence.
Depends what you mean by "believe in". Could it work? Sure, why not. Do we live in one? Hell fuck no.
It's easily manipulated. We already have barrier to entry in several professions via required degrees and certifications. Those degrees and certifications require significant time and resources to attain. They can also be skewed to certain demographic a la old school SAT exams.
My own personal experience is the CPA exam. Passing it shows me nothing of one's accounting abilities. I've seen people who pass it and I wonder how they tie their shoelaces in the morning without injuring themselves. I've seen others who haven't passed it but are brilliant accountants.
All that exam tells me is that a person had resources to not work for six to nine months so they could study and pass the exam. That's it.
But without it, you're just not gonna go very far in the industry at all.
Then the AICPA keeps making the exam more difficult and whines that there's a shortage of young talent.
So what "merit" are we going to measure in this hypothetical system?
I'm confused about the definition. They are moved? Forcefully if needed, or they are offered the position? Also what kind of position are they moved to you mean? Like the person best in the world in welding, they will atrificially be placed in a position of influece? Influece over what, policy? Culture? Or they will be the boss of other welders? How is the demostrated ability measured? Do people take exams in like welding to compete on who is better than someone else? If so, is the test the only thing that matters? If the best welder in the world is also a complete asshole, they still get the position of power? If not, where is the trade-off on how good a welder do you have to be to be a certain amount of asshole?
I'm very wary of the term because it could only be measured correctly if everyone started from the same conditions. People with more resources have it easier to go up.
Generally yes with two huge caveats.
First, It has been widely demonstrated that diverse teams are more productive and produce higher quality products than homogeneous teams.
Second, selection criteria is heavily biased towards homogeneous teams and has also been demonstrated to stifle innovation.
Desire/inspiration is nearly as important as capability and non-optimal teams (according to most, if not all selection criteria) will consistently outperform "optimal" teams in any tasks that require innovation.
Peeps proposing lots of good reasons against, but I'll just say: is a system where a reality show host can threaten our democracy really better?
I'm pretty sure the US IS considered meritocratic. There are just countless other factors that also impact your ability to succeed
That system is widely believed to be a meritocracy.
In theory? Yes. But it not realistic. In reality being good at your job is less important than being good at networking and pleasant to be around when you're at work.
The issue will always be reality. In theory, meritocracy and even geniocracy sounds promosing but so does our current system.
The reality is that incompetent or malicious people will always find ways to corrupt the idea.
At this point, I‘m pretty sure the only way to go forward is to think in new ways. Maybe general AI will work, or anarchy (more like anarcho communist probably).
We tried and broke everything:
- representative democracy - politicians lie to get into office and do their thing after
- autocracy - the person in charge freaks out and becomes a lifetime ruler
- communism - people starve while the politicians become rich
- monarchy - the bloodline will produce some idiot who breaks stuff - also no reason to be this rich
- multiparty system - will get little done and devolves into populism as well
- two party system - devolves into hating the other party
The real problem imo is that a few people just cant make decisions for the masses over an extended time. Its too much power and responsibility.
I‘m pretty sure a more direct democracy represents this day and age more since the majority sees how our world goes to shit.
communism - people starve while the politicians become rich
making it, by definition, not communism.
https://medium.com/international-workers-press/misconceptions-about-communism-2e366f1ef51fWell, again theory vs reality.
Every iteration of communism so far was an absolute nightmare, made by the people for the people.
I agree that most theories are great if taken seriously but I dont see how we keep incompetence and malice from corrupting it.
My logic says weed out malice and educate the incompetent but no idea how to do this.
or anarchy (more like anarcho communist probably).
I've come to a similar conclusion, however I still have some hold ups on how anarchism currently being implemented across the world.
It still relies on organizers and extra attention being diverted to certain individuals who give an agenda for what needs to be done next. This allows co-opting these movements to be a lot easier than if we could work past that.
I still have some hold ups on how anarchism currently being implemented across the world.
If you think there is someone implementing anarchism around the world, you have completely misunderstood anarchism.
It's like when the alt right tried framing antifa as an organisation.
The whole point of anarchism is that you do what your community needs you to do, and let other communities do the same.
Exactly. If anarchy (or a real, local, direct democracy to be precise) was to be born, it would take a long time to prepare. People need to be educated enough to lead their own lives and make decisions for themselves and their peers. Thats something that hasnt happened for centuries. People are born into worshipping hierarchy.
The most crucial thing is education in my book. Even the last person living under a rock should be able to get quality education without any cost or strings attached.
Who decides what is meritorious ?
There is a meritocratic aspect to reality. There are also meritocratic aspects to capitalism. So it's partly real, for sure.
A real meritocracy would nurture merit. In terms of policy that would manifest as socialist policies that create a level playing field.
Hiring based on identity is fiercely anti-meritocratic. Expensive degrees and high interest student loans are also anti-meritocratic.
Do I believe it could work? Maybe.
Do I believe it's been seriously tried to a significant degree? Nah."Wherever you go, there you are" also applies to the human condition and any kind of whatever-cracy. At the end of the day, people are people and a lot of people suck, there's no fix for that.
I don't think this would ever be achievable. It also sounds like a broader form of technocracy (to my very much unqualified brain)
Absolutely not. Demographic data shows it's shit, income distribution data is best explained by a random walk process (neat graphic explainer here), and all the data on startups and investing show that there's no free lunch; capitalism actually does ensure everything gives the same steady return on average.
Every rich person won some sort of lottery. Even the bona-fide engineers are never the only ones that could have invented whatever thing - as technical person myself.
Don't organisations already follow this? Atleast for their workers.
People getting into a public or private job have to show that they are eligible.Regarding meritocracy at level of society:
I think it's going to be difficult in reality.- Who appraises the merit of people? Who defines, maintains and updates the standards/methods used for the appraisal?
- Is there a system for continuous quality check? It'd be needed to maintain the system as a meritocracy.
- How is the quality check system preserved in the system?
- Who appraises those who appraise?
In the case of an organisation, the leaders/owners of the org can choose workers with merit. But the owners themselves are not appraised, right? Unless they are in some co-operative org or so.
Perfect meritocracy seems very difficult to implement for the whole of society.
I think democracy(which gives due importance to scientific temper and obviously human life) is a decent enough system. We can iterate on it to bring up the merit in the society and its people as a whole
Nobody is able to speak for other people. This just doesnt work.
Its just laziness if people prefer to have others speak for themselves.
Anarchy is the only system where nobody can hide because "it was not their decision" and where nobody has the right to "decide for other people".
I mean, are you good at gifts? If you dont know what a person wants to get as gifts, how do you want to know exactly what decisions they would make?
Wildly untenable concept in modern society...
I'm sure it would work great in a video game or something, but In the real world, this shit goes crony AF guaranteed.
We don't measure aptitude or ability in our society, we absolutely suck at it. A person's ability is measured by what pedigree they purchased at degrees R us, or worse, by how articulate and verbose they were when typing a resume. Occasionally, ability is measured by how well someone likes a person even...
Competence is valued in a very select few enterprises. Trades, IT, and at higher echelons, math nerds... That's about it...
No.
Currently: "meritocracy" has nothing to do with "merit" and more to do with eugenics, it's just a word to make white-supremacist-patriarchal-cis-heteronormative-abled-supremacist bigotry sound less terrible than it is.
In general: because hierarchy is bad for society, since someone always ends up at the artificial "bottom" and treated badly or at the very least as less worthy or deserving (of life, dignity, freedom, access, and so on). The only reason anyone would want/believe in a "meritocracy" is because it makes them feel superior to others.