Introduction
Meritocracy is presented in the transcript as a seductive but ultimately self-undermining ideal: it promises fairness and mobility, yet in practice it justifies extreme inequality, entrenches elites, and blames the less advantaged for their own suffering.
Core ideas about meritocracy
- Meritocracy is defined as rule by the meritorious, distributing offices and social goods based on individual traits like intelligence, discipline, and hard work, rather than birth, race, or bloodline.
- Historically, versions of merit appear in many traditions (Confucian exams in China, karma, biblical “you reap what you sow,” and Quranic injunctions that rulers must appoint the best-qualified), which ties merit closely to ideas of justice and people “getting what they deserve.”
- The Enlightenment helped ground modern meritocracy by insisting that all humans share basic capacities (reason, moral judgment, language), and that given opportunities (especially education), anyone can develop talents and rise, feeding into the American Dream and “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” ideology.
Conceptual problems with “merit”
- Merit is fuzzy and multi-dimensional: it mixes cognitive ability, skills, effort, discipline, and “drive,” and no candidate is ever best on all relevant dimensions.
- The hosts distinguish merit (meeting objective conditions for a reward) from desert or deservingness (how much effort it cost you to meet those conditions), noting that real-world decisions rarely cleanly separate these.
- Because institutions must compare people on a single scale, they over-standardize and quantify (tests, rankings), which conflicts with the supposed celebration of individual uniqueness and masks the value choices built into any definition of merit.
Meritocracy as ideology and hierarchy
- Meritocracy appeals across the political spectrum:
- On the right, it justifies inequality as a natural outcome of differential talent and effort.
- On the left, it seems anti-aristocratic, rejecting rule by bloodline or race in favor of ability.
- Yet this very appeal makes it hard to criticize, because merit is equated with fairness itself: people want to get what they “deserve” and not suffer consequences for what they did not do.
- Political theorist Christopher Hayes argues that meritocracy functions as an ideology in the Marxist sense: it hides how the “game is rigged,” legitimizing vast inequalities by framing them as earned rather than structurally produced.
From meritocracy to oligarchy
- Hayes says a “pure” meritocracy would openly embrace inequality but at least pair it with high social mobility; in reality, modern meritocratic systems generate inequality without mobility.
- His “iron law of meritocracy”: once some people rise to the top, they use their position to entrench and pass on advantage to their children, gradually turning meritocracy into plutocracy or oligarchy.
- Winners “kick away the ladder” by rewriting rules (tax cuts, legacy admissions, exploiting networks, deregulation) so their descendants need not compete under the same conditions, even as the rhetoric of merit is maintained.
Psychological and political fallout
- For those at the bottom, meritocratic ideology is cruel: if success is supposedly available to all, then failure is interpreted as a personal lack of talent or effort, not as a product of structural barriers.
- This aligns neatly with capitalism: it normalizes concentration of wealth and power, encourages the poor to blame themselves, and casts poverty as evidence of low merit rather than injustice or policy choices.
- Sociologist Michael Young, who coined “meritocracy” in a 1958 dystopian satire, worried that such a system would weaken the left by siphoning off the most talented working-class people into elite institutions, undermining class solidarity and leaving no credible leaders for grassroots movements.
Education and the myth of fair selection
- Education is treated as the central mechanism by which merit is identified and cultivated, especially via competitive exams and elite schools.
- In practice, selectors cannot see “merit” directly; they rely on proxies like school prestige and standardized tests, which track affluence, parental support, and access to prep far more than raw ability.
- Hayes’s example of Hunter College High School in New York shows this: admission is via a single test at age 11, and despite a formally “blind” process, students are overwhelmingly from affluent (and disproportionately white) families; only about 10% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch in a city where over 75% of public-school students do.
The DEI backlash and hypocrisy
- The episode opens by discussing Donald Trump’s second-term executive order “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” which denounces DEI hiring as “illegal” and claims to restore individual merit, aptitude, and hard work.
- The hosts highlight the irony that this “pro-merit” stance coincides with blatant nepotism and “central casting” appointments: ambassadors chosen because they are relatives (e.g., an ambassador post going to his son-in-law’s father) or because they “look the part,” and a media personality with little relevant experience, Pete Hegseth, becoming defense secretary.
- Critics on the right often treat merely being appointed as proof of merit, while simultaneously casting suspicion on people of color in positions of power, suggesting their roles are unearned products of DEI rather than competence.
Alternative values and proportionality
- The hosts suggest that even if merit has some place in decision-making, it should not be the sole value; competing values include:
- Utility (social good, equality, representation).
- Need (“from each according to abilities, to each according to needs”).
- Diversity-related goods (geographic, age, veteran status, life experience) in settings like university admissions.
- They also question proportionality: even if someone has slightly more merit than another, why should that justify wildly disproportionate rewards (e.g., a star athlete earning tens of millions while others lack basic healthcare)?
- Treating market rewards as a direct readout of moral desert creates a circular logic: you are rich because you deserved it, and your riches prove that you deserved even more, while poverty proves a lack of deservingness and justifies further exclusion from goods like housing and healthcare.