"If you want to have social equality--a country where everyone is considered an equal, by themselves and others--what Young describes is a doomsday machine. (Young himself famously didn't like it much, which is why at the end of the book the 'merit'-promoting bureaucrat gets killed by a populist mob.) The more you provide 'equal opportunity' for those at the bottom, the more you perfect a system in which those at the top can believe they are smarter and better (i.e. more meritorious) than those who can't or don't climb up the pyramid. After all, they had equal opportunity. What's their excuse?"
Mickey Kaus at Kausfiles wonders what comes after meritocracy.
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