A impossibilidade da meritocracia

Meritocracy won’t happen: the problem’s with the ‘ocracy’, por Andrew Gelman (Monkey Cage - The Washington Post):

Basically, “meritocracy” means that individuals with more merit get the goodies. From the American Heritage dictionary: “A system in which advancement is based on individual ability or achievement.” As Flynn points out, this leads to a contradiction: to the extent that people with merit get higher status, one would expect they would use that status to help their friends, children, etc, giving them a leg up beyond what would be expected based on their merit alone.

Flynn also points out that the promotion and celebration of the concept of “meritocracy” is also, by the way, a promotion and celebration of wealth and status—these are the goodies that the people with more merit get. That is, the problem with meritocracy is that it’s an “ocracy”.