"Meritocracy" changed from "How do we ensure the best rise up?" to "How do we ensure ppl get an equal chance? Who decides who's best? How?" It was used to protect the market from gov't social engineering—now it's used to justify it. Time to find a new word. It's been co-opted.
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Replying to @eriktorenberg
I’m sorry. You literally have no sense of history here. Meritocracy was coined as a satirical term by a Labour Party member in Britain in the late 1950s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy …
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Replying to @kimmaicutler @eriktorenberg
Before he died, he wanted Tony Blair to stop using the term.https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment …
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Replying to @kimmaicutler
Lots of people invented things that had different use cases than they anticipated. I don't know how the inventor's intentions are related to my point: Did certain people not use meritocracy as a concept to justify market outcomes?
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Replying to @eriktorenberg
You were upset that the term got coopted w/out realizing that your interpretation of the term is also in fact cooption of the creator’s critique to the opposite effect.
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Replying to @kimmaicutler
Not upset. I'm addressing the general sentiment, nothing to do with the original creator's intent. Let's wind this down, I respect and appreciate you but find the ad-hominem assuming of motives tiresome
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Replying to @eriktorenberg
It's not an ad hominem. You made the point, "It was used to protect the market from gov't social engineering—now it's used to justify it." I am refuting your central point. That is not how the term was used or came into being.
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Young was trying to explain how a new class system & justification for its existence was supplanting the old class system of British aristocracy in his book. I'm just a little exasperated at how frequently this term is misused; it's not personal at you.pic.twitter.com/k7dYqVkokg
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Replying to @kimmaicutler @eriktorenberg
It returns to me that ‘aristocracy’ comes from ‘hoi aristoi’ meaning the ‘best men.’ Presumably the aristoi felt they were the result of a meritocracy too. But after hundreds of years the idea took a much different, more fixed, connotation. A form of compounding really.
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