Society & Culture · Real arguments from SuperDebate members below
The alternative to rewarding merit — rewarding birth, seniority, or random selection — produces corrupt institutions and mediocre public services. Every country that has abandoned merit-based advancement has seen institutional decay. The question is not whether merit should matter but whether...
Posted by jconnor
Social mobility data is widely misread. US mobility is low not because meritocracy is broken as a concept but because structural barriers prevent the competition from being fair. The solution is fixing those barriers — better schools, healthcare, and opportunity access — not abandoning the...
Posted by jconnor
Meritocracy's critics tend to be highly credentialed people attacking the system that elevated them. The solution to credential inflation and credential capture is better-designed merit systems, not egalitarianism that removes the incentive for the effort and excellence that make institutions worth...
Posted by jconnor
The zip code you're born into predicts educational outcomes, income, and health better than effort or ability. Meritocracy, as actually practiced, launders inherited advantage as individual achievement — it provides the powerful with a story that their position reflects desert rather than luck of...
Posted by jconnor
Elite institutions select for skills mastered via expensive preparation: SAT tutors, extracurriculars, essay coaches, legacy connections. These resources are purchased, not earned. The admissions process optimizes for the outputs of wealth, then calls the result a meritocratic selection of talent.
Posted by jconnor
Meritocracy's cruelest effect is on the winners: it convinces them they deserve everything they have, making them less empathetic and more hostile to redistribution. The ideology of desert produces plutocracy with a clean conscience — the worst possible combination for democratic societies trying...
Posted by jconnor
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Practice with the coachThe alternative to rewarding merit — rewarding birth, seniority, or random selection — produces corrupt institutions and mediocre public services. Every country that has abandoned merit-based advancement has seen institutional decay. The question is not whether merit should matter but whether... (Argued by jconnor on SuperDebate.)
The zip code you're born into predicts educational outcomes, income, and health better than effort or ability. Meritocracy, as actually practiced, launders inherited advantage as individual achievement — it provides the powerful with a story that their position reflects desert rather than luck of... (Argued by jconnor on SuperDebate.)
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