A Meretricious Meritocracy | 1 of 5

Rise of the Meritocracy.

This is the first of five posts relating to the modern American meritocracy. The first examines the rise of the postwar meritocracy. The second considers ‘the bureaucratization of everything.’ The third reviews the class consciousness of the professional managerial elite. The fourth surveys the ongoing corruption of the professions. The final installment focuses on the reserve army of the over-credentialed that serves as the praetorian guard for our oligarchy. This series diagnoses American national challenges. Recommendations for reform will be presented in future installments.

Meritocracy [is a] political, social, or economic system in which individuals are assigned to positions of power, influence, or reward solely on the basis of their abilities and achievements and not on the basis of their social, cultural, or economic background or irrelevant personal characteristics. Meritocracy represents a rejection of hereditary aristocracy and nepotism. The theory of meritocracy presupposes the possibility of equality of opportunity. —Daniel Costa, Encyclopedia Britannica, 2023

Meretricious 1. apparently attractive but having no real value….2.(archaic) relating to or characteristic of a prostitute. — Oxford Languages

America is based on an eternally disruptive notion: Don’t tell us who you are or where you come from: Show us what you can do.

Our first founding—and our second and third—overturned oligarchies to make way for a revitalized, more open and merit-based society.

Many of the founders of 1776 were scions of privilege. Yet they pressed their faces against the glass, peering into an English aristocratic order that dismissed them as bumptious outsiders.

Thomas Jefferson’s egalitarian vision of the Declaration was a forceful assertion of an alternative vision. All people are created equal. Our equality inheres in each of us as individuals.

As John Adams wrote to Jefferson in 1813, “We are now explicitly agreed… that there is a natural Aristocracy among men; the grounds of which are Virtue and Talents.” They saw in yeoman farmers the qualities of individual initiative and communal spirit that would form an enduring national character. Creating value and sustaining values, they are the spiritual ancestors of today’s mass middle class.