You keep using that word
The IQ tests evolve to predict the intelligence of a couple’s children, heralding a kind of merit-based eugenics. Meanwhile, the lower classes turn out not to be the contented idiots the elite hoped they would be. They protest their status, and the indignities accorded to it. Many smartly point out that only a narrow concept of intelligence could be so easily ranked. A manifesto appears, arguing for a classless society in which people are evaluated “not only according to their intelligence and their education, their occupation, and their power, but according to their kindliness and their courage, their sympathy and generosity.” It asks, “Who would be able to say that the scientist was superior to the porter with admirable qualities as a father, the civil servant with unusual skill at gaining prizes superior to the lorry-driver with unusual skill at growing roses?”
The book’s message is clear: not only is a purely merit-based system unachievable, it is also undesirable. It’s a mechanism not for expanding opportunity but for cementing inequality. It believes that some humans are more valuable than others, and naively proposes that we can measure the difference. It rests on the foundation that those declared less equal will accept their inferiority without resentment. It is thus both unsustainable and morally bankrupt.
The Rise of the Meritocracy concludes with its fall. We should be so lucky.