Meritocracy

Well I did a little piece on anarchy, so now for meritocracy. It's been mentioned recently in the Queen's Speech, the former PM banged on about it, and even the Church of Satan are in favour of it, so what is a meritocracy?

The -carcy bit's easy it means strength, power, rule; merit's a little trickier. It's easy to mistake for qualified especially when it gets used in conjunction with schooling and education, that would make a meritocracy one where we're ruled by those qualified to do so. Except it doesn't mean that - it means worth and makes the system one where we're ruled by the worthy. So who's worthy?

Well presumably if you have a degree in economics you're better qualified to run something economically based then someone without such a degree, but we're not talking about qualifications. The person with the degree owns a piece of paper saying they have the knowledge, but might be someone who couldn't organise their way out of a paper-bag. Assuming the non-qualified person also has the (or some) knowledge and doesn't have the character flaws who would you hire?

So would a system based on worth replace nepotism, favouritism, the Old Boys' Network? Take two people with the same abilities and make one of them an old school friend, who gets hired? Make the old school friend less able and if they still get hired then we don't have a meritocracy do we? If the knowledge that this person is trustworthy gained through long-term experience and is instilled with the same tenets as the boss via education makes them more worthy in his eyes; then that's still a meritocracy and that's the problem.

Worth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder and a meritocracy would only stamp down on the excesses which are already frowned upon. 'Why did you place this person in that position over this (in my eyes) more worthy candidate?' 'Because this is a position of trust and I know I can trust this person'. Say that and it's possible to see a meritocracy as a step to aristocracy. A person isn't inheriting a position it's just that not only can we trust them because of their family, but due to that same family they've had a better education - they're worthier then anyone else.

Do that and hey look we're back to where we started from. So how do you iron things out? Ditch all private education, ditch the aged based system and have children taught in classes commensurate with their abilities in that subject. Want to go the whole hog then you need to remove the concept of family, children are raised by the state with no knowledge of their parents and are moved between schools each year to break any attachments that might be made. It's the only way to remove bias, but I don't think it'll be appearing as any party's policy.