&gt; &quot;as for your statement that &quot;meritocracy doesn&#x27;t really value merit&quot; you&#x27;ll have to explain that one.&quot;<p>I explained it before, but hopefully I&#x27;ll do a better job this time...<p>How do you measure merit? You cannot measure merit without measuring success.<p>Success can be achieved by more than just merit alone, privilege is another key factor in success, yet there are no mechanisms to distinguish between success based on merit and success based on privilege. In most cases it&#x27;ll be a mixture of the two anyway, it&#x27;s hard to find successful people who were born into completely hostile circumstances, or find successful people who had every possible external advantage but didn&#x27;t have some ability to convert this into success.<p>In short, meritocracies measure success, they don&#x27;t measure merit, as merit cannot be measured directly, it can only be inferred by success, and success has multiple contributing factors, of which merit is only one.<p>Furthermore, meritocracies tend to favour certain types of success. For example, in school, the abilities of an academically gifted kid are more likely to be recognised compared to a kid that&#x27;s good at telling jokes, even though they&#x27;re both valuable traits.