The Meritocracy Machine
20th August 2026
Widespread use of the word “meritocracy” may only be possible in the world it describes. British sociologist and former Labour Party official Michael Young coined the term in a 1958 satire as a sly alternative to aristocracy, clumsily mixing Latin (mereo: to deserve) with Greek (kratos: power, rule). Young’s friend, a classicist, warned he would be “laughed to scorn” for employing such a barbarism. Her caution was, sadly, optimistic.
Nonetheless, meritocracy’s advocates have attempted to supply it with a noble lineage. Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio and former presidential candidate, is convinced the 20th-century term is central to the American experiment going back to 1776. Palantir’s Jordan Chandler Hirsch likewise argues that America was “born meritorious,” defining meritocracy as when government and society operate through objective measures of “quality and talent, open competition based on fair play, and ruthless disinterest in any other factor.”
Yet by Hirsch’s own definition, today’s “objective” meritocracy has little to do with the founding generation’s ideas. As his own source, historian Joseph Kett, describes, “The Founders viewed a man’s public character, his reputation among his peers, as the outward measure of his essential merit…. Nothing would have astonished the Men of Merit more than to be told to take an examination to measure their character.” Indeed, in the founding era there were no standardized examinations, grades, or entrance exams for public service. When Thomas Jefferson spoke of a “natural aristocracy,” he meant one distinguished by “virtue and talents,” not paper credentials and background checks.
The ‘competitive examination’, as satirized in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe, especially for the civil service, started Britain on the road to being ruled by Sir Humphrey Applegate and his brethren.
The economic flaw with meritocracy is that it implies a labor theory of value. Markets reward scarcity and demand, not deservingness. As George Mason University economist Alex Tabarrok explains, “A wage is a price”—it does not signify moral worth but guides action. Forcing markets to become genuinely meritocratic therefore would require a powerful administrative state to direct the economy, much like China’s own allegedly meritocratic system.
The world doesn’t owe you anything for your merit. The world has needs; if you can meet those needs, whatever your ‘merit’, you will be embraced by the world. If not, the world will pass you by.
It is no accident that the Democratic Party’s most radical constituency consists of post-grads with relatively modest incomes.
Exactly so.