This was something I was thinking should be memified / rendered into an infographic.
Meritocracies tend to have blind-spots regarding certain folks:
People who do useful stuff not recognized by the merit assessment system, and allotted no reward or compensation; also merits under-valued and underpaid (e.g. parenting, teaching)
People who subvert the system, often playing to the measures of merit rather than the spirit (e.g. private equity schemes, MLMs, cults, lobbyists, trillion-dollar far-right hate-based propaganda machines)
People who have characteristics favored by the assessment system that aren’t really meritous (white, male, related to wealthy families), and people who are devalued for characteristics that don’t affect their merits (nonwhites, women, queer, poor, fat, unattractive, strange cultures and religions, outside the mainstream ideology)
The personhood of those people who genuinely have little or no merit at this time (disabled folk), some of whom have served (enlisted veterans suffering from TBI or PTSD, or were just blackballed by a superior officer with a grudge) or have the potential to serve (children of the wrong color, children who are below average in physical prowess, children with unusual learning styles, weird children, poor children)
This was something I was thinking should be memified / rendered into an infographic.
Meritocracies tend to have blind-spots regarding certain folks:
Probably not a complete list. Early draft.