A Conversation Starter, by Shweta

"As the first child of working class, college-educated parents, an idea I grew up believing is that "meritocracy" exists, and that alone is the way to do well in life. The idea that if you work hard enough make yourself the "best" version of something, it may be possible to choose your destiny. The more I travel and move through life, the less I believe that.

The origin is ironic: the word "meritocracy" was coined by British sociologist Michael Young in 1958, in a dystopian novel, as a warning. He imagined a future where sorting people by merit created a smug ruling class fully justified in their dominance. He was horrified when the word became an aspiration. It was a critique from the start, and we built societies around it anyway.

The system rewards the successful with a morally comfortable story: I earned this, therefore I deserve it, therefore the system is just. That loop is what makes it so resistant to challenge. It doesn't feel like ideology to the people it's rewarding. Philosopher Michael Sandel calls this the tyranny of merit: meritocracy creates not just inequality but humiliation, because it tells those who don't make it they have no one to blame but themselves (at least old aristocracies didn't pretend the hierarchy was fair).

Whereas in reality, "geography" or "where you are born" is the most consequential lottery nobody talks about. Where you're born may be the single most consequential unchosen variable in a life; shaping your currency, passport, legal system, access to credit, and crucially, your ability to fail and recover. "Merit" as the world measures it is dramatically easier to produce with good schools, stable institutions, and a currency that holds value. Someone equally talented born elsewhere is playing a different game entirely. Meritocracy doesn't account for that. It just sees the outcome and calls it deserved.

For meritocracy to actually work, you'd need equal starting points, equal access to the tools that build merit, and judges with no bias. None of that exists.

The honest version of the idea: none of this means effort and skill are meaningless. The more honest framing might be: talent and hard work are necessary but nowhere near sufficient, and the gap between individual outcomes is filled mostly by things nobody chose. Geography, family, timing, which decade you were born in, what language you speak natively. Acknowledging that doesn't erase achievement. It just makes the story closer to reality."