[lordCarbonFiber]

This logic falls appart almost immediately. A couple immediate counter examples: Two candidates for job, one objectively brilliant but an arrogant SoB the other more modestly skilled but jells with our culture. I hire the second, and the first can take is "hard work" and beat it.

Two more candidates, one again is more technically qualified but the second grew up in a market Im targeting for expansion. Again, I take the second because the circumstances of his birth are worth more to me than difference in developed ability.

Every choice made is a combination of hundreds of culminating value judgements and to pretend that we can create some objective score based on merit is intellectually dishonest; to pretend that we want to ignore the other factors is unhealthy.

[onetimePete]

Thank you for that reply. I always favoured meritocracy, but im currently running into this "outside" world, the challenges the outside world poses are fascinating. People are so complicated, it should be a science.