[yourapostasy]

> Unless the system is highly unmeritocratic this does not happen. Say you work at McDonald's and you're a brilliant person. You will soon be promoted and get more options.

To judge whether or not a society is meritocratic, one metric until it falls to Goodhart's Law is look to how its whistleblowers and those who speak truth to power are treated. By that measure, populations in the US and most of the G20 are very tribal-, patronage- and nepotic-bound. Meritocracy prevails when challengers to ideas are embraced for the potential to further strengthen the system for everyone including themselves instead of excoriated.